Recent reviews by Ceiyne

I stumbled across Mash VP just before it released out of Early Access, and decided to take a chance on it. I'm glad I did! It evolves the usual rhythm game formula with 2 tracks of notes and mash-up songs.

Although I'm not a super competitive gamer, I've had a lot of fun playing the ranked mode, where you go up against a "ghost" of another player's results for a song. The matchmaking does a good job of finding opponents who are near your skill level, so it never feels like a score is impossible to reach. This mode gives me targets to shoot for as I'm trying to improve my play.

If you're on the fence, check out some gameplay vids and the music. If it looks and sounds good to you, you'll probably like the game.

I've always enjoyed Smite although I wouldn't call myself a serious Smite competitor. I played mostly casual Conquest or Arena back in the Xbox days, with a little bit of Ranked. I jumped on Smite 2 when the Alpha started, since I had planned on getting the "all gods pack" anyway.

I think Smite 2 has come a long way in a relatively short amount of time. The gameplay feels really good right now, and the performance has noticeably improved. The devs seem to be making a lot of right choices, doing the right things, and being incredibly communicative about everything.

Now that the game is free to play, there's no excuse not to give it a try for yourself!

I'm primarily leaving this review in hopes of getting some feedback to the devs.

I love the concept: superheroes and dating, what's not to like?! If that sounds interesting to you at all, then I wholeheartedly recommend trying out this demo or the one on the main store page for the game -- it's free and then you can see for yourself what you think.

The art style is amazing and I'm a fan of games with turn-based combat as well.

My main concern is how slow everything feels. I like the way the text message conversations are written, with characters talking at length across multiple texts just like real people do. But when a character takes 7 lines to express something, and each of those lines takes 2-3 seconds to appear... it adds up and you end up waiting 20 or 30 seconds to read what boils down to a simple thought. There should be options to speed up text flows and/or jump ahead by hitting a button.

The pace of turns in combat was also too slow for my tastes. With the timeline-based combat system, there were a lot of animations, transitions, and button presses required to move things along. It also felt weird to do input an action (like an attack), and not see that action take place until some time later in the timeline. This delay may have magnified the overall feeling of slowness in the combat.

I have wishlisted Nova Hearts and will definitely be keeping my eye on it!

(Note: I actually played the demo on the main Nova Hearts store page and not this demo. From what I understand, they are very similar but the store page has a newer build, so I think my comments will still be valid.)

I like RWBY and I thought the game looked good from the screenshots and the Mostly Positive reviews. Don't make the same mistake I did. Listen to the reviews that say the combat is dull and tedious, and that it's just one fetch quest after another.

TL;DR: Wayfinder is fun and well worth the asking price for the amount of content and unlockables that you get.

Wayfinder feels like an action RPG MMO, without the requirement to actually play online if you don’t want to, and without some of the baggage that comes along with certain MMOs. After you buy the game, you can play it forever without paying another cent, and unlock characters, skins, housing items, etc. simply by playing. The game is fully playable offline.

I’ve seen other reviews compare Wayfinder to Warframe or Diablo. It’s got some DNA from games like those, but it doesn’t really feel like either of those games. Combat here seems a bit slower paced and deliberate, as opposed to the speed-run annihilation that you get in those games. It feels more like an ARPG version of something like Final Fantasy XIV to me.

There are multiple progression systems that involve your characters, skills, and gear. There is also an account-level progression system, which has the extra benefit of helping after unlocking a new character.

The devs seem very committed to the game, having brought it back after a problematic launch, which required them to take control back from the original publisher and completely revamp the game into what it is today. Most of that was before my time, but my experience is that these devs are open and honest, and communicate frequently on Steam, Reddit, and Discord.

This review was written during Early Access, but I was surprised at how mature the game felt despite being in a pre-release state. I did not encounter any bugs, and the game ran great.

I'm not a die-hard crafting/survival game fan, but I've played a few (DayZ, H1Z1, Conan Exiles). I had no idea Nightingale existed until a couple of days after release when I happened to stumble across it. It seemed appealing from the start, but I was a little worried about it being in Early Access. I read a ton of positive and negative reviews, and watched a bunch of streams. In the end, I decided to dive in.

The research I did paid off: the game played exactly how I imagined it would. I have wholeheartedly enjoyed my time in the world of Nightingale. There is a lot to take in, and like I said, I'm not exactly an expert in these types of games. However, I took things at my own pace and have figured everything out as I moved along. I feel like after my first 12 hours that I have only scratched the surface of the crafting system.

I really like the world-building and lore aspects of this game. Sandboxes are nice, but having a story to follow is a nice change from the games I've played before in this genre.

Being in EA, there are some things that could use improvement. The UI is not the greatest right now and takes more scrolling and digging than I'd like. It's inconvenient to have to manually take your materials out of storage when you want to craft something. I expect these things to be addressed, as the developers seem very responsive to player feedback. For instance, they launched servers in new regions, and committed to creating an offline mode for the game within days of release, in response to players' requests.

I recommend this game to anyone who enjoys survival games, with the understanding that this is an Early Access game that still has room to grow.

I can't believe I slept for so long on such a great game. I played a few rounds back in one of the betas, thought it seemed like it could be fun, and promptly forgot about it. I happened to get a key as part of a Humble Bundle and figured I'd try it out... a short time later I was hooked! I am not a big PvP player but this is one of the few that I really enjoy.

I just finished 9 Years of Shadows and really enjoyed my time with it. The controls feel good and the art & music are really great. There isn't a huge amount of depth to the story but what's there is generally entertaining. The conversations with other characters and the main character's own inner monologues are a nice break from exploring and fighting.

I don't play many Metroidvanias, but I enjoyed Bloodstained quite a bit. I would say that 9 Years of Shadows is a simpler game than Bloodstained... but I don't mean that in a negative way. I've seen a number of reviews that complain the game is too easy or too short but I would say it was just right for me with my lack of Metroidvania experience.

As of the time of this review, there is a bug where the game may hang in the last part of the final cutscene after beating the last boss. I was able to work around this by restarting the game, setting my FPS cap to 60, and defeating the boss again. Hopefully that helps someone.

Marvel's Midnight Suns is my Game of the Year. I love this game so much that I've made over 18K updates on the Marvel's Midnight Suns Wiki (https://marvels-midnight-suns.fandom.com/, editor name: Ceiyne9). Note: My Steam playtime is practically nil because I primarily play on Series X, where I have over 350 hours of playtime.

The card-based combat is easy to pick up, and it's fun to come up with a strategy of how to finish a fight quickly, and then execute on it -- then coming up with a new strategy if my plan falls apart.

Back at your base, you can hang out with your superhero buddies to get to know them better, which improves their performance in combat. You can also explore the mysteries of the grounds around your base, though if exploration isn't your thing, this part is almost entirely optional.

I saw the positive reviews, thought it might be a fun, cute game -- and I'm a sucker for the anime aesthetic --so I picked it up in a bundle for $2. Even at that price point I can't say it was worth it. I was not expecting a AAA game, but there are only a handful of very similar locations, little variety in enemies and missions, and the controls are terrible.