Recent reviews by Dogmod

Gutted the Breakthrough experience in the latest update. It feels like people who make changes never play their own game. Instead of actually trying to come up with a solution to a more balanced map, they just remove vehicles from defence AND expand the capture point closer to the attacker's spawn. Furthermore, the maps themselves were not made for the new capture points. Previously, they were well defined in the world, with cover in somewhat reasonable places, spots to hold and places to hide. Now that points have been moved and expanded this all goes out of the window. Attackers have more cover, can capture without challenging the actuall terrain and buildings, plus they get more vehicles and defenders get less.

All that in addition to a generally much buggier experience, with even menu and game select not working properly at times. Do not spend money on this. Especially since this full priced 70 Euro game has a battle pass.

Launcher in a launcher in a launcher

If I had to describe Lies of P with one word - it would definitely be annoying . Every decision the devs made leads to a remarkably unpleasant experience. In all honesty, I can not recommend this game either to the fans of soulslike genre or to the newcomers. If you want a game with deflects just play Sekiro, it's much better.

Here's a more comprehensive list of issues (and some good parts) about this game:

+ Graphics: The game looks quite good and can stand toe to toe with other 2023 releases in terms of graphical fidelity. Sure, it may not have pathtracing or some other bells and whistles of the recent titles, but that doesn't really take away from the style and atmosphere this game presents.

+ Performance: For how good this looks, the game performs very well and i've never had a CTD or a drop beyond 144 fps. Can't say how the performance scales on lower end machines, tho.

+ Art style consistency: You get what you've been promised. A re-imagined story of Pinocchio with a wicked twist on the familiar characters. While it's not my cup of tea, it's definitely inventive and deserves praise in terms of setting and atmosphere.

+ Boss designs (art): Every boss fills like a part of the world and like they are exactly where they need to be. Also design-wise, each boss is varied and somehow looks like one of the best From Soft's bosses.

+ No heal reading: Bossed don't attack you just because you disengage and heal. That's good.

+ Regaining last heal: You can regain one healing item if you run out by attacking enemies. That's also a great idea and helps in a pinch without affecting the tension of running low on heals.

= Story and storytelling: I personally couldn't care less about Pinocchio's story and the game haven't convinced me to care. The more traditional and 'in your face' style of storytelling didn't help either. I do recognize that some people crave a more digestible story in a soulslike and that game provides it, i guess. But i found the story quite boring and uninspiring.

= Weapon system: Cool idea of mixing and matching blades and handles. On paper. In the actual game you quickly find the one thing that you like and play with it for the rest of the game. Also the coolest weapons (boss weapons with cool and unique movesets) are exempt from the system and can't be mixed and matched. That only raises the chances of you not engaging with the system much.

= Humanity mechanics: It's okay. Lying is fun sometimes, but it doesn't affect the game nearly enough for me to care. I also hate that you have to listen to the entire songs you find to get more humanity. I don't like the songs and I don't want to listen to them, period.

= Enemy weapon breaking: Once again, cool idea on paper but severely underutilized. Enemies don't change their attacks or behaviour, you don't get some material\weapon reward for it. You just make an enemy a tiny little bit easier.

- Parrying and defense mechanics: The game tries to be both Bloodborne and Sekiro and turns out to be the worst of both worlds. Let's start with the parries. Just like everyone else has already mentioned, the parry window is too tight. Especially for how erratically most enemies attack. ESPECIALLY for puppets. Their wind up animations are ludicrous and timing a perfect parry is extremely hard. Great choice for the first enemies in the game, the enemies on which players will be learning how to parry. Puppet bosses suffer from the same thing. Oh you want to parry? Let me delay my attack just enough so you'll get hit. You also can't fan the parry button like in Sekiro, so you either commit to a block or go for the perfect parry. With an extremely tight perfect parry window this results in you eating the attack most of the time and dying.

Rallying mechanic (regaining health by attacking) is locked behind a block. Why? Instead of being able to regen any lost health, you can only regain chip damage you got while blocking. This creates a bigger gap between committing to a block or going for the parry. Because IF you get hit you won't get a chance to heal from attacking.

Dodging is just pathetic. Very little distance and very few i-frames. Oh, and remember the red unblockable attacks bosses and mini bosses do? They ignore dodge i-frames and still hit you, have fun!

So what we get is a play style that's not aggressive and relies on rote memorization of attacks to counter them. You never really set the pace for the fight, you just react to what the boss does (and hopefully you react perfectly, otherwise you either lose health or boss regains it) and you whittle the boss down in small windows they give for attacks.

- Poise and staggers: You have no poise and can be hit out of basically everything. That makes some of the enemies and bosses extremely hard to stagger to deal a big attack. It's much worse with heavy weapons and handles on which heavy attacks do multiple hits. Since stagger only applies on the last hit. This leads to the situation where the boss is staggerable, and you find a window to fully charge a heavy attack, AND you hit them, but you only manage to hit them twice out of the 3 attacks you have in the animation - and the boss hits you out of it. No stagger for you and some lost health as a gift.

- Boss mechanics: While boss art design is great, boss game design is awful. First issue has already been mentioned a million times: 2 phase bosses. They are not fun, especially when it's a completely different boss in the second phase. Sure, one or two surprise appearances spice up the game, but when basically every boss after the 3rd one is some variation of a 2 phase boss - it's just annoying.

Bosses are too tanky. You never feel like you damage the boss, rather you just chip away at the giant health pool they have. Add to that the health regeneration and you get extremely annoying boss encounters. And you usually do it twice :)

- Boss runbacks: Why do they exist in a post Elden Ring world? Why do I have to run to the bosses door each time I die? Just why? Your souls spawn outside the door, you basically get no punishment for dying besides spending your consumables. The only punishment is you have to slog through half a level holding the B button to fight the boss again. Sure, they are mostly not long, but they shouldn't be there at all. No one likes boss runbacks.

- Level designs: General level design is boring and too easy. This creates a giant difficulty spike between levels you play and bosses you defeat on those levels. The developers seem to think that everyone likes poison swamp, rolling boulders and status effects in soulslike. So you get a lot of extremely annoying places where you'll be poisoned and trapped. Again, this kind of thing can spice up a level or two, IF you don't expect it. In Lies of P basically every other item pick up or bridge is a trap, you become accustomed to it and just get annoyed when the fifth bridge in a row breaks under you.

I also hope you like dealing with status effects, since there are a ton. And a ton of levels where status effect dealing enemies and props are a big obstacle.

- Enemy designs: Annoying. That's it. Too many status effects and too tanky.

- Item drop rates: Why do I have to buy items that would literally be abundant trash in other soulslike? You even have to buy pebbles (cogs in this case) to throw and get the enemy attention.

- Gemini: Shut up already, I don't want exposition thrown at me and listening to his snarky comments makes me sick.

- Enemy health regen: I don't care that I can remove this with the P-organ mods, this shouldn't have been in the game. This game doesn't encourage aggressive play and this mechanic showcases this problem.

Pretty fun little online brawler. Especially fun when queuing up with a friend or playing locally. Main problems as of writing the review: AFK players and skill disparity in the community. AFAIK the developers are trying to update the game to make matchmaking more fair, but chances are if you are a casual player and aren't really into the competitive aspect of the game (especially if solo queuing) you won't have a good time. Toxicity levels are manageable, some players will focus you (again, a much bigger problem when playing solo) but voice chat is mostly harmless in my experience.

Regarding micro-transactions and skins: if you are putting hours into the game - you won't have to pay a dime for pretty much anything you want. I currently only know about 1 skin pack outright locked behind a paywall. Level rewards are generous and skins that cost normal currency are basically free, especially once you hit level 100. Paid currency drops in decent amounts from level ups, I never had to buy a skin for money and even managed to gift a fairly expensive skin. The issue may become worse (or better, actually) as more content is introduced and additional levels are added (though i'm not aware of developer plans to add more levels atm)

All in all, if you like competitive online games that are a bit more random Party Animals comes recommended. Queue times are not long right now and the game is not annoyingly random (though this also kinda depends on the map). Skillful players will outmatch luck 90% of the time, i'd say. Bugs are basically non existent, which is also a big plus. What little bugs i've encountered have been more fun than annoying.

Dredge is an indie gem about fishing (and we all know that every game about fishing is a great game) and exploring the wide waters. While things start off innocently enough, you quickly get the feeling that there is more to almost every aspect of the game. More to the gameplay, more to the story, more to the world and it's inhabitants. And this hidden layer is oozing with atmosphere and dread, creating an addicting feeling of wanting to know more and more, but fearing what you could find.

Gameplay-wise the game also starts off simple but quickly expands both with depth of the given options and their quantity. Admittedly, some may find the primary gameplay loop a tad boring, especially if you don't like the repeating day cycle (think Stardew Valley). It wasn't a problem for me and in my opinion it only strengthens the game.

While I have not seen the entirety of the game as of writing this review, I am both impressed and highly intrigued at what comes next. If the finale somehow spoils my impression i'll be sure to update the review accordingly.

May you have fair winds and following seas, fisherman!
And remember, beware the fog.

Storyteller is an interesting indie puzzle with a unique storybook aesthetic. But you probably get all that from the description and screenshots. Therefore I will address the other big concern about this game.

The main issue people take with a game is its length. While you can 100% a game on the first playthrough in about 2-3 hours, I personally don't see this as a problem. Sure, you probably can spend whatever it costs in your country to get more hours with other games but it doesn't really work like that. You pay for an interesting experience and this game provides plenty of it. If you are concerned about pricing to length ratio you should probably get it on sale .

Imo refunding a game that you completed and enjoyed, even if the experience was shorter than you expected is only sending a message to the game devs that they should pad out their games. And I would definitely rather pay 15 euros for a great 2-3 hour game than a 60 hour slog many AAA titles are nowadays.

I will say that the concept of a game can be fleshed out more. It didn't really feel like the devs explored every possible interesting interaction, but as it stands Storyteller is a great indie puzzle with a unique mechanic, if a bit short.

BABBDI is an indie game that revolves around exploring and finding your way through a dilapidated urban sprawl. There are multiple distinct tools in the game to explore the environment with, and it was nice to see that the expansive map accommodates all of them. The map itself is just the perfect size for such a game, with obvious distinctions between different districts\sections. Think Half-Life 2 (especially the canals look eerily familiar, but that's not a bad thing) but even less hopeful. Exploring the mysterious map is fun and pretty much every secret contains bits of dialogue and lore and interesting environments.

While you can blaze through the game in speedrunning times (and there is an achievement for it), you'll be making yourself a disservice by skipping all the interesting bits of the game. For your first playthrough - take it slow and enjoy yourself while uncovering BABBDI's secrets. Even going for 100% shouldn't take you more than a couple of hours, so I see little sense to ignore this hidden indie gem. Plus it's free. Yeah.

Similar games: Lorn's Lure

After spending a formidable amount of time on this game, I can certainly say that I don't recommend it.
It may seem really fun at times (and, to be frank, at times it is, especially at the beginning), but once you fully grasp the mechanics it just becomes a toxic mess. The further you go, the more annoyed you get with:
1. Broken hitboxes
2. Meta-characters dominating ranked
3. Lagspikes
4. One dominant strategy (baiting and punishing) in higher ranks
The devs seem active and 'close to the community', but in actuality all the updates are just more broken characters and lootboxes with obnoxious skins.

Really neat little horror. Especially for it's price.