Recent reviews by froggyfroggyfroggyfroggyfroggyfr

Love the game, avoid playing melee.
After act 1 it feels like they lost the entire design philosophy they made Poe2 for outside of boss fights.

Mechanics go out the window, mob packs are largely uninteractive if you don't just one shot them. Problems for melee include the current melee classes having the worst defensive options as armour/life are largely, largely inferior to the other options

Enemy packs are just zerg swarms of aoes, projectiles, arrows. Made worse by on death aoes, bubbles around enemies specifically to slow, off screen ranged projectile spam, lingering floor aoes and more. There's not much to "get good" when your only option in most packs is to sustain through them or slowly wittle them down from range (and at that point why play melee)

One of the trials to reward you your "ascension" points, requires you to not get hit because of a special life bar they give you. Except when you're melee you're generally taking a hit or two to get your swings off, and the enemies here don't seem properly designed around the mechanic either.

It feels like the only time the games design ideas were considered after Act 1 was during bosses, outside of that they have done the same thing as PoE1 which feels like such a waste of an entire game. Every mob can be easy, then one with a bunch of modifiers zips in off screen and taps you, there's nearly no inbetween.

Or you could just pick something ranged and nuke things as they come on screen and play from safety

The games visuals are really good, it's a massive step up from the other Spike Chunsoft 3d games. The OST is pretty decent too. But now we get into where it falls apart.

The characters are your dangan ronpa tropes dialed up further, there's maybe 2-3 of the main cast currently who don't make me want strangle them. So far I only particularly enjoy the interactions with Haruto/Zen/Ritusto because they don't act like whackos and actually consider and think about things. The rest? One's basically someones feeding kink dialed up to 100.

The main mechanic of this game involves your chars aging over the course of 13ish days to adult hood, dying being cloned and returning to childhood. This would be fine if the progression of the game wasn't tied to doorways that require all 8 chars to be alive.

Walking up a flight of stairs progresses the game by a whole day. So you have to make sure your chars are all young [kill them off on purpose, I guess, then revive?] so that you can actually progress the game. It's a wonky system I'm not entirely enjoying. Aswell as all chars being effectively the same thing, you stick all your side/base skills on 4 party members you aren't using then have 4 fighters. That's the strat for the whole game really.

Exploration doesn't have to be as clunky as it is. Grid based games don't need to be fully true to their inspiration, there's no new mechanics or anything ontop of it. I do however like that you drop items and can pick them back up.

Charging attacks don't feel good, if you google how they work you'll see a vast amount of people asking if they are bugged. You're supposed to let go of the button prior, then press it INSTANTLY on the pink mark to hit the charge. It's also inconsistent in general even when you know how it works.

Then there's the dissonance with the main story, your characters can die, but you will walk over points where that character is suddenly alive and talking for no particular reason other than they probably couldn't figure out a system to make char deaths/scenarios sync up. My Zen died of old age, and he was present for the entire story sequence involving him except the part where he had to be alive to open a door. It feels cheap.

The "conquest" videos are how you learn about each chars backgrounds, but they are forced loosely animated CGs with that cover each of the characters backstories. There are multiple per tiny shorts per dungeon (7 of them where I currently was) and they didn't really particularly do anything crazy. It almost felt like the 2nd one was trying to be "edgy" for the sake of it.

Watching 15ish vids in the span of an hour, and knowing this process is gonna repeat for the remaining 6chars has already burnt me out

Also, the TV chars range from having some genuine funny moments to being beyond unbearable.

It's also not free from that signature "creepy" vibe and it turns out they had to censor it for our release because of certains CGs featuring children.

edit: paid dlcs worth x2 the value of the game is a bit weird this early when it's been popping off
but people can just wear them without paying cause they have 0 anti cheat and it's really easy to do

Has some of the BEST sound design I have ever seen in a game

Current update fixed pretty much every issue with weapons; no more one guy popping an entire server with a revolver 8seconds in.

Much more focus on the social aspect / sabotaging due to the nature of the game, amazing fun.

short game, just install it
it's pretty cute and comfy in a weirdo kinda way

one of those games where you make a decision, then the char who is opposing you makes you feel like you really did pick the wrong one

so far, love it a lot. ost is a vibe, the 3rd eye mechanic is interesting and spices up the world a fairy bit + the chars are pretty damn likable.

if you are homophobic, run.

Great game at it's core, couldn't recommend it to anyone.

At it's best it's a great fun among us alternative, but in it's current state it's, the most racist, actively sexist offensive game in my library. And yes I have Dota and CS in my library. Imagine those games without VAC bans and a worse community.

There hasn't been a single lobby in my last 10-20hrs that hasn't been full of slurs, cheaters or glitchers. My last 3 lobbies have had a guy join, lock every door via hacks, hide the keys, and set every bin on fire with cheats, before instantly ending the round for everyone else! No way to tell who it was either!

You can play private but good luck finding 15-20people

A lot of the fun at first was the interactions with people. it felt like an alternative to SCP SL in a way.

And when you do find that one or two mythical lobby were people don't slur, you'll have a massive percentage of people who don't actually play the game and make it less fun by default.

end game review; they kind of screwed its end game
you'll want to farm things a lot to get their mats
the devs added an extremely easy mode, that /everyone/ farms on
you wont really find any harder difficulty lobbies up, and they give the exact same rewards as the super easy ones

Suffers from MMO questing, stereotypical in the truest sense of the word. Would benefit GREATLY from allowing you to TP directly to the next quest turn in, there's a /lot/ of playtime walking between two places / teleporting.

Gameplay is SOLID. Not the best thing in the known universe but it's good enough that if this DID release as the ARPG MMO that it was intended to be it would've stood out. The weapons are pretty varied but as is true in all games, there's some clear stand outs that near invalidate hte rest.

The range weapons are ungodly clunky feeling to me, they all lack the sort of oomph that you'd think they'd have.

World design is beautiful. Honestly you can see where the budget went. the main city hub is beautiful, so is the overworld but it comes at the exchange of horrible optimisation.


its generally really fun but the super easy mode farming cheese kind of invalidates the need for any sort of gear progression, imo there should have had a limit where it didn't apply to end game bosses/ dungeons

steam deck verified is A LIE

the mixed rating was way before whatever this is

there's something VERY wrong with the performance at times
game is really fun, but you really need to look into what's happening because it shouldn't be this bad globally

you wont attract new players when the game needs stronger than 4070 to run on medium

Final edit: online is deserted. the audio in the desc is a lie

I was removed / banned from their discord after reviewing this. Good way to confirm my points below about criticism (only did bug reports there!)

The lead gameplay dev struggles with criticism and has frequent outlashes. lethal company comparisons send them right over the edge

They want to implement overwatch matchmaking bans(backpedalled now!) if you leave while DEAD. insults people who mention/compare lethal company aswell as has been historically beyond hostile / abusive when people mention the price (which recently, WAS reduced due to the MASS amount of criticism!)

struggles to understand what makes this genre fun and calls critics dumb ♥♥♥♥ drones. the current state of the game is their vision, don't expect more.

i don't see a future for this game even in EA, it's carried 100% by the world

they plan on dropping the game after release

finally "you upset me so i'm taking your virginity" is a post by them

avoid buying IMO

there's no new ideas in this game, you have played it better already. (outside of the visuals)

(edit) Artist response below goes against what the lead dev is saying / acting like to this day.
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It's kind of playable. that's about as much as i can say.

currently random lobbies are being trolled 24/7 because you can instantly end the run by lever pulling

I'll start with the strengths. Then move onto some things that aren't so good.

Visuals.

Games visual design is baller. the level of polish in the map and certain bits of the audio / atmosphere really sell the game. Certain set pieces of this game are much more memorable than you’d expect them to be. The work here is beautiful.

The snowy out door areas in the screenshots may mislead you to thinking there's more going on in this than there is currently, you won't get to experience that at all.

Sound design is generally really strong too, and these two together can carry horror games, but here it just isn’t enough with all the other issues.

The issues.

Enemies.

The enemies are really clunky, the ai is exceedingly linear and don't have much to them. There's nothing "cool" that other monster survival games have.

If you're expecting lethal company levels of uniqueness / polish to each enemy, turn away.

All enemies in this boil down to similar things (except one is blind, another one screams, one appears from vents, she’s currently bugged though). there's not really much uniqueness behind them, which even though this "isn't" lethal company I know why every single one of you is looking at this game.

They all have the exact same ai. They will chase you, know your exact path and then down you. And when you duck under a table and hide they will stare exactly where you are and then leave. The ai is terrible.

Which, compared to it's competitor - (yes these will keep coming, this game isn't LC but the game it's competing with is directly linked)

Bracken makes people scream with the most genuine scares. Yippee bug hoards items and sets up a region you want to avoid / risk. Dogs are blind and make you play around it / have interactions with other things (bait them to your jukebox, or buy items to bait them away from ship). Spiders set up and you have an area that you have to play around. Every enemy in that has a unique idea. None of that is in this game, it's playstation 1 ai towards you. Repeat about every single enemy. LC gives a toolbox of creatures that lead to awesome situations. None of that is here.

Enemy gameplay here itself is incredibly weak, being chased you have one option to dodge an enemy, get under a table. otherwise even after you break line of sight and turn 4 different corners it will find you exacly where you are. Unless you're under a table, then it'll stand right infront of you, stare into your soul and leave.

Leans into DBDs format. Get hit go down , except you do nothing for 12+mins other than crawl if your search buddy goes down too.

And some of the comments by Vy (developer) on their discord with someone who had similar issues to mine, they don't get the expectations of that person regarding unique monster design and it doesn't sound like anything cool is coming either.

Animations / Enemy visuals.

The enemies are the clunkiest goofiest looking things you’ll ever see. The spidey boys movements are clunky with a bizarrely awkward permanent facial expression. It walks like a stick rocking horse.

Chainsaw guy has the awkward carry animation where he can walk for 10+mins with you in his hand and you’re exposed to his face for the entire duration absolutely killing the atmosphere because it’s so awkward.

Being hit is like walking into an invisible hurt box with no visual feedback for anything. There’s no “dodging” swings, when an enemy is close you get hurt. You only really tell you got hit because of the audio or instantly falling onto the floor. It feels cheap.

Bugs : There's a ton of game breaking bugs at the moment or overall run ending bugs. Desync issues where people aren't seeing the same map. Doors being closed or openned for others. People being left behind by elevators. Items being different for others. Overall the co-op experience isn't very smooth. But they'll fix em for sure.

Sound.

The store page states it muffles audio through walls / echoes. it doesn't. enemies 3 floors above you sound like they are in the room right beside and in front of you. this is maybe the hardest disappointment of it all for me personally. hopefully this gets changed. I bought it thinking I was getting into a game that was purposefully designed around audio / voice, and it’s really not true.

Some jarring issues like enemies don't have any sort of footstep noise with some of the worst animations that go along with it (check out the lanky boy in the trailer, the spider) takes away from the horror a lot.

Some things are REALLY well done, such as the alarms / metal detectors at least.

Gameplay problems.

It's stiff. It's janky.

Some issue's I've had is that in a 12person lobby, its impossible to tell people apart. There's no proper customisation for this, so everyone is near identical

Name tags are tiny and illegible in movement (clips into the chest crouched too)

No indicator mic is working when alive, no indication you need to hold V either.

You can see through things by leaning.

Enemies seemingly freeze up running on the spot 24/7

The biggest thing that seems to kill most people isn't even monsters, it's random holes in pitch black corridors that drop you multiple stories

There isn't really much "co-op" in this. If someone messes up they go down(sometimes a cocoon or hook), you hold E to bring them back and that's it. There's no saving people from things are imminently gonna kill em. No sharing items between you all so people can cover seperate roles, or camera guy to help from afar.

The items feel like a checklist. There's nothing fun/innovative about them and they don't feel good.

You can't deposit scrap til the train leaves. This leads to situations where you / players are too valuable to actually play more. So they afk mostly in the train til the others come back. Because calling the train ends the game for everyone else you don't want to do that.


Also easy to troll, people pull the leave lever instantly

Price point

it's not worth nearly double the price of lethal company. this game is less polished than that game.

respond to the dev;

they were raging today over criticisms even post launch, from price / lc comparisons.

The lead in the disc said exactly what I said about dropping it

The bans were not a joke from them, they are backpedalling now

They were accepting unverifiable footage to perma anyone from the game (record anyone + send a steam ID = ban.).

Their history/creepy comments + being abusive & obtuse to criticism + insulting players aswell as my ban cements this as a game I don't think should be supported

They're doing this to me tomorrow.

edit 20-30hrs in. Absolute GOATED game. Art is godly, the ideas and concepts are nuts. My only complain to this moment is that once you figure out the game it gets too easy, and this is 100% solvable by making the ascensions work quicker and punish you more for using the One Die.

Awesome game, loads of good stuff this year - but DICEOMANCER is a one of a kind gem that is just so polished and well developed and it's RARE to see the amount of love pored into it.

- original review applies ;

Make it work properly with steam deck/controller and you have my soul
(sizes of cards too small, text small, no controller supportt)

Games mechanic is nuts, huge fan of it so far