Recent reviews by epsik-kun

Nova Drift is an outstanding game.
It depends, though, what exactly will it be for you.

Maybe, it will just be a well-made top-down shooter to beat.
Or perhaps it will be a game to challenge your skills and reflexes.
Something that'll make you compete for the highest of scores?
Or something, you will find a speedrun category for.
Possibly, your favorite menuing simulator even.

But for me, Nova Drift is an addicting build maker that keeps giving you new and strange ideas, which might be ranging from cool to stupid, which might be viable or bad. Or maybe they are actually viable and that's you who's bad.
Either way, it doesn't really matter, because it will be fun. And you'll be having fun bringing those ideas to fruition or trying to do so.
You will find your own metric of success and you'll have loads of entertainment while at it.

Can't recommend this game enough.

It's a pretty good throwback to the old TMNT arcade games.
I'll be definitely playing more of it with my friends.

As a longtime fan of D**mRL, it was only natural that I'll be interested in its spiritual successor.
So, I've got this game as soon as it had hit open Early Access on Steam. Truth be told, I was somewhat disappointed initially.
The game was lacking several vital features of its predecessor and didn't provide enough to compensate for that.
However, while that was the case before, I don't think this is true now.
Over time, the game had evolved considerably, gaining more and more features of its own, becoming more robust and engaging.

• To address the elephant in the room, there's no diagonal movement anymore. It's gone, and it's a huge change.
  D**mRL had an absolutely amazing dodge system, which isn't something that gets transferred to Jupiter Hell.
  It's sad to see it go but the game is balanced around four-directional movement and it's balanced well, so after some time of getting used to it, it doesn't really feel like the game is lacking something.
  So, playing on a TKL keyboard is easy now, and you can even use a gamepad if you're into that.
  
• Amusingly enough, bug-driven corner shooting gameplay of D**mRL does evolve into the actual intended combat system of Jupiter Hell. So, the games do end up feeling peculiarly similar to each other, helping to scratch that itch.
  
• Some of the minor fussy stuff D**mRL had was deliberately left out. You can't unload weapons anymore, gift-dropping isn't a thing either. However, as a UV player in both games, I can't say that makes Jupiter Hell a less skill-reliant game.
  Yes, rolling the dice generally matters more, however, there's plenty of skill and knowledge-based decisions you'll have to make, allowing you to mitigate the RNG a lot.

So, aside from a possibly negative initial impression of Jupiter Hell simply not being more of the same, it otherwise does a great job of adapting and expanding most of the core elements that made D**mRL a great game.

All in all, Jupiter Hell is a great modern roguelike well worth trying out.

Honestly speaking, the main reason I'm still recommending this game is my respect for ADOM.

The game is very raw. There are bugs all over the place, soft-locking the game is a trivial task, and errors are quite frequent. Albeit, I do commend the game's ability to recover from errors as that's a preferable alternative to just crashing by far.
I'm not sure how to feel about the four-way movement. In Jupiter Hell, I was genuinely mad about that decision but that was due to the importance of the diagonal movement in DoomRL. In ADOM, the diagonal movement is not as important so while I don't like the change, I'm not mad about it either. Maybe streamlining the game controls for it to be playable on a laptop is a decent enough trade-off.
That being said, if the streamlining of the controls is something the game values, it still has to work on it.
The core of the gameplay - at least whatever is there - is good. The game feels good to play, and that's a good start. I'm a bit concerned that the shift seems to be towards simplification and streamlining of the gameplay - I believe ADOM shines in its complexity even if the game ends up feeling slower because of that - but on the other hand, looking at the already implemented interactions gives me hope that's just a consequence of the game still being in development.
Progression system looks like it needs balancing, a lot of it. I'm also not a big fan of forced specialization in roguelikes. I do like being able to specialize eventually but when all the viable skill options require me to pick the equipment I'm going to use, I basically feel like I have to start the game with a predetermined "build" in mind as opposed to just rolling with whatever the game throws at me and adapting as it goes on.

Still, I feel like whatever is the direction the game takes, it's likely to end up being a product I'll enjoy playing, even if I won't be agreeing with every decision it'll make.
Keep up the good work!

A cute little project with solid gameplay, great artwork and music, and amazing overall concept.
And with pancakes.

Anime when?

A year after, I feel pretty good about recommending Stoneshard.
The progress might be slow but it is steady.
The game still has a long way to go, as only a small part of the seemingly intended content has been implemented so far. There are some hiccups here and there, be it minor bugs, oversights, or balancing issues.
However, I do feel like it had somewhat reached the point when you can jump in and have fun and not just feel like an alpha-tester.

It'll probably take years for Stoneshard to become fully fleshed out but so far devs gave me all the reasons to trust them to deliver a good final product eventually so it might just be worth it to follow them along that ride.

Age of Decadence is one of these games that, despite generally favorable reputation, is grossly underappreciated.
It's a great game in many ways, and it's one of the most unique RPGs you will ever play.

To say it is "good" is to say nothing. There were multiple games that were released after AoD that tried to do what AoD did and yet came nowhere close to it. Tyranny specifically comes to mind - a good RPG regardless but even when it's praised, it's usually for the "you play as the bad guy" aspect as opposed to its truly praiseworthy take on non-linearity. Well, it's because that aspect is honestly speaking pretty shallow.

If you ever played an RPG and thought to yourself: "Wouldn't it be great to see how those huge worldbuilding events could play out were I to be involved in them", Age of Decadence is the game for you. I haven't ever seen a game, let alone an RPG, achieve this degree of true non-linearity. The whole point of the game is that you will affect the story. No, it won't be just a slideshow of "that had happened" at the end of the game. No, it won't be just a mostly pointless choice during the final moments of the game that allows you to experience a couple of different endings. No, if anything, Age of Decadence is at very least three games bundled in a single package.
You could play the game for its (unique and well-executed) combat and get involved in every major battle happening throughout the story, possibly changing the outcomes of those battles.
You might come to appreciate the characters, dialogues, and actual text quests more and avoid getting involved in the combat at all, resulting in the game playing more like a visual novel of sorts instead. Mind you, the aforementioned battles? Oh, be sure they will still happen even without you. You will hear about them and might even have to suffer their consequences but they are a part of this world and you have made your deliberate choice to avoid them.
Or maybe you will find that the whole world makes no sense and there is something much, much deeper going on and maybe, just maybe, you will want to try digging through all the secrets and lore of this world to finally get to understand it and see the actual truth.
The choice is yours. And this time around, there are actual important choices to make.

Of course, the game isn't perfect. Nothing is. But I think diving in while being aware of the game's quirks and arguably shortcomings results in a great overall experience.
The game is short. Especially by RPG standards. That is to say, "a single playthrough doesn't take long". It's a very important clarification because Age of Decadence is actually intended for several playthroughs. And, as it was said before, each one of these "playthroughs" can be a completely unique experience to the point of feeling like a completely different game.
As a natural extension of this issue, the game will refuse to "allow you to experience everything". Implying "in a single playthrough". The game does expect you to realize during its introductory stages that you can't really have it all and you will have to give up on some things. It's just mathematically impossible in this game to be the best combatant there is, the most shrewd "know-it-all" street rogue to ever live, and the most gifted and pleasant silver-tongued merchant who could make living by selling sand in the middle of the desert - all at the same time.
Yes, it makes sense if you think about it but that's not really the way most RPGs handle this kind of thing. Yes, you can occasionally miss out on a (mostly flavor) option here and there but you are highly unlikely to get locked out of a huge and important part of the game because of your choices. Age of Decadence will lock you out of the content. That is just something you have to accept and preferably be ready to experience.
As soon as you drop the "I must experience everything NOW" mindset and stop restarting the game every twenty minutes because there is yet another skill check you've missed because you've distributed your skills "wrong", the game will click for you.

Take it for what it is - a short but elaborate story of a single important life that somehow changed the history of this intriguing, complicated, and deep world.
How exactly? Well, that's for you to decide™.

Well, that was an incredible experience.
I've waited for this game for ten years and it managed to hold up to the expectations.
The game takes the best ideas of DMC4, expands on them, and fuses it with a story that's easily as good and powerful as the story of DMC3.
Outstanding gameplay, an absurd number of mechanics, incredible variety, great characters, amazing levels.
The only thing left is to see how long-living will this game be. It has all the components of having good replayability, though, so I'm fairly optimistic about it.

Still, it's the game of the decade for me personally. Well, at least when the Bloody Palace is released.

TFH is kind of a phenomenon when crushed dreams come true against all odds.
A promising fan project once, it went well beyond what can be called a "fan game" or even a "doujin fighter" - it's a fun, unique, and high-quality game. The development might've not been as smooth as it should've, but the team gave their promises and they fulfilled them beautifully.
Who knows, maybe that dreadful C&D letter all the way back then was for good, after all.

That is if we hit 1.0 one day.