Recent reviews by Shaaria

It's short - about 10 hours for the first playthrough while talking to everyone and doing all the sidequests (but for a $15 price tag, if you intend to play it multiple times or 100% it, completely worth it). It's pretty trivial to get a particular equipment/stat/move combination that breaks all combat. Combat itself is generally pretty easy sprinkled with an occasional enemy that will take off a huge chunk of your lifebar and environmental hazards that do the same. There's a save point practically every other room so there's almost no punishment for failure. You never really do find out what the antagonist's motivations are. Crafting is heavily under-utilized, as by the time you're able to craft most of the blueprints you find, you've already got better equipment...

...and yet despite all these faults, it's still a fun game. It's incredibly charming, the voice acting is varied and incredibly well-done, the music is good and the controls are very tight. It's a rather linear metroidvania style game, and it doesn't lean too far in either direction between "Grimdark" or "Sugarcoated". It has a very good time split between story, travel, combat and bosses. You level at just the right pace that there is absolutely no grinding necessary. You don't have to be super good at the game to make progress, but it helps. The platforming puzzles are fairly easy to figure out and mostly rely on your execution to complete them. And (though this one is a little more personal) it's nice to finally see a fantasy game with lizard-like characters cast in a positive role and not delegated to being early-game barbarous savages.

Definitely worth picking up if metrodvanias are your thing.

The best implementation of a co-op Roguelike that I've seen. It mixes turn-based elements and real-time play, so that it's not one constant unbroken action sequence - you get downtime after each room unless you get overrun. The premise is simple: Open doors to explore the level, and beware of enemy spawns in unpowered rooms after you open each door. Find the exit, and carry your crystal from the entry point to it - but as soon as you pick it up, monsters will spawn until you escape.

The lowest difficulty mode is tough, but reasonable - and there's one more above that if you're looking for a serious challenge. The descriptions of the items are humorous, the game is easy to understand, and offers a good challenge without being punishing. And it's fun on your own, but even moreso with up to three friends you can collaborate with. Highly recommended if you like Roguelikes and want to get your friends in on the action.

It's not as good as the other 3D Ys games (Oath in Felghana and Ys Origin), I'm going to be honest about that. This is due to it being the first-ever 3D Ys game, and even though this is a remake, it still carries a lot of the unfortunate baggage of the original, in the form of brutally difficult boss fights (which you are expected to survive by having a lot of healing items on-hand) and some required grinding. But it could be worse, and the grinding is only -really- bad at the very end of the game, where you *need* to get one of your swords to max level to do anything more than chip damage to the final set of bosses, which requires 100,000 emel. You get that much, but you probably need to spend it on your armor first, so you still need to get 100,000 by grinding in the final screens.

That aside, it's still an enjoyable game and a good remake of another installment in the Ys franchise. A single run on Normal that missed only a few items but saw the majority of the content took me 10 hours - so you might want to wait for it to go on sale first unless you intend to replay it. To that end, it does have multiple difficulty levels and 'catastrophe mode' which is truer to the other 3D remakes where healing items can't be carried around.

At this moment in time, KF2 is nothing more than a lot of promises with a very shiny exterior. The graphics are improved, animations updated, and other cosmetic changes. But, KF1 has more maps, more weapons, more classes - more actual content. Now, that said, KF2 IS still in Early Access, so this is expected...

...except that the kicker is that the actual gameplay is basically unchanged. You still fight waves of enemies determined by the game length and number of people playing, you still fight a boss afterward, you still run to a trader between waves, you still have some guns and grenades, your inventory is still a matter of managing weight, and so on. It's basically the same game but with all the actual content of the original stripped out. The perks are identical in name and basically identical in execution, except the ones that aren't implemented yet.

At first, it seems less grindy as you gain levels more quickly; however, now you can gain 25-ish(?) levels per perk instead of the original's 6, so if anything it's MORE grindy. It's also, frankly, -embarrassing- that you can't create private games, so good luck rejoining a game if you drop out of it for a second for any reason.

The one boss they have so far is also of questionable design, as you HAVE to let him catch you and drain your health to proceed with the fight when he puts his shield up; he's invincible until you do, and summons minions all the while.

On the plus side, the trader's voice isn't nearly as annoying. But while KF2 will EVENTUALLY be the better game (by virtue of being almost identical with better graphics), RIGHT NOW there's practically no reason to pay $30 for what is little more than an unfinished prototype held together with promises of future content, when you could just play the original instead, which is a finished game with more gameplay in it.

Unless you buy games based on how detailed the reload animations are, in which case, this is the game for you.

(For an example of what a sequel SHOULD be like, see Payday: The Heist vs. Payday 2. The second game takes the premise of the original, but rather than carbon-copying it and slapping new graphics on, it adds new features and changes the gameplay to something new)

As shmups go, Syder Arcade is mediocre at best. The good things about it are elements of every shmup ever, but the things that aren't so good are its own additions.

There are multiple ships, none of which can possibly hope to match the power of the forward-shooting laser gun ship. Each ship has its own special weapon, none of which can possibly hope to match the power of the same ship's big-ass laser. Level 3 has some very questionable design where part of the background is the exact same color as most enemy bullets, effectively making their shots invisible if they pass over it. The dialogue is so short, uninformative, cliched and referential that it actually detracts from the gameplay and would be better off being removed. There's a "hyperspeed" mechanic where if you keep going forward for a few seconds you get a speed boost, but it's not used very often - mostly on the last level, where you risk instant death from collision damage as a result. You can also turn around, unlike most shmups, but like the hyperspeed it's very under-utilized as 2/3rds of the levels go in one direction only and on the others you mostly just flip back and forth to face different waves.

It's not BAD, but it's not good either. Which brings me to the opening line: mediocre at best.

More fun than mopping floors and throwing out trash should be.

Akin to "Restaraunt simulator meets Warioware" and "Ordinary Swedish Meal Time: The Game". Incredibly fast-paced but also quite forgiving; I'm not actually sure it's even possible to lose. Lots of different foods, mostly with their own way of being prepared, but you don't have to memorize -too- much (although it can help). You can practice foods before trying them during a workday to make sure you know what you're doing, and it has various side-games to add some variety. And if you think it's too easy, there's always Extreme Mode. I highly recommend it, even at the full $10 price.

A wonderful game well worth the money. Pretty much what you'd expect from the creators of Ys turning their hands to a traditional JRPG: The same art style, a great OST, a fantastic translation and a deep story. Most of the things that happen in the story are predictable - but the things that you don't see coming will throw you for such a loop that you'll just want to keep playing to see where things go next.

It's not completely without flaws - the ending is an obvious setup to a sequel and the last few bosses are unreasonably painful to fight compared to what came before - but they are just a few small blemishes on an otherwise fantastic game.

Fast, fun, and absolutely brutal. Oh, and it looks like you're on acid the entire time.

The primary feature of the game is that bullets, when fired, can be collected from the point of impact, making them a very precious resource. Mook enemies die in one hit, so it's mostly a game of reflexes, but you still won't get very far if you Leeroy Jenkins your way forward instead of taking the time to properly approach unexplored areas.

Very simple and fun, certainly worth a try.

Okay, so I'm a decade late to the party, reviewing a game released back when I was in highschool. But I'll be damned if it isn't fun!

The differences between the playable factions in the game are more than just the typical cosmetic or minor-boon types you find in many 4X games; every single faction has a wildly different playstyle because they all employ different forms of interstellar travel, and have different spreads of tech trees. There are a lot of random factors to the game that make every game different; planet hazard ratings, available techs, encounters, and star locations.

But it is where there is NO randomness that makes the game stand out: Combat is done entirely in real-time with actual ballistics and NO die rolls - the only randomness comes from weapon spread cones. Population growth is predictable, travel speeds behave the same every time, and weapon damage is fixed. This perfect balance of where to have randomness and where not to is what makes SotS so enjoyable; despite the random factors, skill and tactics will always have the final say in victory.

Toss in the amazingly detailed lore by Arinn Dembo, and you get a 4X game with a surprisingly engaging setting. The alien designs avert the usual boring "bipedal humanoid recolors" that plagues sci-fi; you've got clever reptilians, long bird-dragon-things, sentient insectoids, telekinetic cetaceans and rabid marsupials.

Pity about the sequel, though. At least the spinoffs (The Pit, Ground Pounders, and Freehold) make up for it!