Recent reviews by Hahagi

It's pretty good engine with a great foundation for animation work and gameplay.
For some projects it might just be the right engine. It really depends on what you want to do with it.
A 2D / 2.5D fighting game, a small arcade game and RPGs might be well within the scope of this engine, so far with a few limitations I will list shortly.

So far customization in some areas is lacking, but extensive resource importing is in. The attribute and status effect system the engine uses it at this time somewhat limiting and the main thing holding it back in my eyes. A few bugs can be found here and there, too. However, the dev has plans for this to be changed in the future and bugs are usually quickly fixed upon reporting.

For the price point not a bad baseline at all. Will adjust this review based on the future development of this engine.

Update on 25th of May, 2024: The Engine has gotten several impactful updates and the developer regularly reacts to feedback positively, either by acknowledging it or implementing suggestions.
Love to see it.

Only hesitantly would I recommend this game. Classic case of "deserves a sideways thumb, alas Steam does not provide".

Picture this - A group of old 90's kids come together to make a Souls like game. They take everything they saw on their journey thus far and compiled the following:
- The conceptual level design and interconnectedness of Dark Souls I
- The power stancing and combat feel of Dark Souls II
- The jump and movement mechanics of Dark Souls III
- The health system from Bloodborne (to a degree)
- The boss design (including duped normal enemies) from Elden Ring
- Various enemy types from all the Souls games
- Various map concepts from all the Souls games
- Several enemy design from Mortal Shell
- The dual world game mechanic of Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver!
- And the Grim Reaper from Gauntlet hunting you down should you linger in the Nether too long

Sounds great, right? Except mid development, Bob's wife comes into the studio and makes a fuss out of nowhere. She forces Bob to let their sister's in law younger brother on the project. Let's call him Timmy.
Now Timmy is a mean little rascal with no sense of restraint, because he's a 7 year old kid. But he is assigned the level design and enemy placement.

"Teehee, these nerds" says Timmy. "I will have them ambushed when they cross the corner right here. And here. And here. Oh this will be so much fun."
Nobody stops Timmy, specially not Bob. He is afraid his wife will leave him, should he ruin Timmy's fun. So Timmy goes and designs the entire world like that. All of it. You heard that right.

This game's world design is childish in the worst way possible. Enemies waiting in attack stance behind destructable items are a one-trick pony already 2 areas in.
Winter themed skelly bois (clearly inspired by the Painted World of Ariandel) shoot you with arrows, which splinter into giant icicles on impact. You can hardly react to them. In general it is a constant pattern that some projectile or magic missle comes right in your back from an angle that was outside your peripheral view. It's. Just. Too. Damn. Much.

And if that wasn't enough, it often feels like Hexworks tried to imitate something they didn't fully understand. Many enemy concepts and movesets are copied over. However, placed in a new environment taken out of context, they fail to invoke what the originals they are based on did just fine. The same goes for the armor sets. Oh here is the "Dark Wraith" inspired set with an edgy skelly face mask and darkened plates. Oh here is this and that knights armor. Oh, the Orion set looks a lot like the starter priest gear in Dark Souls III.
Obviously, having some throwbacks can be nice. But when your entire game is throwback on top of throwback, you start risking your own identity. LOTF lacks identifying qualities.

With that said, the game isn't all bad. When LOTF's unique features do make a debut, they do shine. And sometimes they manage to give an interesting twist on old established concepts.
The swampy knee-height water areas for instance. Of course they make their debut here, too. But in the Umbral Realm there is no water, only eternal death. So when you miss the freedom of moving unhindered, you can quickly zoom over to the netherrealm and enjoy running along on the seabed. Quite ingenious.
Other times you see a lot of items behind an unapproachable cliff. Or someone locked behind a gate. And then you remember that the Umbral shifts the world around...

This Umbral world mechanic incidentally also serves as a second chance, since you get sent there automatically after your death in human form. On the other hand, more enemies appear in the Umbral Realm and you get your souls collected multiplied. Health you regenerate is halfed with the other half being "withered" health, which you can only regain by attacking an enemy. So there is a big risk vs reward element at play here, too.
Conceptually it's great - If the enemy placement and the janky combat were just a little better, it could alleviate the game's shortcomings entirely. Alas, it does not.

In terms of story, there is more presentation here than in your classic Souls game, but the tonality is about the same. Grim everything, men and women whisper their saaaaaad stories in a deeeeeep voice into your ear.
They also make use of mini-scenes reminiscent of "The Division 2"s story-telling. It's passable, but unless the intro really grips you, you probably won't pay it much mind. You can only go through this type of content ever so often before you're desensitized to the tearjerk routine.
Even here, you will see many reuses of archetypes found in Souls. You've got your Boc the Seamster coward rogue trader. You've got your (armored) maiden upgrading your Est... Holy Cross.
You've got your crestfallen knight holding a ceremonial demotivational speech, albeit with the twist of some empathy betraying his character.

And so on. You'll be saying "Hey, I understood that" a lot when you play this. The entire game is a runaway From Soft reference.

Anyway, to cut a long story short. Is Lords of the Fallen a great game? Mh. Nah. But it's not exactly bad, either.
If you have a high frustration tolerance or you really crave more Souls, this is the game for you.
If being subjected to repeated "Gotcha!" moments irks you or you don't even know what Souls is, this isn't for you.

I rate this a gracious 7/10, because there definitely was some effort here and the devs don't deserve to get lambasted for what they delivered. But they missed a chance it feels like.
The Lords truly have fallen short of their potential. They really do have. Tis unfortunate.

Darktide is the work of the Chaos Gods themselves through and through:
It is a somewhat rotten Nurglish flickwork developed by Slaneeshian developers who reside in the great Warp we call Sweden.
They cannot resist their perfectionist drive to overhaul their own work from scratch, because their forums and social media are filled with Tzeentchian Tricksters, who convince them slyly that the gameplay is ever so slightly off and must be changed.
Thus it cometh to be: The only constant is change. Just as planned.
However, if you actually deep dive into the game, you will find the community to be full of Khornate Warriors, frothing from their mouths at your lack of finesse, strength and inferior war tactics. And if you are not careful, they will recruit you into their ranks of Bloodletters.

Now you, a brave and glorious warrior of the God Emperor must be thinking:
"Sheesh, that sounds nasty. I must cleanse this unholy place of it's karkin Corruption and bring the Emperor's Light into the Darkness!"
And you should, because Darktide is supremely awesome, if you can look beyond it's bewixt nature. Like Slaneesh's alluring body, it seems great at first, but is ever so imperfect at every turn and outright grotesque on closer inspection.
Yet you'll love it anyway, for it gives you something unique no prude Sister of Battle could. To the voluptious details:


The aggressively Khornate Gameplay:
It is the most delightful thing about this game next to it's amazing soundtrack, but it takes getting used to. While this game disguises itself cleverly in Tzeentchian fashion as a First Person Shooter (which you can mod to be third-person too), it features a lot of elements you'd find in other genres not home to FPS.
For starters, movetechs such as dodging and dodge-sliding are not just features, but crucial to your survival. You will not notice this in the first few difficulty levels, but once you go beyond Malice you should be aware that most of your success depends not just on your ability to headshot, but to absolutely endure a great onslaught of enemies.

The real gameplay you only encounter when you make it to level 30 and dive into Damnation Auric missions. What would elsewhere be negatively described as a kitchen sink is absolutely exhilarating here. While you get swarmed endlessly by weak and strong foes alike, you also have to fend off disablers, manage your resources like health and ammo, and have to defeat boss enemies that appear completely at random.
And you have to help your teammates when they fail at any of the aforementioned (no surprises here, it happens a lot!).
Not only does Darktide throw you and three other unlucky souls into the greatest kitchen sink of a warp rift you will ever encounter, it also grants you the tools to rise to the occasion. You eventually overcome your foes, succeeding where your past self did not.
And when you do, you will feel the Glory of the Emperor in your very own chest.
It's a big step up from Vermintide and I cannot go back now that I have tasted the delicate challenge that is a Darktide Auric Damnation run.
You won't either, if you dig the style.


The hauntingly beautiful Slaneeshian Presentation:
Arguably the next best thing to the core gameplay. The sound design is amazing, music and sound cues alike.
Axes crush helmets with an impressive crunch, swords slice and dice heretics like butter and explosions fill rooms with a deep hall that will tingle your eardrums.
The voice work comes with a wide range and oozes character. Each of the playable archetypes comes with three voicesets for both genders and they have all sorts of unique banter.
It is deeply in lore and tells the story (that otherwise finds little presence in this game). This also leads me to the topic of world building. Whereas most games tell everything through cutscenes and Souls games tell their story through the item descriptions and placements, Darktide veers away from both.

Here you get all your context from the conversations taking place wherever and whenever. While there are a few cutscenes, they just made it in recently and most of them don't seem to go too deep beyond an introduction to the setting.

You will notice that I weirdly didn't mention the visual aspects yet. That's because it is here, that the cursed nature of this Daemonic entity shows it's ugly face.
While the visual style and graphics are technically speaking supreme, optimized they are not. Unless you run a machine with latest nVidia card series (RTX 4070 or higher), you will invariably turn on one of the already integrated FSR / XSR / DSSL options. And your view shall be muddied courtesy of upscaling technology. This too is an aspect you can mod with Reshade and Sharpening filter, but there it is.
But wait, there's more...


The deeply infested Nurglish Influences:
While most of this dopamine ridden ride is definitely a fun experience, there's something stinky about this game. I hope you're ready for the big smelly, the detestable whiff of Avarice that has taken root.
For one, this game has a cash shop. And while you can earn some of the best cosmetics through achievements "called penances" only, many are also only available for Aquilas.
But Nurgle underwear's foulness doesn't end there. Fatshark has done an impressive job of emulating the despair a Guardsman surely must feel, when he is handed a faulty Lasgun with the expectation to kill armies of heretics:
The Itemization makes things difficult. Granted, you don't need a God Emperor blessed Sword to make it, but you will still feel the occasional gutpunch while upgrading what would be a maximum attribute weapon, just to see it hard locked with Blessings or Perks that don't really excite you. Yay to +20% sprint efficiency. Surely this will help me kill that enormous Plague Ogryn faster, that is stomping away at me.


...and then there is the dreaded ones, the Tzeentchian Tricksters:
Like any game this one certainly has it's staunch fanbase, to which I count myself. Hence I see the wretched Hubris of these daemons on a daily basis.
Charlatans posing as "experienced players" will descend from the warp to torment the disoriented spirits of the Fishtank Daemons. They will call weapons, items, enemy types, game mechanics and even entire playstyles "just not right".
And they will cast their darkest of magicks: Claiming "OP" and "Needs a buff". These sinister messages will soon be echoed everywhere, like shrill screams echoing through Tzeentch's Labyrinth of Mirrors.
It will confuse the Slaneeshian Fishtank mutants in the warp and there will be changes. All sorts of changes. The change never ends.
One day your Purgatus Flamer melts the faces of heretics off, the next it barely resembles flame. Your run of the mill clawsword, once an unappreciated piece of metal, shall suddenly cut into the toughest Ogryn hide, piercing deeply.
Other weapons gain completely new attributes or lose their former.
It is always a great surprise what the next patch shall bring. Glory or Suffering?! Success or Defeat?! Community Demands met or defiantely opposed?!
You never know. It becomes it's own exciting adventure to read the cursed Patchnotes when they drop. And drop they shall, for every new piece of content is called a Content Drop.

Speaking of Trickery in the Patch Notes: The Fishtank Daemons from the warp like to surprise us. Some changes announced in the Patch Notes don't make it in. Other changes are not announced.
It really goes to show how deeply the Slaneeshians are currently corrupted by Tzeentch, the poor souls.


Final Verdict?
This is is a supreme game conceptually held back by small but many flawed executions. But certainly an experience it is.

8.5 / 10
If you like a challenge, want to feel the dread or just want more WH40K - Go ahead. "You shall not regret it" to quote the Zealot.
All praise the God Emperor and the Slaneeshian Fishtank Daemons (Fatshark)

Touhou 19 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost is easy to describe:
The worst mainline Touhou game. But that's talking Touhou standards.

Now make no mistake, even ZUNs unluckiest miss is better than at least three quarters of what's out there. And I never feel bad buying a Touhou game.
By making this purchase you essentially allow a rather humble guy at the other end of the world, who otherwise would be an underpaid Japanese salaryman, to live an upper middle class life together with his wife. The game is fair priced, there is no DLC, no microtransactions, nothing. It has great music and Touhou character sprites are always hilarious to look at.

Still, if you don't know what Touhou is yet, this would be the least suitable starting point.
Here's why:
1. This game is very unrepresentative of the classic Touhou Formula.
For those who are a new a short explanation. Usually you have a story consisting of 6 progressively harder stages, each of them throwing a mid-boss and an end boss at you. Playing that feels like a mini-campaign. You can gather some extra lifes and bombs throughout this endeavor, but resources are scarce and extras are limited.
Once you clear the game without using continues, you unlock an extra stage and the bragging rights to claim your 1cc paper crown. Normal 1cc is recommended before moving onto hard mode or extra stage.
Extra stage is then the advanced challenge to aim for, a difficulty level that is above hard and below lunatic. One extremely long and dense level, that is amped up massively. Finally, the toughest challenge of any Touhou game is the 1cc lunatic clear. Standing in the rain without getting wet, as they say.
Well, since this game is one of three Versus games, there's none of that here. So far so good. Being different is not a crime. But it doesn't end there.

2. Even among the three versus games - Touhou 3 (barely anyone knows this little gem), Touhou 9 Phantasmagoria of Flower View and Touhou 19 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (this game) - this one feels the worst to play.
Touhou 3 was a little barebones, but fun in concept. Touhou 9 took the formula and expanded greatly on it. It also has some of the most-beloved characters on the early Windows games era.
But this game takes a huge step back terms of gameplay.

3. The game cheats not just you, but also itself:
Now, all three VS games were a little cheaty, but this takes the cake. It's easily the most obnoxious about it.
Whereas the first Touhou VS game had enemies using summons way more than you could reasonably achieve and Touhou 9 had a hidden timer that would give enemies perfect dodging up until a certain point into the match, both still worked with their own systems fully intact.
In both you still had to use your skill and abilities to reduce the enemy HP pool to zero.
Touhou 19 is different:
It breaks all of it's own rules, yet delivers no noticable benefit for doing so. I see some people around here citing story purposes. But the story isn't told in any new or exciting way, either. It's barely different from Touhou 9 PoFV in that sense.
To get to the point: Enemies will summon their boss fight onto your screen a *preset* number of times. The game will try a laughable attempt to make it look organic, but anyone with basic cognitive skills That'd be you, fair Gensokyo Citizen will figure it out fast. Defeat these preset boss fights and the opponent HP pool immediately drops to zero, ending the round unceremoniously.
It's 100% on rails and you feel it. Now this might sound like the game is too easy.

4. Ironically enough, Touhou 19 can be extremely frustrating.
And it's not the random nature of the bullets. I mean, that's part of it, but Touhou 3 and Touhou 9 PoFV had that too. They both had something this game does not, though. They both gave you options to fight back. Activating your LVL 2 power triggered a mini-bomb with bullet cancel. Your LVL4 boss appearance would immediately end the opponent's. Thus there were several strategic options to go about matches. You could constantly use lvl 2 mini-bombs to turtle yourself to victory. Or you could gather power and bring out the big summons to get some peace on your screen, temporarily at least.
Not so here. The bullet cancel of ALL your activations is gone, the big shockwave when you summon your boss appearance is gone, the invulnerability window is gone. The enemies will summon barrage after barrage and you WILL eat that big serving of Skittles and M&Ms and coffee beans or die trying.
In short: All significant game mechanics that would make the game what it is, have been mostly voided by the game itself. There is no point in trying to subdue the opponent. You just wait your turn until the boss appearance has been baited out X times and it's over. Only your basic attack and bombs matter. Forget the EX attacks and summons and charging your meter, it's all fake.

5. Balance is rather poor, too.
Always has been with these games, but here it's compounded by everything else. Reimu, the shrine maiden girl, is right up there. She retains her bombs with bullet clear on Lvl 2, making her one of the few to have great survivability. Her Spirit activation circle is huge. She has giant bombs. No, not those bombs. She clears the entire screen easily.
Did I mentioned before that opponents are defeated the moment you defeat their boss summon X times? There is this one particular character with a really strong, piercing, high focus laser... Guess which character is the strongest...
On the other hand, try to clear the game with any character that has unfocussed shots. It's absolute hell. Their strengths are supposed to be their EX attacks or how much and fast they can clutter the screen - Which is as hinted at earlier completely pointless, since only the "boss kills" matter. Talk about a great concept bogged down by superflous design.

Now ZUN must have certainly felt in his beer-enhanced programming sessions that something was off with the game.
This is the one and only game in the entirety of the Touhou series that gives you both, infinite continues and no penalty on a clear using continues.
Every other game would have you penalized. Not granting unlocks, spooking you with Bad Endings and telling you to go 1cc or go home. Not so here. Touhou 19 hands out rewards like candy, even when you torture yourself through the last stage with 4 continues in tow and bombing every spell card.

Now I could keep going. But you're prolly already wondering: "Gee Ponyeater, if this all so tiresome, why do you still recommend this game?"

Simple. Even as an inferior version to Touhou 9 PoFV, the core concept is fun. The presentation is nice. The music is stellar.
It's not a masterpiece, but it's certainly a serviceable little game. Just not ZUN's best work.
I'm not going to deny the old man his beer donation money over a few nitpicks, even if they are rather strong nitpicks.

So, in conclusion - How do I rate this game?

As a Touhou game: 3/10 - Do better ZUN
As a Gaming game: 7/10 - Many a developer could still learn from titles like this one.

There's interpretes out there demanding 20$ (or your regional equivalent) for an album of less than 14 songs.
ZUN gives you a game on top of the whole album, a bunch of misshapen 2D girls, a serviceable adventure with curvy lasers to dodge and a basic lesson in Japanese Folklore. You can't knock that value offer.
If you want to know what real Touhou is, get one of ZUN's other games first. This is one of those "save for later" games, when you still have an itch to scratch and seen everything else.

What can I say? It's ZUN doing his thing and it's great.
This one has the UFO mechanic reimplemented.

Microsoft Sam has got nothing on this.


Boring gameplay, very limited areas to traverse, okayish graphics, but the text-to-speech makes it still funnier than many modern games.

Aeiou / 10

7 AM, waking up in the morning,
Gotta have fun,
Gotta go turn Dota on.

Seeing everything, the Matchmaking is going,
Ticking on and on...
EVERYBODY'S RUSSIAN!

Anti-Mage in top lane,
Chen and Slark in mid lane,
Gotta make my mind up,
WHICH LANE CAN I TAKE?!

It's Feedday, Feedday,
Gotta get ganked on Feedday,
Everybody's looking forward to the match end!

Feedday, Feedday,
Gotta get teamwiped on Feedday,
Everybody's looking forward to the match end!

Smoke gank and some gank and...
Teamfight and Teamfight and...
CYKA CYKA CYKA CYKA
Looking forward to the match end!