Recent reviews by cysgu

Combat is fun when it gets hectic, though if you've got good builds then fights will be over in seconds so you don't experience the chaos. If you have bad builds, fights will drag on for unreasonably long times so you do get to experience the bullet hell chaos, but now you're spending forever fighting.

A lot of unlocks feel like slow burners, there isn't much instant gratification where you got really far into a run so now you unlock a ton of new stuff. Even clearing a run nets you a hundred or so of the hub currency, which could unlock a few new weapons or maybe one new outfit.

Fishing kinda sucks, mechanically it's kinda nonexistent and you need bait you can buy during runs if you visit an item shop room. But why would you buy expensive bait so you can fish once when you could just buy chips and hearts to help you clear the run?

Basebuilding... exists. Resources to craft new stuff is slow to obtain during runs, and item bonuses mean you're probably just doing to spam the same items to give you buffs instead of making anything nice. Really needs work, especially with QoL when it comes to managing your base.

Tutorials are basically nonexistent so there's a lot of trial and error, some rooms can be extremely useful but cryptic or stuff you want to avoid at all costs (sometimes potentially costing you a lot of coins or your entire run).

There's some good variety in terms of room design. Challenge rooms, parkour rooms, chase sequence rooms, miniboss rooms, and a really fun fairground room with three minigames that are pretty enjoyable to do (while offering some good rewards to boot). Some rooms are filler, or only situationally useful.

Right now the story (though a bit confusing to follow) is incomplete. You get a second loop to go through which adds one extra boss and then it just kinda ends with no extra post credit dialogue. There is a bit of a cliffhanger so i'm guessing early access and we'll get more.

I felt like I got my money's worth and i'm happy to see where this goes when I check it out in the future. I'm giving it a thumbs up but with the caveat that you should be okay with some bugs, messy translation and a fair amount of trial and error when it comes to mechanics and content.

I want to recommend this game so much, it's so unique, so fun. It's got great music, art looks clean and the gameplay is extremely tight and polished. Lack of optional game modes aside, it's generally a good time.

But there's a severe problem that has been affecting a portion of the playerbase that just seems to get swept under the rug by both the playerbase and the devs, and that's rubber banding.
It's obviously something to do with packet loss and the games inability to handle it, but if affected your character will just run in place and reset to the position the Omega Strikers server last received. This can just be shy of a second, or it can last several.

For some people, they might only get it once or twice a match, while others (like myself) it's a consistent problem that happens several times a minute every single match. For a game that's fast paced, based on reactions and being able to move around in response to (and predicting) a quick object, it's honestly a complete deal breaker. Especially when the only content actually available is mostly just ranked as there's a complete lack of matchmaking outside of it.

The worst of all is the general community reaction to this problem, and the lack of devs acceptance of it. The community either seem to leave, live with it or mostly just sweep it under the rug and pretend it doesn't exist whenever it's brought up. Those that do will often accuse the player of having poor internet. Let me say just now, my internet isn't bad, I have spent a good deal of time fault finding and trying to make sure everything cannot be down to me.
I've tested my internet connection pretty harshly, far harsher than this game will ever stress it. I've made sure that my computer is cleaned up, drivers and device fully updated with no background processes potentially causing issues. Even made sure that it's not other devices causing a problem, taking everything off except my PC. Turning down graphics just in case, trying out different servers.

Nothing fixes this issue. I shouldn't have to be fault finding this, I should be able to pick up a game and have it just work. This isn't my job to do it, but the developers. It's only this game that I have issues with, and it's honestly draining all fun out of what is meant to be an enjoyable experience.
Last night (and today) the rubber banding got so bad that I went from wanting to spend money on the game to outright uninstalling.

For the devs, this problem isn't even on their known problem page. It's not a new problem, this is something that has been complained about for months, if not longer.
I've heard rumblings from the few people who do seem to acknowledge this problem that the developers are apparently looking to servers so that this isn't an issue. That's great and all, but i'm playing right now.
If that's genuinely true, please make an article on your website detailing such, provide users with advice on how they can try to fix it in the meantime. At least some readily available communication that this problem has been acknowledged and that it's being taken seriously.

Maybe one day I can come back to this once this problem has been fixed, update my review and change it to an easy thumbs up. But until this issue that's making the game actually unplayable and I cannot recommend anyone pick this up until that's been resolved.
Sure, it might not happen to you, and that's great if it doesn't. But the problem does exist and it can kill the experience.

I'd be lying if I said Team Reptile knocked this one out of the park, there's some big issues that i'll address later in the review.
And honestly, even though i'm giving this the thumbs up i'd be lying if I said this game was anything higher than a 7.5/10.
But i'd also be lying if I said I wasn't very excited for the future of Team Reptile, as what we've got here is mostly an extremely solid foundation that i'd love to see built on with a Bomb Rush Blaze.

What we've got here is a spiritual successor to the likes of extreme sports games like Tony Hawks, and naturally Jet Set Radio (more Future than the original though). Be mindful that this isn't as arcadey, outside of some challenges you won't find any time limits and instead are plonked into a map and told to graffiti away, grind some rails and beat some challenges. Once you do that you unlock the big two minute score off challenge, then repeat for 5 acts total.

You can switch between bikes, skateboards and rollerskates but they all share the same controls and mechanics, so this is mostly an aesthetic change outside of one optional, but recurring pretty awful unlockable door mechanic that requires you to be on a bike and then wait outside of it. I don't know why they exist, as there doesn't seem to be any doors for the other options so unless you like riding a bike then congratulations, you don't really have to do anything. Otherwise find a local character swap area and get a bike out.

Throughout each act you'll go to a different map to take on a new crew, and these can vary in quality. I feel like the earlier maps, mostly those used in act 1 and 2 are the best as they feel the most tightly designed and well packed. Once you get to act 3 you'll go to a mall and, well... I think it's universally agreed that the mall just isn't good. At all.
It's an extremely large, empty space for no reason. Some of the more annoying areas of the mall have layered sections with little means of getting back up if you fall (a problem that is not exclusive to this map) and the worst of the map has mandatory timed platform sections which will involve waiting and if you fall, climbing all the way back up. For a game that very prominently showcases speed and style, I didn't think standing still while I wait for a platform to move in front of me would be on the menu.

It's at the tail end of act 3 that makes the police that chase you from something you can ignore to something that's just outright annoying, and sadly this will never go back to how it was even when you've beaten the game. More on that later.

The map issues don't really improve past act 3 either, they kind of remain too big and bloated. Act 4's map starts pretty promising and more of a return to form, before eventually revealing those ugly layered sections where you'll frequently be falling off or jumping to lower areas, then having to make the boring and repetitive trek back up because they only thought to put up one teleporter that doesn't really save that much time. 5's map is kinda okay, but again it just feels too big and spaced out for its own good.

Throughout the game you'll come across a grand total of three bosses and some minor combat encounters, and these are... Well, quite frankly they're terrible. I'd actually argue the game would have been better with them removed. The ones that appear at the end of act 4 and the final boss are particularly bad due to forcing you to only damage them through very specific means, which is extremely repetitive and often involves a lot of waiting around for no reason.
The final boss is an on rails (quite literally) section where you're expected to jump between multiple rails, but the camera is forced on the boss at all times so it really makes movement just frustrating.
There is an extremely basic combat system you can use to fight the police after you, but outside of one or two mandatory instances this is counterproductive as they'll just infinitely respawn and all it'll serve is increasing your heat meter and cause more annoying disruptions. And dear lord does the heat meter build too quick, you're safe for a bit whenever you're doing a map as part of the story, but once you can build heat you'll instantly get 1 star from doing any form of graffiti and then build an additional star each act of vandalism of fighting back against the police (which you will need to do for some particular threats as they're too annoying to leave alone).
You can lose heat by going into toilets and changing outfits, but I don't want to change outfits... I like how I look, and I don't want to feel forced to change to an outfit I dislike just to stop an annoying horde.

From act 3 onwards, even one star police will become extremely annoying to deal with, so putting down a single bit of graffiti and then being swarmed with some really annoying stuff is a pretty negative to the game. I would ask that the devs maybe tone down heat buildup a little in the name of fun.

Controls are for the most part tight enough, though the in game map and menu system is although stylistic, pretty atrocious and I couldn't see a single instance of a minimap to help weed out those last graffiti spots. I'd have to frequently pause the game. The game also does a pretty poor job of explaining a lot of the systems or mechanics, or when it does it explains them way too late or doesn't put enough emphasis on them. There's a rather unique way of racking up your score but I do not recall being actually told it in words until act 3-4? At that point I had already gone through several challenges which could have really used that.

There's a story here if you're interested, but honestly I didn't care much. I did care when my character was forcibly switched at the end, but I was thankful you can get the original character back post credits by going to a dance pad.

So i've just been extremely critical of this game, but i'm still giving it a thumbs up and rating it about 7.5/10, why is that?

Well, for one the game is absolutely charming and has a phenomenal soundtrack outside of a singular track which is honestly raw garbage (Please for the love of God the moment you hear "I've got my nails done" in the playlist in act 2, switch the song and save yourself the suffering).

It's also for the most part, a pretty tight and polished experience. I noticed a few hiccups here and there and maybe one crash and bug, but it's been the most polished launch experience i've played in a long time.
The first two acts are honestly really great and show a good future if Reptile will build on the foundation of this game. Tight map design populated with plenty of grind rails, wall rides and spots for tricks is when the game is at its most fun, and those early maps definitely deliver that.

I feel like it heavily falls off in terms of quality, and the pretty terrible bosses and map design are some of the worst of this, but it's all still very much playable despite some frustrating moments.
But most importantly, this represents a promising future for Team Reptile's new endeavour and potential for a revival of Jet Set Radio. If through player feedback, Reptile can take what makes the game good and build on it while weeding out the bad then we could be in for something very special.

Just please, no more bosses or combat in Bomb Rush Blaze.

I wish steam had a neutral review, because on the one hand I want to recommend this but there's also some major issues going into it that I feel need to be warned beforehand. I won't bore you with too many details because quite frankly everyone else has reviewed the game far better than i'm, capable of... Instead, I will outline my issues with the game and why i've left this review, and I hope that you take it into consideration before buying it.

This game oozes charm, style and it's generally written nicely to present a fun experience. The soundtrack is outstanding, artstyle clean and interesting. And the gameplay honestly starts extremely strong too, the whole reverse tower defence system and coffee minigame are great and I was looking forward to seeing how the game would build on these.
...Sadly, it's these two mechanics in question that are why i'm leaving a negative review. Not because I don't recommend, I really do, but because I cannot recommend the game outside of some very specific caveats and conditions.

First let's talk about the game's core gameplay system, its reverse tower defence mode. Because quite frankly, even on normal it quickly becomes punishingly hard. The developers clearly have specific builds and card combinations in mind and if you have not discovered them or do not want to use them then you're really, really not going to have a good time. By the time you've reached the second story boss, unless you're running one of these combinations then these fights are going to grind down into an unbearable, unenjoyable slog at best and an impossible fight at worst.
Coupled with limited time windows to complete stories and character interactions or personal stat boosts taking up potential currency grind time I could genuinely see instances where people effectively lock themselves out and are required to reload earlier saves or drop the difficulty.
I inherently disagree with this design, if you're like me and enjoy finding a team that works and then comfortably sitting on it for a while? You're in for a bad time. If you just want to experiment and not be beholden to the very obvious combos and teams the developers had in mind? You're in for a bad time. These encounters are designed in a manner that stifle expression and freedom, players should be free to explore their own creative deck builds or express their teams in any manner they desires and still be able to scrape through on the standard difficulty.

So, why not just drop the difficulty (which you can do freely)? Well, because easy is effectively "story mode" and sucks almost all interaction from this game mode. It's too easy, you're either forced to adopt teams the developers had in mind and struggle through some extreme difficulty spikes on normal or bore yourself to death with being unkillable on easy. There's no inbetween, and that's just poor balancing that needs to be addressed through the inclusion of more difficulty options. A fight should feel fair and engaging, and you're either forced with boring or ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ (god forbid knowing what hard is like).

So that's my first major warning, is that if you're looking at this game and just want a comfy time without the game being trivially easy? Look elsewhere, because a game that has an achievement for resetting a stage at least 10 times before completing it, that over 30% of players own is indicative that the developers really need to learn how to balance their difficulty appropriately.

The second issue I have is in regards to the coffee making aspect. After all, you run a coffee shop, and you make friends and will often be required to make brews for them. However this aspect of the game feels extremely neglected, and the writers really fumbled on this one.
You are heavily encouraged by the game to go off order, make alterations to the drinks, season them differently to suit your friends tastes. This will likely then come with a healthy friendship boost that allows you to skip some gift giving or timewasting with them in order to continue their side stories.

The issue with this, is that the game never actually even hints to what these characters actually like. It's never sewn into the dialogue naturally, or at all for that matter, and the amount your can customise your beverages is pretty extensive.
So what it feels like is that you're fumbling around in the dark, and making a choice to just ignore what the game is encouraging you to do and make their drink normal for a standard friendship boost, or randomly guess what you think they might like at which point you're probably going to get it wrong and miss that friendship boost. And in a time management game, that feels like you're being punished because the game isn't rewarding you for reading what the character is saying and using intuition to customise their drink.

If anything, the game punishes this. And this is where I have to give my second major warning and complaint about the game.
See, one of the characters you can befriend mentions that people gift her cakes and snacks (in a positive tone) and this is before you ever make her a drink. Then when she does order a drink, she orders a pretty sweet one.
Me, thinking that the game had finally dropped a hint about what the character liked, I seasoned it with chocolate to make it a bit sweeter. Nope, wrong answer, no friendship gain for you.
Frustrated I reloaded a save to experiment and made her the drink normally. At this point she is happy with what you've provided and mentions lemons with her drink and how she loves it.

Okay that's great, because you actually have two different options for lemon when seasoning. So I reload and try again, putting a lemon slice with her drink. Wrong answer, no friendship gain for you.
Reload, and then try lemon juice instead? Wrong answer, no friendship gain for you.
This entire coffee making system feels extremely half baked and poorly done, and the writing team really fumbled when it comes to things like this. If you wanted to pick up a game so you can pay attention to what people are saying, then try and make a coffee with alterations based on what you picked up? Wrong game, because the game will never say what they like and if they do then I guarantee it'll be the wrong choice because the writers didn't stop and think "hey we said this character likes lemons and there's multiple lemon customisation options, should we maybe reward players for serving that?". They won't, and it's extremely frustrating that they don't.

Overall I still recommend the game... ish. I'm still going through it and if more complaints like these continue to crop up this could quickly go from a maybe to a no. But right now, these two are something you should really be cautious of before picking it up.

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EDIT: Further thoughts down in the comments.

This isn't a bad game, even if it's been stuck in alpha for almost 10 years now and feels like it's barely made any tangible progress. There are times that this game feels like a complete unity asset flip and a repetitive grind and honestly i've been completely fine with that, it's a game that's very fun with friends.

But I really dislike some of the changes they have made in their latest Alpha build, A21, and I feel like I need to use my recommendation here to speak out about it.

Too often does it feel like instead of providing new content, tightening the gameplay, giving variety to the player, that the devs feel the need to instead alter the progression structure. As others have mentioned there's a "vision" that the developers expect everyone to play and every change seems to serve that vision, usually at the detriment of everything else. The developers aren't interested in creating a fun sandbox experience where you can play how you want, but a game where you engage in exactly the vision they intend and straying from that is either extremely difficult or outright impossible.

Previous convenient and very simple gameplay loops have been either butchered or removed in order to effectively force players into playing exactly how the developers want you to play. Which honestly, is not a very fun way to play for a very long term.
Players getting XP from simple tasks (which accommodated base builders and resource gatherers), which you could then spend in levels of stuff to learn recipes? Nah, too easy that doesn't serve our vision. Instead if you want to learn new recipes (which you need for both survival and progression) you NEED to constantly loot locations and spam repeatable, identical quests in preset locations to hope you win RNG and pick up one of the like, 20 magazines and then hope you win RNG even more so you get the exact magazine you want. Got that magazine? Great, now read 99 more of them because the stuff that's even remotely fun or viable is hidden towards the very end.

Want drinking water? Well you used to be able to very easily find bottles of murky water from casual looting and then cook them to make clean water. Once you drank the bottle, you got an empty bottle and could just... refill it at a water source. Sure, you'd be refilling with murky water, but you'd just cook that and have an ever growing supply of empty glasses to trivialise an already boring hunger and thirst system that drains at your stamina.
Or if you invested into the cooking skill, you could just take those glasses and use yucca fruits to make extremely useful yucca juice.
...Now? Drinking doesn't give you the glass back, making water extremely scarce and making being thirsty (and the thirst mechanic in general) extremely frustrating and annoying. Your new source of clean water? Why these new water catchers of course... Only they take what feels like actual hours to get a single bottle of clean water and you can only craft them by buying filters from traders. And you can only get the currency to buy them by spamming these awful missions over and over and over again.

The developers have a vision, they want you to spend 80% of your time going to a trader, picking up a repetitive mission where you clear a bunch of pre-set zombies from a house where they always spawn in the same location. Then go back, claim your reward and repeat. And anything that doesn't serve that vision and allow you to not engage with the system or engage in it very little? Well, that's going to get nerfed or removed hard. It doesn't matter if it's to the detriment of the game and everyone's fun, because that's not what's a longer gameplay loop. Spamming missions for RNG rewards so you can get one very specific magazine you need, then doing that 100 times? That's the longer gameplay loop.

Instead of focusing on the actual issues with the game, like how it still looks like it's a unity asset flip half the time, like the sheer lack of variety of zombies, like how the game still has a general sluggishness and jankiness to it, like how half the mechanics in this game just aren't fun. We get minor visual updates and revamps to fun and functional systems to force you down the unfun route the developers have in mind for you.
And that wouldn't be an issue, if this game wasn't in alpha for like 10 years and still feels like it deserves to be in alpha for another 10 at this rate. I've heard of pushing to gold but even if Alpha 22 was released tomorrow that added 100% more polish, this still wouldn't deserve the tag of beta.

Please devs, just focus on the cool sandbox experience and let people have their fun. Stop nerfing and gimping core aspects because if people engage with it, then they might not engage with the setpieces you made for them.
I should be able to thrive in this game without having gone into a single house, just like I should be able to thrive without engaging in other systems. Just make a fun game, focus on the fun, add more content and then let people play the elements of the game that they want to play.
Instead of locking almost all existing recipes behind this RNG magazine spam, make new ones that make people want to go out and engage in it. Or maybe alternate recipes provided by the magazines to circumvent having to put levels into things. Just stop making the game less fun to force people into the repetitive grind vision you've got in your head.

Very good vibes and seemingly a lot of content for a demo.
I feel like the game is going to get a little grindy down the line (it already starts to a bit by the second biome) and from what i'm seeing the inability to further expand biomes you like after unlocking the next is a little upsetting... Hopefully that's something by the full release.

As it stands it seems to somewhat lack in the base building aspect but I'm hoping that's just because it's a demo.
But as the core gameplay loop seems to be exploit biome, move to the next and then repeat I wonder what would be the point in having a nice, core home base to come back to... Maybe if you expanded the initial island out a bit more, you could treat that as a sort of "hub" island and allow the player to hop between multiple biomes from there? I'm not sure if the game already does this, it started getting a bit grindy for my tastes right now so I dropped out.

I do appreciate putting such a comprehensive demo out though, at the very least it allows people to make an informed decision about if they want to buy the full game. Myself? Probably not straight away, though it'd be on the list of things to pick up during a sale.
You can't go wrong with trying the demo out, i'll recommend on that alone.

What I wanted:

A comfy mining/farming game with some cool exploration and maybe a few interesting boss fights.

What I got:

Digging up 10,000 identical slime tiles one at a time to stop them from respawning and stop my character from moving 0.01 mile an hour, all the while my tools keep breaking from durability that would make BOTW blush and my character hungrier than the average Ethiopian while constantly crying they're hungry because the hunger system was designed by someone who clearly hates fun.

Half of the stuff in this game is a chore that feels tedious to engage with, and the controls feel kinda imprecise and clunky. The kind of "i'm just going to let my character die instead of eating to reset hunger" tedium because eating food gains you barely any hunger back, food is far too few and far between and digging feels so garbage that I really don't want to engage in farming.

In games like this such as Minecraft, when you want to create safe areas to navigate through you pop down a few torches and it's done, the whole ordeal took 5 seconds and you can move on with your life.
In this, you come across a room of slimes, have to one by one clear them out in awkward combat because I can't find a dodge roll for the life of me (so instead it's just awkward hit, walk back a bit, hit, walk back a bit...). Then spend 20-30 minutes digging up slime all around you so they don't respawn anymore, though better make sure you brought like 6 shovels because lol they're all going to break before you're even half way done through the room. And make sure you brought like 20 mushrooms or you're prepared to die and walk all the way back, because otherwise your character is going to constantly screech that they need something to eat while you desperately fumble through the settings menu trying to find the option to either completely turn hunger off or slow the rate of hunger down because you're wondering why is it even in the game in this state and are the developers and people praising the game actually having fun with that mechanic.

Oh and then when you're done with that one room, dig a few more down and there's another completely identical one to waste your durability on. Enjoy!

Do I only have 2.8 hours in this game? Yes.
Did I enjoy it? Not a second.
Will I be coming back? Not unless there's been a massive overhaul, because what's here so far just isn't fun in the slightest.

The boss for act 2, 2X, made me smile and laugh so hard. I was unbelievably giddy from the sheer unexpected creativity that by the time it was over I was crying for 10 minutes straight, and I don't get emotional from games or movies.
The rest of the game is golden, but that's easily the peak of the game and it's cemented itself as one of my favourite moments of all of gaming. It's been over a day since i've finished the level and I can't stop thinking about it, nor get this grin off my face.

That alone is worth the price of admission, even if you don't like rhythm games.

If you're looking for a fun singleplayer experience, the game is somewhat enjoyable if you only do the bare minimum number of mostly optional challenge missions. However, it's also extremely short lived for its price and a lot of the gimmicks are going to run really, really dry really, really quick.
The floaty, imprecise and inconsistent physics it presents though, make any of the challenge missions (especially the more tedious ones) insanely frustrating, unrewarding and generally unfun. Like trying to enter the grand prix in a unicycle falling apart, you feel cheated because you're losing an uphill battle. These challenge missions can sometimes scream precision or speed in environments where you're provided little to none, making an extremely poorly designed and awful experience.
If you still intend to go through with some of these, avoid any of the par missions... They're usually AWFUL and suck all fun out of the game.

Though if you do manage to get the optional challenge missions done, what do you get? Some extremely boring figures in a museum that you'll never see again and get no use out of. Terrible rewards to go with terrible challenges.

If you're just going in this for the singleplayer then avoid this game outright. Even if it was 75% off, it's not worth it as you're getting an extremely short set of base challenges and if you ever go for the optional ones they're going to be so frustratingly awful that you'll wonder why you ever bought the game.


So what about the multiplayer experience?
Well, it's actually really great. With some extremely big caveats.

First of all there's no online multiplayer. At all. For a game of this price tag, during a global pandemic, that is outright unacceptable. You'll be stuck with Steam Remote Play which, for this game the quality of my remote play sessions (just for this game, generally i've had no issue with remote play before) have been pretty garbage.
However the 1v1 multiplayer itself has been really enjoyable and presents a nice amount of variety. Maybe they'll consider using that Apple Arcade money to actually put some online multiplayer in?

It's also limited to just the two players. For... Well, i've honestly not found a reason. Why there's no 4 way PvP i'll never know, but it's also a huge negative to the game.

So if you're interested in multiplayer, should you pick it up?
Yes... At a heavy discount, because it's sure as hell not worth the price tag it's asking for. Maybe wait for a sale, though i'd dip no lower than 60% off on this one unless you're REALLY desperate and none of your friends own it.

Overall I can't recommend unless it's on sale.

One of the best FPSes ever made, just prepare for frustration when you match with people who've prestige'd 100 times and know the game like the back of their hand.