Some of the puzzles are just plain tedious, there were several bad typos in the script, the ending I got was a bit of a letdown and things felt a bit jank. Would've been maybe a 3/5 star game but I didn't realize until the very final scene that this continues the trope of indie horror devs making all their female protags "alphabet soup" - I didn't realize that's what the dev meant when he said Sasha's her "partner." Come on, indies, quit that. Very uncool and samey, that's not how all women are.
If you enjoyed the 2D Castlevania games since SotN, including the DS titles, you'll probably like this one. Big complaint: there are occasional difficulty spikes, and when you die, you're sent back to your last save point. Losing half an hour or so of progress in such a cheap way is frustrating enough that I take breaks lasting several, several months when it occurs. Huge nuisance. Not enough to ruin the game, but man, such a huge flaw. They should let you restart the boss fight instead of losing loads of progress, especially when you've gotten lucky item drops from enemies on the way to that boss. Yes, I'm salty.
I read this one like a decade ago and it gave me nightmares for a few weeks. I'm a horror nut, it's rare that anything can ever actually scare me, but this one really got under my skin. I've always wanted to financially support the devs through direct and legal means, but the Steam release was censored, and I don't do censorship, so I've been waiting for an uncensored release. If you dislike basically all of Gen Urobuchi's other stuff, don't let that deter you, this is his only product I'm aware of that I've enjoyed. That magical girl series was way not my cup of tea. Would've been great if they'd folowed up this game with some other stories in the same world or something, but the one-off nature of it makes it feel more timeless. Well worth a read. Kudos to Jast and Nitroplus for bringing this one to GOG, they deserve all the sales they can get. I can't recommend Saya no Uta highly enough for people who don't mind being disturbed or leaving far from their comfort zone. If you think Silent Hill was enjoyably haunting, this is the next level.
Helps satisfy the same itch that Doom Eternal has been scratching since early last year. Dread Templar feels fresh and engaging, with energetic music, tight gunplay and rad weapons. I haven't completed all of the early access content just yet, but I've had a lot of fun so far. Only complaint I have so far is that I died instantly when I fell into a spike pit, made me repeat a few minutes of gameplay. Some other boomer shooters(*cough* Doom Eternal) have spoiled me with a little more leniency with platforming mistakes, but it's not a biggie. Game doesn't have a ton of platforming so far, it's a minor concern. So far I've been playing it on the normal difficulty mode, and I'm wishing I'd played it on hard mode. If you're a boomer shooter aficionado, start on hard, disregard normal. I will say that I haven't found a use for the bullet time feature yet, so far it feels totally unnecessary. I play at 1440p 170FPS and have speedy reflexes, so maybe it's different for others. $15 is a crazy-good price for the game, it's an easy impulse buy and I haven't had this much fun with an indie arena shooter since Prodeus. I highly recommend this one.
This is in my top five horror games of the 2010s, standing strong alongside RE7, Alien: Isolation, Amnesia TDD and Outlast. It has a mountain of atmosphere blanketing it, crushing the player. I'm a brave guy, but I was often quite hesitant to head into the woods and delve deep into the horrors within. I got a digital copy of this one on a whim and it blew me away so much, I had to get a DRM-free GOG copy. I can't recommend it enough, as long as you have a modicum of patience and don't expect an action-packed military shooter or something stupid like that.
I was apprehensive about this game, since the visuals are a little hard on the eyes and it seems like a Doom ripoff. The enemy types are definitely very Doom, but oh man, you guys, this is insane. So good. It's the most adrenaline-pumping arena shooter I've played in the past five years. Doom Eternal is a better game, of course, but I dig the more traditional gameplay of Prodeus. The guns feel punchy as heck, the soundtrack gets your blood pumping hardcore and the moment-to-moment gameplay loop is incredibly engaging. I got this on a whim and thought I'd casually stream a few levels, but by the start of the second level, I bumped the difficulty up to the second-highest and played through all the content in one sitting. I had such a high off this game, I ended up winding down with another fast-paced arena shooter right after. I want more content, but I don't want it to get old or anything, so I'm gonna hop on and play through all of the levels each time there's a big content drop. Other people seem to have performance issues and black screens, but for me, it was a solid 240FPS on my Vega 64 and Ryzen 2700X and just as smooth on my 6800 XT and 5800X. I think I may've had one crash, but I was jumping between programs and kinda asking for it.
I'm a big fan of boomer shooters, particularly Quake, so after holding off a couple months, I finally caved and got Wrath in early access. First thing I noticed when I booted up the game: it's incredibly dark. I spent about two minutes running around in circles in the opening cave because I couldn't see anything, assumed maybe the blade was laying down in a shadow or maybe there was a lever somewhere... nope, you're supposed to smash the wooden boards blocking your path with your fists, which I could only see once I raised the brightness literally to the max - I'd assumed he was unarmed. Not sure if his blade isn't supposed to be on his arm until you teleport into the first level or if the blade model just didn't load when I started up the game, but whatever, they'll probably fix that. I'm rocking a 1080 Ti, a Ryzen 2700 and 32GB of 3200MHz CL15 RAM, and I'm glad to report the game plays at a locked 240FPS. I didn't notice a single frame drop during normal gameplay, just when quicksaving. This is far better performance than games like Project Warlock, Dusk or Ion Fury. The gunplay feels fine, but probably needs more polish and variety. Thankfully the game has significantly more content on the way, so I'm gonna keep that in mind and update my review periodically. I was gonna recommend starting the game on the difficulty right above normal, since it starts kinda easy, but after half an hour the difficulty starts to ramp up. I like doing multiple playthroughs of games like this, starting at Normal and going up in difficulty each time, so thankfully that works here. So far, I'd give it a solid recommendation for fans of the genre, as long as you're fine with waiting for all the content drops.
