Gorgeous artwork all the way through, music I listen to outside the game. Story and characters swing from endearing and compelling to plots quickly brought up and dropped, Combat starts out interesting with the ability to send enemies to the past and future with additional effects, but spamming Haste and elemental weaknesses worked for the whole game.
You might look at the screenshots and think "Thief the Dark Project", then read the description and read "Stalker" and "stealth-shooter." So you start up and when you find a gun and ammo they go straight into the inventory. Some with every consumable drink, cigar, birdskull, special ammo. Spec right into stealth because I had painted this picture of a world extremely scarce with ammo and only, ONLY, should I fire a shot or use a valuable consumable if I had spent five hours trying to stealth past. By the time I reached the second zone my Stash had so many consumables, ammo, artifacts and weapons the game lagged several seconds when I tried to put something more into (please dont do what I did thinking you need to collect ALL the waterlillies.) It was around this time I also had snoke my way through the entire second map, almost without dying once because stealth bonuses stacked, I could literally scamper right out into the open, walk up to a scallywag's face and introduce him to Mister Stab. Suddenly, this Wyrd Western had turned into Diablo 2. Or Dark Souls. Diablo Souls if you will. And I only draw that comparison to attempt to paint a picture in your mind where youve gotten into the swing of things, you pick up and item with a unique effect, and you mind immediately goes back to "hang on I picked up an artificate that does..." or "I saw an item at the vendor that gives..." Im barely even through the last act and Im already planing new runs with new builds. Since most unique loot seems to be placed by hand, I also had fun discussing the game with others and learning the location of weapons or artifacts that my run a little more smoother.
In Sound Mind surprised me greatly. When I first tried the demo on Steam (among many others) I thought it'd be your average "walking simulator" without much going on. Boy was I wrong. Only by pure coincidence did I push on through the demo and before I knew I was in a massive sprawling mall of a level, it's size grew as I gained a glass shard while I tried to lure an angry spirit to mirrors scattered around. There was items to find, upgrades to collect, puzzles to solve, an enigmatic figure always watching from afar. There was details, combat, interesting puzzles, I had to navigate by jumping platforms and crawling airducts! I got the game on release and started my Spooktober session with it. While not technically a horror game, it had a lot of unsettling elements along with tons of in-world notes and posters that help make Milton Haven feel like a real place as you read about notes left by disgruntled store clerks or tired electricians in factories. I love this stuff, not just for finding clues for the next puzzle but also to help immersion. If you would like some comparisons to make it easier to understand then you're giving me a hard time since this is really unique. Should I be pressed it's something like this: Imagine the open-ended levels of Alan Wake and it's use of lightning, imagine the level design of Half-Life with it's constant rewarding for exploration and Silent Hill 2 in it's depth of character. The bosses are great in that each makes full use of the entire level they're in. Performance on Medium settings on a Ryzen 5 1600X and RX580 was mostly smooth 60 fps except in combat or when large parts of the level was shown. It would also stutter when autosaving. There is no quicksave, but autosaved often enough. Im reaching the limit so let me finish with: Great music, fantastic atmosphere, stellar characters, creative arsenal, extremely immersive, amazing level design and lovely cat to hang out with.
I don't usually find resource-gathering and crafting games compelling, but Spiritfarer manged to do it nontheless with it's extremely charming artstyle, wonderful animations, great soundtrack and it's very compelling characters. As the game makes very plain: You are taking over for the ferryman in purgatory, who vessles souls over to the final beyond when they are ready and help them get there. So you plan a course for undiscovered island, cook food, plant crops, seeds, harvest trees, melt ores, hammer ingots, chat up spirits, find new ones to bring a board or just sit in the back of the boat and fish. You get into this very daily rhytm of waking up, ring the bell, feed every passager, make tasks for travel and harvest, always maintain and collect toward something. This might sound hectic but it all builds toward it gradually. The characters are the star of the show and I won't hide that it was a very emotional moment when they were gone. Not only have you gotten to know them, but some of them not only reminded me of people I have known in real life, some even seemed a reflection of myself. And when they're gone, their house remains, with nobody to inhabit it. It was a journey alright. I really recommend this game for it's addictive gather-craft platform gameplay, the style and it's characters. Hope you enjoy it too.
