Recent reviews by AL_TheHoly

I don't seem to be able to steer my vehicle... Uh.. I push the buttons, one shoots, and one boosts. I can parry things with boost and nothing really seems to be hurting me, at all. I'm not sure why but I made it to wave 52 on one life. Enemies have a lot of health now, but still do nothing to me. This is really boring. Escape lets me stop the game. Good.

The music is awesome at least.

RoR2 follows the same formula from RoR1: a roguelite action game that focuses on combat over all else, with permadeath. While the first game is a platformer, the latter is a third person shooter. This game still has an excellent soundtrack as provided by Chris Christodoulou, who did the music for the first game as well, and although I don’t often remember the melodies to hum them, that distinct sound and composition is so familiar to me that it feels right, and I could easily listen to this music for hours on end.
The visuals are actually decent, in spite of being a cell shaded game. I love pixel art a lot, but I think the 3D representations of all the monsters and characters is extremely faithful to the original, and they even added a feature that slowly augments your character’s equipment and appearance as you collect more power ups, much like the character portrait from the credit roll of RoR1. I find it is a nice touch, and stays in line with the aspect of corrupting one’s self in the interest of survival that the first game established.
I will say that playing this game is both easier than the original game, since getting a run started is much easier in the sequel. RoR2 allows you to snowball even more ridiculously than the first game, which makes the play cathartically satisfying with how hard you can steamroll swarms of monsters, while also keeping you on your toes by threats of outrageous punishment for even smaller slip ups, as to be expected. This keeps the game exciting for me. Having a large selection of different characters is awesome too, as they all play differently from each other, and it is reassuring to know there aren't any characters in RoR2 that feel as bad to play as the Enforcer was.
My biggest issue with RoR2 is that there is a small subset of power ups that use a special currency to purchase, and those Lunar Items require Lunar Coins. These coins drop very rarely, and the chance is reduced further with each coin that does drop, and this kind of sucks. The Lunar Items can definitely be a huge boon to a run by providing super powerful effects in return for equal or more severe penalties, such as the Shaped Glass that doubles all your damage output, but halves your total health. However, most of the Lunar Items are largely worthless, as I can only think of 1 I would 100% take every time and only a couple more I would strongly consider.
With that said, the full release of this game is excellent, and the chance to play even more, especially because the online play was sufficiently fixed, now that matchmaking and friend lobbies are now a core feature in the game, is possible. Highly recommended.

This game is so quirky and complex, and brain bending in the right ways. If you like puzzle games, you'll love this game, it takes the usual puzzle game fare and proceeds to break your understanding of how games work to create a brain scratcher of a game.

Thinking outside of the box is very much encouraged, as you will not just be expected to find the correct sequence to finish a puzzle. It is seldom that simple. You will use word crafting, move planning, and outright ignoring the boundaries of typical video games to do some really satisfying, loopy puzzle solutions. It can be very difficult to wrap your head around the game, even if you are good at thinking unconventionally.

If you have a lot of patience and a disposition for exploration of mechanics, this recommendation could not be more in favor of your tastes. For those who lack patience, you will get stuck, you will be left staring at the screen or testing moves for a long time, but the novelty of Baba's puzzles and mechanics are one of a kind as far as I know.

I feel the weakest point of Baba is that the video scaling is really poor if you play around with the resolutions too much, everything becomes a blob that melds together in really nasty ways, and ruins the retro 2d aesthetic I tend to enjoy. This game is in sore need of a pixel perfect scaling feature or an easier way to use standardized resolution options that don't make everything look crappy. The music is fairly forgettable too.

After taking my 100% away when Iceborne came out, I finally got it back! Woo!

Addicting game with lots of quality of life changes that will help new users experience what makes Monster Hunter so amazing. Every weapon type is an entirely new experience and the locales in this game are simply the most stunning ever seen in a Monster Hunter game. Even more enjoyable with friends, and easy to find lots of small goals to set for ones self and many challenges to surmount.

No game is perfect of course, but I feel a lot of the issues this game used to have are mostly fixed now, barring the few knit picks I initially had. Menu draw time being slow instead of instant, character movement taking too long to hit full speed, some input windows for attacks being too long, a couple weapons being incapable of running after sheathing for a full second, decoration reward tables overlapping too much, etc. Lots of small things. The big one, however, is that the online story mode is a mess, and you are not allowed to bring friends into quests or expeditions during the story until you see the cutscenes. Then your friends can join. Unskippable. The tutorials do a poor job of directing players to where they need to be, especially out on quests and expeditions. Also unskippable. Oh, clutch claw is a fun too, but the way they designed it into the game stinks because it's pretty much mandatory for G Rank, that really sucks for the light weapons, and even a couple heavy ones, in spite of the buffs it got.

This all sounds bad, but in the end, now is the best time to get into Monster Hunter. This is the easiest to pick up game in the series, and you can't really get an idea for how amazing it is until you really sink your teeth into it. The best parts are even easier to get to now because of the streamlined design. It's hard to describe what this game feels like, but it feels more deliberate, weighty, and viscerally cathartic than Dark Souls. Dodge rolls are not spammable and require great timing, there are bosses everywhere, multiple bosses at once, even, and fighting feels so damn good. Even moreso, no 2 weapon types play the same, even if they share visual similarities. (Lance and Gunlance, or Light Bowgun and Heavy Bowgun, for example.)

You'll blow through low rank/high rank story mode in about 20-30 hours, but thankfully, the story mode is but a giant tutorial for the real deal of Monster Hunter. With Iceborne added on top, the game is even more massive, and G Rank is challenging, full of content, and all around a perfect expansion to the original game. The right combinations of amazingly satisfying combat, rewards, and new challenges and opportunities will incentivize you to play for many more hours after the story "ends."

P.S. If you are wondering why this game received so many bad reviews early on, a combination of the Steam Friends update and Capcom not anticipating a large volume of users combined to create some pretty horrid online stability, and almost nobody could play together. THANKFULLY this has been fixed for the vast majority of users.

P.P.S. This game got a weird shadow update recently that breaks some particle effects for a small number of folks. I have an older system, so I had to regress my graphics card driver to make it work again. If you get these weird effects and it causes the game to crash, I recommend either dropping video quality to the minimum when watching cutscenes, getting a mod to skip them outright, or regressing your graphics drivers. It's primarily the cutscenes that break when the graphics go awry.

Tried it because it is free. Simplistic dungeon crawler with ugly art, lackluster music, and some uninteresting sound effects. No charm, no wonder, the structure is very rigid and predictable, if there are any puzzles in it, I pray they are more interesting than the combat and exploration. There was hardly any discovery to be had, and combat was in almost every room. Misses the point of being a dungeon crawler

Game encourages microtransactions, not mandatory, but not a good sign for a free game of this caliber either. Not going to pay in microtransactions for a game that doesn't grab me, to hope that this money will make the game better in the future is foolishness.

There are many dungeon crawlers out there that are better than this one, most if not all much older too. Play those instead.

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Wow, I hate horror adventure games, they are the worst, I can't tell you how difficult it was to go forward in this game. The atmosphere and the music and the setting all ooze of eerieness, mystery, and dread. Enough dread to fuel a million nightmares, I hated every moment, and yet I couldn't put this game down. I'm constantly on edge as I find letters and news clippings alluding to the story of Blackwood Manor, and any change in tone or music causes me to freeze up so hard that my ass balls into a fist.

Hopefully you realize this game does an excellent job of being truly horrifying, and my claims of it being 'the worst' are simply me being a big baby and knee jerk reacting to the scary content being fed to me. I may have not been having fun in any form of the word, but I was absolutely enthralled, immersed, in this game.

Being an adventure game, you'll be expected to rummage around in first person and collect every odd doo-dad one can encounter and vigorously rub it against whatever looks suspicious. Early on, there's almost no real direction for what you need to find, but being thorough is the easiest path to success. The later parts of the game do a much better job of directing you, although vaguely, to what it is you must do. Thankfully, most puzzles are self contained to a point, with the only obvious offenders being the combo to the secret lockbox, and turning on the water. How was one expected to know you needed to turn on the water from the cellar?

Despite that caveat, the inability to use an HD resolution, and the odd edge panning controls, there are no other egregious problems I encountered as I played. The additional chapter included in the Director's Cut is short, but still very much worth a look.

I wish I had played this game much sooner. It was an amazing experience. But seriously? All I wanted to do was Nope on out of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ville. I hope this is enough to encourage other horror fans to give this game a whirl. The game tends to go on sale for a very meagar price, so grab it when you can!

SUMMARY
The combat is far more in-depth than one once assumed, the game cheats to ensure you remain challenged, and the game always has a new mechanic/trick/challenge up its sleeve that keeps fighting interesting. Lightly strategic, and amazingly visceral combat to boot. As of this writing on 10/3/14, it's $0.99, how could it hurt to buy this?

STORY TIME
Well, what an unusual situation I am in with this game: I had the 'misfortune' to play the demo on another platform (probably the 360) a long time ago, and the demo only included the first 2 acts in stage 1. I played it, deemed it a mashy beat em up with no depth, and disregarded it entirely. Come 4 or so days ago, I notice it on sale for $0.99. I decided to buy it, not entirely remembering what it was that i disliked about it.

I finish the first 3 acts of stage 1, and felt the same way. Then I played the 4th act, The Swordsman. Suddenly, the game wears its true colors, and mashes me into a fine paste. Of course I get mad, decide the game was cheating, as it was indeed breaking a lot of rules it had already established. After a dozen or so tries, I win, and that should have been the end of it. But I keep playing either way.

Act 2 is already off to a good start, wailing on me mercilessly, but despite the game going out of the way to break rules, it slowly dawns on me that it probably wouldn't stand a chance if it didn't. An hour of arduous play later, I beat the 2nd Stage. Now I'm hooked.

VERDICT
This game is really really FUN. The demo I played so long ago did an excellent job of selling itself short. The light content the game gave me convinced me the combat was overly simplistic; not the case. The BASIC COMBOS are very unique, in that both directional inputs, timing, and the speed at which they are pressed changes your attacks. This allows for a very fluid, natural feeling attack sequence that is wildly variable based on user input, as well as highly adaptable to the enemy. The sounds they chose for some of these strikes are so viscerally satisfying, you're likely to react quite strongly at the earth shattering, bone crunching, lighting-esque chi strikes you'll be landing on the enemy.

The COUNTERS/GUARD BREAKS are a neat mechanic too, it's a little cumbersome at first, because the Hold X commands are not easily understood at first, but how it works, is if the enemy is trying to do light parries, the hold X command is a rapid flurry that aims to overwhelm them and break their guard. At any time, if they can't, or wont, let their guard break, they'll go into a full guard, the jumping attack (A), is used to break their guard in this case. Depending on the enemy, you can get anywhere from a few hits to a full blown series on them. This system, I realize, is meant to punish mashing. Yes, I said it, mashing is bad in this game. Mashing some situations is damn fun, but the game demands carefully chosen attacks. A layer of, dare i say, STRATEGY. That or PATIENCE.

The enemy can use your PARRY and CHI STRIKES as well. The white glow is their parry, and the red glow is the wind up of their strongest attacks. You can bait their parries with carefully placed strikes, and CRUSH their powerful attacks with your own, giving huge damage, stunning everyone in the fight, and giving that oh so wonderful thunderous crashing sound that I crave so very very much.

What surprises me is this game, despite pulling so many stops on me already, still finds ways to make each new fight even more interesting than the last, new enemies, new challenges, new mechanics to learn. On top of that, every act is a small, self contained fight that is short, but exciting to play, and easy to jump into and attempt.

ISSUES
I daresay my BIGGEST QUALMS with this game so far are the lack of integrated settings (you have to go outside of the game to adjust your video settings), the lack of the ability to remove the letterbox that forces 16:9 ratios, even on 4:3 ratios, the lack of a quick restart option in the pause menu (Really frustrating Stage 2 boss, I'm looking at you), having to sit and wait for your body to settle before you can continue (2nd stage boss again), and unusually high costs of items. I suppose the latter most is resolved by playing on all difficulty levels, but I'm still practicing here, give me a break.

A game very much inspired by the games of old, La-Mulana is a rather challenging SotN style, or more accurately, Maze of Galious style action adventure game, with a strong focus on exploration and puzzle solving. Players are expected to learn from repeated deaths and make steady progress over time.

Unlike many games nowadays, La-Mulana is very open ended and permits the players to advance in any direction they see fit to a point, as there are select key items that will open vast new portions of each area to the player.

So to put it bluntly, I love exploring, challenges, using my own wit to succeed, and going wherever I please, whenever I feel like it. They just don't make games quite like this anymore and maybe this is a key factor to my enjoyment to this game, but the style and aesthetic of the game appeals to me as well, as it makes me reminisce on the games I love from my youth. NIGORO made an amazing game, and I feel you should help them out.

Already cleared the game several times now, still finding neat details, and hidden items and areas I hadn't seen before. Oh yeah, I like a little bit of history too, and a lot of this game's ruin design is steeped in it. Its enjoyable to me to stop at something unusual or unknown to me and research it a little. La-Mulana is a game that just keeps on giving.

Be prepared to take notes/take pictures, keep your eyes peeled, and think differently. Also die a lot. Still waiting for La-Mulana 2 as we speak.

All the depth, intrigue, and strategy of a fighting game, without any of the steep demand for player skill in move execution. The in-jokes are going to fly over most people's heads if they don't have any knowledge of fighting games or its community, and the rather simple flash designs might not appeal to everyone.

Even still, good fun to be had with friends, and a good tool for teaching players the mindsets that come with more competitive gaming, as doing well in this game will require that one develops some savvy for the finer points of the game's design. The best part is it does it all without overwhelming the player with tutorials or even making itself remotely obvious. Just simply playing the game a lot will get users to recognize patterns and see opportunities that would have otherwise been lost behind the usual execution barrier.

Technicolor LSD incarnate. Play Pac-Man without it being slow and methodical, but rather, super fast and exciting. You like trains? Make Trains, Ghost Trains. Then eat the trains. Then eat some dots, and then some fruits, then more trains.

Great for short sittings, and fun enough to hook you for hours.