Senaste recensioner av Rafl

Haru to Shura is a short and interesting story (completing my first playthrough took around 4 hours) backed up by the wonderful pixel visuals and music from StudioPixel/Daisuke Amaya.

There's not much I can say about the game without spoiling other than the plot is based around exploring the world of Eden and interacting with its residents.
This game is extremely reliant upon you going in blind as it IS a story focused game, unlike that of Daisuke's previous works this is a side scrolling story game.

There's also multiple endings based upon your actions and interactions with characters with highly encourages multiple playthroughs, which is also a mainstay with the creators previous works.

Overall this is an absolutely fantastic little game and its only 5 dollars, I would highly recommend it to anyone who has part of their afternoon open to give it some attention.

(This has been reviewed after getting around 3 of the "endings")

Everhood is an rpg with heavy themes of existentialism as well as choices. The game itself follows a fairly standard rpg format for the overworld, but the game mechanically shines within its battle system.
The battle system warps the gameplay of guitar hero in a way that turns it into a bullet hell, in which you dodge/block the incoming notes by dash and jumping. I can safely say while jarring initially this is indeed a very cool battle system. More mechanics are adding to this system over time but that's spoiler territory.

The story itself is also very good but I'd rather not spoil anything for anyone interested in playing.
The visuals and music lend themselves very well to what the game is going for, which ranges from weird to acid trip worthy visuals.

This is an absolutely incredible game in nearly every aspect it aims for which it does almost flawlessly, plus secrets and hidden objectives galore for replays/ new game+

While I like many aspects of this game such as its visuals, music, and general art direction (as well as ***some*** parts of the story)... This definitely feels like an experience that's great on a first playthrough but an absolute slog depending on your preferences if you chose to play it again.

While avoiding spoilers I personally got a bit bored around the underwater area, not bad by any means but I was started to feel like the buildup to the climax of the story (which anyone with a basic understanding of storytelling could tell where it was heading) and it started to drag a bit more than it should've.

This is a game that does a lot right, but also does a lot wrong from an RPG perspective, which is most definitely due to how this game was a development hell baby, and despite being a stickler I do think it warrants 1 playthrough, and if you don't enjoy it hopefully it at least encourages you to try out a massive trove of other great RPGmaker games, such as BUGGERWORLD or SUPER ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ RPG

I took very extended breaks (months to even years apart) but came back to it to 100% it recently.

BIT.TRIP Presents... Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien feels like a true peak for the Runner series from a gameplay and visual perspective unlike that of its sequel which I have many personal gripes against.

Runner2 expands upon the gameplay of BIT.TRIP Runner through adding new obstacles, hazards, and environments that feels like a fresh new experience rather than a coat of paint. A lot of the returning hazards return as well adding a feeling of familiarity but with new twists. The game itself is roughly 90 level spread out across 5 worlds which offer new mechanics and abilities to the player as the game progresses.

Most of these abilities are those of the first game which translates very well without needing anything else expanded upon it.

This game is also much easier than the first game, but does allow the play to choose a difficulty, which usually decreases the speed and has less hazards/vice versa.

Overall this might be the best game in the trilogy right now, and with the state of Runner3 this may be Commander Video's last actual "rhythm" game

Spelunky 2 is interesting to talk about a few years later after 100%ing it. This is a sequel that does a lot right but adds a lot that just adds frustration in many scenarios, but is overall a great experience.

To get things out of the way the "community" aspect in the trailer is literally just seeing all the playable characters you unlock walking around nothing more.

This game is structured similarly to HD but adds a lot more shop variants, areas/alt paths, npc interactions, and different secret areas. a lot of these add way more gameplay variety and run choice but some choices are just straight up better than others. IE: Vlad's cape, going to Tidepool in many cases, etc etc

This game does give even more player choice via learning skips and exploits, such as being able to skip the entirety of the requirements for the hard mode ending if you're really good at jetpack movement.

The biggest negatives I can give this game are how some items were changed + a late game area: Cosmic Ocean...
Jetpacks and other backpacks that are electronic/ will ignite and explode dealing 10 damage to you, this wouldn't be that crazy if it weren't for the fact that lava as a fluid is very fickle and unpredictable in many scenarios. The real offender in this case is the hazards in Neo Babylon, but are entirely dodge-able. This is just a skill issue on my part but it can be quite annoying to acquire a great item for a heavy cost/risk just to instantly lose it. This sorta leads into Cosmic Ocean and a few other area caveats.

Cosmic Ocean IS designed as the ultimate challenge, but being screwed over time via a single mistake, whether it be poison or curse status and NOT be able to remove it ever in this zone is poor design. You can often be boned without the Kapala (item that lets you heal via blood) and just have a slow agonizing trickle down.

The only other area in the game that can often be straight up unfair is Volcana in a singular instance. When using the drill to reach the castle the lava flow the drill impacts can often leave you just... waiting.... sometimes you can't even get through and have to give up on going to the final area if you don't have enough bombs. This rarely happens thankfully due to some restructuring of level generation in patches.

Despite these two area negatives this is a great game with so much depth, my only biased negative that isn't gameplay related is that HD's soundtrack, which included easter egg songs and multiple tracks per area really added to the run variety and general vibe.

TLDR; Fantastic game but lacks in many areas compared to its precursor.

A great game but suffers from being too easy even on the highest difficulties, coupled with modifiers they often just make the game easier rather than bring a real challenge. (I see you with your 1 billion lunar coin value, yeah man have fun rerolling in the lunar shop for 30 minutes very fun)

On the opposite side eclipse mode rocks, good steady progression that actually teaches ror2 players how to get good at the game, rather than rely on command. If you ever find yourself getting bored of monsoon or artifacts try it out, its like NG+ for people that enjoy the feeling of progress/learning.

Overall? Its really good, but just like returns/ror1 its a roguelike that allows people to just cancel out the roguelike elements and often causes these players to rarely invest much time into the core game itself, usually resulting in them getting bored of the game. Which to be fair? If you played a roguelike and cut out all random elements and did the same build over and over wouldn't you get bored? I know I would.

Easily one of the best of the best roguelikes when it comes to fast paced gameplay + tight-knit action, plus an incredibly tight twinstick shooter to boot.

Post-DLC (Which is now a part of the base game + more content on the way) This is one of the best bang for buck games in the genre. Not only from a price perspective is this game a steal but from the general gameplay loop and progression, which I personally think it does better than some similar games in the genre.

Unlocks are decently plentiful and bought via the currency you actually use in runs, which is tallied up in bulk whenever you complete a run or die, but unlike titles such as Gungeon its incredibly easy to buy out multiple items at a time early on. Not only this but the player is allowed to toggle which items they want on if they're not a particular fan of certain upgrades. The other unlock the player has access to is characters which are primarily locked behind beating hard challenges such as final bosses for specific routes or certain modes... there's also one other guy but you'll know him when you see him.

The gameplay itself is akin to that of most top-down roguelikes: blasting through rooms, dodging pulls, and using defense tools when necessary. This game really likes to reinforce the pacing of going fast so you're also able to teleport to any room you've cleared at any time. Maps aren't even that large in this game but its such a great quality of life feature, coupled with shortcuts you can access via bombs blasting through floors feels almost seamless once you get into a rhythm.

This game also features a looping option accessed after beating [REDACTED], which is a sort of progressive modifier that hard caps at 50? (I have yet to reach this). This mode adds slightly different bullet patterns + extra projectiles on enemy attacks the higher it gets, which unlike Nuclear Throne feels well designed + intended rather than just bloating your screen and requiring you to min-max for the best weapons possible. Looping in this game is encouraged and works in a way that has an actual ending.

Overall this game does everything well a roguelike should, my only gripe being my skill issue against the Fish...
Here's hoping Dunkey being this game's publisher gets the eyes on it that it truly deserves.

Please play Mono-
... Star of Providence

If there's any shoot-em-up I could recommend to a friend that's never played one, it'd be this one. The difficulty scaling is fair and the continue system rewards you for replaying for the most part.
This game has so many references I can't even keep track of them.

(Also its not one of those stupid clear a screen with a bomb type deals, you can't stop the bullets but they're entirely possible to dodge)

heh heh skeleton game

(if i wanna actually be serious its a pretty good/challenging platformer with plenty of bosses)

Final Directive is a top-down shooter definitely worth its price and it has:

-responsive controls
-a variety of weapons at your disposal (you can swap between 2 in a similar fashion to nuclear throne)
-an interesting dodge roll mechanic with slight ricochet physics
-wonderful cutscene art by that wonderful boy soup-erb
-solid pixel art
-a good challenge for anyone who likes to fight hoards of enemies that endlessly spawn
-3 game modes (story mode, endless, and local co-op)

the only issue I think anyone could complain about would most likely be the length of the story, which took me roughly 90 minutes, but it truthfully isn't that big of an issue for a game that's $2.