Games nowadays kind of has to catch the interest quite fast if people are going to play the games. After spending 200+ hours in Cuphead and Hollow Knight, I really wanted something similar. I felt this was exactly the game I needed. I gave it 1 hour of gameplay, I beat the first boss and came a bit longer. But there was just something annoying about the level design that bothered me. It felt like Meat Boy or some game that was just made to have a lot of obstacles just for the sake of having obstacles. The graphics was nice, but it felt a bit repetitive and monotonous after a while. I did not really get any feeling for anything, even though the game mechanics were pretty cool. It felt like they got inspired by a lot of nice parts from Hollow Knight, but made it worse in some way. I may give it another hour to see if I will start enjoying the game but this far I don't really want to keep playing.
My first impression of this game was. "Yeah, this will be my new Hollow knight experience in a musical sense while waiting for Silksong". My expectations was waaay to high though. It's kind of a musical Hollow knight clone when it comes to both graphics and controls (if you play with Xbox controller like I did). I enjoyed it for 30 minutes, then I just got bored. It was just not entertaining enough for me. I have always disliked puzzle games (I love logical puzzle games though like escape room isch style) with rotating cubes and how to get from point A to B and then proceed to next stage. Trine series are an exception though. I was expecting some more metroidvania RPG feeling on this one with characters to interact with and going back and forth throughout the world etc...just collecting "coins" and getting over obstacles is not really fun. It should contain some more in my opinion. It's not a bad game, it's just not the type of game I enjoy. It would have been a success though if it could be minibosses and enemies and less focus on "hmm, how do I get past these obstacles".
I only played it for about an hour or so, but I can't really say I enjoyed it at all. Combat was not fun, HUD looked a bit too...clumsy in some way. It felt like a typical "I also want to make an RPG game with "X of Y" items. What made me not continue playing was lack of feeling in the combat. You hit a dog for example and there was no "is hit" animation or nice sounds that makes if fun to fight. I appreciate the effort, but it was too generic for me. Maybe I should have tried a couple of more hours to give it a fair review since I did not really get into the story part.
I have not been able to play this until I recently got my new computer. And wow, this is totally a mashup from all the first three games and all the best parts are kept. The skillset RPG feeling is back, the plank is back, loads of new cool items and features are there and it's incredibly beautiful and awesome soundtrack. I am still on Act 3 in this game, but I can with confidence say that this is the best one. I still miss the inventory items from the first one though. It should have been in all the games in my opinion.
I'm quite a hardcore horror fan since childhood and I've seen like all horror movies. Nothing really scares me anymore. When it comes to horror games, I've only played a handful of them, and the most scary ones I've played are Layers of Fear, Kholat and Darkness Within. I would say Song of Horror is a combination of all of them in some way. I'm currently playing Chapter 3 and I just had to turn off the game for a while since my nerves couldn't handle it. The big difference with this game compared to the other three I mentioned is that you can actually die! And you only have limited lives. If all your characters die, then you're smoked and have to restart the chapter. That takes the game into another level of focus and horror feeling. I don't really dare to do anything in the game without being extremely cautious. Yes, there are a lot of jump scares, but also slow scares like the whole atmosphere. The minigames are not that creepy, but the thought of a minigame could appear anywhere and kill your character is horrible which will boost the atmosphere a lot. The bad parts with the game are probably that the voice acting is pretty bad. And as an adventure gamer, I want to hear the character talking while clicking on something, even if the person is alone and no one can listen. In this game it's just "hmm....ooh" etc. Like The Sims or something. If this game would be patched, please change the voice acting. That French sounding guy in chapter two was just sounding terrible. But as a whole, this is the scariest game I've played this far so I can totally recommend it.
Nah, I would not recommend this one. It was not really bad. It was quite enjoyable with the secret camp and so. But the love story with Capon just felt a bit poor. When the game was finished for real, you had that nice and sad feeling, and it had to end with this quest, which just was tedious. It totally killed all the magic at the end of the game and it was more "meh" when I decided to finish it for real. As a side quest, yes. But not as an end game extension. I would not recommend new players to play this one since it will kill the experience. Just ignore this expansion and take it the second time you play the game or something.
I just did my Second playthrough of KCD, and this time with all the DLCs. I didn't have any of them the first time. When I started this quest and found out you could actually rebuild Pribyslavitz from the ashes, like a strategy game. I got hysterically happy and it was awesome. I totally skipped all other quests and just focused on this one. However, when the city was built. No more villagers were complaining, no more decisions that would affect the income. Nothing more to build, even though Sir Divish told about an expansion. I was totally expecting to be able to build more buildings later on in the game. There were still wooden stumps and the church yarden still had uncut grass. I wanted to make everything beautiful and a litte bit more happenings and quests. But when it was done...it was basically over. Just a place to grab tens of thousands of groshen...that you don't need anymore at that stage. So conclusion, it was very awesome until all buildings were set up. Then I just felt emptiness and disappointment. I would like a DLC From the Ashes 2.0 where you extend the DLC with more stuff. More buildings, more choices so it becomes less linear and more decisions and quests and stuff to do. Make it your home. I want to feel it's my home for real as a Bailiff. Why not let Theresa move in with me there etc?
I finished this in around 13 hours and I like to play these calm games without stress as some meditation. I finished Kholat (the creepy Russian game) a couple of days ago, and wanted more of that kind of stuff. This was basically what I was looking for and it's what I got. It bugged me a bit that sometimes I did not understand who was talking. It was the same color on the text, but it was not really clear what voice was what person. I mostly played it for the atmosphere and the puzzles and that was the purpose of the game. I enjoyed almost all the puzzles, and I did not need to use that many hints from the build in hint page (I really like those kind of sections). Only a few places I used the hints just to conclude that what I already tried to do was what I supposed to do. It was a good level on the puzzles and they made me feel quite smart. The puzzle boxes annoyed me so much though. After I got like 7 photos, I just skipped opening more puzzle boxes because that one was too tedious and boring. It was quite fun the first three times. Never re-use a puzzle more than three times! However, since I finished the whole game - it was a nice game. I was using an Xbox controller on PC so it was a little bit annoying to light all the super small candles and lights all the time, but I just wanted them to be lit to get the cozy atmosphere. I don't want to complain more. It's good if you want some nice puzzles and meditative feeling between more rough games.
This took me 7 hours and 47 minutes to finish. It was super atmospheric and I was scared most of the time. I really enjoyed just walking around feeling lonely in these mountains. And sometimes after only trees, snow and rocks, you saw something interesting and it all got more exciting. However, one thing that really annoyed me was the balance between daylight and night. Act 1 was my favorite with that beautiful looking train station and that lovely singing. It really made me want to keep playing the game immediately. Then it was all night the rest of the game. I was really looking forward to see the daylight again at some point, but noo. The compass was a bit hard to read at first, but it also felt quite realistic. I got used to it after a while. I did not totally get the whole plot though, but I suppose that was the point with the game. I would have put 5 stars if it was a bit longer + some more daylight and maybe a proper outro with some more explanation of the story and maybe some more time on that train station. But yeah, it's a good game for sure. I've never seen anything like this before.
I bought this on a sale for a cheap price and I was expecting some 5 hour beautiful puzzle game. But what I got was some combination between Cuphead and Metroid. I was so proud that I finished Cuphead a while back since I thought it was the hardest game the last decade. But, I may have been wrong. This was definitely as big challenge as Cuphead, and some parts was even harder (Geez, that White Palace drove me nuts). Now I sit here 76 hours later and 102% game completed and I'm feeling this kind of Cuphead proud again. Hollow Knight is super well balanced and for the first time in my life, I kind of use all items in the game and all spells. Usually I find something that works and stick to that until the end, but in this game, I really had to try every single charm at least twice because it was kind of required. The only thing that bugged me was that I was playing this with an Xbox controller on a PC and there seem to be some kind of input bug in this game while using xbox controller. A little bit now and then, I suddenly see the start menu bar on Windows overlapping my game, waiting 5 seconds with that menu, the game minimizes itself and it's impossible to start it again and it freezes and crashes. Makes me have to restart the game. So I was always super nervous that it would happen during some complex scenario (which it did a lot of times and I had to do it from last bench save). Some kind of solution was when the start menu appears, click all possible buttons on your controller at the same time and 50% of the time it disappears and you can continue playing the game. Kind of destroyed the whole gaming experience. But, I kept on playing even with this bug since the game was so good!
