Recent reviews by ned

The game itself is enjoyable; with beautiful visuals and vistas, a fun (though, partially flawed) combat system, good build diversity and good replayability.

However, what is on offer for 49.99USD$ is NOT a finished game. There are masks, weapons, entire weapon classes, pre-order/deluxe edition bonuses, certain voice-acting, and more absent from the game on all platforms along with a baffling lack of polish in many places. Additionally, the "40+ hours" of gameplay that is listed on the store page is incredibly deceptive, and the average first playthrough will likely only be 15-25 hours even when accounting for a collector's playstyle; for the price point Jyamma Games asks, and compared to its contemporaries, the game is very short.

The game may be improved over time, but it is impossible to recommend a blatantly unfinished game, admitted as such by the release of an "improvement roadmap" only 3 days post-launch, being sold at near full price with intentionally deceptive marketing; either check back in 4-6 months down the line, or play if there is a drastic price cut or sale. Would refund if I could.

Samurai Bringer is a beat'em'up/Dynasty Warriors type of game with a cute and appealing artstyle, customizable moveset options to dink around with and optimize, and decent replayablility despite its huge lack of post-game content.

It has to be said that this game is much more fun if you approach it as what it actually is; it is not a true rogue-like/rogue-lite, despite having randomized maps, drops, spawns and etc. It does offer loops, much like other rogue-lites, but they do not get progressively harder (or even harder at all).

With the comically excessive amount of health, damage and gear you'll begin to have post-Orochi, combined with the (good, mind you) Blacksmithing system to swap passives from weapon to weapon, you'll spend almost all of your time optimizing as much as possible and doing "chores", like achievements and self-established goals. It becomes genuinely hard to die after looping, and combined with being able to save and come back later at any point during the run (also a good feature), you won't be dying and restarting runs very frequently at all beyond the first few hours of the game.

Quite fun for what it is and innovative in a number of ways, but can definitely get stale fast for non-completionists and is in dire need of post-game content. Note that I purchased this game on a sale for 6.99$ USD, so I can't comment on if it is worth its full price.

Divine Knockout has a fun concept, being a more MOBA-like take on team brawler games like Smash Legends, but in its current iteration is largely brought down by a plethora of glaring game design issues, bad balance and, expectedly, lots of bugs and lack of polish.

Arcade 3v3 is perhaps the peak of the game's design problems, as almost every mode offered in Arcade is fundamentally broken in some small or otherwise significant way;
- Oddball is similar to Capture the Flag-type gamemodes, except that you have to hold onto the flag ("oddball") to rack up points for your team.
If you've ever played Overwatch, you might recall how that game's CTF mode explicitly locks you out of mobility skills while carrying the objective... and DKO is a prime example of why; you're not locked out of mobility skills or even slightly constrained while holding the oddball, and actually get an attack buff while holding it. This clearly incentivizes playing characters who excel at stalling (Thanatos) or have lots of knockback abilities (Ymir, Thor, Hercules) and generally makes the last few seconds of a round incredibly frustrating more than tense.

- King of the Hill is fundamentally broken by one issue, and one issue only: if there is more than a single team member on the control zone, the opposing team cannot contest it without matching their numbers. This means if your teammates die and you make it to the point and have the potential to make a game-winning play, you lose anyway because you aren't allowed to contest by yourself.

- Coin Blitz doesn't have any major game design issues, though depositing coins is very clunky and annoying. Whole mode in general is very unfun and takes too long.

- Knockout is clearly the premiere mode of Arcade, and possibly the game in general, and has almost no problems (outside of aforementioned balance issues); it's a simple Team Deathmatch mode where you knock out people on the enemy team 8 times in total to win.. Maps aren't super varied or notable but fine.

- Nothing to do with the gamemodes, but it's worth noting that Arcade 3v3 simultaneously shows the best and worst of the game at the same time and grants more XP than the other modes on offer, making it really the only thing worth playing to progress.

Beyond anything relating to gamemodes, the game has some server and global control issues aswell; the buffer can store inputs for a ridiculously long time and make them come out when they are no longer desired, and dodging sometimes fails to work or has visual issues when combined with the server rolling back.

It is free at the moment (12/17/2022), so definitely try it out if you wish, but I cannot recommend anybody purchase it in its current state after the promotion ends. In general, check back a few months into next year to see if Hi-Rez goes anywhere with this concept, and don't be surprised if they don't.

Potentially an enjoyable game, but currently frustrating to play because of two hugely detrimental reasons;

1. Hitstun Mechanics

When you get hit by an opponent's chain combo or some abilities (Peter's X ability or most characters' Z>Z>Z chains, for example), you get put into a launch state where you fly backwards and can then re-enact control after a few seconds, either by attacking or jumping which gives you an adept way to break out of sticky situations. This is fine for most cases.

Why "most"? Because this mechanic is reduced to nothing in Domination 3v3 matches; If another opponent hits you out of the first opponent's chain combo, the launch state will never happen and you will be unable to break out at all, meaning the two players (with coordination) can ping-pong you between their two chain combos and you will die with no counter-play except for... just don't get in that situation.

Even if two players are not in coordination, this issue of overriding the launch state will affect your gameplay CONSTANTLY in any situation where there is more than a single player, and results in taking ridiculous amounts of damage off of singular very slight mistakes. You could play 1v1 Duels where this isn't an issue at all, but you get significantly less credits per match while playing Duels, so have fun making any progression or getting any characters that way.


2. No Controller Support

This is, very evidently, originally a mobile game; a mobile game that uses a digital analog stick for its controls, which lets you freely walk and attack in 360°, making precisely striking your opponents relatively simple.

For whatever reason, however, the game currently has no controller support AT ALL, which means you're stuck to the 8 directions on the keyboard layouts (WASD and Arrow Keys by default). This is a problem because there are highly mobile characters in the game, who will very frequently tuck into and out of angles that 8-way movement simply cannot hit at all (unless if you're playing a character with easy to use cleave attacks; good luck playing any marksman on this port).

This makes playing against characters like Red, Kurenai, and many others downright infuriating. It's baffling that this port has no controller support at all, and combined with the Auto-Target setting being faulty at best and garbage at worst, this is where almost all of my problems came from with the 6 or so hours that I played. Could you get used to it? Maybe, but there should be controller support so the game can be played as it was intended, with its proper analog controls, period.

NOTE: This review was written on April 10th 2022, and the game has since gotten (some) controller support; I've had inconsistency with the deadzones on various gamepads (which, mind, do not have any drift and are fine on all other titles) and they are not adjustable in-game, but it works well enough.

The issues with launch states are still present, if not worse with the addition of some newer characters, and with "engravings" balancing seems to be a total mess. Combined with much more aggressive monetization, I'd still avoid the game, if only for slightly differing reasons nowadays.

Once a game I knew and loved, turned into a horrid and enraging greed-influenced disaster.

I might have only 173 hours on steam but I had way more on Glyph (late Trion's 'launcher'), and I would guess I've played this game for well over a thousand hours. It's absolutely not the same game it used to be 2 years ago, and is infact so far away from what it used to be that I would call it an entirely different game.

It hurts to see how hard this game has bombed in the short short timespan of 2 years, but it is what it is, I suppose.

Please don't touch this horrid ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ company's products with a 20 foot pole, for your own good.

business casual man is the only character that matters

Let me tell you my experience with this game.

-Start a new world
-Walk around a bit and shank some zombies with the starter knife
-Figure out how to use gun
-Shoot stuff
-Notice chunks of blocks going everywhere
-THERE'S A ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ SKYRIM DRAGON
-Try to fight dragon with pistol
-Kill it
-Loot its stuff and craft an AK47
-Explore
-Dies to falling down a cliff

10/10