Recent reviews by ScottyD

Amazing game, lots of fun with friends, great to play in VR (and easily my favourite VR game)

I've recommended this game since the day i bought it and with its newest updates it only gets better

I both love and have a dislike of this game at the same time.

This game does a better job of balancing out really unfair rng rolls than any other roguelite i've ever played or seen, giving you specific feats or modifiers that making it possible that even the worst roll become a semi decent or even an amazing roll to combat your enemies with... but there are still a disproportionate number of times where you feel like enemies get perfect rolls and you end up in a situation where unless you also roll perfectly, you're sure to lose.

Whilst frustrating when it happens, that just further adds to the theme of playing a rigged competition in order to both escape the arena and receive your coveted wish. With a story that slowly unravels and reveals itself with each chapter successfully completed.

I personally quite enjoy the visuals however have noted whilst the music and sound effects are nice, they can become a bit repetitive if you play for longer periods of time.

Overall I would say this game is a pretty solid "pick-up-and-put-down" title which you can come back to at any point without missing any major skills or knowledge that would make it unplayable to continue from your current point where you left it.

I bought the ultimate edition to have all the content.
Sad to know I can't refund this under false advertisement and wait until the proper ultimate edition comes out and buy it then, because i'm sure that version will be great since the current one is pretty good too.

TLDR;
Are you new to rhythm games;
Yes? you may like this as some casual fun.
No? probably give it a miss.

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Honestly, I'm kind of confused who the target audience for this game is.

If you've never played rhythm games then this style probably wouldn't be appealing to you, since its showing a more direct style of rhythm game like step mania, invaxion, voez, osu as well as many others. Instead something like muse dash would probably appeal more because even though its the exact same concept (press button at right timing) you at least have the appealing visual mask and cutesy story over just the game play itself.

However, If you have played rhythm games before, then this game will always feel like there's something not quite right with it. The timing windows are extremely off. Not just slightly large as others have mentioned, but just in general entirely off. You can almost press the key at any moment it is on the screen if you play at note speed of 7+ and it will count as a minimum of 'great' timing windows, however, if you let the note actually reach its intended hit spot (on top of where the key is shown just like what's expected from any other rhythm game you will have played), the game will say you have pressed it too late and get a much lower grade for timing key presses.

The scoring system makes little to no sense, as despite missing 1-2 notes, you still will easily get above 100% accuracy no matter the difficulty of the song just by essentially spamming every key at all times (i actually tried this for one of the level 8 maps and it did work with a 102% A rating, which is the lowest rating I have received so far in the game).

With that said, no i clearly don't recommend this game. The only people I can recommend this game to are people who want to casually play this game with the intention of seeming better at rhythm games than they actually are (which i guess if that's what you're into, go for it? but who are you really trying to impress).

If you have actually played rhythm games before and want something new to try? do not buy this. your skills will get worse as it actively encourages off rhythm timing with some of the songs not even correctly mapping the bpm, meaning you play every note at a different timing to the song's rhythm itself which you can hear immediately if you have a mechanical keyboard.

Do I intend to refund this game? not for the $2.67AUD I paid. but this is how many flaws I noticed as someone who actively plays a few rhythm games, within 30 minutes of playing the game.

TLDR: I like this game. A lot. I would love to recommend this game and talk about its great qualities, and did so in the past.

But with the recent updates to 'balance' the game, it has made it very hard to even start up the game and play for longer than 1 hour at a time.

Friends make this still enjoyable, but doing almost anything with friends is fun. So that means absolutely nothing to me.

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-Proc boost (catalyst) no longer does its one function, boost the proc chance of all chance-based effects. Now its limited to status effects only, which I have yet to ever see 'chance-based' status effects play a role in the game in my whole time playing and trying most guns both in MP and SP.
The idea was that it broke the game incredibly hard early on (which i agreed with). however... it was one of very few ways to actually deal with enemies effectively at higher character levels on harder difficulties. Now it is a chore to kill even the basic enemies at around trait level 250 unless you use very specific guns and setups.

Problem with this change: it was done in order to stop incredibly broken builds... but the reload crit damage build does higher damage, yet did not get changed at all? It was the build I had the most fun discovering naturally and playing with, but its essentially made an entire trait, a ring, and many guns, worse at higher difficulties.


-One of the changes to a boss basically makes the boss' shield phase mechanic, entirely optional. This fight was one of two fights that I really enjoyed about remnant's current core gameplay loop, balancing your want to end a fight quickly with having to pay attention to the pincer-based tactics you are caught in.
It was really fun learning how the boss behaves and what patterns to be careful of when fighting it for the first time, and maybe a little frustrating. but that made the feat of completing the boss (which whilst hard, was far from impossible) far more satisfying by the sense of accomplishment.

Problem with this change: Couldn't care less about the exclusivity of "i beat this when it was challenge mur mur mur". But when you essentially make the environmental obstacles entirely useless as anything more than a cheap visual aspect because it was frustrating to some people to die due to not wanting to learn the mechanics and a lack of paying attention to the environment. It cheapens the experience greatly and a well thought through boss idea and design might as well have become just a copy-paste of any other boss in the game, but with two in the arena instead of one.


-Many of the armour sets are now just "you get the exact same bonus damage (%) but just at different ranges, or when you get hit, or when you kill something". Tbh i don't see why you should get 25% damage within 5 meters or outside of 15 meters. outside of 15, it should be less as you're not in any immediate danger of death/getting hit. inside of 5, you are. Why shouldn't you be rewarded a bit more for that? (In case you were wondering, i use none of those sets. I use the adventurer set just to get more scrap from breakables, and I *still* think you should get that damage, not for me, but for those who do use it).


-For the love of all things holy, you re-balance the game, but don't make a "skip cut scene" button. Make a skip cut scene button. People keep asking for a skip cut scene button. We've already seen the cut scenes. Half the boss cut scenes take longer to complete than the actual boss. Make it only on characters you have completed the campaign on or for cut scenes you've already seen. There's literally been steam guides made on how to break the cut scene movie files to make them not play. Please listen to the player base so they don't have to break the game's files to do it (again, I'm fine with it personally but it's basic stuff to add and enough people are asking for it...)

-Same paragraph as last except replace "cut scene" with "tutorial". Enough people want to skip tutorial on secondary characters. C'mon guys... The tutorial doesn't even represent how the game's core game play works. You have no guns in the tutorial. It's a game heavily revolved around guns and gun play.


I want to recommend this game. I want to keep recommending this game.
But as it is right now? No. Enough of the aspects that either kept me playing, or made me enjoy the game in the first place, got removed or dulled down so they may as well not exist anymore.

UPDATE 09/08/2019:

TLDR; the only bug I've encountered is now fixed and to me, that makes it worth recommending...but

1) I would still caution people buying this who expect a finalised product. More balance and bug fixes need to come.

2) So far, the developer seems to be working hard to make sure the game is as good as it can be. I feel assured that they care about this game as a passion project.

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A quick hotfix by the developers has implemented a skip cutscene button which at least allows me to continue playing the game without resetting runs just before clearing the dungeon.

However, in doing this hotfix, it seems that I can no longer view any cut scenes at all, which is a shame, but I consider only a minor cosmetic bug currently as while the cut scenes were beautiful, they did not affect my overall experience or provide any major additional context to story (from the two cutscenes I could view).


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ORIGINAL REVIEW:

TLDR: Game still needs some bug fixes and patches to re-balance some enemies/cards if i'm completely honest, even though I am thoroughly enjoying the game and want to recommend it, with it's current state, I can't.


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In terms of bug fixes, as of this moment, i am stuck on a cutscene after defeating 3rd floor where the game simply does not load any further once the cutscene has finished playing. Atleast the game auto-saves progress so i haven't been entirely set back, but even after multiple game restarts it still has not continued past the cutscene.

In terms of re-balancing patches, unless I just happened to not come across the cards required for dealing with this particular boss in question in enough quantities that the fight becomes possible, but the boss which has a buff specifically blocking all attack damage for multiple turns (which can, within 2 turns of being downed from waiting, can be re-buffed due to the card pool the boss has).

Every other boss has had clear strategies for beating them other than hoping you can cleanse down the buff and then top-deck draw enough damage to deal with it quickly (I'm willing to take advice on beating them consistently if anyone has it, tried thorns and cleansing but no luck on the consistency part).

i'd really like to recommend this because the art style is crisp and clean whilst the mechanical aspects are actually fairly in-depth once you have understood their role (i never personally had issues creating specific styled decks after the first floor but I will admit there is some element of luck there, but the chances of being completely out of luck are low unlike some other games I have refunded in the past).
..but for now, i can't. I won't be refunding this but I can imagine with the current state of the game, alot of other people will.

From a game-play perspective, this gives off the same vibes as many other relaxing puzzle-like games in the style of Polybridge and other similar titles however it has that nice visual coat of charm and chipper tunes you've come to expect from games published by Team 17.

Big time worth the purchase in my books.

Has a campaign with structured levels and specific goals to teach you mechanics, a 'campaign' style mode where you complete levels for funds to improve the machinery available to you, and workshop support for custom levels and machinery.

Played for 5 hours as of writing this review, and i can already tell I'm going to be playing a lot more.

UPDATE SINCE GAME WAS UPDATED WITH MULTI-TRAP ROOMS;
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Now that rooms have the potential for multiple traps, single player replay-ability has been improved a fair bit and just in general the game has more variety, i'm sure some people will find it gets dull still, but it has removed what I believe to be one of the biggest flaws of the game, which was that a room is guaranteed safe if you set off the trap on single-use traps.

With this improvement alone, there's no longer any reason i can give why i wouldn't recommend buying it to give it a try as you can no longer be sure if that trap room was really just a trap room or also hides a few more traps when you step inside.

I am personally looking forward to what traps they introduce into the game as development continues.

ORIGINAL REVIEW
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Ever heard of the hit 1997 movie "Cube" (TM 1997)? No? Fair enough... Well its that but has a battle royale mode ontop.

Solo will get dull pretty quick once you've seen all the traps if the concept isn't super appealing to you but if you can convince 4-9 friends to spend the money on it, you got yourself enough players to try out the huge room puzzles which will make it more fun,

that, or ya know... the battle royale mode which has more effort put into it than probably should have been.

Side Note: even if you don't buy the game, checkout the movies which have almost an identical concept... they're pretty top notch

Anime is Trash and so am I.