Скорошни рецензии на Kriptini

Entertaining, but lacking in detail.

Harvestella is an ARPG/farming simulation combo that sounds bizarre, but works out fairly well. Players take on the role of an amnesiac traveler who is thrust into a new life of managing a farm, slaying monsters, and uncovering their lost memories.

Harvestella's farming mechanics are decent. There are four major seasons, a variety of crops that can be grown, and a few different environments that further add to farming variety. Animal husbandry features are minimal, but a vast number of cooking and crafting recipes encourage growing as many different types as possible, rewarding players with new discoveries, although a lack of winter crop variety slows down the game considerably during that season.

Your character can learn a variety of combat jobs and equip up to three at a time while exploring dungeons. Each job comes with unique movesets and passive abilities to customize your playstyle the way you want. An elemental weakness/resistance system further encourages you to experiment with class combinations, rewarding you with special moves from your comrades if you manage to target bosses' weaknesses enough. ARPG fans may be displeased to hear that the player cannot block or dodge attacks in Harvestella; spacing yourself from an enemy's swing or telegraph can sometimes allow you to avoid a hit, but many attacks are completely undodgeable, requiring players to eat food and drink that they've prepared in advanced to heal during battles. Additionally, some jobs don't explain their attacks with much detail, and other jobs are downright underpowered, which creates an overall clunky combat experience.

The narrative starts out extremely slow with a run-of-the-mill amnesiac JRPG plot, though there are some plot twists later in the story that keep things interesting and somewhat unique. The major characters of the story aren't particularly interesting, however; although each character has their own extensive sidequest chain dedicated to their own development, these quests are usually little more than sophomoric monologues that force character development rather than letting the characters grow organically.

But perhaps the biggest issue with Harvestella is that there is a lack of fine details that are so important to making RPG experiences immersive. In cutscenes, characters regularly handle objects that are invisible. Dialogue choices exist, but they have no impact on anything and most of the time, the choices are two different ways of phrasing the exact same thing. All cutscenes are unskippable, which can make the banal writing of the sidequests become too tiresome to bother with after only a few hours of this 50 hour RPG. Translation errors abound, including both improper word choice and spelling/grammar mistakes. The culmination of all of these forgotten details create an experience that feels phoned-in.

I did enjoy my time with Harvestella, but I acknowledge that it has numerous issues that might turn off many fans of ARPGs or farming simulators. That being said, it has a bit more crunch to it than your average casual game, and its mechanics are fairly simplistic at their core, so I would recommend this game for both casual gamers and kids.

An explosive and essential contemporary take on a retro shooter.

As a new school "boomer shooter," Proteus does an excellent job of capturing the nostalgia of late 90's first person shooters and combining it with modern mechanics for a unique and captivating experience. In Prodeus, you'll shoot your way through expertly crafted levels on a futuristic asteroid caught between two warring alien forces with one goal: destroy them all.

Prodeus deserves praise for its incredible level design. Enemy placement and encounters are carefully crafted with peaks and valleys of difficulty; some sequences are meant to challenge the player while others are meant to allow them to go nuts with powerful weapons on unfortunate enemies. Levels are relatively linear, but each boasts plenty of secrets to uncover for the curious player, allowing them to acquire rewards that can be used to upgrade their arsenal or even find new guns before they are "intended" to come up through the campaign. Each level in the campaign clocks in at about 10-15 minutes, and they feel packed to the brim with action without ever becoming annoying.

All of the gameplay mechanics are incredible as well - guns have a significant amount of oomph to them, movement controls feel tight, and there's lots of variety in enemy designs. The sound effects are incredible; I probably spent two minutes just shooting and reloading the shotgun over and over again after acquiring it because the sound effects were so satisfying. Music is your typical "doom metal" you'd expect to hear in these games, which intensifies in the midst of combat and settles down in between encounters for an immersive aural experience.

Graphically, the game gorgeously combines retro character sprites with contemporary lighting techniques. Just look at the screenshots and videos - they're incredible.

Prodeus falls short in the narrative department, but that doesn't matter. You're here to splatter alien invaders and obtain high scores, and after you finish the campaign, there's plenty of community-made levels and campaigns to download (including an intuitive level editor for making your own) as well as multiplayer co-op and PvP modes.

This game is a must-play for anyone that's a fan of retro shooters, and I would also highly recommend to anyone that likes first-person-shooters in general.

Engaging and innovative, though lacking in narrative.

Crystal Project takes the old-school JRPG formula and enhances it with additional features to create an experience that feels mechanically complete. The player controls a party of four heroes to explore a large fantasy world that includes turn-based combat, over 20 character classes (with dual-classing to create hundreds of possible character combinations), and equipment with interesting effects to further customize your playstyle.

The game excels in three major areas: combat, customization, and exploration. Combat is similar to typical JRPG turn-based combat, but Crystal Project enhances it by including a visible threat meter, visible enemy intentions, and detailed turn tracker, allowing you to know which one of your party members will be attacked, what they will be attacked with, and when it will happen. A plethora of conditions exist that can be used to strengthen your own party members or weaken your enemies, which create meaningful tactical choices and unique encounters throughout the entire game.

With hundreds of class combinations and bespoke pieces of equipment to choose from, Crystal Project doesn't lack in the customization department. Players who love experimenting with different team compositions and tweaking their stats to create the perfect party will find immense fulfillment in Crystal Project - moreso than most JRPGs that have ever been made. (You could compare the levels of customization to those of Bravely Default or Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.) A savvy player can use their favorite team composition to complete most of the content in the game, though the optional superbosses may challenge them to experiment with different choices in order to succeed.

Platforming mechanics and a lack of invisible walls add depth to exploration. Crystal Project takes the approach of "if you can see it, you can go there, as long as you can find a way." Many unique treasures and sidequests can be found in areas that other games might section as "off-limits," and clever players can find ways to access lategame areas early. However, it should be noted that the world isn't as cohesive as is typical of JRPGs - it can sometimes be confusing to figure out where to go next due to the world's unintuitive geography.

Narratively speaking, Crystal Project is barebones. Players should not expect a good story (or even much of a story at all) from the game. This is both a pro and a con; while you won't have to be bothered by watching uninteresting unskippable cutscenes, there isn't going to be any intrigue or character development that pulls you into the game's world.

Boasting a mastery of the JRPG mechanics that few other games achieve, Crystal Project is an easy recommendation for anyone that enjoys the genre, though players who prefer story over gameplay may wish to sit this one out. As a bonus, the entire game was made by a solo developer, with the exception of art, music, and SFX, most of which are stock, licensed, or royalty-free.

Conceptually intriguing; shallow execution.

Weird West is a hybrid of the immersive simulator, RPG, and twin-stick shooter genres while thematically being a combination of western, occult, and sci-fi styles. The design proposition is very intriguing while the art, music, SFX, and dialogue styles all contribute to make a wholly unique world.

Gameplay is fun for the first hour or two as you learn how to interact with all of Weird West's systems. Combat is a little awkward at first but becomes satisfying as you learn to utilize the "bullet time" dodges and gain some collectibles to unlock perks and abilities. One of my favorite moments was throwing an unconscious body off a rooftop into a road to alert a bunch of outlaws, then blowing them all up with dynamite in one fell swoop as they gathered around to inspect the body.

While the immersive simulation systems are very impressive from a technical standpoint and no doubt took the developers a lot of time and effort to create, they sadly come across as quite shallow from the player's perspective. The RPG mechanics don't help with this either. As you collect more perks and higher quality guns, it becomes much more efficient and effective to drill a powered-up bullet into an enemy's head than it does to try to sneak around them or kill them with environmental effects.

Furthermore, side quests are very dull, and secrets/easter eggs - while amusing - do not significantly impact the "fun" factor of the game to outweigh its drawbacks. After about two hours into the game, you'll have seen almost everything the game has to offer. Though the main story should take around 15-20 hours to complete, I can't say it's compelling enough to keep someone interested if they're not enjoying the rest of the game.

While I enjoyed Weird West well enough, I don't think I would recommend this game to most players. If you enjoy unique takes on game genres and are curious about how Weird West manages to make it a cohesive (though not very fulfilling) experience, you might consider giving it a shot, but if that nuance means nothing to you, there are more entertaining games in the immersive simulator, RPG, and twin-stick shooter genres.

A very unique type of hybrid puzzle/sandbox resource management game which appears difficult to get into, but if you take the plunge you'll find the learning curve is very reasonable and every new discovery you make is extremely satisfying. There is a ton of content in the form of in-game events, challenges, and mysteries, and the developers have been working hard to make continued improvements to the game, even now almost four years after its initial release. A recent technical update has introduced some new bugs into the game, but Weather Factory's communication has been constant and transparent with the community, with many fixes already implemented and more on the way.

It's not as good as Amazonian Warriors, even with the Brave New World expansion.

EDIT: Changed recommendation to positive. Many of the below bugs have been fixed, and the game is quite enjoyable, but please be aware that some critical game-breaking bugs do still exist and it seems that HBS has no intention of fixing them.

(Old Review)

I love the gameplay, the characters, and the story. But this game is too buggy to enjoy. I've encountered four extremely frustrating bugs that have required me to restart levels or lose progress, and countless other bugs that have negatively impacted my experiene, some of which have been detailed in patch notes as fixed, but seems to have not been the case. The four major bugs I encountered were as follows:

1. A summoned minion "escaped" from my control (game mechanic), but the level gave me the game over screen and I was forced to restart (bug).
2. The enemy's turn never ended. Game just hung at the end of the enemy's turn. Because you cannot save during an enemy's turn, I was forced to load an earlier save file.
3. My mouse cursor wouldn't let me select any tiles. Had to save and quit.
4. During the save and quit of bug three, however, my game crashed and the save did not take.

I have emailed reports of some of these bugs to the developers (luckily they have a system set up for bug reporting), but I could not do detailed reports for all of them due to the nature of some of them. As I said, I think that this is a great game, but it's too frustrating to play at this time. (This review will be rewritten once the game is more stable.)

DDD is a fantastic blend of minimalistic mechanics and RPG progression that makes a very challenging and fun game. It's hard to describe DDD's combat experience with words, but I can say that it scales very well as you progress through the game. While the controls never change (press right to attack and left to defend), the game begins to add in mechanics that require situational awareness in order to complete more difficult levels, such as timing your attacks in order to get an attack speed boost or watching enemy cues to defend against particularly deadly attacks.

The thing that makes the whole of DDD so satisfying for me is that you don't defeat harder enemies by levelling up or unlocking passive talents (though there is a cool talent tree feature), you defeat harder enemies by getting better at the game, and the game uses enemies to teach you important tactics that you'll use to defeat bosses.

It's an action-packed arcade-style game that can easily be picked up, put down, and then picked up again whenever you want. I highly recommend it.

Transistor is one of the best non-traditional RPG experiences I've ever had. The trailers might make it look complicated or intimidated, but it's actually very fluid and only ever becomes as complex as you want it to. I highly recommend that if you're on the edge, you dive right in. Your trusty sword will be at your side to guide you throughout the Process.

If you're a narrative-focused gamer that doesn't like to get into deep customization and wants to mostly focus on the story, you can do that in Transistor, and the experience is extremely rewarding, as there are many aspects of the plot which are only revealed to those who are dedicated to searching for them.

Conversely, if you're a mechanics-focused gamer who couldn't care less about plot but loves to customize characters and really "play" the game, Transistor is also for you. Instead of getting generic combat abilities, you earn Functions in Transistor, which can be used in three different ways: actives, upgrades, and passives. Depending on how you use Functions and combine them together, you can create drastically different playstyles and create your own unique way of defeating enemies. You can even use Limiters to change the way the enemy fights you for a more challenging experience.

Despite those two points, I think Transistor is most enjoyed by the completionist. While it's true that the game can be "finished" in as short as four hours, Transistor allows you to build the game the way you want to play it. If you want to 100% complete the game and experience all it has to offer, you'll be here for a while, and you'll love every step of the journey. In Transistor, the sky is only blue if you want it to.

It's a very precise swordfighting game, which definitely feels unique. There a variety of characters and different sword types which allow you to customize the way your character fights and looks. It's got a steep learning curve and the community is fairly small, but if you're a fan of precise, competitive fighting games, you'll really enjoy Blade Symphony.