checkmarkchevron-down linuxmacwindows ribbon-lvl-1 ribbon-lvl-1 ribbon-lvl-2 ribbon-lvl-2 ribbon-lvl-3 ribbon-lvl-3 sliders users-plus
avatar
philkingz
Profile Games Friends Reviews
Reviews
Profile Games Friends Reviews
Send a message
Invite to friendsFriend invite pending...
This user has reviewed 16 games. Awesome! You can edit your reviews directly on game pages.
Drova - Forsaken Kin
Created on 29 July, 2026 13:32
Drova - Forsaken Kin

Beautifully crafted only on the surface

This game is beautiful, the Celtic setting is very cool and the story is so so. I beat the game on insane, but it was a chore. Gothic is prominent for its progression curve and bittersweet start, but it is also transparent with its simply, yet effective mechanics, and you can beat the curve. This is not true for Drova. I spend hours reverse engineering the game files and the math I saw reminds me of the stuff I see from first Semester Students of Informatics. It tries to be sophisticated, but it does not do the job and in Drova it looks like this: You cannot beat the difficulty curve with regular progression of attributes, weapons and talents. Even when you completely min-max, it feels horrible. I could not figure out the damage reduction to explain why it is exactly how it is, but I could test what I see before my eyes. In the end I needed like 30-50 hits for a single bygone, despite having epic weapons and spend most points on strength. When I cheated idiotic amounts of strength, like 1600 to 10000, instead of the regular 60-120 I started to see a difference, "It is the base damage"- I hear you cry, but it isn't. If I used a 160 legendary Axe instead of a 90 damage Axe, it needed a lot less strength to gain the same results, but these values were still vastly out of reach for a normal play-through. So in the end I crippled through the game and with my endgame gear I was able to kill starting and middle-game enemies fast. Against enemies on my progression curve It literally felt like using a wooden stick from level 1. So despite being beautifully crafted, this game does not feel like Gothic, but like Elex.

1 gamers found this review helpful
Chorus
Created on 03 July, 2026 20:33
Chorus

3.5 Stars - a good journey

It is a heavy story driven space journey that reminds me a bit of freelancer, especially control-wise, which can be heavily customized. You can even customize hot much you can move the crosshair around the center without moving and when your ship should start to steer. Very good, only I would not play this game with a controller as the bunch of auto-aim features are kill the entire action and without them, you will have a hard time. For Reference: Played this game in M&KB without aim-assist and no autohit on extreme. Chorus has some strong difficulty spikes on the highest difficulty, that need you to replay the encounter several times until you know what's happening, cause your reflexes and good aim will not be enough, but overall very satisfying combat, especially with the drifting and powers you have access to. But with most space-combat-games. it can become boring. For that reason a higher difficulty is always appreciated as it does not turn stale so fast. The Story is not mind blowing but carries many moments and repetitive scenes. Overall a satisfying experience and definitely worth on sale. 3.5 of 5 Stars!

Created on 13 June, 2026 22:22
Darkest Dungeon® II
Created on 26 April, 2026 23:00
Darkest Dungeon® II

Awful in comparison to the first

-Made it through the game, beat the hardest boss, which is act III, not the last one, and still encounter 3hour runs that end, cause the collector shows up several times - Encounters are even more concentrated on character combs than before - Slay the Spire-Like progress gives not much to the game, but it eats your time. Together with the fact that you have to put your comb together, than do the "tutorial road" and then equip it again at the first INN, it wastes your time before a run starts - Token-system is really, really bad. There is no well-defined syntax, you need to press a button and read what the token actually does instead of hovering your mouse over and as already said, the content hides behind the syntax. It feels like the scene from Idiocracy in the Hospital with that Lad pushing symbols in order to make an diagnose. - There is very much RNG involved when you want to play certain combs as you need a lot of res-piercing or certain trinkets. The buildsystem is too narrowminded for myself. - Fighting animations etc. are not only slow, even when sped up, as there are paused between each action, but it also takes away control from the player, so that you cannot look up resistances or read in the token guide. - Shrine of recflection encounters are obscure and you often need to read guides if you do not want to waster the shrine. The longer I think about the entire package, the more I wonder what this is. Is this really from the guys that gave us Darkest Dungeon? Or did Redhook Studios hire people that try to water their fields with Gatorade, because of the electrolytes?

1 gamers found this review helpful
Created on 27 January, 2025 14:30
Updated on 27 January, 2025 14:30
Created on 17 June, 2024 16:32
Punch Club
Created on 17 October, 2023 18:26
Punch Club

Reached a Dead End in my first try...

..and did not bother to restart - what a bummer. You are introduced to Mick, who is willing to give you food if you are on the low end of cash, but he only mentioned that this help is limited when it was too late. Ended up with no cash, no food and no ability to sleep cause that is costing food. Also had no bar unlocked for looking through the thrash for burger. This happened on my first try, since I thought Mick is some kind of Father for our protagonist as "Rocky" is to "Creed", yet he is only a workaround for incoherent and untransparent gameplay design. Bad.

4 gamers found this review helpful
Noita
Created on 07 October, 2022 13:20
Updated on 07 October, 2022 13:52
Noita

Timelessly embracing gaming's soul

The game features a pixel art-style from 1980, but after playing the game for a couple of minutes you instantly realize that it oddly enough feels more vivid than modern games trying to emulate reality with their graphics. Why is that? - Every pixel in the world inhibits "real-world" features in terms of stability, combustibility and characteristics that determine how they interact with one another stuff. There is even a feint of physical algorithm in terms of kinetics. - The game treats does not treat you like an infant, but a grown-up being trying to get along in world like anybody else. You need to find out how it works, every point of health-damage is important to you and your enemies. Progressing through levels and solving problems can be done in multiple strategies. - Wand-building is a kind of simple in-game programming and you get explanations as well as dummies and a display-wall in order to find out how it actually works, as if you are the little magician yourself that needs to learn his powers. - Game is not easy, but still motivates to go on after dying simply 'cause the gameplay and world-building is topnotch, which includes a reasonable UI and control-scheme for a PC. In 2022 this is no longer a matter of course. For whom is this game? I'd say for everyone. It is possible that the difficulty and requirement for the player to learn interactively through "try and error" will chase off some players after a couple of hours, but it is not unlikely that these people will return to their Gog-library a few years later to give it another try. Highly recommended!

4 gamers found this review helpful
DYSMANTLE
Created on 14 September, 2022 19:19
Updated on 14 September, 2022 19:27
DYSMANTLE

Vampire Rising with steering wheel

I wish I'd never started this game as my autism enforced me to finish it. It fails on so many levels like depth of mechanics, convenience, control and game-flow. - The game is about destroying and looting, yet there is a delay of about a second until items can be picked up, which permanently enforces you to either wait or micro-backtrack even with increased pickup radius. - They even added a delay between cycling weapons in a single-player game. You can't double or triple click in order to switch two or three weapons, since the commands will be ignored during the delay, instead of being queued in. It is so slow and unresponsive, it is easier to switch into inventory and equip items, especially when you want to cycle through 2-3 items. - Movement feels very sluggish like controlling a person on ice-skates. - You can't use your mouse to aim your hits properly like in other games with isometric view. This is for a ton of reasons that gog will not allow me to elaborate. - Powerattacks can only be done when you face an enemy near you while being aim-locked onto it. Since the lock activates much too late, you need to do it manually every time. - Monstermovement patterns are easy to read, certainly to compensate for the sluggish playstyle. They are also literally blind. - Have fun planting and harvesting over 500 seeds into the ground, costing you hours of lifetime only to watch a senseless animations and press 1 button every 2 seconds. - Dying is not something you need to be afraid of in this game. - Most open world areas are filled with tunnels that restrict player-movement, treating the player like a toddler, which directly corresponds to how the story progression is handled. Not recommended, even when discounted, unless you are a controller-cowboy that is okay with a very slimmed down survival game experience and sluggish game-play and controls.

34 gamers found this review helpful
Loop Hero
Created on 20 August, 2022 05:50
Updated on 20 August, 2022 06:17
Loop Hero

Worth every penny!

How can a game with graphics from 1984 and such simply controls be that good? - The 8-bit soundtrack rocks ass in 2022! Normally 8-bit pieces of music cover existing songs, this soundtrack makes people cover 8 bit music. - The gameplay loop is addicting, mechanics are deep, but not that deep once you understood the principles and strategies, making it a game that encourages thinking without breaking the flow. - Balance and difficulty is kinda ding and dang. It is demanding at the start, but as soon as you have grown your village and crafted your supplies, you can become unstoppable. This motivates to progress and plays fully into the powerfantasy of the storyline, yet the challenge is kinda gone in the end. - Mentioning the story, it is neither good nor bad, but I did expect much less from the character writing, which is kinda neat. - Transparency and documentation of mechanics are mostly present (One exception: stamina-mechanic) - UI and menu are solid, you get to anything fast without the need for hotkeys, should be a standard for triple A games, when a group of 4 developers can get this done for a game that looks from another century. That said: Don't get turned off by the graphics! Give it a try and you will probably have a very good time!

3 gamers found this review helpful