Recent reviews by Hex: Maidenless

The first real advancement in the genre in untold years.

New players be warned, however, this is NOT Diablo. This is something entirely new. It feels more in line with the Souls series at its core than it does with the classic ARPGs of yore. I'm sure that time will bring us some nonsense builds that break the mechanics of the game as is per the standard of PoE, but starting out without access to all the big shiny toys, you're going to find that things like timing your dodges, positioning, aiming your skills and most importantly comboing them together in a meaningful way are make or break factors in PoE2. It isn't enough to be good at crunching the numbers. In a way that this genre has never really seen before, being mechanically skilled as well is more necessary than ever.

I suspect its going to turn a lot of people expecting the typical ARPG power fantasy off. But for me, its damn near perfection.

One of the best ARPGs ever made, to the point of completely stealing the show from the franchise that brought the genre into the forefront of the gaming consciousness. Half game and half vast and intriciate economy, though truth be told, the latter is entirely optional to engage with (but makes the experience so much more enjoyable if you're into that thing. Giving your time and efforts a real sense of value, without actually using tangible real-world value akin to something like EVE Online with its PLEX.

That said, there are some flaws. The game is overwhelming to new players. It is very, VERY bad at conveying information on its systems and their functions as well. It is entirely possible to "brick" a character by making a build so terrible that you hit a point where you can no longer progress, even before reaching the end game. I'd know, it happened to me back in 2013. It is also very bad at telling you how you died, which can happen in the blink of an eye once you progress far enough into the endgame and are unable to discern how "juiced" maps can completely and utterly obliterate certain builds. These are all problems that can be overcome via the fantastic community maintained game wiki, which will let you understand these elements either on a surface level, or as deep as you wish to via breaking down every facet of the mathemathics involved. But, it still needs to be said no such explanations exist in the game, and IMO, especially for a game this deep, that's a huge problem.

All that said, it has gotten a lot better at this. The current league finally made respecing a largely trivial affair, and given its Gold mechanic is being made a mainstay of the upcoming sequel, it will hopefully remain a mainstay here as well.

The ultimate result of this is that new players will want to follow a build guide their first time through. As obnoxious as that may seem, the need to "do it someone else's way", its simply far, far, far, far, far, FAR more reasonable to learn the game digested through someone else's explanations than to try and learn it on your own, with the game almost feeling like it is going out of its way to hamper your efforts at times.

Perhaps the worst of it is the degree of commitment demanded at times, depending entirely on the current league. I dumped a little over 100 hours into the as-of-writing current league of Settlers of Kalguur, and I ultimately burnt out on it because the demands of Kingsmarch were so utterly excessive as to mandate I effectively play the game as a second job to be able to sustain its upkeep. On the flip side, many if not most past leagues have had no such problem. Most are as jump-in/jump-out as it gets. So your mileage will vary depending entirely on what content is current at the time of your arrival.

And then there's the element of the story. Its... fun, what's there at least. But its very disjointed in its telling and easy to not understand. By GGG's own admission, PoE1's story was never really written with the intent of being a cohesive narrative. Rather, it was merely a means to an end to get you from one place to the other, and facilitating you experiencing all manner of content they would cook up. To put it bluntly, the world of Wraeclast is fantastic and intruiging. Its dark, grim, gritty and violent. Harkening back to its original inspirations in games like Diablo, and works like BERSERK. It is a world you'll want to know more about... but, even going into the depths of the wiki, you'll find most of your questions left unanswered. Make no mistake: Path of Exile is defintiively not a game you play for the story. Even when compared to something like Diablo 4, it is found excessively wanting.

I write this but a few nights from the eve of Path of Exile 2's release. I do so as a means of at last "putting down" a game I have loved for so many years. Many of the qualms I have listed above with PoE1, GGG has stated, or at the least insinuated, they desire to remedy for PoE2. Combined with the improved visuals, more action-oriented and visceral gameplay, and far more approachable means of building your own character specs, and assuming PoE2 doesn't drop the ball in a monumental way, I don't see myself returning to its predecessor for the foreseeable future.

I also leave it as a warning to those few who are currently hyped for the sequel, or might be interested in the future of seeing the roots of what this franchise sprung from: You are not missing much passing on PoE1 for PoE2. The narrative is so poorly portrayed that you can get it better from lore videos and the wiki than experiencing it within the actual game. The engine, gamefeel and graphics are a mixed bag of age, holding up in some places and lacking severely in others. Put it simply, as of right now before we've actually had a chance to experience it ourselves, but from all reports coming from those who have: Everything PoE1 does, PoE2 will do better.

I love PoE1. Its by and far one of my favorite games of all time. But the time to experience it was years ago, not now. If you're here before PoE2, trying desperately to fight the hype and kill time waiting for its release, just wait. There amount here to digest is overwhelming, and you simply won't get anything out of the short time we have left. If you're here after PoE2 has released, assuming that it isn't inexplicably a monumental ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, unless you have consumed EVERYTHING there is to consume in PoE2, it really doesn't seem like it will be worth it to go for this game over that one.

Absolutely GOAT'd game and developers. This game had a big impact on my life, and I eagerly hope its sequel will do much the same.

A pinnacle example of "Steam needs a side-thumb option". The game is basically Destinyframe but made by Koreans. It has all the telltale signs of an "Asian Alternative" to an already existing popular thing.

>Gorgeous visuals, fantastic environmental and armor/character designs.
>Poorly told story that will make it really hard to care. You're here for the looting and shooting, not the lore.
>Questionable quality of voice acting (which is funny because if you actually look up the game's cast they got some genuine talent here, the direction must have just been absolute ass).
>Gameplay being a bizarre mix of genuinely fantastic ideas and mediocre execution. On the one hand, enemies feel good to just generally shoot. Unlike most looter shooters this game completely avoids (at least initially, can't speak for endgame) the typical problem of damage sponges. The enemies that do have high health pools feel like they should, and typically can be dealt with in some way other than just pointing and shooting (like CCing or outright killing with abilities that bypass their defenses). On the other hand, things feel generally lacking polish or impact. Abilities can have JUST too little range to feel like they should have hit when they don't. Animations can lack snappiness or weight, especially melee which can have an obnoxiously long "swing" only to miss the intended target because the tracking sucks.
>Excessive MTX with obnoxious pricing tiers for currency normalized so long ago by the Xbox ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Actual cost-wise, the pricing is basically on point to Warframe but without the value Warframe gives through the player-run platinum market.
>Ultra-grindy progression. A staple of this genre, and will be a plus or a negative depending entirely on your mentality towards it. If you're a warframe player, there's nothing new here. Literally. They even copied the whole "building new thing takes an amount of time you can pay currency to skip" gimmick. Want to get stuff for free, which will be the primary reason to play at all in these kinds of games? Expect to run the same dungeon over, and over, and over, just like in Warframe.

It has a lot of potential, to be honest. Its in a better state than Warframe was when it first launched so long ago, and if you're like me and have simply put too much time into Warframe and can't get any enjoyment out if it anymore, there might be something here for you. Its for that reason that I'm choosing Recommend, but only because again, there's no "middle" option. The game isn't bad, but it also isn't exceptional. If it sticks around, it could become something really good in the future. But, that remains to be seen.

We are so back.

DBD is a game unlike any other. That's how it'll get you. That's how it gets everyone. You'll try it out after picking it up dirt cheap on sale, jump in and for a while, have an absolute blast. Nothing else on the market does what DBD does. There are other asymmetricals, but most of the ones focused on horror suck, and don't give you the kind of experience DBD does. You'll see a massive roster of killers and survivors. Your brain will go haywire thinking of all the cool combinations you'll be able to try in the future. You'll be in dopamine heaven.

And then, somewhere between hour 50 and hour 100, depending on how much of a critical eye for gaming you have, the illusion will be completely shattered.

Pain Point 1: The game is unapologetically P2W, but its the nefarious kind. The kind that gets corporate simps to shout "YOU CAN TECHNICALLY GET EVERYTHING FOR FREEEEEE!!!" Yes, you CAN technically get everything in the game EXCEPT for licensed characters, for free.

No, you never will. It will take you, and I am not exaggerating in the slightest, thousands of hours. This game's business model is THAT kind. It dangles the "free" in front of your face to distract you from how long getting said free will actually take. And that's just looking at the raw time-to-obtain-premium-currency factor.

Paint Point 2: The game is agonizingly new player unfriendly. Survivor is an absolute slog solo because BHVR in their immense egotistical idiocy refuses to give them communication tools every single other game standardized 10 years ago. And KIller? God, Killer... Don't even get me started.

Pain Point 3: The game is imbalanced to a degree of insanity. There are too many perks (talents you bring into each match) to be reasonably structured against one another, but more importantly, game knowledge causes a cataclysmic gap in skill, to the point that someone who understands the game's quirks (most of which are exploitation of the game's TERRIBLE spaghetti code and horrendous mechanical consistency).

In a competitive PVP game, you'd think that latter point would be a positive. But this isn't a competitive PVP game. This is a party game that BHVR can't decide if it wants to be a competitive PVP game or not, because they want to keep survivor whales buying the 5873457389 Feng Min skins they put out every year, but also want to pretend there's legitimacy to the game design philosophy of their gameplay loop (There isn't).

The end result is that you have a pool of HUNDREDS of perks from which maybe 10 on each side are actually worth a damn, and the only way to learn that is to go watch hours of Otzdarva (God bless that man) videos explaining to you what's actually worth trying to get access to and use. And if you DO learn enough to become competent and capable, what does it get you? To borrow the words from a certain frustrated nerd of yore, a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of ♥♥♥♥. The game is simultaneously in favor of both sides differently depending on how deep into it you are. If you're new, playing solo, and anywhere below high MMR, Killer has an overwhelming advantage in most circumstances thanks to the complete and utter inability of the survivors to communicate and coordinate without VOIP.

Then you dip into high MMR, and all the sudden the opposite is true. At the top rank, when everyone knows what they're doing and survivors are running around with 2-4 man premades, 90% of the killers in the game are helpless, and the 10% that aren't have to sweat their balls off to have any chance of winning. Oh, did I mention MMR is completely botched? Not only will it routinely send you against opponents you have no right being paired against, but there's ZERO MMR bleed or decay. The higher you climb, even if by accident or by fluke of MMR sending you against too weak of opponents too often, the more impossible it becomes for you to EVER have a sweatless match again. You can go months without playing and jump back in once the bitterness has faded and the rose tint has returned, only to get thrown against people who you would have had difficulty beating at your peak before you took a break.

Pain Point 4: Bugs. This game is not actually a game. This game is an amalgam of bugged code that is wearing the skin of a game. I've never seen such a level of tech debt before in my 33 years on this rock, and I'ved Played WoW on and off since year 1. That's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ saying something. DBD is so horrendously designed that BHVR cannot change ANYTHING without something else breaking. Patches will go onto the PTB and a tweak to a perk will have broken a map's functionality, or a change to a killer's animation will make a completely unrelated gameplay function wig the ♥♥♥♥ out.

You'll see bugs re-emerge from years ago arbitrarily. You'll see game balance changes from years ago suddenly revert for no reason. Every possible facet of un-logic that can be applied to how a game's internal structure is handled, DBD has it in spades. It isn't spaghetti code, it's the flying spaghetti monster of code. Just recently the game updated to UE5 finally after years being on the obsolete older version and the game has broken as a result in ways the community is still discovering the full extent of.

Pain Point 5: The Community. Dear God, the community. This game has the worst community of any PVP game in existence, and I don't say that lightly. Old Source? Xbox Live Certa 2008? LEAGUE OF LEGENDS? They're ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hugboxes compared to this ♥♥♥♥. The Survivor vs. Killer nature of the game has led to a culture of us vs. them. Both sides are fully convinced that the other side has 100% of the gameplay favor with BHVR and anyone who says otherwise are toxic crybabies. There are laundry lists of unspoken unofficial and completely nonexistent "rules" you must adhere to or you WILL be verbally assailed with diaherrea at the end of each match for being "toxic" by people whose only happiness in life is tearing others down.

This community makes League's look like a tween christian concert audience.



There's SO much more I could go into. So, so, so much more. But I'll spare you that and just leave you with this:

Don't do this to yourself. You are worth more than this. You matter. Nobody like you deserves Dead by Daylight. Nobody like you deserves to suffer through a game developed and maintained by Behavior Interactive.

Leave while you still can. For your own sake.

Don't be like me.

UPDATE: MAJOR ORDER SUCCESSFUL: SONY BACKED DOWN!

https://twitter.com/PlayStation/status/1787331667616829929

Previous Review:

I love this game. I've loved this game since I bought it on day 2. It is, in my opinion, one of the greatest AAA games to come out of the last 10 years, and by far THE best co-op experience to be had since Deep Rock Galactic.

That's why it breaks my heart to change this review to Not Recommended.

As most are likely aware by now, Sony is planning on enforcing mandatory PSN account linking to continue access to HD2 in the future. It is my opinion, and one that I think a court would find in favor of, that this was not in any way adequately communicated to the community. No, a single blurb on the store in small text easy to scroll past is not adequate communication. There should have been a warning in-game (the one initially offered at launch only ever stated that your online experience "may be impacted", and in no way stated that in the future it would be mandatory), and proper communication on Steam's news system prior to this point. And if that were not bad enough, the PSN website until the day the announcement was made stated outright that PSN linking would /never/ be required for access to any Playstation games on PC. That blurb was conveniently changed right when the announcement was made. This is a violation of consumer protections even in the hellscape of consumer rights that is the USA, along with basically everywhere else in the developed world. Sony has objectively opened themselves up to a class action with this nonsense.

But that's just the beginning. The main issue is that roughly half of the world's land mass does not have access to PSN, despite the fact that Sony has up until very recently, freely sold the game in those regions without any regard for the fact that their planned mandatory linking would lock them out of access to it. On top of that, there are a number of countries, one example being Ukraine, whom supposedly have access to PSN, but if one were to actually try to make an account in those regions, they'd discover that for some inexplicable reason, the ability to do so is gated behind ownership of an actual PS5. In other words, if you want to play HD2 on PC in those parts of the world, your only recourse as per the word of Sony's own PS support team, is to drop $500 on a console you will never use for the sake of making a free account. A console that mind you is STILL having production issues and getting one isn't even anywhere close to a guarantee.

This entire situation is ridiculous and whatever idiotic execs made this call should be fired, publicly shamed and blacklisted from the industry. Literally all Sony had to do was shut the ♥♥♥♥ up, sit down and let their most popular game in over a decade print them free money for the foreseeable future. Somehow, they still managed to ♥♥♥♥ that up.

And to the morons who are saying "HURR DURR PEOPLE WHO CAN'T READ ARE MAD", sorry to burst your brain-dead bubble but game companies have gotten slapped hard both in the US and ESPECIALLY in the EU for far, far less than the BS that Sony has pulled here.

The devs have asked us to make our voices heard, so that's exactly what I'm doing. The message to Sony needs to be broadcast loud and clear: You ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up, hard. Your only recourse is to capitulate and reverse this moronic decision. You WILL lose under every other circumstances. Do right by the studio you're currently ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ over for the sake of greed and maybe, MAYBE you can salvage this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and still let your popular game print money. But try to puff your chest and the collective internet will happily and eagerly continue to ♥♥♥♥ all over you, and this game, which by all rights deserves the success it has earned, will be depressingly caught in the cross-fire.

For once in your miserable corporate lives, consider doing the right thing.

This is an extremely tentative recommend. Important note: My first ever 100% playthrough was on the HARD difficulty. Perhaps some of these problems are mitigated on normal.

TL;DR: This is Half-Life by a team of fans, at least some of whom do not really understand Half-Life. Which if this had remained a mod as it were first intended, would be fine. But as its own stand-alone game billed as a reimagining/remake of HL1, its a bit of a problem. If you are new to Half-Life, you should not be starting with Black Mesa. You should be starting with the original Half-Life 1. Black Mesa is NOT a replacement for it.

Some context: While I'm far from a unique case in this regard, Half-Life means a great deal to me. It was the first notable PC game I ever played, and HL2 was both the first "core gamer" PC game, and the first collector's edition that my parents ever bought for me as a kid. I replay either HL2, HL1, or the 2 Episodes, once a year as a tradition. Last year, a mate bought me Black Mesa. At the time, I didn't finish it. Some major release happened and I got distracted. I ended up doing HL1 instead later on.

So this year, I opted to finish it, and I did. And it really hurts me that I can't give it just a straight thumbs up,

Visually, its a masterwork, not because its visuals are groundbreaking, but because it manages to be perfectly faithful to the original while making notable improvements to the level design at times. Black Mesa, from top to bottom, feels more realistic. Like somewhere people actually could be working en masse. More cubicles. Bigger rooms off to the side. More locked doors in places that make sense. It all works well. Sound design is much the same, an almost universal thumbs up.

The problem is everything else.

The combat is changed in ways that end up being very bad as the game goes on. It feels like the person who was in charge of combat didn't understand Half-Life's combat is meant to be more like a puzzle rather than a twitchy reflex shooter ala Halo. In fact, in the case of Vortigaunts, they literally changed them to feel like ghetto Destiny enemies, and it does nothing but make them worse. There's plenty of other examples too; enemy spam is common in the second half of the game, and enemies retain pain points from the original (Hgrunts being super tanky) while adding in NEW pain points rather than mitigating them (Hgrunts now move continuously instead of standing still so you can chew through their spongy HP pool. Eyehounds charge up in half the time and usually come in groups of 5+, 10+ in late-game. Just to give TWO examples, almost every enemy has changes like this that make them worse.)

Explosive weapons were artificially neutered for no justifiable reason. Grenades have like half of the radius they used to have yet somehow feel even worse to throw, which I admit, is an impressive feat considering how clunky the HL1 grenade was. Similarly, the underslung grenade of the Assault Rifle, one of the most satisfying weapons to use in the original, not only has had its ammo economy all but obliterated and is extremely rare to find, but has been nerfed in the same way as the grenade. So basically, anything but straight up pegging an enemy head-on is worthless. Both suck and feel like ♥♥♥♥, and the other two options don't play well with the changes to enemy UI and are almost useless. I used the trip mines a grand total of once in the whole game, and the C4 twice.

The biggest problem, though, is the quiet time. Or more aptly, the lack thereof.

Anyone who knows HL is aware of the concept of quiet-time. It's a foundational element of Valve's design philosophy: Whenever a player goes through a noteworthy sequence, there needs to be a substantial amount of time following it with minimal effort and interruption. "Quiet time" that allows the player to take in what they just went through before they go through something like that again. Time to appreciate it.

Well, Black Mesa throws that ♥♥♥♥ right out the window about halfway through the game. In stretches that would have previously been quiet time, there's now eight billion headcrabs around every corner waiting to cheaply ambush you. There's another wave of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Eyehounds about to rush out from the distance. There's SOMETHING that is going to break up your quiet time. It is a FOUNDATIONAL betrayal of what makes Half-Life what it is.

However, all of that compounds when you get to the biggest problem-element: Xen. Now, most will agree Xen in HL1 was exceedingly mediocre. A product of rushed development, it was very disjointed from the rest of the game.

Well, Black Mesa got that last part right, I guess. Because their solution to Xen was to remake it from the ground up... into an entirely different ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game. Where the rest of the game was at least making an effort to stay mostly true to the design philosophy of HL1, the moment you step foot into Xen, you are no longer playing Half-Life. There's a myriad of new enemy variants not in the original. The layouts are NOTHING like they were. What was an hour at most romp at the game's finale before is now a multi-hour sequence spanning something like 1/4th the length of the rest of the game, at least. It genuinely feels like Crowbar Collective tried to pass their own original game off in the guise of being an "updated" Xen. Right down to the visuals being NOTHING like the original (In a very good way. Its downright criminal that this immaculate otherworldly artstyle was wasted on such obnoxious gameplay), and also the fidelity of Xen being ten times higher than the rest of the game.

And all of the chapters in Xen drag on, and on and on, filled to the brim with all manner of, well, filler. There's barely ANY quiet time; hell, one chapter (Gonarch's Lair) is basically a 40 minute long gauntlet of excruciating over-stimulation. Literally every single ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ step you take is hounded by either waves of headcrabs, babycrabs being spawned on top of you, Gonarch herself pelting you with ♥♥♥♥, or stage hazards you have to keep mobile to avoid. It was infuriating to move through. And dear god, their version of Interloper, while it easily had the best moments out of all of Xen (actually felt like Half-Life at times), seemed like it was going on FOREVER. It must have taken me at LEAST an hour and a half, maybe even two.

All of this compounds into what I mean when I say Black Mesa feels like Half-Life made by a team that didn't fully understand Half-Life. I could go into so, so, so much more detail, but there simply wouldn't be enough room in this review for it all.

All that said, I can't deny that the first half of Black Mesa is absolutely A-tier, and while the game has plenty of frustrations due to poor design choices later on, I would still say if you're a fan of Half-Life, its worth at least one playthrough just to see the new visuals and take in the clear love for the game that the team behind it had. That's why in spite of most of my comments being negative, I still am ultimately recommending it. It's going to be a toss up, though. If you end up enjoying Xen or not.

If I ever pick it for one of my annual HL play-throughs again though, I'll probably stick to a lower difficulty from now on. Dealing with a continual wave adding up to 20 Hgrunts with your only healing scattered in the corners of the room where you'll be out in the open if you run for, just isn't really that fun to do when your combat system is built atop ♥♥♥♥♥♥' Half-Life, it turns out.

While its still not 100% there, the class rework brought Darktide a LOT closer to where it should have been at launch.

The game still has a large variety of flaws, though.

The story remains functionally nonexistent.
The gap in difficulties is insane. 1 is almost impossible to lose, 2 you'll only ever be threatened if your teammates are all game journalists. Then all the sudden 3s require you to have a full understanding of the game and how it flows. Not to even speak of the difference between 4s and 5s, but that's more forgivable since 5s are functionally endgame.
The class balance is completely scuffed at higher difficulties, worse than it was before as you basically always need at least two Psykers with CC support to do well in the hardest content.
There's a whole ton of downright useless filler weapons that serve no purpose other than just taking up your loot drops. Not to mention the naming system behind weapons is obnoxious, prioritizing pedantic lore accuracy over straightforward information; IE, I don't need to know what mark this combat shotgun is. I need to know if its the fast one with the vertical alt fire, the one with incendiary ammo, or the one that fires single target slug shots. Don't get me started on the 8 billion variants of Lasgun.
The crafting system is horrible and an objective step down from VT2 in every conceivable way.
Resources you need to upgrade/reroll your weapons are horrendously distributed; you'll have 10x the amount of Diamantine than you'll ever have Plasteel, despite the fact you need more of the latter than the former.
Perhaps most egregious of all because it so obviously stems from raw greed, cosmetics are stiff scuffed with most of the free stuff being extremely boring and the good stuff being locked behind paid currency and ALSO tied to an obnoxious FOMO rotation system.

Still, in spite of all of that, I can't deny the core gameplay loop is a lot of fun. At least, once you get to difficult 3 and above. Almost every class has multiple viable playstyles (outside of 5s), and they're almost all a lot of fun to use. Thus, I give this game a tentative recommendation. It feels a bit dirty, as practically speaking, again, this basically feels like the state the game should have been in when it launched a YEAR ago. But, at least Fatshark didn't cut their losses and move on, and are indeed working towards making it a good experience, one slow step at a time.

Hey, still a better comeback than Total War Warhammer 3.

TL;DR: If you're a fan of Vampire Survivors, play this game immediately. If you're a fan of Hololive AND Vampire Survivors, be weary for the future state of your social life. JK, as if you had one.

I probably put a good hundred hours or more into this game before it hit Steam. Holocure is the passion project of one massive Hololive fan and his merry band of volunteers. He's an absolute lunatic who will not even take donations because he doesn't want the game to be anything more to him than a passion project and fears the ability to support himself off of his work would taint his enjoyment of it. Forbidden Knowledge of Hololive will indeed increase your enjoyment of Holocure, as every corner of it is filled to the brim with memes and references to the various talents of the vtuber agency. However, it is by NO means a necessity. The game is simply a solid survivor-like with or without its Hololive roots.

Now, I don't want to say Holocure is "better" than VS. There are some things VS does better (Upgrade economy, stage variety) and some things Holocure does better (Weapon variety, ease of unlocking). Both are exceptional in their own right, but one is free and the other costs 1/10th of dinner at Mickey D's, so if that's your own deciding factor, Holocure wins out.

The best way I can compare the two is that if you prefer a more fine-tuned and "flashy" experience, Vampire Survivors does that way better. Progression there is riddled with secrets and strange gimmicks you have to figure out to progress further into unlocking. However, if you want variety of ways to do the same thing over and over and over, Holocure wins out by a landslide.

The game currently has a roster of 38 characters, likely with more to come in the future as there are still a good chunk of Hololive talents that haven't been added yet (COME ON KAY YU, YOU PUT NOEL'S MILK AND BOOB PLATE IN THE GAME BEFORE YOU PUT NOEL IN THE GAME FOR SHAME). These characters are where the meat and potatoes of what makes Holocure really stand out can be found. Unlike in VS where your character largely amounts to just some stat and level-up bonus variation + starting weapon, all 38 characters in Holocure have their own unique weapons that only they can access, along with three skills that only they can learn. Finally, each has their own unique "ultimate" ability that recharges every couple of minutes. The result is that each of the 38 characters have a dramatically different playstyle, in spite of having an otherwise shared pool of generic weapons and accessories ala VS or any other VS-like. Where in VS with a few exceptions your character mostly just determines how easy it is to get your build off the floor, playing Korone in Holocure is a vastly different experience from playing Amelia Watson or Kronii.

Additionally, the game has a variety of support for leaderboards, so you can fight other weebs across the world over who can get the top score on your respective waifu.

Finally, the Steam release has added the "Holohouse" which anyone who dares enter will inevitably lose several days of their life to the new fishing minigame, which is not only a fun time waster but also a great way to kickstart progression because the sand you gain from it can be directly converted into the same holocoins used for upgrading and rolling on gatcha for the girls at a 1-to-1 conversion rate. It also introduces some "idle" elements with fans you can "hire" to generate passive holocoins, and a farm you can use to grow ingredients to both feed your fans and also craft foods that will grant you buffs when you go into the main game proper. Finally, it includes a little customizable room that acts as for-fun player housing.

Honestly, I'm mixed on these new additions. On the one hand, they're very fun. On the other hand, they outright break the economy. 5 or so hours fishing and using the income to build up your hired fans will result in a passive income that in the previous iterations of the game would have taken dozens upon dozens of runs to achieve without the absolute peak min/maxing of good luck and optimal characters for farming. With a full roster of not even maxed out fans my current income sits in the range of around 176,000 holocoins before they become exhausted and need to be fed. A single GOOD 20 minute run with a character whose weapons don't specifically lean towards farming holocoins will usually net 20-40k holocoins. Those fans only take around 15 or so minutes if that to become exhausted, so basically, baring pure farms with good luck to get all of the stuff you need to farm efficiently early on in the run, your passive income from the holohouse more than triples the average income from playing the game normally.

But, in the end, it IS all optional, so I can't fault it much. If you are someone who wants to optimize though, just be aware of the reality that truly maximizing your efficiency in Holocure will involve putting a good number of hours into doing a side activity completely unlike the core game.

All and all, if Holocure cost $10, it would be an 8/10 in its current state. Because its free, I'll firmly call it a solid 9/10. There are a few annoyances that hold it back from being a perfect experience (Why the ♥♥♥♥ can boxes give me entirely new weapons I have no need of when I still have weapons that aren't max rank?), but its still by and far one of the best offerings in this burgeoning genre. And its free, so hey, what do you have to lose?

PS. Watson best gremlin

Fantastic. Simply fantastic.

When putting down a review for Legacy of the Moonspell, I lamented that while it was by and large inoffensive, with very few exceptions, the things introduced in that first DLC were by and large underwhelming compared to the base game. Enough such that it was still a good, regret-free purchase if for no other reason than to support further development, but it lacked a lot of interest when compared to the base game.

Fortunately, I can safely say that Tides of the Forscari is the opposite. It does not just add onto the game, it adds all the RIGHT things onto the game.

Eight new weapons. Five new evolutions. One of which is the game's first combination of three weapons into one. With the exception of the mandatory "one weapon that doesn't evolve and isn't very good", ALL of the offerings this time are notably good. The Three Spells are both strong, and feel great to use together, and their combined form is one of the best weapons in the game for sure, easily worth the trouble to obtain and use. The sword is essentially a straight superior new Whip without the problem of only ever hitting things above you until its final form, with an extremely satisfying combo attack and a very wide reaching evolution. The Arrow, especially when combined with Arcana VII allowing it to bounce off the sides of the screen, is likely the single best elite killer in the game now outside of insta-kills or fully upgraded Sword of Victory, and it might even beat out Sword if you aren't on Sigma. Within just a few upgrades it already starts hitting in the hundreds, and only keeps getting better as time goes on. The Light Orb is a solid "AFK" weapon that consistently will kill anything that comes anywhere near your personal space. The Dark Orb starts out slow, but gradually evolves to the only Insta-Kill weapon aside from Gentle Moon, and is decent at clearing groups to boot. All of them are solid and both introduce fun play styles, and heavily compliment existing ones. Solid!

But if that weren't enough, the characters aren't so bad either. Big standouts being three new "Heroes" whom act as the protagonists for this DLC; one based around always getting access to the three Spell weapons, one based around armor, and one based around luck. Additionally, all three of them gain a new Passive Item at Level 30 that outside of one of the new stages, can only be obtained by them. A nifty little thing that fully upgraded grants you -15% EXP gained, but 2 extra revivals and +3 projectiles for your trouble.

But then, if that wasn't enough, the new map is FAR better than Mt. Moonspell was. Its the same general idea; a fixed map with a "map" that shows the whole thing. However, unlike Mt. Moonspell which was essentially just a standard area with a really obnoxious mountain path and a few buildings you needed to walk around to find the entrance to, Lake Voscari, perhaps in keeping with the classic fantasy theme of the DLC, feels like a real adventure to explore the first time through. Its paths are straight forward but also winding, leading to different regions. Its tricky the first time through, but you quickly realize that everything around you can be treated like what it looks like, and if you need to progress, you can quite literally just "follow the path." Additionally, the map for this area is located about halfway "through" it, meaning you are forced the first time through to genuinely explore the place and figure out how to reach it. And best of all? This time around, there's damn good reasons to come BACK to Lake Voscari. Not only is it just a fun map to actually play on, with entirely reasonable waves and a fun path to travel to get to all of the Yellow Sign items, but like with the base game, this time, the map has actual secrets to unearth. I won't go into anything here, other than just to say that this one was an absolute banger to go through. They really nailed it, this time.

And that's really all that needs to be said. This second DLC is a 100% compliment to the existing game and an absolute must for anyone who loves what the base game already has on offer.