Recent reviews by Phirestar

Dragon’s Dogma was pretty heavily recommended to me for a while. After getting into the Dark Souls series in 2018, and absolutely loving those games, I was obviously on the lookout for more action RPGs. This game popped up and was on my wishlist for about three years until I purchased it in 2022, and then finally sat down and gave it a proper go in 2023. I’ve heard lots of people say that it’s the best action RPG ever made, that it has the best combat system in the genre. I watched a review from Shadiversity on YouTube where he said that he likes Dragon’s Dogma’s combat more than the Souls games. So of course I had to play eventually, based on that level of notoriety.

I’ve put a little over 26 hours of playtime into the game, and after more than a year since the last time I booted it up, having spent some time reflecting on my experience, I’ve now decided that I am not going to return to the game to continue my playthrough. I haven’t finished the game, but I’ve spent enough time with it to get a good idea of how it plays and have completed at least half of the main quest line, I’d wager. I’m also no stranger to offering games far more of my time than most people are willing in order to give them the benefit of the doubt that they will interest me eventually. I have put 10s of hours into more than one game, in the past, before I was able to properly start enjoying them, and unfortunately to say, Dragon’s Dogma has reached its time limit.

My issues with the game all boil down to the design of one thing: the open world. To start with, the world is barren in terms of content. There are two types of enemy spawns in the open world: fixed spawns and giant monster events. The fixed spawns are comprised of mostly weak enemies that are trivial to fight and don’t do a whole lot. You’ll find packs of wolves that go down in a couple of hits each, goblin raids that become non-threatening when you set them on fire and watch them flail about in pain instead of retaliating, bandit groups that put up some level of resistance… sometimes, and a couple of other enemy types like harpies and saurians (crocodiles with spears). These enemies will always spawn in the same locations on the map and never outside of those spaces, meaning you will always know where and when there are combat encounters, and you’ll known how to deal with every single time they do show up once you’ve fought them once or twice before.

The other type are the gigantic creatures that all of the game’s marketing and reviews are focused on - the ones that you’re able to climb on and that require a great deal of effort to take down, unlike the trash mobs. Based on what I found on Google, there’s apparently 22 different “colossal” monsters in the game, and with exceptions made for story-specific, scripted monster encounters (like the chimera in the tutorial, and the hydra toward the intro section of the game), I only encountered 3 of them in my playthrough. (Technically it was 4, but that’s because one of them is the Armored Cyclopes, which is essentially just the regular Cyclopes with damage-mitigating armor that can be shattered off the creature.) Perhaps it’s a result of the way in which I played the game - I might’ve not gone to other zones where other colossal monsters appear - but 3 of the primary enemy type in over 20 hours is a very slow pacing of content, especially when I also fought multiples of them, including 2 separate Griffins and around 3-4 total Cyclopses.

On top of this, the act of traversing the world is long and uneventful as a result. Dragon’s Dogma largely follows the trend of having a linear narrative that requires moving from quest location to quest location in order to progress, and beyond that, it doesn’t offer much in the way of side content. There is an island that you can travel to from the starting town, which I think was added as part of the ‘Dark Arisen’ relaunch, and it’s apparently where people go to speedrun leveling up their characters on subsequent playthroughs due to the presence of high-level dungeons with enemies that offer massive pools of experience. Beyond that, however, the thing I eventually noticed about places on the map that I would explore on my own is that, eventually, they would become a quest location. The catacomb behind the waterfall beneath the bridge that you cross on the way to the main town, Gran Soren, became a location to retrieve an item in the main story. The dungeon I found in the woods outside of Gran Soren became a site to investigate a cult. And even the mine that serves as a shortcut over the mountains, where I met one of the Ogres, was recommended by the quest giver to help reach a far away fort more easily. All of this suggests to me that if you simply focus on the questing, you’ll end up seeing most or possibly even all of the game’s world by having the game take you there. So what is the point of exploring on your own, then?

This is coming from a person who is a huge fan of open world, fantasy RPGs. My favorite game of all time, RuneScape, is an open world, fantasy RPG. I loved Skyrim when I played it in 2012, and I’ve been desperately craving to experience Elden Ring for many months now. Dragon’s Dogma is the exact sort of game that appeals to someone like me, and yet I did not like it. I think it might’ve been better by not being open world, instead going for a more linear, “open zones” style. A big part of why I say this is the fact that according to what I’ve heard about the game’s development history, it seemingly ran out of its budget and was released as half of a game. The ambitions of the developers apparently outweighed what they were able to create, and much of what was planned to be in the open world never made it to the final product. A more tightly controlled experience would’ve potentially prevented this from happening, I’d think, and the way that there are a bunch of obvious barriers surrounding certain sections of the map indicates that they didn’t intend for everything to be traversable.

I won’t sit here and try to claim that there isn’t anything good about this game. I’ve seen plenty of fans whom express their love and admiration for Dragon’s Dogma, so it’s fair to believe that there is something to this game that I didn’t see personally. But that’s what it comes down to: you have to play for long enough before “the game gets really good”, and I think everybody who likes it will admit that. All of the stuff I hear people praise the game for, most of it is endgame, like the high-level sorceries and the dragon that’s in the cover art. I’m not opposed to the idea of an open world game with minimal fast travel options that places a strong emphasis on the journey to the destination. But if that’s core to your experience, then that journey needs to be engaging and memorable, and that wasn’t how I felt while playing. I would’ve much rather just had the ability to warp to each locations; you are able to teleport back to the hub town without restriction, at the very least. If I could’ve done that, then I may have considered to continue playing.

For anyone wondering about the sequel, Dragon’s Dogma 2, I cannot give you a definitive answer since I haven’t played it myself and don’t plan to. I have listened to a small handful of videos from people that have, and based on what I’ve heard, it seems like DD2 follows mostly in the footsteps of DD1, meaning that any design choices I’ve criticized here are likely also present in the sequel. Some people have even gone as far as to state that Dragon’s Dogma 2 feels less like a second entry and more like a refined version of it, or like a remake that uses a different storyline and setting from the original, but keeps the same general idea. Make of that what you will; perhaps someone else who has played it can attest otherwise.

If I was going to describe Age of Wonders III with just one sentence, it would go like this: it has everything I could probably ask for in a game, and as a result, it feels like it was designed specifically for me.

There are five elements to gameplay that form the appeal for me:

• Combat
  
• Exploration
  
• Progression
  
• Variety
  
• Replayability

(Exploration is a bit hard to explain on its own, so I'll go into it when it comes up.)

To start, combat: the core component of Age of Wonders III's gameplay - the thing you'll be doing for most of the game. In the 250 hours I've played, there has never been an occasion where I found one of the fights to be dull. You have an option to auto-resolve combat, but aside from instances where my scouts get caught by a wandering party, and I cannot save them, I've never really felt a desire to use this feature. With all of the hundreds of unit types in the game - each with their own abilities, resistances, type advantages, visual designs - and the range of spells, enchantments, and battlefield layouts, even the lowest risk engagements are fun to do. And on top of one-on-one battles with your army versus an opponent's, there is the ability to take multiple armies into a single fight for large-scale wars, with up to 42 units in total on the field. It is currently my favorite combat system of any game, beating out my previous favorite title, Dead Cells, and it'll be a while before I could reach a point where it begins to feel repetitive.

Next comes progression. I get a great sense of satisfaction from seeing something grow and change over time in an RPG, sandbox game, or whatever else. In this game I like to zoom out to the overview map and see the extent of my empire's influence in the world, and take screenshots for comparison later. But beyond an obvious part of gameplay like that, there is a sense of incremental growth in everything you do. Each and every one of your units has veterancy, where they're able to gain experience and increase their rank to acquire higher stats and additional traits. Some units also have my favorite trait, Evolve, where they'll transform into a new, stronger unit upon reaching Gold rank, and can be trained up once more with new benefits. Along with that comes your leader and heroes, which level up RPG-style and can choose unique perks from an expanding list of upgrades. As they all grow, you'll clear out structures on the map, absorb independents into your empire, and research new types of units, letting your military strength morph and develop so that you can challenge even tougher opponents, with even more armies. Even exploration takes on a visible form of progression, as you can enable an option in match settings to cover the map in a layer of clouds that lets you see how far out you've ventured into the world.

Lastly, let's discuss the variety and replayability of the game together, as they go pretty hand-in-hand. So one of the most impactful choices you're able to make is picking a leader. There are six race and six classes to choose from - nine and seven, respectively, with the DLCs - when deciding a leader, and these choices dictate what types of racial and class units you can produce. That may not sound like a lot, but the combination of your race and class choice can create synergies (mainly in the case of race with class units). This means that even if you've tried every race and class in the game, you'll still find small differences in playstyle if you play one race with multiple classes, or vice-versa. A High Elf Hunter will be able to deal full damage with their ranged attack at maximum range, meaning they'll be able to soften up foes more easily than if they were a Human Hunter. A Tigran Apprentice gets Magic Bolts (fire/spirit damage) instead of Fairy Fire (shock/fire/cold), making a Tigran Sorcerer more effective against Necromancer leaders than anyone else. These factors affect which units you'll want to prioritize producing, as well as how you approach fighting them, leading to variation in engagements of the same nature.

That creates a huge degree of replayability, and along with that the game shines with its multiple game-modes, including what is probably the most picked choice: the random map generator. I'd say that a majority of people primarily play Random Map, and there's good reason for it. You are given an on-demand means of generating endless matches to play through, with a lot of control over customizing the settings for a match to make whatever type of game you'd like. I love starting at the very bottom and building myself up to the top over a long period, so I give myself the weakest starting army, a settler unit in place of an established city, double the costs of research and city growth, and I burn slowly through a match over days and weeks. But, at the same time, I could set it up to do the opposite: give everyone late-game units at the beginning, and lower the relevance of non-combat elements to a minimum to focus mostly on warfare. You could lower the frequency of resource structure and make territory control a larger factor, or increase the generation to speed up production. Flood the map with independent cities and have lots of variety in your military, or just turn them off completely and rely on your starting race; the same for dwellings of NPC factions. Plus there's multiple victory conditions, if you tire of winning by just killing the other leaders. You can do so much with it, but what I will say is that it does require plenty of experimentation and good knowledge of the game's mechanics to get the balance right, so if you play random maps I suggest sticking to default settings. My one criticism of the RMG is that you cannot set up matches with a singular climate, such as an all-Arctic or all-Tropical map, because it appears that none of the map settings can be set to "zero" on the sliders.

A few other miscellaneous things to mention: character customization, always a nice feature; one of the best video game soundtracks in my opinion; lots of Workshop content; pretty low demand in terms of system requirements, so most people should be able to run it.


To round this off, I want to quickly cover the expansions (Eternal Lords and Golden Realms). If this game sounds enticing to you, I'd recommend buying it with the DLCs together. You can get all three on a sale for less than the base game at full price, and development ceased years ago, so it'll be the full package. The main reason you should have them is for the three new systems they implement: empire quests, cosmic events, and mystical city upgrades. To briefly summarize, they all introduce elements that break up the predictability of matches by encouraging you to make more on-the-fly decisions, in order to gain advantages over your opponents, progress faster / more easily, and specialize your cities. I couldn't imagine playing the game without at least one of those systems, preferably all three, after seeing how they affect gameplay.


When Age of Wonders III was free-to-keep in 2019, I downloaded it because I wanted to give strategy games a try. The only one I had played prior to that was Heroes of Might and Magic III (another series quite similar to Age of Wonders), when I was a kid, and that ended up being an incredibly lucky scenario. I found not only one of the most engaging gameplay loops I've ever experienced, but also now have a gateway into a genre that I previously viewed as unapproachable. I now want to play other strategy games like Total War: Warhammer and Endless Legend, both of which I might've not even given a consideration had I never discovered the enjoyment I get out of this game.

I'll leave it at that, so I can return to my match and put another hundred more hours into this game. And another hundred after that... and another hundred after that, too.

Like so many people, I grew up on this game and have come back to experience it once more. I played RuneScape from 2006 to 2013, and in that time I invested over 4,000 hours into it - making this my most played game of all time, even today, eight years later. To me this is more than just my favorite childhood game, or something which nostalgia is driving me back into. When I look back over what RuneScape is, and what I found so enjoyable about it, I come to realize that it has also defined much of my taste in video games, and many of the games I love today share something in common with this title.

The first point that should be brought up to anyone new to Old School RuneScape is that it's a game that demands patience. It's fair to nickname this "Grind: The Game", as I feel almost no other game can match the degree of time investment this game can ask for. If you're someone who hates the idea of grinding - grinding in the most honest sense of the word, where you're repeating the same exact activity hundreds or thousands of times over - then this is just about the worst experience you might ever have. But if you're someone who finds it rewarding to dedicate large sums of time into accomplishing goals, or even if you're someone who enjoys playing games casually and is looking for something to dump some hours into, then I welcome you to give it a try.

Despite being a subscription-based MMO, RuneScape has always prided itself on offering a lot of free-to-play content for new players. In this specific version of the game, as a free player, you have:

• 15 out of 23 total skills
  
• 21 out of 147 total quests
  
• Access to roughly 20-25% of the total game world.
  
• No level caps, meaning you can progress you character as far as you want.

Even if you play through the free content and have no interest in spending money, you will still get a pretty solid experience regardless. This game has a number of memorable quests, particularly for some of the rewards that you receive, and each skill feels quite distinct from the rest in how you interact with it. Every single part of the game shows a real level of thought and passion put into it. And of course for those who do choose to stick around, the game will multiple several times in size as a member.

So why play RuneScape specifically? Well if you were to ask me, I would say to look at how much control and variety you get with how you choose to play the game. RuneScape is the only RPG, that I personally know of, in which combat is both a focal point and an entirely optional part of the experience. My most memorable moments playing as a kid weren't always from fighting things, but also from catching shark at the Fishing Guild, cutting Yew trees west of Catherby, stealing herb seeds from master farmers to grow in farming allotments, and transforming into a monkey to do an obstalce course. Progress isn't just about getting higher level gear and dealing more damage, and you're able to take your character in any direction you wish. You can build yourself around a specific combat style, level all three together, or none at all. And then choose whichever activities sound the most appealing: PVP, PVM, killing bosses, questing, doing minigames, or whatever else you might come across. And that is what makes RuneScape feel so special in my opinion: the amount of real freedom it gives you.

To those of you that decide to give Old School RuneScape a go, I hope that you enjoy it and will take the opportunity to fully experience what is, for myself and many others out there, one of the best games ever made.

EDIT: Slight update for the first paragraph of this review: the DLC has now been announced (CrossCode: A New Home) and has a store page on Steam you can search up.


CrossCode is the closest that a game has come to deserving the title of a "perfect experience", at least for me. This game began on a high note, and only ever went up from there the further in that I played. And on top of already offering far more than its asking price, the developers are currently working to put out one final major update that, based on my personal interpretation, will likely add enough new content to push this up to the 100-hour mark for a complete playthrough - a task that was accomplished with virtually zero recycled or repeated content, as well.

On their website the developers talk about their focus on simplicity and detail, and this game displays that philosophy very well. CrossCode does quite a number of things - combat, puzzles, story, exploration, customization, side quests and challenges - and the consistent quality throughout shows a clear level of thought and time invested into ensuring that no part feels lacking, or left behind from everything else. From the layered level design that incorporates a pseudo-platforming mechanic to make traveling the world a wholy different experience to every other top-down game, to the gearing system that allows for some control over the protagonist's playstyle in an otherwise set-in-stone character class that cannot be changed. There is a main story that everyone will follow, but also a section of the menu that saves pieces of lore and characters' backstory that you'll encounter on the journey. And they go so far as to give contextual explanations for all of those "game logic" scenarios(some of which you'll even figure out on your own, if you pay close enough attention), with perhaps the greatest example being a modifier in New Game+ that enables you to one-shot everything resulting in brand new character dialogue interactions where they acknowledge this change.

But my favorite of all were the details that helped build the MMO theme: the world is filled with the avatars of other "players" wandering the world alongside you; a fake Social menu that display online status for your party members, and the way in which they're shown to log out of the game when they're done playing. It left a particular impact on me, as somebody who grew up playing an MMO, to the extent that it changed how I experienced the game. I know that we like to call everything immersive now-a-days, but when I chose to sit there for 5 hours and continue playing until the "session" was over and my party members left the game - not merely due to it being fun to play, but because it seemed like the right thing to do - that was the first time I considered it immersion that I had experienced. It's that kind of atmospheric detail, which made it such a familiar environment for me, that allowed for such an easy connection to the world and characters in a way that made them feel somewhat real.

When I bought CrossCode in 2019 it was approaching 8,000 user reviews, and since then I've come to wonder how that number isn't 80,000. "Hidden gem" is maybe not the appropriate term, but I do feel justified in stating that this game is nowhere near as popular as it should be. Take any of the major indie titles from the last ten years, and I will say with full confidence that CrossCode is on par with them, if not exceeding a few at the same time. There is no reasonable explanation, in my mind, for why this game does not have a huge following behind it, and that is why CrossCode has been placed at the top of my list for games to recommend.

I have played Dead Cells since the days of its Early Access period - from the Brutal Update (0.4) in November 2017 - and if there is one word that I would use to summarize the entire experience, it would be this one: choice. Where this game sets itself apart from every other roguelite (at least as far as I have seen) is in the way it strips away nearly all of the randomness & luck that traditionally drives the genre, in favor of creating a game where the "Every Run is Different" motto is derived from the player's decisions. And it is that level of control over the game that has led to this being my most played singleplayer game of all time - surpassing even Terraria, the game that got me onto Steam around ten years ago.

There are two main choices to be made in any run: where to go, and what to take with you. Roguelites are built around the idea of having to work with whatever the game gives you, and typically follow a strictly linear path that at most offers some optional secondary areas for bonus rewards. Dead Cells breaks both of these principles to a lesser or greater degree. Firstly, this game does not try to make weapons intentionally good or bad, in a way that can heavily influenced your chance of success. Rather, they are balanced to be of roughly equal power (to the best of the developers' ability), and are offered to the player at a very generous rate. You will frequently swap out items for stronger versions, or other items, working to craft a build in which each piece of gear synergizes with the rest to create a full, well-rounded package. Combine that with well over 100 different weapons and mutations (perks that offer special boosts your kit or survivability), and this system on its own already allows for thousands of possible combinations. But it takes this a step further by introducing multiple separate, but interconnected pathways through the game, each with their own set of distinct challenges and boss fights that have strengths and weaknesses to specific playstyles. This results in each build being experimented with in many scenarios, with the player's goal being to figure out which locations work best with the weapons they're using. On top of all of this there is also a Custom Mode which lets you choose manually enable or disable every piece of gear, and the option to heavily modify specific traits of gameplay in order to fine-tune the balance / challenge to your liking.

That level of complexity and mastery is what kept me coming back, and every new update that added more items or new areas layered increasing depth to the formula. And this is why it is unfortunate that I am no longer interested in playing Dead Cells. In recent times the developers have begun implementing changes to the game that significantly alter certain aspects of the core design. Over on the forums you'll see a handful of players whom have shown frustration with the most recent of these updates, the Malaise Update (2.1), but I myself have been at odds with the game going through an identity change for well over a year at this point, and it was this past August where I closed the game and haven't returned since. This may sound very negative and contrary to the rest of my review, and while I do think the community's concerns are perhaps worth considering, I do also believe that very little of this has relevance to brand new players who've never seen those older versions. So the reasoning behind this paragraph has less to do with stating whether or not you should buy the game, or why I don't find it fun anymore, and more to show that I still feel comfortable recommending it to people despite my change of attitude.

This review is partially a means of saying goodbye to one of my favorite games, at least for the foreseeable future. If Evil Empire ever decides to add full modding support (perhaps as a final update, when they're ready to close the page on Dead Cells and move on to something new), I suspect that the community will have enough shared passion for creating new content that it would bring me back. I've even had a bunch of my own ideas that may drive me to attempt learning how to mod. But until that day, I am leaving this on a positive note to tell you that you should experience Dead Cells for yourself.

Quick Note: If you intend on playing Death's Gambit with a controller (which I recommend) that uses DualShock 4, you'll need to enable controller support on Steam: Settings -> Controller -> General Controller Settings -> Turn on '[Your controller type] Configuration Support'.

I couldn't get my 360 controller to work for the first half hour or so, and almost refunded the game as a result. I don't want anyone else running into this issue, so I'm writing the solution here for you.


Death's Gambit is an action platformer that is inspired largely by the Dark Souls series. In particular, it seems to pay a lot of homage to original Dark Soul 1, with world design that mimics the same layout and sense of guide-freedom, as well as slow and methodical pace to combat with a heavy emphasis on stamina management. Though with a more direct approach to storytelling, through dialogue / cutscenes, and a plot focused more on the player character, rather than the events of the world.

There is a ton of incredible game design here, and I feel that much of it has unfortunately gone unnoticed due to the fact that the central gameplay - combat - has a frustrating learning curve. So I will start off by discussing what I think is great about the game.

Level Design
The layout of the map is the aspect that stood out most to me, and felt very intelligent. To make it simple, there is one long passage - the Rider's Passage - that takes you by horse from one end of the map to the other, with (almost) every zone being weaved around and connected to it. One end is the tutorial area; one end has the tunnel to the final area; and in the center, you have your main sanctuary that houses all of the important NPCs. This hub area is built in the same fashion as Firelink Shrine was in Dark Souls 1: there are multiple different paths to take, but only one is the intended path. You are free to go anywhere from the start, so it is up to you to figure out (or decide for yourself) how to progress.

Enemy Placement
Just like with Level Design, the way that enemies are laid out across the map is cleverly done. You'll see this right away in the tutorial zone, how enemies are arranged into groups of different combinations that result in every encounter feeling unique. This, to me, can even make individual enemies seem distinct and memorable. I would describe it as a very hand-crafted feeling.

Bosses
All of the bosses are greatly varied and have many different attacks and multiple phases. The game does a good job of encouraging you to get back up and keep trying after you've died, as shards (which you use to level up skills) are distributed based on how far down you get the boss' health, allowing you to increase a skill or two and be stronger next time. A marker will then appear on their health bar, to show you how far you've managed to get, and you'll have to pass that mark to get more shards.

Once you've defeated a boss, you also unlock the ability to face them again as "Heroic" versions. In these situations, you'll be facing stronger variants of the existing bosses, but they are now equipped with altered attack patterns that require you to learn even more patterns. It's a harder fight, but also a chance to receive even more rewards beside just shards.


Okay, now for the Combat. I think it's reasonable to state that if none of the previous topics interested you at all, then you should probably just click off the page and look for another game. This is arguably the weakest aspect of Death's Gambit.

I believe that there are three main complaints that people have (ordered by significance):

1. Stamina management - this game takes stamina very seriously. It is slow to regenerate, and attacks use up a large amount to perform. I don't know whether this is intended design or not, but what I can say is that if you are someone whose instinct is to mash the attack or dodge button, you will struggle with this game.
   
   
2. Weight/Feel - attack animations just simply don't feel all that powerful. Death's Gambit does not manage to replicate the satisfying sense of power that you get from swinging a weapon in a Soulsborne game.
   
   
3. Hitboxes - I'm listing this one down here because I don't know if it's still an issue in the game. When I first played through it, back in December, I can't recall anything that really felt unfair or nonsense. But I do know that poor hitboxes were an issue at the game's launch, a few months prior.

In short, the combat system is relatively standard, but is strict and can be quite unforgiving. It can (and has) certainly been done better before.


Aside from that, the only issues I personally had with the game is that it does feel rather short, and lacking a lot of variety in terms of weapons. My first playthrough (Wizard) took around 15 hours (though it didn't really feel like it), and in that time I used the same spell book I started with for the entire game.

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Let's put this all together: Death's Gambit is kind of difficult to recommend. While there is certainly a group of people that will enjoy it, a lot will be put off early after the first hour or two.

If you aren't phased by the idea of average-at-best combat, and the other parts of the game sound interesting, then I would recommend Death's Gambit. But if proper Soulslike gameplay is an absolute essential to the experience for you, I suggest skipping this title.

Out of all of the games that I've played, Rain World is the one that I truly cannot think of anything else to compare to. This game takes many risky decisions and goes to great lengths to be as foreign as a game could get. To the extent that the first point I need to bring up is this: you have to push aside pre-established assumptions of how a game should act and feel. If you go in expecting all of the elements of a traditional 2D platformer, then you are already in for a bad time.

The world of Rain World is bizarre, mysterious, and most importantly, harsh. Separated from your family and lost within the pipes and metalwork of a seemingly abandoned industrial complex, you play as a slugcat: a half-agile, half-clumsy little critter whose place on the food-chain can vary depending on its (your) survival skills and knowledge.

The first obvious "issue" you will run into is the fact that your character doesn't seem to control very well. Navigating around feels awkward and clunky, and you'll likely assume that it's just been poorly designed. But as I said earlier, put down your expectation of tight and precise controls for a second. Movement in this game is done through procedural animation, meaning that actions change depending on the scenario. Just as an example, look at the way that slugcat moves through non-transitional pipes (the ones that you manually move through, instead of those that automatically transport you to another location). When you enter a pipe while standing on your hind legs, he will first push his stomach in, and have his head and rear-end follow behind, causing him to fold over himself like a sandwich. By comparison, if you were to stand facing that pipe entrance and push down to go onto all fours, you will now enter and move through the pipe in a natural way, head-first with your whole body trailing behind. (You ought to also recognize the fact that you move faster through the pipe in the latter situation than the former, since bending yourself in half and squishing into a tight space would obviously make for a tight fit.) And this is the first hurdle that you have to acknowledge: the fact that the controls are designed to act in a specific manner that isn't normal for other games. They are context-sensitive and physics-driven, and when fully learned, are actually capable of a lot more complicated actions than initially presented. Bellyslides, backflips, somersaults-into-long-jumps, speed-hopping – all completely legitimate moves that can be utilized to your advantage.

Now, about the ecosystem, which is the part that has caused a lot of people to give up on Rain World and claim 'cheap, unfair difficulty'. To put it simply, the creatures within the various regions of the map are designed to work entirely independent of the player. Every single animal has its own AI and desires. Sometimes it desires to prey upon you; sometimes it preys upon others; sometimes it will get into a fight with its own kind, and end up being picked off by something that preys upon it. The fact is, you are not the central focus of the game, and the ecosystem around you will continue to function regardless of your existence. And this is another way that the aforementioned procedural animation ties into the game's main idea. Rain World is attempting to simulate a real-life wilderness, with all of the unpredictability and brutality of animals in the wild. People will play this game and complain that it is extremely punishing, and offers little-to-no reward for the player's efforts. And that is true, because it very much represents the actual struggles of organisms in the real world. When you pop through a transition pipe that takes you to a different screen, and a lizard is waiting on the other side to immediately grab and kill you, it sucks. But that is exactly how a real predator would function: lying in wait for prey to appear in the most vulnerable spot. It may seem unfair from a gameplay point-of-view, but it helps to establish this idea of a living, breathing environment that replicates reality – the real beauty of Rain World. Just like with smaller creatures in the real world, or rolling dice / picking cards blindly, there is a small bit of luck to success Rain World that you will have to accept. And above all, you have to put yourself into the mindset of the slugcat, and make decisions and actions based upon what will most likely keep you save and out of harm's way in the pursuit of your goal to explore the world.

If it hasn't been made clear by now, Rain World is a niche game that is a challenge to get into, and a pleasure to overcome. As someone that went into the game completely blind, I will state that it took me around 10 hours to finally "get it", and begin to really enjoy the game. But I will also say that once I passed that point, I discovered that this was one of the most captivating and intriguing experiences I've ever had. The environment is absolutely enormous in size and detail, with no sense of random generation or copy-pasted elements. Over 50 hours in, and there are still large chunks of certain regions that I've never even seen, along with creatures and behaviors still left to see.

I would highly, highly recommend that you give this game a go and just stick with it to the end. For all of the potential frustration, it is totally worth it.

Ghost 1.0 is a metroidvania that has you exploring the hazard-filled corridors of the Nakamura Space Station, on a mission to acquire the AI algorithm that controls all "Naka" robots. Along the way you will acquire various upgrades and weapons for you android chassis, fight off (or bow to) a plethora of robots, and "Operations Chief" Jacker – your boss – will make a fool of himself by forgetting to turn the mic off.

You play as Ghost, a digital... ghost, that is capable of controlling any android. Your main body is equipped with a basic pistol, and a huge inventory space for improvement. There are five categories in the inventory screen:

• Items – various tools (like repair kits) that can be bound to hotkeys, and provide aid in battle.
  
• Powerups – toggleable upgrades that provide offense/defensive passives, such as a shield.
  
• Weapons – primary guns (only one equipped at a time), and secondary guns (up to three equipped at a time) that can be swapped between while playing.
  
• Upgrades – flat increases to health, starting currency after death, chance for receiving double currency, etc.
  
• Geeks – a list of easter egg items scattered across the world. A "fun" category.

There's also a skill tree for unlocking permanent boosts to help you out. In a similar fashion, there are five different categories of skills, each one tied to a "character", and four tiers of skills. Five skill points must be invested in order to unlock the next tier. One skill point is given each time a piece of the next keycard – the main objective of each zone – is found. Only 20 of the 60 available skills can be chosen in any playthrough, but a New Game+ feature is available, so all can eventually be unlocked in one save file.

One of the more unique mechanics of the game (as I mentioned earlier) is the ability to leave your chassis and take control of androids that walk around Nakamura. There are times in which this is a requirement for passing through certain sections, but it may also be used as a means of clearing out the area ahead. Utilizing the enemies' bodies to clear a path ahead means that you won't put your own suit at risk of being destroyed.

While the gameplay may suffer from a generic, slightly repetitive keycard collection quest, and some secrets are just far too obscure to be found without using a guide, the story really makes up for it. Speaking as someone that puts mechanics first and plot last in terms of importance, I found cutscenes and dialogue sequences to be one of this game's strongest factors. (It's the reason that I'm already playing through the game again.)

Aside from the main Classic mode, which I recommend playing first, there's also a couple of additional ways to play the game: the basic Easy/Medium/Hard settings; a list of (genuinely hard) challenges that're unlocked once you complete the game once; a Survival mode that lets you play through the game a roguelite-ish manner – alarm rooms will reset upon dying; weapons and upgrades will be found at random, and removed on death.

As far as controls are concerned, I know that in my experience the game was perfectly playable with a controller, despite supposedly being designed for keyboard and mouse. Aim assist is provided by locking the crosshair onto enemies when pointed in their direction. The crosshair does have a tendency to snap when close to the X or Y axis while aiming with an analog stick, but I never found it frustrating.


Overall, I would say that Ghost 1.0 is a solid option for anyone looking for a new metroidvania to play. While it may not be the best game in the genre, it has gameplay that gets the job done, a good challenge, a set of main characters that're great to listen to, and plenty of content for its asking price.