Recent reviews by ★ Bliss

Honestly, this game took me by surprise. I got into it because one of my friends told me about it, and that it was somewhat similar to a souls-like game. That immediately caught my attention due to the fact that I'm a Dark Souls and Elden Ring fan - now before anybody feels discouraged from reading those two titles, I can assure you this game is not nearly as straining as those games. The game offers a range of difficulties for whatever suits you, from Story Mode - a casual experience for the player that isn't stressful at all, to Master Mode - a much more challenging way to play the game that will keep you on your toes. The way you want to play is completely up to you, and I'm glad the game provides this.

The basic concept of the game is that you are trying to help corrupted spirits find peace so that they can move on, and the way this concept is integrated into the game works extremely well. For a concept that seems so simple on the surface, the game has quite a lot of depth to it, especially regarding the stories of the spirits that you help along your journey. There was so much depth and emotion to the game that it genuinely made me reflect on real life circumstances quite a lot. Especially the existence of spirits and the afterlife. The fact that a game like this was able to make me question something quite existential like that...I think that's an incredible feat. Especially since the game is very respectful to the idea of spirits and helping them move on, it made me more inquisitive and open to the idea of things like that.

The visual style of the game is also lovely. The game is very polished, with only a few bugs encountered that were not remotely game-breaking. The mechanics of the game are also quite solid, as well. Some very cool ideas that were executed very well. The music as well, especially in certain scenes, is absolutely gorgeous, and really helps bring this game to life. The environment is probably the strongest part of this game, however. There is always a use for your abilities which is nice, since there are some games that tend to include too many things and end up making the vast majority of them redundant / no longer needed. But this game has incorporated many things and has made them all serve a good purpose, which is really cool.

Note: I played on Master Mode, so my opinion on the combat may be slightly skewed as I'm not sure how the easier difficulties go about things. The combat in this game is honestly pretty good, really satisfying to backflip over some attacks and makes me feel really good about some of the cool things I'm able to do, though sometimes I did find myself fumbling the keybinds and the order of them due to the amount of abilities you can unlock, but I don't think that's too much of a problem, only a bit frustrating when you know what you want to do and then you just don't do anything because you messed up an input or something. I also thought some enemies were a bit too difficult to dodge sometimes, not due to being hard, but in a way that didn't make sense, especially since all of the enemies attack you at the same time, so it can be a liiiiittle bit overwhelming at times. I distinctly recall two enemies that seem to be able to hit you no matter what even if you roll at the perfect times, their attacks seem to be designed to catch up at the end of your roll, then again I might just be bad, so take that with a grain of salt (literally).

My conclusion of this game is that it's a really sweet and moving game. The story of the game isn't too long and isn't too short, and there is a lot of fun to be had within. Definitely some emotions to be felt, and in general, a game that managed to capture my attention and focus, which a lot of games struggle to do nowadays. Definitely give this a go, absolutely worth your time and money.

I really enjoy the idea of an RTX Portal mod, but my god, this feels very heavily unoptimised.
I like to think my system is pretty decent, RTX 3070Ti, Ryzen 9 5900X, 32gb RAM, etc etc, and for the most part, yes! It does run fine! But after a little while, and especially after placing portals down, the FPS just dips to about 10-15, it is literally just unplayable. After disabling the RTX effects and re-enabling them, the FPS relaxes and goes back to how it usually is, which is stable, but again, after a few minutes have passed, the FPS just dips significantly. It's hard to sit back and relax when I'm watching a slide show. Even lowering the RTX effects don't help with the framerate drop.

Again, really like the idea of an RTX Portal mod, but it feels like the execution was very poor, and seems more like an advertisement for the RTX 4090 (there are NVidia QR codes everywhere) rather than something out of passion for Portal itself. Disappointing, to say the least. If you have a NASA computer you should be fine lmao.

I'm sort of fed up with blowing up in every room but it is good fun lmao

Perhaps not strictly true to the 'endless' nature of the Backrooms, since it heavily relies on puzzle solving as a condition for progression, whereas the original nature of the Backrooms is endless exploration and desolation, but it's still good fun! Everything you pick up during the game has a use. It makes sure to include each nook and cranny of the level design in order for you to obtain every item that you will need for progression.

There are three difficulties with a variety of scaling when it comes to health, stamina, lives, revive time, etc. Easy is definitely the best difficulty to play on if you're after a more casual experience I would say, as there are less drawbacks compared to playing on Normal and Hard. On top of that, as you unlock new levels, you can choose to spawn from those levels going forward, which is very nice, as I wouldn't enjoy having to replay the entirety of the game if I wanted to simply spawn at my desired level.

The very first level is monster-free, you can explore safely but the non-saturated colours and the sound of the level is very off putting. I think they did a very good job in capturing the uneasiness of the Backrooms with the first level, even if it's very short and brief - as with any good horror game, there's a sense of dread and uncertainty. Definitely a strong sense of eerieness as you'd expect from the Backrooms.

The second level is a variation of the first and is darker, known as the Dark Rooms. As you explore, you will find various other levels such as the Parking Lot and the Office as well as secret levels such as Level Fun, Level ! (Run for your life!), and the Sewers, with a new level coming later this month which my friends and I are incredibly excited for.

There are multiple endings to the game which provides you with a lot more play time. My friends and I thoroughly enjoyed this game. There was initial tilt when we played the Sewers for the first time, but I think it really got us to co-ordinate and get our brains working, and overall, I don't regret any of the play time on this game. We replay the game and we have some very good laughs, and enjoy replaying through some of the levels.

I absolutely recommend playing this game if you enjoy survival horror games, as well as puzzle solving. Especially with a group of friends, I would say this is a 'must-play'.

I thoroughly enjoy the Souls games, and Elden Ring is no exception.
The game is breathtaking, and the very first time I played through it, I was pretty much at a loss for words from how impressed I was. If you're like me, you probably have 200 games in your library and you're like "gee, I have nothing to play". Well, Elden Ring is something that completely stole my attention and I sank all of my time into playing it.

It has some really good music, some really good atmosphere, some incredible views, seriously, the sense of scale in this game is absolutely amazing. Maybe it's just me, but I love looking at places from a distance and seeing just how far I've come. Or looking at places afar and knowing that I'm eventually going to get to that area. It just fills me with this feeling I can't put into words. I thoroughly enjoyed exploring this game, all the ruins, tunnels, caves, etc. There was always something to do, and it always kept my attention. Not to mention the fact that it has a lot of replayability with different classes to choose from, as well as a more challenging NG+ like the other Souls games have. With more playtime, you will discover more and more, things you didn't even find 300 hours into the game, as that's currently what's happening to me.

Some of the quest lines are very cool, albeit some needing a pretty extensive tutorial to follow correctly as with the sheer sense of scale comes plenty of ways to lock yourself out of particular quests along the way, though it's not world-ending, it can be a little frustrating as there are a lot of characters to keep up with. Some of the questlines are pretty short whereas some are a lot more game-lengthy, and will require the usage of a wiki or tutorial in order to make sure you don't miss anything crucial.

In terms of boss fights, it has some of the most memorable and impactful bosses to date. The game is absolutely packed with bosses, with the main adversaries being a showcase of FromSoftware's signature style of Soulslike. Chaotic, grotesque, challenging and of course: brutally unforgiving. It's always a fun time heading into the boss arenas, though I will say, this game in comparison to the other Souls games is REALLY hard. The enemies in this game are fast, acrobatic and there is not a lot of respite between attacks, though that does not make them unbeatable. You can make use of certain game mechanics like the use of summons (don't let anyone tell you that using summons is an incorrect way of playing the game, play how you want), on top of that, you can trivialise most bosses by using a bleed and frostbite build in tandem with summons, though, I don't recommend this as relying on cheeses to get through the game will only guarantee that you suffer later on or in future playthroughs. Another thing I love about the bosses in this game is that you can do them in no particular order. While yes it's true that doing them in a certain order is more beneficial due to the location scaling, it also encourages the player to simply play how they want without the overlurking shadow of an upcoming boss fight. FromSoftware have done the open world aspect of the game incredibly well.

Time for my personal qualms with the game.

I don't tend to dip my toes into PvP very much, simply because I enjoy playing the game without getting ganked by someone much better than me. But occasionally, I'll play with friends, and so we summon each other and eventually get invaded. Sometimes, the invader will have a weapon that's extremely difficult to avoid or is straight up broken in terms of balancing. Rivers of Blood as a prime example (before it was nerfed to hell). Or a weapon that turns your opponent into a literal beyblade and you don't have enough i-frames to roll away from it unscathed, especially when they're spamming it non-stop. I understand the risks of summoning, but it can be really frustrating to attempt to play with friends with little to zero souls experience and get 2v1'd by a character who has purposely built their character for invasions, or not even that, just has a broken weapon that destroys players.

This game's biggest flaw is the reuse of bosses throughout the game. I think it's just...lazy. I understand how ambitious it would be to create unique boss fights for every single nook and cranny of this game, but it really isn't fun walking into a new boss arena and seeing the same dude you've killed like four times already, only this time maybe it's a little bit stronger or weaker depending on where you find the enemy. Especially when they copy and paste some of the MAIN bosses. That for me is something that really bugged me. It wouldn't even be that bad if they did it once, but they do it more than once, and that for me is unforgivable. It definitely ruined the unique feeling of exploring a brand new tunnel, or a brand new cave, fighting so hard to get to the end and realising it was basically for nothing new. Kinda underwhelming.

The late game bosses are incredibly hard and honestly? Pretty unfair. There's a point in Dark Souls 1 that most players widely agree upon called the second half downfall where the game stops being fun and rather unfair and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ once you reach the halfway point. At times, this is how I feel about Elden Ring's final seven (main) bosses. One has FAR too much health and is the most trivial experience ever conceived. One is blatantly unfair due to the high damage output of your foe and the fact it's a 2v1 (against you!). One is so acrobatic it puts the Olympics to shame (seriously, getting a hit on this guy is so difficult because he doesn't stop jumping all over the place and his AoE attacks are a whole new level of unfair). One spams spells more than your average Dark Souls 2 player. One gives no space for respite and can stomp the ground and effect the entire battle arena (admittedly this guy is really fun to fight). One is just crazy hard by default. One doesn't stop running away and sometimes stacks attacks, making it impossible to figure out what's going on and dodge it all at the same time. If you've played the game before, you know exactly who each boss I'm talking about is, and I hope you agree with me to some extent. They're not bad bosses by any means but during my first playthrough, I honestly didn't know if I was gonna get through the game because they were honestly kinda ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. The difficulty spike past this certain point in the game is just crazy. The ABSURD amount of damage they do with one ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hit is just not fair. If you're a melee player, prepare to get stiffed over. Levelling health is absolutely crucial in this game and unfortunately that kinda gives me the Dark Souls 2 meta of "just level ADP" which sucks. I'd like to sink points into my other stats but most of it needs to go towards health if I simply want to survive for long enough to actually get some hits in.

All in all, it's just part of the experience. To be a true souls fan, you need to be able to say "I hate this game" while still playing it. I absolutely recommend it. It's amazing fun, and hey, maybe some of my qualms won't be as big a deal to you. Playing this game was still absolutely worth it, and I wouldn't ever recommend against it.

Larry and Shy Guy make the funniest duo.
I literally couldn't stop laughing as we were trapped in a room getting spawn killed over and over again.

I'm still not over this ♥♥♥♥. (3.6 hours)
EDIT: Got over it 50 times.

The main story of the game is still one of the best psychological horror experiences I've ever witnessed.
The side stories are a very pleasant addition to the game that had me chanting "LESBIANSSS" every time.
Highly recommended.

If only life was as easy as automation is in this game.

SHHHHH
SLIPPERS