Recent reviews by Skiylark

Don't sleep on this one. This was one of my favorite games of 2024.
All those AAA companies who say you can't do it all are absolutely wrong. This is a cleaning game with a story, puzzles, secrets, skill trees and collections. It runs beautifully, it's got amazing collision physics, lots of cute references and is oh so satisfying. I wanted to keep playing every mission just to make sure I saw absolutely everything it had in store for me.
I really hope they continue adding onto this one because it was an absolute blast! Cannot recommend enough.

I'm very easily entertained by simulator games, even if most of them are the same. I can find enjoyment in them even if they aren't perfect or have some issues but this simulator has some MAJOR issues. Just glancing at the discussion board will tell you that.

Game is extremely slow, especially at the start. Milestones are easy to reach and feel rewarding but a lot of the interface is confusing and unclear. You're charged sales taxes every day but can never know ahead of time how much the deduction is. There is a significant game breaking issue around level 20-25 with the unlock of the 5 tier pharmacy shelf where you cannot move product between shelves even if the product is the same. This made restocking a pretty major hassle for me. Many other players are reporting this same issue.

Amount in stock also reflects products still in boxes but not on the shelf which makes restocking confusing. In order to hire an employee your counter has to be closed and reset for the next day - things that aren't mentioned. The amount of product you can buy vs the size of the shelves is also strange. Why 10 items per box but 20 spaces per shelf?

Will edit review if bugs are fixed. Might be worth the reduced price but certainly not more.

This game is an awesome mixture of base defense and business management. Very easy to get sucked into, hours and hours of game play. Runs very smoothly and had virtually zero bugs. However, I will say that the tutorial does this game a massive disservice - essentially setting yourself up for failure. It was easier to restart than continue on after the tutorial. Additionally, the really important stuff like how to purchase upgrades or start your front business aren't even included in it. I found myself googling the questions I had about game play. Furniture/building placement is also archaic which can be frustrating at times. All-in-all if you stick with it, I think the payoff is worth it and that it's a very fun game.

Echoing some other reviews, this game can be very satisfying but is essentially watching a money counter. It's kept me engaged through level 30 but after that any upgrades to the shop take an impossible amount of money. One store expansion is about an in-game week's amount of profit, most of which you are sitting around and just restocking product via the in-game computer.

There are many things I would personally want added to the game to make it more engaging, such as employee training or upgraded store equipment. An overhaul to the PC's UI to more easily be able to identify what products need restocking. Some optimization to restockers in general to better prioritize tasks.

My biggest annoyances, though, are that when I upgrade my shop - something that should feel well earned and satisfied, it deletes any paint I'd applied to the walls. Additionally, this game pauses when tabbed out in both Fullscreen and Windowed modes.

Absolutely charming game.
Simple but captivating game play with lots of references to video and table-top gaming culture. Each map is designed to tell a story about the people who live there. It was really exciting to see what items they kept and purchased as their lives progressed as new additions were added to their family. There's also lots of hidden achievements that bring a smile to the face when you incidentally place something in just the right spot.

I only had one major criticism and it was that the game lasted under 5 hours. The developer has posted that they do not intend to add onto the game, so do not go into this expecting DLC or workshop or even a sequel. A game that's under 5 hours, in my opinion, should not have a price tag of $20. I bought this on sale and you should too. It is worth a discounted price.

I am rating this game with a positive review because despite it being an EA game, I still have found nearly 30 hours of game play out of it and I'm not even through the first year. However, I have many criticisms for the state of the game as it is now.

To start off, I'm an Alpha tier Kickstarter backer from their campaign in March of 2021. The initial advertisement for the game showed off bits of every part of the game from farming, mining, diving, bug catching, ranching, the museum and NPC relationships. The Kickstarter raised 1.6 million USD. Early Alpha impressions of this game were... mediocre at best. There was essentially nothing to it. No quests, no tutorials, no dialogue. For full disclosure, I ended up hardly touching the Alpha and decided to just give the game an honest go when it released in EA in October of 2022.

I have... many many criticisms of the product as it is currently in the first iteration of EA but I will start with the positives. The game as it is - is currently just another iteration of Stardew Valley with few variations. The game play is nearly identical in every way starting with the home plot and ending with all of the stores being closed on Wednesdays. If you liked Stardew Valley, you will enjoy this game also. The graphics are very pleasing and there was clearly a lot of effort put in from the animators for NPCs and critters. Progression is sensical and rewarding. Crafting is simple.. for the most part.

Now for the criticisms. Number one, far and away my biggest problem with the game is that there are zero *absolutely zero* indicators of what is inaccessible or still-in-development content. If you check discussion boards and forums for this game and even the discord server they are littered with players trying to figure out if x resource is available or if y quest/festival is accessible. Most of the time the answer is no. I personally found myself swimming around in circles for hours trying to figure out how to get to the next depth tier of diving only to figure out that I couldn't by checking the discord. When crafting, many items are simply unattainable even if they are in the game at the moment because the resources to make them are unattainable and other items that you can craft seem to require far too many resources than they should. The game's performance was nearly flawless on release but for some reason after the first Hotfix the game began having significant lag and other general performance issues especially while diving and in between days. Speaking more about diving (since most of my criticism is there), there are... so so many missing assets during diving. Huge structures with no textures, shells without textures, NPCs that are uninteractable and T-posing - and *no underwater map.*
The entire purpose of the game is to increase the town's ranking but even when you do, the rewards for doing so aren't even accessible in the game yet so it's unrewarding. There are also buildings and NPCs that should be interactable but arent, again, with no indicator that's the case.

There are a lot positive things coming to the game promised by the Kickstarter stretch goals and on the road map for the next couple years. As it stands, this is a daily grind farming sim. There is limited enjoyment to be had but it is a good start for the content that is supposed to come later down the road but it still has a long way to go.

Noteworthy successor to the original Slime Rancher. Very notable graphical improvements and QOL changes. Map areas feel much larger and the map in general is much more navigable. Lot's more random loot and decoration caches that make exploration feel rewarding. Puzzles are similar to the first game but more intuitive.
The game itself runs so smoothly with no stuttering or frame rate drops, no lag and extremely responsive game play overall.
I can't really justify the $30 price tag given that after about 10 hours I felt like I'd already played through pretty much all the game has to offer however the devs have lots in the works and if the expanded content is anything like the original Slime Rancher it will be worth the asking cost.

If you, like me, were conflicted over buying this game, be conflicted no longer - buy it.
MHS2 is basically a better Pokemon, complete with monster collecting of all your favs from other Monster Hunter games like 4U, Generations and World. The combat seems repetitive from a spectating standpoint but its actually very lucrative and rewarding. While the dialogue can be cringey for the adult audience, it has charm and the voice acting (in English) is excellent. You will get your Zenny's worth playing this game.

Bit of a late comer to this game, but here's my opinion on it:

Very well executed, especially for a small studio & Kickstarter funded project. It takes some of the best aspects from other rancher-sims and smashes them together; flavored with their own unique style. The characters are childlike, but appealing and the story is well paced and exploratory. NPCs have daily schedules, complete with holiday and weather exceptions, stores rotate items. Customization of your character and property, while minimal, are impactful and rewarding.

Some Cons - The instances are somewhat lackluster; open spaces with not much in them. Hostile creatures are gimicky, and could either get you or you could get them stun locked until someone faints. Crafting, while interesting, is a slog. It takes days of in-game time for metal bars to cook or wooden planks to be cut. Very mobile-game-isk. A lot of things involving crafting are also not well explained, I found myself on the wikipedia often trying to figure out where the resources I needed for commissions came from.

All in all, an enjoyable experience, but probably not one I would play through more than once.
*It should be noted, the same studio recently successfully Kickstarted another project, "My Time in Sandrock" which is set to release later this year.

Do not purchase this game.
This has been deceptively advertised as a finished product; it is far from it.
Bugs beyond counting, disgusting scaling issues, laggy multiplayer, and uninnovative combat. You can literally stun lock enemies and push bosses into walls to automatically kill them. Some enemy types don't even have complete animation sets, so when they throw something backwards they appear to throw forwards and you have no way of knowing.
Characters are not balanced, not even slightly, solo play is unpleasant and that's being gentle, and multiplayer is too easy to be fun. Its just a grindy, laggy, buggy mess and listening to the same ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ voice lines over and over is beyond lazy. The merchant in the main camp has *1 voice line* they repeat every time you return to camp.
Playing this game made me want to reinstall Vermintide 2 instead because they did the same thing better years ago.
The theme of the game is great. I adore Drizzt and his companions from RA Salvatore's books, but their execution is an insult. Putting a D&D skin on a game style that is 10 years old, forgeoing putting it through quality assurance and charging $40 is basically robbery.
I wanted this to be good, but save your money. Its a hot disaster. Watch the Skill Up review for an honest look at the game.