Recent reviews by ShadowDark3

UPDATE 2: It's cool, nothing to see here.

UPDATE: No longer recommending the game. Not a fan of the decisions Sony has made.

Been looking for a game that lets you fight bugs and robots. This game ticks both boxes. Also very good and funny voice lines.

"How about a cup of liberTEA!" is my favourite.

Wholesome mini-stories and cute sticker designs. A sweet, casual little game to relax to while scratching a creative itch.

Just finished the character creation portion of the game and it's fantastic. Can't wait to see what happens next!

I usually love these sorts of games but unfortunately this one just didn't click with me. The controls were not intuitive, and building supply chains—one of the most important aspects of this game—just wasn't fun. A lot of people seem to like it but I can't see myself picking it up again so refunded.

I've been excited about playing this game for awhile, but wanted to wait until it was out of Early Access. Unfortunately, the campaign was not worth the wait, and the survival mode has been a letdown as well.

Gameplay is much slower than I expected, with a huge emphasis on managing your economy. Defending against hordes of zombies is the end goal but the build up takes ages. Units aren't particularly interesting, and the voice work feels very out of place for the setting.

The campaign is bogged down by incredibly tedious levels in which you must control a hero unit and take them through infected locations, hovering your mouse over every little object in the environment to scan for things you can click on in order to collect research and empire points. These levels can take as long as the real missions as you spend a significant amount of time kiting zombies around with your lone hero.

Along the way you will unlock bits of lore, but unfortunately the writing seems to have been an afterthought and was not properly edited. The story is rather piecemeal, and serves as a forgettable backdrop to the string of lengthy missions.

To me, They Are Billions is the RTS equivalent of an RPG with a vast open world but nothing to fill it with. For it to have worked I needed it to either be faster paced or a greater emphasis on strategic decision-making.

I love deck builders, but sadly this one just didn't hit the mark. It's important for me that a deck builder is intuitive and easy to pick up, but that was not my experience with Library of Ruina. The 20 or so minutes I spent playing this game was made up of:

Exposition and intro song - 12 minutes
Further exposition - 5 minutes
Combat "tutorial" - 2 minutes.

By the end of that first brief combat encounter I was bored and somewhat confused about my character's actual role was. I'm a librarian responsible for inviting people to the library and then killing them and taking their books? The concept of a mysterious dystopian library is awesome but unfortunately the narrative was a little too all over the place.

I found it ironic that one of the first things the head librarian says to you is that she does not tolerate long-winded conversation or sentences that don't get straight to the point. Then proceeds to talk and talk and talk without really telling you anything. There are many other games I would recommend before this one.

Take everyone's favourite monster collecting game, give each creature multiple skill trees, scale up battles to 3v3 fights, then slap that onto a metroidvania backdrop and you have Monster Sanctuary.

This game features fairly deep, tactical combat, where buffs and debuffs are just as—if not more—important than your attack skills. Building a balanced team that provides a strong mix of utility, healing, durability, and damage output takes some finesse, but the process is fun all the way through. Thanks to new monsters you hatch always being within a few levels of your strongest creature, and a good supply of level up badges (this game's version of rare candy), it is relatively easy to try new monsters on your team. You can also save multiple teams and quickly switch between them (outside of combat of course).

In addition to having multiple build pathways, each creature can also equip a weapon and three accessories to further increase their stats and abilities. Equipment can be upgraded to enhance stat bonuses, and special rare equipment can have unique effects. I enjoyed how many paths one could feasibly take to reach success. I personally enjoyed emphasising burning away enemy buffs and stacking shields on my own team to keep a glass cannon alive and bombarding the enemy.

What can sometimes put me off of metroidvania games is the feeling that I am constantly backtracking. I'm happy to say this is not generally an issue here. While I did find myself returning to previously explored areas a few times, it was usually relatively low hassle, and was seldom necessary. While some backtracking is required to progress, in most cases the reward for returning to previously explored areas is extra upgrade materials for your equipment, or occasionally finding some new monsters.

I went into this expecting a reasonably quick game lasting between 20 and 30 hours, but I spent nearly 60 hours before completing the main story and hitting the end credits. I'm happy to share that I never felt like I had to grind, and naturally reached max level at the very end. There is a New Game+ option that I have not yet tried, and before I do there is still a significant amount of additional content to explore.

This game packs heaps into it. I never even touched the competitive multiplayer or several of the optional quests/explorable spaces. Overall it's a great game and well worth picking up if you enjoy RPGs in any form.

I didn't like Dark Souls. I didn't like Bloodbourne. I do like Elden Ring.

Update: now that I've finished the game, I can confirm this is worth your while if you enjoy fantasy RPGs. Don't let it being a Souls-like scare you away. It can be difficult, but it's not punishing. The fun fighting normal enemies and sense of accomplishment when you overcome a challenging fight are excellent. Elden Ring has really raised the bar.

I wasn't a big fan of the writing, and for a game that is mostly reading text that's a deal breaker. On top of that, I picked it up to play co-op but the multiplayer is kind of awkward. It's not particularly clear who is in control of what, except for during combat where characters can be assigned to a specific player. However, as mentioned above, the combat is a very small portion of the game.

The game itself is alright, but struggles with finding a good level of difficulty. Most fights can be won in the very first round. In one instance, we counted the number of clicks to get through dialogue/story prior to a fight (it was 17), and compared it to the number of clicks to finish the actual fight (only 4). After the fight there was about a dozen more clicks to get through the post-fight story. You can adjust the difficulty up or down, but it only forces you to approach fights extremely slowly to avoid being killed.

For those who enjoy the kind of light-hearted, cheesy humour used in the little vignette-style scenes making up Wildermyth's story, this is probably an enjoyable experience (the "overwhelming positive" of Steam reviews attest to that). While I like story-heavy games and don't mind lots of reading, this one just didn't have strong enough writing to keep me interested, and none of the jokes were landing for me.

Coming back from bingo and Granny's doing just fine,
Gotta gotta bake now, cause I want it all.
It started out with a click, how did it end up like this?
It was only a click; it was only a click.
Now I can't fall asleep, and my grandma is mad
While she's kneading the dough, are her eyes turning red?
Now she won't go to bed, all these cookies are crisp
And it's all in my head, but she's chanting a

Spell now, what's that sulphur
Smell now? Let me go!
And I have to cook; it's killing me.
They're taking control.

Frantically, clicking to earn currency,
Baking pastries in the dark, to appease the matriarchs.
I don't mind the price I paid, golden cookies calling me
Mixing up a sweet surprise, 'cause I'm Mr. Brightside.