Recent reviews by blue

very easy to see why people made this game their entire personality (not me because i am a scared coward)

a better game than 1. classes are more diverse and fun, biomes are more well-thought out, bosses are flat out more interesting

however "farm gold, die, rinse and repeat" is still the loop and after a bit it began to irk me personally. still a good game overall, just not one i see myself revisiting overall too much

it's still fine all those years later but i find it frustrating more than anything else. dying is a core part of roguelikes to spend meta progression acquisition, but usually coupled with upgrades you get in the run. rogue legacy doesn't feature any of the latter, so it's you as you start the run and you don't really get anything else. which on its fine is whatever but the second half of the game is not particularly fun to grind your teeth against so it becomes a chore really quick. leaving it as a positive because i do think there's something to like but i did at the end just find it a bit tedious to start a new run over and over to become ever so slightly more powerful each time.

yeah its space harrier. yeah its very easy. yeah its cheap. yeah sure buy it if you want to why not

an excellent end to the trilogy. firing on all cylinders at every turn. fixes the issues i had with 1 (light on the story) and 2 (did not iterate too much on the combat). tons of new backgrounds and areas to traverse - even if it doesn't add anything to the gameplay - is very welcome too.

the new combat additions in the combo system and the assists are very welcome and feel fun to play around with. my favorite of the 3 games by far. thank you for your service cyberconnect2, hope we get to see more of your own personal projects inbetween whatever other games y'all will be working on!!

utterly confused by how this game bombed critically & how it keeps being compared to "souls" game. darksiders 3 is darksiders refined to a very decent extent, and it's the one of the "main" trilogy i found the most fun to play.

3 is a mix of a decent time with the combat & fun exploration. it did away with the most tedious parts of 1&2 - drawn out empty levels, meandering traversal that is there only to pad the game, and repeated puzzles that become exhausting to play. a lot of people cite 1 or 2 as their favorite but they both... lack a bit? 1 repeats the puzzles too much and 2 pads the game out a lot by asking for extended climbing segments and moving about vast empty bits of level and world (very pretty but empty). 3 goes for a bit more compact approach on all fronts, much more focused on the combat and the exploration. there's still puzzles, they are lighter, they are more sparse, and that is very welcome.

Fury is also my favorite horseman of the four, the writing of the game is actually sensible and gives her an actual character arc, which neither War nor Death had (arguably Strife shows a bit of depth but it's not the most story-heavy game). Banger design on the Sins all around too

it's a decent time overall!! as i said, utterly puzzled by the negative reaction the combo of 3&Genesis got because it's the more fun half of the series.

for actual criticism : the game doesn't perform all too well technically. frame drops and long load times. wasn't a deal breaker to me but i know people care about that kind of stuff

Could not get the game to run at a resolution where I could actually *see* the whole game on a Steam Deck. UI and HUD are just, cut off. makes for a frustrating game to play. it runs fines and starts but that's about where it ends.

more of a warning review because I fully realize asking a 21 year-old game to be patched to work on steam deck is a little silly.

the level design is fine. the combat is okay. the bosses are alright.

but wow is every normal enemy just a total pain to fight. truly kills any sort of drive to go anywhere. i can forgive an enemy archetype being annoying in a game but somehow they totally nailed the feeling that every enemy has to be annoying. jumping across the screen to command grab you, dropping down on your head to instantly poison you, literally kickflipping to follow you ACROSS SCREENS... part of why souls games are cool is that once you know what you're doing you can bypass enemies, but this game just decided that no actually everything must hunt you to the ends of the earth.

and that makes it miserable on any sort of run back. total buzzkiller.

absolutely insane video game. could not tell you anything that happened when i played. my legs are ok.

a surprisingly tight package? the biggest issue with darksiders 1&2 was that they were way too drawn out. a good idea fundamentally but areas are too big, enemy density never matches quite what it should, overworld is too big for its own good, and so on

but in genesis, the greatly reduced scope plays greatly in its favor. combat segments are more frequent and decent fun, the game handles well, and there's way less padding with unnecessary traversal because the team working on those games did not know how to make a whole level fulfilling in terms of enemy/puzzle/traversal balance.

game definitely feels better playing as Strife as a pseudo twin-stick shooter. War is here which cool I guess but he already got his game and even with his new abilities here Strife still feels more fun.

i guess i'd have 2 things to really criticize : the map isn't super helpful (the geometry matches but it doesn't rotate, which often left me a bit puzzled which direction i was going vs the map, especially annoying for collectibles) and the camera is a bit too far out (makes it hard to tell the finer details of what's going on sometimes). overall, minimal complaints on that front but still something i wanted to mention