Recent reviews by Minhs2

I'm writing this review with the expectation that you know what the series is about already, but if I were to describe the appeal in brief:

Skill based mastery through cooking dishes = pure personal satisfaction in an incredibly satisfying and tasty package.

I love this series, but burnt out pretty hard of CSD 2 which made me stay away from 3 for a good few years.

I think the first two games are still very good, but they both have entirely different parts I don't quite like. With CSD 1, you never needed to go out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself so it was just grinding out the same foods until you got really good at it. With 2, the grow a restaurant part of the game is deemphasized in favor of an arcadey a list of levels. 2 also removes any strategy and player freedom too since you're just forced to use the level's menus in the C4H mode which is the main content of the game.

CSD 3 is pretty much the perfect sequel to me in a series I love, it literally addressees everything I thought was just okay or bad with the game's formula and fixed it into something awesome. It's super rare that a game series that perfectly iterates upon the previous entries in the series, but for me, but CSD 3 managed to do that.

I don't want to give too many of the gameplay surprises away here, but the game somewhat takes the best parts of both 1 and 2 and put them together, while introducing new things to keep the pace of the game interesting and throw different, non-grindy challenges at you, while still giving you freedom in figuring out how you personally want to tackle them.

As per co-op, I 100%ed this game in 2 player co-op. Mind you, co-op mode makes this game exponentially easier to handle, and the co-op gameplay doesn't emphasize co-op too much beyond just having an extra player to help. Still, one of the better co-op experiences I've had in games despite the game not being entirely designed around that. You still have to coordinate something or else you might step on each other's toes, though the game might become too easy for some folks, which you can still choose to challenge yourself through picking a harder menu!

The Trackmania series as a whole is a very mechanically pure game, where your gameplay is dictated by just 4 buttons (or 2 buttons and a left right stick). It's very focused on time trials and honing in on fractions of a second optimizations on 20-60 second levels.

This game is a package of 4 environments, which all can be treated as kind of their own separate gameplay styles. It's a good value package to try out many different gameplay styles with ease.

This title is missing a lot of features from other Trackmania games, mainly pertaining to multiplayer and user generated content, but has the best single player campaign. Coming from someone who has 100%'ed every other Trackmania title's campaign.

I'd only recommend this Trackmania game over the others if you are interested in the single player campaign. Trackmania Nations Forever and Trackmania (2020) are both free and good ways to try the series out if you're unsure.

The normal campaign is definitely one of the more challenging ones in Trackmania, but strikes a nice balance between feeling difficult and feeling doable. It doesn't do the best job at teaching you fundamentals of the game, but you'll pick it up with more playtime.

After you 100% the base game, you unlock Super Solo, which is legitimately one of gaming's hardest challenges to complete. If you want to spend possibly thousands of hours mastering every tiny nuance of a seemly simple set of mechanics, than it's for you! It's extremely rewarding to do so, but of course that amount of dedication is not for everyone.

Even so, if you're looking for any kind of skill based time trial challenge, the single player campaign of this game will have you covered for a long long time.

I love hardcore puzzlers and Baba Is You may be the best one I've played. Without spoiling too much, the puzzles often require a certain twist that is not obvious at first and for maybe even a few hours, but when you realize what it is it's one of the best feelings ever when everything clicks all of a sudden.

I want to note how good the local co-op (meant for 2 players) is. Some serious patience by both players is required for it, but in the suffering through the co-op levels is a blast when I did it.

Besides that, lots to offer in single player as well, some very raw 2D platforming. 2D platformers are not my thing, so I didn't enjoy it too much due to how much filler (also could be a good thing if you're looking for value for money because there's lots of levels) there was in the game and a few other very minimal issues.

2D platforming fans definitely should consider purchasing.

In summary:
-It feels good to get better so quickly
(compared to other games like multiplayer competitive ones)
-Stellar soundtrack made just for this game
-Fair and fun difficulty that will make you love getting beat up for that sweet victory down the line
(More playtime if you suck like me /s)
-Very simple to execute actions and attacks
(I played with controller)
-Feels more like a duel more than boss fights against an unstoppable force
-Memorable characters
-Good story with moments of brilliance, but overall nothing exceptional
(you shouldn't play the game just for this)
-Speedrun mode

I absolutely suck at games, Furi definitely included; that being said, I really enjoy the difficulty in Furi and have beat the hardest difficulty and can beat all bosses in under an hour now. My original run took 9 hours, with the harder mode run adding another 7 hours for reference. You really get a lot better quickly and you can see it just by playing it a 2nd/3rd time and decimating these battles that once gave you a ton of trouble.

Because I suck so much at games, difficult games have to be done right for me to continue to play them, and Furi is great at bringing me back for more pain, because getting beat up is fun. Difficulty doesn't feel unfair, except for like 1 or 2 times in the harder difficulty. It can be hard finding the fun in getting rekt again and again sometimes, but you simply get so much better by just playing the game and it feels really good for relatively low effort.

The battles feel like a true duel, somewhat similar to when you duel someone in a fighting game, trying to get every advantage you can using reaction and knowledge, but the game isn't execution heavy like a lot of fighting games. This, and the fact that your enemies are AI with patterns that can be predicted to an extent, makes your improvement rapid.

The health system in this game is fair and encourages risky and quick play on phases you have learned well: it restores health of both you and your opponent when you lose a life, or you beat a phase. This means you do not have to worry about having a bad early fight, and not having enough health for the later phases.

The enemies all have a memorable design and battle; don't want to spoil them here.

The soundtrack was composed just for this game and shifts in moments of rising and falling action, which is a neat touch. The soundtrack alone is stellar on its own too.

NOTE: There is a free version that is hosted on GitHub that is usually the same version as the one on Steam.

This program saved a lot of headaches for me, been using it for years now even before the Steam release and it works perfectly for a very large number of games.

Battles are really fun for an RPG of this style. (I don't have much experience with them to begin with) You sometimes get that feeling of completely outplaying your enemies. It's long enough for its price, and short enough to not feel like a chore. You run pretty darn quickly which is awesome for getting right back into the action and not having death be an extremely boring affair.

Writing leans on the good side, is concise, and compliments the game well, but probably wouldn't hold on its own.

Music doesn't do anything special, but is all around stellar and awesome.

Overall a really good package for an ultra budget price.

Only big issue is how you might get stuck not knowing what to do next, but is usually good about helping you enough while not hand holding.

I don't really know how to recommend this without spoiling any of the clever bits of the game, but I do recommend it a lot.

If you like games where the gameplay takes a backseat for other ways of engaging the player then you may want to give it a shot.

Gameplay will be hit or miss and probably leans onto the boring side for some. It was okay for me, it had its moments, but other moments were not engaging as the rest of the game.

Concept is interesting and done well it's a walking and waiting simulator stealth puzzle adventure point and click exploration murder mystery story game with majora's mask groundhog day time loopery and metroidvania exploration elements /s

But the appeal falls into mostly solely the story and puzzle elements, where the puzzles will be hit or miss, as I said earlier.

Music is pretty stellar and thoughtful and is some prime electroswing.

I barely started to unlock the potential of this game and holy crap is it as amazing as I have been told.

Combat is so slick and powerful and the world is beautifully crafted. Starting off, it gets a little slow at times, but it isn't unbearable.

Will update review when I am done hours down the line. :P

Intense experience where you dive in and fight to the death.

I want to focus on the developers though, they have been releasing a steady stream of updates of bug fixes, content, and things the community has asked for. This is a pretty good handling of early access.

The BIG asterisk is how poorly the game is optimized.

The smaller asterisks are the added loot boxes and the clear intent on the developers prioritizing money over players in some other cases too, but if the game looks fun at the moment and you have a powerful enough rig, you can try it and keep it or refund it.

The do the goods outweigh the bads is up to you, I don't know. I have to give a verdict on recommendation, and I would say caution before you commit. The game might be destroyed in a day, but given its popularity that probably isn't a possibility anymore.