Recent reviews by Punished Vorst

I can say after almost 100%ing the base game, that Rise of the Ronin still needs a Rise of the Framerate. I love this game but the Rise of my Blood Pressure wants me to now rise and play literally anything else. Well, at least it's still a better game than AC: Shadows. Whoever at Team Ninja fixes this mess, needs a Rise of their Paycheck.

1/12/2024 Edit:
So I'm not sure if the developer read this review or not, or if this was just a common complaint- but they made it so that enemies can't be hitstun while attacking, if this works the way I assume it does, then that fixes one major issue I had with the game and its block/parry system. Nice.

3/12/2024 Edit:
Less of a world salad now.
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I got gifted this game—was planning to buy it later, but hey, free game.

I’m liking it! The character creator surprised me; it’s not the furry bait some folks joke about unless you really push it. Even then, it’s tame by furry standards.

The melee combat’s solid. It’s a bit floaty at first, but that smooths out with time. I didn’t try magic or bows. There’s a slight delay with heavy weapons, especially if you're playing with high ping, but it’s not game-breaking. Played with a friend in the USA (I’m in Australia) with 260 ping, and it wasn’t too bad. Hosting with 0ms felt smoother. Netcode’s decent for an indie game.

The game’s good overall, but the enemy balance needs work. Parrying’s central, but it’s poorly explained. I only figured it out after reading the PVP NPC’s advice—start blocking when the enemy’s attack begins or midway. It’s very generous, but timing it right before getting hit feels pointless, since there's no real reward for perfect timing.


The lock-on system’s fine but feels too close-range. It works for bosses but becomes useless in tight mob fights, where you constantly need to toggle it.

Not really a complaint, but I’d like to see more weapons, especially for Bandit. The katars/wolverine claws are cool, but I’d love a rapier or another option for variety.

All in all, I really like the game. It’s a fun co-op experience in a market full of competitive games. It reminds me of old-school Zelda, WoW, and Gauntlet, which is a refreshing change from the era of Triple A 'quality' games and ToddSlop(tm).

Soulash 2 and Elin both being bangers, what a year for Traditional Roguelikes.
This takes Elona, makes it look better than before, a reworked stamina system that doesn't hinder combat, spell and ability UI reworks, improved and positively streamlined/simplified controls where needed, better encouragement to interact with all of the different skills and systems through both the narrative and the mechanics, loads of QoL improvements (my favourite being auto-walk to quest giver NPCs when you have what they need for a fetch quests, and guards auto-walking you to NPCs you ask for), and even just some small things like the casino being way better and grand, farming being much easier to understand, and more.

I feel like Elona+ and its modded versions were looked at, and some ideas in Elin might've been inspired by what those communities did, which is cool if true.
I'll say the new controls and stamina system while I think they are improved, did take me quite a bit of getting used to, but now that I'm over that hill, I've been enjoying the game a lot. My only complaint really with the game is the character creator is still limited for clothing on male characters, and there's no custom portraits (or at least, not a quick and easy way of doing it?) that I'm aware of.

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Update, I would just like to say, the updates in terms of game balance, QoL, and feedback response time from the dev team, has been super solid!

So apparently, we're fascists IRL. This studio is a joke, but I'm not laughing.

Phasmophobia is the closest I'll get to having a Onryo MILF constantly telling me that she's behind me, and that she's going to attack me in front of my friends. 11/10

All of the Season Pass 1 DLCs felt like they were made by a very inexperienced Junior Team, which I can't help but imagine might have been the case after the big patches were done and they started working on the 40K game. Even if that's not actually what happened, that's what it *feels* like.

With that in mind, it's weird that the base game is pretty damn good, but then you have... These travesties.
Very dull, 'meh' feeling DLCS all around, but the rogue-lite mode being pretty sloppy was what stung for me the most, it really just ended up being a 'quickly test a build, kind of' thing more than an actually fun, functional rogue-lite mode.

A lot of the content overall just felt like it was made by modders who were trying really hard but just.... Couldn't.

Please note: My review has nothing to do with the recent reviews, these are just a few things I have to say as someone who didn't like Soulash 1.


This game basically fixed all of my problems with the first game.
God awful gear durability? Gone.
Crafting stations being fickle as hell? Gone.
Enemies knowing where you are at all times? Gone.
Death/dying feeling absolutely terrible and wasteful? Gone.
Balance feeling absurd and out of wack? Gone (for the most part).
Survival needs feeling like they don't fit in with the gameplay? Gone.


THANK YOU! I doubt my review was the reason any of these were changed, but regardless of that, I am a man who will give credit where credit is due, and Artur has earned a positive review from me.

The fact this has mod support is awesome. Character creation is REALLY good for what this is.
I just hope more is added to the game after 1.0 because it would be a shame if that ends up not happening.

Really small thing needs to be fixed/changed though, some of the enemies I've fought still refer to you as the character from the first game, which is kinda weird.

*Did some edits to clarify things, and to get rid of some exaggerated language, while I'm sure people understand what hyperbole is, you can't always detect it so it would have felt disingenuous to leave it as is since people do tend to take things at face value and I should know better.

Controversial opinion, I know, but.
This is less a "I don't think you should buy the DLC" negative review, nor is it "I'm bad so I'm leaving a bad review" kind (I beat it).
In terms of the stuff this DLC adds to the game, it's my favourite one. The new weapons are fantastic in particular, a lot of them are things I've been wanting since the original Demon's Souls. Hell, I think light greatswords, the smith throwing weapons, and a few others are the most fun I've had with Fromsoftware weapons.

But SOTE is just not for me.

If you really hated certain bosses of vanilla ER that make most people mad such as Malenia, Godfrey/Hoarah Loux, Radagon, Maliketh, and Elden Beast. You won't like the DLC bosses that much, since they have the same problems: attack spam with very few and short player damage windows, large area attacks, attacks that require jumping over, attacks that have them backflip/leap far back so you can't get a hit in, etc, but so much worse. There's still some bosses I did enjoy, but I found the major progression tied bosses to just be annoying at best.

Even with a high scadutree blessing, you take plenty of damage in this DLC as well, which- To me was less 'hard' and just more annoying, really. People are making it out like having the Scadutree blessing at 20 will trivialise the bosses, it does not. It's more of a system in place to make sure characters who had beat the main game, don't steamroll the DLC.
Is it dumb to expect to steamroll the DLC with no scadutree blessings? Yes. But acting like the 20th rank makes you a god is just plain wrong.

While I have defeated every single boss in the DLC, I can't say I was having fun with certain fights, defeating them felt more like an end to torture rather than achieving something. It's all subjective of course, but that's the whole point of a review, and your opinion is just as subjective as mine.

If you dislike the collect-a-thon and checklist nature of the Open World aspects of vanilla, the Scadutree fragments and spirit blessing things, basically make exploration and secret hunting far more mandatory than it was in Vanilla. If you go into this willingly blind like I did, you'll probably not realise you've missed out many points of interests, and screwed up multiple NPC questlines. Which, is another reason I don't really like this DLC, it just has too many vertical layers to it, but I wouldn't mind that if there was more often, more than one way of reaching an area, but there usually isn't. You might find the odd rock that Torrent can unintentionally climb, and jump onto another to reach somewhere in a way that wasn't planned by the developers, but that's not a legitimate solution to a problem I have with the world design, an exploit will remain an exploit.

I say this next part very sardonically, but also earnestly. If you ARE the type of person who likes having to investigate almost every single nook and cranny of the map to find mandatory items, if you enjoy having to find the one entrance to an area with no room for creativity with your entry, and if you enjoy bosses that punish even the slightest mistakes, this is probably a 10/10 for you, and that's okay. It's just not for me, and while I think it is worth buying, if you find Maliketh and Malenia in particular obnoxious to fight, either try and get some friends to help you, use spirit ashes, or change your gear.

That all being said, if you really are complaining about having to kill Mohg and Radahn to do the DLC, that is actually a skill issue.

I ended up refunding this game, and only partially in a reluctant manner.
That's because oulash has cool ideas, I like that you're god of this universe, who was sealed away or whatever, intruding a mortal vessel with the intent of regaining your old strength, if not more so. It's implied the whole world somehow, knows the vessel is you (it's explained your crossover back into the mortal world was visible, but how are they going to know you've inhabitated the body of a specific lizardman?). Which, funnily enough, this is tied in with my major issue with the game.
There's sort of life simulator mechanics I enjoy, like fishing and the fact you seemingly can have livestock is pretty cool.
I also like some of the races make such a huge difference, with Lizardman race, you don't really ever have to worry about food because you're an apex predator that will eat corpses like lunchables.

See, I like traditional roguelike games, Elona+ (Especially the Custom GX mod) being my favourite of all time.
Dungeons of Dredmor is pretty good, and I like Dungeonmans and Tanglewood as well. There's more but I can't really remember them from the top of my head. Hell, this game kinda reminds me of the game Realm of the Mad God a bit, though I'm not sure where I'd put that on Trad Roguelike to Roguelite scale.

But yeah, this game has the issue of randomisation being too harsh on the player.
You can have the experience on my best run, where the game only sends easy and low level mobs at you so that you can actually have time to level up and fight harder stuff, and find a base that not only has an infinite water supply, but crafting benches of all sorts, beds, and a cooking fire.
But most runs are going to be, from my experience with the game, you getting randomly swarmed by enemies you can outrun as soon as you take a few steps, even and die.
If not that, you won't find food, crafting benches, or a reliable source of water.

And even in my best run, that ended short when the game decided to throw two archers at me, which I couldn't counter at all since they were almost as healthy as soldiers, and hit just as hard if not even harder, with infinite ammo, and you can't flee from them either, as they have better LoS than you do and can keep up with you, so even if you can't see them, they can still see you and will just shoot you from ranges that seem impossible.

I don't even mind permadeath, whilst it's not how Elona+ handles things, there's still consequences for dying in that game, like wasting your time having to travel back to where you died, risking dying on the way as dying again without sleeping in that game makes you lose stats permanently, and so on. So it's not the consequences that upset me, but just how much this game is actively trying to screw you over through it's randomisation, and enemies constantly tracking you down.

Also, god forbid the equipment in this game. While it's cool that salvaging gear means you can get a chance of learning the blueprint, good luck finding the relevant crafting stations. And even if you do, gear durability in this game is a joke. You can't seemingly repair gear on the go, but have to find a grindstone.
This repairs gear to max, but here's the issue: It reduces the max durability by 10, each time you do that.
So you have to risk your gear dropping to basically as low durability as you can to make the most of it, unequip it before it gets destroyed, keep the useless weight on you (this game has inventory weight mechanics), find a grindstone, and repair it from 1/30 durability, to now 20/20, and then later on 10/10 which at that point, cannot be repaired anymore.

Oh, and you will be constantly resting in this game as even walking uses up your stamina bar, meaning you'll be spending more time worrying about finding a place to rest, instead of fighting off enemies that seemingly know where you are at almost all times.

One huge nitpick of the game too... Some enemies are ACTIVELY fearful of you, and will beg for mercy while CHASING you when you're trying to mind your own business.
They literally beg for mercy as they strike you first, after chasing you. It's so awful.

I can't recommend this, it's an imbalanced fustercluck. Cool ideas and great potential can't save a game that doesn't play well.

This is genuinely really good. I don't have to open up Spotify and get blared with ads, and I don't have to find some random YouTube stream that doesn't really play the kind of songs advertised. Nor do I have to open up a bunch of webpages that play different static/ambient sounds and have to struggle with the volume and intensity of those sounds. It comes in this neat, all in one package that you can watch and listen to, or just listen to in the background.

Only complaint I really have is the faces are too feminine looking for male characters. Otherwise, pretty much a 11/10 for like, what this is trying to be. I hope more songs and playlists are added over time.