Recent reviews by Gravidea

The thinking man's game.

Good game, but something seriously needs to be done with that multiplayer server section. It will often show games that are full (despite them not showing their player numbers as full) and will kick you back to the main menu whenever you fail to join a server, which adds a little agitation to the process. Also it will sometimes show servers for games that have already had the ship taken off, which is like... why are they even shown there then?

Also to add on to that last part, I also don't understand why you have to reset your lobby every time you want to get more folks in to play, such as when someone leaves/disconnects. Modded fixes that obviously, but I'm talking about base game. The server should be open to join whenever you're in orbit, that way you can replace any player slots that were once full. The game's great, but the multiplayer game lobby section is where I have my main gripes. I sincerely hope Zeekerss will do something about that.

Just to make it clear; I only play this game because I have a handful of friends and family who like playing it together, and don't really enjoy TF2, which is fair. I basically only play this game because I get to play with my friends, and that's it. It's a pain I endure so I can hang out with them.

I don't like a lot of things about this game. I don't like Blizzard and their practices (look it up, it's a huge thing). I don't like them going the Battle Pass route. I don't like that certain characters that were already in Overwatch 1 are locked behind completing challenges. I don't like that they removed the whole reason that this was supposed to be a sequel; the multiplayer PVE with upgrades to heroes and replay-ability. I'm still not over the whole situation with Hong Kong, and how they tried to silence players who spoke out against China. I don't like that Doomfist is now a tank for some reason. I don't like that they brought it down to 5v5 instead of 6v6, making it so one less friend can play with our group. I still generally don't like the community of this game, and prefer to keep voice chat off due to it, talking only to my friends.

Just to name a few things. I could go further, but I mostly just made this review to justify my reason for playing it for my friends who do not like the game.. I don't plan on spending a single cent on this game.

Game was perfectly fine, then they decided that you HAVE to have an Epic Games account to play it. It would be fine if the game didn't constantly give me errors saying Epic couldn't confirm whether or not I could play the game, which leads to a bunch of headaches.

This game has some conflicting feelings, but I'll try to break it down regardless, because I still feel positively about this game.

Essentially, Rainbow Six Siege is a tactical shooter with tense gameplay that makes it stick out from other shooters I've played. It has a lot of unique concepts that it works with really well, despite how people love to compare it to Valorant these days because of some of the more "futuristic" operator tools that have been added in recent seasons. I get that point, but directly comparing it to Valorant discredits everything both games do well. For Siege, I love the idea of fortifying a location with creative methods and the tools at your disposal as a Defender. Every site is in a different location, and you have to work around entry routes and other weaknesses of the location. Then, as Attacker... breaking into the Defender's location is like solving a really difficult puzzle, and your prep phase is meant to give you the time advantage so you can prepare for the inevitable.

The problem is that this game brings with it the unfavourable community that other shooter games have. Communities that view Siege as "just another shooter" and will talk garbage and grief like hell. It doesn't sour the game for me completely, but it'll definitely be a point for contention with new players. I made a whole Steam Guide talking about the game's toxicity and how to avoid it just because of it all, and I still agree with the points I made in that guide today. However, I will say that this game is a lot more fun when your teammates are just your friends. If you do have to play with randoms, get used to turning off voice chat/text chat or just muting quite often, because people in this game will go out of their way to make your experience quite unenjoyable on many occasions.

That being said, I still love this game, and I want it to succeed. Unfortunately, the game did have what I feel is one of the worst/most underwhelming patches in history recently, which addressed nothing and made very unnecessary changes to the game that no one asked for. Despite all that, I still do want the game to succeed, and I hope the Siege devs will move away from catering directly to eSports and focus just a little more on community input from people who actually care. Because at the end of the day, without the community you have no eSports fans. People who watch eSports more often than not, also play the game and watch people play it at a competitive level because they enjoy watching the game being pushed to its limits.

I love the uniqueness of each operator, with each operator serving a niche even if their "purpose" is about the same. I like leaning, breaching, rappelling, dropping hatches, breaking windows, setting up cameras, barricading commonly used advancing points, creating rotates in sites. I love that operators have different utilities and weapon options from one another, making it so no operator is a simple copy and paste in terms of loadout, even if their unique gadget is similar. I think the game is the best in terms of balance that it has been in a while, and while there are still some outliers that need to be addressed, I think Ubisoft can do it if they try and listen carefully to community reception (And stop showing operator metrics in patches if they literally don't do anything based off those metrics).

If you want a fun high difficulty shooter to get into with friends so that you can work together and overcome situations together in, this might be the one for you. Just be aware that it's not for everyone, of course.

For the time being, this game is a no for me. Is it a good game? Yes, for the most part. But it has some glaring issues that might turn off some fans of the series.

The first being the kind of audience they're going for. Personally, it doesn't give off the same vibe as any of the previous games. And I get it, change is good. But with the way this game is going, it feels like it's trying to appeal to the "Esports crowd" as some might call them. It feels like this game is more catered towards competitive play. Things like assassinations being removed with the reason being "gameplay balance" give me that impression. The existence of only 4v4 and Big Team Battle also gives me that impression. It feels like they just forgot their other gamemodes exist. And I get it, it's just a Beta. Surely they'll be adding more gamemodes and things like Forge in the future, right? Maybe so, but I still feel like I know where their current focus is.

The other problem is performance and optimization. I'm sure you've seen it in other reviews, but I can also tell you this game is not well optimized. I've spent more time on loading screens due to game crashes than actually playing matches. I do not have the disposable income that other people have and I can't spend upwards of a thousand dollars on an expensive rig to run games like this, and neither do a LOT of my friends I know that like Halo. Just about everyone I know has cited optimization and performance problems when playing this game, and I myself have the exact same problem. I can't play this game with more than 30 FPS and hitches, and the game will sometimes just crash during a match I'm trying to enjoy. It makes it really hard to give an unbiased review of this game gameplay-wise because half of the time I can't even play it properly. I really don't like the culture of "high visual quality video games" we've gone for where your average person trying to get into PC games can't enjoy half of the newest ones because their computer can't run it worth crud, and I would love more low (even lower than their current lowest settings) visual settings to make games like this manageable on lower performance PCs, or just more optimization in general for that matter.

Other problems I feel are with the maps. If this game is indeed meant for competitive play, then maps need to be less asymmetrical, as sometimes half of the map will just have better ground to fight enemies on, or better positions for objectives/flags in comparison to the enemy, giving an advantage that neither team can control. That isn't to say that ALL maps are not symmetrical/fair, but there are a few I can think of off the top of my head. As well as that, I'm sure you've also seen what other people are saying about the progression system being a little messy and difficult to make any progress with, and I agree with that sentiment as well, even though cosmetics aren't really my focus.

Trust me when I say I WANT to enjoy this game, and I want others to enjoy it too. This is the first time a Halo game (at least its multiplayer) has been FREE for all to play, and even better that it's on Steam. But unfortunately, it currently doesn't capture the same charm that the other games do, and I worry that will ruin the perception of those who are playing this game as their first Halo multiplayer experience. I'm sure you might be thinking that I'm just driven by nostalgia, but if that were the case then I wouldn't be even giving this a try and I would be playing the Master Chief Collection instead. I like many aspects about this game. It DOES obviously have some resemblances of Halo. It just needs more to make it enjoyable. And yeah, I understand this is a beta too. That's why I'll certainly be giving this game more of my time, as I want to give it a chance. If things change, I'll certainly be updating my review. For now though? I can't recommend this game until they've added more. If this is about to be your first Halo experience, I'd say hold off for a little while.

Got this game from a friend when they had "Buy one, get one for a friend" deal back when it first came out.

I've been watching this game's progression since it first came out, and I can confidently say that it's worth the money. Hopoo clearly listens when it comes to the changes they make to the game, and I enjoy that a lot. Roguelike is possibly the best phrase that could be used when coming to describe a game such as Risk of Rain 2, but there's a lot more under the hood to it than just being "procedurally generated".

To start, the only things that are really procedurally generated about runs of this game are the locations of important things such as chests, shrines, 3D printers, and the Teleporter, as well as the enemies and bosses you will counter along the way. The most important out of these are the chests. From them, you will get a completely random item that will help add onto your "build", granting helpful effects that will allow you to progress easier. Money obtained from defeating enemies will help you get more items, that will in turn help you progress.

It's a very fun game with an interesting gameplay loop. The multiplayer component will often make playing with your friends more fun than playing by yourself. As you continue to complete runs, you'll have to chance to get different and new items from chests you buy, changing the way your builds work. You'll get more characters as rewards for your progress, giving you new abilities and playstyles that will change the way you approach enemies. You'll get new abilities FOR the new characters you get that will add even more diversity to your characters. As well as that, you'll get other little rewards along the way such as lore for certain stages, items, and enemies that you can read on your free time.

Unlocking different characters and experimenting with new items has been a blast, and I'm confident that going into the 1.0 version of the game and coming out of Early Access, this game will be fun to anyone who enjoys rolling the dice and doing your best with what you were given. The gameplay of this lovely game is just the beginning. This game also has a stellar soundtrack, artstyle, and background story that makes it really entertaining. I'd suggest giving it a try!

As a fan of bullet hell games, I honestly cannot recommend this game enough, especially if you have friends that enjoy bullet hells or have been meaning to get into them. Playing the game with steam remote play has been a blast when playing with some friends, and characters definitely do seem to have some balance among them. Their playstyles are interesting, and so far I can't find any characters that feel "better" than other characters. It all comes down to your preference, really.

The story might be my favourite part about the game so far though, even if a big part about this game is multiplayer. I really like each of the characters, and their stories say a lot about them. The lore that Mino has created for this game is fantastic, and I felt myself being drawn back to play the game again for the character story missions even after putting the game down. It may not be amazing to some, but it feels fresh to have such nice likable characters in a game such as this. If I'm honest, one of the story missions even made me cry.

Overall, I think this game is quite worth it for its price! Underrated indie gems are always my favourite to play. It was a fun ride, Mino. Playing the demo, trying the beta, watching you post about your game's development on Twitter... and in the end, it was all worth it! I just couldn't wait to try the full game when it came out! You have made an extremely enjoyable game! I'm really proud. Please continue to make games! And maybe there'll be more updates to this game in the future? I hope so! Thank you for this lovely game!

As a Touhou Project fan, this game is pretty great! This feels like a solid early access, with a solid hour to hour and a half of gameplay. There definitely seems to be a lot of love and care put into this game so far, and I humbly await the next stage and full game.

If you already played Luna Nights like I have, another Touhou Project game published by Playism, you will find many different contrasts between this game and that one. They are quite separate from one another. I'd say the only thing really connecting them is the fact that they are fighting platformers with room based progression. Suika's fighting style in this game is the "go crazy, have fun and do your best!" kind of playstyle. There are interesting mechanics to her, and she feels quite powerful (like an oni should be!). Bosses feel fun and challenging, though if you've gotten the hang of the mechanics by the first boss and know how to utilize them, you might have an easier time.

I had a little trouble with setting up my controller to the game at first, but I believe it was because Steam wasn't setting up the input for the game properly, and not the actual game being the problem. After that, the controller worked perfectly fine and I had no issues. All the buttons were mapped in a way that made sense and I didn't have to do any editing! Very satisfying. Full controller support is always something I love, and I always appreciate developers that do it for games like these.

I also see that many people are misinterpreting the meaning of "Early Access". Yes, the game is at its full price, but as the game updates you will receive these updates and be able to play through with your current play file. You're paying for the full game, and will own everything included with it when it's finished. You're essentially paying for a game in its beta. If you don't like the price of it, be sure to pay for it when it's done so you can pay for the FULL game.

Other than that, I honestly had no problems! If you're not a Touhou Project fan, this game's references and story might not make as much sense to you, but I believe it still makes for a good game even on its own. I'm excited for the next stages of development, and I hope the developers take their time! Thank you for such a nice game so far.

(PS. I use a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller, which worked just fine with the game!)