aditya1101

I think a lot of my disappointment with this game is due to how much hype it had before I started my playthrough, so I definitely had pretty high expectations for it. And to its credit, there are some things that I absolutely loved about the game - I really enjoyed the combat, and particularly the process of replaying a boss/hard enemies multiple times and eventually getting the parry timings down. It was super satisfying, and it scratched both the more tactical jrpg itch while also managing to fit in really satisfying real-time combat too. Towards the end of my play through (~30hrs total) it was maybe starting to get a tad stale, but it certainly held my interest throughout my whole playthrough and its easily one of my favorite rpg combat systems ever. I also loved both the big twist and the resolution of the story - it was both really interesting and really heartfelt, and I think they did a great job with the story in terms of nailing the themes throughout the different story sections. However, I ended up spending a large portion of my playthrough feeling pretty unhappy with many aspects of the game. While the overarching story/themes are great, a ton of element of the actual execution of the story - the moment-to-moment dialogue, the characterization, the world building, the tonal consistency, etc - were either not my cup of tea or, in some cases, were just really poorly done. Frankly I've forgotten many of them, but off the top of my head here are a couple of the story elements I didn't enjoy: – Some of the juxtaposition of sorrowful, deeply moving sequences next to "hehe funny bit-NPC does a silly thing lul" were super off-putting to me. This game has a similar problem to the Nopon in Xenoblade Chronicles - they're kinda cute, and kinda funny at first, and even if it's not your favorite kind of humor you can live with it for a little bit, but by golly do they overstay their welcome. This was mostly a problem in the first third of the game, and the existence of the analogous characters in Expedition 33 does make more sense once you know the full story, but even so I just really did not enjoy their inclusion in the game at all. – Following up on the previous point, I also just didn't really like a lot of the humor in general. This is largely an issue of personal taste, so take that with a grain of salt. However, a lot of the humor was of the "lul so random" variety and normally I enjoy that brand of humor, but the majority of the jokes in this game just didn't land for me. – Some of this might be the translation, but a lot of the character dialogue either felt really stilted or overly cheesy, especially Maelle's. Towards the latter part of the game there are two moments where a specific party member is able to overcome a boss due to their unique personality/characterization, and both of those moments landed completely flat for me. I really didn't feel like I "knew" these characters as well as I sometimes do when I'm playing a longer game like this. There were some great character moments towards the end, but for the majority of the game I was pretty unimpressed by the characterization and character dialogue – There were a ton of small things that just didn't really make sense. There's a character on your team that's supposedly extremely powerful but they don't help at lots of key moments. The technology of the world is contradictory at times (e.g. there's some insanely advanced tech/magic, but the story wants you to just forget about it sometimes even if it could probably help the characters navigate the predicament they're in). The story eventually explains some of these things, and I'm sure I'm wrong about some too, but I just had way too many "hmm, does that actually make sense" thoughts while playing – There's a couple big things in the story that are just introduced out of nowhere, deus-ex-machina style. This is a problem with lots of jrpgs though :P I also had some general gripes about the graphics/movement in the game. I absolutely abhor the platforming in the game, and while you don't have to do a ton of platforming, when it does come up it just feels awful. The lack of a minimap in the overworld and the lack of any map in the levels themselves is a real head-scratcher. The amount of confusing navigation and backtracking in the levels was really annoying, and a map (and some way to put markers on the overworld map) would have gone a long way to making this a smoother experience. There was also a lot of level geometry that didn't feel well tested - on two separate occasions I got stuck behind parts of the background foliage/etc and literally had to reload because I couldn't get unstuck. And finally, while the game is really visually stunning, there were a lot of places where the lack of polish was really clear - overlapping textures (especially the hair!), glitchy battle start/end animations, etc. But especially for such a small team I was mostly impressed with the graphics, despite those gripes

Probably the best exploration game I've ever played. Getting through the full story and reaching the ending is probably one of the most special experiences I've ever had gaming. Just an absolute masterpiece.

Just an absolutely beautifully told story - I unfortunately got spoiled on the ending pretty early on, but despite that I was still blown away by how much of an impact this story had on me.

Very solid game, it combines the village management and roguelite parts of the game really well and I definitely enjoyed the gameplay loop. My main gripe is that the combat started to feel a bit stale after a while, both because of the lack of variety in enemy patterns as well as because the combat itself isn't as tight or satisfying as some similar roguelites e.g. binding of isaac

Feels like you're playing a movie, there are more plot contrivances/conveniences than I would've liked and the characters aren't as good as I was hoping but overall it's a pretty solid story and a lot of really good action set pieces

Really excellent game, I had a ton of fun with the humor and overall storylines within the game. The amount of work that it must have taken to create this is just baffling.

The premise is interesting, and the voice acting was pretty good, but I didn't really enjoy most other aspects of the game. The story started pretty strong but ended on a pretty unsatisfying note. Ambiguity in stories is fine but I didn't feel it was handled well here. Instead of making past story elements fall into place, the big reveal actually made most of the first act of the game more confusing and there were so many loose ends and things that I felt didn't have a satisfying explanation beyond just being an oversight or plot hole. In addition to the story issues, the gameplay loop itself quickly became very tedious - it was cool to discover new lines of action through trial and error, but those exciting discoveries were too few and far between all the drudgery required to experiment. There was also a lot of polish missing from the games, particularly in the character animations but also in the overall clunkiness of the games UI.

More fun than I was anticipating for a single button game, the puzzles weren't particularly deep or challenging but they were satisfying to complete.

Short but sweet retro platformer, I just wish there was more of this game to play. I definitely enjoyed my time with it - it's no shovel night but it's one of the best retro platformers I've played in recent memory.

I knew it was only an hour long so I wasn't expecting anything too deep gameplay wise, overall it was fun albeit a bit annoying at times.

I enjoyed my time with this game, especially as someone who plays a lot of these types of deckbuilding roguelikes, although I felt the gameplay wasn't that deep and wouldn't have been that satisfying to master. The story was cute, albeit kinda hamfisted and not as well written as I'd have liked, but overall I felt like they at least did a good job of weaving the themes of the story into the gameplay itself, which is always really cool to see.

Pretty interesting game, kinda like dicey dungeons with less polish but more options, which overall I liked a lot. The game is still in early access which was pretty obvious from both the lack of polish and the bugs (I encountered a game breaking bug after 3 hours of playing).

Quite a bit better than Little Hope, they did a much better job of making the choices actually matter in this one.

This game was impressive in some regards, but overall it felt like the pacing was really off, the characters weren't that great, and the dialogue was really awful at many points. It has a lot of the same issues as Until Dawn but it's much less fun to actually play through, so it doesn't make up for its issues nearly as much.

Interesting game, I enjoy autobattlers in general but this got repetitive way too quickly. There was far too much grinding to access anything that made the loops feel different from one another.

Pretty amusing game, it felt a lot like a lite version of the stanley parable. I thought the humor was pretty fun, though definitely not for everyone. It ended up being pretty repetitive to go for new endings after a while though.

Surprisingly fun game, it would be nice to see more variety in win condition (dodo too op lol) but in general there's a lot of different mechanics and it's fun to see the game demand different things of you as you transition from the early game to the mid game and to the late game.

I have a lot of experience in other card-based roguelikes like Slay The Spire, and for a while I felt like this game would be a great alternative. There are a ton of elements to this game that I really enjoy, but after playing about 20 or 30 runs now I have to say that there is just too much volatility, especially in the endgame, and it leads to runs where I've made hundreds of good decisions ending because of a single misclick, which is just aggravating and not very fun to play around. I enjoy playing games with a lot of risk, but this game takes it way too far and makes it unconscionably easy to die in an instant to something that wasn't even obviously a threat.

Overall, I didn't like the actual story quite as much as the first game, but there were a lot of quality of life improvements, as well as just better integration of story and gameplay which made it a lot easier to feel immersed in the game. Definitely not my favorite game series by any means, but as long as they keep making these i'm gonna keep playing them for sure.

This game is obviously very similar to megaman battle network, and I think it does a good job of taking that concept to another level and adding a lot of interesting and fun mechanics. Overall I feel that the progression could've been better gated to avoid overwhelming the player, and I personally felt that there were too many things to keep track of with some cards, but the combat was overall pretty fun and the deck building aspect was done quite well.

Incredible art. I honestly wasn't the biggest fan of the gameplay itself, because while the puzzles weren't bad, there really wasn't anything special about them to keep me hooked. But what really drove me to keep playing was just the vast array of different art styles that were all so masterfully done in the game. For that alone it deserves a high rating.

I really enjoyed this game, and i felt like it did a good job of providing a space where you can simultaneously feel protected by anonymity without being suffocated by it. I enjoyed being able to have meaningful interactions with people without having any strings attached.

great game with a lot of really cool and innovative mechanics (especially bash). Some sequences (like the water vein escape sequence) were some of the best platforming experiences I've ever had, and although the game unfortunately didn't maintain that level for its entirety it was still a really amazing platformer with stunning visuals.

Really awesome game, the controls felt really complex at first but the more I played the better it flowed and once I started getting toward the end of the game it really just felt amazing to control spiderman. Beautiful visuals, really enjoyed the story (despite not being super duper up to date on spiderman lore), and just overall a super solid game.

One of the best roguelikes that I've had the pleasure of playing. It's not quite as replayable or customizable as the binding of isaac, but it comes pretty close. I wish there were a little more variety in the characters, which feels weird to say given that there are so many characters, but it felt like the characters that were able to kite had a huge advantage over the other ones so it would've been nice to have more characters like that.

Wow, I never thought I could get so emotional about shapes. It's got a really great story, and more important, really great characters. The story and characters are also supported by a good set of puzzles that keep the entire experience both entertaining and interesting throughout. Also, one of the best soundtracks I've heard in a while!

Absolute masterpiece. Gameplay was super interesting and really engrossing, art was beautiful, and the music/atmosphere was perfect.------------------

This game does so many things wrong and yet it was still such an enthralling and entertaining experience for me. The pacing is awful, there's way too much grinding, some of the characters are way too horny (to the point where that becomes the primary facet of their personality), and there's just generally a lot of points in the game where I thought "Wow, I don't like the way they did X." But at the end of the day, this is still an extremely compelling video game experience that has so many interesting ideas, so many balls-to-the-wall ridiculous or unexpected moments, and enough charm that I thoroughly enjoyed my experience with the game. It's definitely too long (just like Persona 5) but I imagine that's probably due in large part to the extra Golden content. I'm not really sure what to make of this game - I feel like if I try to think about this like a video game critic I would give this a 4/10 but if I tried to rate its entertainment value and how much I enjoyed the experience of playing it, I'd easily give it a 9/10.

I absolutely loved playing through this game, the art, music, and overall art direction is just so incredible. This game really is an artistic masterpiece. My only real gripes with it is that the real-world meaning of the game (overcoming grief) wasn't done as well as other parts of the game, and the platforming controls/physics engine didn't feel as good as other platformers I've played.

Awesome game - probably my favorite pixel horror game of all time. It may not seem like much at face value, but this game has so much character. The atmosphere of this game is so enthralling that I found it really hard to not get completely **** into the game and start feeling super freaked out myself. It's not super long, but it fits a whole lot into the short amount of time that you have with it.

I enjoyed this game a lot, it's one of the coolest pixel-art horror games i've played in a while. It reminded me a lot of Ib, which is a similar game that I enjoyed a lot. The vibe and the fantastical elements in this game were done super well and I really got immersed in the story. I did feel like there was some wasted potential, and that the story (and especially the ending) wasn't as fleshed out as I was hoping it would be, and so at the end of the game I felt kind of unsatisfied.

Pretty interesting, wacky game. It was kinda slow at parts and the final explanation for everything wasn't as satisfying as it could've been, but this game really shines in terms of the characters and the voice acting.

Honestly, this was a pretty underwhelming visual novel esque game. The connection between your choices and the resulting actions never felt very strong, and there wasn't really anything in this game to rescue it from mediocrity.

Honestly, this was a pretty underwhelming visual novel esque game. The connection between your choices and the resulting actions never felt very strong, and there wasn't really anything in this game to rescue it from mediocrity.

Loved this game and it's use of audio to simulate psychosis for the player. There are some weak areas in the game but overall it was a super unique, super compelling experience and I'm really glad I decided to pick this game up and give it a try

I really enjoyed this game, and I felt like it offered some pretty interesting perspectives on AI/psychology/mental health. The story's pacing was really nice, and I really enjoyed all the different characters and the viewpoints they represented. I definitely have a personal connection to this kind of story so maybe I'm overrating it a bit, but it's definitely one of the better visual novels I've played in recent memory.

This is a really fun open world exploration game, which was clearly very inspired by breath of the wild. It has its rough edges and the gacha system is not particularly generous, but overall I'm really enjoying all of the game mechanics and the combat is really fun and unique.

I really wanted to like this game, and there are so many cool aspects to the first 3/4 of the game, but things went so off the rails and by the end there were so many story holes, plot conveniences, and overall confusing or frustrating elements that the game ended up leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

One of the best storytelling video games I've ever played, it's a really beautiful example of how video games can amplify the way in which characters are developed and can really affect the way that you are immersed in the world of the game.

I generally really enjoy these types of games, and there are some things that this game does well, but overall the writing is just so awful and unrealistic that it was really hard to feel at all immersed in the story.

Overall the mystery was okay, i thought it was cool that the culprit could be randomized but because of that the mystery wasn't very well constructed and it wasn't very satisfying at the end. The acting was pretty awkward and there was a lot of wasted time with the empty chair scenes.

Super charming game, the plot was cheesy but it didn't try to take itself too seriously so it was all in good fun. Overall I enjoyed the humor and most of the puzzles were fun to solve, although there were times where the game felt a bit tedious.

I'm a big fan of rogue-likes in general, especially ones that have progression across runs, and this game is one of the better examples of that type of game. I really enjoyed the overall gameplay, although my one complaint about the combat was that it was a little too centered around cheesing enemies for my liking. I also really enjoyed the process of unlocking new items through collecting cells, although I didn't like the fact that you were discouraged from buying every item in order to not dilute the item pool - the completionist inside me was cringing about that T_T

one of my favorite card games in recent memory, and super well integrated with rogue-like gameplay. insane amount of replay value, and even though luck is obviously a factor, it really does feel like skill is way more important in this game.

as far as jigsaw puzzle games go, this one is very middle of the road. there's a lot of recycled content, but the core mechanics are solid and not annoying.

At its core, I really enjoyed this game - the main mystery was compelling and satisfying, and i really liked the pacing of the story. However, there were a bunch of aspects of the gameplay that were annoying, and my game kept on crashing during certain parts. There were also quite a few deus ex machinas and plot holes, but they were mostly easy to ignore because the main mystery was wrapped up in a satisfying way.

really interesting game, super stylized art and well written dialogue/story. The plot is pretty crazy and i'm still not sure what happened but i was hooked throughout. The gameplay loop was tight and super rewarding, and it required a combination of strategy, planning, and reflexes. Honestly, my biggest complaint is that i think both the story and the level design could have been extended further. The game definitely could have been a couple hours longer without getting boring.

This is my first Yakuza game and I really loved almost everything about it. The humor was excellent, the variety in the gameplay kept things fresh and interesting, and the underlying story was compelling and made me really care about the characters.

Really beautiful and touching game, I love how this medium was used to tell this story. In many ways, this isn't that original of a story, but the new way in which its presented makes the experience very novel. My only problem is that I wish the game were longer! I initially gave this an 8/10 because of the length, but two years later I still can't stop thinking about it so I'm upgrading it to a 10/10.

Not a bad idea, but there's waaaay too much grinding and the core gameplay loop is decent but not nearly good enough to survive the needless repetition that the game puts you through. Story/visuals/controls were all bleh.