Recent reviews by Ryan

There's something there with each weapon having 3 evolutions that each have unique branching trees for giving something to discover with successive runs, however every other part of the game is lacking. It feels like the devs got so focused on making this system cool and trying to do something different with the story system that they lost all sight of what makes other survivor games good. I'll break down some of my major criticisms:

Characters -
At no point was I excited about unlocking any of them. I have no favorite, and none of them are exciting to go back to. The decision before a run should be 'what kind of build do I want to do and what character has an interesting way of facilitating that?' Instead in this game it just comes down to picking the only one that is generally useful because it has a dodge roll ability. The rest of them are either incredibly lackluster or even detrimental to make use of their skills. The newest character that switches between sun and moon is just terribly designed. Choose a mode that makes you take double damage or choose a mode that makes you gain less XP? I'd rather choose to not play it. Yes, it has upgrades that lessen the downsides and give slight upsides but they aren't that good, aren't that interesting, and I'd rather spend my level ups on any other weapon/aspect of my character. Which brings me to the next bit..

Leveling Choice -
While I like some of the decisions here, chiefly that if one upgrade is going to be an option it always displays the alternative choice it locks you out of if there is one, overall it is a very shallow system. Each weapon has a three row branching tree, so you have an initial upgrade that branches into two choices, and then 3 at the bottom row that branch from the previous 2. Then based on the bottom one you chose, the weapon evolves and gains a 2nd tree of the same size and shape. This amounts to 6 level ups spent on it, and then a bunch of trees that have about 4 or so nodes in them. The problem is the amount of levels you get in a game does not really give you any interesting choice or builds here. You generally get to max out one weapon, maybe get another one decently progressed if it has come up enough, and then just have some generic good stuff with a couple stronger boss abilities. So every run feels equally shallow in choices whilst being easily comparable in power level. You just don't get enough levels, and the game's main feature makes this even worse.

Story Book -
I saw in another review the developers responded that they only expected people to have a few twists added to their run, and was absolutely baffled. The game is so mind-numbingly easy and boring that I think most players will make the same assumption that adding more twists is the intended (and frankly it is the only way) to increase difficulty. So as the lack of difficulty wears on you, you will continue stacking twists, and the game even encourages this by making the main meta reward based off how many twists you have in the run. The big problem here, though, is that the twists range from completely irrelevant to absolutely awful to play with and damning to your story if you choose one that turns out to be way worse than you anticipated, forcing you to start from scratch. This headline feature just sucks, I don't want to engage with it and seeing as the asynchronous multiplayer is entirely based around it, it is equally pointless. You can skip the twists if you don't like any of the options, but seeing as you can only add them after a run and (as I'm about to discuss) run out of meta progression without grinding twists, skipping the twist amounts to having wasted your time having even done the run.

Meta Progression -
It kind of just sucks. You fill out 80% of it within a few super easy runs (making the game even easier), and then are locked out of the last few options unless you engage in stacking twists or grinding like crazy. The options are somehow less interesting than Vampire Survivor's basic meta upgrades, with a section that is greyed out with no explanation of if it's just not in the game or there is some hidden thing you need to do to unlock it. One of the options is particularly egregious, which is the option to speed up the game because they clearly must have recognized the base speed is way too slow and dull. Can you please just balance the game around being fun and well paced? It's far too easy to make it so fast you may as well be playing an idle game since there is no way you can actually respond to danger if you somehow come close to losing, and by default it is painfully slow. So you have to scale it yourself to what level you want but none of them feel good because the game is just boring and when you hit the point of wanting it to just go faster so you can get your meta progress and spend less time playing it... why bother playing the game?

Gameplay -
My final point goes back to just failing to learn from the genre. Survivor games are generally very accessible and can almost all be played with controller and have options to enable auto targeting/aiming or allow you to do manual. There is no controller support and everything has to be manually aimed and clicked. I play intense action games and RTS games like Starcraft, but I don't play these survivor games to have to click like crazy or do bow charge attacks or whatever. These are supposed to be lower effort but still tactical and challenging. This game just isn't any of those. Oh, and before I forget - you might be swayed by seeing the cute pets. Don't be, they're the low effort option but they are visually and mechanically absent. You can get a bunch of buffs to the pets abilities but it's random which pets you get, they have long cooldowns by default, and they are incredibly pointless. There's not much going on visually, they didn't seem very powerful unbuffed (I admittedly never even bothered to do a pet run because they just seem super lame), and frankly I think they're in the game just to sell it as having a 'cute' build.

Conclusion -
This is the first survivor game I regretted my purchase for, even at $4.99. I loved Project Winter and bought into this because it's the same studio. I won't make that mistake again, this is just painfully unaware of the market and feels like it should be Early Access rather than a full release. I've finished all the content that isn't grinding the twists in less than 5 hours. It isn't done, it isn't fun, and you should look towards the much more promising alternative survivor games coming out in the next couple months.

If the developers read this - I understand how some ideas led to many of these problems and appreciate the attempt at many of them. I even think many of my criticisms can be fixed and there is something there to be salvaged. However, this should not have hit release like this. Other survivor games have 10+ hours at EA release, let alone full release. This isn't there and a lot of it feels like it needs a lot more time in the oven with a lot more feedback. I would like to no longer regret buying this at some point. I would also be open to having a discussion about my thoughts on the game, I do have game dev experience.

I am thoroughly impressed by this game so far. It has launch issues, but they seem to stem from the game being far more popular than they were prepared for and overloading the servers. Even their website was hard to get onto when I tried.

The game takes the best parts of Path of Exile and Diablo 3, and blends them together in even more interesting ways than they were originally done. The attributes and way the game handles different mechanics like status effects are all very interesting and new, there's a good variety of very fun and customizable skills so far, and I've been engaged with the story and setting since the start. The appearance customization also seems amazing, though I haven't gotten far enough to really bother touching it yet.

I hadn't heard of this game before today, and I usually try to keep more up to date on upcoming games than most, but this is by far my favorite ARPG. I love the ideas of ARPGs but I rarely get very far before making new characters and getting bored, and I don't see that happening here. This game brings me back to the feeling of playing Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance back when it wasn't dated and terrible. Play this game, support these developers.

A stellar souls-like metroidvania set after the betrayal of the clones. I did not generally find the combat as challenging as From Software's games, but it is very satisfying and captures the feeling of playing a Jedi better than any other Star Wars game. The story is really compelling and journeys through a lot of references to some of my favorite Star Wars stories and settings. As for the level design, it is the best feature by far. So much of the game is coming into a fantastically composed area and seeing really interesting places or a chest you can't quite get to yet, and then finding your way to that spot later in the area or even later in the game when coming back with new abilities. The abilities and mechanics that are introduced as you play through make such a rich, rewarding experience with areas that used to be a pain to get through now being a blast and puzzles that make you feel clever when you finally finish them.

My biggest critiques for the game are 1. I want more and 2. the cosmetics you find hidden throughout areas are really underwhelming (maybe it is just me, I don't like the poncho look and all of them are variations on the poncho, mostly with very dull coloring), which is a shame since the puzzles and navigation to find a lot of them are really great.

10/10 If we continue to get Star Wars games like this then the movies don't matter any more.

The game has some pretty neat ideas and I appreciate games that try to be deliberate and atmospheric. It is the kind of game where the more active your imagination and the less you know about it, the more exciting it is until you start peeling back the layers and seeing what the game really has to offer. Exploration really starts to dull when you discover just how randomized much of the loot is and how unexciting unique pieces (and most places) really are. Combat starts punishing and then quickly becomes very predictable and easy as you learn to control the game and enemies very limited attack patterns. The progression/classes/magic all leave much to be desired, and the story isn't really that exciting.

Couple all of this with how they've pulled a Skyrim and released a Definitive Edition that requires you to have owned the DLCs (which have had terrible reviews since launch) to get for free when the game is already overpriced, and that the modding community has entirely moved to the DE, and I have zero interest in supporting these developers. The worst part is they set it up so it lists it as the DE in my library and on the store page for it, but I don't and there is no easy way for me to upgrade. I would have to either buy the DLCs I have no interest in, or pay the full price of the game again. So it wasn't until trying to play the game with a friend who had also bought it years ago but left it in his backlog that we discovered we both have the wrong copies of the game to experience any of the updates, improvements, or mods.

I don't know how more people aren't annoyed about this, it's absurd for an indie developer to do this knowing full well the backlash AAA titles have received for doing similar tactics in the past.

Was a promising game on launch that they chose to stop developing because they didn't see a massive resurgance of players after one minor content update. Hard to trust devs who don't understand that it takes a bit more effort than one patch to make a game good enough to be revitalized.

henry should buy it, because its good.

If you miss the 'simplicity' and straight up fun, sandbox type gameplay that existed during the PS2's golden era, then this is the game for you. It brings back all of the best qualities that games these days are missing. No more disappointment in the lack of content, playstyles, coop/versus, optimization, or goofy gestures. This is just a fantastic game where the goal is only to have fun however you want. Not to mention it has challenge, customization, and a massive selection of weapons to choose from. Not satisfied with the already massive amount of content? There's a large variety of DLC to expand whatever area of the game you want more of.

TL;DR Just buy the game, it's great.

Saw a random update for this on the store page, realized the game is exactly the same as when I bought it years ago, and still isn't even as good as the mod was. Then proceeded to see how poorly the developers have (allegedly) treated customers who question this, and got a big reminder that purchasing this was a waste of money. Don't do what I did, there are several alternatives if you came here for this type of game, and if you want a zombie game there are about a million way better singleplayer and multiplayer zombie games.

Fantastic game for both aspiring game developers and gamers who want to know more about the process, or just mess around swapping parts between your pets. Although short, the game is very entertaining all the way through and there's a lot of room for replayability and messing around.

Played training mode with unlimited boost.

Flew car like a jet.

11/10 would batman car again.