Recent reviews by Demonite

This DLC adds two separate areas to the game, both of which unlock once you unlock the final area of the base game. This makes it the only time in the game where you can actually decide in what order you want to go through areas in, which is a huge plus in my opinion. The DLC also adds various new equipment and three bosses to the game, one for each area and one secret boss.

The first area is a Minecraft themed poison swamp. Every good Souls-like needs one, of course. But you'll be getting poison curing items and a new item that allows you to quickly traverse water very frequently, so it's really not bad at all. Nice area overall, I'd say, with one of the best boss fights in the game.

The second area is my favourite of the two though. It's pretty large and can be divided into three sub-areas: first a small sewer section, then a very vertical area similar to the Gutter from Dark Souls 2 and lastly a gloomy, run-down and corrupted beach resort area. While the boss here is a bit on the easier side, it's pretty cool lore wise.

The secret boss is locked behind a questline from the base game, which seems to be the most common complaint people in other reviews have. I agree that it really was an odd choice, considering that same questline already had 2 boss fights locked behind it, and it's something most players will likely miss on their first playthrough unless they look at a guide. But I also think that's no reason to hate the entire DLC, because it really just is a single boss fight with no additional areas or even items attached to it. In fact, doing the boss actually removes a weapon and armor from your inventory (another odd choice that you don't get them back after beating it). It doesn't unlock a new ending to the game or anything like that either, really it's just some lore and a boss fight.

So in short: really good DLC that adds a lot of content to the game and makes it less linear. If you care about experiencing every bit of it, you will likely need to do more than one playthrough or look up a guide, but the same goes for the base game, so if you didn't mind it there, you shouldn't mind it here.

A love letter to Dark Souls and gaming as a whole. It references Dark Souls 1, 2, 3, Bloodborne and Demon's Souls as well as a multitude of other classics such as Minecraft, Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Castlevania and many more.

For me personally, this is probably one of the games that comes closest to the "feeling" of Dark Souls 1, not counting other FromSoftware games. I don't necessarily mean atmospherically, it's a very different (although still very charming) setting of course, but gameplay wise instead. The world is very interconnected with many paths leading back to previous areas, which you'll need to make use of until you're allowed to teleport between Bonfires (Beacons) later on. I just wish it was larger. There are actually quite a bunch of very distinct areas in the game, with enough complexity so that exploration always stays interesting and just enough Beacons so that it remains dangerous but rewarding to explore. Unfortunately the game doesn't have a lot of boss fights and most of them happen towards the end, so you'll be going through multiple different areas in a row without fighting anything big. And as far as progression goes, the game is also very linear from start to finish, excluding the DLC. That adds some much needed branching pathways to the game, but I'll write a separate review for it on its store page.

There's a decent amount of weapon diversity, with this unique gimmick that equipment in this game wants you to "remember" it, making it stronger. For most items you need to go to a specific location somewhere in the world in order to be able to remember them, and you're given clues as to where that is. It's pretty fun. I also like that no matter what build you go for, even if it's very niche, there are always multiple weapons designed to be used for such a build, meaning you always have some variety. Like, say a build that equally focuses on all 3 main damage stats (strength, dexterity & source), there are 4 weapons for that. You can also infuse weapons like in Dark Souls, so technically most weapons could be used on most builds, just not optimally.

The combat feels pretty good overall, however here is where the game shows its one biggest flaw, which is that the hitboxes of your weapons can be very janky. Every once in a while an attack will completely miss an enemy, even when your weapon's model is physically going through the enemies body, and even when you're standing directly in front of the enemy and are locked on. It sometimes looks like the protagonist isn't the only thing made out of one dimensional sticks. And it happens to all kinds of weapons, from daggers to great clubs, but at least it mostly just happens against human-sized or smaller enemies. Very annoying when you get hit because you were relying on an enemy to die/stagger from your next attack, but then that attack just whiffs for no reason. Eventually you'll just get used to using attacks less prone to missing.

Another, minor critique I have is the performance in some areas. The FPS is pretty inconsistant and one area in particular (Start of Sequence) causes lots of stutters and small freezes, which is really annoying. But it's nothing game breaking.

Anyway, highly recommend anyone who ever enjoyed a Souls-like to at least give the demo a try, it's free after all. If you end up buying the game, your demo character even gets transferred to the full game automatically (although idk if that messes with achievements in some way, I ended up just making a new character to be safe). I'm currently on my 4th character, hunting the last few achievements I have left, and I'm having a great time with it. I can definitely see myself coming back to the game at some point in the future just to make even more characters/builds.

After finally getting all achievements and full map completion, I guess it's time to leave a review. It's a really nice and really huge Metroidvania, you can tell that the devs put a lot of effort into it. It reminds me a bit of Vigil: The Longest Night in a couple of ways, but that game is a Souls-like where as Afterimage is pure Metroidvania.

It's difficult as well (at least on advanced difficulty, dunno about normal), don't be fooled by the easygoing earlygame, things will get a lot tougher as you progress. I think the game expects you to do some level grinding, which I didn't do at all, so at some point I was basically underleveled for every boss I encountered. It got better later in the game though, when you have so many areas to explore that you'll naturally level up a lot. While I kinda wish enemies simply scaled with your level, being underleveled is still better than being overleveled, which happens in some other games of the genre and makes things too boring. Anyway, the boss fights, and there are a lot of them, all felt unique and a good chunk of them very challenging too. Maybe 2-3 of them were cheap/unfair (which could simply be because I was underleveled, or because I didn't realize "subweapon damage" was for magic, not for melee, and my build was completely wrong lol), but the majority of them were cool. There's also a boss rush mode (except it's not a rush, you can select any boss you want to fight) and 3 playable characters which you can use in it.

The overall combat and movement feels really tight and fast paced, which I like. You can choose between 6 main weapon types (sword, greatsword, dual swords, scythe, whip & katana) and various subweapons (magic). There's a skill tree that'll allow you to improve your stats or unlock new weapon skills as you progress. Each main weapon type has a unique moveset which will be expanded on with these skills. Some weapons even come with innate skills unique to them. There are a lot of weapons, with different elements, different special effects and sometimes bonus stats.

Like I said, the game is very huge and there is a ton to explore. The level design (maybe aside from some very obnoxious parkour puzzles) is fantastic. So many secrets everywhere, tiny nooks and crannies you can fit and find items in. And gameplay aside, just atmospherically the game is amazing. Everything is very detailed and pretty, it's pleasant on the eyes. Only downside is that in order to fast travel to any location of your choice, you need a consumable, which will cost you money in the long run. I'll get to why that's a huge problem later.

Something I often see people criticizing about the game is the story and lore, which is a bit confusing. I think it's alright personally, nothing amazing, but gets the job done. What I gathered is that there's some self-proclaimed goddess that didn't actually create the universe, but merely the realm you live in and now she has seemingly abandoned it. The vast majority of powerful characters in this game are women that more or less look alike, which makes me think this goddess was a bit egoistical and full of herself. I'm kinda hoping this gets proven to be right in the sequel, otherwise it'd just be a game with barely any male representation and instead full of waifus, which would be pretty cringy. There are also some translation errors here and there, unfortunately, but it shouldn't get in the way of understanding what anyone is saying in-game. And even though I wouldn't say any of the main characters really grew on me, one of the bad endings was so heartbreaking that it actually made me sad. lol

Now lastly, what I have to criticize about the game: the way money works. Farming money in this game is pretty much impossible, at least not efficiently. The most efficient way will still take you for ever, I think I spent 2-3 hours just farming money towards the end. The intended way of getting money is to break these containers that are spread out throughout the map. But once you have discovered all of them, that's it, they don't come back. The game has an achievement that requires you to buy every single shop item from every single vendor in the entire game. Because I obviously didn't know I'd need a crap ton of money at the end, I always spent the money I gathered throughout my playthrough by buying potions, the aforementioned fast travel consumables and upgrading various weapons I wanted to try out. Don't do this. The fast travel stuff is kinda unavoidable if you don't want to spend a lot of time running around, but you don't really need that many potions. I basically never used potions outside of boss fights and even then I tried my best to avoid using them because it felt a bit cheap (still did it a couple of times). Upgrading weapons should be fine if you don't overdo it like I probably did. God forbid I wanted to have multiple options for every weapon type... Just stick to 2-3 you like and ignore the others, I guess.

Anyway, with all that being said, my conclusion is that it's a really solid game and I hope we get a sequel.

I really enjoyed this DLC. Maybe even more than the base game. I just wish they turned it into its own fully fledged game with more content, rather than just being a DLC. That would've also stopped all those people from complaining about losing their 100% achievement progress.

Anyway, this is basically Castlevania 2 Simon's Quest, but better. It's called Classic 2 since the game already has Classic 1 in it for free, which is basically Castlevania 1, but better. So if you liked Simon's Quest, you will like this too and it's a definite recommendation. If you think Simon's Quest was a flawed game with an interesting concept, you should also check this out, it might fix all of the issues you had with that game. And if you never played Simon's Quest, I think the best way to describe it is as something inbetween a Metroidvania and a Classicvania. Maybe you could call it a Proto-Metroidvania?

In my opinion Dominique's Curse fixes a lot of the issues Simon's Quest has and expands on the entire concept in a good way. It has some much needed QoL added to it, like a menu option to read all clues (NPC dialogue) you've found so far and a map that labels areas. It's not a real video game map, more like a drawing of the overworld that expands as you visit more locations (although proper fan-made maps exist online if you want them, I did end up using one for 100%). There are a lot of areas, all of which feel unique and you have reasons to re-visit them later, with various secrets and items to loot as well as upgrades to buy or unlock. Overall it's a great experience, sometimes a bit frustrating, but never too much. I would say it's absolutely not a requirement for you to have played the old Castlevania games in order to get into and enjoy this one.

This is a very mixed game for me personally, but still something I'd recommend. If you like Castlevania AoS and DoS, you'll like this game too. Just like in those games, you collect souls (called shards here) from monsters to gain abilities. And just like DoS, it's very grindy if you want to upgrade them, which I'm not a fan of. There's a variety of weapons, most of them useless, again just like in AoS & DoS (or PoR, or OoE, or SotN). There are also a ton of unnecessary consumables, again just like in various CV games. Except it's a lot worse in Bloodstained. Not only will your inventory be cluttered with various foods that should all simply be potions, but there is actually a cooking system in this game. It's awful. Exploration is mostly fun, until you can't figure out where you need to go next and have to look it up online, unless you enjoy running in circles for hours, AGAIN something that also happens in a few CV games. I know what this sounds like, but don't get the wrong idea, I actually love Castlevania. I just think a lot of the SotN-style games could be better (CotM is my favourite for a reason) and as such I also think Bloodstained could be better since it just copied those flaws. If you disagree with me that these things are flaws, then by all means, buy this game, you'll probably love it.

Anyway, I do still think that what this game represents, being a spiritual successor to a franchise abandoned by Konami, is very respectable. And it lives up to that. It does have a ton of content too. Various characters you can play as and lots of bonus modes. Including a classic mode (not the DLC, I mean in the base game) that's just an entirely separate game that plays like a Classicvania, which I love (I wish it had achievements though). You can tell the devs put their heart into this game and even if I don't agree with all the design choices I do still value that a lot.

Nice game, doesn't deserve the hate it's getting. It's not Salt & Sanctuary 2, so don't go in expecting it to be. Still mainly a Souls-like with the combat and build making systems being pretty much the same as in Sanctuary, but with a few Hunter-like elements thrown in. Sanctuary might be 2D Dark Souls, but this one isn't 2D Monster Hunter, not at all, so don't go in expecting that either. It's its own thing, a bit experimental I'd say, but it turned out well.


A lot of the issues other people complain about have been fixed with the latest update. Or maybe never existed in the first place? Idk, I only started playing recently. Bosses juggling you around isn't really something that happens. There are a few combo attacks, but they usually deal around the same damage in total as a single normal attack. With some of these reviews I wonder if people even know that you have iframes on rolls, because honestly, they're making it out to be a way bigger deal than it is. The biggest danger is getting stunlocked because multiple enemies attack you at the same time or getting punched off a cliff (although the fall damage is extremely forgiving, you gotta be in free fall for a couple of seconds for it to be lethal). And while multiple enemies can swarm you, they will also fight each other, so just use that to your advantage. 75% of the time enemies will be pre-occupied when you arrive and you can just attack from behind.


As for the gameplay, basically there are 5 different locations, each being a big and open map with various sub-areas that are interconnected like in Sanctuary. But the main locations are disconnected and accessed via a hub, like in Demon's Souls. The exploration is very similar to Sanctuary, with some backtracking to access pathways that require specific tools. There are regular bosses spread throughout each map, but the main combat loop comes from Mage hunts.

The hunts can be divided into 2 parts. First you accept a mission to hunt a specific Mage (there are a total of 21 different types) and proceed to chase it around the map. During this stage the Mage will rarely actively attack you and instead mainly spawn minions. Regular enemies, other Mages and their minions as well as hazeburned enemies (which only spawn while a hunt is active) will all be on the map alongside you and the Mage you're hunting. It's basically a free for all brawl. Once the Mage receives enough damage it will flee to another nearby spot on the map (always an open spot, they never spawn in tight hallways or something, the game has lots of big rooms) and if you repeat this enough times, you'll enter stage 2. The chase phase really isn't too troublesome, there is no time limit and you can even rest at a "bonfire" and restock your "Estus" in the middle of it without losing your progress. In the second stage you'll enter a proper boss fight with the Mage. Once you get close enough to it a health bar will pop up and walls will be erected around the area, so you can't run away or get punched off a platform. This is where the Mage will actively attack you with its full moveset and no longer spawn minions, although if minions or other enemies were present at the beginning of the fight they will stay there (and possibly fight the Mage alongside you). Mages as well as their minions drop materials specific to that kind of Mage, which you use to craft gear, same as in Monster Hunter.

The new DLC adds a 6th area to the game, but outside of a boss rush-style arena (which is an awesome addition) there are no Mages here, it's purely Souls-like in this case. You unlock it pretty early on, but it's kinda divided into 3 sub-areas with big difficulty differences, so I think you're meant to leave it after killing a sub-area boss and returning later once you're stronger. It's not a small DLC either, it has various hidden paths and a total of 4 bosses (one being a secret boss). The setting is probably my favourite in the entire game and it adds to the already very interesting lore.


Honestly, the only complaint I have about the game is the balancing in terms of raw numbers. At some point, roughly halfway through the game, everything seems to be turning into a glass cannon, both the player and the enemies. You start 1-3 hitting all the mobs and a lot of boss/Mage fights are over within less than a minute, whether you win or lose. Which is a shame, because some of them have cool movesets that would be rewarding to learn and master. But in practise you mostly end up killing them before they get use to all of it, or they kill you ofc. If everything did like half damage, the game would be more fun imo. Hopefully a future balancing patch will change this. Other than that, it's a nice game, with unique gameplay and a banger OST (the Mage theme goes hard). I have done 2 complete playthroughs so far and unlocked every achievement, all of which was a fun time. I definitely plan on making more characters in the future for various different builds as well.

I do still prefer Sanctuary and I do still hope that Ska's next game will be more like that again, but I don't think Sacrifice was a waste of a game. I would also like to see it getting a sequel at some point, ideally with better damage balancing and a bigger grind. Perhaps even higher difficulties/ranks, like in Monster Hunter, instead of NG+, since I found a bunch of fights, particularly the Mages, were too easy (but part of that was the damage you deal ofc).

Honestly, I didn't like the game, it's clunky and looks more like a tech-demo. But I do respect how this isn't just a demo (and a demo alone is a HUGE plus for any game in my book), it's apparently an entire standalone game that simultaniously functions as a demo for the "main" game. So just for that alone I have to give it a positive review. Definitely worth to take a look and see if you enjoy it more than I do. If I ever catch Hellpoint at 1-2€ or something I might just grab it for the sake of supporting this kind of stuff.

Jet Set Radio Future was a huge part of my childhood. Hell, it DEFINED my childhood and caused me to gain my love for video games. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is a game I have basically been waiting for my entire life. It's been over 20 years since the release of JSRF and we had the occassional sparks of hope here and there with stuff like JSR Evolution, but ofc Sega was being a b**** about it. So if Sega doesn't want my money, I will gladly give it to anyone else who delivers. And boy does Team Reptile deliver.

This game is part of my childhood reimagined. I bought the game and finished the story roughly 24 hours later, because I was basically glued to the monitor. Took a nap inbetween, and this is gonna sound corny as hell, but I literally dreamt about it (and about JSRF), because I thought about it so much. You can bet your ass that I'm not finished yet, not by a long shot. Gonna 100% it and AT LEAST do a second playthrough before I even think about taking a break from it. And then a year later I'll do all that again, probably, maybe even buy the game on another platform. This game is a gem and I cannot express how much I recommend it to any fan of JSR and/or JSRF. Especially if you have kids, let them play this. Maybe they'll love it as much as I loved JSRF, maybe it'll shape their future.

Well, I admit I bought this game out of nostalgia. I loved Underground 2, Most Wanted, Carbon, Pro Street and other racing games like Juiced or Midnight Club 2 as a kid. Really wanted to experience something similar again, but modernized, and heard nothing but good things about NFS Heat. But unfortunately, I was disappointed. I feel like modern racing games just aren't for me. Haven't really enjoyed the genre since I was a kid, except when I do go back to those old games.

Heat just felt unrewarding. Don't even have 10 hours in the game, yet it feels like I've already seen 70% of it. You can buy a new car after pretty much every other race and you have a huge selection of cars even early on, half of them being sports cars. Shouldn't those be saved for later in the game? Or I guess that's when you unlock the ultra super hyper prototype exotic cars? What happened to taking real street cars and modifying the crap out of them, like an actual street racer? In the older games having something like a Porsche Carrera GT felt special. Here it's just another car, every little racer has 20 of those in their garage.

Other than that the entire map is unlocked from the beginning, you have access to nearly all of the vinyls and stickers from the get go and in general it just feels like everything is handed to you for doing basically nothing. This got boring very, very quickly for me. Added on top of that were the garbage police chases as well as the horrendous soundtrack and I just couldn't enjoy the game.

Really the only plus I can think of is the customization. You can spend more time perfecting the look of your car than you do driving the car. It comes close to the level of detail something like APB Reloaded offered (if anyone even knows that game anymore). I know if the rest of the game wasn't so unenjoyable for me, I would've probably spent some serious time in it just painting my cars in funky ways. But sadly that's not the case.

First played this game in April 2022 and back then I liked it, but felt like a lot of its amazing potential was wasted due to bad balancing of various weapons and items. Probably the biggest offender were weapons with dual or triple scaling. Basically any weapon that scaled in more than 1 stat was objectively worse, because of how softcaps worked. This really limited the weapon and build variety, meaning the replayability suffered as well. Other issues were things like armor/weight distributions (basically heavy armor was terrible) and generally just certain items being underwhelming or overpowered.

BUT one year later a new update was announced, 7 years after the game first released! This consisted of 3 (soon to be 4) separate patches, which massively overhauled the balancing, not just for items, but also enemies and upgrade progression. It also added items that were previously unobtainable and added a bunch of QoL stuff. The balancing isn't perfect in every way, but it's much better than before and any critique I could mention would be nitpicking. The patchnotes can be found on Steam and they even released a datadump of every single weapon/armor/etc in the game that highlights all the changes with raw numbers.

Anyway, the absolute best thing about the update is that this entire overhaul is completely optional. When you create a new character you can select between Classic Mode or Enhanced Mode, with enhanced giving you the new balancing. Something other game devs could really learn from, especially when you're fundamentally changing an older game that players have settled on (looking at you, Gearbox). And it's not stopping here either, soon the game will get a built-in randomizer (for enemies and items) added in the final patch. That'll boost the replayability even more, which I'm very much looking forward to.

Did my first enhanced playthrough recently and it's great, I've already planned out a bunch of different characters and their builds for future playthroughs. I would've recommended the game before, but only with a grain of salt (pun intended). But now it's a definite recommendation, it's a short but very fun game. Currently the best 2D Souls-like out there in my opinion (though I have yet to play the sequel).