Recent reviews by Eldritch Horrowl

it helps me write dabihawks fics (i think) so that is a net positive i think

I haven't played this a lot but what I have played is really fun and promising. The creativity and freedom you have to design your school, and how easy it is to set things up. It's really satisfying to build up your school and see the school day unfold. I'm also a big fan of the artstyle and just the humour in the game.

Buy it!

:3

This a really sad game while also being very optimistic. It approaches grief and coping with that grief in a very mature and straightforward way. It has a rather sincere way of dealing with these things that I have kind of missing from a lot of other contemporary media, and I feel it really helps the game with the vision it had. This is a really lovely and sweet short game.

Potionomics is a wonderful game that that takes a lot of inspiration from different genres and puts a refreshing spin on them, making them feel new even if very little mechanically has actually changed. I love pretty much all the characters you meet, they have a very good balance of goofy, sincere, and fantasy-witch-like goodness creating a good and varied cast. The animations and 3D models of all the characters is really what does a lot for me. It is what is truly distinctive about the game, freshening up the regular 2D models that visual novels usually have and instead giving them a lot more personality that is more easily gleamed from them. They also manage to retain a lot of the anime aesthetic that seems to be huge part of its inspiration, doing what I think is a much better translation of that style then what has been done with other attempts.

The characters have a variable of different characteristics inspired by a lot of witch-like pop- and internet culture, giving it a lot of commonalities with something like Monster Prom in all the best ways. The rivals are also a delight to deal with, the 10-day cycle works great as a good little build-up towards the big bad of that week, taking a lot of cues from the “villain of the week” from weekly variety cartoons. I do feel like I could use some more time during the 10 days to talk with the characters and build relationships, but it is not something that hindered me massively much in enjoying the game. I love this game, it has a very great blend of genres that I like and nothing feels out of place when playing, I can highly recommend it.

It very much has its own spin on the genre of stat-building games, it draws on inspiration from the games that presided it and simultaneously expands on the romance routes, giving more varied romances and deeper character development for the love interests. Is it somewhat simple, sure, but mostly in the way that a 90s sitcom or teen-romcom type of movie would tell their stories. They’re filled with delicious melodrama and teen angst that comes with growing up and choosing one’s future, making for very fun delight if that stuff is your thing, and I love it for it. I think it’s a game that is well worth the money.

ohh yeah, this DLC did happen.... I could live without it.

It's not that bad of a DLC, the content is fine and we finally got something new that fleshed out Africa, but it's not much more then that. This is a problem EU4 has had for sometime now, the content of the last few DLC hasn't necessarily been bad (not accounting for the bugs and glitches), but it's more that they feel like bloat then they feel like something that improves the game significantly. The implementation also leaves something to be desired, it feels like the engine is on it's last legs, like it's trying to keep up with all the new content and ideas but never quite hits the mark.

All in all, you won't be disappointed if you get this DLC but it won't dramatically improve or enhance your experience, it'll just tide you over until the next one comes out.

It’s a very good and relaxing game, it falls into a lot of the same groove that Townscaper have but with the added aspects of having small milestones and objectives to complete along the way. It’s a great little thing where you can fall into a flow while playing, and I think it’s a pretty good time. It hits a sweet spot of retaining engagement of the player while giving them ample opportunity to just get lost in its mechanics, setting, and general aesthetic.

I don’t know how to rate Yakuza 0; on one side it is a master at utilizing melodrama and the mundanity of regular life in very imaginative and fun ways. The story very much plays out like a procedural drama with all the high jinks and drama filled scenarios that you could expect from such a thing, and it chains in its combat in a very excellent way that just adds to it procedural drama storytelling. With how over the top the regular combat and combos can be and the heat moment executions being an absolute treat to watch. But it also has a very strange way that it depicts Makoto and her role in the game, acting like not much more then a helpless damsel in distress a lot of the time, and there being straight up horrid depictions of trans women makes the games themes of respect and familial bunds strange and like a complete mismatch. It also doesn’t help that the ending doesn’t completely sticks the landing and stumbles a bit towards the end as it tries to connect all the different plot points. But I would still say that Yakuza 0 is a great game with some pretty fun and actualised characters, with a few glaring blind spots.