Recent reviews by Hoai Boai

phenomenal, hits the same notes that hollow knight did for me




i just didn't think silksong would be chinese, is all

If you like 100% exploration and sequence skipping with precise movement tech (and puzzles) that feel rewarding to discover, then I would recommend this game. There's pretty much no guardrails or guidance, which maximizes the ambience of the world and the feeling of self-discovery.

I highly recommend you do a play-through without looking anything up until you're missing the final few pieces (which, truthfully, can be a bit tedious to find). Even so, such is entirely doable in retrospect so long as you understand how the map works; if there's an empty space on the map that is either connected to something or a little too spacious, then there's probably more to discover.

If any of this sounds tedious then you honestly shouldn't bother. But even then, the game on its own is pretty short; I would give it a chance if you like the art direction and ambience as is. You play as a little guy who wanders around and I think thats already pretty awesome.

they fixed the online issues, so that's pretty cool

I've had an absolute blast playing this so far; I initially picked it up because 'funny grappling hook', but it really lends itself well to the exploration aspect through the janky yet consistent mobility options that it provides. The game never really explicitly tells you what sort of mobility options are possible with your tool-set, but that's honestly a plus; the boundary between the expected solution for a platforming puzzle and outright sequence breaking stays blurry and lends towards fulfilling moments of pure dopamine and creative genius. It really feels like the game respects your creativity, as you never really run into a situation where you can be disappointed by fixed circumstances (besides the scripted boss fight at the end of the demo, that can go jump off a cliff.)

Exploration is also satisfying; each area (past the ones present in the demo) have taken me at least 1/2 hours to complete. The biomes and enemies within them were always different enough to feel varied and fresh. The pixel art (which is what caught my eye, besides the grappling hook) is also a delight to look at and right up my alley. I never wanted to stop exploring, if only due to my sheer curiosity with regards to what the next area would be and look like.

I do want to point out that the combat feels a little superficial, though. Most enemies feel like they have sequential routines rather than dynamic AIs; this leads to many cases where you can just sit in one spot or just repeat the same three motions in order to deal with a boss once you have learned them. Even with such being the case, generic mob and boss patterns did suddenly spike in difficulty, to my pleasant surprise. In retrospect, this might be a result of sequence breaking, but even so I did find myself enjoying the combat even if it plays second fiddle to the exploration and platforming. If anything, you can view the bosses themselves as platforming challenges in the same way that you would view a bullet hell game; you're not really playing the game to shoot, but rather to perfect your dodging while on a timer that can be min-maxed.

On another note, I saw someone mention that traversing through previously explored areas was a chore; for context, each area has a teleporter and teleportation can only be done if you are at a teleporter. I initially thought so as well at first, but the moment I gained access to my second gun, my mindset went from "alright, time to redo this puzzle I guess" to "how can I speedrun from my current position to the teleporter with the power of janky physics and reckless abandon."

All in all, it's a new experience and a great game. If messing around with the grappling hook physics doesn't hook you, at least stick around until your reach your second weapon; things start to get really fun when you start mixing things together.

epic style

The songs kind of ♥♥♥♥ and the aesthetic absolutely ♥♥♥♥. I'm looking forward to see how the yet-to-be-released narrative and world will play out to be given the level of quality and sentimental evocation this game already has to offer. Definitely worth the 0 bucks.

NieR Replicant is a mixed bag for me; while my first and final experiences with the game had been incredibly immersive and fun, the long cyclic road that needs to be taken before you can achieve most of the endings results in a large majority of the experience becoming and brain-numbing, repetitive slog with little variation in gameplay.

The characters, to get it out of the way, are incredible. The main cast is especially memorable and nuanced; Kaine, for one, is probably one of the best written female characters I've experienced when gaming in recent years. The dialogue between the characters is fully voiced and is genuinely entertaining, with each character playing off each-other well and leaving me with a general sense of fondness for the cast. You come to enjoy some of the characters so much that it somehow becomes interesting to click through black-screen, visual novel segments that help flesh them out. Some of the side characters met in some side quests are also somewhat interesting, but when most of the sidequests are grindy, money-rewarding A-to-B fetch quests you're going to have to put some agency into considering what quests seem worthwhile to do in the end.

The main drive for playing the game, however, ends up being to learn more about the world—you can only get so much enjoyment out of reading the same lines of dialogue across successive playthroughs, after all. Yoko Taro slowly builds up a more nuanced, bleak, and existential world across successive playthroughs, with every new, drip-fed piece of information feeling incredibly rewarding to come across. However, the sense of reward that comes with obtaining said pieces of information is in some part reliant on being contrasted by the excess of bloat that you have to wade through when it comes to getting past the repetitive gameplay and—eventually—lines of dialogue. Playing through the exact same combat scenarios, walking the same large distances, and spamming ESC on the same lines of dialogue isn't exactly the funnest of endeavors unless you happen to enjoy seeing how much faster you can beat the game each time. Thankfully, the game mainly introduces new content in the form of cutscenes, making it hard to accidentally skip a new piece of information that you would have otherwise loved to have had your hands on.

Do note that while my main gripe is with the amount of repetition across playthroughs, the start of the game can still be somewhat boring. There isn't exactly a narrative hook beyond exploring the world while finding a cure for your sister for the first few hours of the game, and it takes some time for you to get attached to the characters. Some of the few negative reviews that I've seen about this game seem to be people who dropped it early due to such, and that honestly shouldn't be underestimated.

For me, those first few hours are instead carried by my experience with the combat system. In those first few hours of the game, the combat was generally fun; the fluidity of the character's moveset and the large amount of options that are given to you allows for some dynamic, responsive action. As time went on, however, it becomes more and more clear that there was no incentive to diversify which attacks and weapons to use. Whether or not I chose to press right click or left click meant little beyond a difference in animation to amuse myself with some variety. The spells also ended up suffering the same fate, as while each spell could find its viability in certain situations, the need to go into a menu to switch between skills would end up hindering the flow of combat. The one time I turned auto-combat on out of boredom, I was amazed by how much funner and interactive the game felt when you could actually rotate between your whole arsenal of spells in fast-paced combat. It's honestly a shame that there's no skill-selection wheel or the like. Do note that I still had a blast with alternating between weapons, skills, and attacks for the sake of choreographing my own fight sequences, though; in the few moments past the first playthrough where I wasn't min-maxing to try to get to the juicy, new bits as fast as possible, the combat was indeed fun, albeit only as fun as what you are able to make out of it. Perhaps the problem lies not in the combat system itself, but rather, once again, the non-meaningful repetition that envelops it.

Beyond the player's controls, the enemies that are faced only ever have about 2—and for bosses, maybe 3 or 4—attacks in their moveset, so their novelty quickly became trivial and boring in any successive playthrough. It doesn't help that Hard mode mainly turns everything into a damage sponge; do play Normal or Easy in any playthroughs beyond the first if you value your time.

I probably wouldn't have had a good, final impression of the game if it weren't for the impact, duration, and freshness of gameplay in the final ending; the game goes beyond being a simple remaster, and that experience honestly can't be fully encapsulated in some YouTube excerpts like playthroughs of other endings can be. If you're down to knowingly waste some time, the game doesn't end even when you finally get the "Thanks for playing!"—keep going and you're in for a treat.

TLDR: 7.8/10 too much filler

Is there a direct antonym to serendipity?

Because this game is an eponym for it now.





i am going to poly myself irl if one of my friends quotes this pretentious review one more time