Recent reviews by rane

Tunnel: starting
WSO: panicking
Redline: playing

yep it's go time

Build your empire except you're a thing (?) possessing emperors every few hundred years to get things done.
Also, termites ruin everything.

Marathon: the expert scenario. Will break your knees and gloat about it, but will also lure you in with a very unique, puzzle of a storyline and some really memorable shootouts.

Expect:
- changing allegiances
- challenging combat and difficult maps
- esoteric story twists
- exploring every corner of a map to meet your objective
- a really tough gauntlet of vacuum maps

Possibly the best out of trilogy to just shoot through but also the least interesting by a very wide margin. Levels are mostly straightforward, but you'll need to master the very weird swimming mechanics. Dual shotguns are super fun but not given very often.

Expect:
- loads and loads of bug aliens to splatter
- a variety of narrow and open levels with emphasis on water, swamps and swimming
- actual objectives to complete instead of running to the exit
- some mildly confusing switch hunts

Quirky game that's more claustrophobic adventure than a straight shooter. Unique tone and passable gunplay but needs some tinkering in options menu, especially the controls, to make it more palatable.

Expect:
- loads and loads of bug aliens to splatter
- complex levels of narrow, twisting hallways to navigate
- actual objectives to complete instead of running to the exit
- loads and loads of interesting worldbuilding and twists
- one really damn annoying switch puzzle

All the mistakes of old Resident Evil games with all the flaws of Unity engine.

Calling this a lazy port would be an insult to lazy ports. Comparing what was done with this game to what was done with Untold 1/2 shows how far did fatlus truly fall over the past decade. It's basically AI art upscale with some (badly needed but also very basic) UI tweaks; they didn't even upgrade draw distance, it's still walls blatantly spawning out of void three tiles away. Furthermore the map drawing, the main gimmick of the series, was ported in possibly the worst way possible, with barely usable UI and a plethora of problems. Fully convinced that the only person involved how put any amount of effort into this was Yuzo Koshiro, who remastered his old music.

Apart from porting / "HD" issues the game is still kinda mid. It's better than the previous two technically but it's still very flawed, especially w/r to amount of grind required for the most basic progression. The sea portion of the game is also a lot of effort while being borderline pointless and only worth it for 2 or 3 good Limit Breaks. About the only cool thing about this game is the split route gimmick (with a secret "true" ending), and the classes - but even that on a conceptual level as the classes flip between borderline useless as a main (Monk, Buccaneer), overly gimmicky (Ygg), and turbo overpowered (Ninja).

In short, the only reason to buy any of the "Etrian HD" games is to buy this one, because it at least does something interesting, and was never properly updated, unlike EO1 and EO2.

It's as if one of the great classics of early to mid 90s RPGs were transported to the modern day and got a really solid amount of 2024 polishing, while keeping everything that made those classics special. A trully oldschool experience without the drawbacks, and it's a properly executed cosmic horror to boot!

THE best independent Metroidvania game. Accept no substitutes.

A pretty solid puzzler/metroidvania game. Do mind however that on your own you'll likely get no further than the basic ending, anything past that may require looking for solutions online due to the meta nature of some of the puzzles. I do not like that, but at least the 8 hours I spent in the game were enjoyable.