Recent reviews by fallout161

Felt like I was playing Zelda: A Link to the Past on SNES all over again, in a good way.

Picked this game up cheap, with some hesitancy, but I was convinced by the incredibly positive reviews. And the game earns them well. It's a solid metroidvania with stellar combat, exploration, puzzles, and genius map design.

The graphics and music aren't amazing, but they get the job done. We're here for gameplay reasons, right? And Unsighted has that in spades. Yes, you will look forward to every combat encounter. You'll squeal with glee when you get ambushed by 5 enemies. And in between you'll be engrossed with progressing through tricksy, puzzle-laden rooms, and rewarded often with unlockable shortcuts that make navigation easier, not to mention all the loot that allows you to customize how you like your combat.

And yes, you will be using both melee weapons and guns and damn, it just feels so chunky. So finely-tuned and so satisfying to decimate big foes after parrying them. Which in this game, is easily attainable - not some skill to be skipped over because only the perfect-timing-elite can handle it. Or you could build your character to pelt enemies with bullets and grenades from afar. The game gives you 3 loadouts to play with, and lets you change those loadouts instantly, even in the middle of battle, without having to slog through slow menus or long character animations.

I won't comment on the story since I don't play games for story, but it seemed fine to me. The dialogue is quick and the cut scenes are skippable (many thanks to creators who do this). And it's always nice to see characters treating each other with kindness, whenever you take a break from the unspeakable violence.

I kinda cheesed my way through my first playthrough, playing on the easiest difficulty, and using the minecraft-style crafting system to make myself a bunch of late-game items at the beginning of the game. (As long as you know the recipe to make an item, even story items like the hookshot, you can make it in the first few minutes of the game.) But even with all that, the game was challenging and the bosses had me sweaty. The game is designed such that you can conquer the areas and bosses in any order that you want, so even with mild cheating, you won't find yourself stuck in an area that you're completely unprepared for.

The bad:
Not anything major, just a few nitpicks.
-First of all, although the controls are good, it might take you a few attempts to find a control scheme that works for you. Perfectly doable.
-You'll end up spending a fair bit of time in the menus. Crafting things, adding chips to slots (like the Hollow Knight charm system), swapping out weapons, and turning temporary buffs on and off.
-the name. Is so Unsightly. So much that I kept failing to notice that I actually had this game installed and it sat dormant for a month. But this downside can be overlooked.

You need it. Buy it; play it.

A highly polished roguelite card battler. Similar to Slay the Spire, with arguably better execution. The graphics are better, the characters are developed and well-designed (and kinda adorable, NGL), with lean, witty dialogue that will have you chuckling.

But the best part is the solid integration of the various gameplay mechanics. Not only is it a balanced card battler, but positioning your ship (and mid-row objects) is just as important, and adds a layer of strategy that keeps the game fresher longer. I've sunk 27 hours so far and have only unlocked about half of the story, maybe less than that, and I have no reason to stop.

If you enjoy card battlers, this is a no-brainer. Buy it. If you're on the precipice of trying one, this could be your gateway to a whole new genre.

It's Hollow Knight.

Now that I've pissed off half of you.. heheh.. I'll explain myself. It's a lot like Hollow Knight, in that it's a uber-high-quality metroidvania, with obvious homages to Hollow Knight and Super Metroid. It has a quirky protagonist, charming NPCs, a currency that loses its value halfway through the game, a similar upgrade system, a map that functions identically to Hollow Knight's, neither spoiling hidden locations nor making you tear your hair out trying to find them.

I normally skip talking about a game's soundtrack, but this one is so sparse and haunting. A minimalist post-apocalyptic ambience, perfectly suited for the game's melancholy and philosophic tone. Other games that have good music are tempting to turn down, because of how repetitive the tracks can get when you put 15 hours into them. This one held up.

The story is good. The controls and difficulty progression are everything you'd want from a metroidvania.

You could say that too many elements were copied, but I'd say that certain aspects of metroidvanias have been boiled down to perfection and this creator decided to just keep what works and make it his own. Through all the smoke, rust, and muted color palettes, it shines bright.

The question is, do you want to play one of the best metroidvanias of your life for a few measly bucks? Yes, you do.

This is a hidden gem.
It makes me sad that it took me this long to find this game, and that it seems overlooked. It's nearly perfect. Good for long sessions or short runs of about 30 minutes.
The concept could have easily been fumbled in a number of ways... it could have been hard to look at, or to figure out which enemies are at which depth, or they could have overcomplicated things by forcing you to constantly jump back and forth between rings in order to do boss mechanics or avoid projectiles or something. Thankfully, this is not the case, and the game is dolphin-skin-smooth.
The bosses were challenging but I never felt cheesed. The difficulty progresses nicely. The graphics and music are good, the controls are flawless, and there's hardly a story to speak of.
The bad? I'm really reaching here, and this is a skill issue that better gamers might not have, but some of the rewards are reliant on keeping a combo going (not taking damage), and it's reeally easy to accidentally take damage. At the same time, there are also rewards for going fast (certain chests can be opened if you reach them at the 2 minute mark, the 5 minute mark, etc), and I was always laughably behind schedule, since the timer keeps going during some parts where it could have been paused - like in non-combat rooms, while picking items and abilities, etc. And none of that is terribly annoying.

Buy it quick before 2/5 while its under $4. It's worth it.

A delightful, addicting, well-balanced, well-paced bullet heaven. Extremely polished for an early access title, too. No bugs. No controller issues. Worth the price.

My only only complaint is that there's an arachnophobia option to turn the spiders off... and it turns them into slimes. My ONLY OTHER PHOBIA. UNBELIEVABLE. FML

A solid, good, maybe even great Metroidvania game. Buy it. And I'm tempted to leave the review at that, but I'm a bad boy. I want to go deeper.

I really pity anyone who misses these games because they have adult content turned off. Yes, this game has H-scenes, and a lot of them, and they're not bad. I'm biased though, because I love pixel art. But you play this game because it's a good game, and not just for your masturbatorium.

First, the good. As I said, it's a solid metroidvania. It does most things perfectly. I particularly enjoyed the depth of side quests and the rewards for doing them. There is a diverse cast of characters that want favors from you, and doing them is worth your time, as it allows you to upgrade your healing ability and your attack ability. Switching genders is instantaneous and gives some enjoyable complication to the platforming, exploration and puzzle solving. The music is fine. The story is fine. The controls are good. The graphics are good, and amazing in some places. Yada yada, the usual 'good game is good' stuff.

And the bad, which is mostly nitpicks. I was initially alarmed at how short your jump height is, but I got used to it and so will you; it doesn't matter.

My main nitpick is the spells. The combat spells that you unlock like the bomb, various projectiles, etc. Just like in Blasphemous 1, I didn't use them. Here's why: In order to use a spell, you have to charge your projectile to 3 levels. Tapping the projectile button gives you a ranged attack (which I already barely used, because it's weak and it doesn't activate the HP-recovery charm). Holding the projectile button gives you a charged attack, which is stronger of course, but when it comes down to it, slashing with your primary melee weapon is always better. It's faster and does more damage. And the enemies are not difficult enough to warrant respecting them, at least in most cases. Charging to 2 levels is time-consuming enough, but to use any magic spell you have to charge it to 3 levels (which takes 2+ seconds), and what you get is a magic that's weaker than if you had skipped all that and just mashed your attack button the whole time. I was halfway through the game before I realized I had a magic meter underneath my HP meter, and 80% through the game before I actually started using spells, and only on bosses. And even then, I could have done the bosses easily with just slashing. Which leads me to my next and final major gripe.

This game needs a hard mode. Since I'm not a speedrunner and I've 100%'d the game on my first playthrough, it feels kinda bad that I won't play it again after only 14 hours of solid metroidvania gameplay. A simple New Game+ (maybe where enemies do double damage?), and one more achievement would warrant another playthrough and make the game price even more worth it. If you are a speedrunner, I think this game would be enjoyable as hell to work on.

And there's a sense that this game was rushed just a little bit toward the end. Not that it lacks in quality, but there are hints that the map was meant to be bigger. For instance, one of the last upgrades you get, the Mermaid Scale, allows you to walk through waterfalls. In the whole game, there are only 2, maybe 3 waterfalls that you need to traverse. I should have been teased the whole game with impassable waterfalls leading to juicy treasures, just as I was with the other unlockable abilities, but this feature was barely implemented. Alas, maybe next time.

I really like this game publisher though. After I checked them out, I realized I had 2 more of their games on my wishlist, and one of them I already owned. They're past the point of "making good H-games" and they're "making good games." I'm looking forward to their next releases. Catch yall on the flip side. <3

A great little excursion of a bullet hell game, and I do mean little. You can complete this game in a weekend, and I basically have. Not as good as Soulstone Survivors, but incredibly addicting in short bursts. I'm not sure if I'm missing the "early access" tag or not, but this game is NOT finished. Even if it thinks it's finished, it's not. It needs an update badly.

First, the good. Parts of this game are extremely polished and high-quality. The graphics, controls, gameplay, are all amazing. The music and sound effects are good too. The menus are the way they should be, gloriously designed, simple, and easily navigable. The difficulty progression is satisfying and quick. It has decent replayability due to the variety of spells, upgrades, and different endings.

Now, the bad, and there's a lot of minor nitpicks, with the major problem being that the game just doesn't feel complete, and there isn't enough to do. No reason to grind or keep playing for longer than 10 hours' of gameplay.

The "Extras" option in the main menu doesn't work. It leads to nothing. There are no extras. At least they should let us see the single-image "endings" that we unlock by mastering the different types of magic.

Every stage looks the same. Not much variety for enemies, either.

No way to turn off or turn down spell graphics, so eventually the screen is too cluttered to see enemy attacks that you need to dodge.

No rerolls. No banishes. No locks to hold upgrades to the next level up. (this is not as bad as it sounds, however. Due to the limited types of upgrades, it's not entirely necessary.)

Turning off the sound effects does not turn off all the sound effects.

This game only has ONE dash, and it's on a long cooldown, and the cooldown is only indicated by an icon in the lower right of the screen, which is tough to look at during gameplay. There's no option to upgrade your dash and make it longer, or get more dashes. And that's bad enough, but you would think that if you only get one dash, in a genre of games where the dash is extremely important, the dash should be really good. But it's not. It doesn't even give you invincibility frames, and your movement is slowed at the end of the dash. To all you video game creators out there who make a dash that ends in movement speed that's slower than your normal speed... as a tiny "punishment" for dashing... PLEASE stop doing that, no one likes that.

The spells and abilities need more balance, generally. The "familiars" (minions) branch of magic sucks, just like it does in every bullet hell game. Some spells and upgrades are incredibly overpowered. After getting 2 stars in the explosion tree, for example, you unlock an upgrade called "Increase every area by 15%" which you can stack 5 times. Incredibly overpowered, allows you to blanket the whole screen with attacks, and makes the rest of your run a cakewalk. Same with all the "Amount +1" upgrades. If these card shows up, there's no longer a "choice" of upgrades--these are inarguably the best choices.

The game doesn't really offer you spells randomly, it tries to push certain spells on you. In your first stage, you will be offered 2 spells and only those 2 spells, no matter how many spells you unlock by beating the game, or how many times you pass on them. You don't want to start the game with Snake Minion or Poison Pool? Then enjoy using your bouquet (starting weapon) for the whole first level and part of the next. Worse, is as you progress through a magic tree, new spells are unlocked, and the game is really stingy about offering you these new spells. It keeps offering you the old spells that you've passed on 10 times. This is why a banish option would be really useful.

The gameplay itself quickly becomes "ignore everything and search for pumpkins." (The pumpkins are breakable boxes that contain items like health potions, kill-everything-on-the-screen items, magnet items, and gold.) You don't have to pay attention to bosses, and you'll do worse if you do, because it's better to let them live longer while you search for pumpkins and kill more enemies in order to level up more. Just run away from them and hope they don't die quickly. Even the last boss is this way, and all bosses are pushovers and could use significant difficulty boosts. It's weird, and I don't think that's the way a bullet hell game should be played, and I think it's an unintended result because finding pumpkins is so important.

The English translations are questionable and make a lot of the upgrades confusing as to what they actually do. I still don't know if +37 attack power to all "flowers" is supposed to be all "powers," which would make more sense. "Master Beast Magic 10 times," and other such achievements are also confusing as to what the requirement actually is, and should be worded better.

The potions that you drink (to progress through the magic types), such as "Big breast potion" and "Hips potion," are too hard to grasp. I'm almost done with the game and it took me this long to remember that "big breast potion" is actually the Explosion magic school... "hips potion" is the Area magic school... "Small breasts potion" is the Projectile school... etc. etc., and which potion icons go with with those schools... just needs more labeling, or maybe a tiny Encyclopedia section so you can look it up.

One last minor nitpick: This game is rated 18+ / mature, but doesn't have any H-scenes or H-content of any kind. There is no nudity, not even a single nipple. This puts the game in the awful middle ground, where it has a smaller audience, unfindable by gamers unless they're open to 18+ games, and unsatisfying to people who want a decent game with a few H-scenes. You should push it in either direction, I don't care, but push it. Make the game less sexy and remove the 18+ requirement, or make the game more sexy and add some actual smut.

Conclusion: Please keep working on this game. It's good, it just needs more work, and more reasons to keep playing. Add more waifus to play as, add some super-expensive, hard-to-grind-for upgrades. Add another (expensive) dash, nerf the pumpkins. Add 2 new stages and elite enemies, or harder difficulties, or challenge modes. Also, it's only $5? Finish the game and make it 10 bucks. You could sell it NOW for ten bucks. It's polished in the ways that matter. You have something good here, and with a little more love and work, it could be GREAT, and you can double or triple the price and it would be worth every penny.

Don't wait for a sale. Pay the 5 bucks. And say goodbye to your weekend.

A flawed but pretty little gem. Not as good as other bullet-hell games, but it still holds its own and it's easy to learn and to get into.

The characters are cute, well-drawn, well-animated, easy to unlock, and their hentai scenes are easy to unlock too... if that's what you're here for. The rest of the power-ups, however, will take some time to unlock, which adds to the reasons to keep playing the game. I'll probably be able to squeeze 15-20 hours of total gameplay out of this, but afterwards I'll just go back to Soulstone Survivors. It's also the first bullet-hell game I've seen that has tower defense elements, as you'll be choosing and placing buildings, too. This game is the right amount of challenging; you'll be losing a lot in the beginning.

Now for some minor gripes:

The first and most important one, is that this is not a twin-stick shooter, as a bullet-hell game like this should be. Instead, there's a "strafe" button which you can set, which allows you to lock your aim in a certain direction. I would prefer aiming with the other stick, but this wasn't too difficult to get used to, and doesn't affect the gameplay too much.

Some of the weapons/abilities/buildings just suck. Game needs more balancing.

The English translation is not great. For example, one of the expensive powerups is called "Amount." Of what?!

Menus are a tiny bit buggy. Every time I play the game, I have to re-set my controller buttons, and certain menus can't be navigated without using your mouse.

Also, it doesn't look like there's an option to play this game at full-screen, so you're stuck with windowed mode.

I would wait until it's on sale at $8 or lower.

Since I'll probably quit playing in a few days, now is a good time to drop this review.

This game is great. A high quality, addictive game, with solid controls, an incredible magic system, which allows you to customize your spells and mix-and-match different schools of magic in the same build. The game is split about half-and-half between building your castle and going out and killing/farming/exploring. Both parts of the game are handled extremely well. Building, which in so many games, can be frustrating to learn, in this game is easy and intuitive, and it's a pleasure to just build your castle the way you want it. Also, if you'd rather skip building entirely, there are ways around it. For instance, all you need to do is join a clan, and you can use their castle as a home base and for crafting. I wouldn't skip it personally, since it's so good and fun, but I'm just saying, there are options.

As usual, I won't be reviewing either the story or the music, since I don't care about those things.

The controls and combat are amazing. You can equip one melee weapon at a time, and each weapon gives you 1 standard attack and 2 extra abilities (set initially to E and Q). You also can equip 4 separate magic spells at a time - 2 regular spells, 1 dash, and 1 ultimate. All your spells and abilities are on an 8-second cooldown, which can be reduced but not by much. Your ultimate ability is on a 2-minute, 30 second cooldown, and you'll have to play the game a bit before you unlock your first one. Also, you can switch weapons in the middle of battle, and most good players do exactly this. It's not necessary, but it's an option. I really appreciated the depth that spell choices provide. You can put whatever spells you want into your 4 spell slots, and there are no bonuses for choosing spells from the same school of magic. If you want to use the Unholy counter with the Frost dash and Blood bolt, that's fine, and you won't be penalized for it. There are multiple valid builds, so you can use the spells you like without having to worry if it's an ineffective build. Every time I looked up build suggestions for taking down a boss, I got very different suggestions from every youtube video I found. Like I said, use the spells that you like, there is no right or wrong answer, and there's lots of time to experiment. There is also a way to buff and customize your spells, by attaching gems to them, further adding to your ability to customize your combat experience.

As far as the combat itself, it's smooth and satisfying. It's really fun to be a vampire and murder a bunch of humans, and some of it can be quite challenging, and you will die repeatedly. Death in this game is an annoyance, as you drop all your loot and have a 45-minute window in which you can recover it, which involves (like in most games) running back to your corpse. However, there are items that you will never drop when dying, such as your weapons and armor, so you will never be completely helpless when recovering your loot. And there are moments of pure tension, when you're being overwhelmed by a group of 6 humans, you're on fire, and you're running away, and trying to line-of-sight behind trees and rocks, and the sun is coming up, so you have to dart between shadows so as not to be caught on even more fire... it's great.

As far as the progression goes, you do not gain levels simply by playing the game. You progress in the game by taking down one boss at a time, and by crafting better gear. Each boss you kill allows you to unlock something, sometimes multiple things. For every boss you kill, you will unlock one spell and maybe a new crafting feature or recipe. This allows you to build your castle with more and better crafting stations as you progress, ultimately so that you can make better armor and weapons for yourself, which you can use to fight harder and harder bosses. These bosses can be solo'd, too, and there are guides that help you do this if you can't find other players to help you easy-mode a certain boss. Playing with other people definitely makes things easier, but it's not a necessity.

There are other game features, such as capturing human prisoners and sending servants on missions, which are fun and add to the game, but don't need to be thoroughly discussed. Suffice it to say, it's in the game, and like every other aspect, it's done well.

Now, let's talk about the bad. Since it's an online game, you will have to choose a server to play on. When choosing a server, you can choose a PVE or PVP server, depending on how you want to play. I won't talk about PVP since I didn't do any. My beef starts with not being able to tell what settings the server has in place. First I played on a private server, where you could not teleport with certain things in your inventory (a LOT of different items prevented you from using a teleporter). On the other hand, you could stock up your castle heart with a lot of blood, allowing your castle to live for somewhere around 150 days. (After which, your castle will decay and disappear, and you lose it all.) With this amount of time alotted, I felt safe that I could leave the game for a long period of time without losing anything. However, my small group of friends stopped playing, leaving me alone on the server, so I sought out a more populated place to play. Of course, this meant I had to start the game over.

On the new server I picked, you could only feed your castle up to a few days' worth of blood. 4-6 days. Which means I was basically required to log onto the game regularly, or else I would lose my progress. I'm not sure if there's a way to tell which server settings you're agreeing to when you roll a character, but for me it wasn't obvious. I ended up playing on this server, because I wanted to play with a lot of people, but the drawback is, once I stop playing for 6 days, my castle will be gone. I don't see this as reasonable. Sure it lets the server stay "alive" with new players, but it guarantees that you will lose all your progress if you step away from the game for a few days. And as I said, I couldn't tell which server settings I was agreeing to when I started a game. I'm not sure if you CAN tell, or if it just wasn't obvious to me. Just something to be aware of.

Then there are the boss difficulties. Some bosses are insanely difficult, while others are pushovers. And some bosses do that thing I hate, which is punish you endlessly for one mistake. In one boss fight, there are 9 consecutive explosions, and getting hit with any one of them will slow you down. So if you make just a tiny mistake in your movement and get hit by the first explosion, then guess what, you're getting hit with the next 8 explosions too, and you're basically dead. I've never been a fan of the whole "one tiny mistake will completely screw you over" theme. Thankfully, this isn't a huge problem, and I'm sure the bosses will continuously be balanced.

Another problem I feel I should mention is that the game can be very "short." Sure, I got 200 hours out of it, but that's because I poured 75ish hours into a character I didn't want to continue since my friends left the server. There will be updates to this game, and new areas built, but I won't get to see them because I will lose my progress after 6 days of inactivity, and I doubt I will pick up the game again knowing that.

If you're looking for a good bang-for-your-buck, you can't go wrong here. This project has clearly been loved by some talented people, and the community is helpful and non-toxic. I always got gifts from higher-up players, and help with tough bosses when I asked for it. It's worth playing, especially if you have a small group of friends to play with, and it's not an infinite time commitment like other MMOs. It's highly worth a single, fervent playthrough. And for that one month or two, your whole life will be about V Rising.

Let's start with the good:

This is a solid metroidvania game and I burned through it eagerly. I have a ton of new games to play and this one won my attention over all the others. The graphics and designs are great. I won't comment on the quality of story because I don't care enough to notice it. The music is... jazzy, if you're into that, which I'm not, but it fits the theme of the game, so I won't knock it. The combat is okay and the map system is great. There are lots of bosses, some mandatory, some optional, each with unique mechanics. The game honors the original Metroid, down to long elevator scenes where the heroine just stands there and thinks. The controls are crisp and the new armors that you get give you interesting, sometimes fun, abilities. The platforming and puzzles are engaging and sometimes challenging, and very rarely annoying.

The bad: First of all, I have to mention the crashes, which is what everyone mentions, and for a lot of people, that is a dealbreaker. I did lose a small amount of progress due to the game crashing, but it wasn't a big speed bump for me. I finished the game in about 10 hours and I had less than 10 crashes, with so little progress lost that it was barely an issue for me. Keep in mind that this is still a new game, and I have faith that the developers will fix it.

Now, the bad things that actually bother me:
1) unskippable boss introductions. Very annoying when attempting to kill a boss multiple times.
2) awkward combat. The game features a projectile (which is also your shields), which is not easily aimed. You don't get a targeting reticle, and it seems somehow completely separate than melee attacks, even though it can and should be used to kill enemies. Also, I don't see any reason for the "heavy attack" button. The heavy attack should have been worked into the light attack combo, which would have made the "shoot" button more easily accessible. (By default, it's the right trigger.)
3) bosses with strange difficulties - some bosses are so easy you can button-mash through them, and other bosses require multiple, focused attempts
4) No customization - there are only a few upgrades you can buy, and you don't really get to make choices with your currency
5) changing armors is fast but almost pointless - you do extra damage to enemies if you're using the armor that corresponds to the enemy's color. But it's only a 25-33% difference in damage, so you'll only care about switching armor for the difficult enemies that can't be steamrolled.
6) the map needs work - the map is good, but there are some things that should be marked that aren't marked. There are "paintings" that you can jump into, which are large, separate map areas, and complete mini-levels in themselves. However these paintings aren't marked in any way on the map, so god forbid that you skip something in a painting level and want to go back (and there ARE things you can miss).
7) Lack of teleportation - the game features a main elevator, which is the only "teleport" feature. When you start the game, you get 2 locations, and they're both so close to each other that it barely matters. I was 75% through the story (!!!) before this elevator got additional locations. Basically, you do NOT want to backtrack in this game, it will take forever, because you WILL be hoofing it.
8) I hate Apino so much. Apino is your little stuffed teddy bear buddy that joins you at the start of the game, and facilitates your ability to shoot things and solve puzzles. The problem is, he talks, and he only says one gibberish word, and it's stupid and pointless and gets old really fast during long conversations where you're trying to button mash through the dialog. There's another level of stupidity in that the main character seems to understand what he's saying as complete ideas, even though all he says is "Tzwii!" Ugh, I hate that trope. Also, a generic teddy bear? Why? I would have rather had any plushie-thing in place of that. Maybe a floating eyeball, or a frog, or a seagull. Anything would have been better. Give us some DLC skins for him or something. Idk.
9) No replayability, no new game plus

I definitely did not play for 18 hours. I think I left this game on pause for half a day or something. You can finish the game in about 8-10 hours casually, and half that if you're good and trying hard. And as of now, there's little or no reason to replay it, unless you're a speedrunner.

It's fun enough to burn through in a weekend, but I would wait to buy it until it's discounted.