Recent reviews by Datlossit

(On break from the game as of writing, may update this review with more detail later as i get back to playing more)

First played this game all the way back in 2012 when it was still owned and ran by Wild Shadow Studios, while fun, i eventually dropped it after losing a solid Wizard character. This was during the time where the "original" end-game gear was very valuable and hard to get, so it was a big loss i couldn't take.

I did not play at all during the Kabam era, so can't comment on that.

Fast forward to 2022, i eventually picked this game up again at around late July, and the addiction was strong. As long as you avoid the ridiculous amount of Pay2Win aspects, (Which for reasons i best not comment on) Realm of the Mad God has a sweet, short, addicting loop, while being brutally hard, especially the end-game dungeons and bosses, on top of fear of permadeath.

This can overstay it's welcome however, and it can get repetitive quite quickly. Otherwise i highly recommend playing the game in short periods rather than full time, it's a good small time killer game when you got nothing else better to do or consider playing, it's negatives really come out if you try to play it full time.

One of the best 3D Platformers of the modern generation, inspired by classics such as Super Mario 64/Sunshine, bringing in the roots of Banjo-Kazooie, along with a beautiful visual style based on The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker.
A Hat In Time attempts to bring what made old 3D Platformers and Collect-A-Thons so loved to the modern era, and does so beautifully.

NOTE: This review is based on having owned and played both the DLCs: Seal The Deal & Nyakuza Metro, this contains marked spoilers to them, read at your own risk.


-Simple To Play, Hard To Master: Like most 3D Platformers, you have your standard full 360 direction movement, and a jump button. You can also crouch if you wish to.
You have a double jump that can only be used once per jump or while in the air, but can be refreshed in a number of ways without touching the ground, allowing for some clever use to gain height.
At the beginning your top running speed isn't the best, but fortunately will you very quickly gain access to a proper sprint at the start of the game. However, jumping while sprinting will not allow you to double jump, but will gain much more distance in speed than in height a double jump would.
You also have an dive action, that can be used on the ground or in the air. You will slide down hills/slopes much faster while diving, and cover a bit more distance in the air. Any direct contact with solid objects like walls however will cause you to bonk, stunning you momentarily. This can be prevented as diving can be cancelled anytime, which can be chained into the next movement ability listed. Cancelling can also be used to reset falling speed and thus prevent damage from falling too far.
Lastly, you are also able to scale most surfaces and walls by jumping onto them. You will run up automatically until coming to a stop and sliding back down, or you reach the top and jump up automatically. You can jump off anytime, in close quarter areas this can be used to wall jump constantly and gain infinite height. You can also grab the top of ledges normally and hang onto them.

There is much more to the game in movement, but these are the most basics. All together, while simple in concept, can allow for some very satisfying movement and a high skill ceiling to the game.


-Beautiful Artstyle: Taking heavy inspiration from The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker in it's cel-shaded style, with a dose of Super Mario Sunshine on top of it. The game is incredibly beautiful and takes major advantage of modern tech, while still sticking to the cute as heck style it's aiming for.
It has many themes across each of it's major levels and worlds, from an island town, to an movie studio, an haunted forest, mountains far beyond the clouds, an cruise ship, and an metropolis underground.
Polygons can be noticed at some points, but they do little to hurt the games style, adding to it's charm and simplicity.
Personal nitpick is that i am not a fan in the high use of blur, it can cause some distortion or sickness. Fortunately, all these can be turned off in the games graphic options as one pleases.


-Very Lovable Characters: Just about all the characters in the game, especially the majors, are great to interact with. Learning their personalities and their distinct motives. This is helped by they have good voice acting, with characteristics nothing like the last.
The only nitpicks is that ones present in the vanilla game and in Seal The Deal do not have proper lip-syncing, instead using standard talking animations. This is subverted with The Empress in the Nyakuza Metro DLC, who has full lip-syncing.
Another is some are not fleshed out more than others, and can come off as more bland as a result. DLCs have attempted to fix this, adding more depth to it's characters and their backstory via the content they add.


-Outstanding Soundtrack: For an adventure starring an kid in a hat, this game has one phenomenal OST that truly captures what the game goes for. Calm, curiosity filled tracks as one explores the worlds, to absolute rock hard guitar once things get serious and a boss fight begins, and that's just the beginning of the types of tracks you can find and listen to!
It has become one of my favourite video game OSTs, it even has it's own remixes you can play in the game that were originally fanmade but made official into the game. DLCs are just as good, with both of them having some of my personal favourites tracks in the entire game.
There's also the B-Side DLC that has 134 tracks, which includes even more remixes not present in the game, all ones that were lost, used in the games beta, WIP or were never used. If you just can't get enough of the cute as heck adventures sound pieces to bop to, this is for you.


-Full Modding Support: The game has a active modding community via the Steam Workshop, all sorts can be found there to ones content. Wanna play as some other character? Want more cosmetic options, weapons, abilities, or even more levels to play? It has it all, from one shot levels to full blown new worlds to explore!
Just click and download, then you're good to go! You can even find mods that are effectively cheats if you just wanna mess around, or simple quality of life improvements if something in the game bothers you but wanna fix that.
Others as well allow teaching the player on mechanics not taught by the game itself, allowing them to improve their skills even further or abuse some of the games mechanics to their benefit.



-A Story There, Not Much Impact: The game does have a story and how one gets into the mess having to explore the worlds. Each worlds story is good on it's own, but the one spanning the entire game isn't really expanded upon, with the finale coming a bit out of nowhere with no buildup to it. The relationship with one character in particular also fell off kinda hard with no big impact and being short.
The story by no means really harms the game, but it felt it could've been better. There's also alot of mysteries left unanswered, but these may be intentional for all that's known and left up to the players imagination and speculation.


-DLCs Can Be Underwhelming: Both DLCs suffer from flaws that can affect the experience playing them, this varies from player to player, but some have remained more common than others.
Seal The Deal suffers from it's unique chapter: The Arctic Cruise, being very short with only 3 acts, no boss fight, all set around only the ship itself, despite also having 2 Time Rifts. It also contains one of the most infamous Acts in the game that also has a Death Wish variant, both which were nerfed in an later patch.
Seal The Deal also suffers it's entire unique mode, Death Wish, being mixed. While it can come off as a good challenge and adding replay value, it can be a massive difficulty spike and being unfair to some players. Even after nerfs, Death Wish holds some ridiculous and hair-pulling tasks to complete if the player wishes to complete the mode without Peace & Tranquility/Easy mode.
Nyakuza Metro instead has a full chapter to explore that is Free Roam right from the start, an single Time Rift, stickers to collect to use as emotes, Online Party mode, a cool setting and great use of it's unique mechanics. However, just like The Arctic Cruise, it has no boss fight for it's finale, which can come off as anticlimactic for some.


Overall, A Hat In Time i highly recommend to any Platformer lover with no hesitation. It is one of the most solid takes on the genre it is aiming for in the modern generation. Flaws are there, but the positives outweigh the negatives so much they barely matter. Play it!

Happy hat wearing hourglass collecting!

- P.S

PECK!

An game that has well held it's ground since it's beta days, Terraria offers tons upon tons of hours in content. Play how you want in anyway you like, no matter the pacing. Many ways to approach the game as well, offering 4 major "Class" styles in the form of Melee, Ranged, Magic and Summoner. (There is a fifth in the form of Throwers, but it's mostly an underdeveloped and highly outclassed class compared to the other four)

Very well deserves the Labor of Love award for the The Steam Awards of 2021, no contest. The amount of respect and content Re-Logic have pushed out for the game over it's 10 year life cycle has been incredible. Despite the train of main content having now stopped with the final update 1.4: Journey's End, Terraria will continue to live on for a very long time thanks to it's amazing community and modding base, home to amazing mods such as Calamity.

Consider this a must have title for an average Steam user, a throwback to the Retro days of gaming with it's pixel style art, amazing OST, decent control scheme, a very in-depth skill ceiling with many unique challenges, with better rewards playing on the highest difficulties in the form of Expert and Master mode.

Oh and now add in the awesome crossover content, from the likes of Dungeon Defenders to the recent Don't Starve update!

Came back to this game after it's lack of content years ago on first release, but now it's filled to the brim of it that it can be overwhelming. Many aspects are similar to Terraria, some better some worse. However, by no means it's clearly a hot take.
The difficulty of the game in my opinion has been it's major drawback so far, it can be either a cakewalk if you find an good weapon or cannot find one at all to deal with enemies well. Bosses can be tough and will destroy you if going in unprepared.
The soundtrack, despite being large mostly consists of piano songs, but are beautiful and fit the experience. The OST is well worth the purchase for piano instrument lovers.
Starbound still remains a unique title and in my book another one of a Steam users must haves to expand their creativity experience, especially if you love to explore the universe which Starbound does fantastically well for a 2D title.

As of July 3rd 2020, i no longer play Spiral Knights due to a variety of reasons. Some of those will be listed in this review.

So, where to even start? This game has quite the history in it's books. However it'll be best to focus on the important aspects of a review, So, let's do that foremost.


-Addicting Gameplay: Inspired by other games such as The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords and it's sequel Adventures, the game is a 3D top down Action Adventure with mixes of RPG elements and MMO support. Despite the MMO genre, it's not as one may expect. All players are put into a main hub world, split into instances so they don't get too crowded. Later on one will get access to the Auction House, where most players gather for trading and alike.

The main focus of the gameplay is a max party size of 4, but you can play at any size, even going all by yourself. The size of the party determines the health of enemies you fight, and together you dive into randomly generated level layouts to explore and defeat monsters of various types in a place known as the Clockworks. There are 6 main monster families in the form of Beast, Slime, Construct, Gremlin, Undead and Fiend. Each of them focus on a main damage type out of 4 in the game, split into Normal, Elemental, Piercing and Shadow. along with this are 7 status effects in the form of Fire, Freeze, Shock, Poison, Stun, Curse and Sleep.

The core gameplay itself is pretty simple, and doesn't require much effort at first to play. However, there are many quirks with the game that add more much skill depth to the game once learned, some being slight oversights in design that are not considered broken. Unfortunately, alot of these are not explained well or at all by the game, requiring trial and error or knowledge from the community to learn about. As a result, some of these quirks are underutilized by players as they get stronger and hit the end-game. Despite this, these make the game much more enjoyable and pretty intense at times if one has the time to learn them.


-Good Simple Visuals: The graphics are pretty simple as put best, and it's easy for one to notice the polygons. Despite this, it works very well. It has a charming appeal along with adding a sense of mystery to ones surroundings. Some places are a sight to see for the first time, while others one may get a chill down their spine. Some levels also get more grim and darker as you descend deeper into the Clockworks, going by logic there's less sunlight from Cradle's surface the deeper you go.

Enemies also change depending on the status theme and as you go deeper, your gear also becomes more fancier and awesome looking, climaxing in their final 5* star forms. Same goes for your Battle Sprite as they grow and mature more.

-Great SFX/Lovely Soundtrack: There's not much to the sound effects themselves, mostly your standard expected SFX. Still some stand out that leave an impression, such as Devilites various cartoonist noises, Kats being literal cats, Gremlin grunts, or hearing the poor yelp of a Gun Puppy upon being destroyed. All to give their cutie and adorable feel. For the player themselves it's mostly when attacking or using charge attacks, but it feels good especially as you get stronger weapons.

The soundtrack though is phenomenal, it has both that simplistic and mysterious feel being stranded on a unknown world. A number of areas get their own unique themes including all the boss dungeons. Big contenders would be the battle themes, which you will be hearing alot, and the themes for the aforementioned boss dungeons. Some tracks are calming and ambient, sinking in Cradle is a place you know nothing about.


-The Company: Unfortunately, the game has suffered terrible treatment thanks to it's company in the form of Grey Havens, formerly known as Three Rings when they were owned by SEGA. The staff team have made all attempts to not communicate with the community with absolutely no explanation as to why, and have made a number of questionable and worsening changes, along with refusing to fix bugs that have been reported thousands of times. This has been happening for years with no signs of changes and the state of the game continues to worsen.

-Player Ran Economy: The entire market and pricing of items is ran by the playerbase themselves, leading to an number of issues and allowing particular players to easily control the market, including mass inflation of certain items especially if they are rare. As of last playing it has reached it's absolute worse that some standard items are borderline unobtainable by normal players without risking ones health in grinding or paying up hundreds of dollars in buying Energy, the games secondary currency that big traders rely on.

-Removal of Steam Trade Support: The game originally had full on Steam Trade support, allowing one to trade their Spiral Knights items for other game items such as Team Fortress 2. It was cut on May 15th, 2019 due to reasons. One being players were using real life items to trade or being scammed. However other reasons made no sense, including a statement saying it was "Too confusing" and technical issues that they never bothered to fix for years.

-Terrible Servers: The servers have always remained bad, they were never fit to handle a large amount of players. However, even after the playerbase dwindled to only a few hundred, lag spikes and rubberbands continued to happen every now and then. For a time it was manageable if you had a good connection, but as of March 2020, the servers took a turn for the worse, and since then the game has become borderline near unplayable.

There are now lag spikes and rubberbands every 5-10 seconds now, it's overall just an unfun experience and more of a anger triggering one.

-Grindwall Without Using Real Money: It is entirely luck-based for one to progress in the game, and is the main reason thousands of new players have shortly quit within their first few hours of playing. In order for one to level their gear, they have to be Forged to a certain level, which requires Fire Crystals that drop from prize boxes. Problem is, you need hundreds of them, especially for 4* and 5* stars, and the Fire Crystals for them only drop rarely in the final few depths of Tier 2/3 respectively, You also at best only get around 20-30 of them from a full run, or none at all if you are super unlucky, 5* stars need around 500 Radiant Fire Crystals total without testing your luck.

The same goes for Orbs of Alchemy, which are required to upgrade gear to the next star level. Elites the 4* star variant are so rare that many players just recommend buying them directly from the Supply Depot. To rub it in, one of the first trailers for the game outright said "NO GRINDING!". They straight up just lied in your face, even in the days of old it was still a grindfest.

-Aspects of Gambling/Pay2Win Exclusive Gear: THE biggest reason the game went downhill, Grey Havens have mostly spent their resources spamming releasing "Promoboxes", these are literally just Lootboxes we come to know today. They mostly contain cosmetics, but they have contained unique weapons that are far superior and/or borderline overpowered compared to the rest of the gear a normal player can obtain, all with at less than 5% drop rate if not lower.


I had to cut corners on this review due to the 8,000 character limit, there's more to the games problems if ones willing to search. It overall saddens me what Spiral Knights has become and in my opinion one of the biggest wasted potential games of all time.
There were so many ways it could've gone to be successful, but in the end a greedy company consumed it from the inside. I honestly cannot recommend this game anymore to anyone.

And that's all folks, thanks for reading.

-Chainguy, Retired Spiral Knight.

One of the best action-adventure metroidvania games i've played, with no regrets to buying this. This review comes from me 100%ing the game on the highest difficulty.

First off, the good:

The graphics: The graphics and art is absolutely gorgeous, on top with causing no issues where you can and cannot go. Sometimes you just wanna stand there and look into the amazing view of the Elysian Tail world.
The gameplay is very solid: Using a mix of platforming, RPG elements along with combo style free for all melee combat, it's a very enjoyable experience. Some enemies prove quite a challenge to defeat.
Amazing story with a great twist: At first it seems your standard "Hero lost his memories and must recover them" story, but it is way deeper than that. The game has it's fair share of funny, heartwarming and tearjerking moments.
Very colorful and enjoyable cast of characters: Pretty much the entire cast is lovable including the tag-along sidekick, but it does have it's fair share of some you just outright hate for one reason or another.
Incredible OST: Words cannot describe it! Every single track is really good, especially the boss themes.

Now let's move on to the bad:
Difficulty spikes in some areas: Not really that noticeable on lower difficulties, but the game gets a little bit too difficult by the time you reach The Sorrowing Meadow. The cave sections of Blackmoor Mountains can also be pretty frustrating.
Too easy unless you play on the highest difficulty: This is probably the game's weakest aspect unless you play on Hardcore, most of the very tough enemies are located in the final area. Plus, a certain move you get in the first area you start in called Dust Storm is a massive Game Breaker, you can plow through the entire game spamming it.

Despite the mentioned flaws, overall Dust: An Elysian Tail from my prospective is a must have for any Steam user. Most of the game was made by just one person!