First time playing in full a pre-Square Enix Tomb Raider in the year 2024. It's worth the $.97 I spent on it. Would not recommend. Exploration, puzzles, and platforming aren't engaging, couldn't care less about the story or characters, the combat is bad, and camera is awful at times and the controls don't feel precise. But it's exactly what I expected it to be hence the 3 out of 5.
An achievement seemed to be bugged. Looked into it, Steam version got a patch (various bug fixes in addition to the aforementioned issue) but nada on GOG. Also, pretty sure the decade+ old fan translation has less typos than this.
The gameplay and story are dull. But not dull enough to drop entirely. It's a solid game to kill time while listening to music or podcasts. If you've already played the slew of excellent releases in the past couple years and you still need a taste of the genre, Relayer is barely good enough to get the job done. Also a very bare bones PC port. Options are pretty much 720 or 1080. You can play with a controller but it'll still show keyboard icons. [Shift] is Y/Triangle on a controller, you'll need it to put the dialog on auto. But you can go run errands as some of these segments go over half an hour and the characters & narrative a real nothing burger.
This game is the epitome of a delightful, laid back afternoon.
Bought this a while ago when it was in Early Access on Steam (played through it when the campaign was finished but didn't play it when it was at 1.0). A solid, stylish DMC-like romp that will scratch your action itch. The characters are really fun to play, but it has the issues that most indie DMC-likes tend to have: you feel the budget. It's a tad shy of that tight feeling the standard bearers of the genre have (might be better now, early access and all that) and enemy variety is to be desired. It has a playful story/characters and an eye-catching aesthetic. The character action delivers, playing as the two characters and beating things up is fantastic, but it can stand to have more interesting things to beat up. Support indie action games, fools!
I don't like 2D platformers. I don't like most Metroidvanias I play. Despite knowing that about me, my friend said I should check it out. I'm glad I followed his recommendation as Hollow Knight has become my favorite Metroidvania. The exploration, the combat, the platforming, the story & world building are all of exemplary quality. Though I hate platforming, Hollow Knight did its job by compelling me to explore the world and follow through on hard optional platforming sections and it rewards you for doing so. The combat encounters are interesting throughout; despite having a fairly simple toolset, there is a great amount of nuance through augmentations of the player character and in enemy design to keep you engaged. It's a very well designed game both aesthetically and mechanically. Hollow Knight belongs in the canon of Metroidvanias.
