Recent reviews by Sarick

Peglin shows some promise with its decent presentation and some interesting ideas in its Peggle/Pachinko game space. But I think it falls short on showing potential on what it can deliver as a Roguelike, at least in its current state.

Each Peggle level layout has an interesting theme and design based around its enemies. Spiders will put you inside a peg web, a Slime Boss fight that once captured will get stuck in the center of a slime shaped peg layout, Mirrored arenas and more. The bad part is that some suffer from their own ideas - particularly the invisible enemy fights which cause the arena to be entirely invisible. There's nothing meaningful or fun about just tossing out your balls out blindly and hoping for the best, and it really needs a way for the player to have a meaningful way to approach that fight. As currently it's just blind luck.

Overall though I think it presents some interesting ideas in the Peggle space that could be interesting to see fleshed out. It would be great to see the shape of the arena be influenced by the different areas to give each a more unique feel.

Unfortunately, I can not say I see the same promise in its Roguelike elements. As the game is now it is easily solvable on your first run, and there's not enough variance or variety to make each run actually feel unique. By the time you beat its three short levels which is easily achievable in an hour you'll have seen 90% of what there is to offer. The weapons you use don't have a meaningful impact to how you play the game, upgrades are linear and uninspired, and even the majority of the the relic items fail to have any real impact, with their effectiveness ranging from utterly pointless, to mindlessly overpowered - but in pretty dull ways. When the biggest gameplay impact to the Peggle never goes further than Multiball, and the biggest impact to the Autobattler never goes further than AOE damage there really isn't anything that interesting being delivered.

It would be great to see if the same creativity could have been put into its Roguelike elements to actually see it have potential. But my honest opinion is it really has failed to show promise in this design space. Where other Roguelikes push you into entirely different strategies and give you the opportunity to delve into synergistic designs with amazing combos, this doesn't have any penalty at all for going wide and taking everything, where the majority of your upgrades standalone and impact almost nothing outside of the turn you use them on. If it's a Roguelike that you are after, Peglin is going to fail to deliver what you're after.

Cost is also something that can not be ignored. Any potential I or others think this could have, the game currently on its Early Access release only contains three short levels worth of content beatable in under one hour. There are no unlockables, no alternative characters, no different starting loadouts, no narrative, no branching paths, and no secrets, it offers nothing beyond the Peggle you see. There is at least one alternative boss to fight in its early stage, but that's about the only real thing you might miss on your first successful run.

But yet they are asking for a price that is the equivalent of much more fleshed out games like Slay the Spire, Inscryption, or even Hades. Games that offer fleshed out experiences - while this for its $20 price tag is offering at best an hour of content. And even now the developers are publicly stating that they're considering increasing the price on its release - where I don't even think they've yet to develop the game to a point it actually shows any promise of replayability.

This review is better off started with its own conclusion:

Yuppie Psycho is a vapid experience that fails to be supported by either impressive horror notes or a compelling story. However in its brief stay there is an enjoyable but short adventure game experience with an eccentric office world to explore. It is just unfortunate that it is held back by how shallow the game ties everything together.

Why did I start with the conclusion? Because unlike this game I felt it was important to have one. Or to be more fair-minded that a conclusion is there to offer an opportunity for the writer to give the audience an acceptance that what led up to that point mattered. In Yuppie Psycho, no matter the ending, the summarisation of everything is that basically none of it mattered. In the end the only concrete offering you get is the revenge and vindication against one single co-worker that you didn't particularly like. And even that felt relatively forced way for something to face a comeuppance for what your character had been through on his one day of work.

Otherwise the game is filled with one-note character appearances, irrelevant lore, disconnected Easter eggs, and an assortment of collectibles that don't offer any significant further depth or continuity details. Even the main story is filled with events and characters that merely exist so that a particular part of the game could have dialogue or brevity. It is very hard to ignore how problematic it is when you're introduced to a new character through a Deus Ex Machina sequence, for them to exist for the sole purpose of delivering exposition, and then for them never to appear ever again. Then follow that up with the same exposition reiterated by other methods, rendering the whole sequence unnecessary to begin with.

That said between the arbitrary 50% line of positive and negative that reviews must abide, Yuppie Psycho does manage to sit on the positive side. As already concluded, it is an enjoyable brief game that despite some shortcomings was compelling enough to finish. It is just unfortunate it comes with the caveat that nothing matters as much as you’ll believe it should.

They also do have plans to extend the game with DLC in the new year with additional endings and more content. If they take the opportunity to alleviate some of more outstanding issues with the game it might become a more worthwhile package then. Right now though the game is just a bunch of ideas, never fully accomplished.

If you own any Monster Hunter game at all, and you are after an experience that will match a true Monster Hunter game I would not personally look here. I was personally unable to run it without it causing my Nvidia 780Ti driver's to crash after about 10 minutes or so of gameplay. However, I did study available footage of the PS4 version to see if struggling to fix the game was worthwhile, and if I hadn't I would not be wasting my time with this review with such little time played.

On every account the game seemed to be the Hack-and-Slash gameplay of a Dynasty/Samurai warriors game. Which I can and do enjoy on their respective series. However, I do have trouble imagining that this formula which works well for tearing through entire armies would work equally well for lengthy fights on single creatures. Sadly it looks like the majority of fights in this game are also considerably underwhelming and uninventive; amounting to little more than perhaps an uninteresting MMO boss with a big HP bar. In contrast Monster Hunter's monsters have significantly more interaction, varying states, are faster paced and have interaction with their environments (climbing, hunting, eating, sleeping, hanging from ceilings and more). While both games do boil down to "dodge the attack on the tell", Monster Hunter gives you a significantly larger pool of options to combat your adversary.

The contrast between these two game's weapon and item systems is evidently told through discussions and guides in each weapon found online. Both games fundamentally have a three button weapon style in addition to a dodge button. While both games have weapon combos, the combos and rate of attack are what set most melee weapons apart in Toukiden: Kiwami. In a Monster Hunter game, despite having a significantly larger pool of weapons each plays significantly differently. Despite the Greatsword, Longsword and Sword and Shield all having swords in their name, none of those weapons truly play in any similar fashion, and not all enemies can be approached the same way with the same weapon; with many monsters moving in different ways and their individual parts all taking different varying damage to different types and elements. In the case of Toukiden however the the largest significant difference of any weapon is that ranged weapons can hit high targets consistently.

Customisation in items and gear are significantly different. Toukiden: Kiwami’s armour only significantly varies on its defence and resistance values. Weapons differ only on damage values, elemental bonuses and slots. These “slots” are for the Mitama system, which is a much more pick up and play, simple variant of Monster Hunter’s decoration system. By using the Mitama which are basically the spirits of fallen Toukiden heroes of the past, you can level up and receive bonus skills that improve attack, HP etc. It is more simple than the Monster Hunter system, which that game was never good at explaining (after all it isn’t uncommon to see new people with mixed gear sets with less than +10 in skills online - rendering it useless). However one of the fan favourite aspects of any Monster Hunter entry is delving into the gear progression it offers. This isn’t even counting the fact MH has a significant pool of consumable items that make preparing for any individual fight a take in itself.

Other issues I will run off quickly. The female walking animation was significantly bad, like some kind of demon warding washing machine dance of the wrists. The hub town was bland, unintuitive and the game’s pacing rushes you right back out of the town before you can become acquainted on your first visit. Lastly despite the fact the game advertised that it would auto-save, it never onced saved after the first tutorial fight, forcing me to face that Oni five times due to crashes.

I wanted nothing less than this game to be good. I do believe there is room for a Monster Hunter clone on the PC, especially one capable of bringing some decent competition to Capcom's dominating franchise. Port issues aside, I do not believe I could have reccomended this game due to its lack of complexity and the uninspired adaptation of Dynasty Warriors gameplay to the MH genre. Keep playing Monster Hunter if you have the choice. In case you still want to go forward and purchase this game, make sure you have a controller and I hope for the best you don't run into significant port issues.

It has come to my attention that you have not yet purchased your own copy of Dungeons of Dredmor. I am sorry for your sad diggleless existence and hope that you correct this hideous flaw forthwith.

Everyone reccomends Terraria!