Recent reviews by Chet_Awesomelad

The platforming in this game is pmo

Improves on the first game in so many ways. Story is incredible, with some absolutely amazing performances. Gameplay is more varied and encounters feel more natural. Combat is tense and challenging. New enemies, new weapons, that sort of thing.

It's like KCD 1 except better in every way imo. Combat is improved, riding and exploration is improved, the plot has a lot more excitement, the world is bigger (without sacrificing the density of towns and secrets to discover), plus your character starts knowing the basics of all skills so you don't need to mess around learning to read or learning how to parry or whatever. It brings the same quality of writing and acting, the same memorable music, the same gorgeous visuals and recreations of historical landmarks.

Good game

This game is really fun! It's essentially a combination of Factorio and Pikmin - instead of building conveyor belts, you build paths for your Sparks to follow and carry goods between machines. Much like Factorio, there's always some new technology to unlock and new efficiencies to implement, but with the added fun of discovering new Sparks that have unique abilities. The exploration and combat are inspired by Pikmin, where you throw Sparks at enemies or obstacles to have them fight or clear the way. The art direction is really cute. The music and sound design are great too.

If you're waiting for Silksong then this is a great game to scratch that itch.

Played a good chunk of the game and I've enjoyed it so far! Overall definitely recommend trying it out!

PROS:
It's really impressive visually and the soundtrack is great too. I love exploring the levels, they're very detailed with lots of little secrets to find and puzzles to solve. The combat is really fluid and allows for some cool strategy moments involving combos that synergise with each other, but if you don't feel like that level of strategy then you can also just wail on enemies. The skill tree has a bunch of cool new abilities that are easy to unlock, you'll soon be spoiled for choice. There are tons of customisation options too - lots of hairstyles, face shapes, body shapes, etc. but you can also change the appearance of your armour and weapon to look like any you've collected, and there's a little decor mode in the protagonist's HQ so you can find and buy little statuettes and whatnot to display.

CONS:
The story so far is less engaging than the earlier titles - it's not particularly bad, it just hasn't quite gripped me yet. One thing that is pretty consistently underwhelming is the voice acting, which often sounds like the characters aren't aware of the situation they're in - either too chipper for serious moments, or too dry for unserious moments. The controls on keyboard were also goofy as hell by default and I had to change them around to make things work smoothly for me.

This demo turned me off the game. Enemies take a million bullets / knife slashes to kill, so you run out of bullets before even killing one of them and then you have to spend 2 full minutes circling the enemies and slashing them while they lamely attack the spot you were in a few seconds ago.

Visually it was really pretty and it ran well on my hardware. I liked the sound design and the level design. But if the combat is this boring and frustrating then I'm going to give it a miss.

This game seems very heavily inspired by another game called Deadlight, but unfortunately Deadlight does basically everything better. I've only played the first 40 mins or so, so this is very much an early perspective:

- The exploration in Kong Survivor Instinct is pretty good, although the animations are a bit janky and disconnected. There are plenty of places to explore but so far there's been nothing particularly interesting to find, just keys and medkits and ammo. Very occasionally you'll find a lore pickup, but it's all based on the films so if you've seen the films then it's information you already know.

- The combat is pretty uninteresting. They've got parries and blocking and grabs but the way the combat animations are designed means you can rarely combo attacks smoothly - instead, you'll spend a lot of time chasing enemies down because your attack knocked them backwards. The gun makes combat easy as hell, enemies drop with one headshot, and since the gun is also necessary for exploration you'll find plenty of ammo so there's no scarcity of resources to worry about.

- The story seems like pretty standard fare for Monsterverse stuff - it's a thinly veiled excuse to show giant monsters. The voice acting is incredibly phoned-in. The big set piece moments, like when Kong jumps into the foreground and starts trying to kill everyone, are pretty underwhelming.

So far it's basically just made me want to replay Deadlight.

Definitely not finished cooking, wait for further updates before buying.

Camera is too restrictive and enemies attack you from off-screen before you even know they're there; combat against more than one opponent becomes super frustrating because the game keeps changing which character you're locked onto; inventory is limited and keeps filling up with garbage so you constantly need to travel back to town to sell it off; fast travel system is unnecessarily limited so you have to walk back through previously visited areas instead of just teleporting to fast travel points like you'd expect.