Recent reviews by Domarius

This is a relaxing, and very whimsical game. Apart from basic prompting to help you control the game, there's no direction about what to do or what's happening. You will find it out yourself as you experiment - you can fail, and you can eventually win. If you feel like a bit of whimsical escapism, this is it.

"Bloody hell", this is one of the most well designed games I have ever played, and it's particularly funny that it's one of the cheaper games I have ever bought as well. "Typing of the Dead meets Resident Evil", sign me up! From the moment you experience their very interesting solution to having you walk around by typing 3 letter words, you realise this is a very creative team with a great talent for game design. If someone could take "Typing of the Dead" off the rails and make it more open ended like Resident Evil, these guys are the team to do it. My friends and I took to it very quickly and found it entertainingly challenging! If you ever tried Typing of the Dead and thought it was a fun way to get good at typing, this is the next level up!

Very finely tuned gameplay, I only main as a "sniper" class, not as invested in the finer details of upgrading as my regular team mates, but they talk me through that, and I like aiming and that pays off in this game. I really feel like I'm doing my part as the ranged character, especially when I use the special that highlights all the ranged & priority targets for everyone and ups my damage to them - I can pick them off and it resets the timer of the special so as long as I can keep taking the ranged targets down I can keep doing more damage. Very awesome.

Unfortunately, this game suffers from what a lot of open world survival games suffer from; it's good for the initial phase of the game while you're getting your feet under you. There are some elements that work really well and get you interested in trying to survive and improve your equipment and learn about cooking and crafting. Let me say that the structure building is excellent, and the art style is immersive and there's many beautiful scenes that show just how good artwork than having the best quality graphics engine (this game was made in Unity).

Eventually the cracks start to show and the game begins to fall apart. The huge intimidating ogre is confused by a couple of logs that (he himself knocked down) forming a particular arrangement that he can't work out how to walk around - when he's tall enough to simply step over it. Regular enemies have the same issue - ponderously stopping and turning on the spot to navigate around a simple log on the ground, when they could easily jump over it. But the ogre not being able to step over them is the most egregious.

Then it becomes clear that they just increase the damage output and hitpoints of later enemies to make them "harder" because they can't design difficulty (or program good soluitions to things, as evidenced with the path finding issues above.) I can't deny that it's terrifying to have the deathsquitoes one-shot you and have to build up to being able to defeat them, but why a little green goblin thing (Fuling) presents a bigger threat than a larger swamp orc thing (Draugr) requires a suspension of disbelif that breaks you out of the world and has you thinking "Ok, I guess I just have to level up to withstand the hitpoints on this thing".

And finally, once the stakes are really high, the real failings start to show. Anything with a large attack radius (like an ogre swinging its log) will clip through any defensive walls you put up, clip through the actual walls of your home, and damage and destroy all the precious contents inside with out first destroying the outer walls. The damage just takes hitpoints off anything within range, making walls pointless, so you resort to using the games's cheap programming against it - just put up smaller stone walls to "distract" the ogres away from your base because they will target those first even though they could just walk right around them. With the final dominant strategy being to elevate the terrain to make an impassible slope that the enemies can neither destroy, or walk up, just ending the conflict right there.

Another cheap thing is the way "raids" just kind of "happen" at your base out of nowhere, spawning whatever the most difficult enemy you've encountered is. It would make sense to build a heavily defended base in the snowy area where the flying creatures could fire their ice shots at it, but it makes no sense for the same cold-based creatures to spawn around your cosy little Meadows base and just obliterate it. This doesn't make sense and just isn't fun.

And ultimately, there's no strong story reason to push ahead and defeat the bosses. You start getting the feeling "what is the point of all this?" since the only motivation to go visit the next boss and kill it is because it's next on the list. They kind of seem to be minding their own business until you summon them and start bothering them. And there's no story besides a bit of cryptic text that pops up in the morning sometimes after sleeping, saying things like "You recall drinking and laughing with your friends around a table" or something like that.

With no reason to push forwards, there's no reason to accrue all these mighty powers, once you can one-shot an ogre (which we managed to be able to do only a few bosses in) there's no push to complete the rest of the game because the only motivation was survival. Obviously the "raids" were a cheap answer to this, and it shows - it's just frustrating, because it just "happens" at any base, with no course of action to mitigate it, so it's just frustrating and annoying.

I'll change my review when they put more budget into designing the rest of the game instead of spending it on flashy anime trailers. I used to love this game in the beginning but I feel like it was all a facade. There's no game there after you get a handle on surviving.



EDIT:

For the people hating on someone for leaving a negative review after nearly 200 hours, I guarantee you'd also be hating on someone leaving a negative review after only 10 hours. There's no winning with people like you.

I hate to leave a bad review but I'm spending time on my phone for the 5th night in a row while my partner does base management, because as soon as we get back to base, I can't help in any way.

Co-op is only half implemented. Half the game is combat, half the game is base management. The combat is great! But as soon as we get back to base I may as well disconnect the controller and go make a tea or get on the internet because it turns back into a single player game.

While it's possible to help in a minor way by cleaing up mess and harvesting plants, 90% of the base activity is done in single player menus that lock up interaction to whichever player opened the menu, so if you try to help you're constantly getting interrupted by the other player opening menus.

The frustrating thing is it's clear to see this is just an oversight, not a necessity, since while the menu is open, there's so much screen real estate free to have the other half of the screen still active for the other player to keep helping.

One of my favourite co-op games of all time is multiplayer single base mode in Age of Empires - base management is super optimised since you can have each player focusing on specific tasks making the most efficient base ever. This game could be like that, one player cleaning mess, the other player blessing followers etc. I would have loved for this game to make that possible.

Leaving a negative review on the chance this gets attention. I would love to change the review to positive if this is ever addressed.

Very underwhelming. It started off promising, and we did have fun along the way, but the characters don't develop and the ending doesn't seem to know what it's trying to say. The big "turning point" in their attitude just seems to happen during what was yet another visually spectacular, but emotionally meaningless task.

Yes - in practical terms, they're "helping each other with their passions", but this is functional in nature only - that only plays out in the gameplay. Their actual attitudes towards each other don't change. There's one moment during the snow sequence where they started to seem more intimate, but it turns out nothing really changed. From then on, their attitudes were so consistent in that it was a surprise that they started to act all lovey dovey to each other while floating around right before the end of the game.

And boy, does the game heavily lean towards trying to present May as the one in the right, and Cody as the bumbling fool - but in the process, May just comes off as patronising and heartless. Was it intentional? Hard to say, since it's never really called out in the game, only that she "works too much", whereas Cody is called out for being forgetful and not pulling his weight. They really didn't want to give her any flaws, or at least address them openly.

Take these examples, from the end section of the game which is most fresh in my mind - Right in the final music sequence, which takes place after the snow sequence where they seemed to be making progress, he says "I'm making a song!" and she says "Yeah - a song made by a lump of clay" (tone is
everything, it was like "Give it up Cody" as opposed to playful banter). And when he's already shielding her and my partner (as May) is running through, she needlessly calls out "Use your shield Cody!" My partner had to pause the game because she was in a fit of laughter at that point.

She said that summed up Cody and May's relationship perfectly - her backseat driving, never giving him a break, and most importantly - if the gender roles were flipped in this story, it would be outrageous, no one would have the husband constantly verbally beating down the wife the way it plays out in this story.

I think they never took a step back and looked at how all the individual moments and small comments in the dialogue come across as a whole.

And the ending, not much to spoil because there was no big revelation, the therapist book seemed to constantly be hinting at some big revelation that will happen, and nothing happens. They kiss for some reason, and then the focus quickly switches to the daughter. That's great, but nothing about their relationship had been resolved and they hadn't developed as people. It really feels like they will break up again not long into the future.

It's a very art heavy game - it's a visually beautiful game that presents itself as a story based game with a heavy focus on the relationship underpinning the gameplay - but it doesn't. The gameplay is good and the visuals are good, but the story and characters don't develop the whole time, which is crazy since the game is so darn long - but doesn't present many actual opportunities for them to learn something together or about each other - they literally just play different games together.

It sets up this relationship story and leaves you feeling empty - it really could've done with much more focus on having good writers, and consultation with actual marriage therapists to make a meaningful story with something in it for all couples to take away.

Don't buy if you expect to use 8 players, and more than 4 of your gamepads are Microsoft gamepads. This version suffers from the "4 microsoft gamepad limit" whereas Knight Squad 1 does not. KS2 is a step backwards from KS1 in terms of gamepad compatability. So KS2 won't be being played in our upcoming game night. Sticking with KS1.

I really hate to leave a negative review on such a good game. But this is for the people like myself who might be buying purely for the local multiplayer.

The local multiplayer interface - I was able to "get by" but my partner found it unplayable frustrating and I don't disagree with her. It's a bittersweet thing seeing local multiplayer in this game. For people who like to have visitors over to play games in the same room together, you always hope to see local multiplayer in a game. And this kind of game is the kind you might wonder aloud "Man, imagine if this game had local multiplayer!" and it would be a fantasy if it did.

And it seems the developers thought so as well, and they clearly have put a lot of work into trying to shoe-horn their obviously "desktop" designed experience into a local multiplayer, controller based experience. But you will be trying to navigate multiple "pop up" windows using your gamepad, which are just opposing design schemes. And these very convoluted popup windows will also be trying to cram themselves into your split screen windows. Some windows just don't care - they overlay both your split screens even though only one of you is supposed to be reading it. Also they've been designed with a really small font in mind - fine for reading on a monitor, but not on a TV. You can scale up the font in the options, but then the interface clearly hasn't been designed to support it, with a lot of text clipping out and even just overwriting other text so it's unreadable.

It's not just the popup windows either - there are some really odd control choices even for the things that are mapped directly to the gamepad buttons. The A button does most things, but B has (seemingly at random) been assigned to "climb through window" which is the thing you're likely to want to do most. So what keeps happening? I need help in a room, my partner comes to save me, presses the "action button" instinctively to climb through, and just shuts the window on me! Climbing through a window should just naturally happen when you walk against it using the analogue stick. And for some reason they DO do this when you want to leap over a fence! Windows are entirely different for some reason!

They seem to have bit off more than they can chew. And I know, it says "Early Access Game", but come on, the game literally released a WHOLE DECADE ago as of 2023! Kids have been born and are now in highschool since this game got released! The game is out, people are buying it, and this review is for those people looking for a local multiplayer experience.

Why are the characters locked under existing character slots?? So if you choose the eggplant, no one can play as the bubble tea, for no reason??

Or if someone chooses the banana, no one can play as the fries?? Etc. Etc.

This is insane, why add this content and then lock it away in this weird way?

Was it too much of a technical hurdle to give the new characters their own extra row of icons underneath the existing ones?

I'm not sure how to best enjoy this game. Went looking for a forum, Discord, even a Reddit group, and couldn't find anywhere to chat to others about this game. So I decided to shout into the void about this game, in the form of a review.

For context: This style of game is not new to me. I'm a big fan of "party" style local multiplayer games, and I have a lot of fun introducing new friends to Duck Game, Towerfall Ascension, etc. etc.

Just played this over xmas with some family and ... I think we had fun? It was certainly chaotic. Much of the first rounds was just trying to work out what the heck just happened and who "won" and why.

Right off the bat - the screen is chock full of stuff as soon as people start attacking. It can be very hard to see who's shooting at who and what to dodge. And then within seconds, the powerups "happen" and you have no chance of making sense of anything. The entire screen fills with flashing effects like laser blasts, particles, lightning strikes, and before you know it, 1 or more people are dead and the round is over.

We played a decent number of rounds (I would say somewhere between 10 and 20?) trying to work out the game and give it it's best shot. We were laughing and making alarmed noises, probably not for the right reasons - mostly just reacting to the sheer chaos and confusion and sudden end to each round.

In the end, the best tactic we came up with was trying to work out where the nearest person was, and charge towards them mashing the fire button hoping for the best. Actually we stopped trying to play and switched to another game, because we just couldn't make sense of it.

Possibly this is a game which requires a decent amount of skill to start enjoying, and the barrier of entry is kind of high. Certainly, for the reasons I described, it's not very clear what's going on or how to play the game effectively by jumping into it and trying to play. And yet I can't find any guides or anything online.

Started out this review with the "YES" option selected, then switched it to a "NO" when I got to the part where I realised we gave up on the game and switched to something that actually made sense. Until then, we were almost having fun. It's certainly frantic, and there's a lot to do.

To the developers; please tone down the size of the effects, and I get you want to keep it "manic" but slow down the speed of the projectiles, the size of the powerup abilities, etc. etc. just enough to make it clearer what's going on and introduce a degree of skill into the randomness.

I get the impression the devs have something good on their hands, but tweaked everything up to 11 as they got better and better at their own game. This needs more public testing!