Recent reviews by Adilya

I should start off with saying that Kyoto Winds is only the first part of this remake of Hakuoki and is essentially only half a game. That being said, there's enough content there to last you a good 40 hours, with a lot of new routes that weren't in the original game.

Hakuoki is an Otome that takes place in the Tokugawa period as certain events lead to the main character staying with the famous Shinsengumi. Nearly all Shinsengumi members as well as most in-game events are based on real-life, which will teach you a lot about Japanese history.

As with most visual novels you start on a common route and choices made will lead you on different paths favouring different characters. Let me say this though: if you're just looking to romance handsome guys, this is the wrong half of the game to play. Kyoto Winds focuses on getting to know each character and building your friendship with them but it doesn't bloom into a romance until the second game called Edo Blossoms. That doesn't mean it's boring though, as each character has their own unique personality, story and background.

The production quality of the game is pretty good, with beautiful graphics, animated lip sync, great voice acting and a very nice OST. My playthroughs were super smooth on the SteamDeck with only a few minor spelling mistakes to note, and it was a great alternative to the Vita never having sales anymore.

Despite only being half a game, this is a solid visual novel and I'm looking forward to the second part. These games are pretty cheap on Steam and on sale a lot, so having to buy two games to get the full story shouldn't be an issue to anyone a fan of Otome games.

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The Good:
- Great cast and voice acting
- Dramatic and educational Storyline
- Lots of choices that impact the story, with 13 routes in total

The Bad:
- Only the first half of the game

Epistory is a beautifully crafted typing adventure. The entire world is made up of paper and words, and unfolds before you in origami animation as you explore the world. Enemies or obstacles are dealt with by typing words, and there are puzzles and dungeons spread all around the world for you to discover.

As you progress through the story, you unlock elements that will power your words. Fire will help you burn away next words, while ice will temporarily freeze enemies in place. This adds a level of strategy to combat encounters where choosing the right power to attack with will often matter more than swift typing. I pride myself in my typing speed and was often overwhelmed by simply typing away at everything that moved because I simply wasn't using the right combination of elements.

My parents forced me to take a typing course as a kid, and I absolutely hated it. While I'm extremely thankful they made me do this as it's invaluable in my profession, it would have been so much better to learn it by playing a game like this. I really love the concept and despite the fact that the learning part was lost on me, I still had a lot of fun and thoroughly enjoyed seeing the beautiful origami world (literally) unfold. I'm seriously considering recommending this to some of my colleagues who type so slow I sometimes wonder how they get any work done at all!

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The Good:
- Beautifully crafted paper world
- Soothing music
- Can help you improve your typing speed

The Bad:
- Running doesn't always work well
- WPM is calculated weirdly and thus inaccurate

I picked Bloons TD6 up on sale, after my boyfriend was hooked on it over the summer, to see what it’s about and now I can’t stop playing. It’s a super polished and well-designed tower defense game with a comical art style and extreme strategic depth. It’s easy to pick up with a ton of content to enjoy for casual players, while also having more than enough challenging to extremely difficult content that’ll keep even the most hardcore of players busy for hundreds of hours.

The gameplay is exactly what you’d expect from a tower defense game - you build towers to prevent the enemy from reaching the exit of the map. There are a number of different types of enemies that will try to make it through your lines as well as a a good variety of towers with many upgrade tiers you can stop them with. There are 3 difficulty settings for each map as well as alternate versions. Typically, when increasing the difficulty, it increases the number of levels you will have to complete as well as the cost of the towers and their upgrades. The alternate modes add new layers of challenge for each of the levels such as limiting which towers you can use or restricting your methods of gaining coins.

Since this game was clearly developed mobile-first, it includes some mobile money-making schemes that I’m not a fan of. I already bought the game, so I don’t want content to be locked behind a paywall. Luckily, this isn’t really the case as you earn more than enough currency from playing the game that spending extra money on it seems pointless. The power-ups themselves are also rewarded for clearing challenges and specific levels, so I’m currently sitting on a bunch of items I’m not even using.

Bloons TD6 is easily the best tower defense game I’ve played to date and I recommend anyone that enjoys the genre to try it out. It offers enough towers and upgrade tiers to keep you busy planning out how you are going to build and tailor your ultimate defense against the Bloons. This combined with the many maps, different game modes and events they regularly have as well as the cross-platform co-op play this game will keep you busy for hours to come.

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The Good:
- Fun and addicting gameplay
- Bright, cartoonish art style
- Lots of content and variety

The Bad:
- Microtransactions

Rusty Lake Hotel is a really bizarre, short point-and-click puzzle game. The theme and atmosphere are really cool, but I'm a bit mixed on the gameplay. While I did think the puzzles were good and not necessarily difficult, I had a hard time figuring out what the game wanted me to do to proceed.

The story, while fitting for the creepy atmosphere, didn't make much sense to me. Especially the ending had me scratching my head, wondering what the hell I had just seen. Apparently it'll make a lot more sense if you played the previous games of this developer.

While this isn't a bad game, I'd recommend playing earlier games of the developer first if you want to understand the story, though I wouldn't be able to tell you how much that actually helps! If you don't care about the story making sense and you like the odd puzzler and have an hour on your hands, this might be a nice way to kill some time.

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The Good:
- Good puzzles
- Creepy setting
- Unique aesthetic

The Bad:
- Terrible voice acting
- Ending made no sense

I played the original Steins;Gate, a dark sci-fi visual novel exploring the consequences of altering the past, about 6 years ago and it has been my favourite visual novel since. After playing the Elite remake this still holds true. Steins;Gate Elite combines the original visual novel's script with video footage from the anime, the best of both worlds!

Steins;Gate Elite does absolutely nothing that wasn't in the original visual novel in terms of storytelling. There's no change to how interactivity is handled, except for the fact that emails received on your phone now pop up, making them unmissable.

What did change however, is the presentation. They took parts of the anime, added some original animation and superimposed it over the text, creating a beautiful animated mix that really enhances the storytelling. It's honestly going to be difficult to go back to the standard static character portraits and backdrops in visual novels.

Elite is a fantastic entry point for newcomers, as well as a great way to revisit the story for existing fans. It has all the charm of the anime, all the narrative excellence of the original, and ends up with a great example of what a top tier visual novel should look like.

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The Good:
- Seamless integration of animation
- Excellent story about time travel and its consequences
- Characters, voice acting and music are great

The Bad:
- No new story content

Just like My Darling's Embrace, this is another game of side-stories set during the main story of Steins;Gate. The difference being that this isn't a dating sim. Instead, the different stories are told through the eyes of the different lab mems and shows us new alternate timelines as well as a more in-depth view of familiar timelines from a different point-of-view.

Just because this is a spin-off of Stein's;Gate, doesn't mean this isn't every bit a well written and serious as the main games. The writing in some of these side-stories are arguably better than Steins;Gate 0, and though some stories felt a bit filler, most of them really added a lot of depth and backstory to an already amazing cast.

The thing that drags the game down a bit is the localisation. While the quality of the translation itself is good, the lack of proofreading is not. I spotted more than a few typos and there were a lot of spelling and grammar errors throughout the entire game that could have easily been avoided.

While it has nothing to do with the quality of the game itself, another downside is that the only way to get this game is bundled with Steins;Gate Elite. While this is a really good bundle for newcomers, someone who's already played the original may not want to waste money on buying Elite which is essentially the same game with anime graphics.

Steins;Gate: Linear Bounded Phenogram nicely complements the main story and does a great job at expanding and developing the cast. The gameplay, presentation and writing is great and at times even surpasses the mainline games, so anyone that's a fan of the series should definitely give this a go!

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The Good:
- Great writing
- Adds more depth to an already amazing cast
- Answers some of the questions left by main story

The Bad:
- Some stories feel filler
- Too many typos, spelling and grammar errors

Firewatch is one of the better walking simulators I've played. It's fairly short, rolling credits at a little under 5 hours, but very memorable.

The game follows a middle-aged guy named Henry that took a summer job as park ranger to escape from his daily life. His only human contact is through a walkie-talkie with his supervisor Delilah. The story itself is mostly conveyed through dialogues between the two, complemented by some stellar voice acting and amazing writing, as you perform your duties around the park.

The navigation system is great, giving you just a compass and map to find your way. You can even increase the immersion by disabling your location on the map, having to use Delilah's hints and the area around you to determine your location. I may have lost my way more than once because I absolutely suck at navigating, but the breathtaking vista's and goregeous color pallets more than made up for that.

The ending left me a bit unsatisfied, but I absolutely recommend this game for the story, dialogue and amazing atmosphere.

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The Good:
- Amazing visuals, atmosphere, and audio
- Fantastic conversation system and voice acting
- Immersive navigation system

The Bad:
- A slightly disappointing ending

I picked up Tell Me Why for free during Pride Month last year, and was reminded I should play it when Dontnod gave it away again this year. While it is hard not to compare it to the developer's Life is Strange series, I think this game manages to stand on its own.

The game is set in a remote Alaskan town, starring two siblings torn apart by a tragedy. After being reunited after 10 years apart, they not only rediscover the inner voice that connects them, but find out they have the power to relive old memories. While I think this mechanic is nice and lets you slowly puzzle together what happened, using the power doesn't really have a big impact on the story outcome, unlike Life is Strange's time manipulation or telekinesis.

Gameplay aside, the writing in Tell Me Why is excellent. Not so much the unraveling of the overarching mystery that the characters are trying to figure out, but more so in the characters themselves, and how they interact with the townspeople trying to understand their mother's actions before her death and how it shaped their lives.

There's still a couple of days to redeem this game for free on both Steam and Xbox, so go do that so you can experience the story of Tyler and Alyson!

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The Good:
- Excellent character development
- Great portrayal of marginalised people
- Voice acting and mustic add to the emotional impact

The Bad:
- Pacing can be a bit slow at times
- Player choice impacts the overall story very little
- Button prompts don't always register correctly