Recent reviews by Selvon

Editing my review after defeating shard 3.

After fighting the 2nd boss i was hopeful, it felt much more in-line with how the actual game plays, it played like a more advanced normal level.

Then i got to boss 3. Boss 3 is a (literal) repeat of boss 1, but worse (And slightly different colour wooo). I also discovered that "breaking flow" as i mentioned earlier will result in the boss getting to just jump away without you getting a hit, if you are not able to permanently go forward at him, you will have to functionally repeat that section, which again, is procedurally generated and sometimes you just get a lava wall in a flat section, or giant space beams where there is already floor stuff everywhere and you have no-where to go.

As such i'm changing my review to not recommended for now, PURELY for the boss mechanics, which genuinely ruin an otherwise brilliant game.


Original review:
A hesitant recommend due entirely to one feature.

I'll start with the positives.

* The normal levels are extremely fun, the core gameplay loop is perfect, balancing your speed, getting sparks getting boosts gettting energy.
* The music is absolutely top notch.
* Roguelite element is a wonderful addition to the "endless runner" style of gameplay, hoping lots more items unlock as i play through.
* Npcs and "story" so far are interesting and keeping me want to know more.
Negatives:
* The game is nearly impossible to sight read through your first time if something is an obstacle or a boost. Go through a little hole in a spinning wheel, boost. Sparkly objects? good. Shiny purple object in sky? bad, almost instantly shard endingly bad?

* If you aren't doing poorly it can be very difficult to tell where the left/right edge is until it's too late especially since the levels "curve". (When you are doing poorly and the void is catching up and you can see the "seams" approaching at the side of the levels which completely resolves this).

Both of these are probably relatively easy fixes (Perhaps some degree of colour coding on good vs bad objects?, and have some degree of the "wall" show even when you aren't doing poorly?)

But the feature that nearly made me not recommend this?

Boss fights. They are a complete departure from the fun of the levels, and really highlight the negative side of procedural things. The main levels are all about this going fast keeping low to the ground, the bosses are about desperately trying to avoid the fact the ground is covered in (again random) crap, which sometimes leads to just straight up walls of stuff that forces you to completely break the flow of the game. Then on the first boss there's an actual literal wall of lava... and since it's procedural, there's no real guarantee you'll be able to jump it when it appears, unless you again break flow (and even sometimes not then).

The bosses are <so> unfun compared to the normal levels i nearly quit and refunded it purely based on that, they simply don't fit well at all and it is genuinely wild to me that they are in the same game with the same design as the rest of the game.

This review will not talk about performance, as i'm not personally having any issues whatsoever, i'm not saying other people aren't, but i'm not so i'm going to talk about the game.

The story is decent, if a little handholdey. We have the ability to skip cutscenes this time around, but still can't skip the "escort" sections, so it'll still be mildly annoying if you decide to do another character. Yes, it's easy if you are a monster hunter vet, thus is the joys of low rank, it absolutely will not be easy for brand new players.

The changes to weapons are fantastic though, and the monster roster is varied and fantastic. They somehow resisted putting in the usual pink/azure/silver etc, so the only "real" variant is a guardian vs non guardian situation.

The focus system is fun, the maps are all pretty and there's some cool stuff to explore.
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The only things i explicitly don't like are:
The Palico system, aka it does everything, you can't tell it to do anything specific, you can't specialise it into what you care about, you can't turn off abilities you don't want them to cast.
The fact the map is "pre explored", the way it worked in worlds where things got added to your map as you "scouted" was far better, made more sense. And it makes even <less> sense given this is a land that the Guild hasn't been hanging around in before us.
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The new Meals system is great, the ability to re-up on the go, but with better meals being available occasionally from the tribes for helping them is cool, whenever you see the lucky/carve meals pop up it feels good.

To answer some things you may have seen from reviewers... I don't know if they just had a limited copy, if they lied for internet clicks or what but...

No, you won't get enough pieces for a full armor set from a single hunt, atleast after the lowest of low rank quests. Even towards the end of low rank i was finishing quests with some armours still ??? out, by high rank at times i would fight two monsters at once and couldn't make a single piece.

Yes, there is a "farm" it looks different this time around, but it works functionally the same (Without the stupid fertilizers), you unlock it in High rank.

Yes, there is more difficult content around, unsurprisingly it isn't in low rank, where it'd otherwise block new players.
Tempered 8 AV and Tempered 7 GM can seriously throw hands.

TL:DR I recommend the game, it's fantastic fun and the current end game hunts are great fun and i'm looking forward to what else is to come.

This is a bad TD and a maybe ok puzzle game. It's a puzzle game themed as towers, which just doesn't <feel> good.

It doesn't feel satisfying beating a level like you would in a tower defence, or the progression you'd get in longer tower defences. It also doesn't have the level of instant gratification from solving a puzzle either. It's just sorta neither quite enough of either side.

Much better than going to a real casino.

This is a pretty fun deckbuilder rogue-likey thing with some pretty great features. I love that the activation of a muse changes the music and background especially.

As a warning to anyone looking, this game is anime. It is EXTREMELY anime, it is anime inside of anime inside of anime. Like a giant robot girl falling over and a lightbeam covering her pants/privates levels of fan-servicey anime.

You can completely and utterly ignore all the story though and just pretend it's a deckbuilder but i definitely wouldn't play this on your lunchbreak at work that's for sure.

Gameplay is genuinely great though, cool combos nice cards nice audio and visuals.

It feels much less like Balatro etc and much more like the dumbest games of Yugioh you can find on youtube.

Both from the player and the enemies, it's dumb instant win/lose traps, some of which even show up on the earlier floors. You can, absolutely be locked into permanently losing till you die.

There is situations where you get your maximum score every round, but the AI is also getting the maximum score every round and their max is higher so you cannot win simply because you were never offered a max score changing card..

But it just also lacks the charm and cleverness feel of other gambl-ey roguelites.

There's a lot of potentially cool features here, marred by a sort of weird half-assedness to some.

My first, and primary issue, is that you can re-keybind in this game. Which is great. Except... they only half implemented it. You rebind the arrow keys to WASD? Great! Except that camera controls and menus will still demand you go back to the arrows every time.

There's lots of various debuffs and DoTs and such in this game! Cool! Except... you are rarely given an explanation of what they do, and importantly, you aren't given very important information like what stacks or doesn't. You receive a gem (or sword) that poisons. Great, let's say it say it does 3 damage per second. That's not very good! Oh, maybe it stacks? The game sure doesn't bother telling you, so you take it to try anyway and discover it does stack. But only to 3, for some, unexplained reason which again isn't mentioned.

There's nice movement options with slams and air attacks and dashes and upgradable multi jumps. But, you constantly feel... floaty? Like you constantly have hollow bones in Rogue Legacy 2, or fighting on a "low gravity" stage of Smash.

Second lastly, and this is absolutely more of a personal one, but it felt like the player character is an extremely generic oo edgy dark king who's dismissive of his people which really didn't gel with me.

Lastly, there is leaderboards. They are already filled with 0 second completions. Cannot tell if that's a bug, or they are already hacked but just sort of icing on the cake.