Recent reviews by Complexity

bonk

still learning the basics but it's pretty good yeah. I will update when I finish campaign

best puzzle game of all time. it is stiff competition.

if you want to play something similar with your friends in real life, check out fluxx (card game)

Genuinely wildly ahead of its time (gambit system, real time combat, etc.) when it came out in 2006, and made with care and campy charm. Dialogue and costumes are a bit cheesy, but this is expected from a FF series game. I played it for 300+ hours growing up on the PS2. I enjoy political history and software engineering now, so maybe I was just the right target audience at the right time?

It's your first day interning at the SCP Foundation, sh*t hits the fan, and you need to jury rig your way out using staplers, duct tape, and nuclear radiation.

It's definitely masochistic as is, but mint bosses, audio design, worldbuilding, NPCs, etc. Do yourself a favor and rush Reaper Crest early on.

Yakuza games are no stranger to filler, but this one felt like it was actively wasting my time. 5 hours before getting to Hawaii dulled any interest I had in playing the game.

I almost passed on this due to the 90s anime style (it is a bit off putting personally), but I couldn't have been more wrong. Little Goody Two Shoes is a full realization of a Grimm's fairy tale in game format - the joys and deeply human flawed characters, dark magics in the woods, and the hubris-ridden downfall . The art is gorgeous and a breath of fresh air in a world of sterile modern design. If you can deal with the relatively difficult dream sections (for the VN genre) and are not put off by retrying a section once or twice, it will become one your favorites.

The art team is pumping out 10/10 content all the time -

the balance team is not. Many core design features need to be fixed (endgame, build diversity, etc.) before I would truly recommend it.

Example:

1. Devs choose to reduce movement speed sources greatly to make boss balancing easier (ok, I guess, thought this feels very odd as a poe1 veteran)
2. After a year, they realize this is an issue and add "sprinting" to help with map clear speed/backtracking (ok, sounds good)
3. When you log in on patch day, you find out:

- You have to hold down the "dodge" key to start sprinting, which forces start lag and repositioning. Also you can accidentally hold down dodge too long and misinput.
- If you take "too much" damage while sprinting (ie a random projectile) then you fall and have what feels like like a 5s delay before getting back up.
- You have a maximum turn speed while sprinting, which makes you feel like you are piloting a tank and feels particularly bad on WASD (you always have to commit to 90+ degree turns).
- There is a long end lag on finishing sprinting. And if you bump into a wall when sprinting, it immediately drops you out of sprint and into end lag.

As a result, an ostensibly "good" feature just feels bad for no reason. Snappy, responsive gameplay was the whole design philosophy of poe1 and it feels very odd to give it up in pursuit of other design goals.

GGG has a good history of fixing problems eventually, but save your money until then.