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First of all, a game of this scope and scale is genuinely astounding for a team that appears to be made up of just three people. I couldn't believe how short the credits were, because playing it this felt like something closer to the AA space (albeit perhaps at the lower end). There are flaws to be sure, but it's easier to overlook them when you realize it's not a massive team of developers putting this out there.

Generally, I'm not someone who cares for survival elements in games; often they're just busywork between the actual meat of what you want to do in the game, with little gameplay or thematic connection aside from "if you don't eat/drink/sleep you'll straight up die." Even having said that, I think that the survival mechanics work with what this game is aiming for, rather than being tacked on and at odds with it. It's a game where the prepwork you do to surmount the obstacles it puts in your way pays off -- if you want to climb a mountain enveloped in a blizzard, or stand a chance against gargantuan monsters, you'll stand a better chance if you gather what you need first, in a way that makes the odds against you feel that much more serious. As you struggle to keep your health and stamina up, encounters with wildlife turn into a necessity where you're not hunting just for fun, you're hunting because it's your best chance for survival, forcing you to take part in the (admittedly simple) ecosystem in a way that feels genuine. And I really appreciated the way that as battles against the creatures wore on, an my resources depleted, the reduced capability of my character mirrored the way that these giants were on their last legs. Not many games really capture that feeling of a fight wearing the character down until they just scrape past by the skin of their teeth. I'll admit that playing on Survival difficulty does make the gauge depletion perhaps a little too punishing, but I didn't find myself really minding given the feelings it was being used to cultivate. I'd imagine playing on a lower difficulty would keep some of those same feelings, without being quite as brutal.

The battles themselves are also quite the spectacle. The creatures are massive, and the game really captures that gargantuan scale in a way that few games since SotC have managed to. It's not the most punishing test of skill, with each boss acting more like a dangerous puzzle than a traditional boss, but that doesn't make the feeling of tension you get taking them on and the exhilaration of felling one any less powerful. Although there are often clearly intended ways to tackle each encounter, the game often offers you the freedom of alternative approaches -- maybe you'll use the mechanics of the arena, but you might also just choose to start climbing when you see an opening, or get a higher vantage point to drop down from above. Not all of these approaches work on every boss, but I found the freedom to approach things in your own way refreshing, and rather than feeling like you were circumventing the challenge by taking an alternative approach, it felt more like using what's at your disposal to get the best result.

There are actually a few things I think that this game does better than titles much bigger than it -- namely, the recent Zelda games. The inventory system here feels, in a lot of ways, very similar, but it makes small changes that make it feel more like part of the experience by, ironically, adding more friction. While the inventory in Zelda is no doubt convenient, the unlimited space and the ability to use any number of consumables instantly make it so that it never feels like you're making any important choices about it, and it often doesn't interact with the rest of the game at all. By limiting space in the inventory, Praey for the Gods asks you to make decisions about what items are more important to bring with you. You can't simply load up on unlimited recovery items to ensure that a boss is a done deal, you've got to make the most of the space that you have and actually think about your choices. Similarly, making using items an action that takes place outside the pause menu, and isn't instant, slowing you down while you recover, means that there's a risk and reward to using items rather than just pure benefit. You can't simply give yourself infinite stamina by eating while climbing, or cheat death by healing yourself in the moment before you're hit -- if you want to recover, you have to find a place on the wall or beast you're climbing where you can get your feet under you long enough to eat, and you've got to make sure that trying to heal won't actually put you in more danger, finding safe moments to heal. As a game that isn't trying to have such a broad appeal, it makes sense that the mechanics wouldn't try to be as smooth, but I think a lot of games forget that some mechanics lose what makes them compelling when you eliminate all friction.

Similarly, this game also has a durability system, but gives you the option to expend resources to repair your equipment before it breaks. It allows you to keep equipment that you'd rather not go without, but balances it out with a high, but not prohibitively so, repair cost.

It's also a good case study into why those recent Zelda games definitely should've had a grappling hook, because it adds a whole other layer to climbing in this title, and even has fun uses in flat ground traversal. When you realize that you can grapple to any climbable rock surface, and not just the preset grapple points, it turns the whole game on its head.

If I had to critique a couple things about this game, there are some issues with the climbing. The character has a frustrating tendency to forget how to climb when reaching the tops of walls, getting stuck on the corner. Usually regrabbing is enough to fix this, but it happens just frequently enough that it'll probably be a point of frustration by the time you finish the game. It would also be nice if the game allowed you to use items without needing to open the inventory, or at the very least kept the same option highlighted when you opened it after using an item -- a problem that's only made worse by the fact that your inventory seems to rearrange itself whenever you use anything. That said, these are small complaints in the grand scheme of things, and it's hard to hold it against such a small team that stuff like this slipped through the cracks.

While there's better presentation than many other SCP games I've seen, this one offers very little in terms of engaging gameplay, and I was left with the feeling that I would have gotten just as much out of the stories if I'd simply gone and read them rather than experiencing them as a video game.

This game tries to keep things fresh by bouncing you through a few different styles of game, but none of them really shine and it's usually more of a relief when they're over. Most SCP games I've played require the player to use an understanding of the anomalies they're faced with in order to overcome them, while this game plays more as a guided tour with very little in the way of interesting problems. That wouldn't necessarily be a dealbreaker for me, if the story it presented was compelling enough to pick up the slack, but the narrative connecting the anthology-style stories together feels entirely pointless (Even if it does a good job of capturing the vibe of a workplace messaging thread). With a lackluster overarching story, only 2/5 of the case files presented actually being all that interesting, and unengaging gameplay, it's difficult to recommend this.

This is rough, because I would really like to be able to recommend this game, but I can't.

The most obvious issue, as you've no doubt seen in every other review, is how short it is. Granted, I already had a sense of the gameplay from playing the demo (which is essentially an entire third of the game, an issue on its own), but even with some stalling looking for extra clues after I'd already pieced things together the entire experience still clocked in under 2 hours, and there is little if any replay value to be found here. A game being that short doesn't automatically make it worse, but the quality of the time spent with it needs to be much higher, and that just wasn't the case here for me.

As much potential as I see in the mechanics presented here, I don't think they reach their full potential, and they often get in their own way in terms of crafting a truly great detective experience. The cases following the first do ramp up in complexity, but never to the point that figuring out what happened feels like a huge accomplishment, and there's little agency to figure things out in the overarching story that spans the length of the game. When it comes to the accusation stage, the requirement to establish means, motive, and opportunity is compelling, but the fact that each of these is verified independently makes it feel as though you don't really need a full understanding of the case in order to solve it. Motive especially suffers, as each suspect will only have 2-3 possible pieces of evidence to present, based on an understanding of their psychology gained by looking into their minds, a process which feels like skips over an interesting part of the investigation, handing you possible motives on a silver platter. The final step of demon identification also feels lacking, with such a small catalog of options that it fails to suggest any sort of world outside of the game, as well as often simply being a restatement of the already established motive.

I feel like there's a lot of promise here, but as presented it it lacking in content, never moves past fairly straightforward cases, and ends up being narratively unsatisfying.

As a preface, I've only played the fixed-camera version of this game. I'll primarily be speaking to that aspect, and while I suspect many of the same issues apply to the over-the-shoulder perspective, there are almost certainly other reviews that could more properly examine that experience.

This game feels like it's having an identity crisis. The ambitious goal of wanting to pay homage to the whole history of the genre by including two different ways of playing is admirable, but playing this game made it clear that there's a reason few if any other games have attempted it. In trying to craft an experience that functions from both an over-the-shoulder and fixed-camera perspective, the developers were seemingly forced to make concessions that they wouldn't have had to if they had simply chosen to make the game one or the other.

While the puzzle solving and navigation feels in keeping with the survival horror games of old, the same simply can't be said for the combat. I have to imagine that enemies were made to be the way that they are for the sake of keeping the third person perspective engaging, but this results in an enemy design that feels incompatible with the realities of a fixed camera perspective. Games with this perspective have always been the strongest when they emphasized decision making and resource management in combat over precision maneuvers and pinpoint accuracy, as those simply aren't things that are feasible given the controls. When enemies are prone to sprinting at you for extended periods, taking a sizable chunk of ammo to defeat, and rarely even flinch when hit, it's clear the game expects more from you than you can be reasonably expected to do given the interface, not to mention the overly punishing precision that is expected of your aim, a near impossibility given the perspective that makes missing entirely all-too-common. Playing through the game on hard in this way is simply impractical--even as someone who often chips away at difficulty walls far beyond the point where most people would know better, this was one of the few games where I was forced to admit I was truly not enjoying the game and had to restart at a lower difficulty.

Ultimately this was a game too ambitious for its own good. There's a reason that even AAA developers haven't attempted to make a game that can be played in such vastly different ways, so in a way it's no surprise that a smaller studio stumbled in implementing it. While these combat-centric issues could be overlooked if the game had particularly stellar puzzles or story, I just don't think there's enough good here to outweigh the bad.

I wish I could recommend this game; I really do; it's the sort of game that makes me really excited to see what might come out of this developer next, but the fantastic ideas it brings to the table aren't enough to outweigh how rough this game feels to play.

A stealth investigation immersive sim devoid of combat where you play as a journalist attempting to collect enough evidence to get the truth out of the people you're interviewing before your scheduled appointment. It's a genius idea, and for the first hour long mission, you really do have that feeling of hunting down leads and digging for the truth. That hour's up before you know it, though, leaving you with a bunch of half finished leads and nothing much to show for it. Maybe, as I did, you decide you want to give it another go to wrap up your investigation -- it feels a bit against the spirit of the game, but it's hard to leave those threads unpulled. If you don't decide to do so before the game saves at the end of the mission, you'll have to replay the prologue, along with minutes of unskippable cutscenes, just to get another go at it. So you sit through that, and it seems like it's worth it -- you're able to unravel more, and you've almost followed up on everything, right up until you're kept from wrapping up the last lead by an NPC who ends up stuck in a corner in such a way that you can't investigate the last room you need to. One more time, you think, figuring it'd be a waste to quit now when you've put in so much work. Only this time, it takes you less than 15 minutes to gather everything you need, and now you're going to grab dinner instead of playing the game because you've got to let it idle for 45 minutes, because in a game where the major levels take one hour of real time, there's no way to make time pass any faster.

That's my lengthy way of explaining how this game seems brilliant on the surface, but the longer you spend with it the more the obvious cracks start to show. The game wowed me with its first impressions, but it felt like I was getting punished for trying to engage with it beyond that first brush. If the interviews forced you to synthesize the information in an interesting and engaging way, or the story was vastly enhanced by following the leads, it might've been worth it, but for the most part the game doesn't really care all that much one way or the other whether or not you actually complete the objectives.

This game has unique ideas that I really hope can be expanded upon in this studio's future, but as is I can't really recommend this game unless it's on a deep sale.

This is the sort of game that makes me wish steam had a neutral review score -- it's technically solid, but you're not getting anything here you haven't seen done better elsewhere

The best thing this game has going for it is the art direction. A retro pixel aesthetic contrasted with some genuinely unsettling boss designs really serves as a good hook, but once the novelty of it wears off there's not as much substance to those decisions as I'd hoped.

The combat starts simple and stays simple, though bosses do ramp up in difficulty enough to stay engaging. Traversal is fine, but is often hampered by an underdeveloped overheating system that only really serves to limit how often you can dash. Healing exchanges money for health, which is a novel idea, but since you'll almost always have enough money to heal to max it's so slow that it's almost never a viable option in combat.

You can tell this game was made by someone who played Hollow Knight and really, genuinely loved it, but because of just how similar it is it's impossible to escape comparison. Its collectibles mimic the grubs, its upgrades mimic the charms, its fast travel mimics the stag stations (To its credit, the train in this game does act as a mini-hub for NPCs -- a great idea, though not explored to its full potential). There's nothing wrong with taking inspiration from another work, but if there's not enough new ideas mixed in with that, it ends up feeling like you're retreading old paths, and in this case often not as skillfully. The story told here seems intriguing, but tries to be so understated that it just ends up being vague. Many NPC quests feel like they're there because games like this are supposed to have them, ending abruptly without any mechanical or narrative reward. The postgame feels as though it exists out of obligation, telling you the moment you load your save exactly the one step to take to find the true ending, which is barely explained.

This game was clearly made with care, and I have a huge appreciation for the work that was put into it, but it never quite steps out of the shadow of Hollow Knight. If you've already played that and want more of the same, you could definitely do worse than this, but if you haven't played Hollow Knight already, it's a bigger, cheaper game with more fulfilling content.

This DLC has the tried and true gameplay that features in Arkane's stellar recent games, but lacks just about everything else that makes them as good as they are. Without all the other important aspects to back it up, like an engaging story or moral choices, the gameplay starts to wear thin, especially considering the small size of the map relative to the base game. Loot and enemy layouts are randomized, but you'll still find yourself repeating the same encounters ad nauseam. Having to figure out how to get past a Typhon gate with the Moonshark on your tail is engaging the first time, and maybe even the second, but by the tenth or twelfth time it's lost all novelty. The scraps of story that are present are good, but the quests and audio logs are so few and far between that it's not enough to carry the rest of the experience. If you're looking for more of what you loved about Prey and haven't played Dishonored yet, I'd give that a try before coming here. Even as a last resort, you're probably better off replaying one of their other games, unless you're really a fan of repetitive tasks.

Evoland 1 is kind of hot garbage, honestly. It's a novel experience for the first thirty minutes while you're constantly getting new upgrades, but those slow down as the game progresses and the gameplay and (essentially non-existent) plot aren't enough to keep it compelling for 2-4 hours once the gimmick fades away. While I don't want to be too harsh since this clearly felt like a first outing, it's not worth buying this for as it's a parody that leans too hard on the things it's referencing without having any real soul of its own.

Evoland 2, on the other hand, is a genuinely enjoyable parody of JRPGs, and a smattering of other genres. It's got a story that isn't necessarily unique, but was compelling enough to carry me along for the 10+ hours of it I've played so far, thanks in no small part to the way the party members and NPC characters are written, with life that was really missing from the shells of characters that were present in 1. This game picks up the slack enough in every other area that even though it has nearly eliminated the gimmick that was the only redeeming factor of the first game, it still ends up being a better product. Even the shifts to different gameplay styles are less jarring here, as your level and stats carry across to almost all of them, making it feel more like a cohesive experience thanks to the shared progression, where the first game tended to isolate the playstyles from each other. In the rare cases where this isn't true, the gameplay changes are either so short it doesn't matter, or make enough sense in the context of the story that it can be forgiven. I truly wasn't expecting such a heartfelt parody with its own strong identity after the lack of soul in the first game, to the point it's almost a shame they're packaged together because the lackluster experience of 1 might deter people from even trying 2.

tl;dr buy this for 2, give 1 half an hour of your time if you're feeling generous.

I had a passing interest in the first game, but it was never enough to motivate me to buy it. A few months back I saw there was a second one, and the setting and characters sparked more interest than the first did. When it popped up on Humble Bundle for cheap, I couldn't see a reason not to buy it, and I suppose there isn't an objective one. The game is put together with a great deal of quality, and it does what it sets out to do very well, I think. What it sets out to do left too bad of a taste in my mouth for me to give it a positive review, though.

This won't be a spoiler free review, you've been warned.

First of all, I was set up with the wrong set of expectations from the moment I read the description on Steam. I got the impression that I'd be playing as a small town sheriff teaming up with a criminal on the run, that there'd be some balance between those two points of view. Lilly being the main character was actually something that caught my interest about the game, but in reality you play as her for all of fifteen minutes before the next dozen hours are spent playing as Jack. I thought this might've been on me for taking too brief a look at what the store page had to say about the game, but it really wasn't. In the official art, Lilly is prominently featured with Jack looming in the background, a design which I think one could reasonably assume is meant to show Lilly as the protagonist. Furthermore, in the description, she's the first one mentioned of the duo, described as a team, and the ownership of the plan is put on her rather than Jack. I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt that it was an honest mistake to give off that impression, but it still majorly dampened my enjoyment of the game, right from the moment I realized Lilly wasn't going to have any of the spotlight.

This game had an incredible amount of buildup in the story, but the payoff was the exact opposite of what it felt like it should've been. The Jack Boyd you see at the start of the game is someone you believe could be the man that he says he is. He seems like he's trying his best to keep to himself, to do what's helpful, because he genuinely believes he's still a good person. That Jack Boyd was someone I wanted to see succeed, but as soon as he felt like he was in a position of power that changed. Within a week, he's already abandoned empathy and basic respect for the people around him, and it only gets worse from there. There's a tipping point, where you realize he can't be the person you hoped he might be anymore, and you begin to think that everything he's done is all build up for him getting some kind of justice for what he's done. Maybe it won't come soon, but every time he does something atrocious you just hold on to that light at the end of the tunnel that he's going to get what he deserves, that that catharsis is going to come. And it never does. There are moments when you think Jack's about to start the downward spiral that's finally going to do him in, but he never does. The whole game feels like it's building up to a moment where he'll have to answer for what he's done, but in the end he's better off than he started, and even more of a monster. It's the kind of ending that leaves an empty feeling in the pit of your stomach.

I realize most of what I have to say is fundamentally subjective, but I just can't help but feel that this game led me along the entire time. Maybe that's my own fault for jumping to conclusions, maybe not, but it ended up defining my time spent with the game for the worse.

The gameplay itself is passable enough, but the presentation and concept turn what would otherwise be a decent but forgettable game into a memorable experience.

Without spoiling too much, the game puts a unique spin on the "choose your own adventure" style of storytelling that is great to experience, even if it's not always perfect. The concept itself is good enough to get a recommendation from me, and it usually hits its mark.

Then there's the presentation. A nicely creative and colorful setting and storybook cutscenes are all topped off by an incredible narrator. He makes the entire game feel just like a book with how closely he emulates the style of audiobook narrators, not only speaking the exposition, but voicing every character with distinct voices that are still clearly his own. On top of that, he never gets annoying in the way that some narrators are apt to do--in my time playing, I could count on one hand the number of times he repeated the same quip. The sheer volume of material that is present not just for the story, but for random interjections kept things fresh despite his constant presence.

While it's not a perfect game, the unique creative choices it makes make it worth a look.