Recent reviews by Tal Rasha

Good game. If you're a fan of Hades and Diablo, chances are you will like this game. People talk about Vampire Survivor, but I've opened this game once and did not enjoy the art style, so didn't really get to enjoy all the gameplay. And I'm a guy who fell in love with Katana Zero, Shovel Knight, Blasphemous, UnEpic, Undertale, Stardew Valley, Celeste and even Papers, please - so don't judge my taste in 8-16 bit pixel art.

It took me 14 hours to max out my favorite hero - Avoron - to 36/36 in the constellarium and beat the game's Acts 1 and 2 (the ones we have so far). This paladin is a beast and with a certain buildup becomes an unstoppable force of nature, more than that green orc barbarian guy. With my current build Act 2's boss - the Djinn - dies in less than 2 minutes of game time. I went for full-on knowleagable armored paladin with a little bit of damage from auto attacks. The knowledge skillset is so awesome, you start at Adept and build yourself up to Master and Legend from there.

I call my fav build is "The song of ice and fire" (hi, GRRM). You get:
- either chilling attack or fire attack for your hits;
- fire breath, flare, combustion + ring of frost, path of frost, shatter for powers and passives;
- frost wolves for summons (imho the best summons in the game, except maybe for the ultra rare Legendary Fire Dragon)
- and the game is pretty much over for Death's minions.

Additionally, my fav casts are Chains of War and Earthspike (this ♥♥♥♥'s OP). Earthspike at Master rank level 4-5 gives your 6000-8000 damage per hit once in 5 hits. I think this needs to be nerfed a bit. Dracula dies in like 3 hits. With Paladin's skillset it's easy to get Earthspike to Master (any skill actually).

Now, it would be great if the heroes' outfits reflected what they're wearing, like this worked in Diablo 2. Because so far playing for 14 hours with the same knight's armor outfit kinda blows.

Looking forward to Act 3 and spending another couple of hours in the game. Do I recommend it? Yeah, if you can stand the pixel art and enjoy the art style, like I did. The gameplay, though simple, is pretty addictive. Money well spent.

P.S. The ultra rare mythic ring of the Necromancer helps in beating the game a lot. I mean it's 36 immortal skeleton warriors running around your entire screen murdering everything they see. Their damage is not that high, but there are 36 OF THEM. If they start buchering the boss all at the same time with your other summons - it's GG.

I've never played deckbuilding games before. A friend introduced me to this one with physical cards and then we moved to the digital app because it was easier to track all the allied skills and gold and damage, which you sometimes forget when playing with physical cards. At first it was hard to get into and I almost got frustrated losing to the AI and my friend. However, once I understood the factions and their strengths and weaknesses, I won against my friend six times in a row and the hard AI is no longer a threat. I got hooked so badly that I can't stop playing it. The 11 hours at the time of this review I have in Steam aren't exactly true - I've played more than 60 hours in 3 weeks on my phone. This game is addictive.

Yes, there is some chance involved in this game, because you never know which cards will be dealt on the market and into your hand, but in the long run with a good strategy in mind you and lots of experience have a good chance of smashing any opponent.

In short -
If you want an action-adventure shooter set in the world of Harry Potter with a few RPG elements and you don't mind repetitive gameplay, play this. If you're looking for a fulfilling RPG experience with deep characters, motivations, possibility to go down the light and dark path and enduring consequences set in the world of Harry Potter - you've come to the wrong place.

Details:
As a long standing HP fan, I'm glad that we finally got a cool RPG set in the HP universe. That being said, I expected more from the game. Don't get me wrong, it's nice and beautiful and story driven, but that's about it. No interesting, deep characters with proper motivations, rare quests that aren't "find this" or "kill this". The most memorable quest was Niamf Fitzgerald's trial (the stealth mission against Death). And Sebastian Sallow's questline just because you get to use Avada Kedavra in front of your teachers with no punishment. Honestly Sallow's questline was more engaging and emotional that the main quest.

The game seems empty. Yes, there is a lot of space and freedom to explore, but it's not fun or interesting to explore to begin with. There are many villages that I haven't been to just because they don't provide anything meaninful aside from small boring and repetitive side quests, trivial Merlin trials and collecting Field Guide Pages, which you're not interested in if you're not a 100% completioninst. Never throughout the game have I asked myself "What's behind that tree? What lies beyond that mountain? I wonder where this path leads", like I did playing Zelda Breath of the Wild or Witcher 3 or Dragon Age Origins. The game forces you to explore with demiguises, field guide pages, a horde of icons on the map, like in another Assassin's Creed game, but all of this doesn't feel natural.

The flying on a broomstick or hippo is so awesomely made, you can fly anywhere you want, but you don't WANT to fly anywhere, so you just race circles around Hogwarts over the lake looking at the beautiful sunsets ad nauseam. I remember living almost full-time in the worlds of Morrowind and Oblivion, but Hogwarts Legacy never gave this vibe. Morrowind - a game from 2002 - provided more freedom down to flying between cities, jumping from one island to another and murdering NPCs essential to the main quest (and still being able to finish it).

You can't go full good or full evil. Even if you torture or murder people in front of a whole village with Crucio or Avada Kedavra, dwellers look at you all the same. There is not light or dark path that affects the way you play and interact with the environment, like in KOTOR (also a game from 20 years ago).

The classes in Hogwarts were blunt and uninspiring cutscenes without actually studying anything. You don't make any meaninful connections with the teachers or students. Once the cutscene is over, there is almost nobody left in the classroom, except for the professor who replies with short phrases until the next quest requires you to talk to him/her.

I guess being an HP fan and an RPG fan is detrimental in this case as I just expected more in-depth experience from the game.

The game itself is awesome. One of my favorite immersive sims. But the game is also broken and an un-optimized mess. Sudden frame rate drops on a 2023 PC with NVidia RTX 4060.

The broken part: couldn't go further than the "Gain access to Tai Yong Medical" quest because the underground in Hengsha didn't work. You either have to restart the game or download a debug menu mod to play (even then all your progress drops to zero, you have to dance around the debug menu to get back all your inventory and praxies). Can't believe this hasn't been patched in the last 10 years.

Also, it is very annoying to play The Missing Link DLC every single time you replay the game. It's long, tedious and very disconnected from the rest of the story. Feels like one big side quest that brings down the pace and momentum of the game to a crawl. I wish they let us play the DLC separately from the main quest.

Meh. CS 1.6 is better.

I am a huge fanboy of the original Half Life. Played it through at least 4 times. I've played Black Mesa back when it was free and did not have Xen. It was freakin amazing all those years ago already. And then I got the "To be continued" line after jumping into the portal to Xen and I though "Man, how long do I have to wait now???"

This one is definitely worth the wait. Xen is bigger and better than ever. When I saw this on Steam I didn't even think for a second or wait for a discount. I bought it for the full price because the guys from Crowbar Collective deserve our support and all the money and praise they get. So glad Valve let you guys monetize your product.