Recent reviews by Loki Odinsson

Here's the deal: the very nature of this game is punishing. It's a full PvP extraction genre game. However, it has several systems which make rebuilding and customizing gear very accessible. This is especially true if you actually do proper risk reward analysis instead of bringing your life savings into a run.

Overall this is a strong contender for this genre as it grows. The most obvious comparison is Dark and Darker which is currently further along in development. Dungeonborne generally has a bit longer duration to player encounters, but it really depends. Visually, Dungeonborne also has a cleaner user interface and animations.

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The following is a meta-analysis and will change as time progresses:

For those of you who are older than 20 years old: mastery is dead. The way that people play games now has them demanding that core fundamental abilities provide a baseline skill floor to create balance. This is in part because information is easy nowadays. If a strategy exists it will become dominant because of information transfer speed, so core balance of games is a direct comparison to prevalent meta-knowledge. In the past, knowledge transfer was slow and tedious so it was required that you look inward. This meant that a vast quantity of moderate strategies presented themselves simultaneously. Nowadays, people look outward. Knowledge is external. Blame is external. Game balance is determined by the external. Nowadays fewer stronger strategies develop simultaneously.

Part of this game is gear-based, which is a multiplier of player skill. For classes or strategies without developed builds this creates a contextual mis-balancing. Strong strategies exist, but when people see them as too tedious or too far removed from the skill floor it becomes divisive. "Sweaty" "Try-hard" "Competitive" "Abusive" "Exploiter" Pick your insult, it's as old as time. The reality is that there are plenty of other strong strategies waiting to be found, but most people demand only numerical balance and refuse to change their strategies.

The fact of the matter is that the game is early access and some balancing issues do exist. However, the division between the floor and the ceiling is mostly comprised of player skill issues within the same gear score level (and every balance patch specifically tries to address this). Each patch has been a serious improvement primarily in terms of targeting non-mastery related issues (gear/statistical issues). But (and this is probably a bug) occasionally matchmaking is imperfect and puts low and high gear score together. I have never once had this occur so it may be a regional or time-of-day issue or a misunderstanding. (If you come in with partial gear but with some of it high rarity, then you can kill players and mobs and equip a more full kit of higher rarity gear. Some people probably die to those people and think they queued in with that whole kit. Given that most people in lower matchmaking I've seen have completely unrelated bonuses when I kill people with better gear this is likely the case or those people are making really bad decisions.)

Specifically in recent patches they have addressed certain edge-case abuse strategies (heirloom interaction speed stacking), and added counter-play options against dominant powerful classes (fire flask debuff / pyro abilities). The average player who does not understand simply sees "weak class nerfed, strong class unnerfed" because interactions do not exist until someone else provides the meta-knowledge. That or some flavour of "just make my class stronger instead of requiring me to use game mechanics/items". Seriously, people say the craziest things.

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Long story short: the game is fundamentally strong and weekly balance patches directly address the issues between gear-balance and mastery-balance. This is incredibly difficult given the modern nature of game meta-knowledge and they're doing great. The genre is punishing, but this game has strong catch-up mechanics.

Do not listen to the whinging of other reviewers. Mastery is dead, so people are afraid to try strategies that aren't already meta. That or they complain because they have not been taught how to experiment successfully without external knowledge. Most players simply do not comprehend the most basic synergies and mathematical comparisons. If you want to do well you need to adapt your strategy to the situation. No amount of numerical upgrades to your class will change that requirement (without completely breaking game balance). Those types of changes only affect players with higher skill levels. Every balance patch has been very good.

This game is great but too short. It really needs a boss rush mode either from the main menu or as a bonus for finishing the game (so you can actually enjoy testing new spells against tougher enemies instead of just dummies).

( 9.75 / 10 )

This is one of the best platformers ever made, and it's a shame it took me so long to play it.

( 10 / 10 ) Gameplay

Before I played this, I had played the original Pico-8 version and that was already a good game. This expands heavily on that game including more subtlety the the controls, new mechanics, many hidden areas, bosses, and even the original Pico-8 version of the game hidden away in one of the levels.

Although the game is difficult for a platformer, most of the actual difficult content is hidden or optional along the main route of many of the levels. Strawberries are indeed optional, but anyone who likes to challenge themselves will work for them anyway.

In my 9 hour of playtime I beat the game and collected about 2/3 of the strawberries along the way. I could have beaten it much faster but I wanted to collect the strawberries. I will come back to this game and try to collect them all and find the hidden content as well, but with Elden Ring coming out soon I suppose that will need to be delay a bit more.

This is absolutely one of the best designed platformers out there, and if you like platformers you should play this game. It is difficult but fair in the way it presents difficulty and optional challenge across each level.

( 10 / 10 ) Story

Although the core philosophical tone is quite obvious—proving the capability of oneself by literally climbing a mountain—the story isn't literally about "personal achievement" (or whatever reason real mountaineers have). It is about internal struggle, fear of failure, depression, self-loathing, and a desire to prove oneself in spite of all that. It is a transformative journey before it is a journey of personal achievement.

Although the dialogue options that are presented are essentially meaningless in terms of gameplay, they offer an opportunity for personal expression in terms of the game's philosophical journey, and help you explore what it means to feel all of those things as you climb the mountain. This is perfect for a game designed around mastering controls with subtle impact and a high skill ceiling over ever increasing level difficulty.

( 9 / 10 ) Aesthetics

I get that not everyone likes pixel graphics, but the graphical theme is both cohesive and provides clear indication of several important details.

Strong colour changes are presented to determine the current state of your abilities, and across levels to indicate threat and advantage. It is clear what parts are safe and dangerous, and objects don't typically share too much of the same colours as any other object. All in all this leads to a high readability among the many things that show up in each level.

Among all of that, the use of sprite warping and particle effects match the pixel aesthetics without being distracting and help to add weight to many of the game's actions. I remember back when Game Maker Studio had introduced particle effects and although it was cool at the time, most games that used it ended up with effects that clearly didn't suit a pixelated experience (which is most of those games). Celeste does not have these problems; all special effects enhance the experience rather than serving as a distraction.

The only reason why this is a 9 instead of a 10 is that, while the graphics are a cohesive work, unless a game has pixel graphics rivaling some of the amazing sprite and animation work of Symphony of the Night I can't really rate it higher than a 9.

( 10 / 10 ) Subtlety

Game design, level design, and core gameplay are all good, but the real meat that makes this game is the subtlety in the application of the controls. Part of what makes a platformer good is seeing a challenge and knowing that there are many ways to complete it. Among these routes there are multiple layers of optimization.

Being able to jump past the edge of a ledge, knowing how to extend the lifetime of your wall grabs, changing the dash jump trajectory by deciding which to press first (jump or dash), and so on. Those are only the techniques I figured out myself, and I'm sure there are more tricks available on the internet.

Welcome to Darksburg, a place where everyone who plays it claims to be an expert and makes fallacious comparisons in order to trick themselves into being upset with the game.

I'm sure you've read it somewhere: Left 4 Dead meets Diablo meets Rogue... except that's not right, at all. It's Left 4 Dead from a top down perspective in a fantasy setting. "Top down fantasy game" is not the full qualifier for being a "Diablo genre" or "Rogue genre" game. Not only that, but each Diablo game is technically in a different genre from the other. The entire comparison is built upon errors. It shares literally only one feature with Rogue, randomization, and there are a lot of features required to meet the bare minimum of being a Roguelike.

Now that we've established that the vast majority are drawing incomplete or straight up incorrect comparisons, we can describe what Darksburg actually is. Once we do that, we can illustrate how the only reason this game is doing poorly is because of the vicious cycle that poor reviews create on a multiplayer focused game. That's right, you, with the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ opinion and review, are at fault.

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Imagine you're playing Left 4 Dead, there are a limited number of missions, puzzles, and enemy types. It's well designed, and it's fun. You play it on the rare occasion with people you know. Congratulations, there is nothing wrong with that. The fact that Darksburg is played in a different setting, and from a top down perspective are completely meaningless to comparison. Using those things to compare to Diablo and Rogue are meaningless. Stop making the comparison. The core gameplay is exactly the same to Left 4 Dead.

Guess what? Darksburg has at least the degree of content of Left 4 Dead. That's right, it has more. It has several missions, a larger number of playable characters which also have unique abilities, various puzzles, and various special enemies. Now we can get to the part where it has more content: when you play through missions you collect various degrees of currency and progression (think: experience) used to unlock various bonus or modifiers to your characters, both short term (in each individual gameplay session) and long term (in every gameplay session).

It's just Left 4 Dead with more customization, but now we've created a psychological shift. Now that we "grind" for "items" and "skills" we've made a comparison to Diablo somewhow? You in no way manage, modify, or even pick up items and abilities in the way that Rogue or Diablo does. There is no permanent death. Simply because you play "per session" is not a comparison. That's how pretty much any other session game works, this is not a special qualifier. Just because you "feel" like you "need to grind" for completely superfluous bonuses to the core experience you think that you're "missing out" if you don't do so. You're literally tricking yourself into feeling worse because there are things you don't have, which I am going to point out again, are not required to beat any content. They are purely bonus. They are there to give you extra things for playing it, a feature that Left 4 Dead does not even have. This way you can continue to crank the difficulty up on successive playthroughs.

That's right, Darksburg has more content than the core comparison you can actually make to this game, yet everyone claims that Darksburg has little to no content. Why is that, again? Psychological error and drawing comparisons to games and genres that this game is not. The upset is entirely in error.

To compound the mistake, because everyone likes to claim the same completely false comparisons that everyone else does it creates a pattern where people play the game less and less. This has the effect of convincing less and less people to play, which makes multiplayer less and less feasible. If you ever think it's a good idea to give a multiplayer game a bad review because there aren't enough people playing the game, ♥♥♥♥ you. If you think that's a good idea, you're a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ idiot. Stop it immediately.

In summary, you and your ♥♥♥♥♥♥ opinions are responsible for convincing people the game is bad and ruining the multiplayer feasibility, not the game. Thanks, and go ♥♥♥♥ yourself.

[ 4.67 / 10 ]

A game about slinging spells at hordes of monsters. Not really unique, but the spellcrafting system is. It has a lot of high hopes but falls short when actually getting into the shallow combat.

[ 3 / 10 ] Gameplay

This entire game can be summarized simply: You run in circles and fire missiles. Sometimes you just bump into enemies and they hit you. If this happens enough times you die.

Aiming is difficult because at the start your missiles are tiny. The game really wants you to be bad at everything so it can show you how awesome you are later when presumably the gameplay becomes easy because of how much more powerful you become. It doesn't even matter how interesting the events and unique skills are because of how poor the ramp up is, unfortunately. There is not actual complexity when and how you attack, or when and how you defend yourself. Hold your mouse button down and shoot at things. Eventually you'll RNG into a better offense spell and simply spam that one instead. There isn't really any thought necessary to the combat itself, despite the thought required to pick your spells.

The best thing about this game is that it breaks the monotony with events, but they don't come often enough.

[ - / 10 ] Story

There really isn't any, but the game's entire focus lies somewhere else.

[ 6 / 10 ] Aesthetics

Lots of things on their own look really good for a pixel game, but it's hard to actually focus on anything given the pacing of the game's combat. Some things don't look quite as good due to them just being stretched from a smaller size. I liked the way the particle effects worked, though.

[ 5 / 10 ] Subleties

This game is designed very interestingly. There are a surprisingly large number of spells. Unfortunately a lot of them are basically the same when you begin to put them into categories. Missiles, AoEs, melee attacks, buffs, etc. It's not really clear what you're making when you combine runes together, especially since all the single rune abilities are ALL missiles. I wish I could properly explore and appreciate the work that went into designing all the spells, but there isn't a clear direction for why those spells were chosen, because there isn't anything actually inherent to a given rune. You'd think that it matched what your rune level was, say X rune increases damage, so X rune spells are usually damage dealers. This is not consistent because you can level up a spell's runes individually, and that same rune could do a different thing for different spells, and may be different than what your personal rune level of that same rune does.

[ 8.25 / 10 ]

[ 9 / 10 ] Gameplay

Fast paced, tight controls, punishing and rewarding combat. Down to its core there is a lot of stuff to memorize and master.

[ 8 / 10 ] Story

While the core gameplay goes straight from home to dungeon ad nauseum there is a nice intro to set up world building, and there are a bunch of NPCs even just in town to help build the world along with their utility. Some NPCs are enchanted objects, which helps the world feel more magical.

[ 8 / 10 ] Aesthetics

Simple and consistent pixel art style. It is easy to tell what type of spell you are casting or seeing based on the visuals. Each boss has a tileset and colour scheme to match. Enemy moves are clearly telegraphed and easy to understand.

[ 8 / 10 ] Subtlety

While the game has a lot of stuff going on with randomization it really isn't that relevant. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, because the game really just wants to focus on really tight combat. It only uses the randomness as a vessel to keep you on your toes enough that you can't just get into a habit and zombie through the whole game. It is just enough to keep the game interesting for those who are invested in mastering the combat mechanics.

[ 8.25 / 10 ]

At it's core this is a top down action hack and slash game. It is designed to be played in multiplayer, to truly experience the chaotic full friendly-fire the game wants you to experience. It has a unique spell casting system, and a reasonable amount of customization.

[ 10 / 10 ] Gameplay

Clear simple gameplay, with emergent complexity, just like the first. This game is an improvement in every way. There are technically a few more combos that do unique things. Better quality of life features with full level and item select. The only thing this game needs is more DLC.

[ 7 / 10 ] Story

Not much has changed from the first. It's basically the same type of plot hook.

[ 8 / 10 ] Aesthetics

Nice clear consistent over-the-top cartoony. Very silly and humourous. All just like the first.

[ 8 / 10 ] Subtleties

This game like the first one start as though they are trying to be puzzle games, but quickly you realize they are a combat game. Not necessarily bad, but some people will feel overwhelmed. This is probably intended. The core differences that make this game technically better than the first is that everything is a lot more balanced. There is a cooldown between using magicks so you can't just spam Teleport, and I'm not talking about "Focus," the mechanic linked to your hotkeyed magicks. I mean when you actually punch them in. It seems some people think that this feature was removed for the hotkeys, not realizing that you can do both.

The existence of this game is an inevitability. It's practically a monument to what the genre has become... and it's horrible.

Before the review: a history lesson.

Rogue. Classic game about exploring dungeons and managing the items collected as resources, incidentally permanent death. The game was old, so of course death was permanent. This game has inspired many games. Hack/Nethack, Moria/Angband, ToME, etc.

From here we get Diablo. Originally criticized for being a real-time Rogue-like, as though doing such a thing was "against the rules," but the end result was good. Dark atmosphere, magical items, permanent character modification through shrines and books, resource management, etc. It nails the Rogue theme while being a real-time game instead of turn based. It's funny comparing the response to that game's release when nowadays "Rogue-like" has nothing to do with Rogue. Even games like Diablo are considered their own genre...

But that's because people are taking about Diablo 2. Diablo 2 is the game which primarily defines the "Diablo genre." Unlike Diablo 1, Diablo 2 focuses more on loot treadmills and unique character class features. The game is designed entirely around the core principle of "character advancement." Eventually the game developed a ladder system, used by Diablo 3, and used by Path of Exile for their mini-expansion release schedule. The idea was to get people to play forever by experiencing progression over and over.

Diablo 3 takes this one step further by completely distancing itself from what made the first game good, and instead redefines itself as an action game instead of a horror, resource-management game. While Diablo 3 does have interesting decisions you can make to make your character interesting and unique, the designers later decided to let go of this feature of the game that still existed in Diablo 2. Instead it pretends to give you this feature, while actually forcing you to use only the "item sets" that exist if you want to "compete" at the same level as other players. I could write a book about this topic, but we're talking about Hero Siege here.

To finally review Hero Siege, it would be like if you took Diablo 3, and continued the trend of homogeneity and simplicity one step further. Items and classes are so streamlined that basically all you do is equip items with bigger numbers, and level up your health and damage. It goes on forever.

You don't get to decide what systems you utilize to do damage, or be defensive. At least even Diablo 3 got a dodge roll in the console port. Games like Path of Exile and Grim Dawn, which are more keen to remain similar to Diablo 2 have this complex system based on the concept of "damage trinities." Fire Emblem is known for using this method to force the player to make tactical decisions instead of brute forcing your units. Certain types of strategies are weaker and stronger against other encounters. Finding ways to design your character to have as many strengths as possible and as few weakness as possible is what makes a game like Path of Exile and Grim Dawn good. Strip all of those features out and you get Hero Siege.

This game is mindless and bad. I would not pay more than $1 for this.

If this game presented itself as a bullet hell game like Enter the Gungeon this review might be different. However, unfortunately it utilizes the same psychological trap of loot treadmills and false agency to convince you that the bland random generation and chaotic gameplay is unique and rewarding.

Don't play this game.

Precursor: I received this game from a Humble Bundle, and I only played Singleplayer.

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Positives first; why this game is good:

> Abilities that reflect skill based gameplay
> Variance in playthroughs by random generation to prolong replayability
> Ramping difficulty as you play
> Lots to unlock

Interesting game concept, probably more fun with multiplayer (never tried it)

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Now the reason why I will never play this game ever again; the negatives:

> The pure number of enemies this game expects you to fight regularly is in direct contradiction with the way the character abilities work; you cannot be expect to dodge over 50 enemies with a dodge ability on a 4 second cooldown.
> The random variance would be cooler if it was more than just the exact same levels with the objects placed in different locations.
> The ramping difficulty does scale well with player skill expectations, but difficulty is artificial. Rather than sending the same number of more clever enemies, it just sends exponentially more of them. This is lazy design, and as mentioned already, directly conflicts with ability design.
> There may be lots to unlock but it takes an extremely long time to unlock anything, making it feel like every time you do unlock something it's a feeling of "finally" rather than excitement to continue playing.
> Due to the way that abilities are generally useless due to the nature of how enemies are sent to you, the strength of your character is ultimately determined by the quality of items found, meaning that player agency means next to nothing when what matters ultimately is the quality and quantity of items the game makes it easy for you to collect. It may feel great when you get everything, but it also means it's not up to you how well your game plays out. You just have to run through a bunch of playthroughs until you get lucky.

Basically, good concept, very bad execution. I will not play this again.


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Addendum: An argument can be made that the more you rely on player skill, the less of an impact that items are allowed to have. Numerically this is true. Functionally this is not. If an item provided a unique type of function, rather than a magnitude of a function, then it would be less impactful in making player skill irrelevant. It would actually--in this case--simply influence the way that a player performs but not necessarily how well.

In order for this game to be even remotely up to the standard people like to claim--roughly "platformer Dark Souls" or similar--then it requires that all quantities must be scaled down, because it distracts from the finer performance of player vs AI, and exacerbates the necessity for reliance on "snowballing" from good drops, and getting lucky with a high quantity of them.

Lesson in future game design I suppose.

YES