Recent reviews by Lead ✨

Death Note esque VN about Noriko, who fulfills requests to cause people’s deaths through a website to try to grow her notoriety as “Corpse Girl”. The premise is interesting through its first act and the internal dialogue for the characters is pretty good, but sadly the plot kinda falls apart as it goes. I liked Kojiro so didn’t mind Act 2 shifting to his perspective, but the twists and jarring progression for Act 3 were bad honestly. Ending in general felt like a huge drop in quality compared to the start, but least it’s short

Emi Evans did the OP though which is cool. And it has full English voice acting that’s mostly decent

Positive:

• The open world genuinely feels lively. NPCs all follow schedules and complete their daily tasks, they’ll sit to hang out at taverns, frequently bump into and talk to each other, sometimes argue and pick random fist fights, and they’ll react to Henry in various cool ways. They’ll comment on your clothes and armor, how clean or bloody you are, if you’re selling stolen items (the NPC you stole from and even their family members can notice if you’re wearing it in front of them too), and all this affects your reputation for whatever town you’re in as well as speech checks

Most of the map is dotted with small villages and wilderness, but it becomes even cooler when you reach Kuttenburg for the game’s second area, which is much larger and more dense. It’s not perfect and definitely has its fair share of jank, but for the scale the game is on with next to no load screens it’s amazing that it’s mostly pretty well polished as a whole

• The writing for the main quests, along with the quality of the mocapped cutscene direction, is honestly a new gold standard for RPGs of this caliber. I admittedly don’t have the most accurate memory of the first game beyond being just fine in general, but whatever they’ve done to improve the story presentation here made it much more engaging. And while the first ends pretty abruptly with an unfinished plot, I’m mostly satisfied with how the sequel wraps up

• The characters all around are excellently performed, but I grew to really like Henry in particular and how well he’s portrayed by his actor. Most every quest gives him a bit more charm which really adds up to a lot, and his banter/speech check dialogue is always entertaining. Given the monumental amount of time spent playing as him (not even including the first game also), he’s well fleshed out and I felt a rare attachment by the end

• This game has a staggering amount of content poured into it, and one of the rare RPGs where I felt like taking the time to finish damn near everything there is to do before the credits rolled. I spent just about 100 hours and was rarely ever tired of exploring the map to tackle all the side quests, the majority of which are enjoyable and well worth doing

• I played my Henry as a kleptomaniac that broke into everyone’s house and stole their stuff which is very fun. Stealth AI in general is actually pretty decent, and it’s cool that it tracks how inconspicuous you are when sneaking at night and wearing darker clothes. They’ll even notice when doors are open when they shouldn’t be which is something you have to keep in mind

• The graphics and level of detail is really great on high settings (and it’s still a CryEngine game to boot), but what’s more impressive is that it’s mostly optimized well while the first was pretty well known for being the opposite. Had only minimal performance issues in general on my PC, and it runs good on console too from what I’ve seen

Less Positive:

• As ambitious as the NPCs are, you do notice shortcomings after a while. Specifically how a large portion of them reuse the same faces and voice, which tends to be the case even with relatively important side characters which can definitely be immersion breaking. Sometimes they’ll change voices at random or even mid conversation also, like asking someone to play dice and they’ll sound completely different at the table lol

• Still carries over some traversal jank from the first. Lots of times Henry will get stuck on terrain, or can’t climb stairs for whatever reason. NPCs (and very often your dog companion Mutt) will frequently block your path in doors or staircases also

And the game does get less stable when you reach the second map, like dialogue scenes more frequently messing up or NPCs not moving to places when they’re supposed to. Some quests and activities won’t even trigger objectives properly or progress at all either which can get really annoying. The new patch that just dropped does claim to fix a majority of these issues, though that introduced a couple problems as well that still needs a hotfix or two

• The combat in KCD 1 was ok and the sequel is not much different from that. I think the idea of it works well when fighting single enemies and it’s a bit smoother than I remember, but still falls apart with the lock on whenever fighting multiple at once. And while the challenge is early game when you have low skills and next to nothing to defend yourself with, it’s trivialized when you get decent gear and learn Master Strikes which kinda makes using anything other than swords redundant for most of the game

Progression also felt like it plateaus a bit too quickly if you’re bent on finishing a ton of side quests in the first map, and Henry gets so strong by the time you reach Kuttenberg there’s not much more leveling up your skills can do for you

• Not exactly a negative since I think the realism aspects are cool to ground you to the world more, but honestly it’s inconsequential past the first couple hours or so. Never any shortage of food especially with tavern pots all over the place, and can easily fast travel to beds whenever you need to sleep. I also didn’t really have an issue with the save system, since savior schnapps are always in abundance past a point and the game frequently autosaves with quest updates anyway

• Great follow up to It Takes Two, Hazelight really knows how to make the most of the split screen format in how well they can keep adding on creative mechanics every level with constant shifting of perspective. How they pulled off the last hour especially I have no clue, but was incredibly cool

• The side stories were neat too and give more bite sized ideas next to the lengthier main path, though I do wish there were still the more competitive mini-games ITT had as this essentially replaces that

• Visually, Split Fiction is a step up over its predecessor and the set pieces throughout the game are very well done. I had no bugs or performance issues on PC either despite this being on UE5

• I do think the writing is much weaker than the gameplay though (same as ITT more or less), but was fine. Mio and Zoe are likable enough and the ending itself is nice, but it’s fairly predictable from the start and dialogue in general is pretty cheesy

Dodging and throwing back notes to awesome music along with the acid trip visuals is still the biggest appeal, while the changes to the rhythm combat to make it more RPG esque adds a bit of extra gameplay depth over the first game. But the story is definitely… different? I feel like while the first had the issue of being a bit too similar to Undertale with its characters and direction, it still had an interesting core focus to it with a great ending to tie its themes together. This on the other hand goes for being much more philosophically abstract and weird with the writing where not much of what you’re doing really makes sense, which does make it stand out more I suppose but ultimately felt it was running on the randomness and psychedelic vibes than being cohesive. So the last few hours in comparison don’t land nearly as well for me, but it’s an over the top ride nonetheless and worth it for the soundtrack alone

- I haven’t played much of Crypt of the NecroDancer but this is a unique rhythm game with an awesome soundtrack. It only uses 3 lanes but since all the “notes” are actually enemies with different movements, it quickly gets challenging to follow even on medium difficulty

- There’s a story mode which isn’t all that special narratively, but the art style’s cool and takes you through most of the game’s tracks with boss fights. It also has these cute minigame sections that take inspiration from Rhythm Heaven I’m guessing (something else I still need to play eventually)

- Maintains the excellent sci-fi and character writing of the first game, while improving upon the gameplay formula by expanding from a single space station to several as you try to escape your prior captor who’s constantly pursuing you

- This more or less fixes a gripe with the first which was eventually having a lack of things to do as you wait for new events to trigger. Now there’s more ways to fill for time since you’re always in different areas, whether it’s making money to keep fuel and supplies up or doing contracts

- Erlin’s Eye was a great setting but I really liked that this was more of a ragtag space crew kind of story, the Starward Belt is still fairly contained but very fleshed out with the same quality of descriptive dialogue as the first. And I got attached to the more personal cast, especially Serafin

- The story about being on the run from a crime lord was interesting, though I was a bit underwhelmed by how it’s resolved with Laine in the end. That said, like the first that kinda takes a backseat to the focus on your character themself and their deteriorating body, which is just as affectingly written here

- Contracts is a great addition! Early on they can be tense since you need to be lucky with positive/neutral rolls, and each one was really engaging to try and avoid messing up. They do get kinda too easy by the end as you upgrade your skills, but still enjoyed them all for the writing anyway

- I guess it’s a bit hard to not spoil since it’s only a couple hours, but it’s pretty obvious what kind of game this is for anyone that played stuff like DDLC. I’d say it does a pretty good job setting itself apart mainly cause of the first person 3D anime style, was surprisingly neat

- The concept of switching through game versions with little mini-games and seeing different Mitas was cool, though the spooky bits themselves were kinda eye rolling to me (also that not so subtle PT reference lol)

- Was interesting next to KotOR 1 with focus on your character’s role in the Mandalorian Wars and subsequent exile from the Jedi Order. I liked the darker tone on the effects of the war while critiquing the Jedi’s inaction and the rigidness of the Force

- Goes for a more gray take on SW, though was a bit mixed on that. Kreia was a cool character with how she would discuss the faults of both light and dark side choices, though I often felt like this nuance was at odds with itself since most of the time there’s still only binary good or evil options

- Somewhat disliked most of the planets in this, I can’t quite remember if the first was particularly better on this front but the ones here were just kinda boring to me. But I also think the combat in both KotOR games is really dull so that probably doesn’t help lol

- Worth mentioning I played this with the Restored Content mod. I can’t really compare how much this adds over the base game til I look it up, but as far as I could tell it’s a lot of cut content and fixes ton of its bugs. The PC version even has controller support with it which is nice

❤️

- Flew through both Rogue Trader and this back to back so yeah was pretty addictive… While Pathfinder is fairly standard fantasy stuff compared to RT’s premise (join crusade/fight evil demons), it’s similarly massive in scope with dense well written dialogue

- Ton of quests to do with lot of meaningful choices and plenty of locations to travel on the map. The involved characters and villains for the main story are well done in general, I do wish there was more voice acting but what’s here is mostly good

- You can choose to be an angel, a demon, a trickster, an undead lich, etc and the story reactively changes depending on your decision. How that’s handled is pretty ambitious, while I can’t say how different each path actually is with only 1 playthrough, picking demon made a big impact narratively

- Companions are great (though Nenio I found a bit annoying). Daeran, Regill, and Woljif in particular I liked quite a bit, their characters were most interesting and they had the best banter of the party

- No shame, didn’t care for the actual gameplay and party micromanagement so just avoided engaging with it as much as possible. Lowered the difficulty, modded the crusade mode aspect, and mostly kept it on RTwP simply to speed through combat. Even then, the game still took me over 70 hours to finish

❤️

- Just as interesting a mystery/psychological drama as the first, couldn’t stop reading
- The cast of nuns along with Hedwig’s character and how she continues to unravel remains the highlight of the VN for me
- The soundtrack
- Maintains its unsettling gothic atmosphere
- Not exactly a bad thing but was somewhat unsatisfied on how it ends with another cliffhanger, still leaves off with a lot of questions and not really sure where it’s going with its overarching aspect atm (being vague for spoiler reasons). But can’t wait for Volume 3 whenever it comes