I often find souls-likes to be far too frustrating, time consuming, and lacking a story or characters that hold my interest. Asterigos has refreshing Greek mythology inspired world with good characters and a suprisingly deep story with lots of lore. Big pros are the art design and world building. Seriously, there is a LOT of world building if you watch all the echoes/memories and read all the documents. It's so great to find a Soulslike that doesn't lean heavily into Grim-dark, and often found myself admiring the world and character designs. The music is sweeping orchestral with some memorable themes for different areas. The voice acting is really good too and adds to the believability of the world. It made me care about Hilda and Aphes so that I wanted to keep exploring. The combat was easy to pick up and has a good level of complexity with upgrades, skills and perks. Overall though, I find the combat fun and satisfying, rather than unfair and punishing. The big drawback is NO MAP. You have to navigate a sprawling world but for the entire first part without fast travel you will do this BY MEMORY. I handled it because I remember a time without Maps on phones. If you find most 3D souls-likes prioritising punishment over fun, and are getting tired of Grim-dark, Asterigos worked as an antidote for me. I sincerely hope for a sequel with an even bigger budget.
For anyone on the fence about buying, I recommend the demo. You get a lot of gameplay for free, and you'll know if it's your type of game or not. In short: Rogue Doom with skill trees and a ridiculous amount of weapons and weapon mods. Ups: The game has a cool premise for the action - you are a mental ward patient who dreams all the levels that you fight through. When you die you simply wake up in your hospital room and you can go to bed again to retry! 6 hours into my play I'm still finding weird new weapons that make me chucke because of their absurdity. I chose to give a weapon I had a random Rare+ mutation and it ended up making the projectiles 10x the size which was pretty amusing. Art style initially seems pretty wonk, but after an hour you appreciate its style. Music and sound design are really good and add Downs: Sometimes the art and the hectic combat can make the screen too noisy and enemies become indiscernable. Small enemies. Small flying enemies. Both are not that fun to fight with most of the weapons! Sometimes the levels generations repeat or come up with wonky combinations. The platformer skill-tree game gets old (just give me the upgrade!) and the pokemon topaz game felt like a time-sink I wasn't interested in playing - I came to boom shoot after all! Bottom Line: Underappreciated gem. Scratches the itch for sprite boomer shooter with quick, satisfying sessions that have a sense of progression. Lots of gore and gibs (which you can turn off if you want)
Florence is a short experience. That does not mean it is bad or not worth its price. If you want to experience a short story about finding love, letting go, and moving on, then you will enjoy Florence. If you enjoy short films or quirky movies that explore the human condition, you will probably enjoy Florence. Simply put, if you respond well to the trailers, you will like what you get in the full game. The interactivity is limited, but clever and interesting - it's purpose is to connect you with the unfolding story (the outcome of which you cannot change). I really enjoyed the music and the underlying message is one that struck a chord with me. It is beautiful, understated and poignant. The "game" to play when you are thinking about life.
I was skeptical about buying this game, pretty much because of how it looks. However! After playing it on the couch for some hours with a friend, I have to say I have been converted. It's easy to pick up, it's fun, and it has lots of things to do! I haven't played the previous 2 games, but my summary is that this is a twin-stick ARPG bullet-hell that looks very simple but has a surprising amount of depth and content in a big open-world map with lots of secrets. This game is almost like someone wanted to mix Ultima, Oblivion and a Roguelike together into an accessible 2D action game that you can pick up and play without thinking about it too much. The best part is that you level up skills by doing them, like in Oblivion, rather than spending points. So, you'll be really unsuccessful at cooking 'Fried Rat's Tail' the first 20 times... but later on you'll be a master of Fried Rat's Tail. My only complaint is that there is an overall lack of visual and auditory response from killing and attacking monsters. Monsters just die and fade away - they don't explode, have a death animation or even a cool sound. Whilst killing lots of monsters is fun, I think the game would be much better if there was more visual/audio feedback for the player's attacks. As it is, it's just 'okay'. Want to cook? Fish? Make your own armour/weapons? Want to capture monsters and have them fight with you? Do you appreciate some tongue in-cheek writing that doesn't take itself too seriously? This game has all of that and it's best enjoyed with a friend on the couch. Thumbs up!
Can't believe this game doesn't have a review here yet (as of writing). I own this on Steam (I wish I'd waited for GOG), so I'm here to say THIS IS A GOOD GAME. It's pixely, and the art direction is a GOOD MIX of retro charm and modern style. The story is very charming, weird, well written and funny. You play a frog who gets sent on jobs to fix some weird stuff happening around teleporters... sounds hi-tech but you're more of an average-joe who gets shouted at by their boss. It's all pretty LIGHT and FUN. The platforming is good, there is variety and creativity in the levels, and there are different bullet types to unlock. It's not very long, but some things in life are best kept short. If you're looking for a game to kick back with that's STRAIGHTFORWARD and easy to get into, and you like retro platformers that pack a decent challenge but are not frustrating, try this!
How many hours have I poured into this game? Can't say for sure, because I bought it in a box before playtime tracking was a thing, and spent ages tweaking the settings on my family's PC just to get it to be playable. I pirated/eventually owned Morrowind when I was a teenager, and I LOVED that game, but find it borderline unplayable now, even heavily modded. Too much has changed for me to get the same thrill I had when I first discovered it. I also own Skyrim, and appreciate it for what it is, a great action RPG that has amazing mainstream appeal, but can be a little TOO comfortable if you know what I mean. Oblivion is a great halfway between the two - it's much harder than Skyrim - and with the right mods it becomes comparable to Skyrim in looks as well as ease of use. You just have to be willing to put in the time to make it work... but if you are seriously considering playing Oblivion then hard work shouldn't turn you off. All I'll say is, Darnified UI, QARL retexture pack, Oblivion Reloaded + Natural Environments. These were the most important mods to me, because they made Oblivion feel new again - and that's worth experiencing again. Peace.
If you're looking for a pure arcade experience in the vein of 90s FPS (including the low-res-look), this is it. The premise is basically you're on a flat platform on which enemies spawn that you must kill before they touch you. You have two modes of fire, machine gun and shotgun blast. You can collect 'gems' from the devil daggers (the enemy spawners) and as well as harder enemies, which serve to increase the stats of your gun. When you collect multiples of gems gives you an extra performance boost. That's it - kill and avoid. The magic comes from managing the swarms of enemies after you by learning the movement patterns of the swarming enemies, all of which have neat fluid-inspired movements. Sound is a big aspect of the game, and you can recognise different enemies and their locations outside of your vision by their signature hums and screeches. The art is also great, very grungey death-metal-cover type stuff. But if you don't like the low-res look/visible pixels you may be put off. There's a massive leaderboard which you'll slowly climb. Please note this game DOES connect with your GOG galaxy account for score submission, or if you prefer you can create an account with the devs, or play OFFLINE. Already my 'bad-run' scores are increasing inbetween my PBs, which is proof I'm building skills for the game - so there's definitely depth here. Not for everyone but if you're into this niche it'll scratch the itch good.
'Dark Souls' in 2.5d, set in Egypt. If you want a Dark Souls type game that's easier to pick up and play after passages of time away from the game, then this will do the trick. Extra: I really like Milkstone's art style, which is a mix of stylized cartoon with a lower poly aesthetic. This is no surprise as I liked the art in their previous game, Ziggurat (which I also recommend as an FPS rogue-lite). I like the egypt setting, it's very Stargate (the movie) and refreshing compared to the seriousness of a typical Souls game. In the handful of hours I've been playing I've already found dozens of weapons and armour in 2 classes. So far, dealing with enemies stacks has been a challenge. One thing that is both unique and frustrating is the layout of the worlds and how that translates into maps. Because it's 2.5d the environments are layed out like the branches of a tree, and maps are drawn that way. This adds a level of novelty because you have to look at a very simple map of lines and work out where you are by landmarks, but some may find this task of 'figuring out where the hell you are' annoying. Overall - recommended
