Recent reviews by Doug Dimmadome

After 9 hours in server slam, I was entirely mid on Marathon and ready to give it a pass.

After deciding to pick it up and give it another try, I am firmly hooked and having a blast. The game is undeniably HARD, but the gameplay loop is tight, it has that smooth Bungie gunplay, the audio design is fantastic, and the visual design is a vibe. Runs are relatively short, with a ~25:45 maximum possible time limit, so win or lose you're left ready to jump in for "one more quick one." Learning that all loot is temporary and that faction upgrades are the only thing reliably there for you freed me from the gear fear and reservations of risking it all against other Runners.

The Good:
- The writing! The story, the characters, the references, the nautical play on words. It's the most endearing and amusing Souls-like I've played.
- The WRITING! All of their fake products with full copy are delightful and worth pausing to read. Why Lorem Ipsum when you can write a whole paragraph where someone is crashing out over Shrodinger's Butter.
- NO RUNBACKS! Die to a boss? Drop in right at the boss door to bludgeon them until you win or die and try again.
- The music - boss themes in particular can be absolute bops.

The Bad:
- A small count of very annoying sections/enemies/bosses, but what Souls-like would be complete without a few of these?

The Whatever:
- Combat - it's fine, soulsy formula with some ability twists. Once I got running, I found that a lot of bosses could be chunked/nuked pretty hard by combos and rode that out for the rest of the game. NG+ has less of that issue, since everything is much stronger and tankier.
- Difficulty - probably the easiest game I've played with the Souls-like tag. However, that's not a bad thing! It was a fun ride and a nice breather
- Completionist - 100% was only minorly tedious, going back and picking up a few rare items I missed and had to look up. Overall a step up over the usual expected postgame grind.

Verdict: Great! Thoroughly enjoyable, funny, and not too hard.

Two new characters, difficult new bosses, and a wildly different new map (marketed as merely a "new shifting earth") to learn. FromSoft has done it again, this is a great expansion to Nightreign and well worth the asking price! For many the greatest hang-ups are content that was never promised to begin with and complaints about the complexity of the new map, to which there is only one proper response - git gud.

The greatest FRPG of our age. E33 excels in every category - overall story, characters, writing, gameplay... this game has it all. A must-play for any RPG enjoyers!

Lies of P is "we have Bloodborne at home" in all the best ways. At the time of writing, P holds my title as the "best non-FromSoftware Soulslike" and I am greatly looking forward to the upcoming DLC and potential sequel in the future.

Features:
☑ Aggressive and fluid combat system
☑ Wide range of equipment options to tailor your play-style (weapons/tools/amulets)
☑ Dark Victorian-style setting with human and inhuman horrors
☑ Fashion!
☑ An inexplicably interesting re-imagining of Pinocchio that nobody expected or asked for

The pace, planning, and execution take some getting used to coming from a traditional Soulsborne background. However, once things click the game really takes off and becomes an intense race against time through the Lands Between. While best experienced with a squad on voice chat, the solo and matchmade experiences are perfectly fine albeit somewhat more challenging.

Fantasy Football at its finest!

This is how you digital ports should be done. A faithful reproduction of the original with additional content, variant, and QOL improvements. A strong recommend for anyone who enjoys Gloomhaven or has been interested. Loading and startup times can be randomly long at times, but far shorter than setup/teardown of the physical edition.

Incredible depth of play/build options and fun as a solo, group, or LFG player.

It's like Halo but IN SPACE!