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I expected average, hoped for neat, feared the slop and got magnificence. This game is a masterpiece. It can be silly. It can be thrilling. It can be heartbreaking, emotional and expressive. It is well written and every now and then, it hits you like a truck. Because Demon's Roots is an adult game, they do not have to stay away from harsh plot points and extremely rare topics. The English translation is well done. Be prepared for a long story and a lot of text. Also, if you don't like genre mix (fantasy, scifi, alternate timelines) this might not be perfect for you. It might still worth it to you, just be prepared for it. I cannot understate how awesome Demon's Roots is. I only wish I could experience something like this once more. This is really one of a kind. Play it!
I remember games like this were AAA just a few years ago. They don't make games like this anymore. Except they obviously do! It's not great, it's good. Competently good, crafted with care. There are some issues though. You can play with mouse and keyboard. But if you happen to have more than one monitor, you at some point will accidentally exit the game because you clicked outside of the borderless full screen game. The demo crashed once on me, but that's probably because I should really restart my machine. The game runs great, I would like to see a few more settings, but that is me complaining on a very high level. And it is a demo! I remember demos! Those used to be on plastic discs in those game magazines. Back when games were covered on dead trees. Wild days. My point being, this takes me back! It does not have to be great, not all games have to. It just has to scratch this very particular itch which has not been scratched for quite some time. And boy does it scratch! But why are you reading this? Go and play it yourself, it's a demo!
I wanted to like it. Then I wanted to tolerate it. The writing and atmosphere really started to get on my nerves. Constant pop culture references and "funny" dialogues clash hard with the bleak atmosphere. The gameplay might be enough for mobile, but on PC it is really hard to justify the price, especially since it's not even a very good port. If you have no eyes in your head or are only watching the still images, you might think it looks OK. Let me tell you, after staring at it in motion for a few hours, you'll constantly walk against invisible obstacles or at least find yourself in situations where you will say: "Oh come on, I should really be able to walk here!" There is really no redeeming quality here, not one! Watch a gameplay video and if you can stand 4 hours of it, play it yourself. In any other case: Do not buy it!
This scratched an itch I never knew I had. First of, this is not a hard game! I don't have great aim and still finished it without slow motion. It's a top-down shooter with simple mechanics: Shoot fast, die fast, re-spawn fast. You can shoot, dodge and slow down time. Weirdly enough, I did not enjoy Hotline Miami. I had some performance issues on 2160p with high graphics, but that's okay. The game is an absolute banger!
I cannot start a new game as I get stuck at configuring the control style (mouse vs screen direction) and no button lets me proceed. The options do not load at all. So basically, I have Yet Another Start Menu. There is nothing for me to review, I cannot get it to work on any of my machines. I wish I could say something else, I really do. The screenshots and videos look very intreaguing. Nobody even reacted on my bug report on Discord. Stay very far away from it.
Here you get the ending for the first half of one game, consider it episode 2 rather than a sequel. I really enjoy the world and dialogues with NPCs. There are some new combat features like getting knocked over and having to get up again. The sheer amount of Kagura games on GOG looks a lot like shovelware, but this one here is a rare gem, not only in Kagura's catalogue, but in adult games as a whole. I'd say this is well worth your time and money, I enjoyed every minute of it. The fact that it took a sequel to get a proper ending is not great, but at least the ending itself certainly is.
Slave's sword is pretty hard to review. This game has no end. Well it does, but sadly it's in Slave's Sword 2. All in all, both games together form a wonderful package which I was surprised to learn, has some very clever ideas. The writing is surprisingly good as well most of the times and covers themes you will very rarely see in games, even adult ones. If this was one game instead of two, I would be more comfortable giving it the full score, but this does leave some taste in my mouth.
If you can see past the mediocre gameplay, you will be thrilled by the great sense of humour of Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion. Turnip Boy is an awful person, in stark contrast to the cutesy art style. It has nice worldbuilding explaining why and how this setting exists, without being on the nose. Speaking of on the nose: I get really tired of self-referential, pop-culture referencing, third wall breaking lazy humour we so often see in video games. And while this game occasionally has these as well, they are really tame, well placed and more important: uncommon. A lot of the humour comes from the absurdity of your actions, the game is pretty linear, but uses the illusion of choice as a means to amuse the player. Notice I used the word "humour" and not "joke", the game has almost no jokes. You will laugh, but because of a well thought out situation, act or conversation, not because of some cheap gag. If you want an entertaining and yet relaxing experience that does not last too long because you have to work and tend to the house and your social life, this is an awesome game for you. I heard they develop a sequel and I will absolutely play it, once it releases on GOG.
Beautiful presentation, cleverly told and narrated. Solid gameplay with reasonable challenge and multiple well implemented difficulty settings. I am not much of a shooter player and yet enjoy this a lot. This game is now 10 years old and I still replay it every now and then. If you are in doubt if this is a game for you, give it a try, you will very likely not regret it. And don't watch an entire walkthrough before playing it, because you will likely spoil a lot of the fun.