Phil_Montana

The ultimate blend of survival horror and action game. The story is split between Grace (horror) and Leon (shooting), offering basically a "best of" of the entire Resident Evil saga. Playtime is around 13-15 hours and while the standart difficulty seems a bit too easy, especially regarding boss-fights, its an extremely tense and memorable experience. The amount of details is stunning and Graces voice acting is virtually oscar worthy.

Quite a competent and creative Pokemon-clone with fast combat and overall many nice little additions. However, the story is brutally linear and leaves you exactly one path to take at every time. There is zero room for exploring. The nexomon are quite inventive and the overall design is good; however, almost all of them have the same stats so it doesnt really matter how you build your team. Also the way they learn new skills and attacks is convoluted and fleshed out better in the sequel. If it werent for the suffocating linearity, this could have been a really great game, althouhg its a miracle how a blatant copy of another IP is even allowed to exist.

Regarding the remake version: Decent mystery with light horror elements and lots of choices, but also increasingly rough translation errors. You can tell there was no english native speaker involved with this project. The story gets more sloppy as it approaches its climax and there are countless instant game over moments after some choices. Playtime is fairly short, around 3-4 hours. The first half is the best part since it balances mystery with suspence. It falls off when it tries to push emotions and many aspects are overexplained. Overall a mediocre visual novel, worth it when it´s on a heavy discount.

2D Soulslike with some good ideas, but overall too frustrating to keep you hooked. Platforming and backtracking after dying are a nightmare. The map is confusing, closed doors are everywhere and you have to find random switches to open doors and portals - and the game never tells you which one you just opened. Video guides are mandatory and this fact alone is unacceptable. You can´t just stuff every soulslike mechanig into a game without deliberating if it makes sense in this particular case. Overall it runs well on the switch. Major stuttering occurs whenever you kill a boss or other major events happen. The loading times between zones is massive. Apart from that I´ve had no crashes or problems. Apparently though the switch version never got the final 1.6 patch that introduced NG+ and tweaked a few other things. As a 2D soulslike, there are some positive aspects, but they are weighed down by an overwhelming flood of frustrating game mechanics that **** out every fun aspect of the game. Sadly, Mandragora is not worth it and I can´t bring myself to ever finish it.

Eerie horror game with great graphics - but not worth 80 Euro. My playthrough took me 8,5 hours and the game offers little variety in gameplay mechanics and general scale. The ending leaves you hanging too and apparently you need three playthroughs to get the good ending (which I´m not gonna bother with). The story is a psychological horror take on female oppression (written by a guy, of course) and many dark aspects are only hinted at. The gameplay itself is very stiff and clunky, especially the melee-only combat which feels terrible right from the get go - but this seems to be a deliberate choice given you´re playing as a fragile girl. The worldbuilding and art direction warrant a single playthrough - but not at the outrageous price point of 80 Euro. I got it at a 40% discount which seems about fitting for this good looking but mechanically shallow little horror game. Plus the english voiceover doesn´t match the lip movements of the characters at all. They didn´t even bother to fix that!

Runs horribly on the Series X with loads of stutters and is overall plagued by countless little details that in summary create an unpleasant experience. The jank is unbearable, with hits not connecting when they should, a baffling and unintuitive inventory system and exhausting, drawn out, maze-like level design with few saving points in between. (the backtracking after you die is unbearable). The protagonist is an empty shell without personality and the story is dissapointingly dull and not intriguing at all. The boss difficulty is all over the place with loads of unfair WTF-deaths. To me personally it feels the combat would have been a lot better if your character moved with 1,5x speed. I gave up after 4-5 hours and the experience got worse the longer I played. I have never seen a game run so poorly on the Series X and this is unacceptable.

Addicting combat mechanics, stunning visuals and overall breathtaking. Dozens of outfits to unlock without microtransactions. Game launched bug-free and runs somoothly on the PS5. Cleared the game twice and I´m still addicted. Without doubt one of the best Playstation titles ever.

Visual Novel with an interesting Mystery-story, but goofy writing/translation that gets increasingly worse in the latter half of the game. Theres no auto-save so if you get a Game Over (theres some instances where you die instantly by making the wrong choice, based on luck entirely) it could ruin hours of gameplay if you didn´t spam manual saves. Also your choices don´t really matter. The second half of the game is subpar since it dips into cliché riddled, cheesy tropes. Add in the gruesome writing and you get a mixed bag of a mystery-VN. Above all, it´s visuals are not really enticing, probably for budget reasons.

Cool worldbuilding and story, but noticeable framerate stuttering on PS5. Matchmaking doesn´t work for whatever reason (an absolute deal breaker) and the first boss is overwhelmingly hard. This might have been a good game with more develpoment time and better enemy tuning. Simply making a game hard doesn´t make it a good soulslike. I deinstalled after the first boss obliterated me 20 times in a row. If you want Elden Ring, go play Elden Ring. Why bother with a copycat?

Cool worldbuilding and story, but noticeable framerate stuttering on PS5. Matchmaking doesn´t work for whatever reason (an absolute deal breaker) and the first boss is overwhelmingly hard. This might have been a good game with more development time and better enemy tuning. Simply making a game hard doesn´t make it a good soulslike. I deinstalled after the first boss obliterated me 20 times in a row. If you want Elden Ring, go play Elden Ring. Why bother with a copycat?