Recent reviews by AkhraGee

classic platforming
challenge I must overcome
because gay women

the game is fantastic and I applaud the creative team. unfortunately I have to leave a negative review after learning that Eleventh Hour decided to go with zero-effort machine translation, undermining the livelihood of professional translators (and producing atrocious results: there's a screenshot going around of an English GPT prompt in the Polish game text). this is a transparently greed-based decision; even if they couldn't afford real localization teams, games don't fail just because they're launched English-only. as someone who cares about the future of this industry, this is beyond unacceptable. if I were still inside the refund window I would do so.

so there I am, spying on my bride-to-be as she does a ton of unaided and highly dangerous work preparing for our wedding night; and after drinking mutagens in pursuit of a more perfect body to please me with, she up and misgenders me! despicable, all trust gone, our engagement was built on lies. 8/10.

The thumbs down is marginal because there IS the skeleton of a fairly good game in here, but it's trapped inside a sweaty edgelord (the writing matches the voice direction and sweet jesus that is not a compliment) and all its bones are borrowed so nothing about it really stands out and it's blatantly the Hades we have at home and that's too many strikes, I just can't.

Technically solid at least, controls felt smooth and I ran into no glitches, so if none of the other things bother you it's probably worth a shot.

The tactical gameplay is not strikingly innovative, but definitely solid. Lots of fun abilities, and the "interfusion" magic system has excellent flavor and design, turning battlefield clutter into a tactical resource. It also puts a good twist on permadeath, allowing a final heroic sacrifice or a pyrrhic survival.The overworld gameplay is serviceable. Not exciting, but rarely a slog. It connects the missions to the narrative, and forces some prioritization decisions (sometimes difficult ones).The storytelling... my god, the storytelling. The writing is just SO GOOD. More than one quest has made me cry, and the way characters age and develop relationships (and are marked by the raw magic of the world...) adds a whole extra layer. The attention to detail is impeccable; extra points for inventing(?) the word "renny" as a mom/dad equivalent for a non-binary parent. And due to the multifaceted personality system, the exact same quest can have utterly different dialog depending on the characters involved, which keeps things fresh on replays.

Caves of Qud

Okay guys, here's the pitch. We make a cross between Horizon Zero Dawn and Dark Souls. We take all the things people love about those games, but then -- bear with me now, this is the important part! -- we make them all just a little bit bad.

I had a couple of people tell me Night in the Woods is pretty good, but no real details as to why. So here's why.

Each character, even ones you have only a single short exchange with, feels substantive; like they have whole unique lives of their own, outside the plot. Characters wrestle with depression, poverty, death, doubting their own senses; they strive toward goals, find fun, band together against adversity. Friends have bitter arguments but remain friends. Enemies voice mutual hate while struggling side by side to hold a slowly-dying small town together. Everyone expresses a unique perspective; they are wonderfully diverse, and every one of them rings true.

That's the master stroke, here. That's why so many of these reviews talk about connecting personally with the characters. It's because every character is a real person... or at least, a well-stitched collage of real experiences. And not just individually; community interactions, and even the town itself show the same attention to detail. Everyone and everything has a history, even if you barely glimpse it; and though the whole is imaginary, nearly every detail is real.

In short, Night in the Woods is high-quality literature. And it manages to be a pretty fun game, on top of that.

The UI actively stands in the way of playing. It messes up design elements that have been mature since the era of Diablo and Baldur's Gate. Nothing about the combat mechanics or world presentation are enticing enough for me to look beyond that. It almost looked like someone might have been trying to build a plot for a moment during the intro, but the tutorial dungeon is overflowing with ham-handed fourth wall breaks that ruin any air of storytelling.

Not a truly awful game... just outstandingly mediocre.