Recent reviews by Charles

Isn't it appalling when you find, try and thoroughly enjoy a refreshing title that hits it out of the park in every aspect but you realize how little acknowledgement it receives for it.
This whole game is engineered around player comfort perfectly. It shows that the devs invested/had others invest endless hours in playtesting and adjusting the game according to the resulting feedback.
Every mechanic, feature and item is polished so hard you could figuratively see your reflection on it.
Which is exceptionally impressive if we remember we're talking about an indie game from a relatively inexperienced studio.

But enough unsubstantiated praise. I'll go into the specifics.

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Easily the best part.
Could be described as a tactical stealth-oriented bird-view shooter. Might feel a bit clunky at first, specially when compared to other 2D shooters, but since the game has a fair focus on realistic stealth mechanics, it only makes sense that your speed and strength are limited.
The gunplay rules are dead simple. Keep your aim steady, control your recoil, stay away from corners and don't run and gun (unless you're undetected or you're using a shotgun)
But it's the stealth-exclusive mechanics that really take the cake.
Realistic player visibility affected by lighting, speed slider for controlling movement noise, realistic noise flow (range decreased by walls and doors), switchable/destructible light sources, fuse boxes, keycards and keychains, surveillance cameras, silent takedowns and much more.
All of these elements are ideally balanced and implemented strategically for engagement and proper difficulty progression.

Speaking of, the difficulty selection isn't intricately detailed or full of hidden changes. I could fit it right here, actually:
Easy - High damage resistance, infinite saves always.
Normal - Standard damage resistance, 5 saves per level
True - Halved damage resistance (applies to enemies too), 3 saves per level
Masochist - 1-HP player and enemies, armor always breaks in one shot, 1 save per level.

Really easy to pick too. I'll do it for you - True for first playthrough, try Masochist for later playthroughs, if you can't keep up stay at True.
You can "trust" me on that.

The arsenal available to the player is permanent and always available in almost all standard missions. It's quite sizeable, but it can be expanded by confiscating unique weapons from enemy bases.
Might seem like an arbitrary limitation, but all unlockable weapons are practically useless for stealth, hence having them is hardly benefitial unless you're playing the game loud, which isn't quite the intended way.

Other than that, the arsenal in the game is equally-split between strong guns or explosives and suppressed guns or additional stealth items like throwing knives and tasers.
It should be noted that certain unsuppressed guns can still be helpful to bait enemies away from your destination in a level, or also to mix gunfighting and sneaking to reach your target unscathed.
Or you could always just ditch the fancy equipment and punch your way through the game. Never gets old.

To be clear, this section covers sound effects, ambiance and music.

The weapon sound effects are not plain and realistic, instead opting for unique and logical sounds (for a videogame)
All guns feel powerful, and especially in higher difficulties, they live up to that.

Ambiance and music are really brooding in stealth, opting less for tension and more for simple seriousness, to keep the player in his toes and more focused on keeping his volume low, or paying attention to sounds from enemies.
That is until the player is detected.
That feeling of suspense and mild dread when you're spotted by someone you're hiding from is perfectly captured by the tense notes and instruments.
And then it explodes into a high-BPM EDM beat when you cause an irreversible mess of gun-slinging thugs switching between cover and running straight to where they could possibly find you and end your intrusion.

Not exactly worth a section.

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Overall, refreshing and high-replayability gameplay, enjoyable difficulties, great music, fun achievements, badass gunplay?

Buy in or out of sale if it's your type of game.
Buy on sale if just feeling like trying it out.

(p.s love doorbash kills and the an-94 and my personal theory for the meaning of the title is that being "intravenous" could be a cool euphemism for being stealthy)

It's quite impressive that Revolution manages to not just replicate and improve Portal 2's formula, atmosphere and even humor, but even perfects them.

It could be argued that with over a decade passed since the game's release, they had a ton of head-start to inspect P2's every little detail and flawlessly improve it, but even with that much time passed, it's mind-blowing how they pulled off the gloomy, deteriorating interiors of Aperture, The Spire and even Revolution's take on the "old chambers" concept from P2, all these areas coming with all-new textures, puzzle mechanics, etc.

...as well as the easy-to-follow plot, which features two new characters, Stirling and Conley, both dated cores from a time not too long before the death of all human workers at Aperture via neurotoxin. They're incredibly charming and fairly well-written characters that don't suffer from the predictability and overall irritating personalities that Wheatley and GLadOS presented throughout P2. Plus, the villain in this story isn't an annoying, unlikeable, power-hungry idiot but just a reasonably ignorant or insensitive character who doesn't really know the implications of their actions. And they're also pretty likeable themselves, even if they sadly follow a trope originating from P2 that makes their intentions rather obvious. Could've been avoided but oh well.

It's also worth noting that the voice actors were both PHENOMENAL. Not just the line-delivery but they both fit their roles really nicely and make them both very likeable, at least they way I see it (or hear it?). Goes to show that the voice really is part of the character, and in this case it's definitely for the better. Stirling's voice specially is quite the nice compromise between a slightly-irritating nerd and and a likeable dork, whereas Conley's voice is just as likeable as her character, though without much of a unique touch.

And as for the puzzles; they're miles better than most I could remember from P2. I mean that.
They're right between self-explanatory and self-completing, which makes them easy enough to understand but not easy enough that you just walk in and do them. You do gotta use a bit of your head for them but you won't be standing there for hours on end trying to get everything right.
That's not because of a lack of complexity but a lack of layers to the solution, ergo the "base" solutions, or main objective in other words, don't take nearly as much time to get as they would in P2, where some chambers were so large that it takes a lot of moving around and progress to really understand what you're meant to do. Instead, in Revolution, all that time goes to actually trying to reach the goal that isn't clouded by distance of straight up not visible.

TLDR: Revolution is just picking a door lock, while P2 is like having to pick a bunch of other doors and doing some parkour first before reaching the lock that matters and figuring it out how to pick it.

Oh, and the music was pretty cool too

I can safely reccomend it even if you didn't like Portal all that much. That's saying quite a lot.

And devs, please publish the Soundtrack or something so that everyone can easily support you. Would buy that in a heartbeat even knowing I'd never download it.

Summed up in one word: Just fine.

Amalgam doesn't do anything, and I mean ANYTHING innovative. By that I mean, it does nothing differently than the base game does. Same puzzles, same setting, same combat and even a similar main goal.

This is why I won't split up the review into sections. There's nothing to be said about any of the aspects of the game that wouldn't also apply to base Half-Life 2. It doesn't improve nor butcher anything about it, and while that isn't necessarily a negative aspect, it definitely makes it more boring. And I don't mean just conceptually, but also practically boring.
I genuinely feel like just playing Half-Life 2 again for the sixth or seventh time would be more fun. Amalgam is just so... undaring.

Not even a single new unique character or weapon, and I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't any new textures either. And if there were, they were unnoticeable to the point they might as well not even be there. It makes the game feel stale.
Like a project just made to expand on the original game, made shortly after HL2's release out of pure enthusiasm for the game's technical innovations and vibe. But really? This came out 16 years after HL2's release date. It has no excuse for being this bland.

BUT with all that said, I should still give credit where it's due.
Specially when it comes to the masterfully-crafted ambiance. It replicates, if not improves HL2's by a mile. The suspense in certain parts is unnerving, and with how often horror is attempted (and oftens fails) in many Source-powered projects, it's impressive how Amalgam pulls off pseudo-horror sections so well, and in a fairly unique way. The lighthouse is the best example of this. Easily my favorite part of the game!

A few other details made the mod stand out a little better too, such as the G-Man's voice actor. He did an EXCELLENT job. It would take a ton of nitpicking to actually point out any differences between his lines and the original ones. With so many new voice actors trying the same thing for different mods, this one specifically was just perfect for the role. The voice actors for other NPC's, like the citizen in the security room at the sewers for example, did very well too. His line delivery in particular was very impressive, better than some other mods I've played recently.
And speaking of sound, Amalgam DID bother to add new weapon sounds for SOME weapons, like the SMG, pistol and Shotgun, but with no significant stat changes or new animations to accompany them, they still fall a bit flat. Not to mention the new songs, mostly combat tracks, which while not up to HL2's level, are still serviceable and I prefer them a million times over recycled tracks from the original game.

All in all, I recommend playing it only if you want to play Half-Life 2 again with no fancy new assets or characters, just simple combat, simple puzzles and simple story.

6/10

Likely my new favorite HL2 mod of all time.
Everything from the aesthetics, the atmosphere, the map design, the weapons, the gunplay and the objectives, it's all really, really well done, better than any other.
Though Snowdrop Escape was also an amazing mod, not that far in quality from this one, I believe Swelter surpasses it by quite a lot in the technical areas.

In one word: wonderful. Thanks to the extensive use of custom textures, it doesn't feel at all like just an HL2 mod. No repetitive props, no bland textures... and even a lot of fresh designs for the rebels and Combine!
This, paired with the ELITE attention to detail in the maps makes the levels incredibly satisfying to look at and play through.

This might be because most areas choose to be more compact and not include so many pointless little buildings and also because of the linearity of the paths, which is in this case a positive aspect.
There's only a few areas where I was a bit confused on where to go (the river and the plain desert area leading up to the first Black Batallion settlement) but those are still forgiveable because of adding variation to the otherwise exclusively linear and compact map design (that I enjoy nonetheless).

Besides the wonderful maps, textures and aesthetics, the actual gameplay in these areas is very fluid and you don't find yourself backtracking often, or staying in one place for too long (at least after leaving the city). This makes the game feel faster, especially when paired with combat sections.
Another thing that was really improved in the levels is the reduced use of puzzles and the simplicity of them compared to Snowdrop. I agree that puzzles in Half-Life mods should be fun and not so sparce, but many times they break the pace of the game and in the case of SD, it happened way too often, making the game feel like a drag.
In Swelter, it's the complete opposite! Puzzles feel like a nice, fun break after combat sections or long travel sections in the city and the steppe, respectively, and they balance the pace extremely well. Expertly played.

To top all this off, there's the more minor aspects of the game, such as the guns, the plot and the music, because yes, those are very minor aspects when it comes to HL2 mods, generally.

As a quick side note, Swelter has iron sights for most guns! Rarely are they really needed, but I noticed accuracy is slightly lower than usual when you're hip firing. Only gun without iron sights is the China Lake, and it doesn't really need them.

Unlike Snowdrop, it doesn't introduce too many new weapons, but the ones it does add are pretty good. The Mosin replaces the Crossbow, and is, like its predecessor, really fun to noscope with. Besides that, the PU scope it comes with is really cool and feels nice to use when it's needed. Only issue is that it's a bit slow compared to other weapons and ammo is (reasonably) rare so you won't be using it much.
The secret AK is also quite fun and a good nod to SD, and just like in that mod, it feels great and I personally preferred it to the other rifles.
Lastly, the China Lake is much more practical to use than the RPG in HL2, but sadly its ammo is just as rare. However, its shells can be used by simply throwing, and before even obtaining it, with the drawback of much shorter range. More practical than you'd think!

Besides the guns, three new miscellaneous items are available through the weapons bar, these being the protagonist's journal, an instant health injection (with a capacity of five carried at a time, health recovery depends on difficulty) and the so-called "magnet pusher"
The journal acts as a to-do list that helps occassionally by reminding you of the objective without annoying, inmersion-breaking HUD elements.
The health injection is very situational and not very useful. They really should've made it faster to use and made it recover more health, as they're really, really rare, by the end of the game I only had 3 and used them only thrice since the second chapter.
And the magnet pusher is a nice little tool, which is capable of performing the "push" function of the Gravity Gun in HL2, and it's pretty much the devs accounting for the Jeep getting possibly stuck, or in my case Roki getting stuck on a desk in the Nexus, in which cases the magnet pusher shines quite well!

Though I rarely pay much mind to the plot of any HL2 mod I play, this one was really easy to follow, and yet still captivating! No spoilers needed, but I'll just say that making a certain choice won't be as easy as it seemed at the beginning.
Besides that, the characters all are pretty interesting and charming. Roki isn't just another stereotypical terrorist leader, as I expected him to be, and is actually a well-designed character with strong convictions but a deep, genuine yearning for peace, even if it means having to stay under the radar. And the Resistance holds a pretty similar position to the one it did in HL2, just being sidelined by the screentime the Black Batallion gets because of your infiltration into it. And by that I mean that the Resistance is still a courageous, determined movement that seeks complete liberation and a return to human civilization as they once knew it, which is quite honorable itself.
No comment on Chaika but I'll just say she almost convinced me.

The voice acting is probably the weakest part of the whole mod though. It's many times better than any other free Source Mod but it's still a bit lacking in the "acting" part of it. I would pay money for this mod if we got more serious, high level voice acting. But I digress. It might be just that I haven't played the Russian version of the mod, which may very likely have much better and accurate voice acting.

And to end the segment, the music sounds badass and isn't all that blood-pumping, even with its hard hitting Electronic/DNB/Middle Eastern instruments, but still gives you a kick and sets the tone. Same thing goes for the ambient music that plays in the desolate areas you set foot into (which is mostly recycled from the original HL2 but still fits quite well)

Side note, the gameplay customization menu is a blessing, absolutely loved its implementation. Wish more gunplay/realism-heavy mods included something similar.


EXTREMELY recommended. Anyone looking for a fun, refreshing and atmospheric Source Mod? This is it. I really don't think it gets better than this.
I sure hope the developers are working on, or someday release a paid mod! I'm sure the quality would be astounding, and it'd be amazing to support them further, especially on a professional, commercial project!

Perhaps not the most innovative shooter of all time, but definitely the most innovative I've played in some time, and also the most streamlined, smooth shooter I've ever played.
Though the features can be counted with your fingers, and not even both your hands, that's exactly what makes it so "innovative". You might be surprised that what most shooters lack nowadays isn't more, or even better mechanics, but in fact, the drive to reduce them as much as possible and make the game refreshing by any other means.

Now I don't mean all singleplayer shooters should have exclusively two gamemodes, four weapons and a single type of enemy like in this game, no, I mean that they should find a way to make better use of the wonders of modern engines, or their own engine writing skills and make a game that thrives thanks to its gameplay and not because of an overbearing amount of mechanics, controls, loadouts or other lazy gameplay layers that end up making the experience very bloated.

It just takes a little ingenuity to make a great game with equally great replayability, and on the way you can also cut staff.

Gameplay aside, SUPERHOT also has a very inmersive story, which is integrated beautifully into the transitions between levels and general theme. While most games do try their hand at making the game look simple from the beginning, or just in general playing around with first impressions, SUPERHOT nails it better than any other.
It seems like just another arcadey shooter, with some unique mechanics, but as the story goes on, you really begin to question what any of it means, why you're doing all of this... or what you're even doing to begin with.

I also should add that the game is very well-coded and polished, barely any bugs I could find and the ones I did find didn't affect the experience in the slightest.

Highly recommended to at least try. Buy on sale though!

P.S: I haven't played Mind Control Delete yet, but I'm very much motivated to try it out some day and I'll update my review here accordingly, not with any extensive comparisons but likely simple bits about things it did either better or worse than MCD, or what missed opportunities I didn't notice before trying out the sequel.

In a few words: Low-effort yet enjoyable.
OTXO mostly piggybacks off the success and lasting effect of the HLM games by not only drawing a ton of ideas from it, but also by attempting to make the game conceptually associated to it. Even though most of its players have caught the bait, you'll notice none of them denounce it as neither a copy nor a worse version of it. That's because it's not. It's just uncomfortably similar.

Beside the visual design, perspective, flow, storytelling and many gameplay elements, the game is practically its own thing. May sound sarcastic, but trust me it's a genuine, honest statement.
Emphasis on the "practically" though! Because that's the main point I'm trying to make.
You see, these two games share one too many things, yet they feel and play extremely unlike each other.

The literal reasoning for this is of course that OTXO is a 2D top-view roguelite with health mechanics, some permanent progress elements, weapon stats, bosses, progressive difficulty, unique enemies, blah blah.
On the other hand, Hotline Miami is just a 2D top-view shooter with instant death, quick restart, one-shot enemies, weapons separated mostly by their capacity and range and a simple scoring system.
Quite obviously, both games have significantly different gameplay and are not and cannot be the same. Props to the dev team for being able to add all elements required for this thin line to still stand between these games rather than making a modernized knock-off.

That settled, the game has plenty of issues besides the striking similarities it has with another game series, which is what actually made it stray from the path of true excellence. That said, games that take too much inspiration from others don't always fail, and sometimes it is in fact what makes their success, wether long-lasting or not.

However, the dull visuals, inconsistent artstyle, uninteresting and short plot, poor balance, lacking soundtrack diversity, small pool of floor designs, painfully linear gameplay and many other nitpicks I'd rather keep to myself, well, they really hurt the replayability and objective quality of the game, as well as its artistic, non-surface value. Sure, as far as I'm aware, it does what it's supposed to, giving you a quick adrenaline boost and at the same time some incentive to keep playing, with the collectibles and floor progression, but it's just good enough, if even that.
Yet another, larger-scale issue with a game that takes so much from another game is that drawing an audience other than that game's is difficult. I have rarely seen non-HML players invested in this game or its release, and all articles I've read on it just compare it to other roguelite games, if not HML itself. This could seriously damage its potential and reach, if it didn't already.

If a game struggles to separate itself from another, it cannot expect the players to do so.

Never said I didn't like it though! 8/10. Tons of fun. Buy on sale. I look forward to DLC or updates in the near future.

(ending spoilers hidden)

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Definitely a game that feels like it would have grown on me, but didn't. But that's not entirely deserved.
Everything about the mechanics, gunplay, balance, difficulty changes and visuals is flawless. All of the practical elements of the game are near perfect, far more refined than that of any other HL2 mod I've ever played.
But as a full "experience" and not just a mod base, it's definitely lacking (though still above EZ1)
The weak points? Story, its flow and the main character's role in it.

As for the entire story, it's incredibly unimpressive. I wouldn't say it's bad, but I'd say it didn't make full use of its plot points or characters.
Though the weakness of the story is largely caused by its length, too. With only 6 chapters, there's only so much world-building or intelligent explanations that you can make that support the plot in a meaningful, efficient way. It could be argued that the expectations of length and by consequence, of polishing, are unreasonable, because of this being a free fan project, and it is a valid argument indeed, but it only justifies any flaws as simply forgivable, not ommitable.
Anyway, to continue, the story feels rushed and its flow is too fast to digest. Of course, at the end of game you will know what happened, but probably not all the important details. You will see a lot of things happening but you may not really process some of them.
It is of note that this argument is given from my own experience only. There are people out there who surely care more for pausing and taking in the story rather than pushing forward while only digesting the essential points, but as a safeguard, I may add that most games of this caliber with stories as developed and central as EZ2's fit the story much better to the time the player should spend on the game, providing better dialogue delivery, inmersive cutscenes and more creative story-telling.

And as for the other great flaw: Unit 3650 aka Aiden Walker
The protagonist is practically unbearable, not just because of the amount of irrelevant voice lines in and outside of combat, but also his attitude. In this aspect, EZ1 is absolutely superior.
EZ1's Bad Cop was a simpler man. A metrocop with little conviction in the cause he's supporting, instead motivated by apathy, and for the most part his only focus was staying alive, whatever it took. He just did better than other metrocops, which is not what the Combine expected of his rank, making all of his achievements very impressive and less supported by their superiors as they were just honest efforts at surviving, completing his vague objectives by inertia rather than pre-planned operations.
EZ2's Bad Cop is a valuable asset. Most of his missions are specifically given by his superiors and the time he spends away from their supervision is rather insignificant, all of it consequence of pursuing his pre-set goals, rather than survival. All of his efforts are supported by squads, technology and resources provided by his faction, making the game feel less like a voluntary attempt at success and more like just a soldier simulator. Everything is laid out from the beginning. Your target, the locations, everything. Nothing is discovered. The few areas you fall into without a plan just set you back, being mostly areas that are clearly between one place and the other. Pit stops.

In short, the main character mostly goes through predictable, calculated struggles, with all the knowledge and intel required to face them as well. Even when it comes to high-scale objectives that, on success, give dangerous leverage to his faction over the world, he is somehow convinced he will be exempt and soon allowed to experience freedom once again. He has no humanity left either, as slowly even his individualism begins withering. That isn't representative of the protagonist shown in the previous game at all. Back then, he was another egotistical, self-centered metrocop who joined the Combine because of nothing but self-benefit and loose hints of sadism and hatred in his attitude. Now? He cares nothing about himself. His ego seems almost faked, and everything he does is meticulously orchestrated by those who he obeys. Only toward the end of game he seems to return to his senses and finally considers some futility in his struggle, and at a strangely opportune moment, for it may be the last chance to turn back...

But that's not a good story. He remains stubborn through the whole game, and only changes his mind over the same words and thoughts and messenger he's chosen to ignore and oppose many times before? Why? At the very least, such a change of heart could have been alluded to earlier in the story by the way of occassional lines or behavior that depicted the slightest doubt in Bad Cop's goals.

In conclusion, it is a game I can safely recommend to all who don't scrutinize game plots nor find themselves incredibly annoyed by the protagonist's endless, lame, unprompted yapping. And trust me, the latter is a rather difficult element to stomach for most. Or it should be.

Genuinely amazingly crafted game despite its sheer simplicity. It's pretty crazy such an underrated game came from the dev team who also worked on one of the most popular roguelikes of all time, but it's actually no wonder now that I realize how different this game is from RoR, or any other title by Hopoo.

I absolutely LOVE how this game constantly adds new mechanics, weapons and enemies on every level, despite that also being a likely cause for how short it is. Just twenty-seven levels and sadly not a ton of replay value, that said...
Yes, it does have achievements. Yes, one is completing it in one hour with no deaths. Yes, that is the one and only cause I didn't just 100% this game in 6 hours and never opened it again.

HOWEVER... Does that really mean its replay value is weak and forced by arbitrary challenges? Not quite.
As a game with such short length, complete lack of annoying and/or player-detrimental RNG and extremely pleasant, quick, smooth gameplay, I think it earns the right coerce completionists into replaying it by adding such a challenge.

So if you play this game, enjoy it and even finish it, DO try your hand at the game's two most difficult achievements, Death and Famine, which you get locked out of throughout the save file if you die, in the case of Death, or if your savefile playtime reaches an hour, in the case of Famine, both are invalidated too if you quit the game at any point through your attempt.

Now the question is "Why not just do each on different savefiles?".
And the answer to that is simple:
It's a thousand times easier and also a hundred times lamer.

Trust a stranger for once, actually twice and purchase this game, then get its achievements.
For this game in particular, not doing the latter would be like having a sandwich with no meat. Leaves you a tad bit hungry, no?

This game was a really intriguing experience.

So, right off the bat, if what you seek in this game is a faithful sequel to the original flash saga, clearing up unclear details and closing up the long-running-story for good, you'll be sad to know this game is far from a true sequel, let alone an ideal one.

The most important differences that set this thing and the original games apart are:

• Lots of dialogue.
  I loathed Time Machine (third ZT title) for shoehorning a story by giving faces to the characters and giving the protagonist a companion for a fair bit of the game's length. This game doubles down on giving depth to the lore by not only introducing many more characters (with names this time) and of course, dialogue.
  
  To be honest, some of the protagonists' lines in this game pushed me to the verge of skipping some cutscenes. I hesitated because I believed the annoying dialogue would reveal important lore at some point, or that it would get better eventually.
  
  Neither predictions were true.
  
  
• Character design and artstyle, to an extent.
  Simplicity used to be ZT's trademark. One could argue Time Machine started the trend of refining the artstyle, by giving characters slightly more prominent features and such.
  I digress just because placing the fault of this game's mediocre art on either ZT2 or TM isn't fair.
  This game's artstyle fell off because the devs didn't care enough, or cared but it didn't turn out well. The result is equally upsetting in either case.
  
  Wether you hate the new designs because of pure nostalgia or because you have a sharp eye and see through the fake effort in them, we can both agree they're ugly as hell no matter your reason.
  
  
• Story sucks. Hard.
  Shoehorning a deeper or more explicit story to a game isn't always that bad. Sometimes it can actually make some sequels worth playing, other times they actually are that bad but at least they give the lore nerds more peace of mind.
  
  Why don't either of these situations apply to this game?
  Because they didn't "force a story into an implicit game saga". They bloated this bizarro reboot-sequel(or prequel?) amalgamation with a story it didn't need that barely even connects with the original games.
  And the way it does try to link back to old ZT is awkward and perhaps even a last-minute addition when devs realized that all the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ they made up for this game made no sense in relation to the original games' plot.
  
  
• RPG? When why and how?
  First time I played ZT2, I sensed its new weapon switch system as a bad omen for TM. Thankfully, it wasn't, and TM did not develop the weapon switch further. It was still meh and a bit unnecesary, but at least I was sure they weren't gonna complicate it any more.
  I really did not expect the reboot to finally decide to not even double down, but OCTUPLE down on it.
  20 brand new inventory slots that NOBODY asked for, XP/Level system and stat system.
  
  What kinda game did AntKarlov think they were developing? A lame 2D Fallout with aliens?
  Aight aight, gonna pipe down for a sec and try to criticize all this more reasonably.
  
  First off, I'm not entirely opposed to the idea of an RPG Zombotron. It sound like it could maybe work as a spinoff of sorts. But come on, barebones RPG mechanics won't do any favors to an already mediocre reboot.
  I'm really much more frustrated with the lack of effort in said mechanics.
  Making the stats actually reflect your playstyle, brushing up the leveling system's balance and optimizing inventory space usage would at least make the RPG stuff bearable.
  
  Maybe, just maybe, it could then make the game more fun. Guess there was no time for that, eh?

That's enough complaining for one review. I'd talk a lot more about the ambiance differences and I could also mention some minor things I liked about the game, but I don't think any of that really matters enough to be written in.

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Bottom line: Buy if you want to get over your nostalgic ass and embrace negative albeit refreshing change, don't buy if you just want to have fun like you did with the other games

Like I did

I like Visual Novels, and I don't like paying for them, but I

Doki Doki!


...so my strongest feeling took over and I felt compelled to get the remaster of one of my favorite VNs of all time!

I have to say, Dan and his team absolutely outdid themselves with the utter quality of this game.
At first, I was expecting no more of this game than just a more sophisticated and slightly longer DDLC, but the switch to Unity, pretty interfaces, the new music and artwork were all pluses that made the game that much more polished and comfortable to play.

All of that considered, my personal favorite addition to this remaster were the Side Stories.
They're short, separate chapters that serve as prequels to the main game, explaining the relationships between characters and giving more depth and background to their personalities.

The Side Stories also make use of the new resources (music and CGs) that the remaster adds, unlike the main game which uses the same resources and dialogue from the old version, which is probably for the better as not only does it make the Side Stories unique, but it also doesn't alter the original DDLC experience, something a lot of people might've feared when Plus was announced.

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One of my other favorite things of the game was the completionist-friendly features like the CG-Poem-Artwork gallery and Music Player. Both update themselves whenever you see or hear the resources themselves in either the Side Stories or main game. I wanted this feature really bad since I first played the original game, and I'm very glad the remaster took care of it all so well.

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Artwork and soundtrack aside, I have to obviously praise the one most important part of this game, or any Visual Novel for that matter: The writing.

The Side Stories have absolutely AMAZING writing. I had standard expectations from the quality of the original game's dialogue, but just like with everything else, Plus went the extra mile. The character interactions feel really human almost all the time, and the humor is there, but only sparingly so.
The characters feel more "authentic" than in the main game. This might be due to the lack of MC's interventions, or just the fact that the subversive element is not present in the Side Stories, so flanderizing the character's personalities to fool the player is unnecessary, allowing the dialogue to be a thousand times more natural.

Speaking of no MC...
Monika supposedly gains conscience about the false reality she lives in around the moment MC arrives at the club, or the day after that. When this happens, she slowly becomes less and less empathetic to the other club members, and starts to obsess herself with MC (or the player?). Then the whole Sayori-killing-herself happens, Act 2 starts and everything goes downhill from there.

The point is that Monika is still unconscious about the fake world she lives in so we get see much more humanity on her part in the Side Stories. It was specially difficult to overlook her behavior in the original game in order to enjoy and understand her character evolution and flaws in this "normal" state of hers.

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In conclusion, this was a solid remaster of an already great Visual Novel, so I believe it deserves all the green paper it asks for, and even a little more (I could not resist the urge to buy the soundtrack after hearing the side stories credit song :D)



Thanks Dan