Recent reviews by Meylyn

This fever dream of a game was extremely engaging and had a really solid story that kept me immersed for the most part. The story was extremely well-written, the twist was very juicy and I didn't piece it together until I got close to the end, and the world building is just dang good. I really enjoyed playing this; it may be a 2 hour experience, but it's a really good 2 hour experience.

There were a few bits where it felt more like a chore to get to the next part, primarily the "don't make a noise" section and the "graveyard" section. The don't make a noise section was far too long where the gimmick was no longer novel and became a chore to power through. The graveyard section I feel was trying to mimic the feeling of not being able to run in a nightmare, and the novelty of this quickly wore off after the 8th time of getting killed from the back because every movement you make is too slow.

Honestly, this game seems fine if you've got nostalgia and want to play the original, but it plays more like a port to PC than a remake. The gameplay is very repetitive (mash X and sometimes A), and is tedious to try to get through just to get to a 10 second cutscene, and then 15 more minutes of fighting. The cutscenes come off as very dry writing, and the VAs are reading dispassionately from their script (both JP and EN), so I can't find myself enjoying this game, unfortunately.

going into this game I was expecting a short horror game built around a fun mechanic. As I played more though I realized it's a rather expansive game with some great lore and complex puzzles that are fun to solve. Tunnet exceeded my expectations and I thoroughly enjoyed the game.

If you enjoy games like deep rock galactic, and wanna relive your college days of using packettracer for your CCNA courses, this is the game for you.

There are a few suggestions I'd like to make though (which do include spoilers):

• Instead of tunneling your way to the surface, you should take an elevator to the surface (with rolling to credits after the elevator closes). I feel this would be more dramatic and let the player imagine what the surface looks like instead of having a couple trees on the top of the surface.
  
• I would've loved the ability to annotate filters and hubs with custom messages (possibly as an upgrade)
  
• It would've been cool to have the ability to color-code wires
  
• when you have all the gateways hooked up, it would've been nice to have a list of not yet connected endpoints to be able to diagnose which ones aren't fully connected. You could use the tester to do this but you'd have to test each and every endpoint.

Overall, it's a solid game, definitely worth picking up if you enjoy horror, digging tunnels, and networking.

Given the extremely high praise this game has gotten, I had high expectations for this game, and it did not disappoint, with the only exception of the first mission. Other than the basic nature of the levels in the first mission, the story didn't start off strong, and even though the concept is really cool, some of the VO doesn't match the emotion of the dialogue.

Outside of the first mission though, the game ramps up and each mission it introduces a new mechanic which flows smoothly with the other mechanics. Each level keeps utilizing previous mechanics, so it doesn't feel wasted.

Given the inherent nature of trial and error with most platformers, this game keeps feeling fresh as you progress though it, and the story will keeps you enticed to continue to the end of the game.

This game is so close to perfect. I'm invested in every mystery the game presents, and when I come across a new one, I try different solutions to try to unlock all of the endings. However, nearly every story is executed in the same rigid manner, which boils down to: do/do not do the side quest to unlock different endings, and investigate every highlighted area on the map. Oddly enough, the mysteries which confine you to a specific location make the investigations more tailored to the mystery rather than the same generic game loop.

The game runs fine, albeit a bit buggy. The save mechanic is a little wonky and some aspects about your current game state aren't saved, such as inventory items. The resolution options are quite hacky and wouldn't display well on my 4K TV (I imagine this is so the pixel aspect is kept 1:1). The audio will no longer work until you restart if your device loses connection. There is no deadzone for the gamepad, and some of the mappings are wrong, making combat tedious (no load/save combat templates). There's even debug modes left within the game bound to normal gamepad buttons (This review was written during version 1.0.1)

All that said though, this game is still an enjoyable experience, as long as you play on mouse for now.

This game has immense potential to be something spectacular with just a bit more polish. The characters are beautifully designed, the mechanics have a solid foundation, and it's easy to find yourself immersed into the story.

However, the balance is all over the place. Corsac was by far the hardest competitor even though he's only the second competitor. You can even see the significant drop-off of players between Roxanne and Corsac in the Global Achievement Stats.

That being said though, the game itself is extremely fun and still enjoyable. I definitely got my money's worth out of the game, and it's an immensely enjoyable experience overall. If you find yourself wanting to play the game, I urge you to power through Corsac. It gets way easier after him.

Suggested Improvements:

• Competitors' potions price should be relative to your best potions, that way competitions are a challenge, but not too much if you're falling behind. As soon as I unlocked the garden, mimic, and barrels, it became exceptionally easy to defeat competitors.
  
• Either increase custom order expiry, or remove trait requirements. Custom orders are seldom completed in time due to all of the requirements.
  
• Move the barrels to be unlocked before Corsac. Having the garden, the mimic, and the barrels locked behind Corsac makes him a really tough competitor, but all subsequent competitors extremely easy.
  
• I recommend to move the mimic to be unlocked after Finn. Making passive income without needing to open the shop is truly overpowered and throws off the pacing of the game.
  
• Nerf the garden. It's exceptionally easy to duplicate pure mana. There should be a cap on how many items you can duplicate, or perhaps the slime degrades over time. By the end of my playthrough, I had over 100 Mana Conflagrations, which I used to max out nearly every person.
  
• Anubia, compared to other competitors, is very anti-climactic. You barely interact with her before competition day. You'd think she'd be interacting with you more often like Finn, Corsac, and Roxanne. She felt extremely out of place and not much of a threat. Personally, I didn't even need to haggle with her competition since masterwork potions were already able to be brewed.
  
• Remove ending the game after the competition is finished. The current game loop is perfectly set up for an endless loop; there's no reason not to be able to continue playing after the competition is over.

Suggested Card Improvements:

• If you have Ferocity of the Squirrel active and play Catchy Tune, it will only play the amount Ferocity of the Squirrel gave, and not the amount the last card gave. Instead, this should be adjusted to the amount the last card played gave, otherwise the card is essentially useless with any buffs which reward interest active.
  
• Remove ability to draw Improv from Improv. I was able to reach an infinite loop where the same 3 cards I drew gave me 1 Improv and 2 Captivate, which gave me infinite patience without ever ending the turn.

Suggested Additions:

• Add ability to see custom orders in Sylvia's journal. It's frustrating I gotta take notes out of game to remember what magimins or traits I need again for certain orders/recipes.
  
• Add ability to add fuel to Combustopher at any time. Forgetting to add fuel to the fire can be detrimental; much so, I find myself save scumming since it can be a game ender waiting that long.
  
• Add the amount of each potion you have when browsing potion recipes. This would be nice to get a general idea of just how many potions you have so you can plan out if you're missing any for your heroes.

This game is a lot more relaxing and casual than I thought it'd be, which was a great treat. I did play in Gardener mode, so I'm unsure about the difficulty of the other modes, but Gardener felt like a good balance.
I did run into a few bugs and exploits, such as being able to place multiple buildings on top of each other with the monorail system, but nothing too bad.

It can be difficult if you make a mistake with the climate or land placement. Fortunately, the consequences aren't game-ending; you just have to pivot your strategy.

I will say though, 100% completion was only rewarded with an achievement, which was a bit anti-climactic. I wish there was a cutscene or something like there was for completing the first 4 islands. The 2nd city island was surprisingly easier than the first, too; it kinda felt like a rushed map compared to the others.

$5 is worth it to make the fascists mad.

Plus the game itself is fun, albeit buggy.










Go ahead and give me the clown award. Give me your points and stay mad, dorks.

Having owned the original volumes of the game for PS2, it was nice to be able to finally pick this up for PC. The game itself runs very smooth compared to how it was for PS2. The story line is excellent, and the game play is enjoyable (assuming you enjoy RPGs).

The only thing I didn't enjoy was Volume 4. Volume 4 unnecessarily explained the aftermath behind Volume 3, which I felt should've been left to the imagination of the player. Along with that, the cutscene animations in this specific volume felt very choppy (which I believe was an intended effect and not a bug/performance issue). This volume was also incredibly short compared to the other 3. It felt like a rushed addition to porting it to PC in order to give a selling tag to people who've already played the original volumes, as it didn't add any unique gameplay, instead just a really short appendage to the storyline. The only thing enjoyable from the final volume was Haseo's final form.

Volume 1-3:
Gameplay: 9/10
Storyline: 8/10
Performance: 10/10

Volume 4:
Gameplay: 6/10
Storyline: 4/10
Performance: 7/10

Overall, I would recommend purchasing this game, even if you have already played the original volumes before. The storyline is still very enjoyable and the gameplay keeps the game interesting.

My review will primarily focus on the single player aspect of the game, and won't spoil any plot.

hackmud is a great concept, however is poorly executed. The game requires you to complete an entire single player campaign before gaining access to online play. Normally, I wouldn't have an issue with this, however, the single player campaign was not enjoyable, and borderline unplayable.

First off, you're thrown straight into the game. The first puzzle you're given isn't too hard: type what you're told to type. This is to introduce you to how you're going to be mainly interacting with the game. Once you get the syntax down, you're given a task: type a specific set of commands. Not too hard, but it requires you to do this weird set-up where you need to do it on two separate user accounts. I'm still confused as to the purpose of that, and never used the second account again. I wasn't able to even get past the first puzzle without a little googling, because it was not intuitive, and the instructions were unclear.

I finally past the first puzzle, and moved onto the next one: hack into another user's account. During this puzzle, you're prompted for a password. I looked everywhere for where this password may be, but I could not find any password. I had to yet again google the answer to this puzzle. It turns out that you need to guess the password. There is no password file you need to find, no key, or any clue. You had to guess the password given the hint it gave you.

I've got a massive issue with this: a puzzle's solution should not be brute force. It's equivalent to taking the stickers off of a rubik's cube to solve it. You were left on your own to solve this, and, unless you brute forced the answer, you would've been stuck there until you got stumped like me and googled the answer.

I finally progressed through the last two puzzles. No big deal. Let's move onto the next one: access a system which you don't have authorization to. You progress through the different sections of the system and find out the target, and how to access it. However, there are no hints whatsoever on how to access it. I had to yet again google the solution to this problem. It turns out, you need to add a specific parameter to your command. This parameter has never come up before in the game. There were no hints, or suggestions to do so.

I completed this puzzle, and completed the next few puzzles to escape the "VLAN", but I never finished the single player campaign because it felt a lot more like work than it did a fun game/challenging puzzle.

Normally I wouldn't be so critical on an indie game. However, for the price of $20, this game in it's current state is unfortunately not worth it. If you do want to try this game, I would recommend waiting for it to be on sale for $6 or less, because I wouldn't find this game worth more than that in it's current state.

I hope one day to come back to this game with all my gripes with the single player campaign fixed.