Recent reviews by Kirbyster

I am absolutely blown away by how good Brutal Orchestra is given how relatively obscure it is in the roguelike fandom. Its outrageously ingenious turn-based combat is the greatest strength of the game, motivating me to absolutely devour it as soon as I had gotten a taste of it; I played Brutal Orchestra for 6 hours every day the first week I played it!

There are many reasons that came together to so utterly infatuate me with the gameplay of Brutal Orchestra. For starters, the game is very easy to get into thanks to its succinct and flavorful tutorial. The gameplay loop is also conceptually a lot like a Pokemon nuzlocke, which I am a huge fan of. As for the gameplay mechanics themselves, while they are all simple individually, there is a surprising depth to them in the larger context of a whole combat or run. Almost every action you take will have an inherent opportunity cost, incentivizing thoughtful gameplay as you weight the pros and cons of the many series of actions you could choose to take. Learning how the game works in order to more accurately anticipate the consequences of my own decisions is a significant part of the game I've really enjoyed. And even now, after I have 100%'d the game, there are still moments where I will be thrust into a perilous situation after overlooking the full range of effects from my actions (forgetting about LongLiver's constricting passive has been a frequent source of mistakes for me XD), and that has been a lot of fun to continuously improve at.

Out of all the game elements in Brutal Orchestra, its pigment (mana) system is the single mechanic that I found most enrapturing. The pigment system is so fun and novel that I am shocked I have never seen an idea so intuitive and fun in any other game before! The system invites you to create chains of attacks by intelligently targeting enemies with a party composition that can effectively utilize the different colors of pigment that the opposing monsters will drop after each attack. However, actually forming a team that can perfectly handle the enemies and their pigment color is hard or even impossible with the resources you may be given in a run, which is why I think that the mechanic that allows using wrong colored pigment, at a cost, is genius. Because you can pay HP to use mismatching pigment for attacks, the options you have available expand drastically and the game can create more challenging enemy color compositions that don't force the player to use a specific counter-picked team, which they might not even have access to. The move/swap action, equipment, and currency are additional mechanics that all add additional layers to the experience in less complex but still satisfying ways that have made it so much fun to theory craft. I played so much of this game in the first two weeks of my playthrough that I remember thinking after eating a lunch of chicken that I had (I seriously did think this) acquired enough "chicken pigment" that I could "spend" it to "chain" more food. The brainrot was real... and hopefully that speaks to how much I have enjoyed playing and thinking about this game!

I will sing the praises of Brutal Orchestra all day, but I'll also be first to admit that it isn't perfect. While there are a lot of items and a good number of party members, I would have appreciated seeing a couple more end bosses and a handful of additional regular enemies. You will see the basic enemies of each zone (Mud Lung, Music Man, and In His Image) many times, even in the same run. There are also some unfortunate opportunities for players to optimize the fun out of the game. For example, you can 'grind' blue pigment by repeatedly slapping no target, which often leaves the optimal play to be killing all but one enemy and then spending multiple turns grinding blue pigment for your healer to spend getting everyone's health bars back to full, before finally finishing off the last enemy. I think that games should be designed to prevent the player from optimizing the fun out of the game, which just isn't the case here. It's not a huge deal since you can just decide not to do this sort of grinding excessively, but that can lead to some bitterness, for me at least, if I end up losing after making a suboptimal decision like that for the sake of avoiding tedium. I think it would have been nice to add some sort of incentive for players to be efficient in combat, like getting more coins for winning quickly or giving enemies super powerful attacks that they will use after a certain number of turns have passed.

To touch on the non-gameplay elements of Brutal Orchestra, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the music. The soundtrack is quirky, and while I don't like all the tracks, the ones that hit (which thankfully includes most of the battle music) I enjoy a lot! The music and gameplay are so engrossing that I've never felt the desire to turn on a podcast or video to listen to alongside the game, which is not the case for most roguelikes I play by the time I've reached 100 hours in them. I admittedly do slightly dislike the somewhat gory body horror theming, but the concept of the game's world being inspired by a real world 15th century painter, Hieronymus Bosh, is a really cool idea. I imagine that the visuals will turn some people away from this game before they get to experience the incredible gameplay, which is rather unfortunate. I also wasn't impressed by the story of the game. The story's alright, but it didn't resonate with me the way it seemed to be trying to. The gameplay is really the big carry for the whole experience for me, enough for me to see this game as a masterpiece despite my indifference to some of its other aspects.

Some miscellaneous other thoughts I have of the game:
- Combat has some unnecessary friction. At the very start of each turn it takes a couple seconds before hovering over an attack in the timeline will show what enemy queued it. This minor inconvenience gets frustrating after spending a lot of time with the game. You also can't do any actions until the current action has completely resolved, which can be annoying if an attack leads to multiple things happening at once (such as spending/getting pigment, dealing/taking damage, deaths, items, and abilities) adding to the time you must wait until you can continue interacting with the game. I would have loved if additional actions could be queued while the current ongoing actions resolve, like how playing cards quickly in Slay the Spire works. And I do really wish you could skip the victory jungle at the end of fights.
- I don't really like zone 3. It doesn't feel as rewarding to complete encounters there since there are no shops to discover. The difficulty of the encounters can also vary wildly which can lead to me feeling miffed if I get bad encounter luck. It also has my least favorite enemy designs and song and the fewest number of unique enemies.
- One of the final bosses in zone 3 is much harder than the other one and can feel unfair if you weren't dealt any good party members or items on the run.
- The game can be very funny when it's trying to be :3. I was laughing out loud while playing more than once and would have loved some additional dialogue in the game to further showcase its humor.
- There are a couple combos that are too powerful, which can undermine the game's strategy.
- Grinding attempts for the secret final boss was really annoying when its so unlikely to even show up in most runs.

Brutal Orchestra is one of the best turn based games and roguelikes I have ever played, which is especially impressive to me because I can see such clear room for improvement. If there are any future updates to the game I will be very eager to play them, and I am interested in playing Talia's other games after being so blown away by Brutal Orchestra.

Danganronpa's fanbase preceded the game itself and turned me off from playing it for years. When I played it myself, I was quite surprised to discover that it is actually really fun! The mysteries are written pretty well and most of the dialogue (which is most of the game) kept me eager to read more because it would be funny, progress the plot, or offer clues useful for solving a future mystery. That being said, a non-negligible chunk of the dialogue was pretty cringe, commonly featuring immature jokes about boners, boobs, "doing it", off color kinks, etc. Sometimes this stuff was so bad it got a laugh out of me, but plenty of it did nothing but make me embarrassed to be playing this game, so I can see this making the game much less appealing to some people.

If you can handle some cringe dialogue and enjoy other visual novels/text focused games I would really recommend playing this game, despite whatever impression its fanbase may have left on you!

I could see some people enjoying this game, but I found it to be a pretty underwhelming experience. The controls just feel kind of bad, there is a lacking in sound effect and music variety, and the humor did not land with me at all. The minimal visual aesthetic was pretty nice though.

I was excited to play this game, as I am a massive fan of Daniel Mullins' other game "Inscryption", but this game was unfortunately not able too pull off the same levels of intrigue or finesse as that title. Neither the 'usual' nor the subversive moments in this game were interesting to me, and the best thing I have to say about it is that it told its narrative with relative brevity.
If you were thinking of getting this game, I would strongly suggest you get Inscryption instead!

Rhythm Sprout has excellent visuals, humor, and music. What more could you want in a rhythm game? It also offers a lot of replayability with its turbo and randomized map options. Pick it up for a very fun 3-4 hours clearing the levels, plus however long you want to spend getting achievements and full combos!

Inscryption is unlike anything I have ever played. Its atmosphere is so expertly designed and executed and the story was entirely enrapturing. I cannot recommend it enough. Do yourself a favor and play it now, before you risk seeing any spoilers.

Not a bad game but it just wasn't for me. The music dynamically changing based on your movement was really cool, but the actual gameplay got old for me pretty fast. If you are just looking for a visually unique game with equally odd and unique dynamic music you might enjoy the game.

This is the first fishing game I have ever played, previously thinking that they would be boring and lacking depth. While this game does not have a whole lot to do, I'm impressed by what it did with so little. This feels like exploring Peach's Castle in SM64 with all the small secrets there are to find, which reward you with either new species of fish to catch or a new lure to attract fish with. The aesthetic of this game does a lot of the heavy lifting in making this game appealing, so if it doesn't appeal to you, you probably won't like the game. The progression of the game is also pretty quick and it can be beaten in about 4 hours, so there is not much grind at all.

TLDR: It's a really chill game with a cute little progression system, secrets, and retro visuals. Pick it up for a fun and relaxing few hours to reach the credits.

Yume Nikki is not for everyone. It is very slow and there is very little actual 'game'. The experience is almost entirely exploring open areas searching for something interesting among a sea of fantastical things which are paradoxically mundane. I actually found the experience to be similar to browsing 4chan, as it is a very meandering activity, with some unsettling or even disturbing undertones, where you genuinely have no idea what you will encounter next.

Somewhat frustratingly, it is not plausible to actually reach the credits of the game without either spending several hours meticulously combing every single area or using a guide. Luckily, there are spoiler-lite guides on the community page that can point you in the right direction while still letting you discover everything at your own pace. I tried this game in high school and found it boring, but I enjoyed it when I came back to it a few years later. To enjoy Yume Nikki, you need to be in the right mental state and not be expecting something that it isn't (ie a more traditional video game).

The easiest way to explain what Temtem is like is to compare it to Pokemon.

In many ways Temtem is Pokemon but done better. The balancing of Temtem is divine when compared to Pokemon, which has creatures like Delibird that are practically unusable in any and all circumstances. Every Temtem is meant to be viable. The difficulty and overall gameplay are also better and more engaging than any Pokemon game. Every battle being a double battle makes the turns much more interesting by allowing synergy between your team to flourish while also making type matchups much less one-dimensional than Pokemon, because having a type advantage against only one of the two opponents still leaves you vulnerable to attacks from the other tem.

There are also many tweaks to mechanics in Pokemon that just improve the battling formula significantly. The Power Points from Pokemon, which limit the number of times you can use a move without returning to a Pokemon center, have been entirely reworked into a stamina system, which I think is the best addition to the battle formula. Stamina depletes as you use attacks, with more useful attacks costing more stamina. This adds an entirely new layer to battling and teambuilding which I really enjoyed. Moves with a "hold timer" as well as the changes/additions to status effects are also great changes that differentiates this game from Pokemon and nerfs especially strong abilities like sleep.

Inside battles, there is no RNG at all, which I have enjoyed as a somewhat competitive player. Randomness can be very fun in Pokemon at times, but I don't think that it has a place in a game trying to be a skill/strategy based competitive game. There are still random events in the singeplayer, such as encountering luma (shiny) Temtem, but there is no randomness within battles themselves.

Breeding has also been made significantly easier than it is in Pokemon, by removing the randomness of getting a monster with perfect SVs (IVs in Pokemon). The process is too complex to describe here, but the short version is that by using held items you can guarantee that you will get a Temtem with perfect SVs in every stat by breeding a group of tems together that each have 1 different perfect stat. Moves (including egg moves) can also be remembered at any time by simply going into a tem's summary screen! Unfortunately, breeding leads to the first major problem I have with the game, which is the cost of in-game items.

The previously mentioned items that allow you to breed perfect SV tems are consumable, and cost an inhibitively large amount of in game currency. Doing any of the optional side activities in this game costs currency. Raid dens, the battle frontier, participating in "dojo wars", breeding, TV (EV in Pokemon) training, even USING FAST TRAVEL, all cost in game currency. Once you have a good team of Temtem and can farm money by rematching gym leaders and winning games on the online PvP ladder, these costs are not as punishing, but getting a good team is either extremely expensive or extremely time consuming.

I bred an Anahir with all perfect SVs after beating the game. I had about 200k in currency after beating the game. Breeding this perfect tem cost me about 180k, and that was just to get one perfect SV tem before even TV training it. I ended up with multiple perfect Anahir and am able to sell some of the extras in the auction house to make back some money, but at the price that perfect tems go for in the auction house, I will barely break even after selling the extra perfect tems I bred, which isn't even to mention that I have to wait days (or maybe even weeks) for someone to actually decide to buy them. Getting an entire team of 8 perfect Temtem is not possible with only the money you get from beating the campaign, even if you are the one breeding them. This sucks because to make money you need to already have good Temtem.

To fill out the remaining 7 positions on my team, I just used any member of the species I wanted regardless of what its SVs were, and got to TV training. TV training presents a similar problem, you can use consumable items to TV train Temtem, but they are very expensive. Because I was broke (and couldn't make money yet due to not having a team of TV trained Temtem already) I had to TV train by knocking out wild tems (just like EV training in Pokemon). This was a brutal process. TV training all 8 tems took around 5 hours of just grinding, even though I was training multiple tems at once and in optimal training locations. This is by far the worst part of the game IMO. Stamina, SV hacks/glitches, and breeding are great examples of how Temtem transforms outdated or unnecessary mechanics from Pokemon to be more streamlined and intuitive, and it shocks me that they didn't do the same for TV training. There are some locations where TV training a specific stat is relatively painless because only 1 temtem can spawn in the tall grass which always drops 3-4 of the desired TV, but other places (such as the optimal location to TV train speed) have only tems that yield a small amount of TVs each, and also has additional encounters that provide TVs for stats that you don't want, which you will need to run from, wasting more of your time. TV training is actually worse in Temtem than EV training is in Pokemon, as you can only get one of the TV yield boosting hold item, and it doesn't even increase yields as much as the power items in Pokemon do. Yes, you can TV train Temtem with consumable items quickly, but that is expensive and not possible after merely beating the campaign; everyone will have to TV train a team manually to start off and it is a major turn off and I can see it pushing many players away from trying the postgame.

The only other thing that I think Pokemon does better than Temtem is the general world design/atmosphere. The music in the game is not bad by any means, but it is not as good as the music in any of the Pokemon games and doesn't really work as music to casually listen to outside the context of playing the game. And in most Pokemon games, talking to NPCs is satisfying just because they have interesting things to say about the town they're in or Pokemon that live nearby. The NPCs in Temtem are almost all a waste of time to talk to. Even many of the dialogues from NPCs during cutscenes were incredibly boring and I ended up skipping through them without reading sometimes--something that I have never felt the need to do in a Pokemon game. This isn't to say that there is no interesting lore in Temtem, but it is drowned out by the masses of uninteresting NPCs that just waste your time. Temtem does at least have a quest tracker that shows on the map if there are NPCs that want to give you a quest or have an item to give you, which is a very nice QoL feature, but it doesn't excuse the terrible dialogue.

TLDR: Temtem does most things better than Pokemon, such as competitive, difficulty, tweaks to the battle systems, online features, and reducing frustrating RNG. It especially outperforms the most recent Pokemon games with the impressive amount of polish underlining the entire experience. The game does, however, fail to fill the world with interesting NPCs or make the postgame accessible to players who aren't willing to go through a multi-hour grind.

This game is great! It has learned from many of Pokemon's mistakes to make a new and better, although still not perfect, experience. If you just want to play the campaign singleplayer and don't care about postgame or competitive, go for it. The 40-50 hour campaign is great and much more engaging than a Pokemon campaign. If you want a competitive monster battler like Pokemon that is more balanced, with no RNG, and many unique improvements over Pokemon's battle system, this game is great for that as well.

Also people complaining about the premium currency are misinformed. Exclusively cosmetics, with no in game effects, can be purchased in the game with real money.