Recent reviews by Sven++

Finished in about 50 minutes. Short, but fun.
Honestly a pretty good introduction for people new to the Incremental genre.

Mechanically, you could compare this to a more exploration/mystery-focused Subnautica, without any combat or basebuilding, this is all about the mystery, and figuring it out for yourself. Definitely not a walking-sim though, this is so much more.

I'm going to recommend to in completely blind just like everyone else, and enjoy the ride. This is one of my all-time favorite games.

Edit: Gamebreaking bug is fixed. If nothing else, a lot of feedback is immediately noticed by the dev, so props for that.

On to the review. Technically it's fine, although a barebones option screen and no cloud saves are sorely missing. I honestly thought Id like this game more, but I think there's just quite a bit of polish missing from the game. At about 10 hours in, the grind is getting stale rapidly, mostly due to the fact that there's still way too much manual gathering of the same resources, with little or no good options for automating the process (Looking at you, 500 wood for 1 plank).

Lighthearted, but fun for a few hours.

Interesting premise, and it's fun to play as this all-consuming lovecraftian blob, but it's way too short and the gameplay loop itself isn't that good. I genuinely don't like the level layout (No map in a metroidvania, bah), backtracking is an actual chore, and the upgrades are pretty much irrelevant. There's some difficulty spikes in certain rooms, but most of my deaths are just because of the chaos onscreen, and trying to grab that 1 last guy in the room who's shooting at you while you grab everything BUT that dude is frustrating.
Beat the game in just 3.3 hours, and I was just left wondering ' That's it?'.

Nothing really spectacular, but a pretty addictive albeit casual experience.
The city building isn't very expansive, but there's enough to keep you going for a while, and you can do a surprising amount with the tools you have. Just wish the upgrade processes were a little more randomized or expanded, most things in the game require the exact same things to upgrade to a new level with very little variety.

Ive still spent a pretty long time just grinding away, because the core gameplay loop is pretty solid, it being using and leveling skills to get more materials for upgrading skills and building, etc. Towards the later stages the game does start to feel much more shallow, and is pretty much my main complaint.

A murder mystery JRPG with amazing written characters. Although the tone and pacing definitely fluctuates throughout the game its a bit expected for a 70+ hours campaign. I love the dark mystery moments, offset by some cringy too-anime dialogue and cutscenes, but is for the majority just really good.
Combat is standard turn-based combat which I personally just like, but can definitely be summarized in "Use superior elemental attacks 95% of the time, otherwise press A for standard attack".
The level design on the other hand is inexcusably atrocious, because there's no design, all levels are randomly generated corridors and have little to no redeeming qualities, aside from the final few which either have some gimmicks or just look plain cool, Unless you enjoy the combat I recommend mostly end up rushing through the dungeons at a lower difficulty, and turning it up for the bosses for a better experience. The grinding enemies for quests can be super tedious, but is also by no means actually required.

Still, solid 9/10 game.

Progression-based clicker game with a focus on grindy minigames for training and a turn-based combat system. Pretty fun for a while, but there's no new variety after an hour in, and the grind's pretty boring. I finished the game in about 10 hours, and I'd say I got my entertainment for the price, but I dont think I'll ever revisit this one, I've seen everything it had to offer.

FInal verdict: 5.5/10

Surprisingly simple, but fun. Fun oldschool zelda-like combat, really bad puzzles, and a disappointing lategame lack of (automation) content. Turns into a super grind nearing the Nuclear tier, and Ive pretty much done everything the game has to offer a while before reaching that point, but it was pretty decent up until then. Nothing here for actual idling gameplay, the game is pretty active all the time. Also props for no microtransactions whatsoever.

TLDR: I went into this pretty blind, and while Im a little disappointed by the lack of lategame, I definitely think I got my moneys worth of entertainment.

Every Trails game iterates and improves upon its predecessors, and this one is no different. This one's graphics are just all around improved, levels are expanded and just generally look much nicer and detailed, the UI/combat elements are much more user-friendly, and the story (if youve been following the Trails story) is just so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ enthralling. Im on chapter 2 as of writing, but absolutely loving it so far, and having a blast.

If you like character-driven RPGs with a very solid lengthy amount of content, then there's objectively nothing better than this series.

Edit after finishing the final chapter: Wow. This one is definitely my favorite in the series. Just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ superb.