Recent reviews by Cantor of Stelt

A game highly deserving of a mixed review score, tbh. While I did enjoy my overall experience with the game, I find the later bosses to be incredibly infuriating to the point I almost flipped a coin on whether or not I'd recommend the game. I do think the good outweighs the bad, but as somebody who's been playing soulslikes since 2014, the bad is *bad*. I'm far from the best soulslike player in the world, mind you, but there's a fine line between a skill issue and bad boss design.

Leaving the boss gripes for a second, I've gotta talk about something I like or the ghost of Juzo Mido's gonna send me to the Cloud District. First off, the Blood Codes. I can't even begin to express how much I enjoy the Blood Code system, which is Code Vein's take on classes. Instead of leveling individual stats like in other soulslikes, your attributes and scaling are determined by your Blood Code. Atlas, for example, focuses on heavier armor and weapons, letting you tank some serious damage. The Prometheus Blood Code, on the other hand, is a glass cannon that hits hard, hits fast, and lets you move fast enough to not get flattened by the frightening abundance of large format women. Each Blood Code also comes with its own abilities, called Gifts, that range from devastating elemental magic to fast and furious melee combos. I do have to gripe about the melee Gifts a little, as there seems to be no added stagger resistance, or enough stagger caused to really justify using them on less durable Blood Codes, but I tend to run light, so that's probably just a skill issue on my end.

As for more petty gripes, enemy variety is fairly lackluster, and general performance seems to be a little unstable. Not unplayable, but I refuse to believe the FPS counter reading 60 when I'm in particle heavy areas. Weapon and fashion variety is also a bit slim, but the latter is alleviated by the game's character creator. I also personally find destroyed urban environments to be a bit boring as a setting, and there's no escape from crumbling buildings and shattered ruins at any point.

My last petty gripe, since it's more an issue of my own impatience, but still worth noting - the spike traps in the final area. Let me tell you how much I have come to hate the spike traps since I entered the Provisional Government Center. There are one hundred trillion nerve cells laid in intricate channels throughout the human body. If the word hate was inscribed on each nanoangstrom of those hundred trillion cells, it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for those spike traps at this micro-instant. hate. HATE.

As for the major gripe I have with the game, its that the bosses starting with the Successor of the Ribcage about halfway through the game are just not fun to fight. Ribby's second phase has an instakill* attack that she always opens with and sweeps the arena twice, as well as at least two other attacks that can hit you anywhere in the arena. Successor of the Throat has an attack that feels impossible to dodge. The Blade Bearer and Cannoneer are the first and only duo boss in the main path, and I feel like I can say for certainty that Ornstein and Smough doesn't work when Smough has the ability to make you explode from a mile away while Ornstein is freezing you to death with an icy rapier. Juzo ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Mido is not only a boss with a whole laundry list of issues that I could write a whole essay about (for the love of God, ignore that I've already written one), including a distance closing dash with no actual attack that still deals damage, he's voiced by Keith Silverstein, who I'm sure is a very nice man, but I swear to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Talos, getting roflstomped by Nazeem for a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hour had to be the most infuriated I've been by any boss - no, any SECTION - in any game EVER, and I've played Too Human.

Bosses after Mido still have all the same issues as previous bosses. Random instakill attacks, attacks with little to no windup (or too much windup for attacks that hit at Mach Jesus), incredibly dodgy hitboxes**, seemingly endless attacks with short cooldowns between different combos, undodgeable AOEs, nearly unpredictable attack patterns, and probably more ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that I've already repressed in the couple hours since I've completed my first playthrough.

At the end of the day though, coin flip or no, I'd still lean more towards recommending Code Vein than not. Despite my earlier petty gripe about not liking urban ruins as a setting, the game is still beautiful with a well-defined style, and even the lackluster enemy and equipment variety still provides enough substance to have a good time. Also, Io is best girl, and I will not be accepting any argument, THAT'S THE BOTTOM LINE BECAUSE STONE COLD SAID SO.

*Ribcage's exploding fire laser is an instakill against the Prometheus Blood Code, which is a glass cannon as previously stated. Your mileage may vary, but 2k damage is still 2k damage.
**I have no footage to back this up or I'd be plugging my (dead) YouTube channel, but I swear that the penultimate boss, as well as a few others, were hitting me from at least a foot away with non-AOE attacks.

Atlyss has a very solid foundation for what it's hoping to achieve, and the expected growing pains aren't much of a burden in it's current state. The learning curve feels a little janky at first, and solo play can be rough, as expected from an MMO with solo as an option, but the loop of parrying/dodging while spamming attacks as a solo Mystic is simple and forgiving.

Overall, Atlyss is a fun experience, and I'm excited for its future.

Also, yes, it's very hard to play this game one-handed.

Giant robot cheese simulator 2023

10/10, would bully enemy ACs with dual Stun Needle Launchers again

I died of heatstroke while riding a dragon to a volcano. 10/10

In all seriousness, Palworld is a good offering for an early access game, but not without issues.

The first of these is the performance during extended play sessions. After 2-3 hours of play, the framerate suffers, and the game will eventually crash. This is likely a hardware issue on my end, as I only have the minimum RAM (16GB), but other players also experience this. A workaround that helps is disabling NVIDIA High Definition Audio from your system settings, and I've found that disabling shadows also helps.

Another major issue is that sometimes Pals will stop working on their assigned tasks, accompanied by their stations vanishing from the Monitoring Station's menu. You can lift and throw pals to manually reassign them, but keep an eye on your fridges and power plants.

Pals will also occasionally just stop moving, and the lift/throw technique also fixes them.

Overall, I can't say these issues stop me from recommending the game, but it's another level of micromanagement on a game that, for me at least, is already filled with it.

I made a fat zombie bartender drink himself to death. Need I say more?

Speaking as a free player on Steam who paid not only for the game on PS4, but the first 3 DLCs through the Forsaken collection, I cannot recommend this game. Every dime of content I paid for, around $100+ USD, is vaulted. Exotics from that era are locked behind an already slow grind made even worse by the paid battlepass tier and post-Forsaken DLCs. The campaigns are entirely unavailable, and multiple locations, both DLC and BASE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ GAME were scrapped when the content vault was introduced. Exotics I have access to on the PlayStation version are inaccessible on my Steam copy as I don't own the frankly insulting Forsaken legacy bundle or whatever it is needed to use them.
My original review for Destiny 2 recommended it purely on the basis of gameplay and nostalgia, but the time since that review was made has allowed me to see just how unforgivable the flaws are. If you still want to get into Destiny 2 for the gameplay, go ahead, it's fun. The gunplay is good, the reworked subclasses are leagues better than when I got the game, and the DLC that I've been able to play through free weekends have been genuinely fun. But it's a bittersweet experience knowing that Bungie is probably gonna throw all the current story DLC in the vault sooner or later - all $185 of it.
How ironic that a game where the Light is meant to triumph has become a place of utter Darkness...

I first played this game for a week straight when I visited some friends in North Carolina, and I haven't played much else over the last three days. The art style is gorgeously detailed, yet minimalist, the enemy design is inspired and readable, and everything in the game is communicated incredibly well. It's easy to pick up, easy to play, and satisfyingly difficult to master. No two characters play the same, and characters that you look at and think you probably wouldn't like might turn out to be your favorite and vice-versa.
19 Steam hours isn't a lot, but as I said, my first experience was a week of play with friends halfway across the country, learning, improving, and falling in love with this game. Petrichor V will take you and break you, poison, burn and bleed you, and tear you apart more times than you can count, but it'll keep you coming back, and through it all, you'll survive.
In simplest terms, this game ♥♥♥♥♥♥' rocks.

I'll be the first to tell you, I hate playing games slowly. Since I started playing with a consistent group of people, I've blasted through game after game, level after level, etc., all without a moment's pause. Quite frankly, it's a terrible habit, but I'm not like that with Stardew. Sure, I could blast through a lot of the objectives in the first year, farming, foraging, crafting, fighting, and everything else, but I don't want to. I like exploring the mechanics of the game, pushing myself where I can, limiting what I must, and then doing it all again the next day. I could go on and on about psychology trying to explain it, but I'll just cut to the chase and say that this game genuinely helps me slow down and enjoy the simple things in life. Playing a game where I'm not constantly surrounded by cowards and dead men (that's Darth Vader, for ya) is such a refreshing experience, and I absolutely love it.

Don't let steam fool you, I've got well over 200 hours in this game (at time of writing), and every second was spent having a riot of a time, slinging spells at beasts mundane and magical and getting snarky with demons. I've removed people from existence for insulting me, helped unlikely individuals with their daily troubles, searched every haystack I've found, and the game just keeps on giving. There's nothing out there quite like Divinity: Original Sin 2, and I doubt anything, except for another Larian production, can match its charm. This game is a solid 10/10, and I encourage everyone, their grandmas, their dogs, and the horses they rode in on to give this absolute gem a try.

It's alright.