Recent reviews by Kythlyn

Pretty rough to get this playable in a decent state, but it's still Dark Souls, so it's still brilliant (not you Bed of Chaos; nobody likes you). But at this point, just play Remastered.

I can barely put into words how disappointing this game is. Then again, no game in the series has ever lived up to Dragon Age: Origins. The main thing this game has going for it is some lovely visuals and a couple of talented voice actors. That's about it.

But the game itself is... well... boring. It's just boring. Areas feel disconnected and are linear romps through environments that ping pong between encounters and brief interruptions to traversal during which your companions will be sure to point out every exact thing you have to do to proceed, even with hints disabled. It doesn't feel anything like a world to explore. It barely feels like a game to play. It's more like the player is an employee, dutifully following instructions from one quest to the next, one area to the next, one encounter to the next, one guided puzzle to the next, and all the while the companions jabber on with some of the most condescending and unnecessary dialogue in the series.

It might have been salvageable if combat was fun, but it's a mess of blinding particle effects getting in the way of indicators that display timing for dodges and blocks (the indicators really shouldn't be necessary in the first place). In the very early game before it is too messy it can be fun, but it quickly becomes repetitive and tedious as the number of enemies per encounter increases. The last hope for this game was the story and characters, but they didn't interest me enough to suffer through a few dozen more hours of the gameplay loop, despite my history with the series. At this point I don't have much hope for Mass Effect, or Bioware continuing to exist for that matter. Such a bummer.

Don't let it fool you! You thought this was an RPG? HA! Despite outward appearances, and indeed, a turn-based battle system, Crystal Project is at its core, utmost and foremost, a HARDCORE PRECISION PLATFORMING GAME. Last possible moment pixel jumps? Check. Hopping from one minuscule platform to another? Check! More time spent jumping than fighting? Double check! Swerving mid-jump to wrap around a corner and getting stonewalled and falling so far down that it could take a while just to get another attempt at it? Yup! A "Getting Over It" style section? You betcha! Spending way too much time pondering the inner workings of depth perception in a video game presented on a 2D screen? YEAH BABY! I think you get the idea. But if you like your platformers with a tiny little bit of RPG, this is the game for you!

In all seriousness, this game is a delight, and is all about exploration. Early on I had convinced myself that I had thoroughly explored the small opening area, but once I learned what insane designers the devs were and how to navigate their brand of platforming exploration, I found not just a few, but nearly a dozen well hidden secrets and items. Maybe more! There were so many, I lost count, and it was a joy to find them. Also, despite my earlier remarks, the RPG side of this is really quite detailed. It starts out seeming like the original Final Fantasy, but quickly expands into a Final Fantasy V style system of character customization, with immense variety and plenty of challenges worth building towards conquering. Just don't go playing it expecting the kind of epic storyline we've become so used to in RPGs. Overall, I recommend this game wholeheartedly--even if it does remind me of the worst parts of Alundra.

Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles deserves to be considered alongside games like Slay The Spire, Monster Train and Balatro in conversations about the best deck-building roguelites. Don't sleep on this one if you're a fan of the genre.

This was fun for a while, but didn't hold my interest quite long enough to see it through to the end. Still, there's a lot of good ideas here. Glad I played it.

Playing this in 2025 filled the void left by the lack of an Elder Scrolls VI for me. The worst part of the game is the beginning. You need to suffer through it. But if you get past the intro--to the point that the game proudly displays its title--it gets good. Really good. I was constantly astounded by its scope, its attention to detail, its dialogue, and the many ways you can tackle most of the game's objectives. It's not perfect. Combat could be better, and there are still quite a few bugs. But while I was playing I kept saying the same thing over and over again: I can't believe nobody told me how good this was. Every fan of open world RPGs should play Kingdom Come Deliverance.

The Madonna of Sasau chain of this DLC alone is worth the price of admission. I've been a gamer for 40 years and I've never experienced a quest chain like this before. The later in the game you play it, the better it gets, as many of your past adventures can be relevant. As for A Woman's Lot, it has a decent story to tell. Just try not to activate it immediately after the intro of the base game, or you're basically in for another intro that's twice as long that will have little impact on the main character. It really messes up the onboarding in that case, which is why there are so many negative reviews. But play it once you're settled in, and it's quite good too.

Satisfactory hooked me for nearly 200 hours as I worked through its story and learned its systems. It was jarring getting used to placing massive factory buildings in 3D, and to this day I find it too finicky, but I forgive it entirely because the rest of the game is so fun. I particularly enjoyed focusing on perfect ratios, something I hadn't felt inclined to attempt in other factory games, but it seemed appropriate here. It's so satisfying to over and underclock chains of buildings so that every last resource gets used efficiently. Factorio is still my favorite game in the genre, but Satisfactory is a worthy second!

Beat the campaign on my first try within 30 minutes without ever really understanding anything about the game/10.

I don't want to hear people complaining about Space Age being too expensive (personal hardships notwithstanding) when it might as well be half a dozen expansions for the price of one. The value prospect is off the charts, as the new planets each feel like expansions themselves for how drastically they change the game! One turns the gameplay loop completely upside-down by denying raw resources and instead having the player recycle needed parts from piles of scrap. Another has ingredients and products that spoil, made in buildings that need to be supplied with nutrients instead of power, and challenges the player to clean up spoilage from their production lines, all while defending the factory from a new species of enemies.

The list goes on! Over and over again this expansion impresses with something new, unusual, and delightfully puzzling to work to understand. Space Age multiplies the playtime of a "casual" Factorio game by sixfold, with a constant flow of new mechanics and technologies to unlock and attempt to fathom.

Factorio: Space Age is one of the greatest expansions ever made for a video game. It is essential for any fan of factory automation games.