Recent reviews by Retude

I adore this game.

The combat loop is so tight and the general execution of the 40k theme and how all the elements (especially music) come together ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ slaps.

This is one of my favorite shooters of all time. It's a rhythm based shooter in which you're playing a first person shooter but you're dashing, shooting and reloading to the beat. There's a bit of strategy to it because you can't do two actions in the same beat so sometimes you're not shooting so you can focus on dodging. But let me boil down what makes this game so good.
1. It's satisfying.
The guns feel good to shoot. There's a nice clear sound to every gun shot and the reloads all sound great and it's further emphasized with how it blends to the music.. speaking of which.
2. The music.
The music is fantastic. I think some people in the forums want different music but I find myself able to listen and groove with the music in every playthrough. The Overdrive update added a new song and I hope that's added to the OST that I paid for.
3. There's nothing like it. Yes its a roguelite. Yes its a first person shooter with a degree of nostalgia/retro to it but it's a niche that I keep seeming to keep coming back to.
4. Every playthrough doesn't boil down to the same broken combination of weapons and items. Similarly there are some very fun combinations. I had a pistol shotgun and a bracelet that transformed all my bullets into explosives. So i was rocket jumping across maps and wiping bosses.

So here are some cons.
1. Roguelite quirks
There will be some runs with horrendous seeds and terrible rng. Idk if thats really a con since the game is technically beatable without items or upgrades. Removes a lot of fun though.
2. Balance.
Certain combinations of items are a guaranteed full clear. Thats another quirk of procedurally generated and RNG items but you can game the system a bit to get an absolutely broken combination of weapon and perks.
3. Unfriendly introduction.
What the hell does "mind flay" or "mark for death" mean? Often, items will only have a few words (or single line of text at best) to explain what an item does. The wiki is awful at explaining things. This also goes for weapons too. How do you know if a weapon is better than your current one? You'll often be looking up online for things that the game should have explained to you.
4. Nitpicks:
Playing as a 0 hp character (odr and sanngrior) and still having health, armor and hp upgrades spawn could kill an early run because you can't use any of them.
Also enemies should not spawn terribly close to you. This usually happens with the baby spiders who can often spawn right behind me next to the door. Though this only happens sometimes, it can be quite frustrating.

Thats a lot of cons. And a lot of words for some guy whos only played this for about 20 hours. But think of it this way. This is a game where you can do an entire run in 30 minutes. I've beaten the game on hellish with Sanngrior and Odr (and lost a few years of lifespan because of it).

Please pick up the game and try it. If you hate it and saw this review. Comment and call me names. idk.

Didn't play for very long. Might keep your attention for a bit.

I'm a big fan of glam fighters and souls likes. This is a game that sort of tries to do both but fails to do either particularly well.
This is the poster child of that game that is just filled to the brim with little things that culminate to making you stop playing the game. Let me explain.

I can get past the strangely dated graphics despite being a 2018 game. I can get past the cheesy dialogue and voice acting, its a darksiders game. I'm lactose intolerant but I will consume all kinds of cheesy dialogue and writing.

But the core gameplay is just so flawed. There's big things like the combat not really flowing together especially with different weapons. But there's so many smaller or fundamentally important things like

• Movement being SO slow. Part of that being that the "sprint" is painfully slow and there is a negative acceleration to your jump. If you're jumping while running, it'll break all of your momentum, which makes platforming a chore. Plus there's ending delay on your dashes and you can't dash in the air (or so far).
  
• There's no combo list. Granted your attack pool is pretty limited. But not being able to know how to consistently send an enemy in the air, pull them in or something else makes me feel like I'm not really in control of the character.
  
• Enemies have odd telegraphy. Aside from the fact that some of the enemies are ridiculously cheeky with their insanely delayed attacks, dont telegraph at all, or its impossible to see them telegraph through all the effects and their damage animations, the enemies that can block can be extremely frustrating. Coupled with what I just listed, they can block you mid-combo, laying on the floor, as well as in the middle of their own attack animations. AFAIK there is no shield breaking attacks. If the flaming dual weapon's charge up attack does, that isn't really worth it because how pathetic that attack is in the first place.
  
• The dodging is so damn bad. It feels like there's a lag to the start up. This isn't so much of a problem if the iframes were long enough to compensate it. But you'll often dodge a little preemptively, not get the perfect dodge counter (don't get me started on how inconsistent that is), and then get hit anyway either because you get punished for being vulnerable at the end of dodges and/or the enemies have slow wide swinging attacks that will still hurt you even if you dodged.

So a common scenario is that you're using the best combo you can string together despite the circumstances, and the grunt just blocked your attacks in the middle of being combo'd, doesn't telegraph clearly and then you take a hit for 30% of your health, dodge in response, then get hit again because of your terrible dodge and inability to meaningfully cc large groups of enemies.

I could keep complaining. Like about the fact that the souls-like estus flasks in this game don't reset on checkpoints but only in death and enemy kills (though in its defense it is pretty generous). The game only saving at checkpoints/death so if your game crashes like mine did, you lose a large chunk of progress. Also the puzzles in this game never really felt rewarding but more like a nuisance and hurdle that you have to slog through.

At the end of the day, the game wasn't fun enough to keep me playing and it got to the point where I realized I had no real reason to keep playing the game. Was I playing it for the combat? No. Was i playing it for the story? Not particularly. Was I playing it because I like the character? Laughs

I've been playing this game nonstop for the past few weeks. It's a great game. Although i feel that there isnt a lot of story or plot, there is, however, a nice backstory/lore and a unique setting. The game allows you to customize your character (to an extent) and has a large selection of weapons and warframes to suit one's playstyle. In the beginning, the game felt very pay2play; everything i wanted at that point costed platinum(premium currency) and wasn't available until i progressed further and it required (what i assumed to be) heavy grinding. But now, having progressed much further, i've found that most things could be acquired with just time and patience, and the only things that truly required platinum were cosmetics and bundles. And platinum is a tradable currency, so if you really want x that costs y platinum, you could make platinum by trading with other players. But is the game fun? Yes, it's loads of fun. The gameplay is relatively unique, progression freels rewarding, and it looks great. Updates are pulled out quickly, fixes are adminstered hastily. Overall, it's a very refined game (especially one that's in beta)