Recent reviews by Mithrunie

This is simultaneously perhaps one of the better designed BL VNs I’ve read and also the one I dislike the most, which is impressive, given I’ve also played “Requiescence”. I see a lot of common criticisms of this VN, most of which aren’t things I took issue with, and were a principal reason I finished the VN so I could see if any of them were true. Most aren’t.

People say the BL elements are randomly thrown in and the characters have no chemistry. I’m not sure why, because it’s quite obvious from early on that literally everyone in Tamamori’s vicinity is obsessed with him, and this is the primary reason they stick around him, while Tamamori has a similar obsessive streak when it comes to everyone around him, including virtually every side character. If you read more of the story, you learn that basically all the cast are repressed in one way or another, mostly because Tamamori is dense. In that sense, the sex scenes, once Tamamori makes his feelings clear, make sense in every situation (and in the Professor’s case, the Professor is a stalker and the most physically obsessed with Tamamori of all of them, and that’s obvious even outside his route). Even Kaoru makes sense because of that.

People complain there’s not much to do from a gameplay perspective and there aren’t many options. This is a your mileage may vary situation, and I think it would be less of an issue if the story weren’t so boring and the characters weren’t so uninteresting. I tend to enjoy awful characters. It’s how the writer makes the awful character appealing that matters, and at least in my case, the writers failed to make anyone here appealing. I also don’t think it’s necessarily a case of “they should have cut stuff out”, in part because I think the random tangents give depth to the world and make up for the lack of gameplay. That being said, I also reiterate, all of it is boring. I just acknowledge that the extra stuff people don’t like is probably part of what makes it work for the folks for whom it works. In point of fact, the most interesting set of lines is where Tamamori learns one of the side characters had his father run off with a male sumo wrestler. That is far more interesting than anything that happens in this visual novel. Where’s that storyline?

People complain about the dark stuff, including the assault. A lot of romance (m/f, f/f, and m/m) has dark stuff and messy power dynamics and non-con is common in all romance. That’s not what I have an issue with, either. Especially given this is a supernatural horror game. If you’re mad the supernatural horror game that starts with the protagonist writing a story about a serial killer trapping someone in a basement, followed by said protagonist’s friend being physically and verbally misogynistic to a waitress, has dark stuff in it, I’m not sure what you’re expecting out of this.

What I find truly bizarre is that so many people are obsessed with Minakami’s route, insisting it’s the best, when, somehow, Kawase ended up being more appealing than him. This isn’t me stanning Kawase or something, whom I dislike anyway. I just find Minakami’s route repetitive and dull. He’s an empty husk full of obsession over Tamamori, and Tamamori is an uninteresting character, so I’m not sure why the obsession (in fact, the Professor's route convinced me to like Minakami as an LI more than Minakami's route did). The other love interests are all screwed up in one way or another, with Kawase being the most appealing on comparison by dint of I enjoy LIs with his kind of background in m/m romance and he and Tamamori have the most understandable relationship. But also he’s an uninteresting character and the story world is uninteresting, so I don’t find him interesting, either. Hanazawa is almost more boring than Minakami because he is irritating. And his route is frankly uninteresting, though I’ve seen people complain about a threesome in his route. I’m not sure what game they were playing, but there isn’t one in the Steam version. The sex scene was actually the best part of the route, but since I don’t care about either lead, it lost interest for me. The Professor’s VA, like all the VAs, did an excellent job. He also has the most annoying voice of all the LIs, which makes him extra annoying. His sex scene was also about half-decent and one of the better parts of his route. Kaoru's route was forgettable. A lot of people get mad about it. I think it helped that I spoiled myself for it, but I have no attachment to this story, so I don't personally care. The story lets you imagine whatever ending you like. The secret ending existing ruins nothing. Another issue with reviews seems to be most people don't play past route 2, which is understandable: it's a very long and boring game full of uninteresting characters, with an annoying protagonist. I gave up on multiple occasions. But I think more people should give the other routes a chance if they just want to die on the hill of comparing Minakami to Kawase only.

Tamamori is not interesting. He does random, dumb things, and that makes the lack of player control even more annoying. He’s an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to everyone he knows, and I just assume everyone is having really good fantasies about him and that is the only reason anyone sticks around.

There’s likely a lot with Japanese literature in particular that is going right over my head, though other folks have gone to great lengths to talk about it, so go to them if you want that. So that didn’t win me over, either. I can appreciate that the writing quality is very high, but the writing itself does not even remotely appeal to me. I could detect in a number of places where the story was clearly being self-aware, and I could appreciate that while acknowledging it didn’t improve the experience at all.

It’s long. It’s boring. The entire cast is unappealing. The art is decent for a visual novel and the voice actors did a great job, but the art is also not appealing enough to be significant, and many of the voice actors play intentionally annoying voices (e.g., the frog man, Naoshi, the Professor) to the point that the quality of the execution is entirely lost on me. The music is fine. It’s not outstanding. I wonder if people are just overwhelmed by the variety of tracks? I mostly found them annoying because opening the game blares the soundtrack at you, and you can’t turn that off.

In terms of stories that deal with timeloops, this doesn't really rate, particularly given "Dreadful Night", a horror BL manhwa, exists, and has better writing and smut, and more enjoyable terrible characters who deal with obsession. This also isn’t better than a number of Korean novels about regression and “In Stars and Time”, a game where I wondered if it would be improved if you just sat and watched it like a novel. And this game gave me the answer: no.

In terms of game functionality: this has the best VA of the few VNs I've played. I also like that it auto-stores all the art in a gallery you can go back to view as you please, and even has other info, like some character backstory, VAs, and such. That's all good. This is a decently polished VN in an ocean of rather unpolished ones. I still can't recommend unless you're a completionist of m/m titles and very bored. But if you must, at least play to route 2, and then try for route 4.

This is a cute idea and a short game with a cute premise, fun writing, great animation, and great voice acting.

Unfortunately, it feels more like ad libs the game rather than actually solving a mystery. I spent more time just arbitrarily moving around words to see what stuck rather than actually questioning people or looking at evidence. There are clues and it does encourage you to think through things. But it's more annoying than actually exciting to solve anything, and some stuff I truly don't understand the reasoning for. After figuring out who was who, I got an, "Yay, that's over" feeling whenever I "solved" a section. I'm not sure if it's meant to be pointed that the detective reaches random conclusions about all the information he comes across, much of which is useless or contradictory, rather than leading straight to the solution.

I'm also not sure why looking at someone's public Blue Sky page, seeing a book promo, and checking out the book, is considered stalking. I know the protagonist is meant to be a parody of a hardboiled (lol bird puns /end sarcasm) detective, and thus hyper paranoid and also an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, but this particular rehash of "Facebook stalking" where people browse publicly and easily accessible information is very stupid.

I appreciate the idea of smaller point and click-style games rather than, say, the much longer Monkey Island or Grim Fandango-style ones, because those just take a while to go through (worth it for the journey, but longer games can be difficult investments). And I appreciate that, rather than having to visit everywhere again or write everything down, your inventory keeps images of all the clues you can easily browse back through. This is far more accessible than any other similar point-and-click game I've played. And I applaud that.

But I won't be playing the next one. I wish these developers the best, though!

This is a really beautiful, sweet game that reminds me a bit of "Journey" and "Abzu", with a focus on exploration, relaxation (to a degree, if you ignore some of the more frustrating puzzles), companionship, environmentalism, and the cycles of nature. It also vaguely makes me think of "Gris". I'm so happy I finally got to play it, since I was impressed with the first trailer I saw in mid-November 2021, and worried it was cancelled (I know games take a while to make, I just didn't realize it'd been so long since I saw that trailer). As a one-person effort, it's also really phenomenal. I truly applaud the developer for this game, and they should feel proud of their work.

Conceptually, it's like being on a lazy river at a theme park, which was a big draw for me. Since I haven't been on one of those in years, I liked sort of re-experiencing that.

The bright colors and beautifully drawn environments and animals are really a pleasure to explore. There's lots of different environment interactions you can have, and it's just fun to have a giant school of fish and other animals following you. I particularly love the design of the rainbow dragon, which is so pretty. When I first found it, I just swam around to make it spin with me. Naiad's design is also really cute, and it's fun to see Naiad and the mermaid wander around, especially as you collect powers and evolve your form. The long hair and wavy motion is so pleasant to watch, visually. And I love sort of getting a nature log of all the animals and some of the plants you run into. I particularly loved the variety of animals and environments.

The music is generally nice, though not as grabby as similar games. It's still pleasant, and I like a couple of the arias, especially, root.

The writing is pretty decent, and I like the narrative. Naiad's relationship with the cloud and the darkness is really fascinating, and I teared up a little when the cloud sacrificed themself to make rain.

Gameplay-wise, I do enjoy that you're rewarded for investigating most everywhere. And generally a lot of things can be learned intuitively, so the minimal instruction isn't bad, per se. And the game encourages replays, so learning how a puzzle works late in the game because the environmental "explanation" was just better communicated later isn't so terrible (e.g., I really only learned how the purple flowers work after discovering the race to get to the dragon's lair, by which point I'd passed a number of purple flower puzzles; same with the "get frogs on the lily pads" puzzles, and the heart leaves). But I don't know if that's intentional or accidental (and possibly just me being clueless). Clearly the game can teach its puzzles without just writing them down, but it's frustrating realizing you missed a whole lot because there wasn't a proper explanation beforehand.

That being said, if you want, you can ignore a large portion of the puzzles and just enjoy swimming around, collecting fish, and watching the story unfold.

If you are trying to engage with the puzzle elements, though, it's hard to ignore that a large chunk of this is escort missions, which are about as frustrating as escort missions can be. Rewarding as it is to reunite animals and cause all the many wonderful interactions, there is frustration to be had. A lot of the animals get sticky and refuse to come with you, requiring going back and forth to make sure they follow you. Frogs in particular are frustrating, as, unlike the insects, they'll hop off their target location if you happen to swim nearby or something, which led to one puzzle I'd nearly completed getting ruined because I made the mistake of trying to lead the last frog over. As there no proper area map, if you make the mistake of not keeping track of the blue birds, figuring out where they landed because you missed losing one or more can be a nightmare. The most egregious one was where a duckling was stuck in an oil slick, and kept getting itself stuck in the slick when I'd repeatedly gotten it out.

Perhaps my main criticism, with the caveat this can be entirely ignored to play most of the game and is really a minor thing, is the guitarist puzzles. The controls for that are way too finicky, on both controller and mouse/keyboard. It can be frustrating to get accuracy.

I don't know if this is a thing, but I think folks might be put off by the price tag for an indie game, and I really think it's worth the money. There's a lot to explore in this game, and it's really wonderful.

Generally, this is a really fun and great game, with beautiful environments and a lot to appreciate. I'm actually annoyed I stopped playing to write this review. Thank you so much dev for your hard work, this is awesome.

I've played through every route on the itch.io version, which is why my Steam time is weird, which works, because this review is a bit weird. I would recommend this VN with a great number of caveats, including that the writing is quite bad, the art - what little isn't just blurred real-world photographs on repeat - is pretty bad, the music is occasionally passable, the voice acting is at best fine and at worst just really bad, the foley is dubious, the characters aren't interesting and have little to no chemistry, and the overall plot is, at best, fine. Not to mention one character is just very bad and obvious Fenris Dragon Age fanfiction. But outside that, if you want a kind of brainless m/m fantasy VN, one okay route (the secret one), and some interesting bad endings, then yes, this may be for you.

I cannot overemphasize how incredibly bad the writing in this is. It reads like a first attempt at writing a fantasy novel, which never saw an edit to cut down at least half of the repetition. Many parts of this are pages of text that could have been said in a sentence or two. There's a lot of vague hand-waving to generic fantasy concepts you've seen in the past without any real description (e.g., bad people doing bad things in the dark times, who and what specifically, you don't really know). The writing itself is clumsy, full of mistakes someone who doesn't know what it is they're writing about would have (e.g., wrapping a sword in metal). This is not helped by the deluge of entirely unimportant and vague backstory you are bashed over the head with at the beginning of the story, and which never really lets up. You are introduced to a world that doesn't really matter, and uninformed about more important things, like large chunks of the backstory for Kymil and all the love interests and side characters (much of which is in an extra document you need to download from itch). I fell asleep multiple times while playing this because not only is it repetitive and overly long and vague, but it's also incredibly boring. Carrault and Kymil also have zero chemistry, which is funny, given Carrault is based very obviously on the most popular love interest in Dragon Age II (just dye his hair white). There's also just a lot of typos.

If you were ever on deviantart, you will be familiar with the level of original art in this (the mediocre stuff, not the good stuff). It's not precisely the worst, though the artist could probably use some more anatomy practice, given there are some weird lines on legs and arms in particular, and faces get a bit weird. Kymil's shortness in comparison to the love interests is also a bit iffy. The actual CGs range from bland to fine (Carrault's nsfw CG) to almost comically ridiculous (Kaul's first nsfw CG). But most of the "art" in the game is just blurred photographs from real-world places, often repeated as you "switch" between locations, including Trinity College Library in Ireland (they didn't even blur out the Latin in a game on another planet(?) with at least one fantasy language lol), the Canterbury Cathedral high table in Kent, England, and the Lincoln Cathedral in Lincoln, England. One shot is just a flyover of Florence, Italy. The visual used for the guide you get when you buy the game is just a color-changed version of Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, France. I also think the fountain area is from Dragon Age: Inquisition. Why make a visual game if you can't be assed to provide most of the visuals and just get photos from other people to blur? Other VNs can have kind of boring background visuals you see on repeat, but they're typically at least drawn by the developers, and some are interesting. Given most of the game is staring at these very obviously blurred photographs rather than original art, while incredibly bad, boring, and repetitive text plays interminably at you, it doesn't generally create a good time. It feels like most everyone involved in this project couldn't do anything involved (art, writing, editing), and largely didn't try, and that's an odd feeling to have while playing through it.

It doesn't help that the text keeps being moved around the screen rather arbitrarily. Sometimes a character speaking will be in front of you. Sometimes they'll switch to being a little head in the text box. Then back. And back again. Sometimes text will be on a page text box. Sometimes it's just at the bottom of the screen. I think the developers realized that their boring game staring at photos they didn't make that were also boring needed some breaks between things, and that's why the frequent switching is there. It's just weirdly distracting. I am however grateful you can turn the VA off, and the speed up and skips are generous, if a bit clunky at times.

Why then, would I recommend this to anyone? I think Kaul's route is genuinely decent in many aspects, and I think it's laudable to have a disabled love interest, which seems to be relatively rare for these VNs. It's underused, and has some writing holes that could have used more of those many words the story boasts of, and Kaul's blindness is handled, at best, pretty weirdly. If nothing else, there's something there the other routes don't have. But the latter half is still pretty bad. If you've played every other m/m game you can and need something else to pass the time, this is maybe something? Some of the bad routes are also fun enough, if also pretty badly written, though I do appreciate the conceit that the good routes are the heroes, and the bad routes are the villains; it lets you explore the full cast in ways other VNs I've seen just don't let you. And it has some nice angst in spots. I do appreciate that the itch version exists, because actually being able to own games these days is such a rarity.

Overall, it's not a good visual novel or enjoyable, except in very, very brief parts. Buy it on sale, and play the uncensored version on itch.

An absolutely excellent game, and possibly my favorite of the series! The art, story, and characters are absolutely wonderful, and the world-building is awesome and deeply satisfying. The gameplay is also a ton of fun, and the puzzles aren't so complex that I can't figure out most of them without help. The PC release seems to have some issues with crashing and audio, but overall it's relatively unbuggy for such a big game, and it doesn't have some of the clear budget shortfalls Inquisition had, leading to a far more polished project. While I have criticisms, it's a great game overall.

The new cast is a delight, and seeing them interact with Rook and each other is really fun. Their stories are all really fun to explore, and it's a wonderful look at different parts of Thedas we didn't get to in other games, like Nevarra, Tevinter, and Rivain. My favorite character is Taash, seconded by Emmrich and Neve, but everyone is so fun. There's also a wonderful secondary cast of characters, with Maevaris Tilani finally making an in-game appearance, and Dorian and Isabela making delightful returns; even Sten gets a mention, along with entirely new characters who are a lot of fun, like Vorgoth, Myrna, Rana, Stalgard, Tarquin, Teia, and Shathaan. If I have a criticism of casting, it's that it's odd that we get a quest to go to Nevarra for recruitment and another location for a dragon hunter, and not one mention is made, particularly by Harding, who talks about her time in the Inquisition, about Cassandra being from a dragon hunting family. There are some truly heartrending and wonderful moments in this around your team, and it really feels great as they come together, and like you're fighting to save the world together.

Story-wise, the plot is a lot of fun. There seems to be a lot of theming around death, loss, grief, and how we recover and move on, and try to make the world a better place, while confronting the realities of mortality. This is particularly present in Emmrich's story, but also Bellara, Taash, Davrin, and to some degree Lucanis' story as well. I find it to be really fascinating as a narrative choice. The story also covers how you deal with fascists and cults, and its release honestly felt very timely. There's one choice you make late game which just felt really nice to make given certain political decisions in the US . There's also an ongoing theme of responsibility and doing what you can to make a difference, even if you can't fix everything, which is good. There's also a lot of heartwarming and funny moments, coupled with the beautiful vistas the art team has created, that really make the emotional weight of this game just right. The writing is really good, and the library you get as you collect stuff is even better than Inquisition's was, with fascinating lore, lots of extra character bits, and some truly exquisite work overall. My one criticism is that I wish there was an archive of all the little notes and carvings you read as you go along that you don't collect for your library. I'd have loved a record of those. Cannot overstate how amazing the environment work in this game is: every location felt so alive, and the way the team made each map dense rather than huge, but not overwhelming, was incredible.

I'm neutral-positive on the music, and not just because the audio broke with dialogue and music for about 1/4 of the game. Zimmer did a pretty great job from what I could tell (there's one track during Davrin's first quest that's just really excellent and I just stood around to listen to it), but I really would have loved to see another score from Trevor Morris. For dialogue, the VAs did a great job, but it often broke in Minrathous and Treviso in particular, and one conversation with Morrigan I missed 1/4 of when the game crashed.

The gameplay was pretty fun, and reminded me a bit of Inquisition. Your attacks look cool and are fun to use (except Rook's fire beam that I had trouble moving). Even on Keeper mode, I had some trouble with the dragons and some of the bigger bosses (but that's more me being kind of bad at the game than the game being difficult). There really should be a level recommendation on quests, though, since a number of times I stumbled into a boss fight that was 8-10+ levels higher than me and unable to get through it. The GPS pathing is also pretty good, though you can get lost at times, and I wish you could put marks down on undiscovered markers, not just chests, and that all obstacles you can't get past yet were marked, not just some, and all merchants should be marked, not just faction merchants. I would have also appreciated some sort of log of all the things people say, so I could go back and read through conversations, like we had in Inquisition, and that games like Hades II have. My main criticism is the focus on blocking or I guess parrying that seems to have come in to attract Fromsoft gamers or other games that like this. It's a really terrible way to do gameplay. The gameplay was fun without it, and I don't like the necessary inclusion. What's worse, it makes warriors exasperating to play, whereas in previous games I enjoyed warriors and mages equally.

All in all, though, it's a really fun game. Hopefully with more patches, the PC experience will be less bumpy.

A nice, short little visual novel with a cute cast. It's also nice to see a Jewish lead in a story, which is rare, and fun. The music is good, and the art is pretty decent. If you'd like a quick m/m visual novel, this isn't a bad choice.

A very fun game that's sort of a combination of Hades/The Binding of Isaac and Stardew Valley (or similar farming/city building sim games). The premise is very funny, cute, and neatly dark, the art style is adorable (except for the spiders, though they are drawn well, just still spiders), the gameplay is fun, and the writing is excellent. The music is also very catchy.

Unlike similar roguelite games (e.g., Hades), the game is actually very accessible for folks who struggle with these games and just want to explore and/or experience the story or other gameplay elements with easier levels of challenge. You can turn off health loss, choose how your abilities work, and generally just work through the game without any issue. There are also in-game ways to make the minigames less frustrating, which I'm very grateful for. Despite my being good at Stardew fishing, the way this game does fishing is similar but not comprehensible, and being able to put it on auto is so useful. It also makes the more tedious parts of the game less tedious, so I can get back to Crusades or building up my base, rather than spending a very long amount of time with fish, food, or tailoring.

I can't say I love all the weapons, and find the "you can't really choose your weapon at the start of each run" thing a bit annoying, but I do enjoy the sword, dagger, and sometimes the axe. The hammer and blunderbuss are exasperating, though. I also find the shield break mechanic really frustrating, and it's perhaps the weakest part of gameplay, since I really hate any game that does "you need to use this specific attack to break shields". I can't remember the last time it worked, though it's slightly less exasperating than say, "Tomb Raider: Anniversary"... if you're using one of the better weapons. On the worse weapons, it's a nightmare. But if you just push through it, it's mostly manageable, and thankfully not all the gameplay. The only other gameplay irritations I recall are that there are still some bugs and a lot of first-time pick-up animations repeat for no apparent reason, e.g., every god tear pick-up treats it like the first time you've ever found one. But those are pretty minor.

The cast is a lot of fun, and it's great to learn about different characters and talk to them. I lose track of my followers a lot of the time, but I do remember some of them, particularly the special followers. And I'm really glad we could recruit all the bishops, and that the One Who Waits is immortal. The character designs are excellent, and I love ???'s and Forneus' designs in particular.

All in all, it's a very cute game with a lot to love, and if you like any of the games I mentioned and enjoy dark humor, you may like this. Forneus is best square cat mom.

An absolutely incredible and surprisingly filled Early Access version of what will likely be an even better game once it's complete. The new characters, story, music, and environments are wonderful, the familiar system is fun, I love all the added mythology, and I love the idea of being able to change up things by going either up or down, I've played Early Access games before and found them far less polished than this, which on its own is impressive. That being said, since this is Early Access, I'm going to also list stuff I hope the devs work on before full release. This review is spoiler heavy.

The environments for this game are absolutely beautiful. I just want to be able to wander the ships at length to admire them. That being said, the Fields of Mourning are confusing and need way better pathing, particularly the first area and Echo's room. I also find Cerberus' room hard to figure out for boundaries.

The voice actors did a phenomenal job again this game, with the caveat I really don't understand why so many are British. Although many of them also return, I just have to wonder about the writing choices as well: why does Hermes say "Mum"? I love Hestia and her VA does an incredible job and sounds good... but also why? Were they unable to find literally any Greek actors for this? It was a big criticism for last game as well, even amidst all the love for acting in that game.

That being said, I would listen to the voice actors for Hecate, Hephaestus, Selene, Medea, and Odysseus read literally anything.

I also can't pick a favorite character model/artwork. They're all so amazing, whether they're new or returning characters with glow-ups. Hermes and Chaos definitely are high tier, while Selene, Hestia, Hephaestus, and Hecate are just gorgeous.

With the caveat that the game is still enjoyable and fun, particularly for something in Early Access, the game is also badly balanced at the moment, on a number of levels, and not because it's too hard or too easy. With the addition of a magick bar, you now have an extra resource you have to worry about at all times, and no way to replenish it normally without entering a new room, which relies on choosing either boons you need to attack or boons that will replenish the bar, with both choices making you weaker in the long term in different ways, because of how badly balanced the boon system is. Because losing all your magick, with no way to restore it (outside entering a new room), tends to make fights a lot harder and take a lot longer, and makes runs drag. Add this to the increased number of other resources you have to collect with a dozen new currencies, and the game is sometimes a frustrating resource-management grind.

The learning curve on the game as you manage resources is steep, which makes it hard to do a "which of them is harder" comparison. In "Hades", a central part of build set-up was that the game really pushed you to fill all your main attack slots before anything else. Every time you got a god who could offer it, you would typically be offered 1-2 main attack slots and maybe a passive until you filled all your attack slots. This meant you might not face Meg with a full build, but you'd probably face Lernie and definitely Theseus with one. "Hades II" doesn't have that. Your first boon, assuming it's not Selene/a daedalus upgrade, MIGHT offer you one of your main attack slots, but it's otherwise largely random passives/add-ons to existing main things. More of the boons also seem to be geared to be temporary or punishing, whether it hurts your health or decreases your magick pool or costs more magick generally. The passives I've seen are also generally less useful.

Basically a lot of runs feel like no boon runs, which are difficult and not fun to play. This is confusing as well because I got through this game substantially faster than I did "Hades", which would imply to me that this game is easier, particularly because a lot of what I used to do well in this game is not stuff I used to advance in "Hades", and I'm very bad at fresh "Hades" runs. I got to Cerberus within 48 hours of the game going live, and that is a fraction of how long it took me just to get to Meg. But it's still a very difficult game because of what I've mentioned previously, and frustrating because of how much I'd like to explore but can't due to it relying on random chance (e.g., good boon drops). I'm not asking for the game to be harder or easier. But there are major balancing issues in it that has nothing to do with user ability.

This is on top of how most things we did in "Hades" that were carried over now just have more steps added onto them, particularly in the cost of upgrading and crafting.

I like that we see more characters showing up on your runs in a similar vein to Thanatos in "Hades", but it's frustrating with how punishing Nemesis in particular is, and that she can actually steal items you want to buy (not to mention your gold if you lose fights), and steal portals you want to go through if you're not fast enough. I've found that companion fights also tend to take longer than non-companion fights, and this overall has led to me dreading any time anyone who isn't Artemis appears.

There are thankfully few bugs that I've spotted. Melinoe's run sometimes has issues: once she wouldn't stop running forward, and I think sometimes she doesn't register when I've told her to sprint, frequently gets caught on corners, and she seems to slow down for some reason when using Poseidon's sprint. There are some issues with hitting escape, one of which even interfered with the Chronos fight, where he's meant to stop you from pausing. But my hitting the pause button just to test it made the game freeze/glitch, and I was able to sit on the menu screen for a bit, which was strange. Also, while I do think this is neat and funny, I can't help but notice that this is highly inaccessible, and should be an option before you do the fight, not something you can nix after you beat him. I originally beat Hades by taking a short break after getting his first health bar down, and I don't have a lot of the issues other players have.

The friendship mechanics also need some work, and might be a little glitchy in: re what's available to give to who, though I appreciate being informed what works best. Also just an outright criticism: fishing isn't a fun friendship building activity, and while it's fun that the characters point this out, I don't know why this is a thing at all. Nemesis has a hilarious interaction with you at least, and Odysseus has a funny post-date reaction, but overall every time I do this, with the bad fishing game inclusion, it's just frustrating. I doubt this'll get changed for final release, and I can see how it was added due to taking stuff in "Hades" and expanding on it, but as someone who hates fishing in real life and most games, and who found the fishing game annoying even back in "Hades", I just don't get this at all.

If you're considering playing the game now, you can be assured: while stuff is missing, and the balancing is off, it is a very playable game chock full of stuff to do, that by and large functions well, and it is possible to beat all bosses in the game, even outside of god mode. There is plenty of fun to be had here. If you loved "Hades", you are very likely to like this game, even in Early Access, even if I personally feel it works slightly less well at least at this stage of its Early Access, which is understandable. If you want to wait for the full thing to come out, do so with the knowledge that this looks to be a whole lot of fun when that happens.

This is an interesting alternate take on bullet heaven games, in a way that can be very fun, but also very frustrating. If you're interested in a bullet heaven game with challenge, this is probably a good one for you, with the caveat if you are not good with flashing lights, there is a lot of that, and no way to turn it off. And while it does offer greater versatility - to some respect - in terms of play styles, it also has bizarre limitations, and, centrally, you have to hold the mouse button (or whatever you're using to hit "fire") for prolonged periods of play, which can be frustrating. Most bullet heaven games I've played have you focus on collection and movement, whereas this game for some reason also has you focus on actually firing, and that can be physically demanding and aggravating. All in all, though, for the price, it's quite enjoyable.

The artwork is very pretty, although some of the character portraits are a bit strange. The little animations and tiny monster designs are neat, and I love all your summons. The Halloween-themed level is also cool. And the little gun twirl animation is adorable. Visually, outside of the flashing, it is a very neat-looking game.

The only two(?) music tracks I can recall from the game are nice enough, but there are seemingly only two of them, and it gets a little boring and repetitive quickly. Which is fascinating, given I don't have an issue with only having access to three game maps. The maps themselves are difficult enough as is, and increasing your difficult presents extra challenges, that being "limited" to three maps is no issue. Maybe three was the magic number here, or something. Or perhaps adding unique tracks to each map. Or every other difficulty or something.

The power-up concept is perhaps over my head, but I find a lot of them useless. Most of the boss drops I ignore, whereas in other games like "Returnal", the trade-offs (e.g., "you get more of this, but it takes away stuff") are more understandable.

One of the more annoying bugbears of this game is that your "progression" has limits that are rather silly. The talent tree system this uses - runes - has even more of a limitation. You can only use one activated talent from each row at a time. So rather than boosting your character by unlocking all these fun talents... you have to pick and choose unlocks and then pick and choose activation. It's kind of ridiculous. Progression /= progression in this game, at least in comparison to other games.

This game is a lot harder than it looks at the outset, and despite its relative simplicity, it gets hard fast. If you just want a very difficult bullet heaven game, this might be your thing. I personally struggle with constantly holding down the fire button and how activating talents doesn't mean my talents are active. All in all, a fun game for the price, since it's not very expensive.

This is still in early access, so obviously there are some issues to deal with, and changes are being made to the game to hopefully improve it. Like the store page says, it's a relatively simple game to get into, like a lot of bullet heaven games. The more complicated elements that set it apart from say, Vampire Survivors, are that you can equip gear, and you are constantly tweaking varying stats in the game with far fewer level-ups on average (versus VS, where you can hit a certain point and just level up constantly). Gold is also harder to come by. All in all, it's a bullet heaven game that looks like old Diablo games. At its best, it's engaging without being overwhelming, and it can be fun to see how powerful your character amps up, and the character classes are neat. A number of the attacks are also quite neat, visually, and the character designs can be fun. If you have a third party guide that advises you how best to make use of characters and stats, the game can be quite enjoyable. But it's a problem that third party guides feel indispensable. There's a difference between needing help with some of the many achievements, and needing help to avoid dying all the time/figuring out how specific mechanics work because the game doesn't explain them. So while, with the removal of Agony decay, I have changed this to a recommend, it is only with the caveat that you need a third party guide to enjoy it.

One issue I have is that there is also no map for some reason, making at least one landmark impossible to find except by luck and googling, because the game doesn't explain it to or let you know what it is you're looking at. If you're distracted by staying alive and collecting XP and loot, you won't see the markers to go there. If there are any other landmarks on any other levels, I have no idea. For now, I assume there are none. Why there seemingly isn't something LIKE that level 1 landmark, which helps with the final level boss, on all the other levels, I have no idea. It's a bizarre game level change.

A third party guide is particularly indispensable for Agony mode. Agony mode is a neat idea but it is not explained at all (or at least it was not when I started, perhaps it's developed since with their numerous changes). The basic concept is that enemies are harder to kill, and the higher the agony level, the more and harder the enemies are to kill, and the better XP they drop. There is a limit to agony, but the game doesn't (or at least didn't) tell you until you hit it. It's also not at all clear what precisely makes agony go up, though allegedly it's you hitting harder and faster and killing enemies quickly. The developers thankfully removed Agony decay, which is great, because it was one of the dumbest aspects of the game, particularly given Agony is required for progression.

Minor quibble, but it's very weird that you have to select a character just to buy stat increases that benefit everyone. I don't know why that's a thing, other than you have to choose a character to do everything else in the campsite. Also the gold % increase seems kind of useless. I seem to be earning less now than I did before I bought all the upgrades. Movement speed can also be downright punishing: on the fourth level, no matter how fast I made my character, they were always too slow to get out of certain AOE attacks, which was ridiculous. And for some reason to equip rings properly you have to unequip both rings because the game will randomly decide which to replace, which is ridiculous. I'm also not entirely sure what the point of four alternate armor outfits is when you have 9 characters with different stats and abilities and they all share the same alternate armor slots, and this isn't something you can use while on a run. In World of Warcraft, the same mechanic is used so you can easily switch between builds, particularly during dungeons and raids. Here, each character has different needs for optimization. Even if you wanted, say, a gold gathering set, each character is going to have different needs based on their stats, but you only have four places and so can only pre-arrange for four characters. It's not a bad idea in concept, it's just executed very weirdly. Why not just give each character four alternate armor slots?

It's a decent enough premise with some interesting design choices. The levels are basic but that's not exactly a problem, although getting stuck on objects I don't realize are objects is frustrating. I would also like it if there was something like the trinket on level 1 in the other three levels that made the final boss easier, but if there already is I have no idea. This game seriously needs a map and maybe a bestiary or codex or something. The music is okay mostly, and even nice in places, but the sound effects, particularly the warlock's, can be very annoying. I wish there was an option to manually change the music. An option on death but with remaining revives should also be added to allow you to quit the game. As is, the revive screen seems so silly. Why are you giving me the option to revive as if it's an option? The only choice I have is to click yes.

When it's fun, it's very fun, and obviously I put in a lot of hours for it because I enjoy it to some respect (especially after I've upgraded everything and found and bought all the armor). It is still very clunkily designed. Look up community discussions and guides and check out the subreddit, which also has useful info for progression and achievements.