Recent reviews by MDS-95

This is a great learning tool! While it's in early access at the time of this review, I feel there's enough to warrant the price inside the game at the moment. Drawing in this game is simple and works with plenty of the same hotkeys and tools you'd find in art programs like Aseprite. There's plenty of lessons that go into detail on the standard rules for pixel art, as well as insight on how you might break those rules for different aesthetics. On top of the lessons, there's the ability to make sprites for games of Snake and Pinball, which certainly gives room to work on what you've learned.

What's most impressive to me are the line art challenges: tracing the line art of various references, such as Mickey Mouse, the cover to Tetris, Bubble Bobble, and other fun pieces. There's plenty of leeway in tracing the lines, which is likely thanks to the system that grades your pixel art based on the standard conventions of the medium. While not perfect, it's fantastic to get some feedback that points out specific issues that may exist within the line art once you're done tracing. I'm really excited to see future lessons and learn more!

While I imagine I'll reach the end of the content at around the 9 hour mark (give or take some idling), there's plenty more planned for future updates. The website for the game (I found it through a link on the GitHub after clicking the version number at the bottom right of the title screen) also has a written study guide on other concepts, like dithering and more in-depth information on topics the game doesn't yet cover. It's something that's helping to hold me over as I wait for more updates, and a good sign that this is a project that won't be abandoned.

A fine enough port, though I'd recommend turning off High-Contrast Text and setting the font to Classic so it doesn't look like it was made in Game Maker. Actors are infinitely tall in this port, IE you can't run under a Cacodemon which can be a bit frustrating on some maps.

That being said, Legacy of Rust is a stellar new addition with a soundtrack so good I had to stop on a few levels just to appreciate it without drowning it in gunfire. That level pack warrants the price of admission on its own, not to mention the fun notes and history in the id Vault or other great level packs like Sigil and the ability to add even more.
You also get the DOS versions and the files to plug into some other source port if you'd prefer something like GZDoom or Skulltag if you live under a rock

I'm pretty new to the whole Total War Community, so I can't tell you how this game shapes up to Medieval, Shogun, Three Kingdoms, or whatever. I can say as someone who enjoys unique experiences in games and isn't the biggest RTS fan in general, this game's a lot of fun, especially if you're playing Immortal Empires. The scale of the map, the way each faction can feel like they're playing different games at times, and my constant curiosity at what nonsense the AI has done on the other side of the world in a new campaign make this a game that I can sink hours at a time into with ease. There's some bad parts, like siege battles sucking and certain factions being in need of a rework (vampire counts), but I can wholeheartedly recommend this, especially if it's on sale.

Now that I've no-lifed this game for 2 weeks straight, I can give a proper review. Dragon's Dogma 2 is a fantastic game on the whole. I believe it to be a worthy successor to the first game, which quickly became one of my favorite games. I haven't had a game grab my attention like this since Elden Ring game out years ago. However, paying close attention to the game like that means the flaws were visible too, and while I personally can look past them, maybe you can't.
Just to get those flaws out of the way:
- There's definitely some performance issues, though it seems dependent on your specific system. Some people see a ton of crashes, others might get massive frame drops in some areas or at certain times. I only had the performance hits with decent graphical settings and a 3070, people with better cards have had it worse. Though they've been patching this over time, your mileage may vary.
-There's some obnoxious micro-transactions, but there's plenty of misinformation about those out there. Each item you can buy, save for the soundtrack replacement, is obtainable in game with varying degrees of ease. None of these are really "pay to win", and you can easily make your way through the game without them. Still annoying that they try to charge a dollar for a 1-up, but big game companies are going to squeeze out extra money however they can. Don't buy those.
-Pawn dialogue in this game is more repetitive than in the original. By far. Though things were done to make them more engaging (pawns talk to one another with conversations and react to more parts of the world, for instance), the problem is there are not that many lines of dialogue. Often you'll hear things repeated, and while that was true of the original, it was usually with enemy call outs. Here, pawns will have the same discussion about some anecdote over and over. It's not constant, but I miss when they would talk more about enemies that were being fought, or when they genuinely had no idea what was going on. They also can cause some problems with commands when they have quest info, and wandering pawns on the road will occasionally initiate conversation with you to get recruited, which is pretty annoying.
-As the story is a bit more important this go around, it accidentally highlights portions of the world and its setting that are underdeveloped. Some characters and ideas are explored well and have some interesting ideas, others get almost no attention whatsoever. Plenty of people in town can be ignored entirely, they don't even have anything interesting to say.
-Part of this is me playing too much of the game at one time, but tthe enemy variety is pretty lacking in later areas. They do change up enemies a little bit, but at the end of the day goblins are goblins.
-The removal of gloves and clothing as equipment types sucks if you liked playing dress-up with your Arisen, or if you just wanted to try covering up the fact that the best armor you had at the time left your ass hanging out. I never really cared, but others might.
- While I adore the endgame and what it tries to do story-wise, I miss the more arcade-y form of endgame that was in DD1.
-The game could use a Hard mode, though since I only played DD1 on Hard I might just be ruined by that.

With those complaints out of the way, if that wasn't enough to scare you off, then you've got a hell of a game to enjoy.
+In-depth combat system with plenty of room for creativity. Getting an armored cyclops to trip and crack his head against a cliff, his armor falling to the side as he passes out is some of the most satisfying combat I've had in a bit. Managing smaller enemies can be just as fun as tackling greater beasts if you enjoy finding and exploiting their weaknesses.
+ Quest design that on average is an improvement over the first game. If you like having to think and pay attention to the world and your actions in quests having consequences, then there's quite sa few in this game with multiple endings depending on your performance and decisions. Even better is often these quests can affect others and open new options in later sections of the game. While they're not the most impressive in the world, I typically enjoyed going through quests.
+ The world is full of reasons to explore. Dungeons with unique loot and stronger fights, keys and tools to better explore other sections of the world, Seekers tokens hidden in places you'll need to jump to, bugs that give permanent upgrades to your character all around, and if you look at the right spots you could even unlock classes or their special abilities a bit early. I could spend hours just walking around and taking in the scenery of this world, searching for what things I could have missed.
+ Each class is fun and unique, several of them having been changed since DD1 in ways that made them much more fun to play. Quickspell on Mage/Sorcerer has made them an absolute blast, for instance. Warrior is an absolute beast when it comes to knocking things over to get a charged attack on their head.
+ I personally enjoy the story a lot, but it's something that requires some investment in-game as well for reasons I won't get into. The more you put in quest-wise, the more of an impact that it can make.
+ The Pawn Quest system is a lot of fun! Being able to set my own pawn to work on badges I'd like them to earn is a nice way of getting more fights with enemies that are hard-to-find, and it's nice to hire pawns to help others out as well.

This game became one of my new favorites pretty quickly, in spite of its flaws. I'm hopeful we get an expansion or revamp down the line to help remedy some of the flaws. If this game has its performance issues fixed and gets the same jump in quality that DD1 got with Dark Arisen, then this game could become one of the best of the genre. Only time will tell.

Atama, as a game, is far from the worst Unity horror game that I've played. There is a clear idea, the game is mostly clear of bugs, and it does feel complete for what it is. Its biggest crime is that while complete, it lacks anything to truly stand out.

The plot is fairly barren; though it leaves some room for mystery, it lacks the substance to have any staying power. Even with the secret ending coming in with an alright twist, there just isn't enough meat on the bone to feel invested in. I wasih I could say more, but there's so little going on that trying to explain my problems would require spoiling what does exist.

The concept of looking through the perspective of enemies to plan routes and evade them is a good one, especially when it's also used to hint at parts of puzzles. However, that same mechanic is easy to ignore; I outright ran through multiple areas (the forest, the old town, ascending the tower, residential district, the "rooftops") without needing to check for enemies using this main mechanic.

The enemies and their AI were either laughably easy to evade, or frustrating to deal with. Early on, enemies were able to see my full body in their sights and not realize I was there. In other areas (especially the Tower's descent), the enemies would be triggered just from seeing a sliver of the player character's hand poking past a screen. Worst of all, it seems you can easily outrun an enemy so long as you're not running straight at them if you just walk diagonally, which made the more open areas trivial.

There are some things I like in the game; a sequence where you incapacitate the enemies with a gong does some interesting things when you try to look through their perspective, and the sound design was generally good. The problem is, this good wasn't enough to make it stand out, and it certainly isn't enough to warrant the $20 price the game has at the time of writing. It's especially bad when the Developer's Commentary outright admits there wasn't much of a budget: the assets were primarily from free asset packs cobbled together. (This was pretty obvious, though it doesn't become a problem until the Manor, which had really strange statues and a dungeon that was straight out of Oblivion.) I understand this game had a team of devs that all need to get paid, but $20 is a very steep price for what this game offers. $10 would be more reasonable in my opinion.

All in all, Atama is a fairly mediocre horror game. It feels more like a stealth game with bad mechanics for most of it, and I feel like the only thing I'll remember about it in a week is that my friend paid $20 for it. I would not recommend this to anyone who doesn't seem incredibly invested in the idea of waiting for heads to fly away.

Many people praise this game for it's repetitive, generic chiptune soundtrack that sounds like the musical equivalent of a child who's Ritalin has been withheld from him. Others praise the fact that it is a Metroidvania, despite the fact it is as linear as Metroid Fusion, which I did enjoy due to the bosses, story, and atmosphere. The bosses in this game, however, are poorly designed due to flaws such as unskippable intro cutscenes, often poorly telegraphed attacks in combination with slight randomization, and sometimes attacks that can be undodgeable in some situations no matter what the player does. The story is not something to be taken seriously, which I can understand, but the back story provided through the Info Codexes can actually mislead the player on enemies by claiming they're invincible to most weaponry when they in fact are not. That particular codex was also placed before a boss, which was immediately followed by a room with moving platforms and at least a dozen of the supposedly invincible enemy flying around in ways that could make them incredibly difficult to dodge, which would often lead to the player being knocked into the instant death spikes which do not respect invincibility frames. This was incredibly pleasant due to the fact that the player can run out of lives at this point, and if they do they have to go all the back to the boss they just killed, and then continue on yet another long path. This life system is incredibly good considering the fact that difficulty is excessive in this game, often matching poorly designed fangames of I Wanna Be The Guy, and if you've played one of those, you'd know they should not be retail games. And yet here we are with a Metroidvania with a life counter, difficulty that is incredibly high for a game with a life counter and very few points you can continue from, and music that I can't listen to for extended periods of time without turning off to listen to something more appealing, such as nails on a chalkboard.
In summation, don't listen to the hype of yet another poorly made, ugly "8-bit" (which actually aren't 8-bit at all, just a realatively easy art style that's cheap and in vogue currently due to the nostalgia train), and save your money for something more enjoyable, like an actual ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Metroidvania game.

The game's a buggy mess, impossible to complete due to a lack of an incredibly important cutscene near endgame, and the fact that you completely lose your briefcase after the cutscene as well, depriving you of a key that you need to solve one of the next puzzles. but that's not all my friends. Oh no, the game is also filled with some of the worst puzzles I've seen in my life, such as a puzzle wherein you had to search an entire storage room of urns for the ashes of someone that was not hinted at whatsoever, and then revive the soul of said person using a spirit that was not hinted at from what I see as well. To follow that, you needed to then search through an entire library for books in a specific order, not all of which are even needed.

While I left this game having greatly enjoyed it, I have to say it has a lot of flaws. It seemed to get really buggy in the second half, allowing me to get out of bounds and somehow stop seeing my surroundings if I stood at a certain point. At one point, one of my companions seemed to disappear at the end, and had also forgotten that I had done an important quest for her. Crafting also allowed me to somehow create more weight, which is rather annoying when you have a weight limit.
However, the gameplay was phenomenal. Combat feels fluid, challenging, and there are even extremely unique styles of play, meaning a heavy weapons mode and a dagger mode, heavy weapons based on slower, more damaging hits and blocking, daggers based on consistent hitting and dodging. The story was also greatly interesting, and I was genuinely interested in the lives of my companions and was worried for their safety at points.
Despite the flaws, I would highly reccommend this game, but I do feel the need to point out the games flaws so you know what to expect.