Recent reviews by Daedalus007

Update: Everything I said was completely correct and then some. This game is a shameless exploitative cash-grab by greedy devs who hate providing an actual 'service' to you but still want your money. Be sure to (politely) let them know how you feel about that. Not worth your time or money. Avoid like the plague. Way too much competition to waste time on this nonsense. Original review is below

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Several of the prominent female characters (in story and otherwise) look like children and those characters are sexually-fetishized with upskirt panty shots and otherwise. The childish 'semi-chibi' aesthetic in battles makes even the adult women look like children in provocative outfits and poses because that's a completely normal thing in anime for some reason.

This game might have the record for fastest uninstall ever. GG.

C4cat is an appropriate studio name considering they released this explosive diarrhea and dumped it onto the Steam storefront like so many other mobile-game ports before it.

Japan server is RIP and the EULA is all kinds of 'yikes' so it may be useful not to link to your Steam account and just use Guest account and/or C4 account with non-IRL information just in case. Separate email address would also be very useful to avoid potential security issues.

I may update this further; depends on demand but this game isn't worth your time and especially not your money. Seriously read the EULA they 'reserve the right' to terminate your account for 'any reason or no reason' including if you say or do anything they dislike or 'offends sensibilities' w/e that means.

Corporate sycophants and edgelords may defend this garbage but I'm gonna tell it like it is. Hard pass. Onto the next dumpster fire!

Boring, tedious, grindy, pay to win. Do you really need to know more? Save your time and your sanity. Go play Path of Exile.

Nope.

Nope.

The vitriolic backlash to reasonable presented criticism of recent updates is absolutely endemic of a majority of players you will find in WarFrame.
If you are unable or unlucky enough to not find a good Clan (guild) to join, you will have nothing but problems and frustration.

At this point, perhaps it is technical debt or something else, but there very badly needs to be a 'WarFrame Classic' mode that doesn't go past a certain point and just lets people grind what they want without forced mechanical changes all the time. That would be nice.

Not new-player friendly, no longer F2P friendly. Shame it has to be this way but that's how it goes. A great game marred by one of the most 'FUGM' (screw you got mine) game developers this side of Blizzard Entertainment. Maybe they want to be Blizzard so badly that they forget what made THEM better than Blizzard ever was. Perhaps the ego of the game's success has gone to the heads of the devs and they have forgotten their initial core purpose.

If you really want to play, don't spend anything. Don't bother trading for platinum because chances are the person trading you will initiate a chargeback (or have used stolen credentials) and then you are in negative platinum (and banned) while they get off without a scratch since only their easily-disposed trading account was banned (which is replaced pretty easily within a day if not faster).

Perpetual beta for almost a decade. That tells you all you need to know about Digital Extremes (now owned by Tencent/China).

This is one of the single worst gacha games in the entire mobile gacha/gambling market. All style and no substance. The stingiest gacha pull rates this side of the Fate mobile games. Just go play Arknights instead.

FLAMING DUMPSTER FIRE!
This is not Freelancer (2003). This is not even Rebel Galaxy (the mobile one, no Y-axis). This is worse!

So after some trial and error I figured out that some of the keybinds are HARDCODED into the game meaning you'll shoot guns even if you rebound the keys. Fantastic bit of coding genius right there. Absolutely SUBLIME.

There are two ongoing 'Freelancer-like' projects that use the open-sourced code from Why485 (of FL modding and Itano Circus in particular) for their flight model and physics. Wouldn't hurt for this game to attribute the creator and feel free to use the liberally-licensed code here. The current way flying is done feels all kinds of jank. The zoom-in to shoot is really horrible. Again this feels like 'cheap lazy mobile port' but even mobile games have better than this.

Nope.
Not even worth a pity fap.
As sad and pathetic as an 'antiwork' subreddit moderator that appears as unkempt on national TV as possible.
Go play literally any other adult game with decent reviews. This ain't it.
All the worst of mobile gaming dumped onto Steam like a steaming pile of ReddiTrash and yet somehow even worse.

TLDR: A fantastic visual novel experience with anime themes and a nice mixture of cute/adorable anime girls and several supporting characters. Everything from Unhack 1 but expanded, improved, and just made better in every way.
I enjoyed this game so much that I've done two full playthroughs and it was well worth it for a repeat as I caught many hints and other quirks that I missed the first time around.
Buy this standalone or in a bundle but just buy it as it is well worth the regular price!

-Monetization-
Once again, Unhack 2 offers an artbook and soundtrack (OST) both available as DLC. However, this time around the artbook is well worth the cost (especially in a bundle) as it addresses all the critique I had in Unhack 1. It now includes concept sketches, a much longer length, and in-progress work on backgrounds alongside some developer commentary on specific story aspects.

-Technical-
Multiple saves, a proper save/load system, and it is now far easier to resume where you left off. Settings for windowed and (borderless) fullscreen modes. Full separate sound sliders for music, effects, and voices. No way to change keybinds though, so it may sometimes feel a bit too easy to accidentally hit a key and activate the 'skip' function to force loading a recent save and hope it wasn't too far back. One major flaw I wanted to point out here is the lack of a 'back' function to backtrack skipping a piece of dialogue or replay a wonderful camera pan over the gorgeous artwork/background. None of that here unfortunately.
Thankfully this time around the full game has both Steam Trading Cards AND Steam Achievements! :)

-Story-
Unlike the first game, this sequel game's story deals with a far darker tone alongside themes of transhumanism and the nature of our mortality. There were many aspects that I wondered at (the Creator in particular), though there are a few nice story twists that I absolutely don't want to spoil. Do yourself a favor and don't even watch any online reviews as it is best to go in completely blind.
As mentioned in the artbook's dev notes, this story is the product of multiple revisions and that results in a few questionable moments where it may seem to conflict with Unhack 1 and/or the Destruction DLC for it.
Once again the demo leaves off at a fantastic 'cliffhanger' ending so the full version allows for the complete worthwhile experience.
This isn't your typical anime story and as mentioned earlier there are themes of transhumanism, augmentation, the nature of reality, the nature of a soul, cognitive dissonance, mental illness, and many more. All themes are handled with a precision and care that I wish every other story could have.
Thanks to the fantastic efforts of the writer, the story is well-researched with future and potential-future terms being well-explained by the characters without being patronizing. That kind of work is greatly appreciated!
Fortunately this time around, all puzzles are 100% optional and turn-based with unlimited tries at a fixed difficulty. All of them can indeed be completed within a few minutes, though for my second playthrough I was happy to 'skip' all of em :)
But yes, you will love the story twists and they are pretty awesome!

-Audiovisual-
With a vastly-improved aesthetic over the first game, there are some really nice art filters used on some images for story purposes. The full-screen artwork and backgrounds feature well over a dozen characters (alongside variations and expressions) in a massive quality and variety leap forward from the first Unhack game. Backgrounds, environments, and story sequences in particular were given a great deal of TLC and it absolutely shows.

Music has improved compared to the first game, however it still focuses almost-exclusively on an 'ambient' vibe. I will applaud the composer for creating some memorable catchy chords and hummable themes. I will say that quality and variety of the music improved alongside the artwork for the game. Keep all this in mind before you grab the Soundtrack (OST) DLC pack.

-Difficulty-
There is only one 'Difficulty' for the few puzzles that are in the game as this has become an almost-exclusive Visual Novel with a few minor puzzle-style stages thrown in for story purposes.
All puzzles in the game are now 100% optional and don't have an impact on achievements or story progress.

-Overall-
Having remedied all of my criticisms from the first game, this is a worthy sequel for what should become an amazing franchise.
This game is well worth picking up even at full price! Well worth it if you enjoy any kind of sci-fi or techie themes, if you are a Star Trek fan, if you enjoyed the Deus Ex series that explored the concepts of a post-Singularity and Transhumanism, if you wax philosophical about the meaning of consciousness, or even if you've just got a bit of money in your Steam wallet to burn. For any or all of those reasons given (and many unlisted ones), this is worth both your time and your money. You won't be disappointed.

For those wanting to play the first game and get some awesome background on the characters and world, I highly recommend playing Unhack 1 before playing this game as it does contains spoilers for the first game's outcome/ending. The first game leans more heavily on puzzle aspects, but you can just zoom through them on 'Easy' difficulty without consequence. Your enjoyment of this game will be significantly enhanced by your knowledge and playthrough of the prior game.

TLDR: A cute short puzzle game with some VN-style sequences featuring well-voiced attractive anime girls/women. Good for playing through to the end in one sitting (which can easily be done in under 2 hours if playing on easiest difficulty).

-Monetization-
The artbook and soundtrack (OST) are both available as DLC while there's an extra 3-episode prequel DLC (Unhack Destruction) also available that details some events prior to the events of this game. I'd love for the prequel DLC to be included with the base game now considering how much time has passed since release (over 8+ years as of this review). The game is short enough (under 2 hours) on the easiest difficulty to be easily completed in under the 2 hour mark and refunded, so the extra DLC being included would go a long way towards retaining players IMHO.
The Artbook and Soundtrack/OST DLC is nice but absolutely not essential. I do wish the Artbook contained some more artwork, especially concept art, sketches, or other similar material. It feels very bare-bones for what it is at a meager 15 pages with stuff that is already in the game (and about 2 screenshots from an earlier demo build of the game).

-Technical-
The game does not save settings between sessions, but the only settings available were for volume and turning 'emoticons' on or off. I'm presuming this refers to the text-based emoticons typed by your protagonist, but why someone would want to disable them I have no idea. No other options are available for resolution, windowed/fullscreen or other options. The game launches and stays exclusively in 'borderless fullscreen'. There is no save/load system so if you want to return you must manually keep track of where you are in the story. I've detailed this further in the 'Story' section.
The full paid game has trading cards but no Steam achievements.

-Story-
The highlight of this has to be the storyline. The demo offers an amazing 'cliffhanger' ending where the full version lets you play through the entire story. Without spoiling the storyline, there are events that can be somewhat predictable and it feels like a typical 'anime' story.
The storyline has nothing to do with any actual technical stuff in our world as 'unhacking' alone is a silly concept. Worms and viruses are portrayed as various enemy objects to bypass/overcome in various ways. A few minor gaming-related allusions are made. The protagonist is portrayed as a 'pervert' who constantly sexually-harasses the female AI that he works with and this is played for laughs (these kinds of jokes have aged very poorly, but humor should be evaluated based on context and considering none of the AI have a physical body then I personally don't see the issue).
It is a typical arc of suspicion, conflict, and resolution. There are several such arcs placed throughout the story but each 'episode' flows into the next one. One downside is that the player is never told what episode they are on, so episode selection becomes a guessing-game if you aren't manually keeping track of things. There's generally a full-screen artwork image shown with a 'next' button before loading the next episode and this can be used to keep track manually.
One of the single biggest issues with the story clashing against gameplay is that 'story activation' markers within the puzzles are often placed in such a way as to prevent hearing the fully-voiced dialogue during the process of avoiding obstacles. This jarring story pacing/flow during puzzle sequences is a detriment rather than an asset.

-Audiovisual-
For visuals, the clean and simple artwork does a great job of conveying the themes of the story. Character artwork in particular is a fantastic highlight. Backgrounds are simple and get the job done.
For audio, the music is primarily ambient techno/electronica style befitting the game's atmosphere. While lacking in clear chord progression outside of the main title theme, it makes up for it with wonderful and appropriate music to match the mood of the story at that point in time. This is especially notable during heartfelt and sad moments. Wonderful work all around, though only grab the Soundtrack DLC if you want to support the creator a bit more or obtain it as part of a bundle deal.

-Difficulty-
There are 3 different difficulty settings. The easiest difficulty is called 'Normal' with Infinite Lives/Attempts as well as reduced/slower/easier obstacles. After that there is 'Hard' difficulty with 3 Lives/Attempts and more challenging obstacles. The hardest difficulty is 'Insane' and towards the end of the game (around episode 8 out of 10) it becomes very tricky if not downright 'brutal' to complete a stage fully on this difficulty. There are no achievements or other benefits towards playing on harder difficulties which is a shame as it inhibits the desire to replay the game at a later time.

-Overall-
I would recommend only getting this game in a bundle deal on sale. It is a great game but the questionable humor/jokes on certain aspects as well as a lack of Steam achievements means this cannot compete with other similar visual novel games at a similar price point at normal price. Fortunately, nearly all of my complaints have been remedied (and then some) in the sequel to this game known as Unhack 2.