bjhoulding's reviews on GOG.com

Created on 18 June, 2026 00:50

Updated on 18 June, 2026 00:54

Ok but not as good as the first two.

I played this when it came out on another platform but I'm glad it's now on GOG. The game is basically more of the same but with bigger semi open world levels, A city, a jungle and the ruins of the city from the first game. These 3 areas are reused over and over again during the game so the game gets old quicker than the other Styx games although it's actually shorter. The levels feel less hand made than in previous games and some players have said a no kill run is pretty much impossible now. Instant fail detection levels have also gone. There is also a bit of weird character design going on in this game which was probably put in for DEI ESG reasons. The plot also doesn't make much sense, Styx now has a gang but why these random characters are together doesn't really make sense in the games lore. Spoiler below. The final boss of this game really annoyed me, Up to this point I had only had to use combat once and had played it purely stealth but the final boss is more like a Darksouls boss forcing you to engage with the terrible combat requiring precise dodge rolls witch this game really isn't made for. If you haven't maxed out your consumables and projectiles going into this fight it's a nightmare. It felt like a rug pull by the developers. The game also autosaves throughout so you cant go back once you go to the final area. They should have given you the option to continue after beating the final boss to get any collectables you might have missed or side missions. Side missions also give no rewards and are largely fetch quests so are pretty pointless to do. All in all the game is ok but worse than it's predecessors in every way.

35 gamers found this review helpful

Created on 29 April, 2025 02:34

Pretty decent game.

Firstly the good parts, the art style, the music, the voice acting, sound effects and music, the character progression system and even the the narrative and lore are all excellent. The level design Is about average for this kind of game. What isn't so good is the platforming and some of the bosses. While combat is great, platforming by contrast feels clunky for some reason, there are also sections where you'll have to jump blindly onto timed platforms, also many of these sections are against the clock as your health diminishes. Also annoying are instant death booby traps and platforms that kill you if you touch the bottom of another platform. This gets even more annoying when you get the double jump. The bosses are a mixed bag, many have two phases and many have annoying mechanics that feel cheesy or even cheap. One boss took me a day to beat and the final boss took me three days. In fact a lot of reviews on steam specifically mention the final boss. All I'll say is the difficulty spike of that boss is jarring. Despite Mandragora's faults, after beating it I kinda wish there was more and that's the sign of a good game. This is now probably my second favourite Metroidvania after Vigil, the Longest Night. Mandragora is a game that will frustrate the hell out of you while your playing it but when it's finished you'll look back on it fondly.

8 gamers found this review helpful

Created on 13 April, 2025 22:24

High production values but.....

Art style, graphics, animations, voice acting, music sound effects and even the story telling, performance and general polish of the game are all top notch however I'm a gameplay kind of guy. While all the things i've lisetd are nice to have in a game, gameplay to me is king and I found this game a lot weaker and more frustrating than similar games in the genre. Limbo, Inside, Carrion and the classis oddworld games are all more enjoyable than this game. controls are also pretty stiff for this type of game.

Created on 06 May, 2023 02:47

Updated on 06 May, 2023 03:00

The AI cheats.

I like a lot about this game, the graphics, the lore, the races, the skills, the kingdom development, the diplomacy choices etc. All really immersive and it's easy to pass many hours playing this game. However after spending many hours conquering most of the map to have your entire army wiped out in one go by an army from no where that was double your armies level and size even on the first level and lowest difficulty really annoyed me. If it was like that on the first mission how bad would it be later on and on harder difficulties. There are loads of videos on youtube of best spells, units, races etc to be overpowered but I really dont want to have to metagame just to deal with the AI cheating. how I miss old strategy games like settlers 3, populous 2 and dungeon keeper. AI in those games didn't need to cheat.

18 gamers found this review helpful

Created on 18 April, 2023 23:04

Fishing and Lovecraftioan cosmic horror.

At first I found Dredge to be a relaxing pleasant looking little game with a simple game loop of fish to make money and dredge to upgrade things. Beating the game took me three evenings, for the first evening I stayed relatively close to the starting area slowly upgrading my fishing vessel. By the end of my second evening of play I had unlocked all the ship upgrades and was able to fish for all types of fish. The reason I played it this way or at least felt I had to play it this way is the game does a brilliant job of making exploration feel dangerous, locations feel ominous and your boat feels vulnerable. At the beginning of the game three hits will sink you and you move really slowly. Generally your safe during the day but weird things come out at night to attack your ship and this creates tension as you watch the clock and how far you are away from a dock. On my third evening of play with everything upgraded the map really opened up as my boat now moved quickly and could take 7 hits before sinking which removed most of the tension from exploring. The game has 5 main archipelagos to explore each of witch has a main quest to complete for an NPC. Some of the NPC's are very strange and creepy especially some of the side quests. The game also does a good job of passive storytelling with notes and scraps of paper being found in bottles or being dredged up giving cryptic bits and pieces of the story kind of how souls games do. Once you beat the game you can still keep playing if you want to find every fish type and variation. The graphical style of the game is pleasant, The musical score and sound effects are brilliant and are probably the main factor in creating tension. The writing in the game is also excellent and the developers are clearly fans of Lovecraft. All in all a brilliant game that everyone should try.

2 gamers found this review helpful

Created on 22 September, 2022 15:07

Game breaking bugs

This game looks fantastic visually, unfortunately the game is full of bugs, I didn't even get out of bay city before I experienced a game breaking bug where I couldn't tractor beam anything which meant I couldn't replenish saucer shields or abduct anyone meaning I couldn't upgrade anything. So two hours into the remake of one of my all time favourite games is over. As other reviewers here have mentioned despite the game opening screen claiming the game is uncensored and as it was back in 2006 the sex change quest which I recall was quite funny has been removed. I'm really disappointed in this remake, Destroy all humans remake had it's flaws but was over all a very good game and a fine remake. This is just dire. Maybe it will get fixed in a few patches time. Your better off emulating the ps2 version on pc or buy the original for ps2, ps4 or ps5 if you own any of those consoles.

14 gamers found this review helpful

Created on 07 May, 2022 00:30

Quality but not Quantity

Trek to Yomi has an amazing Kurosawaesque style to it that reminded me of the black and white kurosawa mode in Ghost of Tsushima aswell as kurasawa's classic movies. This is achieved through some striking visuals, gorgeous graphics, evocative music, sound effects and voice acting and slick combat. Game play consists of following a linear path where you will do some environmental traversal and fight lots of bandits and solve the occasional puzzle. There are also many hidden paths which will usually reward you with collectables, ammo or upgrades to your health or stamina. But the main part of the game play is definitely the combat. Combat is fast, precise, deadly and very satisfying when it clicks. Parrying is important later on but prior to the final level I found just timing your strikes worked equally well. However for some late game enemies particularly the final boss learning to perfect your parries is essential which may put some people off. I give the game four stars instead of five simply because of how short it is. You can finish the game in about five hours, add a couple of hours to that for the hardest difficulty. It also has three different endings so there is some replay value. I would categorize this game with titles like Limbo, Inside and Edith Finch, Very short but beautifully Crafted. Well worth getting when it's on a deep sale.

19 gamers found this review helpful

Created on 19 December, 2021 19:40

A great old Classic badly ported.

I would give Baldur's gate Dark alliance a 4 out of 5 back when it was on the PS2. It was the most repetitive and linear of the snowblind ARPG's as it was their first one. The three that followed and many of the games it influenced were better. Even though they were better this is still an excellent game. However this port is just lazzy, I tried running it and quickly found that everything runs ridiculously fast when run on my radeon card. Even when limiting the game to 30 frames per second which is what it was originally. Everything still runs at a 100 miles per hour. Game has no options other than what was in the PS2, infact everything is exactly as it was on the PS2. After failing to get the game to play at a normal speed I fired up the emulated version which immediately worked perfectly. It's pretty bad when an emulated version of a 20 year old game works better than a new release. I would say if you like ARPG's and are willing to take the risk that it may not run correctly then this is a good game but very over priced. If it was running correctly 10 pounds would be a fair price not the 30 pounds there asking.

184 gamers found this review helpful

Created on 29 August, 2021 18:35

Brilliant but not ready for release,

This game really has the potential to be the true BG Successor. It just feels like BG1 from the music to the graphics, to the story and the locations, everything oozes BG. Unfortunately there are loads of bugs, minor bugs I could ignore as it's early access but it has a plethora of game ending bugs, 2 of which have just been fixed in the latest patch, however I have now experienced a new annoying bug where characters gear and weps simply vanishes from your inventory, not technically game ending but might as well be. So I have had to end my playing of this game after about 15 hours of enjoyable rough around the edges game play. I think I'll leave it until it's full release in 2022. As it stands I still think the 15 hours of enjoyment was worth the asking price, and when the game is finished and fixed it should hopefully be amazing. I'm giving it 4 stars as I have really enjoyed what I have played up to this point, but this will probably be 5 star game if it lives up to it's potential in the future.

51 gamers found this review helpful

Created on 15 December, 2020 18:29

Bad Controls

I didn't play this on gog but like to review stuff here. Main problem this game has is the awful UI and controls. Graphically I like the art style and voice acting and music are good. The game loop of doing missions and upgrading your ship is also one that I like. What really drags the game down is the UI and the controls, it has one of the wierdest and least intuitive button layouts of any game I have ever played using a controller. From many other revieews I've read it's not any better with mouse and keyboard and doesn't support hotas properlly either. On setup you get the option to show ps4 buttons, I'm using a ps4 controller to play it so picked that option but in game isnstead of press square, press circle press R2 etc I get press 1 press 6 hold etc constantly. WTF are they on a ps4 controller. If the controlls and the UI were fixed this would be a solid 4 star game but as is I'm giving it 2 stars only because the graphics, sound, voice acting music and stability are good otherwise I'de give it one star.

12 gamers found this review helpful

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