Recent reviews by Foxfire

Robo Rolo is a quaint and charming short platforming adventure, albeit rough around the edges. It invites you to explore and find your own ways to navigate its little worlds, improving your skills with R0-L0 along the way. I'd put a casual playthrough at ~3-4 hours to go through all the stages and beat the final level, which feels like plenty for the asking price.

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That being said, I'm going to go into a lot more detail here, because I feel like Doodle will appreciate some more granular feedback about my experience.
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One of the first things I want to mention as it seems to be the only consistent thread across the reviews currently is the difficulty of the game in general. I'm going to be frank and say that I disagree. There are some (relatively) difficult tasks in the game, but outside of the final level, you are given the opportunity to skip pretty much whatever shards you wish. Beyond that, there are checkpoints and no lives to concern yourself with, so you are free to explore and effectively try whatever you'd like without consequence in a lot of situations. What I will say though, is I feel that the difficulty balance during the campaign feels odd at times, and control of R0-L0 themself bugged me a little, even after putting in the time to master movement (relative to the game's requirements).
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Though it isn't the sole thing, I believe the biggest factor to the awkward balance is bonus or secret portals in a few of the levels, which mostly posit a much more difficult challenge than the main stages themselves. I don't believe it is explained anywhere that these are specifically meant to be bonus challenges, and I really only am making that guess because they aren't listed on stage shard checklists, and from learned experience playing through them. This was especially clear to me when I first started and entered the intro stage, and had to get good really quick to beat the clock. Having only a few seconds to spare when making no glaring mistakes on the first level, when I still have signs telling me how to jump, threw me for a loop. I think if I knew out of the gate these were special challenges, I would've treated them differently and came back to them later, instead of assuming the game was going to be significantly harder, and opting to get that experience now.
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R0-L0 is awkward to control, which I'm sure is by design and important to the mechanics of the game. You learn about how those mechanics operate, and can turn them into a force to be reckoned with. Even after several hours of play though, the one control element I still don't jive with is the linking of both the speed boost and the brake to be a simultaneous action. I believe the intention is to be able to angle the camera around and boost in various directions, and sometimes you do, but a lot more of the time I found myself either wanting to actually stop while platforming, or wanting to maintain my speed. While already in motion, the boost is pretty ineffective to gain speed since it literally slows you down. While platforming, I need to stop at specific points, which effectively forces me to charge up a boost I absolutely do not want, unless I repeatedly tap the boost/brake button so that the percent never gets high enough for R0-L0 to fly off the platform. Even when fully charged, holding a boost nearly immobilizes you and even prevents you from jumping effectively, and if you release a boost, you cannot start breaking/boosting for a time after you let go. If there was one thing I could change, it would either be separating the two actions, or at the very least giving me a button to cancel a boost I am charging.
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The game touts a non-linear exploration approach to collecting and is very hands off after telling you about the controls in the initial stage. I think that in general this is a pretty entertaining way to handle the stages, and beyond that, the game not having any invisible walls was always inviting me to improve my skills by simply trying to do things I am sure were never intended to begin with. It's a little double-edged though, since this hands off approach means if you are stuck, you are all on your own. There are no markers of any kind, just a checklist in the pause menu which won't even hint at what you're missing, just that you are missing something. I do think that for a general play-through this is okay though, given you can skip lots of shards and still beat the game, and the maps themselves are small enough to double back over to try and unearth more treasures.
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The hands off approach also definitely backfired on me a couple of times, namely with sparks and the Waste Factory fan. I honestly don't know if I missed a sign or something, but I honest to god had no idea what sparks did outside of be shiny and direct me places. It actually did not occur to me once while playing that I would be able to use the sparks to upgrade R0-L0's abilities! I actually felt like such a dummy when I basically already 100%'d before rolling into the beam of light on the hub and realizing I could spend sparks to get upgrades. You might assume a player would roll into a beaming light next to them, but since I just beamed up to the ship, I fully assumed it was cosmetic and never even tried. As for the Waste Factory fan, because the switch was nowhere near the room, and there was no in-world element to direct me to another location, I ended up doing a very difficult and convoluted setup to entirely skip the fan, bounce on the outside, climb the decorative piping, and boost into the top platforming. Only after this did I (eventually) locate the real solution much farther away and once again feel like the worlds biggest dummy. Though I will say I feel like where it is now, either players will get confused, or people will solve it before they even realize it needed to be solved, which feels like a lose-lose in my opinion experience wise. That is, unless they refuse to give up so much, they do what I did and get satisfaction out of breaking barriers I suppose, I really do enjoy theory-crafting unintended solutions.
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• The top right corner is a health bar. It took me a long time to realize this because the majority of the time you either die in one hit, or fall out of the map. I think the only place it matters at all is in Volcandra, and the Volcandra segment of the Final Gauntlet. I think with how limited its use was, the fire and fire enemy honestly could've just been one hit kills like everything else.
  
• Sometimes it is hard to go back to a checkpoint (i.e. you cannot die quickly, or at all). For those moments I wish I had a revert to checkpoint button, maybe in the pause menu. This was especially true in the Final Gauntlet stage, where it could take upwards of 10 seconds to finally reach the death plane and reset after falling off, dependent on where you are.
  
• By far, the most time I spent theory-crafting was in the beat the clock secret stages. I think leaning into this a bit for the post game, and allowing people to either time collecting single shards, or perhaps timing collecting all shards in a level would provide extra replay value, and also mechanic mastery. It doesn't need to give further rewards, just the timing itself (and maybe some baseline par times initially) could be a huge boon. When the goal is to get people to master unorthodox movement, you may as well give players extra ways to use that mastery afterward. Also showing my best time on secret stages would be greatly appreciated, for the same reason.

If you're looking for your next addiction, you've come to the right place. The more you explore the game and its mechanics, the less you want to put it down. There are so many ways to build and synergize, and you will need to learn as many as you can to handle everything the game throws at you as the stakes rise. Balatro is a game you learn and master, and anyone up for the challenge has so much enjoyment ahead of them.

I remember when I first started going through the game and laughed at the thought of Completionist++, and figured The Fool was an apt image to use for it. Then I got to gold stake, beat all the decks, then I still couldn't stop and had to fully finish everything. If you've ever had something end and suddenly have that "what now" moment, that's me today.

It could be you too!

SLARPG is a very enjoyable experience, full stop. The storytelling is great, the soundtrack is wonderful, and as things progressed I became very attached to all of the main cast. In addition to that, there was definitely a lot of love in the art direction too, with some pretty cool one off changes in a number of areas during the story for reasons I won't spoil.

As far as the RPG elements themselves go, I'll mention a few things in different segments:

Combat - While I see story as the forefront of this game, there is a fair amount of combat and it felt pretty enjoyable. Characters fill a main role as a baseline, but you can customize secondary skills for them on the fly through the usage of spell-books. There are a fair number of unique enemy encounters, varying status effects, and boss battles to face and overcome. My favorite thing about the combat system was it's tells, that is to say finding a new encounter and intuitively being able deduce its weak points or general weaknesses through a number of characteristics. Things like the way the sprite is facing, it's stance, what type of attacks it'll probably use, what its likely made of and elementally weak to, it all comes very naturally and feels good every time you get it right. Also there is no reason to grind which is great. Naturally playing through the main and side stories is more than enough to keep up with (but not absolutely destroy) the stuff you'll run into. As the story progresses you'll have access to more varied and situational gear as well through quests and merchants, and I felt I changed my stuff a number of times throughout the story for improvement sake.

Exploration - I had fun checking out the various maps throughout the main and side quests! Aside from the art, you do also have good reason to explore for various items and money, Most everything you'll be checking out does pertain to some element of the story however, so there aren't really any large ventures into the unknown just because. Just some stuff you can grab off the main paths.

Story - The story and its characters are the stars of this experience. I laughed, I cried, I got very immersed and invested in their world and their struggles. I felt the cast were written as whole beings, who I was able to connect and empathize with as the story went on. As far as the role playing itself goes, I felt compelled to role-play as the various characters as I best felt they would react (as opposed to say, doing what I'd specifically choose). Doing it this way made decisions take more time, but in a positive emotionally invested way as I was rather immersed as the story progressed. From a purely dry standpoint I don't believe the choices you make have a massive impact on the overarching story, just some alternate dialogue or maybe alternate part of a quest. However I don't think this is an issue for a first play-through, and I imagine as long as you grow to love the characters through the story, you're gonna have a great (and emotional) time. If replay-ability is a big concern for you though, bear that in mind.

It took a bit over 20 hours to do the whole story casually for me, and God were those hours well spent.

So far I am really enjoying this game! For me, the biggest aspect I am all about is that I really feel as though I'm playing as Sonic a lot of the time going through stages, and especially when fighting enemies in the main worlds. In a lot of the newer Sonic games I've tried, I feel like it's very easy to feel extremely limited, or even slow funnily enough once you deviate from a very narrow path. Frontiers not only gives me plenty of control over Sonic's speed on the ground and in the air (directional stick controlling boost independent of camera is amazing) but also his strength too. You have these engaging enemy and mini-boss style battles, where you can utilize a fair number of skills you acquire over time in different combinations for different threats. It feels a lot more like I see Sonic in game cut scenes, which is very fun!

On the other hand you have stages which vary a little bit, but are pretty enjoyable and don't overstay their welcome. Things are generally a couple minutes or less, where you can choose to either clear every challenge in one swoop, or take things slower if you need. Though it's hard to stay slow, because it's quite satisfying to maneuver around the stages! A lot less forced slow platforming, and a lot more well timed jumps, boosts, and homing attacks fill the areas. It's definitely not perfect, but I can handle some Sonic jank once and a while to appreciate everything else. Something that caught me off guard is mostly being pacifist in stages for tighter times. Unless you need to bridge a gap, it's always faster to just boost around enemies (or heck even springs). That and also be warned, S rank on 1-2 is like a 100 times harder than on any other stage. I'd consider skipping that one and coming back to it after spending more time getting comfortable with the controls of Sonic, and really getting that jump and boost movement down.

The main worlds are a lot like a cascade of unlocks and mini challenges. I suppose you could call it a bit of a collect-a-thon, though I feel like it works pretty well as a vehicle to get you exploring the worlds, and also is fairly lenient (and isn't purely linear either). Something like this would've irritated me if it was akin to "collect every crystal to win" considering how many there actually are, but it's a fair bit lower and there are other mechanics to collect extras anyway. Speaking of those extras, you get to fish alongside Big the Cat, I mean, that's a 10/10 already right there.