Recent reviews by KrudlerTheHorse

I got this on sale and I've already plugged enough hours in that I feel full price would have been worth it! Because I'm going to keep going with other characters and difficulties.

A simple, humble, but very well made game. I like the fact that you can change "firing assist" setting to none/assist/autofire. So if you want that "true" twin stick experience you can have it, and if you want the fun quick-run of auto or assisted aim it's great too. I love playing both ways.

There's so many cool power-ups and abilities. I love the meta-game of managing health, keys, bombs and items. After each fight you get a choice of doors knowing what's behind them, some of which you might need a key/bomb to open. You can trade health for powerup items, and heart containers for Legendary Powers which are so cool. So you get tons of choice, even early on when you haven't unlocked a lot. There's a mid-run bank to store health/gold. You find items which transform what's behind the doors, and items that transform other items. Lots more stuff going on. This game has so much promise for me.

I've unlocked only a small chunk so far, but it's already opened up fun and exiting builds.

Well enough time writing this review, gotta get back to the game! It's so good!

I just didn't really find it all that fun.

It is cute, it is well-made, but ultimately it feels that terrible combination of non-stop backtracking and map consultation.

Eventually I started to realize that the "game" is just really me remembering what part is next, what little mini-puzzle I haven't had the "thing" to get past, then getting past it. Then there's another thing you can't get past, and you back track suuuuuuper far to push one block you couldn't before for example.

It's is a lot of fun, it's is very charming, for the first couple hours. Then the bloom falls off the rose and the monotony sets in.

As much as I like about this game, I found it really just a time waster and didn't give me a rewarding feeling. I'm stopping early just after the mine-cart switcheroo part because playing makes me feel exhausted.

It's not about easy/hard it's about the fact that 95% of the time in the game is spent navigating menus.

Inventory management is a huge part of the game and I like that aspect, but they made it so tedious. A big part of the game is inserting items into various pots to store, preserve, transform, etc. But it's all done in old-school hierarchical drop-down menus. B (inventory) > D > D > D > A (select pot) > D > A (insert) > D > D > D > D > D > A. Those are a realistic input sequence to put ONE item in a pot. You have to do this kind of thing several hundred times in a run.

You'll find you're always dropping items on the ground to do inventory management, or sometimes just to Bubble-Sort your most-frequently-accessed items to the top of your Backpack menu because there's no sorting or Favorites.

I'm at the 15 hour point and I'm JUUUUUUUUST starting to get to the point where the actual challenge and thinking begins, but I'm just so darn exhausted from playing. There is so much running through unecessary area after area just to get to the part where you're pushing ahead. It can take like 20 minutes just to get a run started before any kind of thinking is involved.

It's all just too exhausting and tedious to play. Which is such a shame because everything mechanically is really tight and it's so well done and rich and deep. I just don't have the patience any more.

It's actually not even good.

I do like aspects of this game. The presentation is kinda retro feel and it doesn't need a crummy CRT filter to do it, so they score at least a few points there. There isn't a moment of tedium - the enemies press fast and it keeps you moving which keeps you engaged.

It follows a predictable formula of random upgrade options as you gather XP motes and use them for random Powers, and you gain permanent currency in Coins to spend after rounds for Stat boosts like Regen, Power, Armor, Cooldown, Etc. RNG causes various "main" weapons to spawn and you can carry 1.

Unfortunately the entirety of the game is discovered in a few minutes, then the realization sets in that outside of dodging and RNG there really isn't much going on.

Big issue is that you can only run. So it limits you to basically running, picking up whatever guns spawn, hoping it's good, lasting as long as you can, spending your coins for an upgrade (you need to grind minimum 3-4 rounds per upgrade minimum) and then doing that forever. There's nothing else.

Some of the guns are just laughable. They don't even have names or labels or anything so I'm just going to say the "green one that does triple-pop-gun-shot" is laughable. It shoots 3 peas a second and 21 things spawn per second. Or you IDK just get the Raiden Laz0r and then you're a killing machine. So you feel the unfairness at all times.

Like, blow the 0.77 CAD that I did and are you out that much? Not really. But even at that Sale price I paid it's not worth it.

I'm going to "beat" the game now because I got fooled into playing this long and I figure I can blast though for another 30 minutes.

It's not good, really. There are good aspects but what actually counts is gameplay and it's paper-thin in that area.

edit: I played more but nope. This game isn't fun and I refuse to play anymore.

It's functional and actually tight in "the right" ways but ultimately it's a complete bore to play.

So many people are talking about this game like it's a min/max'ers dream but as a build god myself, I can tell you the "builds" are more like playing an annoying Tetris-type tetromino packing game. You get a grid-style panel where you place "powerup" Glyphs. Some are huge jagged pieces that boost other Glyphs.

You want to endlessly scroll through MOUNTAINS of gear and Glyphs to constantly fiddle with your build? Me neither. Because the actual underlying hack/slash D2 gameplay is actually boring AF. I gave it everything I had, and around the 8h point I found myself bored to tears because this thing ain't going anywhere.

It is a well-made game that has good controls and decent gameplay.

The game is simple but in a good way. It hooks you quickly because it's easy to approach for brainless jump + shoot action. Then it opens up a bit as you get new weapons and abilities.

There's different bosses with different phases too. I thought the enemy, mini-boss, and boss variety was just great. Enemy attack patterns and (occasional) bullet patterns are well-done and have good variety. You can discover how to beat enemies by watching and learning their attacks. There's 3 "arena types" with actual different variety.

The game was a perfect length and didn't overstay it's welcome at all. I beat it in about 2.5 hours and I don't' want to play more because even though there are more achievements and weapons, I don't feel it's the type of game that will keep me interested for much more. That's not a negative, realistically it's a low-price game that actually is worth it and gives you a good value for the fun factor.

I found that I had to go into Steam's Control settings and set the deadzone for the LStick to like 20% because otherwise the control is hair-trigger and insane. Once I got that sorted I found overall character control to be tight.

I usually buy games on sale and I think I did here too, but I wouldn't feel bad if I paid full price. It was a fun little game!

Surprisingly good! You'll get probably 4-8 hours fun.

There's different spells, characters, etc. Not a lot of great builds because you can figure out very quickly which weapons are min/max efficiency.

I loved the dodge roll which is your basic ability, and that you can replace that ability with others. There's mini bosses, spawner "bases" to attack, some secrets.

It's good!

This is a half-baked game at best.

Mechanics are weak and the RNG variance is way off.

You have a little ship in a small room with little walls or maybe a hazard. Red enemies slowly swarm you and your ship auto-shoots them.

You dodge around and if random powerups spawn you pick them up. There's little "events" which are "stand here for 10s then shoot that" or "shoot that".

You have basically no say whatsoever if you get good powerups or not. You're at the mercy of RNG and you just dodge around. Boring.

This is one of the weakest games I've played. It's not "bad" it's just incredibly tedious and shallow.

It's like a bad good game.

I feel like there's all this depth hiding under the surface, but ultimately when you play it becomes tediously trudging through small boring pod-style dungeon floors. There's moss and mushrooms and grass to eat. You can hit a monster. Find some random junk in a chest, some piece of trash on the floor, and hope that if you combine you get a good thing. Beat a boss. Who cares because now there's more of the same.

That's it.

I keep doing this and I'm not having any fun.

I think for some people, the pleasure is unfolding the intentionally inscrutable game mechanics. For me, no. I want the gameplay to stand on it's own and the gameplay aspects are actually as dull as it could possibly get.

I got this 50% off and it was worth that.

You have a ship in space, it has insane acceleration and speed, plus it keeps momentum. A lot of the challenge of the game is just keeping yourself as stationary as possible, and letting the enemies come to you while you make micro dodges. You also have to collect the currency to upgrade your ship so that adds a bit of the chaos-factor because it's all about controlling your ship.

You also have the recharging Dash ability which can be upgraded to shoot weapons, have faster cooldowns, longer dashes, etc. Its nicely implemented and when used it get you to a safe spot with ample i-frames.

I don't want to get into the mechanics too deeply. But I think it's fair to say there's cool weapons with fun upgrades and lots of styles to discover.

In the end I feel the game started to wear thin around the 5 hour point. I played a bit more to see because it is a fun game but nothing really opened up after that point. By then I had perfect mastery of the ship and upgrade system, and how to exploit the Dash for maximum benefit, etc. So that's kinda also when I realized a run is primed for success or doomed for failure largely by RNG; Getting overwhelmed by enemies or fighting through becomes a function of whether you got good rolls on the upgrades.

I'm not complaining. This is the nature of games like this.

I'm a bit of a grinder so if I like a game up front I'll usually put several hours into it. I think most people will actually be bored in a few hours. But it's a fun game, a good game, smooth and bug free, so it's worth it on sale!