Recent reviews by luckymod13

Early access and it's already an excellent rogue-lite. It's more fun than it has any right to be! Visuals, music, sounds, gameplay, mechanics- It's all really well done. There quite a few unlockables for your runs, and enough items to entertain you for a while. It is fun solo and with groups of any size up the maximum of 4. There are several weapon types and a huge number of variety among them. Build variety each run is pretty good, due to the variety of items, weapons, and unique combinations. Fundamentally, how you play each one varies only a little, but somehow it seems to feel unique enough if you're adventurous with your choices.

Outstanding in the genre. Great aesthetics and music. Mechanics and play are on point. It really is a great game. And I highly recommend the movie as well.

I do recommend this to people who like extraction shooters. It's clearly unpolished and obviously in early stages of development, so the recommend comes with that as a caveat. However it's already quite fun and playable. There are occasional crashes and things, so patience is a must during these early stages. That said, this is a promising title. I've been enjoying the PvE side of the game. It's been a nice Tarkov-lite experience with a heavy focus on tactical play. The mechanics of complex healing, gearing, managing hunger/thirst, and various loadouts are probably the main appeal over other shooters. I'm liking the PvE side of things because I get all of that, but can take a nice break away from the stress of PvP. Once the game is more polished, I will of course begin enjoying the PvP action. For now though, I feel the current state of the game with it's occasional crashes and lags is not quite "there yet" to play this as a PvP game.

Fast paced movement shooter
Rogue-lite elements
Great soundtrack
Engaging
Sound FX are awesome
Appealing graphic style
Comic onomatopoeia (pow, zap, buzz)
Multiple cool bosses
FUN

Recommend HIGHLY

Caveat: max of 2 players :/

TLDR: If you like arcade style multiplayer, roguelikes, or breathe air, you should buy this game.

Overall, it is quite fun and very re-playable. I'm 8 hours in and having a blast. Each run is different and each character quite unique and fun to engage with. I can't imagine this game not blowing up. I enjoy the combat, sound fx, voice lines, enemies, mechanics, and the graphics. No complaints.

I feel it has the right level of difficulty to keep me feeling challenged, but not frustrated. I have a 4 person play group most of the time, but it's fun solo, coop, or 3 person. In our play, we find ourselves working together in a variety of ways, scrambling to the end, and often someone is saying something frantic. Some fights and boss runs are pretty epic and we end up exploding into cheers, laughter, and spouting crude inappropriate things at the enemies.

On a more technical note, the character builds you wind up making up as you go is a huge part of the fun. You find yourself choosing various powers as you level and unlock items. The combinations are interesting and create unique experiences. Thanks to this build variety, there are many different ways to play each character, and each run winds up playing out differently. Some combinations work better than others perhaps, yet all seem to end up feeling fun and powerful if you play into them. I feel like it's similar to Risk of Rain though less overwhelming as there are a bit less items and powers to juggle, and it's more accessible overall. There is enough player agency to keep you involved and feel like choices are meaningful, but not so much as to slow down the action or become a burden. Likewise, you can't really choose wrong and ruin the experience.

I do feel there is content that needs added. More is very likely to be added based on the history and the road-map. At the time of this review, the game is currently in beta and there are two 'chapters' and maybe 6 or so characters, but the road-map indicates a third chapter and more characters are on the way. Personally I feel that could be plenty if there were more bosses, and perhaps some sort of uber boss challenge at the end. I'd also like to see alternative game modes.

I honestly recommend everyone buy this game. It's in beta, not even finished, and I'm telling you it's worth the spend in it's current state. It feels very polished, which is a rarity lately in gaming.

*40 hours in now, and it's at full release.*
This game is fun. I stand by my review. New bosses and characters have been added among other things. Pretty solid game. Could use more levels to mix it up a bit more, but generally it's a fun game.

Cheers,
Luckymod13

This is a wonderful vampire fantasy adventure and base building and crafting game. There is an impressive game map, oodles of enemies and items, and lots of fun thematic elements. The music is pretty nice too. The overall soundboard is great, and there are fun voice lines for all the enemies. The game world feels alive in a way, and it's pretty immersive for a top-down game. The graphics and visuals are a somewhat unique cartoonish style that I find both lighthearted and grim at the same time. There is a day-night cycle, critical to a vampire's concerns for obvious reasons, in which you find yourself managing activities based on time. The base building is fun and role immersive, meaning you can make your castle spooky and strange, utilitarian, silly, or whatever suits you. For PvP, it's obviously more about defensive and offensive strategy.

As a small disclaimer, I enjoy this game casually, having spun up my own PvE server. I've not taken part in PvP. I hear it gets pretty intense, I just frankly don't enjoy PvP in this sort of game. I've never played on public servers!

PvE is often challenging, especially all the mini-bosses you must defeat to earn various powers and crafting recipes. Combat in general is fun because it does require some effort, with each enemy type and each boss having their own mechanics to learn and play around. There are many different weapons and spells, each with their own unique abilities, flavor, and preferred enemy effectiveness. I find I have one main setup that I usually enjoy, switching to different weapons or even changing spells on occasion if a particular enemy is difficult or calls for a wildly different strategy.

There are a huge number of recipes and crafted items. As you go along, you unlock more. These items range from base parts, crafting stations, storage boxes, weapons, armor, potions, and the list goes on. All of the things are interesting and unique, and you find yourself excited to craft the next new thing.

I really enjoy all the transforming abilities. It's pretty fun being able to turn into a bat, bear, wolf, toad, rat, or even don a 'human disguise' for trading coin for goods with the locals. The various forms unlock the ability to traverse the landscape in new ways, or even aid in combat. I also enjoy the horse riding method of getting around the map, especially once you can 'dominate' a horse to make it into your own special spooky vampire horse hoopty.

There's also an interesting facet of play involving the magical capture of NPC's. They can be taken as servants and sent on supply missions or even used to defend your base from PvP attacks. You can also capture and keep various NPCs you find in game, imprisoning them. You must feed them and balance their health and misery gauges to keep them alive. You do this because they can supply your character with blood of various types depending on whom you've imprisoned, each NPC type is also blood type and will have a random quality percentage. These can weakened in combat and then fed upon in the field, killing them, to receive temporary relevant bonuses to your character. However, capturing them means you can choose to have an ongoing supply of a desirable bonus. While adventuring, simply identify an NPC with a blood type conferring the desired bonuses that is of high quality. You weaken them, then "dominate" them magically to lead them to your prison. It's a pretty interesting system in my opinion.

You will eventually have legendary items and armors which confer various bonuses, as well as modifier items to 'tweak' spells in various ways. Through these, you can create custom "builds" to play in a way that suits you. There are so many that I couldn't begin to guess how many possibilities there are. I love that level of deep customization in any game, though at first it's a bit overwhelming perhaps. I started just using whatever I found until I got a few items which seemed to play well together or combo in fun ways.

As far as end game, well that remains to be seen for me. I've got 139 hours in at the time of this review. I've build a few different bases across two character runs. I'm currently only about 3/4 of the way through the bosses I think. I do believe there are some extra hard challenge bosses at the end. I think the only real end-game beyond that is just playing around with base building, perfecting character builds, collecting the cosmetic helmets, or perhaps moving onto trying PvP- but from what I understand that really requires a team of friends to accomplish successfully and have fun doing so. There probably are solo/no-teaming servers for PvP, but as I mentioned I'm not personally interested in PvP in this sort of game.

There are a couple cosmetic dlc's you can purchase. These in no way at all enhance character power or ability, nor are they required in the least to play and enjoy every item and area of the game. This is a huge plus to me, as so many other games have gone a bad direction with dlc's.

Negatives?

Well, it can be a bit boorish alone if you aren't into this sort of base-building/crafting/harvesting game. Best to play with a few friends, as is often the case for many games. Controls are a bit hard to master at first, with mouse cursor position dictating attack direction independent of WASD, all while using right mouse button to rotate the camera around. And it can be a bit hard for some- I wouldn't let the cartoonish graphics fool you, this game can be brutal. Steering the horse was a pain at first too, but eventually you'll get the hang of it. (not sure if there's controller support or not, I use keyboard/mouse) And lastly, I feel that while the character creation options are mostly sufficient, the armor 'looks' cannot be changed. This bothers me. You can customize the character, and collect dozens of different capes and hats, but you cannot currently change your armor appearance or color. The armor just is what it is. Not that it looks bad, but I really feel they missed the bar by not creating a customization option for the armor colors. It's not a deal breaker, but it does bug me. A role-playing game of any sort in 2023 should have all kinds of character customization! Maybe they'll add that in the future? Let's hope. ** EDIT** 2024 now, and there is customization for outfits, and they've added Castlevania items and boss! AMAZING!

I hope you enjoyed my review! It's not very in depth, but I feel you can watch gameplay on youtube to get a better sense of the visuals, combat, and crafting. I do highly recommend this game overall, and especially so if you enjoyed Valheim, 7-days, Ark, or other base builders.



Cheers,
Luckymod13

This had a rocky start. It's certainly not deeply complex either. However, it does scratch a particular itch. You can jump in easily and start playing with less commitment than some games require. The game has you running through grim dark and detailed environments, with a lot of intense combat. You'll be slicing, hacking, stabbing, shooting, blasting, zapping, and more. There are hundreds of enemies per mission, all swarming about your team, while special enemies with unique attacks emerge from dark corners and walkways. Team play and staying together is vital to success, especially in higher difficulties. I really enjoy this game for what it is, rather than focusing on what it isn't. This is not a PvP shooter, an arpg, or a looter shooter. It is very similar to Left4Dead actually. More similar in fact than the spiritual successor Back4Blood. It's worth a try, and especially if you like or are interested in the Warhammer 40k universe. Like I mentioned it had a rough start, but Fatshark has added a bit and seem to still be working on balance, new features/abilities, and even maps from time to time. I definitely recommend this as a semi-casual horde shooter to all my friends.

No longer recommend. It's basically become antique flavor call of duty. Shotguns are and have been super meta for ages. Most of the unique things are watered down or lame now. The servers are constantly broken or crashing. The developers keep making promises and taking ages to do anything. Nothing ever gets added without a slew of new bugs that usually stick around months or years.

Basically, don't do it to yourself. Find something less self-abusive to do with your time.