Recent reviews by Flapjaw

Devs are actively collecting feedback and the game is already great. It isn't perfect and it has some launch kinks, so don't expect perfection, but the quality is high and worth the price. Lots more good stuff to look forward to on the dev roadmap.

"Wands" go BRRRRRT!

With their 63 day turnaround patches, the game is finally better than on launch rather than worse. Very satisfying.

These animations are so smooth. How did management put this together?

Oh, and ROCK & STONE!

I'm gonna be real with you guys on this one, but up front I have to say I need to talk about spoilers to express my points and why I wouldn't personally recommend this game. The only non-spoiler thing I wanna say is that an update introduced a bug that ruins the atmosphere, but you can find different methods of fixing said bug online so make sure you sort the fullscreen bug before you play if you decide to get this game.

Extremely small spoiler here:
I don't like this game. For every interesting and fun character there are at least two others that are massively annoying in the extended cast. It's a good thing the main cast are good characters if we count only the playable party, Basil, and Mari, but the clownish NPCs are just grating on the nerves most of the time. Don't even get me started on Sweetheart. Her scenes just drag on and on and on and they have nothing to do with the main themes of the game, it's so infuriating.

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Then there's the main plot, which is as dumb as it is confusing. You're telling me I'm supposed to sympathize with a kid who murdered his sister to avoid a recital and his insane best friend who helped him cover it up? Not just that, but also I'm supposed to believe the police either never figured it out, or that, if they did, the parents and the neighbors and the pastors all chose to hide what really happened from the other children? What about police reports? Mari would have been severely banged up from her tumble down the stairs, so everyone would know the false suicide was a bad cover job. Sunny and Basil should have just left her at the bottom and hid the photos to pass it off as an accident and the story could have been the same, but the dev wanted imagery of her crumpled on the floor and hanging dead from a tree so came up with this convoluted way to have both.

And the trope of it all being in a character's headspace makes the overwhelming majority of the game feel like a pointless chore to get through in order to get to the actual story. The real world sequences were mildly narratively interesting while I was still riddling out what really happened, but were mechanically boring as Hell. The more mechanically interesting headspace parts also became mechanically boring very quickly, since the energy system lets you start killing most enemies on the first turn if you're any good at RPGs. Do well in a few optional fights against some tough enemies and your only reward for overcoming that challenge is being bored out of your mind for the entire rest of the game since you're now very, very overleveled. There wasn't that much to even do, so why not have a max level at 20 or 25 to keep the power-level in-line with the whole experience? I didn't fight anything with my level 40+ party at the end that I couldn't have beaten with much weaker characters and some items.

The story feels like a weird middleground between Undertale and Night in the Woods that doesn't succeed at being either, or even close to the same level of immersion and quality, subjectively speaking. While the game failed to pull me in, I can see a lot of interesting ideas in Black Space being very moving and upsetting for a lot of people. Personally, though, I was checked out and didn't care about anything that was happening to the fake mental projection people and just wanted to see what the Hell it all actually meant. It's hard to feel bad about what the protagonist is "doing" to "their friends" when all of it is just a nightmare they're having about how guilty they are over some other, actually real thing.

I got the good ending on my first run, but I'm not sure I even want to see the others. The depressing fact of playing as either a murderer, or the murderer's evil self-projection in a nightmare realm torturing and killing his partner in crime for daring to... to help cover up... the protagonist's crime? I just don't like it. I don't like this protagonist. I don't want to play as this protagonist. They do nothing to characterize themselves, and the game never sets up any choices of consequence to make the player feel responsible. You can't just let the player name the character at some point and then assume they'll take on the guilt of stuff the protagonist did before the story even began. I don't identify with this dead-eyed psychotic murderer.

If you can easily identify with a murderer, enjoy this game! If you can't, well, it isn't without other merits, but I honestly wish I could have my thirty hours back to have spent on anything else. I know Toby Fox loves the dev and was really hyped for this game and I respect his opinion, and the opinions of others who call this a masterpiece. I just simply don't agree. I want to be able to recommend it, even though I didn't like it, but I can't fathom why anyone does like this. It's not scary, creepy, or horrifying. It's just disgusting. Gross. I don't have any desire to touch this game again.

I cannot in good conscience recommend this game as it is now. The whole point of this one was to bring together the content from 1 and 2 with even more content and make a complete Warhammer experience.

This is the game that needs the most attention to make something so ambitious actually work, but the studio is just wasting the money from this cash cow on stupid garbage that won't return the same profits, maybe because execs got annoyed by paying the Warhammer licensing fee.

That's not even mentioning how dumbed down Total War was when Warhammer 1 came out. Instead of carrying the complexity we loved into this beloved franchise, they continue to cut corners and oversimplify. At this point heavy modding is REQUIRED if you want a passable experience.

Add onto that the price, which is all prior DLC, all future DLC, and the same for Warhammer 1 and 2 if you want access to the full game, and it's quite an investment. If all that money was going back into this game to polish out bugs and make it a better experience, it'd be worth it, but you aren't paying for this game when you buy this game. You're paying for nonsense no one cares about.

Even disregarding the drama with the recent price increase and their aggressive negativity toward the playerbase, it's just not good value for money at this point. Modders can save it so I won't entirely regret my investment, but I would not commit to the purchase today. I'd rather have my money back if I could, and played this game religiously, expecting and patiently waiting for the massive problems to be addressed.

Instead they keep introducing new bugs that the community has to fix for them.

Went in blind and not disappointed. Figuring things out the first time is really fun for Dark Fantasy Mode, which is basically the actual game. Power Fantasy Mode means you just auto-pass all the vibe checks, which I have no interest in, because figuring out what you need to do to succeed is the most fun part and figuring out alternate paths is heckin' nice.

And there's an achievement for dying. I have barely scratched the surface of what this game has to offer and I'm already crazy impressed.

This is how you really rip and tear. The combo and breaker system is best-in-genre for this contemporary classic. Still more than worth it all these years after season 3, and a blast with friends. Keep in mind that I have tons more playtime and unlocks on the Xbox version and they are not cross-platform, but I switched to Steam for PC due to performance issues with the Microsoft store version. I bought the deluxe versions of this game twice to be playing it more often. That's how good it is.

The playerbase may be thin these days and the lag with randoms may be unbearable on ranked ladders, but only because the game is so crisp and precise. The lag level isn't even bad usually, but you will feel it in this particular game because of that depth of combat, so practice your defenses and recoveries! Even if you get lagged into a bad spot, you can turn it around when the game clears up, and your opponent will have lagged too. Don't be the one of the two of you who gets caught off guard!

If you can stomach facing the predictable AI for several matches in a row, the Shadow Lords campaign is an excellent mode, and really adds depth to these amazing characters. Training your own shadow is fun and lets you hone your abilities on your main. The characters are unique enough that picking a new character to learn is like starting a whole new game, and I've enjoyed my journey to learn each and every one to different degrees of mastery, always working to improve my play with each character.

There are some serious downsides to keep in mind, though. The Dojo mode is your tutorial to get you up to speed and is essential for people new to the genre. Despite how extensive and useful it could be, it was based on original release Jago, and the character's moves have since been updated for balance multiple times. Some of the required timing is now impossible and you will likely never be able to finish the Dojo entirely, as it requires annoyingly specific moves in many of the lessons. You can use some jank to get around this by mixing in some moves that aren't required for certain chains to force the timing to line back up, but having to figure out how to get around these issues requires a deep understanding of the mechanics and that defeats the purpose of the mode: to teach players how to play.

Also, Combo-Assist is the worst thing to happen to the game. With this enabled, you become an insane difficulty AI instead of a human player, with no break pedal on your onslaught. This means you can destroy other new players who aren't using it, and get wrecked by pros who know the combos that the assist system will go for, all without learning how to play. With how over competitive the community is, even the casuals, you'll struggle at first against people using this system, unless you play with friends or lower difficulty AI for several hours first. Do NOT use combo assist if you want to improve your skills. You must be able to trick advanced opponents or they will just combo break you every 5 seconds, and you can't learn your own tricks if you let the game play itself.

So many bird daddies. Nice to see a 40k game with Chaos forces that aren't just Nurgle. The screamers are the most challenging. More melee enemies that force you to run around more could help the game, like some Khorne stuff. Regardless, there's a good enough mix for hours of fun on Exterminatus difficulty. If you beat Nightmare in the new Doom games, you're ready for Exterminatus in this game. Don't waste your time on the lower difficulties unless you are new to the genre.

Also, use the taunt button CORRECTLY. Taunt living enemies right before you kill them. Taunting a corpse is pointless. They can't hear you. Do you think it makes you look cool to taunt only when you aren't in any danger, YouTubers? Stop it. Get some help.

This game won't take long to finish to the satisfaction of most players, and the "find everything" achievements won't motivate most, nor do I particularly care for them, but I still would recommend this short game. It's a fantastic platforming experience with a fun little story, interesting aesthetic, and unique perspective. It can feel a little odd with how often it glorifies the player, but if you can look past that it is a charming story, definitely worth the price and a first playthrough. I can see myself coming back to it a few time years from now, much like a good book, and it stuck with me after I finished it.