Recent reviews by GarrettChan

希望中文可以做更好，其他没什么意见。

Ignore whatever I said below the line since it's not related anymore. There's a really big problem before you want to buy the game. In case this problem doesn't bug you, then you can read ahead for my review.

Currently in around 1 month, the game is on -40% sale and they are saying the studio is dying because the game doesn't sell enough. This game has forced online mode, so the studio's life spam is very important to the game.

Also, they did a really poor about addressing all the bugs in the game, and their PR sounds like a lazy person who only replies the same sentence again and again. Occasionally they have a different sentence (singular), and they never admit they didn't do a good job in patching the game, nor they tell the players what they are working on.

The latest patch introduced more bugs to the game than fixing anything.

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I rated it positive since I enjoyed it mostly, but for review, I'll list the problems you may run into, so you can see whether you want to buy it or not as long these problems exist. (Some may be fixed later, and in that case I'll remove those negative points.)

0. The game developers did a rather poor job to respond all the existing problems poorly so far. They went ahead to release an FAQ without actually answering any of the actual FAQ questions...

1. There's a bug that you may not be able to play the game at all, but I didn't encounter it. However, if this slim chance haunts you, then you should wait until this gets fixed;

2. The game has no offline mode, and you must connect to play;

3. Some puzzles are... not really puzzles;

4. If you're a completionist, it'll be very annoying to you since it's hard to complete all puzzles in an area due to the puzzle rotation in it (side areas are relatively fine).

5. The game has some long loading time and performance issues.

Good game, not too long, and it's pretty fun to decipher all the stuff.

No friend to play with in real life? Choose digital. (Although I still like physical)

It's not easy to make me feel sad about a game, but this time, it is a very sad that they don't really understand the difference between difficulty and annoyance.

If you're playing from Rebirth, this DLC changes a lot of details to maybe re-freshen your feeling about the game, but in the meantime, it changes all the memory and habits formed from 2014, which is something that I really don't like. There are so many ways to increase the game difficulty, but they chose to do what MODs usually do just to be annoying.

For some strange reason, the new music goes with the style of the Void music from AB+. The Void music is sort of... not fitting at the moment I bought AB+, but it's a special floor, so I think it's fine to have something in different style. However, the new music for the X.5 floors now is... very strange feeling and it's not consistent with any other original music since Rebirth.

For the more "other side" of the old characters, they are generally old characters with more gimmicky things to associated with. Some gimmicks are pretty fun (eg: Keeper), but some gimmicks that I have no idea why they think it's fine (eg: Cain). All in all, I'm glad with the high amount of new stuff added, but in the meantime, quality is more important than quantity.

It's a game that digs every single design out of a specific mechanic. This design will either make the player enjoy it very much, or hate it very much. Technically there's no new mechanic in the game because all you need to do is drawing lines, but there are new rules to it for the player to figure out. I personally enjoyed the game quite a bit since I'm a fan of these generic puzzles, and sometimes interesting thoughts can be put into used in order to solve them.

Of course, there isn't any new mechanics to keep the player engaging, so it has a chance that you'll hate this game and line drawing puzzle very much after the first few hours. Also, it's sort of awkward that you don't have a obvious and straightforward way know what puzzle have you missed (or at least where is it approximately) if you're going for all the solves unless you manually check every single of them.

I personally rate this game 8/10.

For achievement hunters: You need to solve most of the puzzles in the game in order to do the time trial, which grants you the second achievement upon succeeding it. Depending on how much extra things you want to do, it takes something like 15 to 25 hours to get it.

It's a very interesting puzzle in term of presentation, and the final puzzle is a surprise to me. There are many nice backgrounds to look at when you're solving the puzzles, and there are quite a few new mechanics added to the game while you're making progress. My only complain is that it seems a little bit overpriced for a 3~5 hours gameplay, and I do understand some of the development cost went into the background. Therefore, if you're looking for a long enough puzzle game for you to enjoy your 20 USD, this is probably not your choice.

For achievement hunters: When you finish the game, you'll get all the achievements. The length is about 3~5 hours, depending on your smartness about puzzle games :P

A fun pixel game to play with friends (although I didn't actually play with my friend because of many reasons). The difficulty of the game actually lowers when you get better equipment even though there are so added difficulty to the later level. Personally, I think single player gameplay can be polished a little bit more because it's very difficult to control 2 (or maybe 1.5) persons at the same time.

For achievement hunters: (Difficulty for getting all achievements: easy)

The most skill required achievement is get at least A- in all stages. This probably needs you to beat the game half way in order to collect all those assistant equipment for non lethal approach. Beating the game like this probably takes 3~5 hours.

Funny enough, the most "difficult" one is yell 1000 times. It takes quite a bit of time, so I recommend use an auto key press or anything like that to yell for you. It takes like 10+ minutes for constant yelling to get 1000.

Very nice game for Deck Building Game & Roguelike lovers. Also, the development team is very active, so it's very good even though it's an early access game.

For achievement hunters: If you are not new to action games, you should be able to the get all the achievements around the 10 hours mark. It's just quite tedious that you have to play through the game at least 6 times.

It's a homage to the old Castlevania (abbr. CV) games by the original creator of CV games. It uses pixelated arts and retro control style. The entrance barrier is fine, but due to the jump mechanics and other things, players may face difficulties from time to time. I recommend you try this game if you like retro action games, but there are quite some points that I don't like this game, so if you think any of those doesn't feel good, probably it's good to skip this game. In my opinion, this game doesn't really quite live up to the hype.

Pros:
+ Nice CV feeling music;
+ Very good pixel artwork.

Con:
- Very limited enemy variety. Even though many of them look differently, they may behave exactly the same;
- Homage overdone. There are many things directly from old CV games. For example, the Medusa/Axe Armor hallway before Death in CV1; the killer painting from CV: Rondo of Blood etc;
- Some old and modern CV stuff stuck together weirdly; There are double jump in the game, but you can't turn in mid air, or there's a very sloppy slide in the game;
- Yoku blocks...

Rating: 6.5/10