Recent reviews by ElectronicSource

REPO shows that you don't need flashy graphics and AAA-budgets to make a fun game. This game looks low budget but is polished and smooth. The idea is simple and the game is damn hilarious. There's rarely any boring run - even if you're bad enough to not get past Level ~5 - it's always amazing.

GOTY for me, A+ for the devs as they really care about this game.

Great game with great art style and voice acting. For me it felt a bit off at though at times. Sometimes I had no clue how you would come to certain deductions and basically just brute forced it just to be confused how that makes sense. Felt more straight forward in the sequel.

Overall playtime is super short, but worth the quality.

Definetly the better thought through game in the series. The first one had it's flaws were it was easy to overlook things and not catch relations between things. In the sequel it's easier to make the connections and more satisfying overall - but resulting in even less playtime.

Great art style, great voice acting, lovely story with nice twists. Pricey for the short playtime (not even 1 1/2 hours for me) but worth the passion that's behind this game. In case of doubt just wait for a sale.

I would wish for (if there's gonna be another sequel, which I assume) a bit more content. More puzzles, more investigation. There's more potential in this series.

Amazing game - not that challenging but it has some unique gameplay twists. Great story with some unexpected plot twists as well. Very much recommended :)

The overall idea is nice, the survival aspect is really strong in Forest. But it just doesn't live up to it's predecessor at all. The story is flat like gas station coffee and once you're through you just ask yourself: that... that's it?

So obviously it's a lot about exploration and the survival feeling. A lot about building and going through slow. But in that process you really see the flaws living up. So. Many. Bugs. And Glitches.

It's out since February and hardly anthing has been done since then. When me and my friend played it after 1.0 launch it felt EXACTLY as bad as it did during it's first hours. The most obvious issues were never fixed. The building system, while genuinely great in it's concept, never really worked. Almost any construction other than a regular rectangular building was impossible to build because at some point the building system just stopped working or glitched out entirely.

So in the end it's really hard to say if it can be recommended. On the one side: Yes. It's a nice game and we had fun with it. On the other side: No. I can't get rid of the feeling that Sons of the Forest has been a cash grab. At least you'd expect after the hit it's predecessor was that the team would manage to deliver something better. And while a lot of things have been way better, the lack of polish really makes it shine badly. What's crazy graphics, elaborate building system and weather worth if all of those things are bugged to the brim.

In the end it does not have enough replay value to go in again. Which is sad. Truly sad.

I'd really love a third option for the reviews. I feel like it has not deserved either or.
But unless at least some patches fix the core issues, I can only go with a no.

What time is it? I don't even know the year anymore. Guess it's a decent game, though.

Absolute masterpiece in the genre of horror games. Although a complete different direction that for example Outlast, this game packs some deeply twisted stories of the psychological pits of the human psyche.

Beautifully designed, truely horrific ambienence and stories that really pull you in. Loved every minute of it.
It is truely more of a walking simulator but it's worth every minute. The various endings of the stories really make you uneasy and send a chill down your spine.

Only thing I can truely criticize: There are lots of passages where you have multiple ways. If you happen to choose the one meant to continue for the story, you'll end up locked behind a door and can't go back. I certainly missed quite a few rooms just because I didn't know that the one I decided for was one with no coming back. Does not feel worth it to me to play it again for that and since the game is so confusing you won't remember what you missed out anyway.

Revision 2:

== Performance & Graphics ==
Performance issues mostly meant Volumetric Clouds and Resolution being the problem. So reduced the resolution to 2K (FHD just causes eye cancer on a 4K monitor) as well as enabled AMDs upsampler. Well, it runs smoothly with 60 FPS now but damn it hurts the eyes. Aliasing everywhere. Kinda reminds of early 2000s games.

The bad thing: Clearly it's not just performance. Visually Cities 2 has miles to go still. It just looks plain awful. When I zoom out (not far, just as much as you do most of the time) buildings start to get transparent, shadows flicker and basically it justs gets a huge mess. Strains the eyes looking at that.

Really bothers me. This alone lets me think the game should have been postponed a bit longer as this really reduces immersion a lot and makes it tedious to look at.

== GAMEPLAY ==
While the game itself is the fun kinda city builder we're used to, you realize after some time that a lot of the mechanics simply don't work as they should for a relased game. There are so. very. many. small annoying bugs that you encounter along playing. Be it traffic jams because some cars got stuck in the ground and block the road, road snapping being totally broken (when you try to merge a new road into an existing one while at different heights - it just doesn't snap automatically all the time, and if it does sometimes in very weird ways).

Besides the bugs, lots of controls are unpolished. Deleting underground low voltage power lines is tedious. You barely can select them. Building complex roads is exhausting. So often things break and you have to delete and rebuild them differently. For example I tried to connect my highway to a roundabout (not a flat area). I built the first connection, tried to build the second one and realized that my roundabout was gone. It just replaced it with a normal street.

That's just a few examples of it. Just feels unfinished. Cities 1 surely wasn't perfect from the beginning, but it feels like Cities 2 really should have gotten more love from the devs. It feels rushed.


== CONCLUSION ==
While it's playable and fun most of the time after only a few hours you feel exhausted. The facade cracks and you realize it just has too many problems and issues. And you begin to become sceptical. Like ... is it really that my few commerce areas don't have enough customers in a 5k city? Or might this be yet another bug?

CO should have postponed it and rather released it once it's more polished. Sure ain't a mess like Cyberpunk, but it really makes you feel they wanted to cash some money already.

I can't recommend it yet. Not for that price. Wait a few months until they fixed the core gameplay (not just performance as everyone is talking just about that).

Another great example what great games can be made by a single person. Dotage is a game with a very unique twist. It looks a bit simple but damn has it depth. It's also quite demanding as it's certainly not an easy one. The best thing about it: it really has replay value.

Usually it's easy to lose interest when you lose quickly. But in this game you actually unlock new game content by playing. Thus your next playthrough might be easier because now you can fish. Next time you get new animals which give more resources. Next time you unlock terraforming. The game really has depth and you can only get to it by playing and eventually losing. Obviously you also unlock content that makes it harder again.

But fighting against the four domains is a great concept. By planning ahead as you know which domain strikes next and when you can make your way through. But there's still a lot of randomness so you might get obliterated anyway :)

As a big fan of Golden Sun I found a spirit successor with Sea of Stars. This RPG is a new milestone when it comes to 2D JRPGs and delivers on every single element. Amazing graphics and amazing lighting as well as dynamic movement that I haven't seen in any 2D game before (climbing and level design with depth).

The story takes a bit to get rollin' but it's definetly worth to stay. Loved it all the way through. The game has a lot of secrets and it makes sense to finish a bit more of the side content to unlock the full story (there's different endings which are worth to experience!).

Overall an amazing game with great mechanics and a good storyline. It rarely feels tedious to play although at some point it feels like you rush from one boss fight into another one. Difficulty is medium but can be increased or lowered by relicts (basically toggleable settings), so great for anyone to play.

Masterpiece!