Recent reviews by The19thFighter

Oh boy, I have no idea where to put this.
First off, I'm a former MSA player. I was Lvl 50 with VIP Level 9, when the game ended.
(Obviously not one of the most hardcore player, but not a stranger either)

So, to begin, this is a version of a game, that used to be filled with power creep units,
that were once purchased with premium currency (either purchased or received through hard grinding on Guild Events etc.)

It's essentialy a port of a game that used to be mobile without the things that make it a mobile game.
Which is great! I think it's awesome to have this game available and for such an affordable price!
I played the heck out of MSA and I'm grateful to have this playable version!
I'm also intrigued by the new features (Support system, for example)

It's sad however to see all the new units gone and I would like to have kept access to my hard earned MSA units, even if they're just in a seperate "archival" mode.

The gameplay is way tougher as a result of this, literally getting me stuck on World 8-1 for 5 hours,
until I found out I pretty much need homing missiles to hit Shizuka.
(Something I've never bothered before, because the Jellyfish of the previous version was strong enough to begin with)

Meaning this game is filled with a lot of grind and repetitive content.

It's a perfect game to play while watching YouTube or listening to a podcast,
however I don't think that this game is a "standalone" title and it still feels like something you'd play on a bus or while waiting at the doctor's office.
The lack of a proper built-in windowed mode to me shows that they really didn't think much about it.
(For a SteamDeck or Switch I don't suppose it matters that much, but for PC you need to tinker around with the configuration file manually, which shouldn't be necessary).

It's great for the price, but it definitely doesn't feel as complete as the former mobile version.
That being said even as a former mobile player, I very much enjoy this.

I think however that new players will see this more of a let down,
than the old mobile players and therefore I don't think they will have that much fun.

Good game, now easily installable and usuable on Steam Deck.
A bit overshadowed by lately bad buisiness decisions.

Pro:
- Unique heroes
- Competitive FPS Arena style gameplay (Quake III Arena or Jedi Knight)
- Colorful and engaging hero and map design
- Improved spatial audio (over Overwatch 2)
- Replayability
- Customizability through Workshop
- Replays and Stats

Negative (starting of with what went wrong in OW2):
- Promised to remove or reduce smurfs through phone verification.
Entitled smurfs and multi account users cried so badly, Blizz back peddaled.
Now old smurfs (the ones that ruined OW1 matchmaking to begin with) can still proceed to use their 10+ smurf accounts, some of which are botted
- Matchmaking sucked and will suck again, once the horde of new players is gone,
and desperate SR climbing addicts will resort to using smurf accounts,
essentially leading to the top 10% of players looking like the top 50% of players.
- We were promised extensive PVE content, so I can finally stop giving craps about the competitive integrity of a game, where nearly no one else cares about it.
But nope, PVE got severely downsized and yet again Blizzard back-paddled.
- The whole female workers being treated at Blizz scandal
- Removal of ways to actually gain cosmetic items through normal play in-game.
Now most cosmetic items are only really obtainable through real-money.

Older problems:
- Old patches remain completely unplayable, this means:
- We can't play using old abilities (Like old Mercy Rez or old Symmetra gun, even in Workshop)
- Certain bugs didn't get fixed for ages or ignored
- MM is broken, because the way players use loopholes.
- Game Balancing often ruined by new heroes, which are then made useless in the subsequent patches.
- Blizz still has no idea what to do with Mercy

A perfectly spooky game, without any "real/cheap" jump scares (other than an easter egg).

Barely any blood or gore (except static blood in the level geometry, half-rotten ghost models and a mostly decomposed skeleton). Newly with the update there are also corpses and gibs on the new Asylum.
Game mostly relies on audio for spooking the players.

You try to figure out which ghost you're dealing with, by figuring out it's location and looking at it's behavior.
For this you have a wide variety of mostly unique items to use.
By accumulating knowledge about the game, you can figure out which ghost it is, much more easily.

The game has fun buggy mechanics, that can be learned naturally through playing the game.
(Remote controlled items, infinite sanity pills, free items, dislocated doors, escaping investigation area during hunt, entering area without unlocking door etc.)
But these might get patched. However pulling them of or figuring them out feels super rewarding.
And some of them have a chance of failing. But getting a successful locker escape on Bleasedale, when cornered is some joy you won't be able to reproduce easily.(Bleasedale Lockers are closed off now)

Ghosts feel like they have different "personalities" making it entertaining to play multiple times, including randomized hiding spots.

For most people this will be a rather short-lived experience, as figuring out the way the ghost work, take away a bit of constant tension, when playing the game.
I'd say many people would only enjoy playing this for around 15 hours.

Game is NOT working in multiplayer anymore on Linux (so likely not working on SteamDeck anymore, either).

Updated 29.9.2022 in response to the new update.

Finally this version of Yu-Gi-Oh! encorporates everything I wanted.
Affordable F2P cards, matchmaking, non-simplified rules, cosmetics.

Just opening the cards could be a little more satifiable, however.
I also think that the cards are a little too easily obtainable (You still need to grind, don't get me wrong).
I think it would be cooler if the game had trading (optionally with Steam Marketplace)
and better special effects instead.

The events are a nice addition and allow to play with special rules.
e.g the N and R festival allows to play with simpler cards which makes
Deck building a lot more interesting.

The microtransactions are non-invasive (for now).

Classic game, decent pricing, fantastic setting.

Doesn't fix insufferable cheating in online lobbies,
introduce annoying overpowered vehicles,
rely on people reverse engineering their game to tell them why their loading times are so awfully long,
sue people fixing their old games by reverse engineering.

In my opinion you should be more concerned about these people than Blizzard regarding bad practices.

Was a negative review, but changed to positive as they've listened and that shall be rewarded.

Old post following below:


"I'm not here to question the ethics behind review bombing [...]"
Me neither, I just do it.
Despite the obviously bad port (and the proof they gave themselves, that they could have simply done it better, but decided not to include it in the Steam version), I'd like to add a few things.

Crashing GPU:
When the game was released, it crashed on the GPU I had installed then. It was an NVIDIA GTX 780 which was on par with the 970.
Something the game did, caused the GPU to crash for a fraction of the second every 10-30 minutes, which the game could not recover from. This is an issue that COULD have been fixed/been worked around, but given the rest of the port you can quite see they did not care. This would not have been THAT bad, if it was possible to save during the first minutes of the game.

Difficulty:
The game is entirely unplayable on the highest difficulty.
I mean it. It's not just that it's incredibly hard. You die after 2 bullets from the lowest enemies.
The difficulty is obviously meant for New Game+, where you're all geared up.
If that's your concept for difficulty, then make sure I can't select it before, or issue a clear warning.
Not make me watch a tonne of unskippable cutscenes before I can even get to save once.

Gameplay:
Having played Bayonetta before, I expected the combat to be more versatile.
However the "combos" are trivial and swapping sets during a fight feels off and out of place.
Same goes for the activation of items. Why do you even have a wheel to quick select items,
when you're putting the player at a disadvantage for using this over going to the start menu?
Some enemies (such as the serpent) have a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ amount of movement speed.
It's armored and everything you hit hurts. WTF? Maybe there is something I missed, but I do not see another way to defeat this enemy other than evading and shooting at him, which is lame and tedious af.

World:
The game world, although aesthetically pleasing, has one of the biggest flaw an open-world game could have.
INVISIBLE WALLS!
Even though 90% of the time these walls are not necessary, because the player could just go there and see that there isn't really anything, you still managed to place invisible walls all over the place and not even prevent players from abusing them (just look up all the OOBs that are possible).
I'm not someone who is a lot into the immersion aspect, but even then, it's completely immersion breaking,
up to the point of bothering me, when you're just being blocked off.
And even then there are much greater tools available to accomplish invisible walls.
Like the character saying something like:"I think it's too early to go there" or "I don't think that's the way" and then he just auto-walks back or something. But no, here the cheapest approach has been used, that has been bugging me ever since I started playing video games.

This is especially being amplified by all the locked chests, plastered through-out the levels.
It's like the game doesn't want you to explore it initially.
I find an elevator, I use it, fight through the hordes of enemies on the floor. Get through the tough level to see a chest, to find out it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ locked! Excuse me?!

It's kind of sad really. I can see why people think this is a masterpiece.
But to me it's only a masterpiece that could have been.
A demo of wasted potential.
This is also the reason why I waited 2+ years with this review.
I did not want to kill any hype, maybe they'd improve upon the flaws?
Maybe I'm just "Not an RPG guy" (Scott here!)?
But now I think, I've learned a bit, that this is not something I can expect.

P.S.: Music is great though, it's on Spotify, go listen to it!

Awesome game, don't buy it.
I started up this game specifically to write this.
(I've played it through long before Nicalis had it's fingers on it,
then I bought it on HumbleBundle, because "Time Trial and Hardcore mode, yay").

Nicalis is pretty shady, look into the other negative reviews.
They take good games, add a few broken extras, take over the IP (as it seems), try to put themselves on the front of everything, and then they shutdown decompilation projects.
Something not even Nintendo has done.

If you look at the achievements, not even 60% got to the first mandatory boss.
So I think it's safe to assume, most people only bought it to support Studio Pixel / Daisuke Amaya.
Something I now really doubt, given the greed Nicalis just showed to us.

Locked to Steam account,
there is no way to undo it.

That means you will always need to buy expansions through Steam,
which is a great deal breaker in many cases.

You can't even rebuy the whole game+expansions (non-steam) to transfer your character onto it.
That is literally insanity, as it's possible to play with the same character on PS4,
but once you decide to play the Steam PC version you'll be locked to Steam for PC expansions, with no way back.

It is not logical and is an awful restriction I think SE needs to lift.
At least allow me to rebuy everything, then transfer it over.

EDIT:
Also the updates are not delivered through Steam, so other than using Steam wallet for paying the subscription or game, you get no benefit from playing the Steam version at all.

EDIT2:
This also happens when trying to create a new trial account.
Let's assume you used the big shiny button on their web page, you get locked into the SE version of the game for your E-Mail, then you try to close your account and create a new one, but you can't, because the account is not really deleted only deactivated and you can't create a new one on the same mail address.

This lock is hilarious and is causing so much trouble. I tried to get a friend into playing this game and we spent 2 hours trying to get him into the free trial and had to give up and contact support (we will see how that works out). Given that it's a new account I'm confident they will be able to resolve that. But it's a pain nonetheless. We're not some technically inept people and we were even aware of the problem with the platform lock, yet we still got trapped even just with the free trial.

7/10 (Gesamt)

(Fazit, ja ich fange gerne mit dem Ende an:)
Gleich mal vorne ab:
Wer nicht bereit dafür ist, Fehler zu machen,
ist hier beim falschen Spiel.

Manche Leute würden behaupten das Spiel würde einen frustieren.
Ich stimme dem nicht zu.

Dieses Spiel wird auch nicht schwieriger oder einfacher.

Wer es über die ersten Lampen geschafft hat, schafft es auch bis an die Spitze.
(Auch wenn es ihn weitere 5 Stunden kostet beim ersten Mal).

Eine Sache die das Spiel interessant macht, ist, dass es eine bestimmte Mechanik hat, deren Möglichkeit fast vollständig ausgeschöpft wird.

In dem Spiel muss man sich ausschließlich durch die Rotation der Maus und dem damit verbundenen virtuellen Hammer einen Berg hochziehen.

Die Schwierigkeit bei dem Spiel besteht darin, kühlen Kopf zu bewahren und sich mit der Steuerung vertraut zu machen.

Dabei ist es wichtig zum Beispiel im Fall nicht panisch den Hammer zu schwingen. Damit stoßt man sich nämlich bestenfalls von einem möglichen Halt weg.

Das Spiel vermarktet sich selber als Spiel, welches dich leiden sehen möchte.

Aber ich habe nicht das Gefühl, dass dies zutrifft.

Allerdings stimmt es, dass dies hier kein Spiel ist, bei welchem man schnell Belohnungen bekommt.

Das erste Mal erklimmen kann von 3 Stunden bis zu einem Tag dauern.

Aber im Verlauf dieses Spieles wird man immer besser.

Bei dem 2ten Durchlauf dauert es nur noch 2 Stunden, beim 3ten nur noch 20 Minuten, beim 7ten mal, 15.

Als LoL-Spieler, der 2500 Stunden ein Spiel gespielt hat, und noch immer in Gold herumhängt, kann ich sagen ist dieses Spiel ein Scherz.

Schließlich ist man hier für das Versagen selber verantwortlich. Man muss auch nicht weiterspielen, währenddem man weiß, man wird verlieren.

Hier gewinnt man einfach nicht (schnell). Aber man weiß, man wird gewinnen.

Wenn ihr es geschafft habt, das Dach der Kirche zu erklimmen, seid versichert, ihr schafft den Rest garantiert.

Man darf einfach nicht aufgeben. Aber man kann nicht verlieren. Man kann nur zurück fallen.

Weit... Weit zurückfallen.

Aber wenn man Stunden lang an einer Stelle festgehangen hat. Und sich nun zurückbefördert hat, an eine Stelle viel früher, wird das Spiel wieder unterhaltsam, weil man eine gewisse Abwechslung bekommt.

Zusammenfassung:

Grafik (9/10):

Das Spiel hat eine besondere Ästhetik.
Ich weiß nicht was es ist. Aber es fasziniert mich.
Der Mann im Topf. Die Umgebung.
Alles wirkt so surreal, aber gleichzeitig einladend und ästhetisch.

Ich denke ich bin nicht der einzige der so denkt.

Gameplay (8/10):

Die Steuerung wirkt manchmal nicht "eindeutig".
Es ist verwirrend wann man abrutscht und wann nicht.
(Wieso rutsche ich, wenn ich langsam rotiere, aber nicht wenn ich schneller rotiere?).
Der Eimer kurz vor dem Ende des Spieles verhält sich willkürlich. Mal kann man sich einhängen mal nicht.

Vereinzelte Jumpscares. Der visuelle Jumpscare ist noch ok. Sound dazu, bei so einem Spiel geht für mich eher nicht.
Klar es ist lustig anzusehen wie jemand erschrickt. Und wenn man nicht abrutscht kann man darüber auch womöglich lachen. Aber ich finde das in einem ansonten ruhigen Spiel eher deplatziert.

Audio (?/10):
Die Soundeffekte passen im Großen und Ganzen. Allerdings habe ich nicht zu stark aufgepasst.
Was der Mann im Topf von sich gibt, hört sich manchmal etwas "falsch" an und wird manchmal falsch getriggered.
Auch kann es sein dass die "Rückfall"-Zitate falsch eingespielt werden.
Eine große Zeit lang wird gar nichts mehr erzählt.

Story (6/10):
Die Erzählungen passen nicht immer zu dem Spiel.
Sie wirken teilweise sogar widersprüchlich.
Soll dieses Spiel nun ein B-Game sein oder nicht?
Soll dieses Spiel einen frustieren oder nicht?
Es wird so behauptet, aber dafür ist es zu einfach, zu viel Sicherheit, zu viel "Nettigkeit".

Viele der Behauptungen stimmen oder sind zumindest nachvollziehbar.

Machmal kommen aber Zeitpunkte, da fragt man sich:
"Was will der mir damit jetzt eig. sagen?"

Insofern ist das Erzählte für mich nicht immer konsistent.



Allerdings ist es das perfekte Spiel für Leute die harte Spiele mögen.

Leute die gerne mittelschwere Spiele speedrunnen, gerne eine Mechanik immer und immer wieder ausprobieren um sie konsistent nutzen zu können, etc. werden gefallen daran finden.

Der Preis ist für den Inhalt ein wenig hoch mit 7/8€ im Verhältniss zu anderen Spielen.
Das soll jedoch nicht zu stark ins Gewicht fallen.
Allerdings bietet das Spiel nicht so viel. Vorallem nicht für Leute die keinen Gefallen daran finden würden.