Recent reviews by Phaseus

I've never seen an indie game receive as much praise as Lethal Company. In all corners of the internet, but almost all communities, it's become a beloved favorite. A 98% positive review rate should tell you something about this game.

Lethal Company is a pseudo-horror title with a focus on exploration, time management, and teamwork. It's difficult to play solo, however, so I recommend getting some good friends, or having a microphone to play with the server browser.

I don't consider Lethal Company a horror title, as besides one particular creature, nothing is really there to 'scare' you as it is to just murder you. Most of the anomalies present in the game can be seen as local flora and fauna of a planet's particular moon, and once you realize that, you start thinking of how better to work around them, rather than run away from them.

As I'm sure you're aware from all the media coverage, the gameplay loop involves landing on a moon, collecting valuable items, and leaving with enough over a three-day cycle to meet your quota. I'll say now, that at the time of this review, the quota will always catch up to you and is neverendingly increasing, so don't feel too bad about 'losing'. The fun of the game comes from exploring randomly-generated ruins, encountering hostile (and not so hostile) life, and having a good time with your friends.

As someone once said: "Lethal Company miraculously turns every player into a professional horror voice-actor."
It's funny, a bit spooky, and overall a not-so-serious game to pick up and put down as you please.

UPDATE:

If you like simple competitive games, air hockey, and varied characters and moba-style abilities you'll probably like this game. Unfortunately, Odyssey Interactive is focused on creating new games, and this one is maintained by only one or two individuals while we wait for the next release.

Despite this, the game is still very playable, and some minor content updates do still come every once in a while.

Gameplay is fairly straightforward, with a goalie and two forwards on each team. Players select the role they wish to play before queuing, guaranteeing that you'll get the role you actually want (though there is some nuance in that forwards have two primary positions and you may not get to play forward the way you want to). Characters in Ranked modes are selected in draft/ban fashion not unlike any other MOBA, with one overall ban per team chosen randomly out of each players' votes.

As you might expect, the difference between ranked play and normal matches is completely different, with the skill level of most ranked players being much higher (and in many cases lower) than players that stick to Normals. For this reason I often recommend new players stick with the Normal or Quick Play modes until they're comfortable scoring or defending in their particular role and choice of Striker.

Overall, it's a good game. I've been playing on and off since the Alpha test and I've loved it all the way. It's a shame we don't get a lot of new content, but what's there is enough to keep it somewhat fresh between seasons.

Pseudoregalia is a short game. Doubly so if you're able to master the movement mechanics quickly. For 6 dollars, I got 6 hours of fun, so I'd say that's a good price. I'd actually be happy paying more for how much I got out of the game, but that's due to my personal taste.

I know people don't like to spend a lot of time reading reviews so I'll list my key points:

+ Fluid movement mechanics with lots of secret techniques.
+ Great character design. Pants are optional in the accessibility menu if you're under the age of 13. Equip them from your inventory.
+ Levels lend themselves very well to the parkour mechanic.
+ You can play entirely in first person. It's cool. And weird.
+ The world is interesting and solemn. Reminds me a lot of Lunacid.
+ Enjoyed myself enough to beat the game in one sitting.
+ You can throw your tonfa for no reason other than to look cool while you parkour. Don't forget to pick it up. (Edit: There's a combat use for it. If you kick the tonfa while it's in the air it'll shoot off towards an enemy and deal double damge)
+ There's at least one unlockable outfit. I don't think there are more, unfortunately.
+ Sybil's weapon is pretty cool. The unlockable powers fit a theme and generally make you feel like a holy warrior.
+ Honestly, the traversing the map is difficult and I enjoyed it very much.

= My hands cramped up by hour three. Take frequent breaks.
= Enemy design seemed a bit bland and out of place. The wisp-maid was interesting but most other enemies are just okay.
= If you make use of a certain mechanic, it's very easy to sequence break. When you do, it's often hard to gauge whether you can make it back on track, or when you'll even make it back to familiar territory. Rarely, this can even result in a softlock if you aren't careful about hitting save crystals needlessly. On at least 2 occasions I completed an area, only to find myself back there once I find the intended path. Always feels like I wasted my time, but that's on me for sequence breaking.

- The ending is extremely abrupt. You beat the boss, get some white-screen dialogue, and then you're back to the title screen.
- There is no map, and the world is a maze of different biomes each with multiple entrances and exits connecting them. A lack of a map results in you wasting a lot of time while looking for collectibles, power ups, and keys. A map was added earlier this year!
- As mentioned, the game is short. I'd like to see a larger world, perhaps with more varied NPC's. The few you can talk to don't say much, nor do they help the player in any way.

Overall, I hope to see more from rittzler in the future. Perhaps even a sequel. I'll be thinking about this game for a while, though I think one play-through is enough for me.

If you're interested in more games with a similar world-building theme (without the parkour), I recommend Lunacid by Kira.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1745510/Lunacid/

Honestly, this is one of the best games I've played in recent memory. The music, art, characters, story, gameplay; it's all fantastic. This will be a pretty in-depth review, but I will try and keep it as spoiler-free as possible. Note that I'm writing this after playing the game for 17 hours over two days. I'm nearing a 100% completion and I'm a little exhausted. If there are any mistakes, please let me know and I will make edits as needed.

There are 96 levels to the campaign and a few dozen extra side-missions included. Additionally, there are two modes (each with two difficulties) in which you have to go through those 96 levels again without stopping, which means you're going to be looking at a LOT of map environments, and have a LOT of time to listen to the soundtrack. For a game like this, a simple, easy to decipher palette and inoffensive music that can play on repeat are some of the most important design decisions the developers have made. Overall, I think they did a great job. Starting with the music, it manages to flow with the levels while still being easy on the ears. Even some of the more disturbing tracks are easy to tune out once you really need to focus. To clarify, by disturbing, I mean tracks that are designed to be unsettling but fun to listen to.

Map terrain is surprisingly coherent. The early level designs are fantastic. The Glass Ocean missions are serene, open, and honestly amazing to look at. Many of the later levels start to lean away from the gorgeous design in favor of more interesting gameplay, however. I think this was an acceptable design choice given that as new features are introduced, I have less time to enjoy the scenery between all the dashing, jumping, teleporting, and blasting I have to do. There were a few sections that very obviously appeared to have been the result of a level design tool. Some areas clip into each other or have open sections that look like a path but aren't. These sections are rare, though, and most of the time you won't see them if you're playing the game normally. I spent a lot of time scouring levels for collectibles and wound up in quite a few places that took me out of the experience, but that's more my fault than the developers'. One thing I noticed is the use of vines on map terrain. When flying through a level, it can sometimes be hard to tell where you're supposed to go. In order to remedy this problem, the developers added vines to ledges that lead towards the objective. This was something I caught onto very early on in the game, and it stayed consistent the whole way through. Overall, I can see a lot of love went into this game's level design.

Character and interface art is great. The cast is stylized in an interesting mashup between late 90's and early 2000's anime. It's been refined in such a way that colors stand out and define characters more than their actual appearance does. This makes sense, given that the main characters wear masks in 90% of their scenes. The player UI somewhat reminds me of Eden of the East, in which the text on the character art gives the same uncanny feeling as the scrolls of text cycling through the show's opening theme.

I'm a sucker for antiheroes becoming actual heroes. The fact of the matter is, White, our player character, was not exactly a good person in life. He's a Sinner, after all. However, in addition to being sent to hell, he's lost his memories. On the outside, he's playful, goofy, and charming. But on the inside he's simultaneously tormented by the loss of his memories and an unchecked impostor syndrome. He reminds me of someone that wants to be a badass, but often has to come to terms with reality when things don't work out.

At first, Red is a mysterious beauty that playfully toys with White, and by extension the player. She constantly hints at the possibility of an involved backstory with White, but never outright says it. From the beginning, White wonders, and hopes, that his historical relationship with her will lead to a romance, but Red doesn't give away any hints for free.

Violet is the other female supporting character. Unlike Red, she's childish and unhinged. Her manner of flirting varies between horny and homicidal. No one seems to mind too much, though. Except for White, that is. Violet appeals to the yandere fandom, and I think she fits in quite well with the rest of the cast.

Violet describes Yellow as a 'himbo' and, honestly it's a pretty apt description. He's dumb, friendly, and has a bit of a frat-boy streak. Still, he's everyone's best friend; or at least with his missing memories, that's the impression White gets at the start of the game.

Green is established as the game's villain from the start, though I wish they'd done a bit more to flesh out his background. The rest of our supporting characters have varied personalities. They even hint at Green being like a dad, but his character interactions with the rest of the crew doesn't seem to hint at a fatherly role.

I had a big overview of the game's plot here, but had to remove it due to character limit.

This is the real reason people are reading reviews right now, but I wanted to save it for last because I personally care about the other stuff more. On that note, this game is amazingly fun. Controls are tight, traversing the map is fast-paced and challenging. The game is easy to pick up and learn, but hard to master, like most games of the speed-running genre. Movement on the ground and in the air is slow, so most of the time you want to be running on water or using a movement ability to complete levels as quickly as possible. Each time you reach the exit, you'll be awarded one of four medals, based on your performance. The better you do, the more features you unlock for the next time you play a level. Chief among these systems is the Neon Ranking and the collectibles.

Neon Ranks are required to progress the game. To earn them, you have to finish a level with a Gold or Ace score. To beat the game, you will only need to do this for about half the levels. You'll want to shoot for Aces if you're interested in a 100% completion, however.

Gifts are the game's primary collectible. They raise your 'insight' and relationship levels with the supporting characters in the game. Each character has a specific gift that they like, and almost every level has a gift hidden in it. One thing I don't like about this system is the requirements to acquire gifts. In order to spawn the collectible, you have to complete the level once with a bronze rating or higher. This becomes very tedious if you, like me, wanted to collect everything in your first run through the game. The strategy I ended up employing was running a track over and over until acing, and then spending the next few runs messing around to look for the gift. Some of these are found in really difficult spots, require resourcefulness and unconventional means to acquire them. Still, I feel like gifts should be collectible from the start, since you become more familiar with a level when you're not worrying about the clock, thus making follow-up Ace runs more successful. Other than this, all of the levels are fun to optimize. Aside from the 3 boss levels, none of them felt particularly bland. For the boss fights, I felt less invested because it became more about shooting your gun than completing the level quickly. Boss battles are (generally) some of the longest levels in the game, so they start to wear on you the 3rd or 4th time through. I say this because in order to 100% complete the game, you need to do each level 4 times, minimum. That's 96 levels, 4 times over. One to ace, one for collectibles, and two for a Level Rush that forces you to do all of them in one sitting. Boss levels often felt like a speedbump, especially if you have to restart the level.

Game is good. See overview.

Honestly some of the most fun I've had in a rhythm game. I don't like the color saturation effect on each level theme, but otherwise it's a solid game.

Rimworld is a great management game. The modding community is large and varied, the developers are active and responsive, and the many different ways to play the game are limitless. It's difficult, but not too hard to do well in. It'll eat up a lot of your time as you work to gather enough resources to get to and survive the endgame. After that, you install a couple hundred mods and wonder where the original game went.

Overview:
Lobotomy Corporation is a simulation management game that works closely with the horror concept of 'the unknown'. It is not a horror game designed to scare the player directly, but to make them doubt themselves while forcing them to make difficult decisions. You, the player, are introduced to the world as a senior manager of the Lobotomy Corporation's power generation facility. Your job is to hire, assign, direct, and manage the fundamental aspects of various departments and the Abnormalities within them. Abnormalities are creatures and objects that, when 'worked' on, generate a limitless supply of energy. That energy then gets used to power the depressing undercity around which the Corporation was built. Coupled with an overarching plot and a desire to know more, this game is unique enough to hook new players, and engaging enough to keep them going to the end.

The abnormalities are the focal point of the setting and the gameplay. They're the 'fun' factor that many other games in the genre fail to supply. If you read any of the reviews a few pages down, you'll probably see a lot of people referencing some obscure bit of information relating to one of the 110 (at the time of writing) things you can encounter as part of the Abnormality system. Most of them are creepy or terrifying, but they all share a theme of wonder. Each day in-game you pick one or more abnormalities to add to your facility with only two pieces of information:

1.) A serial number, containing letters, numbers, and dashes
2.) A quote from their document.

That's all. You're not even shown what the abnormality looks like or given any clue as to how dangerous it might be. You pick a containment unit and start your day, hoping that it doesn't end in a bloodbath. And that's the beauty of this game. It will always give you just enough information to keep you asking for more, like a drip feed in an IV. Aside from that, you manage employees, facility upgrades, and equipment research to help you deal with the less tolerant residents under your care.

Your employees will die. They will die a lot, and often in ways you can't predict. You'll sometimes get an abnormality you can't deal with and have to restart from Day 1 in the hopes that the next time you get it, you'll have the knowledge or equipment to deal with it the next time. That is the appeal of Lobotomy Corporation. The visual novel is just a bit of icing around the edges. I'm writing this review in preparation for the sequel, Library of Ruina, which is supposedly going to be released this year.

Pros:
+ Engaging story with interesting characters
+ 'Real' horror that doesn't rely on jump-scares or fancy VFX
+ 'Rogue-Lite' options that allow you to fix your mistakes
+ Deep lore that is never fully explained to the player
+ Plenty of tributes to SCP Foundation and its writers
+ Good replayability

Cons:
- Poor translation (See footnote)
- Slow tutorial (you'll need it)
- Easy to give up (losing your whole workforce at once)
- Slow/No Updates (There's still a list of unreleased Abnormalities)

Translation Notes - The game's translation was meant to be much better than it currently is. For the most part, the game is about 90% legible. Many of the passages contained in Abnormality Documents are difficult to wrap your head around without re-reading them. Common mistakes include leaving out an Abnormality's name in the unlockable hints and overall poorly structured sentences. If you can look past the Engrish still quite engaging. Project Moon hired a company with about a dozen 'professionals' to do the job. Apparently those professionals don't know how to translate Korean to English. See this thread for more information: https://v1.steam.hlxgame.cc/app/568220/discussions/0/3211505894124567606/

I won a game by getting jailed night 1 and telling the prince I was an assassin. Didn't die til night 6 when more than half of the Blue Dragon faction was dead. Easiest unseen game of my life.

I've been playing Mabinogi for roughly six years, starting just after Closed Beta ended. Over these fine months, the game has grown from a somewhat-playable glitch-fest to a nicely polished MMO. A few of my friends even dubbed Mabinogi "Runescape done right".

The community involved in Mabinogi is one of the best you could ever get. Most players are friendly, and many are willing to help new players with anything and everything. It does, however, have an odd learning curve.

When I started playing, the beginner quests were somewhat lacking, and hard to find. All players will be taken on a "Generation 1" quest line, in which they will be introduced to the enormous plot and equally enormous world. Thankfully, they've added a merciful transportation system in the form of moongates and mana tunnels, which used ot only work during the night and day, respectively.

Once the player gets through the first three mainsteam quests, they will generally feel quite strong, usually ending up to be around level 300-400 by that time. Levels are handled with a continuous rebirthing system. A play may choose to rebirth into a new life, setting their character's age between 10 and 17, and resetting their level to 1. Their previous skills, stats, titles, and accomplishments are retained, however, effectively increasing a player's ability to level up without losing anything.

Skills in Mabinogi are vast, useful, and the main focal point of "Fantasy Life". Each skill set is separated into tags ranging from Life Skills to Warrior, and so on. This does not mean you are restricted by their use, either. Effectively, every player can play as any class at any time without the need to change. For instance, in a Warrior's primary slots, he could have a pair of sharp, deadly blades, and in his auxilary slots, a wand and book to increase his magic potential. The game calls this combination 'Spellblade' in the form of a "Talent Title". Generally speaking, so long as you train the skills and obtain good equipment, you are able to switch between any fighting style at almost any point of your career. If at any poiunt your are stuck in obtaining or training something, there is a user-run wiki readily available with very few advertisments from J-List.

The most common complaint about Mabinogi is that the publisher, Nexon, charges insane bills to those wishing to venture through the cash shop, but the player is never REQUIRED to use it, and why should they? They can get the same, if not, better things by playing the game. Events will generally drop free, usually valuable and strong items that cannot be bought from the shop, or obtained anywhere else. Players will always sell event items they don't want or need. Sometimes DevCat also gives everyone a free month of Premium, or double AP weekends. The advantages of premium don't take away from free users, either. Basically, premium players get cheap items once a week, they get about 10% more EXP, and a bit more inventory space. There's also a daily VIP mission that gives more gold and EXP. The only thing extremely worth paying for are pets, and if a player uses the pets they get from Generation Quests, they won't even need to buy those.

In short, Mabinogi is a great game, and surely worth checking out. Nexon has a very minimalist hand in what DevCat does, so that complaint should not be the first thing that comes to mind.