Recent reviews by King Riiya

This is more of a neutral review overall, but considering my feelings while playing it, I guess leaning more toward negative.

This game has a lot going for it, but I can't really recommend it for modern systems. I think I just got into it too late. The game does have a good story and characters with a few player choices. The inventory is a bit annoying but manageable and the variety of ways you can complete levels is really great since it advocates a really customiseable playstyle. The system of either hacking into systems or exploration being rewarded by finding notes and passwords to manually enter for systems/ATMs was really fun and I also really liked the ability to add manual notes on images and in the log which I find so useful and have hardly ever seen.

The problem is, the game is just too dark even at max brightness. The screenshots on the store page look much better than the actual game on my PC. I think the resources of the old engine don't scale well with modern displays. It was too hard on my eyes and gave me a headache when playing from straining. There are in game ways like light augments to see better, but even those in some areas don't help much and using them constantly drains the battery too much so it either runs out or you can't use any other augments. Especially in the first half of the game where repair bots seem scarce or not present.

If you are still interested in trying it, it might be a much more enjoyable experience if the brightness could somehow be improved. There are apparently some mods for that but I found out about this too late, so maybe the idea helps someone else sufffering through the darkness

I went from thinking, "I'm not too sure about this because rogue likes aren't usually my thing" to this being one of my favourite games.

Great music
Interesting story and characters
Fun gameplay loop
Great art and voice acting

Despite the actual gameplay being fairly repetitive, there was enough new interactions/content each run for it to not feel this way for me for at least 60 hours and I took a couple of breaks of a few months from it while playing which for me was the best way to preserve the enjoyment since the theme and everything else is right up my alley.

Very fun game, especially for anyone into Greek mythology. I enjoyed every minute

Quite a fun game. Does feel like playing through an interactive animated movie with some dialogue choices which define the character of Anne.
The art and music was quite immersive and the concept of the world is interesting.
Enjoyable short game.

Received this as a gift and it's overall a very cool and interesting game. I did enjoy it, however one of the main gameplay elements The time loop was a bit frustrating at times. I understand the purpose of this feature and it's interesting figuring out all the elements of the story behind why and how it exists, but it was kind of a hindrance to the exploring. To be fair the game would be over much quicker without it and it is integral to the story, but it did get a bit annoying sometimes nonetheless.
I did enjoy figuring out the story and mechanics despite this hindrance and that the game doesn't hold your hand, but you figure out how to progress in your own way by interacting with the environment and notes in each area

I really enjoyed this game.

Immersive atmosphere from the environments to sounds, journal and general art.
The style is consistent and it's nice to see the notes looking hand written instead of typed which also adds to immersiveness. Though I did notice a few bits which could have used a bit more proofreading.

The puzzles in this game are more difficult and creative than standard point and click and/or puzzle games which was very refreshing. I liked being able to figure out a lock code by finding a vague clue and then combining about 3 different elements in another document to figure it out instead of finding a piece of paper in another room with the code written on it.

I saw someone mention there is no fast travel option, but there is - it's mentioned in the first few screens of the game and does make getting around between the locations easier as there's multiple travel points in each area. You can't fast travel with objects though, however I found that all usable objects had their uses nearby and usually fairly understandable, with some exceptions but once you realise that, there is no need to deal with the frustration of carrying objects unnecessarily far away for no reason.

The only real complaint I have is not in the difficulty of the puzzles but that 2 or 3 just seemed unfair. One which didn't seem to have any reason to it and potentially trial and error (which I hate), one which had a component which made no sense, and the one most people complain about which requires an ability to differentiate a sequence of different tones which sounded a little bit too similar. I'm not tone deaf but that was too difficult for my musical listening ability.

Quite fun game. A little janky with some visual weirdness from time to time including the floor disappearing after alt tabbing. The camera is kind of annoying and not being able to explore areas and being locked out of going back quite frequently is a bit annoying when you need to collect all the orbs (especially when it doesn't save each collectible and sometimes you might miss some you already collected after dying or restarting the game). Would have been slightly less of a pain if the chapter select also split chapters into sections, but I guess they're not that long so it's not terrible.

Overall though, I like the overgrown post apocalyptic style and the gameplay in general is quite fun, so the drawbacks weren't enough to be a big deal and ruin the game for me.

As for the story, it was decent and made some kind of sense.. until the epilogue where nothing made any sense anymore so I made up my own ending :D

Played this after the Dark Souls games and enjoyed it a lot more. It is now my favourite Fromsoft game so far. The Dark Souls theme and style is usually up my alley, but something in those games didn't fully resonate with me the way this game did.

The characters seemed more... real somehow, the story felt purposeful and interesting, and the combat (though definitely difficult with quite a learning curve and focus on a certain fighting style), was very satisfying.
I enjoyed traversing the world and story and the fighting was also fun even when it took a few (and occasionally very many) tries to get the hang of something.

TL;DR: The graphics, environment, history, and ambience is great. But the story, characters and some gameplay elements are more meh, especially when compared to some of the best in this series. +Ubisoft servers suck and Discovery Tour is cool if you're interested in the history.
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It was enjoyable for me overall despite certain peeves.

The game is beautiful. I love the different parts of Egypt that you can visit and explore and how varied the regions can be, from large cities, to the lush Nile regions, or rocky mountains and hot deserts. It also feels alive. The environment isn't flat (on higher settings) and there is movement and life everywhere. Fish in the waters, various birds and predators and prey in each location.

Considering Odyssey is the next game, I was a little disappointed to find so much Greek/Roman in my Egypt. I had been hoping it would have been set more in the Old Kingdom. That said, I enjoyed exploring the tombs of the pharaohs and the details included in the architecture (coloured reliefs and buildings) and language of the characters (Ancient Egyptian included in some words used by characters and ambient dialogue). The game did feel good to play as there were various such details I noticed which increased my enjoyment of the environment. The main story was just ok, but the other elements make up for that and it was still interesting to see the origins of the Brotherhood even though parts of it did feel a bit off/forced to me.

It is different from previous AC games with it's RPG elements and levelling system, but I personally didn't mind this since it didn't interfere with my usual playstyle which is to complete as much as I can in a region before moving on. You can still go wherever you want, but you just might not be able to easily face the enemies or do the side missions if you don't meet the level recommendations. This game did have more open combat though than I expected, it makes sense that some enemies might just be more aware and detect you so I was ok with that, but don't think any of the main story targets should have been like this, especially if the game forces you to use a character you don't use for fighting the entire game and can't upgrade in 2 late game fighting sequences against strong enemies.

It has it's share of minor bugs and glitches but not enough to ruin my experience. What did annoy me though (and I'd warn anyone to consider whether they want to risk the game being unavailable when they want to play before purchasing), is the issues with Ubisoft servers. On at least 2 occasions, I was unable to launch the game because the servers were down and one of those times my game crashed while playing and I was unable to relaunch. The first time I was confused and tried signing in to Uplay directly and through that discovered that was just not possible and actually Ubisoft servers were down and it wasn't just me (or just this game). I understand technical issues can happen but in some cases it takes hours to resolve and I find it a bit unacceptable that there is no option to play a game I have purchased offline or without being signed into the Ubisoft launcher (which you also can't do if their servers are down).

One last thing which I only played in the end for the achievement to see what it was all about is the Discovery Tour. I probably wouldn't have looked at this if there wasn't an achievement for it and it seems many people don't but I actually appreciate that this was included in this game. I'd kinda have to be in the mood for it to properly explore it but it's great for anyone actually interested in the history of ancient Egypt as it's condensed historical facts presented as an interactive experience which I think is really cool. Better than reading a textbook anyway :)

Good game but quite different in tone from the first one so was a bit of an adjustment to get into the story.

Yagami's fighting style is fun as always and I liked the addition of stealth segments. I also really liked the new and varied tools introduced, but sadly these felt like they were primarily used in their introductory mission and one main side mission but otherwise rarely. I get they can't include all content everywhere, but I probably would have enjoyed it more if there were less things and more fleshed out or used.
I also wish that some of the past characters were more included throughout the game instead of what felt more like token appearances for most of it.
There's also a lot of focus on the school in this game as a majority of substories (the school stories) take place in the school. This was cool and also introduced a number of different minigames which were interesting, but Yagami is the only one who can go into the school so to me it felt more isolated from the rest of the entire story (Even though it sort of revolves around the school) and the rest of the characters. Almost like DLC. I think I might have messed up the pacing a bit though and ended up doing a lot of these very close to each other nearer the end of the game as I originally thought it made more sense to space them out (because of the context so that more time feels like it passed) but waited too long and realised too late. So I'd recommend not waiting too long between school story segments so it doesn't feel like it's all happening at once :D
The actual DLC of this game (The Kaito Files) is excellent though and so is the ending portion of the game.

One other thing I noticed is the subtitles seemed incorrect sometimes. I don't speak Japanese, so I don't know what I missed, but in some cases they straight up made no sense. I had to rewatch a scene on Youtube (one of the ending scenes of an early Chapter, forget which) to figure out why I didn't understand it only to conclude the dialogue actually made no sense. I noticed it a few other times as well, and it was mostly minor, but there were at least 2 points in the main story where it was very weird.

Overall I do enjoy the Judgment series and this was still a great entry despite some of my disappointments.

Excellent game.
The gameplay is very simple but satisfying and atmospheric.
There are not a bunch of tutorials thrown at you right at the start and none are necessary. A few different story paths based on your choices and very enjoyable identifying the plants.
Loved this game from start to finish.

Just to be clear though, it's a game primarily about running a plant shop and using those plants in certain circumstances as events happen around you. If you're looking for a deeper mystery game, this is not that.