Recent reviews by Asterisk

Just watch someone else play it or look up the story.

gameplay loop is abysmal, and the roguelike elements feel so underpowered that there's no meaningful synergy, you just pick up the best guns and wait for better ones. There's also so much irritating level design: There's a ton of loot gated behind boss unlocks: grappling hook, not taking damage, etc., and the game punishes you heavily for experimenting and trying to INTERACT WITH THE GAMES SYSTEMS. Everytime you fall in water you're not immune to, or try to parkour up to a spot that's actually a grapple point, you lose your adrenaline and a lot of your scaling. It dangles loot it front of you, tells you you can't get it till later, and then when later comes (the 2nd act), you can't even go back there: You have to beat the game anyways to go back and use your tools, and unlocking them feels like a waste. The backtracking is a chore if you're minmaxing (don't, the games pretty easy if you just stack health), and the games roguelike powerscaling being so weak makes it so boring to play: Any upgrades you get are marginal and don't help all that much. It's just +damage or +health or better chance to find rarer guns.

There are like 2 memorable (and unique) bosses, and the rest boil down to cool alien that shoots bullet hell rainbow balls at you while you shoot its weakpoints.

While the story is clever, and a genuine masterpiece of talent to use games as a medium, it just didn't resonate with me: 6 stages of buildup, numerous horroresque sequences that shock you out of gameplay, for a short scene that doesnt even do a good job at even giving you a thesis statement of the game is horrendous. You better be paying attention in close detail to every single agonizingly long artsy play-through cutscene when you want to just finish and understand the damn game.

Overall, the game presents a unique narrative with beautiful art, level design, and story, and bungles it all by stifling player agency, denying them any meaningful run-to-run definition in a roguelike game, and makes strategically thinking about the games' synergies a suboptimal strategy due to how weak items are, while breaking up your gameplay with long story segments that don't make any sense until the game's final minutes, which it really doesn't want you to see with how many hoops you have to jump through to get there.

I think I'm done with AAA games. for good.

refunding because I'm not confident I'll get a ton out of it - strategic elements feel underbaked, and it really seems like I'll get bored after a few runs. I won my first run, so IDK if I just highrolled, but the strategy feels very, very lacking in the strategy roguelike. I guess you could say that it's not strategic, and that's the point of blackjack, randomness, but that's just a less fun game I don't want to play. Also, didn't see a ton of synergy between cards, which should be the appeal of card games. It seems better (and far too easy) to just remove your starting deck and have a core of cards that let you disrupt the enemy or blackjack instantly. Not because the cards are working well together, just because some are obscenely strong (looking at you flamewreathed faceless and death).

I do think presentation, concept, and sound are all incredible - I just wish the gameplay loop was more interesting than hit and remove cards, then draft the better ones.

Maybe I'll come back to it after a few updates.

yes

I LOVE GAMBLING

yeah

This game is excellent. It weaves in an overarching story into just plain fun card game backing. However, the game isn't exactly what is advertised, and while I think it was done alright, it's undeniable that the game gets worse as you go on. Act 3 in particular felt like a slog. However, the game is just so well-made I have to recommend it. Is it the best card battler i've played? no. is it the most replayable roguelike i've ever seen? of course not. But, it tries something new for a genre-bending experience that's just so much fun. If you're newer to card games, or even roguelikes, this is a pretty good stepping-stone into the different flavors of each, and has an engaging story to boot.

edit: Kaycee's Mod is POG

if you spam z1 it says "shoot these hogs"
10/10

One of my favorites. Roguelike, and deckbuilding? sign me right up - Hearthstone and Magic players will feel right at home

good for a couple hours with friends on console, but the shaky gameplay and the lack of replaybility (through complete lack of player agency except in the xp upgrade, which aren't varied enough to provide interesting gameplay). The bosses and enemy types are excellent, but i simply cannot recommend this game in the current state

played a bit, pretty good game

nah fr tho get this, it's better than ever. (play summoner tooo!!!!!)