Beardyweirdy

Bethesda takes what made its previous RPGs enjoyable and throws it out the window. Instead of a carefully handcrafted world, you have lazy, repetitive randomly generated environments. The main quest and gameplay mechanics are torn straight out of No Man's Sky but are somehow presented more poorly. The character models lack detail and they demonstrate approximately two wooden emotions, 1. Dead eyed stare, or 2. Slightly shocked, raised eyebrows, dead eyed stare. The skill system locks you out of most of the game mechanics and leveling is atrociously slow. The GUI is cumbersome and lacks any local maps. The encumbrance and stamina rules just aren't any fun. I have no confidence in this game studio or that the next ESO is worth waiting for.

Fun but ugly, performance and bugs are terrible. Unacceptable for a Pokemon game.

Games like this hurt the indie game market. Terrible combat, enemies have nonexistent hitboxes, even turning autoaim on, your character will get too close to an enemy to be able to melee it. There are THREE enemy types in the game, the block and attack in front of itself type, the shoot a glob at you type, and the throw themselves at you type. The two bosses I found had almost the exact same attack patterns. There are some quests early on, they disappear completely leaving you with no guidance or aim for further gameplay. The stat system essentially locks you into either a melee, magic or ranged playstyle. Good luck mixing and matching because switching gear is cumbersome and your attacks will be underpowered. Night time makes it SO HARD to see, even with screen brightness all the way up. There is NO MAP and the world layout is totally confusing. You can leave the screen and re-harvest the same potions from bottles over and over again. The peppermint leaf or whatever quest just glitched out, I had more than ten and couldn't hand it in. The b button closes some menus and DROPS ITEMS on others. Burn damage continues to stack even after the circle is full, causing insane damage that you have no way of healing apart from with potions. You can sell arrows for 45 gold each leading to a totally broken in game economy. The final areas just have masses of crap enemies to fight, I lost interest. The game gives you a skateboard to speed up movement but it DOESN'T WORK on most terrain types. There are boats to pilot but water screens don't connect to new areas, so don't be tricked into thinking there is water exploration. It has great graphics and some sound effects stolen from BotW. And that's it. As an experienced gamer I found it frustrating, buggy, and unfinished, obviously thrown onto stores to make a quick buck.

Progress in Spelunky 2 is tedious. I keep getting to the yellow head, beating the first portion of the fight (which is monotonous) and then getting killed by a bomb in the second section. It forces me to do the jungle room over and over and over again. And there's no sense of progress, unlike in the first game where you can contribute money to the next shortcut with each run. Getting bored fast. Doesn't help that the games are so similar. Reused areas and assets. Seems lazy.

Subsequent review after 8 hours: The game has gotten to the point where enemy creatures are between 2-5 levels above my creatures. The way the game distributes EXP is... interesting. Rather than distributing EXP after each enemy creature is defeated, it's distributed at the end of the battle. That means creatures who contribute a lot early on in the battle may get no EXP at all by the battle's end. It encourages catching and using new Nexomon, which level as you do, rather than training your favourites. Excessive item use (using potions and revives) and just plain waiting for enemy mon to tire out seem to be viable strategies at this point. Which feels like cheesing it a bit. Going back and completing quests is a good way to find new, and more powerful Nexomon, so you can return to the main story better equipped. Initial review: Really enjoying the game so far. If you thought the mainline Pokemon games were becoming tedious and too easy then this is the perfect antidote. An interesting/odd-ball story, excellent monster design (and tons of them, over 350), battles that increase in difficulty as you level up, quick and easy healing, and a more dynamic capture system, this game ticks all the boxes! Some people don't like the writing... If you don't like parodies, it might become tiresome and gimmicky as the game progresses.

My initial impression of Fae tactics was that there were a few key things missing that would make the game an enjoyable experience. A recent update has patched out some of the more frustrating design choices (e.g. NPCs falling into water or holes and dying instantly) which I think is probably in the best interests of the game finding its mark amongst more casual players of this genre. Fae Tactics combines a Pokemon-like creature collecting and leveling system, with a spell casting system, creating real drama (the good kind of drama) in levels with unlockable spells to be found, collectables to recover, and powerful enemy bosses. Many of the early levels play out like well-tuned puzzles, requiring ample consideration of the rock-paper-scissors style of combat (strengths and weaknesses of foes). The combo, critical and mb (shield) system add interest. One thing I noticed was that I was really rewarded for changing out and trying different monsters in my line-up, rather than say, Pokemon where you can usually end the game with the same six creatures you found from the start. There are some make-or-break scenarios where characters can either be lost forever, or recruited to your team. I wish that I had saved more often - as these choices can be time-limited and resource intensive - I would have happily given up Ragnarok in order to [insert spoiler here]. The music mostly hits the mark, however I found the boss theme did become repetitive. The charming art style was another real draw card for me, when I was struggling with the pre-patched build and wondering if the sudden difficulty spike after the first chapter was worth being patient with. All put together this is an amazing release and I can't wait to see what comes next from this studio. 9/10

I loved this game, it's beautiful and engaging and had some great, compelling ideas for changing up online play. Unfortunately the execution was reasonably poor, the online match making is broken, the online performance is terrible, the routes are tiny, lacking in details and trainer battles, there is little to go back and explore once you have the game's only unlockable skill (Surf) and no large explorable dungeons. This is a lazy first entry into the Switch catalogue for Pokemon. Making mattress worse is that GAMEFREAK and the Pokemon Company's response has been extremely poor, and professional reviewers have overlooked glaring issues because they are being paid for ad clicks and ad revenue from being provided with review copies. This is a bad time to be a long term Pokemon fan.