Recent reviews by ryndoki

Honest to god some of the most fun I've had with a single player game recently. Very satisfying core gameplay loop. I think I prefer the endless mode to the story campaign because I found myself getting a little annoyed when I had to stop doing border patrol to take on other missions.

Lots of upgrades to unlock, especially in the endless mode. The rules change every few days to give you new things to look for in the paperwork so the gameplay stays fresh. My one criticism is that sometimes it feels like contraband is unfairly hidden when its in the engine, as you can't really get a good angle to really search for it, and I've missed it when I felt like I searched pretty thoroughly.

Overall though, I've had an excellent time. 9.8/10

I'll start with the pros. In my 3 hours with this game, I thought the art and music were absolutely phenomenal. I particularly loved the boss theme that played at the end of the first dungeon. I felt the first dungeon was decently paced, and the end boss wasn't too difficult or too easy.

After this point, I started to see more of the game's shortcomings. The segment that takes place immediately after the first dungeon, without spoiling too much for any that are undeterred, requires you to travel to the next town and do, frankly, far too much busy work. It felt like the pacing of the plot fell to a crawl at this point, and I started to lose interest. My progression was gated behind a series of fetch quests and other busy work before I could move on. Every time I thought I was making progress, the game would find another reason to halt my progress.

After an hour or so of fairly boring busy work, I finally had the maguffin that I needed to be able to progress, so onward I went. On my way, I got caught by a random encounter with some brand new enemies I've never seen before which killed me in seconds before I could figure out how to combat them. Frustrating, but alright.

Respawn back in town and turns out I hadn't saved in a while and got set back by about 30 minutes. 30 minutes of boring busy work that I have to do again.

Should I have been saving more often? Yeah, probably. Arguably its my fault. But it just made me so frustrated that I quietly closed the game. I have no desire to repeat everything I just went through.

Am I salty? Maybe. But nice pixel art and great music alone do not a good game make. In 3 hours I was unable to get invested enough to be willing to repeat some tedious tasks I had already completed. I can see that a lot of love and polish was put into the game, and maybe some day I'll give it another shot.

In summary, Pros:
-Great art style
-Phenomenal soundtrack
-Decent puzzles

Cons:
-Pacing is all over the place
-Combat can be a bit frustrating because of how touchy it is
-Story progression gated behind money. If you don't have money for some mandatory story items, you are forced to grind
-Random encounters are frustrating and tedious to deal with for little reward
-Movement is okay, but sprinting doesn't feel great with the stamina meter, especially in town. Sprint-leap forces you to jump a set distance, can't adjust trajectory

5/10

So, I played this game several years back on the xbox 360 and thought it was a clunky mess and stopped after an hour or so. But I kept seeing positive reviews, and I couldn't fathom what people saw in this weird, poorly-aged game.

I've gone back every now and then for years and still just couldn't see it. This has always bothered me, and by this point I have sort of a history with this game. I've showed the xbox 360 version to my friends, we all roasted it, and I'd slip it back into its case for another few years.

Tonight I came across it on Steam, and it STILL has mostly positive reviews. Wanting to revisit it yet again, but having no interest in dusting off and hooking up my xbox 360, I decided to purchase it again, expecting it to be just as disappointing as ever. But, for whatever reason, I found myself actually having a lot of fun this time, despite its quirks, and next thing I know, its been 2 hours and its 3 am, and here I am writing a review to say that its actually good! The combat is rudimentary, but I'm having a lot of fun with it, and I'm excited to go back. The writing is typical fantasy stuff, with a little bit of quirky humor thrown in. I find my Shadow Warrior's little quips to be entertaining, reminding me a lot of Duke Nukem's classic days.

Overall, I do recommend this game. 100%.

♥♥♥♥ you Take 2. You ruined a good thing.