Recent reviews by Misanu

Elden Ring is rightfully showered with praise and considered a masterpiece for good reason. Elden Ring is so good, in fact, that upon reaching Radahn I decided to go back to the earlier souls games and experience those before continuing. It's not perfect, however.

Rather than join the choir of those singing it's praises, I'll point out some shortcomings that you may or may not be aware of.

Elden Ring is like walking into a sweet shop of different weapons and fun goodies to choose from except for some reason the rigid upgrade system and respec roadblocks make it as difficult as possible to actually experiment with all of this without mods. Elden Ring feels like it actively punishes experimentation rather than reward it. This, for me, is easily the biggest frustration with the game, and it's something that was an issue in the Dark Souls trilogy, too.

The co-op system sucks, but this is entirely fixed with a simple to install mod. I have no idea why FromSoft has not just implemented this themselves. You may also need to install another mod to increase the difficulty of Co-op since having two players can make the game much easier.

To get an FPS above 60, you once again need to install a mod.

A lot of bosses will come up repeatedly which can get a little boring after a while. This can be forgiven given the scale of the game, but you do end up rolling your eyes a bit when you see yet another Crucible Knight (I've seen three by the time I get to Radahn).

Put simply, to get the most out of Elden Ring i would highly suggest tweaking the experience slightly to get over some of these shortcomings. If you're willing to put in a little work, it will pay off.

Tiny Rogues is a roguelite that doesn't get the attention it deserves for the player satisfaction it boasts. I'll do my part with this review.

This game is great. It's like a mini path of exile without the enormous time commitment and learning curve. Other reviews will outline in more detail why this game is great, so there really isn't much point in me echoing this praise. Instead I'm going to post constructive criticism on the off-chance the developer comes across it.

- The game is frustratingly clunky on controller. I would've preferred to play this game on controller and it's part of the reason I bought it, but it's significantly less smooth than m&k and in the brief time I used controller I encountered several bugs (for example, not being able to select certain upgrades in the campfire).

- (This is apparently being worked on soon so may be outdated by the time you read)
Some of the text is confusing, poorly explained and/or outright misleading, making it difficult to fine tune your build. For example, a new player may think that Non-triggered lucky hits refers to hits that ARE NOT lucky hits. It's actually the opposite. Non-triggered lucky hits are hits that actually have triggered but from your character instead of elsewhere. Confusing? It was for me at first.

- Some of the text can straight up go off-screen.

- In the tavern, the YES + NO options on different characters are in different positions. This means if you skip through the same dialogue that you've already seen a dozen times, you can EASILY accidentally buy something you didn't want to.

Other than these small issues, Tiny Rogues is a really fun title and should absolutely be picked up by roguelite enjoyers.

9/10

quack

This game is visually beautiful, has great sound design and possibly the best build variety I've ever seen in a game of this genre. Everything just feels so smooth and polished, with impressive complexity that rarely makes you feel confused or overwhelmed - a notable achievement given that this is such a common pitfall for similar games. It's a borderline perfect experience with one major flaw, which I'll detail below.

The following is constructive criticism because I think this game has the potential to be something special and just needs a few things ironed out before it can be considered a masterpiece.

My main problem with Nova Drift is the fact that lower difficulties feel WAY too slow, which results in the game being tedious. I actually refunded this game in the first 2 hours because of this, only to buy it again later on to give it another chance. The issue lies in the fact that you can get extremely strong early on without much difficulty, and once you get there it will drain all fun out of the experience. You will drift around deleting everything on screen in an instant, waiting until something remotely challenging finally shows up in around an hour's time. Many other games in this genre suffer from this issue, but I've never encountered it nearly as prominently as I have in Nova Drift.

If you're new to the roguelite genre this may not be a problem for you, but those with experience in roguelites and/or theory-crafting games will quickly identify synergies and be promptly punished with extremely boring gameplay.

Thankfully, this issue is (for the most part) fixed on the highest difficulties, but it takes a fair bit of grind to get there. In my opinion, the default difficulty should be significantly harder since there is an optional easy mode available for those who would find it too difficult. This would make the first few hours of Nova Drift far less boring and allow players to start having fun.

There are other smaller problems such as the fact that it's not uncommon to die because I couldn't see my ship or confused it for another one. This is a pretty lame way to get killed, and it's even more common when you have constructs (summoned allies). It should be easier to differentiate the player from all the other chaos on screen. Perhaps an outline would solve this issue.

There are also some balancing issues with one body being very clearly overpowered, effortlessly reaching absurd levels of strength that other builds have to work very hard to even get close to. This, along with some weapons generally being quite dull to use, means that you're better off just ignoring certain options for the best experience, which is a bit lame but I understand that balancing a game of this complexity is a significant task. Outside of a few duds, Nova Drift excels at fun and balance most of the time, with a vast majority of upgrades being viable to pick up and experiment with.

Overall, this game has an oddly offputting first few hours of gameplay, given the painfully unchallenging difficulty curve and abnormal control scheme. Given time, however, Nova Drift is easily one of the best in the genre - and given how saturated this genre is, that is saying something.

I have many more hours off-Steam than what's listed above.

I'm a massive fan of the first game, with multiple playthroughs completed including Stygian. As I eagerly waited for this game's full release and tried to basically avoid it during the early access period (as to go in as blind as possible) it was hard not to become nervous at the clearly mixed community response to this game.

I'm happy to say that this game, whilst imperfect, is extremely fun. It does some things better than it's older brother, and some things worse, which I'll get into below.


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TLDR review: I love this game, but it has some mechanics that are poorly executed or underdeveloped. It is also very different to the first game, so whether or not this is a problem or not depends on what from the first game you enjoyed most. This game becoming the masterpiece it can certainly become depends entirely on whether Red Hook is willing to put in the work.

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- Artstyle, music, and MFing Wayne June are all absolutely top tier. Seriously, the fighting animations and environments in this game are absolutely stunning. I don't remember the last time I played a video game that looked this good. Only downside here is that those who were running DD1 on a toaster may be straight up unable to play this game due to the increased hardware requirement.

- Shorter runs (typically a few hours long for each) makes for a more casual and accessible experience, as a disaster will lose you a few hours of progress (from which you still gain via metaprogression) rather than a run-killing several days/weeks of progress lost. Whilst this does lower the tension a bit, it completely removes the need to painfully grind in order to return to the position that you previously were before your run collapsed. Anybody who experienced this in DD1 will probably appreciate this change.

- Expanded character lore with the trade-off of losing character attachment (more on that later).

-I didn't like the relationship mechanic at first, but after gaining more experience with the game, it's not so bad. Looking at gameplay from back in 2021 (where heroes would berate each other for stupid reasons), the relationship system today appears to have been improved. It's a lot less frustrating and manageable than it appeared to be back then. That being said, it still has a lot of untapped potential.



- This game is very different to the first one. Is this a bad thing? Depends on who you ask. I personally like some of the changes they've made as base management wasn't all that interesting to me. If you particularly enjoyed the strategy layer of DD1, you may be unhappy with the massive overhaul it's received. If you enjoy roguelites or weren't attached to this part of DD1, you may prefer it. I'm part of the latter.

- Not having all abilities unlocked at the start is frustrating. A big part of the fun (and skill) in DD1 was creating a smart and effective team composition from the abilities you have available. This, at the start, is not the case, severely limiting your ability to actually play the game until you 1) Unlock all characters and 2) Unlock their abilities. This is the one thing that should've been untouched by meta-progression in my opinion, as it takes too much away from the player at the start.

- The stage coach, as many others have said, sucks. This was a cool concept but is a total downgrade from DD1. Controlling the stagecoach is not a fun mechanic, and the fact that you have to slam into (not avoid!) trash in the road makes no sense and should've been kept on the drawing board.

- Frequent stuttering on a high-end overkill rig, especially during the stagecoach section (which makes it suck even further).

- The game picks and chooses when it wants to give you certain information, which is annoying when you want to make good strategic decisions. Early on, I quite often found myself thinking "why won't you just tell me?" or "why has that happened?".

- No official mod support (yet). Somewhat understandable given the change from 2D to 3D, but if you're looking for anime girl heroes and CalebCity Hamlet Skins, go back to the first game.

- No retreating. Part of what made DD1 so great was the option to pull out of a bad situation before it was too late, and the mental conflict that occurred as a result (stick around for the win or cut losses?). This is gone. Especially frustrating and potentially run-ending if you weren't given the option to refuse the fight in the first place.

- Zero encouragement (to my knowledge) to try out different builds and compositions. This means that you may as well take the best possible build every time to win. This is lame. DD1 pretty much forced variety as the different areas and darkest level dungeons themselves demanded different strengths to win. In my opinion this could be easily fixed by giving the player 2 random trinkets at the start of a run (before selecting characters), which would encourage them to select characters that can benefit from those trinkets. Do this instead of giving the player trinkets as soon as they're unlocked.

- A basic but much needed QOL feature - your character loadouts and customization should stay as they are! Before every run, your loadouts are reset, meaning you have to recreate them EVERY SINGLE RUN - why is it like this??

- Another basic but much needed QOL feature - why can't we sell items? It's baffling to me that this isn't already in the game. The Hoarder, as the name implies, should obviously be able to buy items from you, even if they're junk, but nope - not possible. This means you're forced to either use or throw away everything you get. This feels really stupid and unnecessary.



- Almost zero attachment to your characters whatsoever. Plague Doc isn't YOUR Plague Doc, she's THE Plague Doc, meaning that if she dies she'll just turn up again on your next run.

- Stress has been reworked, which was probably necessary to fit within the new system but it's a lot more shallow and less impactful now. Afflictions, the iconic mechanic from the first game are now replaced with their far less interesting younger brother "Meltdowns" - a simple loss of health and character relationships.

- Smaller roster, with the most egregious change being Crusader getting locked behind DLC. Why? I really don't want to assume the worst of Red Hook but... why? Even if they had innocent intentions, do they not see how that looks? Charging extra for a fan favourite character? A silly move at best and straight up greed at worst.

- Houndmaster, one of my faves from the first game, is absent. Sadge.

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Does this review sound critical? Well, it is I suppose. I want to give an objective review of the game instead of just saying "I LOVE THIS GAME ITS SO GOOD", even though I do. I personally can look past many of this game's shortcomings, but it would be unreasonable to expect the average player to. This game does what it does right extremely well, but the many small flaws dampen the experience and I really hope Red Hook works on these (or at least give us mod support so we can do it ourselves!).

8/10

I had basically written off competitive multiplayer gaming entirely due to the enormous array of issues killing these games at the moment (cheating, stale/boring metas, SBMM, the list goes on) and booted up The Finals expecting to check it out for 15 minutes, find it boring and move on.

Turns out the game is actually really fun. For now. I'm apprehensive because I've seen this time and time again. A game starts out great and then due to mismanagement ends up in the garbage like all the other titles that were once great. Really hope that The Finals doesnt go in the same direction.

Two things that will keep this game alive in the long term:

1) Remove SBMM, it sucks, just remove it. You have a ranked playlist. Let the sweats play ranked, let casual be casual.

2) Easy Anti Cheat is equivalent to leaving your front door wide open at night with a sign that says "please dont steal". It's terrible. This game will be overrun by cheating before the end of the month if this isn't changed.

Best of luck to the devs

Path of Exile has a lot to offer underneath it's surface, but the game is notoriously hard to get into and for very good reason. The new player experience is arguably the worst I have EVER seen in a video game, so actually accessing the depth of what the game offers is truly a challenge.

As a new player, you basically have two options to get started.

1) Make a character yourself. You'll have no idea what you're doing, your build is going to inevitably suck, you will restart at some point and learn a bit on the way. Keep doing so until you have a grasp on creating a build that isn't complete garbage.

2) Follow a build guide. This is the best option for most players, but it has one major problem. It's tedious. Playing a game whilst somebody tells you exactly what decisions to make at all times basically feels like a long tutorial. A tutorial that may last dozens of hours.

So, put simply, you have to invest an enormous amount of time into this game before you can even start to get an idea of whether or not you'll even enjoy it. You could've spent that time doing...anything else.

I tried getting into this game, I'll probably try again, but I just don't have the motivation for it. I don't want to get a PHD just to start having fun in a video game.

This game is good. A wealth of build options are offered in a relatively straight forward manner, so you can basically play Path of Exile without requiring a PHD to make a semi decent character.

However.

As a newbie to the ARPG genre in general I feel like I fell into one of the common traps and played this game "wrong". The result has been an experience that consists of mostly tedious gameplay. To avoid falling into the trap that I did:

Focus on story missions as your top priority, instead of mindlessly going around killing everything in a room. If you don't do this, then one of two things will happen. Either your progression will slow to a crawl, or you will power spike too early on and spend the entire rest of your campaign melting everything on screen. Both outcomes are boring, and that's exactly what happened in my case.

Don't be dumb like me. Do the missions.

I bought this game a while back in early access and wasn't too impressed, so I refunded it. From reading reviews at the time, many appeared to share a similar sentiment - the game had potential, but still needed work (even for an early access game).

Seeing a small yet noticeable buzz around this game recently, I decided to give this game another chance on a different platform and was pleasantly surprised to see that the game is ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC now. An A-tier game for sure, with a few small things holding back S-tier that I'll get into below.

If you're looking for the short review, this game is basically roguelike DOOM. It's as good as it sounds.

Main pros:

- Guns feels incredibly satisfying to use, pretty much a requirement for any good FPS that Roboquest firmly achieves
- Movement feels amazing - think Titanfall 2 movement
- Banger soundtrack
- Plenty of weapon and item variety
- Characters that feel distinctly different and each fun to play
- Boss variety is higher than I expected
- Enemy attacks are generally well telegraphed
- Secrets and meta-progression are done very well
- The game rewards fast gameplay which fits perfectly
- Whilst I haven't personally played the CoOp, the fact that it's offered is super cool
- Well optimised - game runs extremely well on my system
- I consider myself to be pretty good at these types of games, yet Roboquest consistently kicks my ass, and I love that. Very rarely do I feel "cheated", instead understanding that I lost because of the decisions I made. A game being difficult yet fair is a product of great game design.

Main cons:

- The biggest thing holding this game back in my opinion is that the roguelike elements are arguably the weakest area of the game. The game doesn't allow for the same level of flexibility or power that other games in the genre will allow you to achieve, which is a shame because if this is focused on in future updates it could easily take this game to the next level.

- Please let us view the full map and read our character/item/weapon descriptions while the game is paused. Since the game rewards you for completing floors quickly, taking the time to stand still and read up on your items in order to make a good choice for your next perk can cost you unnecessarily. This is a small QOL change that would be really nice to have.

- No mid-run saving is weird. I understand that many roguelikes don't allow for saving mid-run, but that's typically because it's a continuous playthrough with no breaks. Roboquest has frequent safe rooms. Dead Cells, another game with similar safe rooms, has mid-run saving. It would be really nice to see this added.

- Multiple different ways to get momentarily stunned - can be VERY frustrating at times. This is particularly obnoxious in the "Doom Gardens" area, which feels like it was specifically designed to be as infuriating as possible.

- Whilst I mentioned the game is well optimised, the FPS can certainly suffer during the later stages. Nothing major, but would be nice if this got cleaned up somehow.

- Comicbook aesthetic and childish tone is a personal turn-off but some may not be bothered by it.

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Overall, this game is currently fantastic with a little work needed in order to be labelled a masterpiece. If the devs happen to be reading this and take one thing from this review (other than the glowing praise), PLEASE WORK ON THE ROGUELIKE ELEMENTS - PEOPLE PLAY THESE GAMES TO FEEL LIKE A GOD, NOT JUST STRONG.

9/10 as of writing

Look up why BHVR got rid of Bubba's masks