Recent reviews by Patcha_it

They should write somewhere there's no mouse support: no keyboard+mouse, but only keyboard, you turn your direction with arrow keys, while walking with WASD.

But, anyway, I understand the nostalgia for PS1 games, but I still don't see the needing to "simulate" the technical limit of a bad PS1 porting in a 2025 game...

Sorry, for me is a no go. Even if a it's a low budget and low price one man game.

It's the chill made game.
Perfect for its purpose.

Holy Shoot is a rogue-like boomer-shooter with comic-style graphics.
At the moment of writing, as in most rogue-likes, the character starts very inefficient, and in my opinion many of the guns are not very appealing. On the other hand, they are all very different, so each player can find a preferred style.

In the end, the player must rely heavily on the bonuses unlocked after death, as typical for a rogue-like, and also on the availability of favourite weapons during the run. These elements can make survival vary greatly, sometimes lasting a long time, sometimes ending very quickly.

Balancing pros and cons, the game is a good one and, if given trust, it can reward with many hours of gameplay. Of course, this is still a very Early Access stage, so much can change over time, but for now developer support is consistent.

I have to say that the main weakness of the game at this moment is the audio system, for several reasons.
First: the music is unnecessarily too loud, and there is no dedicated volume slider for it. Instead, it is controlled through the “ambient” slider. This means that if you want less music, you must also lower the ambient sounds.
Second: elements controlled by the same slider are not balanced with each other. For example, some NPCs speak louder than others, some guns sound louder than others, and the music is far above the ambient. In fact, it is not even clear if there are any ambient sounds at all.
Third, and most serious: even if music and ambient are completely muted, it is very difficult to hear enemies approaching from blind spots, whether from the side or from behind. It feels as if they are all ninjas, making almost no sound at all.
Fourth: there are further issues. For example, the minigun sound is so poorly handled that it can interfere with other audio, sometimes even forcing the music to restart before its natural loop.

Whether the music is liked or not, at this stage of EA it almost feels better to play with no audio at all than with the current sound system. I strongly hope it will be redone and improved during the Early Access period. Still, even with these (hopefully temporary) sound problems, my overall impression of the game remains positive.

It's indeed a good game, but I'm not able to play these kind of games unless they make it possible to aim attacks (and specials) where the camera is facing, instead of where the PC is facing...

I play with mouse and keyboard (I don't like to manage camera with pad sticks) and I want to be able to aim my attacks with the mouse (so the camera), without need to target enemies to make the PC face them automatically.
(That's one of the motivations why I don't play souls-like.)

Seems like they tried to maybe put some options to do it (like "Camera Following") but they seems to actually change nothing at the moment I'm writing this... are they bugged?

I feel it’s important to help readers understand the true nature of the game they’re looking into. Unfortunately, the store page for this title might mislead you. I genuinely believe you can only enjoy this game if you know exactly what you’re signing up for. Otherwise, you might end up like me—hating it.

To be clear, this isn’t necessarily a bad game. In fact, I wish there were a “neutral” thumbs option because whether you like this game or not depends entirely on your expectations. If you know what you're getting into, you might love it. If you don’t, you’ll likely dislike it—unless it turns out to be a pleasant surprise for you.

As for me, I didn’t enjoy it, but that’s only because I thought I was playing one type of game and got the exact opposite. I wasn’t ready for what awaited me, and as a result, I became increasingly frustrated. Even knowing what it’s about, I still think I wouldn’t have played it—not even for free—because it’s just not my kind of game. But again, that’s a personal preference, and it might be completely different for you.

This isn’t about difficulty or gameplay mechanics. It’s about content. If you’re expecting to buy a steak, you don’t want to find a salad on your plate. (And thankfully, I didn’t buy it—I was given a free key!)

If the store page gave you the impression that this is a full-fledged RPG with dungeon-crawling elements, an original battle system and a well-crafted story, I’m sorry to disappoint you: that’s not the case.

This game is far closer to a visual novel—or even a gamebook—with sparse RPG elements. I’m not saying this sarcastically or as an insult; this is quite literally what the game is. If you decide to play it, you must understand this beforehand to avoid frustration. It’s the only way to have a good experience.

If you don’t believe me, here’s an example: I was so fed up with the pacing (since I wasn’t ready for what the game actually is) that I started skipping all the dialogue and multiple-choice options by clicking randomly. Even so, each lore segment took at least five minutes to get through—probably longer! And that’s while skipping everything. Let me emphasize that: more than five minutes of constant skipping for each lore phase.

This is important because if you intend to fully engage with the dialogue and story—maybe because you enjoy lore-heavy games—you should know that by the time the next battle comes around (if the game decides to grant you one), you might have forgotten how to play.

The only positive aspect, in my opinion (and I’ve already explained that I didn’t care for the lore and just wanted gameplay), is the originality of the combat system. You need to choose your moves based on where they’ll deal the most strategic damage to the enemy, which buffs or debuffs you want to apply and where your character will end up after the move. Your final position determines your next move and attack options, which adds a layer of strategy.

Unfortunately, even this positive aspect falls apart due to the unbalanced battles. Some fights are absurdly easy and essentially hand you the win (and next dialogues), while others are heavily stacked against you, leaving victory up to RNG. Your strategic approach becomes meaningless in these situations; if the RNG favors you, you win. If it doesn’t, you lose. The difference between a favorable and unfavorable roll in tougher battles is everything.

With that said, if you’re looking for a story-driven experience with light gameplay elements—where you occasionally get to “play” for real—this might be the game for you. I’m giving it a thumbs-down only because there’s no neutral option, and because the sheer amount of dialogue, even when skipped, felt like a form of torture to me. But I fully understand that the game and I were simply unlucky not to be a match.

I tried this game yesterday, and while I eventually had a lot of fun, it wasn’t immediate.
At the start, I felt overly dependent on RNG, hoping it would give me the right item to place.

It was only later that I noticed the question mark button, which was mixed in and hidden among a group of other buttons in the bottom-right corner of the main menu.
Clicking on it finally revealed all the tools and options I could use to fight against the threat of RNG!

So, here are my suggestions:

1. Start the first game with the "How to Play" screen
The same one triggered by the question mark button in the menu.
Include a "Skip this" button and a note saying, "You can see this screen again by clicking the question mark button on the main menu."
This would help new players quickly understand the mechanics and enjoy the game sooner.

2. On the "How to Play" screen, add navigation arrows to move between topics.
When clicking on a topic, it would be great to have left and right arrows to switch directly to the next or previous topic, without having to return to the main "How to Play" screen.
(For reference, this could work like the arrows used to navigate through social media albums.)

3. The placement preview of the current item is confusing.
The current item to place is previewed somewhere directly on the board, which makes it harder to spot and creates some confusion.
It would be much clearer if the preview were outside the board, perhaps to the left or right, where there’s plenty of space.

Un gioco nato imperfetto, come sequel di un gioco nato ancora più imperfetto, ma è estremamente rilassante (quando non si bugga) e particolarmente soddisfacente.

E soprattutto è molto supportato!
Quindi le funzionalità diventano sempre di più, ed i bug solitamente sempre meno, anche se non mancano aggiornamenti "pericolosi"... che però poi vengono rimessi in riga abbastanza presto.

Direi che sta maturando più che bene, ma sui prezzi potrebbe andare un po' meglio.

This game has positive stuffs, talking about gaming mechanics and ideas.

It can make you have fun, it could be very playable, controls are not perfect but they're enough ok.
The game itself it's enough honest. It would be a good game at the end.

But the very big pixelation made it almost unplayable to me.
Dude, why pixel squares are so big? I approximated they are big like 5 pixels!
It's way too much, I can barely understand what's actually happening in the screen.
Why not just 2 or 3 pixes big squares?

Look, I wouldn't reallly want to put a thumb down. But I don't even want to put a thumb up at this point.
And seeing that Steam doesn't have a thumb "middle" (I think it should actually, when stuffs are not bad, but neither good)... the only available option on Steam to not just be another "thumb up", it's to put a thumb down.

Let's know that I'm very very ready to change my "thumb" if developers will put any kind of graphic enhancement.
I'm not a "wanna beautiful graphic at all costs" guy... but at least the graphic have to do his minimum job: make people undestand what they're seeing.

There are games from the late 80s which are clearer about what's happening on the screen... and that is an issue in 2024.

Beware, on performance modern PC the game is accelerated.
So the mechanics which wants the player to react to attacks, are impossible, because the game is way faster than a human reaction. So it became just a game of guessing and hope.

Also very ugly the idea to put a flashing effect when somebody got hit.
This kind of stuffs should be banned... could turn healthy people into epileptics.

Non sono un'esperto del genere, però il gioco s'è lasciato giocare, anche se la trama secondo me qualche buchino ce l'ha.

Probabilmente non è un masterpiece del genere, però lo consiglierei lo stesso... magari con se c'è un bello sconto.