Recent reviews by SpaceRobot

Beatable in about an hour, but it's a pretty fun hour.

It looks like a little kid's game, but it didn't really feel that way as I played it. The childish-ness starts off as a charming element of the game and by the mid to end it feels somehow profound.

The shell mechanics are interesting and refreshing. They did a good job making the game feel mechanically interesting for its entire duration without ever getting overcomplicated.

It's Helldivers 2. This review isn't going to be what makes you decide whether to buy it or not. It's good.

In a lot of deckbuilders and rougelikes the deckbuilding is really front-and-center and if you can get the right synergies you can become crazy powerful. So far, this isn't that.

BUT, it is still really enjoyable. I think the biggest strength is uniqueness and class variety. The game plays different from any other I've played so far, and the classes play quite differently from each other.

Biggest gripe is that I think it's going to take a long time. Each run takes quite a bit of time, and meta-progression is pretty slow so I think I'm going to get bored of this game long before I feel a sense of having completed it. For some people though, longevity in a game is a good thing.

Overall I would recommend the game to anyone who is interested in deckbuilding, roguelikes, and a dark atmosphere.

I also really like the voice acting. I can't put my finger on it but something about it makes me feel sometimes like I'm playing a tabletop RPG and my GM is pretty good at voices, and other times like I'm talking to an NPC in a Dark Souls game

It's not long, but it respects your time. Very little time wasted. Fun combat. Great game, and I hope to see more from this studio.

Don't look up anything. Just play it. Go for the ride.

Conclusion
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I wish it was longer, and at this point in my life that's high praise. It's really, really well made. No rough corners, no rushed design. It feels like it was made by passionate developers who took their time and refined it down to perfection. I think the only reason it isn't Overwhelmingly Positive is because 1.) It's short and 2.) It's difficult. Both of those are valid and true, so if you want something long or easy this isn't for you.

Overview
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It doesn't fit well into one genre. It's like you took the combat from the Arkham games and sprinkled a little bit of fighting game tech (nothing too difficult execution-wise). If you like combat in Arhkam games or Assassins Creed you'll like the fighting system here, but it's a bit more difficult (in a fun way, I promise).

The campaign that wraps it all up is a bit like a roguelite. If the aging mechanic sounds offputting to you, think of it like a roguelite instead. You can always replay a portion of the campaign to try to improve your "best run" and take the gains forward into the next level. No failure is permanent and the only wall you'll really hit is the kind of "git gud" wall you'd hit in a Souls game.

"It's difficult"
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Yeah, it is.... but I'm 33 years old and I beat it in about 10 hours. I have the advantage of having played every Souls game and having some fighting game experience... but that fighting game experience was just enough for me to realize I don't have the reactions to keep up with the kids :P . It's a challenge, and if you've never beaten a Souls game or competed in a fighting game I would still encourage you to try this game out, but urge you to embrace the challenge and fight the instinct to get frustrated when things aren't going your way. It IS beatable. It CAN be learned. If you sleep on it and come back the next day you'll make progress and it will feel good. If you're already into competitive games (without raging at them too hard :P), or perhaps you enjoy practicing martial arts or an instrument in real life, then you probably already have the mindset to enjoy this game.

"It's short"
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Yeah, it is. To me that's a plus. I'll take a game that leaves me wanting more over a game that bores me before I beat it any day of the week. It's like when you go to a fancy restaurant and the portions are small for the price. It's not a "value" meal. It's a rich, delicious, indulgent luxury meal. I promise, even if you end up frustrated by the difficulty of the combat, you won't find any other flaws. The visuals, the audio, the animations, the voice acting... It's just so refined. Like bonsai tree, it may be small but the amount of love and care that went into it makes it a true gem.

At the time of this review, I have 100% the game. So it isn't a long game, but my god is it a good one. There are some games that drag on for hundreds of hours when I was sick of them 40 hours in. This one I enjoyed thoroughly for every single one of those 18 hours. Highly recommend this game to anyone who even remotely thinks it could possibly be interesting.

I got it for $5 and I won't say it wasn't worth the price... but at this point in my life my time is much more valuable than my money and I just didn't enough enjoy the time I spent playing this (short) game to finish it.

It's not all that difficult to play and win, but the pleasure I'd derive from it would come from playing it smoothly and cleanly, like acing a level of Mirror's Edge or Ghost Runner.

This game offers all the tools to pull off really clean and stylish runs, but to me it just felt too clunky and imprecise to actually accomplish. The bullet-dodging spin, the fact that slow-mo is toggle-only, and the right-click method of multi-targeting all just didn't feel intuitive and I felt myself being frustrated by my inability to make the character do what I wanted. Ultimately it was just more frustrating than rewarding for me to continue to want to play it.

I bought this game based on all the praise it got, and from what I hear the story is the real gem and you have to play through to the ending. If you want to slog through boring combat, boring quests, boring characters, etc to get to a beautiful meaty plot ending then stop reading this review right here.

I just... can't. I've played for ten hours now and haven't enjoyed a single one. The first thing that strikes you is the graphics. They're awful. I suspect it's intentional and the plot is meant to reveal why eventually because it takes effort to make graphics that bad. The models and textures are straight out of a PS2 game at best, at least for everything except the main characters. All of this is behind some heavy-handed desaturation that at times is reduced all the way to monochrome for some effect.

Then there's all the particle effects. There's a dodge mechanic that requires some timing, but it's often impossible to use just because you can't see anything going on through the obscene quantity of effects flying everywhere.

The quests are boring. Everything I have done so far has felt like filler.

The combat is okay. Okay is really the best I can give it. Maybe if this "amazing" story developed faster, or the quests were better, or the visuals weren't actively discouraging me from looking at the game, then the combat would be good enough. As is it is the only thing holding up the game and it's just not enough.

Character customization and build variety seemed promising at first, but then it became clear most weapons share move sets. It's still okay, just... not enough to carry everything else that makes this game difficult to get through.

I really want to believe that the story is worth it if I can just slog through this awful experience to get to it but... ugh. I have limited hours in my life until I die and I found more pleasure in the one I spent writing this review than in all 10 I spent playing the game.