I absolutely adore everything I've experienced of the story and the setting. It's a nice breath of fresh air where not only are you actually the bad guy, but you're stuck having to administrate hordes of idiots. The writing is superb and dialogue choices are heavily influenced by choices you make while playing and during character creation. The problem is when you get to playing the thing. The combat system isn't complete garbage, but when fights often consist of multiple minute long bouts of micromanagement, the flaws begin to really weigh down on you. I'd wager my problems mostly stem from the focus on cooldowns rather than resource management. It makes micromanaging your party much more obnoxious since you frequently need to look over your party to see if their moves are off cooldown and there isn't much playing around with different types of resources like you get in PoE. Spells don't even end up feeling all that different from abilities on your bashy characters. That's not to say there isn't good stuff mechanically. There's a fair bit of "flavorful" mechanics, but outside of one of the companions basically being a chanter from Pillars, they all have to do outside of combat. Barik not being able to change his armor due to his history. Kills-in-Shadow can wield two handers in one hand since she's a beastwoman. You have to find new spells by exploring the world rather than just getting them on level up. All of these and more are cool and interesting, but when you actually get into a combat encounter these don't really matter. You're going to be changing armor mid combat, Kills-in-Shadow doesn't get access to 2H weapon attacks or using 2H with shield, it's a flavor thing, and I already mentioned the issue with spells in that department. Ultimately, combat became such a slog that I couldn't justify spending more of my time in the game, despite the gripping narrative.
I highly enjoyed my time with Tormentum. The art and the atmosphere really sold me the game and kept me entertained the whole way through. The only issue is how short and easy it is. I was able to see 100% of the content in 5 hours spent across 3 playthroughs. I don't think of myself as good at point n click adventure games, so that is legitimately saying something. Definitely worth it on sale, but I don't think the base price is very good value.
This review is being written from the perspective of someone whose only other Ys game was Origins, so my expectations of this game are colored by that, even if this game may be a better entry when talking about the series as a whole. Similar to Origins, there isn't all that much interesting or complex outside of boss fights. I don't mind these segments too much in either game as I think of them as down time so I don't mind them being simple and this isn't were my big problem with the game comes in. My biggest issue is that boss fights are boring. Since you're going to have 3 people fighting the boss at any one time the devs need to balance around all party members having the strongest available gear at a certain level hitting the boss at once. The problem with this is that the party members aren't always working towards hurting the boss so boss fights drag on way too long. This isn't so much a problem with the party system itself as much as it is a side effect. I think there isn't much issue with the system conceptually. Having different party members with different moves and different attack types can add a nice bit of variety. I think the system would've really benefited from just having one character out at a time and balancing around that level of damage output. You could also bump up the amount of damage bosses do to compensate for them not being able to hit all party members at once. Now onto the boss mechanics. Simply, there aren't that many and they tend to be simple and don't impact you as much as I feel they should. The first boss with would I could actually call a mechanic and not just an animation you need to dodge is the third boss and it's the basic "hit this to reveal weakpoint" and "there's going to be a couple mobs summoned." Compared to even the second boss of Origins this is a bit of a letdown. There are a couple issues I have with how skills work, but I can't really explain it due to character limit. I should mention I want to give 3.5 stars.
To start with the positives: The game's asthetics are as good as ever. It's tone, music, art, etc. are just as good as the original. The game has improved variety over the first game. There was rarely a change in the playstyle in the first game, with it relying almost entirely on the core gameplay and varied level design, but that is not the case here. You have the fans whose masks greatly change how you approach a level. You have the Hawaii levels where you need to worry about conserving ammo. There's the all melee Evan Wright levels, and the more traditional Jake and Pardo levels. You never play many of each type of level in a row meaning it rarely ever feels old. Now on to the game's fatal flaw, level design. The levels in Hotline Miami 2 are way too open. There are a ridiculous number of large spaces so that you end up holding shift almost the entire game and have to constantly abuse the AI to pull enemies around corners if you want to have any hope in melee. That's not even to mention how rooms are often so large that you can't see if there are enemies on the other side of it. While these sort of things showed up occasionaly in the first Hotline Miami, it was no where near to the level that it is in this game. I will admit that it didn't ruin my experience at first, but as I got later into the game my experience soured more and more. If you see this game on sale and desperately want more Hotline Miami then I suggest getting this game, but I can't suggest it otherwise.
I have two main problems with the game that I feel really hurt the game more than any others. 1. The shooting doesn't really feel good. I decided to start with the shotgun and it was not that enjoyable to use. I could somewhat understand it if that was the only weapon that felt limp, but almost every weapon is like this. 2. Random levels just aren't that fun for this type of game play. The game was trying to take 90s style gun play and put it into randomized levels which just doesn't work. If you want to use random levels you need to develop the game play around that concept. Without strong level design with secrets and good weapon placement, you really do lose a lot of why people enjoy older FPS games.
Just as with plague knight, this is a different experience than both plague knight and shovel knight. I think it's safe to say that it's even more different from the base game than plague knight was. There are many more mechanics added in to levels, boss fights have been changed significantly, etc. The controls of specter knight are a little awkward at first (it took awhile to get used to auto running up a wall you move towards and wall jumping when you press jump as opposed to releasing jump), but once you're used to them it's a very smooth well paced experience (especially with the armor that lets you grind). I would say that this is a bit easier than the other two campaigns partly due to how specter knight's main mechanic, the slash dash, works, but it may only seem that way since I'm generally use to how the levels and various enemies work. The only reason I'm giving it 4 stars is because they still plan the release king knight with the treasure trove, so while it's not a bad decision to get this standalone, the treasure trove is still a better deal.
It's an expandalone to an already solid RTS title, so it's more of the same, but that's kind of the idea. I'd say it's worth the asking price.
