Recent reviews by psenough

Great concept, lore, worldbuilding, writing and voice acting.

10gb, no controller support, crashes before even the first map starts

Pleasant surprise the discovery of this game! Point & click done right on all accounts: immersive storyline with depth (not just the usual cyberpunk tropes), diverse settings and puzzle types, good pixel artwork, well developed characters, good balance between not having too many items / areas to click for each stage, good casting for the voice acting.

Some minor things that could have been polished more:
- didn't like the initial talk of partners asking questions to each other they already know the answer to just to explain the world better
- should have an option for inventory to remain open, kept having to click it open when trying things
- some puzzles could have had better hints at the solution (like the fishing line needing a magnet for example)
- normalization of the audio on some audio lines

Feeds my hexcells withdrawal syndrome.

The ASCII and ANSI artwork give it a distinguishing look. Gameplay seemed aligned with the typical JRPG tropes. Haven't played long enough to get too deep into the story and get to know the characters but seemed interesting so far.
Did a first impressions video recording of the gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CY-17Yskz1c&ab_channel=psenough

Will just play for a bit ... 10 straight hours later ... can't go now, the storm is coming and i just lost a scout loaded with supplies!

No clue where i got this from, but it ended up on my to_really_check list which i randomly decided to attack alphabetically couple nights ago, out of insomnia. So i knew nothing about the game before getting into it.
I dislike american frat party drink culture references in media and am too old for coming of age drama so i was about to call it quits midway into the first scene when it suddenly ended and the game changed completely in tone/prespective to a much more interesting narrative. Am also an atheist, so not that much interested in anything built around bible references, in hindsight this game would probably really not be for me, for multiple reasons. And yet... the humour in the world building and the characters and the storyline grew on me as the point of the game started revealing itself. I was now actually finding it funny to hear about all the nonsense going on in hell and having fun trying new drinks and chats with characters. Special thumb up for the dialogues and the quality voice acting that really bring the characters to life.

I got addicted to the Tower Defense genre with the original gemcraft flash version on kongregate way back when.

Over a decade later i spotted the franchise on steam but was somewhat disappointed with Chasing Shadows when i first tried it out, not sure why but it didn't really have the flare of the original, it didn't visually appeal to me for some reason. So i didn't play it much.

A few years later now i spot Frostborn Wrath also came out at some point and decide to give it a try, hoping it was improved over Chasing Shadows. And indeed it seems to be, it sucked me right in just like the original had. Good ambience, great artwork, smart level design, little bit of lore and exploration, lot of strategy thinking, good controls on pushing next wave / pause to rearrange stuff (which so many other TD games frustratingly suck at). A lot of grind to replay older levels to get more experience points once you are higher level, which some reviewers dislike apparently but to me it felt like it's well balanced and part of the deal. You have plenty of things to keep pushing the story forward until you finally have to backtrack and regrind to level up and get strong enough to complete the story mode, and when you do go back you can still pick and choose just how much of a challenge you can / want to tackle and what skills to focus on, so it's not exactly the same level.

So to me it carries good value for both casual play and challenging play. It's incredibly satisfying to go back to a level you struggled with on the first pass and now get to blast through it despite higher difficulty.

Done with the main map but kept coming back to try the missing trials and grind those mana farms to get more skill points and puzzle pieces to eventually complete the talisman in the highest possible rarity.

Finally completed the talisman but kept coming back for one more attempt at those missing trials and trying to finish levels under max difficulty for highest experience gains.

400 hours in, still kept coming back to "just max out one more map" or "just try this trial again" and "just unlock one more achievement".. but some achievements seemed unachievable... Oh, there are secret mods to unlock! Alright then, couple hours figuring out all the unlocking sequences later: i can now replay all the maps under weirder settings and grind those final achievements and still half a dozen trial challenges left to crack.

So yeah, this is one of the best replay value per cost games out there.
If you like the tower defense genre ofcourse. Good window into the genre aswell, recommended even if you're not a tower defense fan.

Good typing game. Ace artwork, effects and concept of the game. Voice acting also good. Level design is alright, confusing in some places but overall solid and makes good use of the different elements. Control of the character outside the typing mode was a big janky, basic Unity engine movement, that was my biggest annoyance with the game along with the random enemy showing up next to you while you're dealing with "am i in typing mode or not" weirdness was the most frustrating part of the game, hitting enter by mistake and not understanding what's happening killed me more often then misstyping something.

Overall solid game but with a few usability issues.

Would be nice if the collectibles were more explicitly listed so you know what you're missing.

Missing some sort of special challenge mode to tackle once you unlock all the traits. I understand the main game needed a balance and softer difficulty curve, but would be nice to have side challenges with different spawn patterns etc.

Great artwork, plot and gameplay concepts. Really hard difficulty, brutal unfair randomness on some chapters. Usability of some of the menus of some of the chapters need an upgrade, really annoying to keep clicking 4 times to do the same things you need to do every single turn, stuff like checking basic status being 3 levels deep and actions you need to do almost every turn keep having a confirm option slightly offset from the selection that makes you keep closing/cancelling the order by mistake. Small things that would go unoticed on first plays but that really become a pain when you're replaying the same chapter for the 10th time desperately trying to go fast through the boring part to reach the critical stages of the chapter.