Recent reviews by FLXE

Good experience from start to finish. Definitely an improvement from the 2018 God of War.

Compared to previous game, Ragnarök integrate the side quest more seamlessly, rewarding the player with more supplementary but high quality story beats. In the previous game, I'm not touching most of the side activity since you need to consciously stray from the main path while the main quests keep pushing you to complete the story. And since fast travel is now easier, branching from main path doesn't feel as bothersome, especially to backtrack earlier area.

Story is well written and fully voiced with somewhat better gameplay than the previous game. I could say this game is a must play if you like the previous game.

TLDR; I like the story and overall experience, so all is good :D

Honestly there are a lot of moment that make me want to just put negative review and a wall of rant. Too many baffling design decision that I can't understand the purpose of. Most of them only made the game "annoying" rather than "challenging".

I can get behind some of the janky and lingering hitbox, since they can be easily parried and the parry timing is quite generous. But then, whenever you get hit with multi/continuous hit, the lack of iframe will feel unfair as you can't do anything while stunlocked to death. This made most boss fight feel tedious, as the only way to beat them is parrying their attack till they give us some window to hit them. And so, rather than getting satisfaction from killing the "supposedly hard" boss (IMO actually most of them just annoying and time consuming), it only made me grateful that the fight was finally over.

Fine i guess, in the entire game there is only 1 puzzle that was a bit too obscure how to solve them without looking at guide, so I think the map is well designed. But then somehow we can only teleport to and from the main hub, and every area small or big must be separately loaded, so prepare to see A LOT of loading screen.

I think the story was the best part of this game, they really know how to deliver story. But sometimes, the story feel a bit forced as you'll get stopped mid game with unskipable cutscene or long dialogue.

I still recommend to try this game. Sure there are flaw here and there, but I still satisfied with the overall experience.
And after finishing the game, looking back I mostly only annoyed by some of the boss fight. And when I try to attempt the fight again, I can easily breeze through them, so... I think the game is okay. Still annoyed by the lack of iframe tho.

Unexpectedly well written. The voice acting and writing is really good, I love every interaction with and between every characters.
Also the gameplay is good too. There're some annoying to catch bugsnak (mostly the one that need to interact with other bugsnak before caught and hot/cold bugsnak), but all of the catching mechanics in this game feels intuitive.

If you ever doubt to pick this up, just try em, this game is short enough. It only took me 8 hours to complete the main story and total playtime of 15 hours to complete all the achievement.

Had solid core mechanic. The combat is fluid and responsive. So far there are 4 different weapon types with distinct playstyle, and there are many item combo to get in the dungeon (roguelite style). Just from the combat mechanic alone I can say the game is worth the money.

It also had the usual Klei quality sprite. Which mean smooth and nice looking graphics!

So far you can finish all of the content in this EA in around 15hours, a bit lacking I could say, but I'm sure they'll add more stuff later since this is just the beginning of the Early Access phase

The best Picross/Nonogram available on Steam. Clean UI, feature rich tools for both solving and creating puzzle, and had lot of built-in puzzle that can be worth more than 50 hours plus community puzzle via Steam Workshop.

The things I missed from Jupiter Picross S series is counting tools (so I don't need to manually count each box) and nice looking pixel art. The difficulty on the built-in puzzle is decent enough but sadly the end result was not really up to my taste, but yeah comparing the pixel art from Jupiter who already making Picross games from so long ago with this indie nonogram game is not fair.

Overall I really recommend this if you likes logic games!

Definitely the best in the series. Fast paced, challenging and super rewarding to finish, plus the soundtrack is just too good for this kind of game. totally worth even at full price if you can finish it.

I felt like I should have paid for this game. The game is already feature complete as for now and I didn't have any complaints about the game mechanics.

The overall difficulty is kinda on the harder side compared to other rhythm games. But I doubt you're even aware of this game if you haven't at least dabbled in any kind of rhythm game, so yea, it'll be mostly fine.

The story is good. Won't spoil anything, but try to at least finish the first chapter. I don't like the character's art style, but the overall writing is good enough to engage me.

Definitely worth checking since it's free. In short, I can say that this is both a good rhythm game and a good VN game.

Pre-Season 10 Review:
Now they push the monetization too hard. It used to only affect "Ranked" multiplayer, but now, even for local and private match you need to unlock the character too.

Honestly it could be better game by just selling them at regular price with DLC rather than this Free-to-play gacha ridden pile of trash. The core game's actually fun with creative track layout, nice visual, and really engaging kart racing mechanics. But then you'll be bombarded with the predatory monetization.

Pre-Season 6 Review:
All of the grindy gameplay, awful monetization with multiple currency and FOMO-inducing shop + event, only affect you if you care about Ranked Multiplayer. Yup that was the only game mode where the time and money investment matter.

Honestly I got very mixed feeling from this game.

Let me say my gripes about this game first:
The artstyle is nice and good looking, but only for the first chapter of the game, after that it's tiring to see the same bright pink color everywhere, I call this aesthetic as blindingly nauseating. There's option to adjust the contrast so at least you can adjust how bad you want that blinding colors hurting your eyes.

For the "rhythm" part, the core gameplay feels tight and accurate, sadly the mapping for the beat is kinda off. Sometimes I feels there's too much blank or bridging part for no reason (very apparent in Nature song).
There're also some sound cue that I can't tell the difference but that probably was my skill issue. Mostly the sound cue for differentiating left/right/double hit.

For the song/soundtrack in the game, it's not memorable at all, I mean ALL OF THE ENTIRE SOUNDTRACK from the music focused game. The Lofi/Chillwave genre for the theme didn't help at all. I'm sure I won't even reminded of this game if I ever heard one of the game soundtrack outside the game. This whole soundtrack opinion might be just my very personal taste, but I truly feels underwhelmed with the whole soundtrack.
If I bring the rhythm heaven comparison, if I ever heard one of its game music I can really tell that it's rhythm heaven music and which minigame that song belongs, some of them even making me unconsciously tapping to the beat of the minigame. But yeah, it's unfair to compare.


As for the good things:
The gameplay is really fun, tight, and feels good to play. And I can see how passionate the dev about this game.
This game also offers lot of accessibility option to help if you're having a hard time with this kind of game.

I'm still recommending to check this game for the fun of its gameplay if you're fan of Rhythm Heaven.

If you're too attached to Rhythm Heaven, I will recommend to look over to "Bits & Bops" by Tempo Lab Games. since their game retain most of the Rhythm Heaven charm even almost feels like total copy (A great Copy!).

Many games tries to imitate Overcooked formula with different skin and gimmick, but somehow fail to capture why Overcooked is fun and not too frustrating.

And then there's PlateUp! that looks like Overcooked ripoff with the same "cooking" theme but plays totally different. The roguelite element and restaurant customization make it super replayable. On top of that, you can mostly pinpoint why you're failing on that day and can't blame the system because it's totally your own fault.

Definitely worth to get even at full price if you had group of friends! Even doing solo run is doable