Recent reviews by bayou_hannibal

Absolutely terrible terrible terrible terrible game. Awful level design full of nothing but skinny ledges everywhere that completely eliminate your mobility. Blocking mechanic is completely and totally broken. 10 hours of legitimate content spread out over 100 hours of tedium. reptitiion, and drudgery. Legions of trash mobs with stunlock and one hit kill abilties. The game has nothing remotely resembling any indication of why you are taking damage 90% of the time. Most enemies can outrun you. which means that you can't sprint past them to get to the boss, which is 8 miles from the bonfire thanks to the terrible level design in this game.

I did not have even one moment of fun with this turd bucket. I loved Dark Souls 2 and Elden Ring, so it's not as if I don't know what you are getting with a Souls experience. But sweet Mary, mother of Jesus, does this game suck. I can't fathom how From Software stayed in business after pinching out this fetid loaf.

Dark Souls 2 is a great game. The DLC is absolutely positively terrible. It's beyond terrible. It's easily the worst DLC that I have ever played. It's honestly that bad.

Enemies are massive damage sponges who give you paltry, tiny XP rewards. A 550 XP enemy is harder to kill in the expansion than a 5,000 XP enemy in the original game. I swear I am not exaggerating when i say this.. It's literally that bad.

Level design is Godawful -- the absolute worst that this series has ever had to offer. Levels are mazes of obscurity that require you to stumble onto an Easter Egg after 100 hours of wandering around in circles. Just getting into this DLC requires you to go on a bizarre set of errands that nobody in a million years could possible be expected to figure out.

I cannot possibly overstate how terrible Scholar of the First Sin is. Buy Dark Souls 2. Avoid the DLC at all costs.

As an open world game, it has its share of issues, but it's still the best Souls or Souls-like game ever made.

You could be forgiven if, half an hour into The Last Faith, you were to dismiss the game as a cheap ripoff of the Blasphemous series. It’s a Pixel Art hack-and -slash Metroidvania with a lot of the same visual cues as that excellent series. But it would be a mistake to stop there without elaborating on all of the good qualities that it brings to the table — many of which only become evident after at least a few hours of gameplay. It benefits tremendously from its terrific level design and challenging boss battles, as well as a pretty decent character and weapon customization system that allows for different builds and play styles (enough to at least give you a different experience your second time through).

Combat, for the most part, is an asset to the game. There are a ton of different enemies that attack you with a wide variety of ranged, melee, physical, and magical attacks. Many of them, if you aren’t careful, can drain you of your health in mere seconds. The combat keeps you on your toes while providing ample incentive to gain levels and purchase upgrades. It’s a fairly open-ended game too, which means that you can access areas fairly early on that you are woefully underpowered for. One brutally difficult boss, for example, can be accessed about eight hours before you can reasonably be expected to defeat it.

Secrets and collectibles are a huge part of a good Metroidvania game. You’ll be happy to hear then that The Last Faith truly excels in this area. The desire to constantly see what is around the next corner or behind the next fake wall is a driving force that lends this game the addictive quality that constantly keeps you coming back for more.

That is not to say that the game is perfect. Some of the items that yiu get (namely, the grenades) are fairly useless). There are a few questionable control decisions too — chief among them being the piss poor implementation of blocking/parrying. Blocking is a risk/reward proposition where the former vastly outweighs the latter — so much that you may find yourself abandoning the mechanic outright and resorting instead to dodging through enemy attacks. For a game that is as melee- heavy as The Last Faith — this is a pretty big deal. The interface is a bit clumsy in spots too, and the lack of a pause feature is likely to be occasionally frustrating for you.

Overall though, I can recommend The Last Faith quite wholeheartedly. It’s definitely not perfect, but it’s a 4/5 caliber game that should scratch that Metroidvania itch for you, if that’s what you’re in the mood for.

Important note for game developers. If you are going to make a hard as nails platformer with death spikes galore, bullet sponge enemies that can kill you in three hits, and "healing" that takes up all of your magic while restoring less than half of your hit points, then you might want to make sure that your controls aren't the suckiest controls in the history of video gaming. I'm not exaggerating when I say that, by the way. Rusted Moss has, hands down, the absolute worst controls of any of the nearly thousand-ish video games that I have ever played. It's that bad.

You know it's bad when a game advertised as a "dual joystick shooter" says "'mouse and keyboard recommended" every time that you start (and quit out of) the game. You know it's bad when there is a menu option specifically devoted to putting you into God mode and/or letting you fly. You are some sort of fairy with a grappling hook in theory, but in practice, you are a drunken hippopotamus on ice skates.

I'm trying to think of when platformers mastered the art of grabbing ledges. 30 years ago maybe? 20 years ago? I don't know for sure but it was a long time before this game came out, but you wouldn't' know it from playing Rusted Moss. After playing for more than ten hours the stupid protagonist still wouldn't reliably grab ledges. The ledge grabbing is completely broken, no matter what control scheme you use. If you make the unfortunately choice of playing this game, then expect to infuriatingly fall to your death repeatedly because you didn't grab a ledge that literally every other game on Steam has no problem letting you grab.

The game is horrible, and on top of that, it's got some of the ugliest graphics that I have ever seen this side of the Atari 2600. Terrible gameplay, and it's an eyesore to boot. Avoid it.

When I first reviewed this game, I gave it a thumbs down, because I had just rage quit it after getting killed by the worst boss ever for about the 150th time. I have since then finished the game and I have had some time to reflect, and I would say that this game definitely deserves a thumbs up, but the last two bosses did leave a bad taste in my mouth. The second to last boss is literally the most unfair boss that I have ever played against. The actual final boss is kind of a pushover once you figure out his patterns. It would be nice to see a future patch even out the difficulties a little more.

But for most of the time playing Blasphemous 2, I was legitimately loving it. It is a huge improvement over the first game. Better level design. Three great weapons instead of one, and each weapon is useful. The weapons allow for all kinds of different approaches to your enemies, and the game is long enough that you will get to try all of them. The collectibles are huge in number and high in quality. Exploration is fun and it helps make the game addictive. There are more upgrades to your abilities than there were in the first game, and that gives Blasphemous 2 much more of a traditional Metroidvania feel than its predecessor. Falls into spikes and pits are no longer insta-death (Thank God). The enemies are also more fun to fight. The enemies that were the least fun to fight in the first game have been removed in favor of some new enemies that are very fun to fight. The boss battles, up until the final two, are fantastic – they typify what a boss battle should be in a game like this.

Blasphemous 2 is just as wonderful in its art direction and its animations as its predecessor, with the lone exception being that they, for some reason, neutered the executions in this game pretty badly. The music is top notch once again too. This game is one of the most improved sequels that I have ever played….

…until that boss. And if you have played this game, then you know exactly the boss that I am talking about. The most brutally difficult and punishingly unfair boss that I have ever experienced in a video game. It is at that point that your 15-20 hours of consistent progress and addictive flow comes to a raging halt. This boss has two full health bars and three stages on the second bar, with a short cut scene in the middle for good measure. And by the time that you finally defeat the guy, you will have memorized that cut scene backwards and forwards. The first time that I played this game it took me, no kidding, maybe 150 tries to beat the guy. When I finally did, I had maybe two pixels on my health bar and no healing flasks left. Some of his attacks are so grotesquely unfair that the only way to avoid getting killed by them is to just hope that you get lucky and that he doesn’t use them many times. It’s truly awful and I’m not exaggerating when I say that this penultimate boss almost singlehandedly ruins what, up until then, is a nearly perfect experience.

After you defeat that guy, you go to the final boss, thinking that it must be some sort of epic difficulty confrontation. And he is al pushover. Once you figure out his patterns (he only has a few different attacks), you can easily beat him on the 2nd or third try. I don’t know how you could design a game so near-perfect for the first 98% of it and then stumble so badly with such horribly calibrated boss battles. The final sequences of this game are so profoundly disappointing, and they really left a bad taste in my mouth.

The story in Blasphemous 2, like the first game, is largely gobbledygook. There is, of course, The Miracle. The Miracle apparently causes nothing but suffering but people still refer to it as a “miracle” for some reason. You are the Nameless – er, um – The Penitent One, a silent coneheaded guy who is doing penance for some unnamed sin or crime. An infertile couple is granted a child but apparently that child is diseased or deformed or something, and there is an elevated city above the main city in the game, and a gigantic beating heart there, and you have to defeat 3 bosses to access that city and then beat five more to get five keys to let some birds out of cages – Christ I don’t know. Like its predecessor, Blasphemous 2 opts entirely for style over substance when it comes to telling its story, preferring to cloak the plot in layer after layer of cryptic dialog and symbolism that makes absolutely zero sense. There are youtube videos that attempt to untangle this bowl of narrative spaghetti but if I have to watch youtube videos to understand the basics of your plot, then you have failed miserably as a storyteller.

Do I recommend Blasphemous 2? Yes. Strongly? No. In some ways, it is the most improved sequel that I have ever played. But at a few crucial times, it practically begs you to uninstall it. For what it’s worth, I have finished it twice, which is fairly unusual for me, so it can’t be bad. I am hoping for a third game in this series, warts and all.

This is definitely one of the better indie/retro Metroidvanias that I have played. Great progression, great exploration, good enemy variety and lots of really good bosses. My only complaint would be the scarcity of fast travel, and the fact that your map doesn’t give you much indication about where you should and can go next. As a result, expect to do tons of backtracking into dead ends for this one.

Overall though, I highly recommend this one.

It’s a game that is worth playing, but somewhat lacking in “Merroidvania” style progression, beyond picking up the occasional key. Combat and enemy variety are satisfying enough. Most enemies are challenging at first, but can be handled once you figure out their patterns.

Inventory could have been done better. — the game really needed a weapon wheel or something of that nature for all of the time that you switch weapons or armor for new enemies. It’s also pretty short, clocking iin at just 8 or so hours for me. Still, it’s a worthy pickup if you can get it on sale.

When I first posted my review of this game, I gave it a thumbs down. I have to admit, I was wrong. It’s actually pretty good, but a lot of my criticisms of this game still stand.


I have now played through it twice and, especially the second time through, I couldn’t put the controller down, no matter how annoying it got (and believe me, this game can get really annoying).

Exploration in this game is fun as hell, the enemy variety is incredible, and combat is almost always fun. The art direction is incredible, and the setting is very unique. The music is great too.

What don’t I like about this game? Well, for starters, some of the obscure crap that you have to do in this game to progress will blow your mind. Your inventory will pile up with quest items that appear to have no purpose until you stumble onto a character somewhere on the map who can reward you for them.



Let me give you an example of one of these ridiculous affairs – if you want one of the enhanced navigation abilities, you need to find three items and deliver them to an NPC in a distant dead end on the map. The third item is particularly hard to get, as it requires a navigation upgrade that also comes from a totally inane fetch quest. From that NPC, you get an egg. Then you have to find a tree to put the egg into so that it hatches. Then you take the hatched egg to another NPC so that it can be blessed. There is no way on Earth that anyone could be expected to figure out this downright comical sequence. Blasphemous is loaded with these.

The boss battles in the game are pretty good. Some of them are a little bit unfair, and that includes an optional boss that is prison-rape difficult. Overall though, combat is an asset to the game.

My final recommendation? Yes,. I do recommend that you buy this game. It should have more than enough fun moments to overcome your instincts to rage quit it.

If somebody told you that a developer decided to combine Metroid-vania style exploration with pinball mechanics and Nintendo cuteness, you could be forgiven for being skeptical. But after playing this game for a few hours, I'm happy to report that it all comes together really nicely. Yoku's Island Express is a refreshingly unique experience and it is fully worth checking out.

In the game you play as a little guy who is tethered to a pinball. Other than slowly moving left or right on a flat surface, you can't move a whole lot on your own. So, you have to rely on the various plungers and pinball flippers that have been placed around the world to navigate the map and reach new areas. Along the way, you solve some puzzles, acquire new abilities, and explore a whole bunch of lovely and interesting locales. This is a very well designed game and its mechanics play together very nicely. The pinball portion of the game isn't done realistically, but rather it has been calibrated to be quite easy. As a pinball lover I still felt very much at home during these portions of the game.

Overall, I highly recommend this one for Metroid-vania fans who are looking for something different.