Recent reviews by Mr. Player Six

Do you really need a review for this?

It's a Supergiant game and it's a sequel to one of the best games in recent history. And somehow, despite being early access, this is even more than its predecessor.

We're not quite up to 1.0 launch yet but as of the time of this writing I feel pretty confident writing a review.

First, a one sentence-summary:

Back as a child in the old country, on cold winter days my grammama would always ask us to help her on Sundays with making the stew that she always told us was the same one that HER gram-

Oh, this isn't a recipe blog. Sorry.

Wayfinder has had a troubled development and has ultimately ended up as a Pretty Good, Actually 3D loot-ish hack and slash-ish psuedo-MMO-ish game.

I realize that isn't a very helpful single sentence. Without getting too into the weeds, Wayfinder is a 3D behind-the-back hack and slash with RPG-like progression for your character and loot-based progression for everything else. You have a handful of archetypes when you first begin the game and will unlock others very quickly as you progress through the main story, which consists of two primary portions: Exploring a larger openworld map (it isn't that huge, we're not talking Assassin's Creed here) to get the lay of the land and then smaller-scale Dungeon dives.

The open world is static. As you explore you'll find some cool hidden secrets, come across quest NPCs and do the MMO-style open world stuff. There's some remnants of the live-service component of the game: You'll sometimes find or start zone-based events requiring you to complete some mini-quest objective (if you've played FFXIV, including the award-winning Heavensward expansion and done any FATEs you know what I mean) to get rewards.

Dungeons are quasi-instanced: They'll be different each time you run into one but the setpieces are very recognizable, think of rooms in roguelites and that kind of game and you'll get the idea. There's a number of random events that can appear (or not) during any given run to give you incentive to do them repeatedly, and you'll often find chests with new gear or weapons inside of them.

That's basically the game loop: Get quest, explore world, find dungeon, do dungeon, repeat. The fun comes from any other RPG with similar progression: You can make the number go up. As you play you'll unlock a number of new weapons. Those weapons fall into archetypes: Sword and Shield, Big Weapon, Gun, and Stabby. Each of those archetypes has a number of weapons inside of it, and they come with a variety of specialized skills unique to themselves. That means you get different skills in your kit depending on which weapon you're using, which can be used to augment the skills your character has by default.

Ugh, there's a lot to unpack here. Six (soon to be seven) total characters. Each character has 4 base skills. Those skills each have extra perks you can unlock with points as you level up. No, you can't take them all. Yes, they're refundable and your characters are customizable for builds. Yes, there's an extra, later talent tree that modifies your abilities further. Yes, these all make the Number Go Up.

Anyway. Armor is straight numerical upgrades (you can glamour to look however you want so it's not a Frankestein's Monster of armor pieces). Weapons are uniformly more powerful as you get them at higher levels, but weapons also have specific slots for you to put enemy Echoes in. Strap in, we're doing necromancy now.

Every enemy in the game, to my knowledge, can sometimes drop their Echo. We're not exactly stealing their souls, but... Look, don't think about it. Enemy echoes are used to put into gear and raise your various stats. While weapons are uniform in their base stats and unique skills, the slots they get for Echoes will change depending on the drop, so you can have two of the same level weapons with entirely different Echo slots. You see the loot grind forming.

If you've read this far, you've already figured if this game is for you or not. It's fun. A bit basic, but the art style is neat and the combat feels responsive, albeit a bit simplistic. For the price, you can do a LOT worse for the time you'll get out of it if you see the story through to current completion.

I've played a lot of FTL. I've played a lot of Slay the Spire. I was not prepared for the emotional damage this game did every time I failed my crew of precious children and blew them up.

Having played a lot of 20XX and now almost 150 hours of 30XX I feel fairly confident in saying this is a pretty good game. If you like Mega Man X style platformers and roguelite elements, you won't find a whole lot to complain about here.

I can't believe they made me like Luke.

An incredible port of a timeless classic

I was a little worried at first when I heard that Secret Legend was getting an updated rerelease (now called Tunic for some reason) but all of those concerns were unfounded. The dev went to great lengths to make sure that this version is as close to the original as possible, including using the original, non-localized language in a lot of places. It's alright if you're not a native-speaker though, the game's pretty intuitive and you can figure out what you need to do if you pay close attention!

There are two clever nods that I want to point out, too: First, when viewing the in-game instruction manual (really clever usage of the scans from the OG booklet that came with the game!) you can use the right stick to get a peek at the game screen behind it, and they revert to the original graphics. Secondly, they even recreated the "phantom save file" bug, using the same inputs as the old cartridge.

In short, if you never got to play the first release of Secret Legend (and considering it never released outside of its developing country, most people didn't) this version is a treat.

The best ship-based room-clearing storytelling in gaming today.

I love my goober polyhedral friends.

I've only spent an hour with OVERWHELM so far but it's been a heck of an hour.

Getting out of the way early: This game is not long. I only have one hour logged and I've managed to kill 4 of the (presumably) 5 bosses. The map isn't particularly big and I imagine most people will be able to beat it before hitting the two hour mark.

Let's talk about what this game does well, though: Atmosphere and tension. The map isn't big, but enemies are randomly positioned on every playthrough. You die in one hit, and you only have 3 lives, so you can't just comfortably zerg your way to a boss chamber and clear it. Part of the appeal of the game is that with every boss you defeat, the enemies in the rest of the game will get empowered in some way. You won't ever really feel comfortable, is what I'm saying.

The game knows how to ratchet tension up. The game will pretty liberally checkpoint you in the event you do die, but each respawn brings a bit of additional issue. Your UI will begin to fog around the edges, blocking your view of how much ammunition you have. Ammo is only refilled in boss chambers and back at the central hub, so every shot counts. On top of that, your gun will begin to tick alarms when your ammo total is depleting. It's unnerving to say the least.

$8 might be a bit much for a game this brief, but there's certainly something to be said about what it offers. If you're looking for a retro-styled shooter that will raise your blood pressure between every round, you can certainly do worse.

THE EDIT:

I finally finished the game, with 2.5 hours logged according to Steam. A couple of asterisks there, though.

- The game's random nonsense gets a lot worse at the end of the game.
- The game's "Assist Mode" is pretty excellent: You are not penalized for using it beyond the knowledge that you had to use it.
- There is a segment near the end that can require you to die multiple times, which makes it nearly impossible without assist mode

I threw in the towel after getting cheesed to death when I was 4/5 crystals and making my way to the final boss; An enemy with a specfic attack appeared as a specific location and it was practically impossible for me to protect myself. Vague, I know, but I don't want to reveal a lot.

Let me be clear: There is nothing wrong with turning on Infinite Lives when you finally break down. You can still complete the game and as far as I'm aware, there's no difference in the final sequences. Considering you can turn on or turn off Assist Mode at any point in your game without resetting or restarting, I'm halfly confident in figuring there's no change in the end.

Overall, I enjoyed this game. I haven't stepped back in since finished but I feel again fairly confident that there isn't much to return to: The map is cleared, the enemies are dead. If there's anything post-game I'll update this review again to mention it.

Summary: Satisfying experience tempered by last-moment bullcrap. Maybe worth your money if you like the experience, but I imagine most will play, enjoy, then uninstall.

I like this game. A lot.

It is what it says on the tin: Come expecting Mega Man X style of gameplay, stay for the rogue-lite randomness and item pools. There's a good bit of variety and learning curve in the game, and the items and weapons feel pretty good once you're used to them. Aiming a couple of the boss weapons is incredibly unintuitive, but this game lends very well to experimenting with differnent things to get used to how they work.

95% of my time so far was spent in the Beta, by the way (which was lovingly tended to for an incredible amount of time; This was a great example of Early Access Done Right even in the year of 2017). There's a lot of final touches I haven't seen yet that I'm sure I'm overlooking, but there's one particular pair of points I want to address.

By default, falling into bottomless pits won't kill you. This is good! It means you get to explore a bit and aren't heavily penalized for falling off of things. There's a lot of moving platforms, and a lot of enemies that fly, and you're not screwed just because something came on screen at the worst time. Falling into a pit seems to only ever deal 1 point of damage, and then resets you on the last bit of stable ground you were standing on. Fun!

...until you get into the final levels. These are the Wily Stage equivalents; Utilizing everything you know and your best reflexes to topple challenges that expect you to be able to respond to them. That's where my biggest problem lies with this game. At the risk of sounding like a scrubby scrub who scrubs, the final bits feels overly reliant on platforming over bottomless pits with no solid land "checkpoints." This isn't inherently bad, but if your run didn't give you any kind of movement speed or maneuvering ability (double jumps, enhanced jumps, better dashes, whatever) you can feel unfairly penalized for not being able to move fast enough. I've had more than a few runs end because the spinning platforms were blocked by laser barriers flickering every half a second and my only way out was a series of temporary platforms (Mega Man WHOOOOOOMF blocks) that didn't match the timing on either the mobile platforms I had to maneuver through or the blinking laser barrier.

Losing a ton of health because of "difficulty" isn't fun, and the final stages aren't particularly short! If you're lucky you'll get the tools to help you, but it does feel unfair at times due to the random pools of platforms and sequences.

As mentioned, I like this game a lot. I'd like it a lot more if I didn't have runs end simply because I dared to pick up certain upgrades, and as an effect I made the final platforming challenges nearly impossible. I'll continue to work on improving my own play in the meantime, but the combination of "haha, you're too slooooow" sections is a bummer.

Buy and play this game. It's great, and the dev team legitimately cares about it. Be better than I am at it and downrate this post as salty baby tears.