Recent reviews by Emblem Parade

It's rare that I quit a game in the middle once I've decided to give it a try. But, so it goes.

The writing is very good, but I would rather read the novel than play through this annoyance.

In its feel it's very much a board game. Move from one square to the next, roll dice, and accumulate resources. The "quests" involve you finding and spending certain kinds of resources. This loop is mind-numbingly boring. The graphics are minimal, and the UI could not be less appealing. It's the kind of gameplay you would expect from a game that comes with a Windows 95 install.

I tried. I really tried. But when I finally ran out of resources and started losing patiently-won skill points I felt that I had endured enough.

Warning! Alert! This game, which is indeed terrific, has more limited appeal than its hype would imply.

Its structure is very straightforward: you go into a new area, find the bosses, and defeat them. You will likely have to die again and again (and again!) until you learn a boss's moves well enough to kill it before it kills you. The presentation is drop-dead gorgeous, the controls simple yet subtle, and the satisfaction felt for every inch of progress is palpable. Oh, and it's unbelievably huge. There's a lot to see. And kill.

If hard-as-nails boss fights sound frustrating to you then do not buy this game, no matter the hype. It is absolutely not a "God of War in China", despite how it might look or even feel in the first hour of gameplay. It is nothing more than a beautifully dressed-up, relentless series of boss battles. Or if you insist on a comparison to God of War: it's just the Valkyries. Oh, and I guess there are some poorly structured, ridiculously obscure optional "quests", too.

How hard is it, really? Very. Very very. Most bosses have uninterruptible attacks that can kill you fast, so the only way to get through this game is to master dodging. Learn the tells, practice the timing, and Bob's your uncle. An evil uncle. It took me several hours of persistent rematches to defeat some of these splendid nasties. Is it fair? Well, let's just say that the meaning of fairness is a bit stretched. Probably everything can be dodged, but you will find yourself often praying to the RNG gods for their favor.

There is a story, I guess, but it's rather opaque and just there for background and scenery, a flavorful retelling of "Journey to the West", underscoring its melange of folklore from Daoist, Buddhist, and even Jain sources. Though the characters are just cutscene ingredients, they are all delightful, charming, and often terrifying. However, their world, though tantalizingly alluring, is always at arm's length. Invisible walls everywhere. And that's fine, really. It's inspiring to realize how much attention and love was put into what is nothing more than context and staging for the boss fights. Some of the arenas are nothing short of breathtaking, and their beauty—and dread—builds up viscerally as you approach. But, no, you can't visit that forlorn cliff-side village in the distance, because this isn't "Elden Ring in China", either.

My biggest complaint is that there are missable bosses and quests. If you continue too far, they are locked from you and you have to restart the game to see them (or finish the game and do NG+). I truly hate this design. It's a major blemish on the game.

Smaller complaints: The game does a poor job at teaching you how combat works. I spent quite a few hours not knowing what "focus points" were (hint: they are critically important). Happily, there are community-made tutorials online. Also, annoyingly, there is no in-game map. Immersive in a way, but you might get quite confused, especially in one chapter. Again, the community stepped in to create good maps online. (Edit: Apparently the game has since been patched to add in-game maps. But so many of us played it without them, and the devs still deserve criticism.)

In summary, Black Myth: Wukong focuses pretty much on one thing, but it does it with heaps of artistry and refinement. It's hard, majestic, and excellent. Play it if you dare.

A game with so much potential, and it's all squandered on controls from hell.

Actually, there are some other annoyances, too. There is no in-game map and no quest markers, so it's often hard to know where to go. And the level design is ... mixed. There are a few cool locations, but for the most part it's quite bare.

What's really good: graphics, music, writing, and really the whole artistic package. The presentation feels very coherent. And though the story isn't especially original, and is riddled with plot holes, it scampers along pleasantly enough.

So, the controls. Ugh. They are so sensitive to direction that any slight movement of an analog stick can snap you in the wrong direction; and aiming is critical. The hit boxes seem to have no relationship to the pixels. There's this whole button dance you have to do when switching between walking and flying and carrying and dropping that is just so fiddly and annoying, and it feels like an unnecessary complication. And finally my least favorite: Every time you get hit, you are thrown to somewhere else on the screen, but also your sprite is flashing, so it's very, very so hard to see where you are for a few seconds.

What's sad to me is that so much time went into making this game, so I must assume that all these problems are actually design choices. Features, not bugs. I guess there are people out there who enjoy this kind of gameplay. Not me!

When it comes down to it, Owlboy is not unplayable, but also as charming as it is, it's sadly not enough to be worth the frustrations. I usually aim for 100% completion in games like this, but when the credits rolled I was happy to uninstall.

A wonderfully charming open-world adventure. Take a refreshing swim in the sights and sounds of a fictionalized New Caledonia. Delight in its language and music, learn about its folklore and diversity, and enjoy relatively easy, slow-moving gameplay. The game is clearly influenced by Breath of the Wild in mood, look, and play-style. Tchia doesn't quite rise to the heights of Nintendo, but it has a lot to offer.

There is a main quest and you can play it and only it. Actually, that might the best path for most players, because once you open yourself to finding all the collectibles and completing all the optional challenges then you're in for a repetitive slog. The world is lovely, but there's just not a lot of kinds of things to do in it. Alas, Tchia's open world scheme is Ubisoft-like: find a vantage spot, highlight all the points of interest on the map, and then go clean 'em up. You can also do this after finishing the game.

That sounds boring, and indeed it might be for you. There's just too much of this filler content in Tchia. That said, the world is vibrant enough to keep the game loop enjoyable even when doing the same things over and over again. As the game progresses you get access to more traversal methods, and some of them are truly delightful. But even slowly sailing your raft from island to island has a certain beauty to it. The lapping of waves, the cries of seagulls, a small village in the distance. You can almost feel the warmth of the sun and smell the Pacific sea salt.

While most of the game is about slow traversal, there are some more things to do. Specifically, your powers provide opportunities for emergent gameplay. There's not a lot of combat, but it can be made interesting if you approach it creatively. There are also several mini-games and challenge areas, which work as a change of pace. They are mostly easy, but some can be frustrating if you're going for 100% achievements.

Tchia could have used more polish before release. Controls are wonky during climbing, and you might get trapped in the scenery and have to reload a save. For me, these were relatively small annoyances that did not keep me from enjoying the game as a whole.

Affection for New Caledonia is present in every nook and cranny of this passion project. If that sounds compelling to you, and you're not entirely put off by some repetitive grind, then Tchia is for you.

I was debating with myself on whether to give Greak a thumbs up or not, because it's very flawed. But, in the end, I think it can be quite enjoyable, as long as you have the patience.

It's feels very much like a "mini Hollow Knight". However, it's inferior in practically every aspect: it's much smaller and the levels are generally less interesting, although there are some really cool puzzles. Combat is generally mediocre, though the boss fights are fun (and easy).

Where it really carves its own identity is in that it has you play multiple characters, sometimes together. When it works well, it's awesome. But, the controls too often get in the way when the characters are together. Characters can easily fall out of formation, forcing you to constantly herd them all together. There's no interesting challenge in this, it's just a pure annoyance.

But probably the worst offender is the save system. There are very few save points in the game, and it's fairly easy to die due to a silly mistake, forcing you to replay sections again and again. This includes cut scenes, which are unskippable.

I feel like the game could have use more time in the oven: to polish the controls, playtest the combat, and maybe elaborate on some of its systems. The cooking system, for example, seems quite ... undercooked. There's also very little RPG-like progression. Almost none, really.

All in all, I did have a nice time with this little metroidvania, but I can imagine it being unappealing to some players.

Frustrating, annoying, pointless.

The game is pretty and the animals are cute. But that's the only good thing I can say about it.

If you are expecting casual gameplay to match the cuteness, you will be sorely disappointed. This is a "survival" game, in that you can randomly bump into stuff that will one-shot kill you. Which will cause you to reload to the last save, which will inevitably involve repeating meaningless tasks to get to where you were before. Which might cause you to die again if you don't know what to do to avoid death.

The game does a horrible job of explaining itself to you. Half of the game I didn't even realize there was a map of the world. Not that it's especially necessary.

Controls are absolutely miserable. Half of the time they don't respond. You need to somehow position yourself on the exact pixel for certain actions to be activated.

Are you expecting a story about humanity's role in causing extinction? You'll get a very tiny sliver of that. It's really a story about hunters killing animals. Hunters are bad. That's the message. The gameplay expresses this message and only this message. There is no complexity and no variety.

I got nothing out of this game except a few hours of frustrating gameplay. Skip it, please.

Short and silly.

It actually it does have something to say and is a decent enough satire. The wackiness, though, can sometimes get distastefully on the nose. It's adult humor, sure, but the comedic instinct is teen-aged.

I was impressed by the game's cohesiveness. There's a vision here: a distinct graphical and animation style.

So, not much here, but enough to make interested enough to try Joe Richardson's newer games.

A masterpiece. If you're a fan of first-person puzzle games, this is a must play.

Portal opened the door to the genre, Talos Principle enriched it, but Manifold Garden distills the formula to its beautiful, raw fundamentals. There is no story here per se, nor flashy graphics, just a pure atmospheric experience that drenches you in wide-open geometry and ambient music.

The puzzles are many and wonderful, having you play with colors, blocks, streams, gravity redirection, and mind-bending non-Euclidean spaces, which present themselves to you gradually and thoughtfully. There's no handholding. Instead exploration and experimentation will yield the many a-ha moments. I managed to complete the game without any guide, and though I often felt challenged I never felt the solutions were unfair or obscure. Think, try, and think again. And be rewarded.

I was fully engrossed and smiling from beginning to end. What a marvelous achievement.

A thoroughly captivating science fiction mystery, though it definitely won't be everyone's cup of tea.

The art direction is impeccable. The modeling, palettes, sound, music, level design, and even camera movement all come together to produce a coherent, enigmatic atmosphere. The inspiration is obviously Stanisław Lem's Solaris, and probably more directly Andrei Tarkovsky movie based on it. It's a silent game, but so much is told through environmental storytelling. And yet it is never fully explained. Players have come up with some clever theories, but the mystery endures. This is not a game for those who demand full closure.

Also, unfortunately, the gameplay can be grating. It's very slow, and honestly mostly a walking sim most of the time. There are also some puzzles, which are sometimes quite fascinating in that the game silently teaches you the solutions through environmental cues. Some puzzles, however, are obtuse or clunky. There's a bit of stealth, too, and some frustrating chase scenes that I don't think anyone has ever enjoyed in any game ever.

All in all, it doesn't hold up as an enjoyable experience throughout, but I think the artistic presentation is so searing that I can easily recommend Somerville.

A rather mediocre walking sim.

The concept is alluring and cat lovers would find in it a fairly authentic, if superficial presentation.

But the execution on the whole is mixed. Controls, not that you need them much to play, are not at all cat-like. And though the color palettes are sometimes striking, the graphics and animations are too basic, e.g. there are no shadows. Somehow it still manages to be very un-optimized. The music is meh. But the worst ingredient is the voice acting and dialog, which give the already flimsy package a dull veneer.

As for the message? Don't worry, it will be spelled out to you. I found it disconnected from the actual narrative and my own life, but you may feel differently.

I didn't dislike Copycat. But I find little to recommend, unless you can't resist its premise.