Recent reviews by Mißgunst

Signature Astral Shift charm with campy dialogue, beautiful art direction and all-out on anime girls.

Its other facet is the gameplay, and it has an interesting mix between Vampire Survivor's bullet heaven and a deckbuilding component. While not straying far from its inspiration, it's just as polished, with fun weapons and a couple interesting powerups/cards of its own here and there, especially from curses and deck position-based cards.

Whiny ass babies learned the Watcher master deck and expected the sequel not to account for it lmao

Bro why am I crying literally nothing happened

This game has no right on being so peak, and it is dirt cheap to top it off.

If you're like me and you were a big stickmen flash game aficionado back in the days, this game is going to have at least one thing that'll hook you in the instant. Surprisingly, it can achieve a very casual vibe despite being comprised of two very technical genres: It is both a fighting game and a turn based game as the tin says, but how sweaty it is heavily depends on your opponent. If you buy this for a friend, you can just go at each other over a chatter, you can go into multiplayer lobbies with many tough opponents, or you can just play single player where you can plan out and choreograph cool fights on your own with the distinctly flavored characters, and they do evoke the classic stickmen archetypes (Katana cowboy? Just some guy with martial arts and tools? Classics for sure)

The game also has a passionate and surprisingly lively modding community. You'll find many custom characters, styles, small plugins and scenarios, both original and ripped from other media, and the varied choices are very much on tone with what you'd see today were the flash scene still breathing. Maybe you won't see many animations of Sans fighting Goku, or a furry OC going against Touhou characters at a rave, but, better yet, you can experience them yourself in this game!

Either way, fantastically compact experience that knows what kind of game it wants to be, delivers, and allows others to build upon it.

I thought Sekiro felt good to play... Feedback on this game is practically immediate. Nice soundtrack, visually pleasant artistic design and flair that, in the demo bosses, doesn't get in the way of telegraphing.
Game's butter smooth, but I do think the contact damage hitboxes could be smaller. I may just be a little too risky with my spacing, but otherwise fantastic.

If you're interested in Mordhau there's little for me to tell you about it: You know this type of game, a first person (or not, if you prefer 3rd person) swordplay-focused war game. Contrary to Chivalry's more involved controller scheme, Mordhau's scheme is enjoyably simple and very difficult to master, as your camera defines the direction of your swings, and you can mix up with feints, thrusts, kicks or throws. If you really want to master it though, there's detailed information on every weapon about their turn caps, their damage by body part, how much it is reduced by armor categories and even how many miliseconds it takes to complete animations, then you can apply this knowledge in battle as you chamber, parry, feint straight into throws or thrusts whether you're swinging with wild abandon on the large scale matches or having a competitive and highly technical ranked duel.

A similar philosophy applies to creating your mercenary. Instead of locking your gear and perks behind classes and roles, you have a budget with the which you can put on whatever the hell you want and the most you're limited as far as I'm concerned is carrying just one fire bomb, just so not everyone has to use the fireproof perk. Make it all javelins for all I care, 3 longswords so you can throw 3 pommels at other people, bring both a bow and a greatsword at the risk of running around naked or meme around with a carving knife and a lute. Idk, the battlefield's your oyster. Alongside with some decent customisation to express your feudal drip, just make sure to turn off team colors on the settings and enable teammate markers for the best look.

The maps that you fight in are also part of the fun, as there's open fields and enclosed castle corridors for you to stomp through with your team, alongside traps, chasms, static ballistas, ladders and rocks to use against your enemies and they're mostly quite fun alongside their specific objectives. And the people that accompany you are a big part of why playing this is so much fun, as the vibe is set by the plentiful shouts and voice lines you can choose to call in battle among the clashing of steel, and all sorts of (mostly) amicable critters are on both sides: crusader-obsessed weirdos that only run kite shields with white and red, medieval character cosplayers, bards playing lute covers, chronically online goobers that throw jokes in chat or have the silliest looking merc on the field... And the brief moments of kinship you have with them on the field, whether it means branching off to have a duel, sharing a conversation purely on default voice lines or toying around, are as much part of the delight as the gameplay is. I'm not fully in touch with the community to know if there's a cyst of toxicity I haven't seen, but at least during the match it is all laughs and games.

Even if the PvP isn't for you, there's horde mode for you to survive against waves of angry peasants and knights, managing your money and increasing your skills. I think it doesn't have as much room for wonder as the player battles, I don't think I've seen a pack of bards beating up the biggest fish in there, but it's another option to have fun.

Either way, Mordhau is what for a long time I've thought is a quintessential multiplayer experience that's detached from the corporate, cynical, stat driven approach to matchmaking where you can genuinely pick how you want to have fun at any moment, and most people won't care at the end of the match because defeat hardly feels like one at all when you're having this much fun.

Sans banged my mom 0/10
(Absolute cinema)

Hors

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Not only are Mouthwashing's surreal sequences extremely effective at many types of horror, but its short story also demonstrates that games can masterfully handle politics by naturally, and more often than not, being a hands-on experience; When it is thoughtful, solid and willing to tackle serious topics without padding.
A great, disturbing tale about power and abuse, both interpersonal and corporative.

Personal GOTY of 2024.
Nine Sols' gameplay is without a doubt extremely polished, fun and manages an equilibrium of delivering an intended experience while still offering many choices of playstyle. It seldom offers something tremendously innovative, but what it does achieve is honor its clear inspirations: Its interconnected, metroidvania-like world hides many collectibles and optional upgrades that reward exploration but are hardly mandatory (Although, the rewards are not only gameplay related too, you'll be glad to find!); Its combat encourages learning your enemies until you achieve a state of flow that aligns with Yi's Tai-chi, likely inspired by other asian themed action adventures like Ninja Gaiden or Sekiro. While it's obvious that this is what Nine Sols is most known for, I firmly believe people don't pay enough attention to its art below the surface and its story.

Eastern themes lean towards slightly uncommon in the scene already, and RedCandle's "Taopunk" is something I'd dare to call completely unseen, ever, and it's more than an aesthetic for the game to feast your eyes, but a congregation of themes that offer a critique to transhumanism and the regression of values from unchecked development, like many Cyberpunk stories do. Both its art and narrative present a perspective that, while based on eastern mythology and thus is presented through the lens of Taoism, may resonate even with people who consider themselves plenty secular, as instead of preaching thoughts of divinity Nine Sols instead presents the idea that, just maybe, pure stoicism and adjacent currents that find disdain in emotions may well be a blockade to their own goal of a well-lived life.

Alongside your upgrades, collectibles can be handed over to Shuanshuan and your other companions for dialogue, and this game is not afraid to give you a full conversation to explore further caracterization or tell you more about Solarian history. It may not be of everyone's taste, but I'd recommend playing close attention at least a couple times, as the writing is not only genunely good but you may find that talking with your allies is genuinely endearing, and talking to your opponents oten evokes some emotion. Similarly, Yi is not a vessel for the player or a figure whose story is completely dropped upon you in the first hour, but instead a character that you'll actively learn about through his conversations. Completely extracting what every Sol and what notable characters represent both on their own and in relation to one another would ruin a bit of the magic though, and while some of the overall story is flawed no doubt, it decides to play to its thematic strengths over diluting itself with putting bandaids on the few and small discrepancies.

Whether you want to get it just for the gameplay or some of the insight I've given on story interest you, you will likely not forget it.