Recent reviews by Nyandy

Great game, however it comes with numerous issues and roadblocks that will bring down your experience.
Horrible performance even on high end gpus, frequent texture pop-in issues, textures not loading properly(polygon hunter), stuttering occurring even when turning the camera while stationary.
The UI/UX is horrible as always, requiring multiple button presses for simple actions such as trying to join lobbies or drop items. There is an incredible amount of unnecessary menu navigation present.
The load times are noticeable but not egregious, however they should not be there in the first place for simple tasks such as setting filters or loading up a quest in the exact same area.
The multiplayer experience is quite baffling for a series that is known for their cooperative game play, if you wanted to play with friends then be prepared to jump through 3 different lobby systems. If you just wanted to join random players via the SOS mechanic, enjoy being told that the lobby is full, or you could not connect since the game loves to show you lobbies that do not exist.
It is also baffling that the environments had a lot of effort put into them and then proceed to railroad you for the story into a linear auto walking sim experience instead of letting you explore the new world they've created.
While it is release, the endgame of the game is quite barebones as you end up fighting one monster over and over.

It is very clear that Capcom rushed releasing the game before the end of March 2025 to meet their fiscal targets and they thought that they had consumer goodwill to burn.
In its current state, it is very hard to recommend the game even with the proper hardware to run the game.

This game is indeed anime dark souls. Unfortunately, this game only has three elements that could potentially set it apart from its mediocrity as a souls-like clone.

The first element would be the character customisation, with quite an in depth character creator, it is easy to create any of your favourite anime characters and play the game as them. My only complaint would be that there is not a convenient way to import and export your character presets to share with others and play as other presets easily. The only way for you to create characters others have made is to meticulously copy the same settings when attempting to remake the same character.

The second element is the character customisation of the builds. As the player progresses through the game, you unlock classes which have their own unique stat spreads and passive and active gifts (the games term for spells). The gifts are initially restricted to the specific class to use, but you can "master" the gifts through killing enemies and this unlocks the class restriction on the spells, allowing you to use the mastered gifts on all other classes (outside of a few powerful gifts which are locked to a class no matter what). While some weapons, gifts and armour have a stat restriction, since the stat spreads are tied to the classes, you can just freely swap classes on the fly for no cost meet the stat requirements. You basically have access to all the builds and can freely switch from one build to another once you have unlocked the required classes and the relevant gifts you want to use. The weapon system is simple as the weapons can be enhanced to +10 with in-game materials, I found that the game gave you enough of the enhancement materials so it would not be a problem if you wanted to try a bunch of weapons. Additionally, in the later areas, when finding new armours and weapons, they come upgraded to the expected baseline(+3,+6 or +9) of your current weapon/armour set so you don't need to enhance them from +1 to +10.

The last element that is quite important to this genre that the game does deliver on is thankfully the bosses. While the graphics of the game is a bit lacking for the overall experience, the gameplay of the bosses is quite superb for the most part. Outside of a couple outliers, the bosses are all quite fair and challenging as a solo experience. While most of the bosses movesets and attacks start out basic, usually they have a soft phase change halfway through the fight. The base moveset is built upon with small and simple additions that add to a fair but still challenging boss encounter. There are a couple of moves that lack a react-able tell for some bosses, but this is rare enough that was not a source of frustration when learning bosses. Unlike the general enemies, the bosses had minimal reuse outside of one remixed fight. I do know that the depths area just reuse these bosses, but that area seems more like a bonus option side area for you to grind in. When coupled with the build variety and freedom to switch to any build on the fly, learning a boss has never had more options available especially when a boss is giving your specific build a hard time.

Unfortunately, outside of these 3 factors, everything else in the game is either painfully average or subpar compared to the Fromsoft games. However, as flawed and subpar as this game is, overall, I still had an enjoyable time as the game was what I expected for the most part for a game that seems like Dark souls with an anime aesthetic. Would recommend this game on a heavy sale for anyone who enjoys Souls-likes, the anime aesthetic and the excellent boss gameplay of the genre.

In a sea of games in the souls-like genre, Lies of P is the rare occasion in which the game is clearly inspired but was able to transcend just being a shallow clone.



The combat in this game is immaculate. The developers clearly understood the foundations of a souls-like game and were able to implement this with their own spin on it. There are a lot of tools the game presents to you in order to find a fun build to engage the game with. The incredible diverse weapon assembly system, the addition of various legion arms that supplement your build with a cool ability, the adequately named "P-Organ" system that gives you upgrades.

But what use would all these cool additions be if the core gameplay was no good?

Thankfully, the creators of Lies of P really do understand what makes combat feel fun in this genre. Combat-wise, you have two main responses to enemy attacks, either blocking and parrying or dodging away and iframing with the more advanced applications of the two responses being the latter options. In terms of execution versus reward, all the options are viable and depending on the situation, you will have to weigh which one to go for. The game presents these build options to you in order to encourage you to engage with their core combat systems in a fun way. You are not limited to one type of response and are able to freely mix and use both types of responses through combat. You can also use one type of response exclusively if that is how you wish to play. Having multiple viable responses to enemy attacks allows for a more enjoyable experience in learning enemy and boss movesets. It does not matter if you pick the easier responses of blocking and dodging or the harder, but more rewarding responses of parrying and iframing, it is this freedom of experimentation of how to approach fights in this game that allows for the player to easily reach a flow state and enjoy the combat no matter what approach they use.

Some other additions to the combat that help elevate the game include;
1. Weapon durability for both you and the enemy, you will need to repair your weapon periodically so it does not break, conversely parrying the enemies weapon consistently can break their weapon, lowering their damage and range for whole fight. This adds one more small factor to keep track of in boss fights.
2. When you have no healing charges left, you will slowly recharge 1 healing charge by hitting the enemy. This keeps you flipping between the safety of 1 more heal versus needing to be aggressive to regain the heal back once you use it.
3. An enemy's health bar will glow white upon accumulating enough stagger damage through parrying or hitting the enemy. While the health bar is glowing, enemies will be staggered upon taking a heavy hit (charged heavy attack, a throwable, fable art attack, or a legion arm attack). This encourages you to make a risky attack in hopes of staggering the enemy and turning the fight or just getting hit and dying.

In terms of accessibility, the game does lock you into melee builds for the most part and the game expects you to engage with its core combat mechanics of dodging and/or parrying. There are some additional methods that could make the game easier such as some pure ranged options available in the legion arm add-on and throwables(which are surprisingly strong in this game). There is also a standard AI summon you can use for the main bosses that takes the boss aggro from the player. However it comes attached to a clunky system in which you need to wait for in game resources to replenish the summoning material and buffs/pots for the summon.


The bosses in this game are all quite unique and well designed outside of maybe 1-2 misses. Each boss is a unique, eventful encounter that concludes an area and comes with a unique moveset and tons of variety (there is a boss you can beat by only parrying, how cool is that?). Bosses are all quite aggressive but fair in that a lot of the moveset is very readable and reactable even on your first fight. There are many amazing fights in this game, and I was expecting a drop in quality at some point, but thankfully until the end, the quality of the boss fights never dipped or felt unfair.
The enemy variety in this game is quite solid, usually you would see a solid amount of reuse of both general enemies and bosses in these types of games, however, I found that outside of a couple instances, the game generally was still able to keep introducing at least 1-2 new enemy types for each new area all the way until the last area of the game. This kept the areas feeling unique and instead focuses on giving the player more of these gameplay moments as they run into new enemies or minibosses throughout the game.


Lies of P is quite a linear game, there is usually only 1 optional side path in an area so for the most part the game follows the same structure of new area into boss, then next area into next boss. Each area does have some exploration to do for finding loot and mini bosses but even then, its quite contained and linear. The levels themselves are designed simply as a big circle with a shortcut back to the save point. Depending on how you play these games this might not even be a negative as the linearity means that you would not need to look up guides or be too scared of missing anything important within an area as you can easily explore the whole area. There seems to be only one optional side area in the game and even that is on the shorter side. While the level design was predictable at times, I was still able to enjoy the games atmosphere and environments in each new area.


Narrative-wise, I was quite surprised at how enjoyable the Pinocchio theme was. The game nudges you in the direction of lying to present its main themes of humanity vs being a puppet and it culminates in quite a solid ending which is uncommon among games in this genre.
The game has a clear narrative structure and explains its story really well. The game still has some hidden lore that you can discover but this is just to supplement the story it already tells so you wont have to go digging into lore as the game just shows you all the important bits. The various NPCs in the game all have their own charm and you are given enough interactions with them so that when their part in the narrative comes to a close, you could actually care about them since the game gives you enough to chew on.


The soundtrack is quite solid for the most part but I felt as though the general OSTs were forgettable for the most part. The songs that really stood out to me were the songs that you could collect in game as vinyl records which the game does encourage you to play while you are running around the main hub upgrading and experimenting with your character.


In a fantastic year of gaming, Lies of P might have flown under the radar for some, but it is one of the best in the genre and has shown itself to be an amazing inspiration rather than a pale impersonation of the original souls-like games.

A charming little indie game in which you play as a zombie powering up through the power of questionable recipes and eating dishes made from the various monsters you kill throughout the game.

Gameplay-wise it is a 2D hack and slash with a sprinkle of some bullet-hell. While I found that the build variety was serviceable, I did enjoy all the options and play styles available to the player. The game is quite easy in terms of a creating synergistic build that will be able to carry you to the end of the game.
There are some platforming challenges within the levels but they are not challenging at all considering you can just brute force your way through without dying.
The combat itself was not very challenging due to later enemies basically being HP sponges to whittle down before you move on to the boss/next areas. The bosses were slightly more enjoyable as they had move sets that needed to be dodged and bullet hell sections where you only focused on dodging.
In terms of level design, the game is quite linear with usually a branching short path that leads to a hidden collectable recipe or weapon every now and then.
The game is not grindy at all as going through a level and killing most of the enemies will get you enough of the materials naturally in order to craft a specific dish/weapon that needs the materials found in that level.
Overall the linearity of the game was a small detriment but I did not mind as it was still an enjoyable experience as there was minimal backtracking.

The games art is pretty good, with a nice pixel art and anime style with the visual novel dialogue sections.

The real standout surprise of this game is the characters and story. The characters are all quite charming and entertaining and the story was more than I expected for a small indie like this. The game manages to hit a good amount of comedic story beats and dialogue in a way that isn't just cringy humour. Some of the emotional story beats were quite solid as well.

Overall this game was a pleasant experience, would recommend it if you enjoy the aesthetic of a 2D anime hack and slash with a focus on cooking and zombies.

Stephens sausage roll is the best puzzle game I have played.

On first impressions, this game title is silly, the graphics are horrible and the cost seems way overpriced for a "simple 3D puzzle game". However, the more I played the game, the more my initial impressions of the game were a bit misunderstood. While the game title and graphics were still horrible and silly, it also adds to the campiness of the game in a charming way and does not detract from the main focus of the game, which is on its puzzles. And while the price is quite steep, it does provide a nice 20-30 hour puzzling experience that was never boring throughout its runtime.

The main mechanics of the game are as follows, your character occupies a 2x1 space consisting of your character and the fork they hold. You also need to cook a 2x1 sausage on two sides using a grill tile without losing the sausage or burning it. All of the games puzzles follow this rule, the same sausages, grill tiles and the same goal to cook them. This game has very few mechanics, but each mechanic has been meticulously poked and prodded throughout the puzzles in order to fully explore what can and cannot be done in this game and how that aids you in solving its puzzles. No new player actions are added to this game throughout its play-through, you are able to do the same things at the start of the game versus at the end of the game, you just may not realize it yet or have an opportunity to do so at the beginning of the game. The refinement of the gameplay is incredibly tight and as a result, the puzzles in this game can become amazingly complex even when only based on the very simple mechanics. At no point in the game did I feel that the exploration of gameplay mechanics had stagnated, every new concept or solution in the game felt fresh and and worth putting in the time to understand what the game was asking of me.

In many cases, your initial impression of a level is that they are outright impossible to solve. This happens a lot early on in the game when you are still in the process of learning what the game expects of you. The game does not hold your hand and expects a lot from you from the start. As a result, this means that the game starts off quite difficult and this can be off-putting as players may not feel like they are progressing. Outside of one puzzle, I believe that the difficulty curve of the game is quite well paced, there is no huge jump in difficulty for the rest of the game. A small bit of criticism on the later levels is that you must complete a later section in a linearly fashion, there is no option to try other puzzle sections like in the beginning if you happened to get stuck on a particular puzzle.

As a puzzle game, this game succeeds on many levels as it is able to craft all of its puzzles with minimal repetition of tricks in order to give you as many click moments with the game when you are able to finally solve a puzzle after staring at it blankly trying to move the sausages in your mind. In addition the game manages to avoid another common puzzle problem of being too tedious (for the most part) within its design, for example, making you solve a puzzle then immediately making you repeat it multiple times in order to hammer it into you. The game is not afraid to show you ingenious solutions and then move on to a new concept instead of trying to milk it in the next few puzzles as some other puzzle games may opt to do. Every puzzle does give you something new to take away in your understanding of the game and its mechanics, regardless of whether it would be applicable in the future or not.

I would highly recommend this game to anyone who enjoys puzzle games.

FROG DETECTIVE GOT HIS DATE!

An incredibly cute looking puzzle game that hides some amazing puzzle design and difficulty within its adorable little mascots that you need to guide towards an exit in order to complete levels.

At its core, the main mechanics are quite simple but the puzzle design in this game makes good use of each of the mechanics to create difficult but fair puzzles that rely on a creative solution that best makes use of a mechanic. While the puzzles ultimately have one solution, you cannot just arrive at the solution through trial and error like many other puzzle games. While the game may push you to slowly discover specific mechanics through trial and error, you will need to understand it and be able to apply it yourself in order to solve a level. It is this level of puzzle design that successfully makes use of a users assumptions and subverts it later on in order to make you feel like a genius after finally solving a level after staring at it for the past 20 minutes.

A true unique mystery game which is boiled down to playing mystery sudoku with the fates of all the crew aboard the Obra Dinn.
The core concept is incredibly unique and executed fantastically, culminating in a truely unique detective experience where you feel as though you are piecing together the mystery without the game holding your hand and giving you shortcuts.
The narrative on its own is somewhat average but is elevated by the presentation of the game and the non linear storytelling.
Amazing voice acting and logical puzzles are scattered throughout in order to aid your investigation.

On the other hand, the graphics are quite unique, but can be visually offputting and dated to some.
Sadly, being a mystery game, there no replayability in this game once you have finished the game once and know the solutions.
Highly recommended for fans of the mystery or puzzle genres.

Library of Ruina is an indie game from Project moon.
Being a sequel to the notoriously hard Lobotomy Corporation, Library of Ruina changes up its gameplay to be a card collecting, deck building RPG while still containing an amazing narrative and world building.

Gameplay loop
While you may think it is a card game similar to StS, you cannot mindlessly play your cards and expect to win, even with meticulous deck setups.
The overall gameplay loop can be quite satisfying as it boils down to beating new fights, then being able to use the cards and passives of the fight you just did to upgrade your own decks (small praise to the boss fights letting you use most of the same passives and cards they have when you fight them, making them feel like actual bosses when on your side). The game inserts a wide range of unique and thematic archetypes in both the fights you can do and the decks you can build. I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of unique archetypes and the ways they were slowly built upon throughout progressing through the game.
This game has a staggering amount of content, with an average play through taking an estimated 150 hours.

The difficulty is vertical
While the game maintains a smooth difficulty curve at the start to ease you in, it quickly inserts many difficulty spikes along the way as it culminates in a true test of your deck building and game knowledge near the end.
While the spikes in difficulty can pose a challenge and frustration, it is quite similar to the try and fail cycle of a souls-like game. You will need to refine your deck building and your strategy every time in order to be successful. The main difference that causes more frustration in this game is that your suffering and losses are extended to many, many turns before you lose instead of being over in 2 hits.
While the game can be difficult at times, the game also gives you a variety of very overpowered decks and builds if you are able to discover them as you level up your deck-building skills. If overpowered builds are not enough for some fights, there may also exist some method of clearing a fights in an unconventional method. The game definitely gives you the options and freedom in order to clear some of the harder fights this way if you are able to use the game knowledge to your advantage.


Story
While this game is technically a sequel to Lobotomy corporation, it is able to stand on its own if you have not experienced the first game, however as it is a continuation of the first game, the narrative experience would only be heavily enhanced if you have played lobotomy corporation(I just watched a quick summary video to get caught up).

The main method of story exposition that the game uses is with some good old visual novel style vignettes. These play out usually between fights to add lore and world building to both the guests (enemies) you will face and for the librarians (allies) that you will use to fight.
In addition to the visual novel exposition, the game further builds on its world and narrative through some optional readings and imagery that can be found on character key pages, combat pages and passives. These are just some extra bits of lore that are sprinkled in if you really care about some characters and story lines.

There are many literary (and operatic even) references that are littered throughout the game in the story, characters and songs.
The overall writing style gives such a refreshing and unique narrative that avoids chasing common tropes and trendy story lines that can be mindlessly regurgitated today. The game takes a theme and explores it over the course of its narrative, showing us how the characters can represent their own interpretation of the main theme and what happens when they clash with opposing ideals. Even without the full literary context of the references that the story draws from, the overall narrative is a breath of fresh air and really makes you care about its characters and the struggles they face in this dystopian cyberpunk world.
The story is also fully voiced in korean and the voice acting is quite good even if I don't understand a word.
Even if it is a korean game, the translation is solid and impressively does not take you away from the story with noticeable grammatical or word errors(In fact, I learned a couple of new words from this game).

Music
The first thing you are treated to when the game begins is an amazing opening song sung by Mili. This is also not the last time you will hear Mili as they will appear again with fully voiced original boss themes created for the game. Each song is a treat and heavily relates to the boss in which the song is composed for. The songs were created with many motifs and symbols from the game, but can still be enjoyed by those who have not play the game at all.
Even with some amazing songs by Mili, the OST songs for the game, composed by Studio EIM are also no less amazing. Ranging from orchestral, jazz, city pop, EDM, and rock, the soundtrack does a superb job at conveying its representative character themes when tied to the games emotional flux system.

Graphics
While the game borrows a bit of the artstyle from the previous game, it is a bit more refined in Library of ruina as the bigger sprites have more strokes and shading, giving the game an unique artstyle that blends well with the combat.
The combat graphics itself is similar to darkest dungeons and their 1 key frame attacks which work well within the game thanks to the sound design and feedback of hits and clashes.
The backgrounds of the game are quite unique and give off that oil painting feel with rich colors and use of layering.

Cons
While the game is amazing, no game is without flaws. Here are just a couple that bothered me throughout my play through.
- The deck-building interface is a little lacking for how much time you need to spend in there, there should be more options that help you search through cards and passives in an easier way than just searching card names or filters.
- During combat, the interface can sometimes get in the way of viewing dice info or aiming your combat pages (for example when zoomed in or when you need to pan the camera or hide the passives page to click on a specific speed die. Additionally, the UI makes the game seem a lot more complex than it really is, and to a random viewer who has never played the game, you really cannot tell what is going on.
- The game can get grindy at later points thanks to its gacha system for cards(highly recommended the No-grind mod if you hate grinding at all).
- The tutorial lacks a lot of info, it is basically a huge text dump at the start of the game. While I am happy how the concepts of ranged and mass atk pages are introduced later on once you are a bit more accustomed to game, there is still a lot of information the game omits from you. Whether that is intentionally for the player to discover or just a lack of info on the games side, I cant help but think that the earlier fights should have had more of an emphasis on teaching the player some of the nuanced mechanics through a combination of gameplay and text as opposed to just dumping it all at once.

I would highly recommend this game for anyone looking for a challenging indie strategy game with a great narrative and music.
As a new fan of Project moon, I have high hopes for their future endeavours and hope they can continue to break the cycle both in games and outside of them.

Neko arc doko