I fun little gem of a game.
I left off writing a review until I had completed the game. For the first 2 patches there were progression halting bugs but those have been fixed. As others have noted BTIP2 is very in line with the Original Castlevania games but it does have some minor backtracking as well. Most of this consists of finding items to increase your stats. The music and art direction is excellent. I do wish the bosses were a bit tougher as I can often cheese them and the last boss was easier than some of the earlier ones. One thing to keep in mind is the controls are a bit on the clunky side but I could look passed that as the game was fun regardless. All in all I have enjoyed the game and if you like throw backs to the C64 area, with some modernization, you will probably like this. I hope to see something similar to this but with the C64 version of Below the Root.
Broken Roads had a pretty rough launch. Despite that the game was fun to play even in it's rough state. Thankfully, the developers are standing by their game and not giving up on it. The last couple patches have addressed a lot and have made the game better. You are doing yourselves a disservice by not, at least, trying it. I do not think you will be disappointed.
I bought Ctrl, Alt, Ego on Steam because I never thought it would show up here. Would it have been worth the wait? Absolutely, but it would have been doing my self, and the developer, a disservice by not buying it day one. Ctrl is a fabulous game and innovates on the "immersive sim" formula. It offers so much choice in how to approach the game world far more than most similar games that came before it. Mindthunk put a lot of work into making his world a living breathing place and put a lot of thought in making every tool at the players disposal count. Offering the player an almost excessive amount of player freedom. If you like System Shock, Arcane's Prey, Thief, Deus Ex, than I think you will love this game. It was not inspired by them directly but pays tribute none the less. Ctrl stands on it's own two feet, surpassing the games that came before it, with it's unique setting, story, and mechanics. If this game does not blow you away than none will.
The exploration and world building in Elex 2 is excellent. Let down only by performance issues. I am running the game on a AMD 5800 X and RX 6700 XT and it should not be holding at a average 27 FPS. Adjusting the settings to medium/low does not have bring any improvements. People with much higher and much lower setups than mine have been reporting similar performance issues with both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs so it seems it is not a machine specific problem and more about optimization. Since it;s launch they have addressed the issue with the Vega GPUs and added in a static alt camera mode. I am confident given time that they will address the performance issues and bugs. As it stands right now it might be a mixed bag for some as far as performance and impacted game play goes. As far as the story, writing, acting, and sound, well, it is a PB game. It has the jank that they are known for. And yet, there is something enduring about their game design. Despite it's many flaws the world building draws the player in. Exploring the interesting ruins, seeing the changes of the first game and the attention to detail with the games geography and structures over the time between the first and second game. It is something to behold. PD excels at environmental story telling and world building. This is their strong suit. Go into the game keeping that in mind. The story continues the first game with the signal sent out by the Hybrid reaching its source as a new menace reaches Magellan. The writing and story beats are pretty average and it follows the same progression as the first game. They improved on the faction system by not rail roading you along to join one nearly as much but like the first game I dont really feel any great connection with any of them as much as I would like. The effects are nice with birds flying around, trees blowing in the wind, and there is a day night cycle but some of the textures are rough. 4 stars for the game it could be . 3 for what it is.
