Recent reviews by Mr Groovy

This is a good Metroidvania! Cleared it 100%
It takes a core from Hollow Knight and adds Kriby's transformations.

+ Great visuals
+ Good story
+ Dialogues are interesting to read
+ Multiple well written endings
+ 10+ locations to investigate
+ Map, that marks important quests and which room you cleared for 100%
+ Bosses are fun to fight against, not unique, but fun

+ Most people say that transformations are only useful only in one location.
I won't dany it for half of them, however some of them are very useful.
When you go investigate some unreachable areas, i always recommend picking 1 flying TF and 1 hard hitting TF.
With some of them i could bypass some designed restrictions to reach, like i could jump on enemy, transform into flying robot, dash, and now i no longer need to get TF from pre-final location.
This is a big thumbs up from me, i adore when devs allow you to break their own rules.

- Due to similarity to Hollow Knight, this game unfortunately exaggerates problems from HK.
Late side-quests are annoying to do, most of them are escorting item to different chracters in certain order one at a time.... and there are 6 of them for each quest.
When i reached 50% completion, i had 15 quests active, because i didnt reach other areas yet. I felt overwhelmed at that point.
- Also There are places where you have no idea what you are missing to reach certain areas.
It becomes really annoying in second half game,
i had to take 2 week break from game.
- To add salt to injury, there is a terrible manual marking system for map.
You can only use literaly pins of different colors.
This is not informative at all, because i have to mark places where i needed a key and places that need certain transformation.
Crosscode for example uses same mechanic, but it has icons like chest, cross and arrows, which is far more informative.
- Do you remember charms from Hollow Knight, that let you get coins from further distance and heal faster? They are also here.
Half of them rely on your certain remaining health percentage, either you should have full HP or low HP.
I hate this type of passive abilities in most games, because you have to be perfect at dodging, otherwise your weapon turn into a small fork, enjoy sticking it at enemy to lower his health by 1 hp.
+ Other half is good, that does not rely on your health percentage.
- Dark souls death system, where you have to collect your coins in the same place where you died.
I disliked it in HK as well, because DS was hard enough to squeeze through enemies, so this intense mechanic worked. It doesn't work in metroidvania where you can pass through most enemies.
- Dear devs, please add animations which building I upgrade. I am wasting time figuring out which shopper gets new items for sale.

Overall, solid 8/10, most downsides are fixable and upsides outshines them.

I bonked my friend with a shovel and triggered his perk of Rocket Jumping, and we defeated the boss.
10/10 would bonk my friend again

As a first game came out from this studio it's actually good, it's not buggy, controls are responsive which is important for 2D games with some platforming.
Technical part is great.
Background art is great!
Models are good, Bosses are especially memorable.
Boss fights are impressive! i see devs were more inspired by Castlevania bosses rather than Dead Cells.


But gameplay-wise it's a boring version of Dead Cells without Rogue-like elements.

Variety of enemies is low, but on bright side their AI is good, they know how to land their attack.

Levels are done lazily, it's either a set corridors placed on each other, or vertical corridors with platforms stitched to walls.

Menu map shows how much secrets are left in current area, and tries to hint which of them are at the beggining of area or at the end of area. Unfortunately it's also misleading, since map thinks last ones should be obtained after getting new abilities. Best example is first map: there is unreachable are in the middle of map, so you have to go under it first time around. Map thinks this is the last secret, but it should be the middle one.

There are some status effects implemented, but they are usually useless, upgrading weapon damage is more important.


Conclusion.
Good game for first release of studio, but overall boring, Dead Cells is more fun.
Would rather see what other games this studio will do.

Great game for these 4,5 hours!
Gives off Zelda atmosphere.
Totaly worth its price!

Somebody once said on Youtube:
"PIzza Tower feels like Sonic but good"
And then SEGA said:
"Hmph, fine, how about we make Sonic but a visual novel with awesome storytelling...
AS AN APRIL FOOL'S JOKE
FOR FREE"
And they actually made it.
Srsly, i am not a fan of Sonic games, and i would still buy this one, but it's free.
Considering their Sonic Prime series have good storytelling as well, SEGA must have hired talented writers or old writers improoved themselves over the topp
SEGA, i wanna buy your next VNs

This game is a masterpiece!
I am willing to add it on some level as Hollow Knight!
50 hours were so enjoyful and i am wishing to spend them more in DLC!

One of the best current released MetroidVania games!
You should defenetely give it a try!

First off, I dont hate this game, you can see clearly RWS worked hard on this game.
Animations are awesome, cutscenes are drawn greatly, humans have more realistic impressions than Postal 2.

Unfortunately, game really suffers from overall story.
Postal 1 was very serious and dark, when i finished that game, i feeled afraid of myself
Postal 2 was sarcastic, but very gruesome. It is hilarious, but when i thinked about it, i was sorry for Dude, most people are more messed up than himself.
Postal 4... is just goofy adult swim, every event can be fit in a 5 min sitcom without any order. You have to kill angry prisoners, some SJWs, military... And basically it. No dark irony, that people who angrily oppose something become monsters worse than hell.

Open world design also suffers, it is mostle empty and not intersting for investigating, far much less secrets than Postal 2.

Gameplay is... not much better. Sure weapons are upgraded than postal 2 counterparts, but it is still just gunning down NPCs, you could do the same stuff in Garry's mod, NPCs just run around on huge map and shoot sometimes. For some reason gunning down humans is more fun in postal 2.
Nut hey, small chances you really want to buy this game just for shooting.
Unfortunately there are some challenges, that requires you to kill with specific loadout with time limit like in Postal Redux. And yeah, these challenges are not fun with so little people walking around, spent more time chasing them.

Devs really need to rethink which way they are going with franchise.
If RWS will try to make another Postal game, i will gladly try it out! This one just have so many mistakes, but not that groundbreaking to lose hope for future games. They made great Postal 2 DLC, that (for me) was more interesting to play than base game, so they didn't f'ed up, just lost a touch a bit.

Thankfully Brain Damaged is done awesomely, so i hope devs will get money enough for the future.

Played this game: "Well, that was spooky..."
Played second game: "I dont get it..."

Read explanation in forums and replayed second game:
"Oh"
"ohhhh"
*starts crying*
"oh no"

If anyone of you relates to this girl, i wish you will stay strong and get better.
And don't ignore your mental health

This is the most toxic review i have ever written and i am not proud of it.
I played the first level and had extreme headache.
I don't have any mental issues, i enjoy playing Doom Eternal and boomer shooters, never felt bad after them.
But this has a really weird combination of boomer shooter game designs.
It tries to have:
1) extreme high rate of enemy firing like in Ukltrakill
2) have as many enemies as possible like in Serious Sam.
570 enemies in first level, are you kidding me????
Amid Evil also have a lot of enemies (300 max), but mostly you meet 10 at the time in corridors, it only threw 50 of them in big areas. This one throws 60 in every single room. Adding high rate of fire and i couldnt even think where to aim, i was just clicking like crazy
3) Swap weapon system from Doom Eternal nope, it's Ultrakill again, with score system.
4) Huge map with so many different ways to go... and you get lost very easily, you have to use minimap a lot. The problem is most rooms has a lot of similarity, Old Doom games had same issues in some levels. But, excuse me, this is first level and it's already confusing.
5) Music is... just there, not memorable at all, i thought it was on repeat every 10 secs.
6) Guns are good though, except sword, it's useless against hordes. Adding stamina to swinging is not a good option when you have 70 enemies firing at you at high rate and a lot of ghouls running into you.

Overall, throwing everything at player as much as possible all the time is not what makes old FPS shooters great, even Serious Sam and Ultrakill are not that extreme.
I understand that this game is Early access, but i just got so sick, literally, after playing it, i cant even look at the monitor.
I do not have a clue how devs will make this game better.
Buy this game at your own risk.