Recent reviews by Tsuzu

Literally the only 2022 game I played. But it's pretty cool, gotta admit.

Badge. Great fun if you enjoy gameplay alà Streets Of Rage or Turtles In Time.
You can do local multiplayer with a friend (or online), which is important to me.
Has some real retro throwbacks, but a fair amount of gameplay complexity.
Definitely picking it up eventually.

This used to be a positive review and I never had a single problem with this game
until the day Journey's End was released.
I ran Terraria hours right before the patch, but then immediately became a victim of the "white screen bug" that has been unfixed since 2015 or 2016.
Nothing about my system changed and no conceivable or suggested solution works.
This problem is known to Re-Logic since 5 years ago.
I gave them an extra 2 months to fix it. Nothing.

Revolutionary. Far ahead of its time.
That's how I would describe this game.
Does it have its shortcomings? Yes, a few.
But technically it's still superior to anything else released in 2000, and in some respects for a decade after.
As a dedicated RTS fan I have a hard time thinking of a more underrated and advanced-for-its-time game.
Easy 8/10

Most unstructured and inconvenient game I have ever seen post 1989.
It's like they also tried to emulate how awful games were to play on a 286.
You could call it authenticity, I call it poor game design.

For now I'll reluctantly give a thumbs-down on this title since it does not fully deserve 96% positive at $10 base price, but don't hesitate to buy it during a sale!

It does have its strengths:
Good art.
Cute characters and story
The Eroge bits are passable and not too awkward (albeit a little bit)

But also negatives at a third or fourth the price of a flagship VN:
No voice acting (easily costs you 3 out of 10 points)
Fairly little art and character diversity (Only 2 characters whatsoever, 19 CG scenes)
Short at 4h for the first full playthrough and there's little reason to read it more than twice
Very linear (About a dozen choices, most without impact, and a few to decide between the 2 routes or get bad ends)
The music really isn't very good, better to play your own songs

And finally things that don't exactly stick out towards either direction:
The art is quite sexualized, although it's not strictly unreasonable considering the lore
The story isn't exactly riveting or deep, but it has some emotional complexity

All said, I don't regret buying it at a 20% discount; but I do want to utter some words of caution to spoiled people with high expectations.

I had my eye on this game for a while but never took the plunge, so the free weekend was an opportunity I jumped upon.
It left me disappointed though, and while the game is not terrible I simply cannot recommend it personally.
My main gripes are of a technical nature:

> limited selection of ingame options (can't turn off the motion blur? can't switch language?)
> frustrating world design (often a tilted maze with nonsensical dead ends and invisible walls, yet you can fall to your death at every cliff or ledge.)
> stiff movement controls and animations, poor innate precision for a fighting game and a lock-on system that does not help, which makes tracking attacks superior
> glitches and lag as many other reviews have mentioned

There's nothing here aside from the combat, and while the Tony-Hawks-like ability to build your own skating combat style out of different attacks is nice and the combat is fun in principle it doesn't have the breadth, balance or fluidity to be engaging in the long term.
For a game you're meant to fight your own way in there's very little you can actually do your way and the 4-stance system is just a big name for your relative position towards your current opponent (which becomes a mess fighting more than one at once, which happens all the time).

Still one of the best split-screen PC games of all time.

This review has been sponsored by the Steam Awards Fall 2017.

Overpriced DLC: The Game

While this game has its quirks I suggest you don't listen to the marvellously butthurt Kickstarter backers unless you fall into that group - which you don't.
It's a very solid science-fantasy RPG with nice flavor and excellent writing - get your key somewhere else though.

Since it's good overall I will only point out some weaknesses:

• The UI is a little clunky but tolerable.
  
• Party members make no effort to avoid environment hazards.
  
• Characters could have been a little more fleshed out.
  
• Virtually no voiceover at all.

And yes: if you don't like reading this game is not for you.