It's an interesting story, with a fair amount of suspense and good voice acting but didn't finish the game feeling very satisfied. I think it's because I just need more to do, I like a bit more gameplay in my games or a the very least, some more impactful decisions- I felt most of the time I was just along for the ride aside from dialogue choices here and there. Also I realize there's meant to be a lack of human interaction, but it would be nice if nothing else to interact with the other person in the story. She's a position where she can see me, and while I can see her tower, I never see her. Howabout, just give the character some binoculars so I can look over and her silhouette can give me a wave? I'm glad I played it but- also glad I didn't fork over full price.
For most of my experience with this game, I had a lot of fun. I would rate it as high as a 4/5. But the boss fights just get super tedious. Why build a boss fight where the player has to constantly run or dash to survive and yet also tie those abilities to a stamina system? Most of the time you don't notice it, but the final "armor" fight I'll call it, is just aggravating. Constantly needing to run, heal, shoot stupid armor points on its chest and then run in and shoot crystals. You need to do this some 3 times and if you're playing on hard like I am, you'll need to open the armor up 3-4 times to destroy each crystal because while the boss is "vulnerable", he is still moving and guarding his weak point and still attacking you. Meanwhile you're dodging his AOE attacks, and running away from him when he comes to stomp you. I spent some 20 minutes fighting the guy and then failed to perform a heal once so got killed because if you get hit hard you'll die in the next attack. All that progress lost. In these sorts of boss fights, many of the weapons are useless. The Sword, Flamers and Shotguns are all close range. Crossbow bolts and Rockets have travel time and the latter has a horrendous time between firing. Heart and demon head are useless or have limited ammo. That leaves basically the pistol and PDW. The game really needs more monsters as well. When you fight a couple of invulnerable charge beasts for the third or four time it just gets annoying. You end up just running around those pieces of terrain that aren't destructible and cheap shotting them. In general I just really have a problem with boss designs where the boss is invulnerable for most of the fight. These fights just are just an aggravating waste of time. I don't want to spend most of the fight on the defensive, waiting for my artificial window to do real damage. If you want, start the fight this way, but after I make the guy vulnerable a few times KEEP him vulnerable. Break this boring loop
A game that tries to celebrate the evolution of video games by updating the way the game looks and plays as you progress through it. Very interesting in concept, but the execution just doesn't hold up. As a history, it suffers the same failings of this generation in presenting history as starting with the NES. The Atari, arcade & early PC (Apple II/C64 era) is completely ignored. As a game about the evolution of games, the meaningful changes are pretty much entirely cosmetic. New gameplay is introduced but outside of boss encounters, the gameplay is so bare bones and mindless to be completely uninteresting. The gameplay will actually devolve as it goes from zelda to diablo and back again. Similarly mechanics like bombs from Zelda are introduced and then forgotten. For nearly the entire game you will simply move and have an attack, or in the FF-inspired battles, an attack and a heal with a couple of items. So bare bones. This didn't need to be a game. It could have just been a video as the end credits aptly demonstrate. If you buy it, understand you're buying a novelty, not an enjoyable game.
"Unto the breach" from Henry the V is a rallying cry for his troops to attack a weak point in the line or wall. "Into the Breach" from Subset has next to nothing in common with that famous line. In tabletop gaming, there is a concept called "initiative". A tactical edge where your opponent moves or declares actions before you do so you can better position or respond to those actions. Many reviewers have interpreted ItB as a game which gives players the foresight to the enemy actions, or allows the players to be a turn ahead, these notions are wrong. Into the breach is a turn based game, except instead of structured to be one team moves and fires, and then the other (x-com), or one team moves, then the other, then the first team/unit shoots, then the other, it is instead styled in the fashion that the Enemy Team Moves & Declares Attacks, then the Player Moves & Attacks, and then Enemy Declare Attacks execute. The game happens in one turn, it is just broken up in a way that people do not seem to understand. So the player obviously has the advantage right? Because they can do both move & attack at the same time, whereas the enemy has to wait for their attacks to execute. No. Because the player team is not three mechs, the player team is three mechs plus six or more buildings and all of those buildings lose initiative every turn. So in reality, ItB is not a game where your team has the advantage of foresight all the time, it is instead a game where 2/3rds of your team always loses initiative to the enemy team and the other 1/3rd of your team (the mechs) try to keep the rest of the team alive. It is a game not about attacking a weak point like the name implies, but about being on the defensive 100% of the time. Even in the final mission, the big attack, they deploy buildings to defend! A turn-based strategy game where you only ever defend is very one dimensional and ultimately that one-dimension gets quickly tiresome.
Though not as varied in ships as its successor, Tie Fighter, X-Wing remains one of the greatest games to ever hit the PC. And in addition to that, the game ties in beautifully with the original trilogy story-line.
Played a few rogue-lites of this style but personally I just find the bullet-hell aspect really limiting. The enemy variety is there in appearance but not in personality, spawning different quantities of red blobs to throw at the enemy is not really variety. Maybe it changes up in the later levels, but the early content is not interesting enough to encourage me to keep grinding.
I like Heretic, I like Milkstone's previous game Infinity Danger, and I sorta like rogue-likes but this game just doesn't do it for me. The weapons aren't interesting, and the enemies are a little too cartoony for my tests (slimes & carrots). It looks nice, it's good they give you an alt weapon from the start, but also if my pea shooter wand has infinite ammo why do I need to have the ammo recharge? Maybe it's to promote weapon swapping but I just found it tedious. A lot of these games suffer from the same problem. Boring basic weapon, ammo shortages for upgraded weapons. What they really ought to do is to have no weapon have infinite ammo so that they need to give enough ammo for all the different guns you can pick up.
Played on PS4. Narrative second to none. Some will criticize this as a walking simulator, fact is it's just a game with bold pacing. And when that pacing pays off the enjoyment is second to none. No other game has made me feel like more of a badass, while most of the time playing against seemingly insurmountable odds. There are games that are better fleshed out in terms of systems and mechanics, but as an experience, this is quite possibly my favourite of all time.
