Recent reviews by Tyrannidae

I don't usually buy supporter packs, but this game deserves it

Whether or not you're a Red Vox fan, this game is STELLAR. The ambiance is chilling, and the song-themed areas accent the music in a beautiful way. As a Red Vox fan, I felt almost like I was listening to the songs for the first time again. The little Vinesauce easter eggs sprinkled about are also fun without subtracting from the experience if you're not a fan.

I had to watch the intro cutscene 3 times to get all the achievements I missed and I'm not even mad.

My only frustration is that several of the secrets require clicking on things with no UI indicator. They usually have some hints to point you in the right direction, but actually finding the secret can take you out of the immersion when you're just mashing left click on a surface. Finding the Clone Boy parts especially was not very fun.

This game is Snail's poor attempt to capitalize on the success of games like Minecraft. It is clunky, buggy, boring, and frustrating. At a glance, it looks like a reskinned version of ARK. However, the lack of properly satisfying complexity is honestly what made me shelve this one.

The difficulty in this game basically boils down to "can I break/damage that?". The mining system is similar to Terraria, except you need a better pick to break EVERY NEW TIER of ore. Imagine if a copper pick could ONLY break iron/lead. Yeah. This results in hours of searching for the ores you need in biomes full of enemies that will destroy you. Also, many enemies just don't take meaningful damage from certain tiers of weapon, which is frustrating and often unintuitive to figure out.

The taming system in this game is also a clunky mess. Taming "magic" creatures requires a completely different tranq, which makes sense superficially, but overcomplicates things when compared to regular ARK. Creatures also just feel SO WEAK, and punching up at even marginally stronger enemies is usually a death sentence. Maybe I just have a skill issue, but I don't remember my tames dying this easily in ARK...

This game is also full of bloat, and most tames are practically useless. Most of its updates involve events or the occasional paid, mostly cosmetic, weirdly-named DLC. I've yet to buy a single DLC, and probably won't ever (if I pick up this game again). I WILL give them props for making several of the largest DLCs free, however.

Overall, this game fails to hit that sweet spot between simplicity and complexity that makes the games it's imitating so alluring. It overcomplicates the wrong things, which makes for an unsatisfying and artificially-lengthened gameplay loop.

tl;dr: Just play regular ARK or modded Minecraft.

Extremely well-done "Lethal-like" game that is a blast to play with friends. 9.5/10

Because I'm a huge weenie, the combo of predictable enemy patterns, ample hiding places, and adorably silly player models made this game playable in a way I really appreciate. Fear very quickly turned to fun as I learned how to juke each enemy. That said, Headman still scares me lmfao. There's definitely a "meta", but the game is most fun when you're just messing around and experimenting with the various items and upgrades.

The only part I have issues with currently is how unforgiving client-side lag can be. It's extremely easy to completely shatter glassware, vases, monster orbs, etc., and it's a pain to get back into a lobby you were disconnected from if you have a poor connection. An option to join and spectate lobbies that are currently in an active round would be appreciated, so we can rejoin friends without having to remake the lobby.

The Iron Rig is a fairly nice DLC to expand on the game's themes and world! I went into it with an endgame save, although I think the experience would have been more interesting if I had this DLC from the beginning of a fresh save. The oil rig is fun to build, and I LOVE the new catchable species. It adds new content to every biome in the game (except The Pale Reach), which I appreciated. The only downside to that is how the Rig is placed on the map, as it makes the fetch quests feel a little more tedious.

!!Spoilers Below!!

While I liked the ooze as a new mechanic, it quickly became less of a threat and more of a nuisance. As long as you keep your sanity high, the ooze is harmless, as the biggest threat only appears at low sanity. The only time it became troublesome was around Gale Cliffs, as it obscured the main threat there (which I am STILL absolutely horrified of after all this time lmfao).

Ending spoilers: The ending was fairly anticlimactic. I find that's my biggest gripe with DREDGE as a whole, despite loving this game dearly. The stories are captivating and interesting, but tend to leave you with a feeling of "so, that's it?" after the ending cutscenes play out. That said, I really enjoyed watching the scientist slowly devolve into madness and transform into a horrifying creature.

Ooze spoilers: I would have liked to see more of the ooze monster. Like I mentioned earlier, it only appearing at low sanity made fishing in the ooze spots low risk and uninteresting, especially with the cleaning attachment. I had to deliberately provoke the monster to get the achievement by boating around in circles while running into as many ooze bubbles as I could, and dodging the tentacles that tried to stop my frantic flailing. It was strange to not encounter the main new enemy of the DLC until I was basically done doing all the DLC had to offer.

piza

Cute and simple! 6.5/10

Pros:
- It has nice accessibility features for those who can't or don't want to click a bunch of times, which I GREATLY appreciate
- The art style is unique and easy on the eyes
- Progression is neither too slow nor too fast

Cons:
- The gameplay loop is a bit empty, with the only upgrades being fish food giving more exp or larger tank sizes, which makes active gameplay a bit boring after a while. Decor doesn't do anything aside from look nice, either.
- Trying to get the rarer achievements through pack opening is a slog, especially with the golden fish.

I'm looking forward to the dev's new bird-themed game in the hope that it'll expand on the bones of this one!

It seems that this game had a rough and somewhat controversial development. This review isn't about that, though.

This game is fun. It combines a lot of the best features from other games I've enjoyed to create this goofy, albeit sometimes edgy, game.

Currently I'm playing singleplayer with all default settings except dropping all but equipment on death, and it makes for a good casual gaming experience. The Pals are cute, the controls are easy to use and intuitive, and the gameplay is neither too grindy nor too easy at the defaults, though I'm only level 21 and haven't been playing in the most "efficient" way because I suck at keeping on task in games like these. It took me an hour to get a furnace set up because I kept getting distracted by new Pals while looking for the fire ingredients I needed. When I do actually focus on something, I usually can accomplish it in a reasonable amount of time.

Palworld was released with QOL features that I had to mod into other games in similar genres, though my favorite has to be the fact that resources are pooled and accessible anywhere when you're in a base. That and the ability to pick up built items with little-no penalty is so nice. No more wasted resources because you misclicked while placing a wall!

Catching and fighting Pals is pretty fun. It reminds me of Pokemon Legends: Arceus in a lot of ways. I like that Pals can have random passive buffs/debuffs (I've even found ones with passives that nullified each other's effects, which was funny). The tutorial boss fight was a lot harder than I expected (probably because I forgot to grab the arrows I crafted), but I did clutch it first try.

I know people are getting uppity about the edgier features but, I mean, it's not like it hasn't been done before. I'm a Rimworld player. I've seen (and done) worse things in games before. See also: Kenshi, Conan Exiles, Rust, ARK, The Forest, Urge, etc. Being able to do morally bad things in a game is nothing new. Palworld, like many of the games I listed, doesn't force you into these edgier features either.

There's a little jank, but it's still in beta so I can forgive that for now. The jank I have encountered is mostly minor, aside from one annoying bug that sometimes causes Pals to get stuck and starve. Taking a look at your pals when you're in your base is usually enough to get an idea on who might have gotten stuck, and you can just recall them from the Palbox.

Overall, it's a fun experience that I recommend picking up if you like games like ARK, Legend of Zelda: BOTW/TOTK, Pokemon (obviously), Conan Exiles, Satisfactory, etc. It scratches a LOT of gaming itches all at once.

I'm thoroughly impressed. Shady development or not, this is a good game that is fun to play.

Genuinely, this is one of the best casual games I've played in a hot minute. The gameplay loop is fun and it seems like new things/features are introduced every in-game day or so, so it doesn't get old. Progression feels well-paced, and it's nice when you can easily dispatch critters that were bigger threats earlier on. Bosses hit that perfect sweet spot for me where they're challenging but not frustratingly so; same with the puzzles. Earning gold isn't too bad of a grind and is fairly easy if you focus on obtaining ingredients for higher-quality dishes. So far, the only thing I've disliked about the game is the limited inventory carry weight, HOWEVER, that's a big part of the gameplay loop and I just had to train my crow brain to not pick up every shiny thing I found lmao

Overall, this is a pleasant experience and is well worth the full price. I got it on sale but I'd happily toss a few extra bucks at these developers because they seem to know what they're doing. The DREDGE crossover content (a FREE DLC, no less) is what made me pull the trigger on buying this game and I'm glad I did!! DREDGE is one of my favorite games of all time so it's just the cherry [barb] on top of this already delicious fish-flavored dessert!

This game is cute as hell, free, has great art, AND includes some s-tier bird sounds. Intentional or not, the acadian flycatcher's song is a great noise to hear in a game.

My only gripe was that there wasn't an easy way to tell which non-bee items you still needed to find. Or if there is, I couldn't find it. It made it a bit frustrating when I got down to the last item and didn't know which one I should be looking for. That said, this was a nice time waster!