Recent reviews by Protagonistical

Pros:
Cute fox that barks on command and does a tail waggle.
Blue Fox Fren that is also cute and barks back at you.
Do you know the game Journey and/or Sky: Children of the Light? Or Stray? How do you about those games but with foxes?
Pretty music. Insanely pretty.

Cons:
Swimming. Is. SO. Slow.
Geysers WILL mess up your trajectory, land you in the water, and make you cry.
You can miss out on collectibles, so completionists beware.
So clunky. You can be pointing one way and jump another way.

Conclusion:
Unfortunately, I can't grade the game on cuteness. If I could, it would be 100/10. Alas, the clunkiness and my newfound phobia of letting my fox dip so much as a toe in water, makes me give this a 7/10 overall. Still good, if you can overlook the flaws, which the game gives you ample reason to.

Okay, I have mixed feelings about this game. The first 10 hours were great. I loved exploring the map, picking up new monsters and training them, getting new equipment, and slowly becoming stronger. And then I hit a point around the middle where my team, which I had lovingly crafted for hours, was becoming WAY outclassed by mandatory fights. No big deal, I thought, I'll just grind for a few hours and get them all max level. Worked for maybe another hour or two. Stumped for a solution, I went to the guides and looked up how on earth I was supposed to do things. Turns out, team synergy needs to be PERFECT for you to win the game, and not kinda-sorta-there like I had been playing the game. That's fine, except I had spent all this care and time investing in my monsters, and I don't want to win if it isn't with them, because switching over to a completely new team right at the end, just so I can say I've won, just feels bad to me. So, I probably won't be finishing the game, not unless next patch pulls a miracle out of nowhere and lets me play with whatever monsters I want, not just the monsters that work well together.

A good metroidvania with solid mechanics and a fresh take on the genre's abilities. At times humorous, at times serious, at times sad, this game is a rollercoaster of emotion. Although it appears cutesy and light, much like the ocean, there are hidden depths. I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried several times in the storyline. Beyond the sheer emotional impact, the gameplay is satisfying, the environments are well crafted, and the bosses are varied. That's not to say it doesn't have its flaws. It suffers a little bit of copy-paste syndrome with reskinned enemies, the dialogue is funky in the cutscenes, upgrades feel like they don't do much, but overall, I'd recommend this game to anyone with a weakness for the genre, or anyone who likes wholesome stories that you have to work out yourself to uncover.

There's Subnautica references. 10/10

Cute metroidvania. It's got a little something for everyone. Upgrade systems, fast movement/teleportation, cute characters, a little bit of plot/lore, boss fights, exploration, a tomb of 1000 DEADLY SPIRITS, aircrafts, ranged options, a unique map layout, and a rival that you can't help but hate to love and love to hate.

Is it an innovation in the genre? No. Is it worth checking out? Yes.

Things I hate in this game:
The mannequin placement is too good.
You can't toggle sprinting, so you have to hold the shift key if you want to run, and boy, lemme tell ya, you're gonna want to.


Things I love in this game:
You can go down slides and indulge your inner child pushing around inner tubes and wading around waist-high pools. A++


Honestly, this game was more of a fun adventure game than a horror game, at least most of the time. The "mall" section and the movie theater section are really the only exceptions. The water park level was just plain fun. I had a blast playing it; a -whale- of a time, if you will. If you've seen the trailers and the videos of Youtubers getting the pants scared off of them, and are thinking about giving the game a chance, then water you waiting for? You already have your tickets; now, all that's left is punching them.

If you want to be scared of elevators, doors, fans, vents, assorted metallic noises, and the Two Fingers from Elden Ring, then you'll have a grand old time. If you don't, like me, you'll be terrified out of your wits.

PC users beware, because the frame rate stutters randomly and you'll be left in the middle of an intense encounter and suddenly poor Isaac will black out and wake up ten seconds in the future. And I didn't see most of the cutscenes, because the FPS decided that a still image was what I wanted to look at for a solid minute. I guess that adds to the horror and uncertainty though, doesn't it?

Pretty good game! It terrified me, but I stuck with it to unravel the story. Plot-wise, the game nailed it with environmental storytelling and scattered lore drops. The puzzles were hard but fair. My only issues are that it felt like there were opportunities that weren't taken, and that the ending wasn't very satisfying. Still, I look forward to the rest of HORROR TALES.

I've only played a few hours, but I can already tell that it's Hollow Knight, except machinery. Enemies have the same attack patterns as in that game - there's tiktiks, vengeflies, stalking devouts, aspid mothers, garpedes, fungoons, and crystal hunters, and those are just the ones that I can think of right off the bat, and I've only been playing for about 4 hours. The different locations are exactly the same - there's equivalents of Forgotten Crossroads, Crystal Peak, and Deepnest, and I'm sure there are more that I haven't discovered. And the plot? So far, we've got 3 "creators" to hunt down, aka 3 dreamers.

I'm a little surprised that Team Cherry hasn't sued them for ripping off their game, but maybe there's more differences the farther into the game you get. But as of so far, the only major differences are the art style, the health recovery system being based on currency, and the bosses. If you've played Hollow Knight to death and are looking for another metroidvania to scratch that itch, then try it out.

But don't play games like Elden Ring or Sundered immediately before playing this game; you'll only get frustrated with how slow the combat is in comparison. Trust me.

I'm not one for verbal loudness, but this game had me in helpless stitches less than five minutes in. I had family members come in and ask if I was alright. That's how you know it's a good game; you get so invested your personality changes because of it. No, I swear I'm not cursed.

If you need reasons to get this game, here's a few; a cursed lumberjack who speaks in Olde English and investigates a murdered tree; more silly walks than you can shake a fedora at; tips of the hat to their previous games and other famous titles; there is at least one spittoon; cheese wizard -- CHEESE WIZARD; pets, you get pets that level up like Pokemon; and a wide variety in humor both clever and dumb.

Sound fun? Come join the dark side and investigate the shadows hanging over Loathing.