Recent reviews by blue

it certainly feels like a product of its time. i don't think what's here is truly terrible, but honestly there are way better games you could be out there playing if you want some sort of looting game with a story. humor is... fine, presentation is ok, but there's just nothing outstanding here unless you want a deathspank game, or to see what kinda games they were putting in game bundles 10-15 years ago.

a very fun and surprisingly deep game.

starting with the story - it's very light, but got several laughs out of it. it knows what it wants to do and be and runs with it, and very well at that

for the gameplay - your options are very deep, and can seem overwhelming, but it's very fun. and also decently challenging, your knowledge of the game will be tested, you cannot just bumble your way through fight, you'll have to have a decent handle on how the mechanics and characters work. and because of how the game works, means two runs won't be the same

presentation is also pretty good - overworld models are very minimalist, but the whole thing just grows on you. it also looks pretty cute!

would strongly recommend the game if you like srpgs!

felt oddly frustrating to play. rather, the intro was an alright time, then i got to an island where i kept getting walloped by enemies coming out from blind spots, over and over, until i learned their positions to stop getting my ass handed to me. unfortunately, the whole process was an arduous hour and a half of trial and error that i got no pleasure from. maybe there's something here for someone willing to push forward more, but the game did not make me want to play it more.

Nikola Tesla is so cool. I wish he was real.

really fun(ny) game, movement is cool, action is insanely over the top. i would argue worth it even at full price, a lot of love and care went into the game and it shows. it's insanely unhinged but works in its favor very well.

More Lords of Shadow 2. If you liked the game, I'd recommend buying it. Not terribly long - about an hour. Would recommend picking it up on sale though.

immensely cool game. very pretty. i have no idea how to do anything. desperately scrolling down a walkthrough at all time to figure out what to do. i love it. i have no idea what is going on. great time. it's a saga game in disguise and i fell for kawazu's tricks.

for steam deck : game doesn't work out of the box and will need tinkering to prevent crashes. there's some fixes on the steam discussions to prevent crashes. they pertain to audio codecs.

a pretty solid game all around, gameplay is a bit more streamlined making it closer to a true metroidvania, as oppposed to the first game which was closer to a 2d dark souls game.

weapon play is pretty sick, movement is slick, boss design is a bit more interesting, the soundtrack is top notch, and the iconography is still as undecipherable as ever. good game, u should play it

I am a Lords of Shadow 1 hater. It's a game, better than some, but damn is it tedious. On the other hand, 2 is actually somewhat fun to play. I don't hold any strong opinion on the actual story, but playing through the game is, to my greatest shock, actually fun. I don't think this game deserves any accolades, but it visibly shows how MercurySteam grew and continues to grow as a company, because they just made Lords of Shadow 2 an actual game.

Any sort of review I have about this game is kind of meta because I came in expecting a terrible mess of a game - the game did bomb critically and commercially, and a lot of the criticism was about the setting and the story but ultimately those are... fine? Yeah it's not exactly "Castlevania" but at least the game managed to retain my attention. Which is infinitely more than I can say about the first entry. In all honesty it drives me insane how much people glaze the first game, especially in story, because it's a NOTHING game. You get barely anything, you get a 25 minute cutscene before the final boss, and then credits roll.

Even one of the game's "worst" parts - stealth segments - aren't even that bad. They don't even last long enough to be called stealth in the first place, if you ask me!!!

I personally think the best part is the variety of panoramas the game offers this time around - Lords 1 is very, terribly, insanely bland. I could not remember segments of most levels. 2 however does vary it up, and despite people screaming about how it's not very "Castlevania", by the time this game released we did have entries with guns and hell even part of a modern village with cars. So like, I dunno, the ambiance more than makes up for any criticism I would personally have in terms of visual offerings for the levels. Same for the bosses - they were terribly dull in 1, a lot of them being non-interactive for large chunks of time. And even the worst offenders in this game are heads and shoulders above that game's mediocre offerings.

For actual criticism, even with a SSD, load times are kind of long (and are very present with decontamination chambers, elevators, etc), and the combat is still not exactly award-winning, but at least I found myself using more than just basic air and ground attacks. For character-focused action games, I don't think this should be your first go-to game ever but as a curiosity, sure why not give it a spin.

Overall this is like the most okay game you can possibly play. Definitely emblematic of the end of that generation of consoles and the beginning of the new one, but at least it's a video game that didn't make me angry at it out of sheer tediousness. I would rather replay this game 4 times than ever touch Lords of Shadow 1 ever again.

Purely for single player, leaving a negative review to protest because this clearly should've been Chronicles. You can click the tab in the campaign menu and it takes you to a... Chronicles-like menu to browse the 3 new campaigns.

I have no opinion on the balance and 3K being ranked civs, but just from a single-player point of view, I do not understand the push to make this seem like it's part of the "main" game. Simply adding a tab would alleviate the biggest gripe I have with the presentation.

Other than that, it's a DLC with 5 civs and 3 campaigns. Decent in terms of content, definitely tainted by the poorer presentation. Someone somewhere made a weird push to not make this Chronicles that I do not understand.