Recent reviews by Princess Pearl

Help I can't stop smooching ghosts it's becoming a problem oh god.

The grind walls hits you early and it hits you hard in this one. As you can see on this very review, I only have 4 hours total of playtime and I don't believe that number with be growing higher anytime soon. I writer this review after having reached the Minotaur boss fight in the main story, which served as a massive DPS wall for my playthrough. Despite being at the appropriate level for the battle and having distributed my skill and stat points as the game recommended for my weapon type (Katanas), I found my auto-attacks doing single-digit damage to a boss with 12000 hit points. My abilities would manage 800-900 damage apiece, but were *very* slow charging, to the point the AI companion I was given for the fight ended up keeling over dead in the middle of the battlefield.

Naturally, I decided that the problem was probably me and my weapon, so I set out to craft the strongest katana I could manage, which took me to a mountainous area to farm roughly 5 small wyvern wings. The problem? The area constantly applied a poison DOT to me which I had no way to prevent or cure. Thankfully, the poison was outpaced by my natural out-of-combat HP regen, but only by a thin margin. The wyverns that I was there to kill packed quite a punch, especially with the poison DOT helping them out, and every fight with one left me rather wounded. Not wanting to waste the small supply of healing potions the game gives you at the start, because making new potions is costly and time consuming, I took the option of waiting for health regen between fights, which, because of the poison, would typically mean waiting about a minute between each wyvern. This process continued for about 15 wyverns until I checked my inventory to see I was still devoid of wings. Realising that at this rate I'd end up spending hours grinding enemies in a horrible poison mountain just to get half the materials I needed for a new sword, i settled on returning to town and taking on the challenge of crafting the next highest tier of katana. It wouldn't be as strong, but it was still a major step up from the one I had been using.

Thus began my journey to collect hard stems from the local bird population ("Pico"s as they're called) a short hop skip and jump away from town. Away I went until I found the area Picos were spawning. No poison DOT, there were low enough level for me to kill without any trouble, it'd be a simple task. So I killed Picos. And I killed Picos. And I killed even more Picos. And I didn't get a single hard stem. I opened my map, checked the area I was in to make sure these were the right birds. Sure enough, hard stems were listed among their drop table alongside the bird wings and talons I *had* been getting from them. So, figuring I was just mildly unlucky, I kept killing Picos. And I kept killing Picos. For half an hour straight, I walked in circles, killing birds like I was a serial killer's housecat. By the end of it, I had acquired precisely zero of the stems that I needed to forge my katana. I needed four of them.

Thus ended my playthrough of Toram Online then and there. My story progress was walled off by my complete lack of DPS, and I found myself unable to increase that DPS because of frankly atrocious droprates for essential materials.

If you like grinding, and I mean *really* like grinding, but don't want to play a game with an autobattle function, I suppose Toram Online is the game for you. If you're like me, however, and you don't want to spend hours committing Bird Genocide to craft a katana that isn't even up to par with your level, I'd look elsewhere. Toram Online has an appealing graphical style, a decent combat system, a charming-if poor-translation job, but it isn't very interested in letting you make forward progress without the aid of the cash shop.

If you really like being juggled between NPCs and text-dump tutorials, this is the game for you. In 5 and a half hours of playing, I have participated in combat three total times. Twice were tutorial fights where you cannot lose, and one was me walking into a dungeon that was near the starter town and getting oneshot because I was so desperately bored of the nonstop tutorialising. While not a broken experience by any means, the game's onboarding system is an absolute disorganised mess. The game tends to drop random information on you and expect you to just understand what it means. I was told by an NPC to click the 'change storyline' button to access future quests but gave me zero context within what menu or where I would need to go to find said button.

It ultimately feels like a catch 22 scenario where I can follow the railroaded Memoir questline which consists solely of text dump tutorialising and talking to NPC after NPC or I can wander aimlessly without any quests to point me in the right direction. All I want is a suitably powerful enemy to sling fireballs at but the game is too busy giving me a billion different outfits and reward sounds while all I'm doing is just listening to a girl tell me in exhausting detail how cool and epic it is that I can enchant items with the enchant skill.

Added silly NPCs to a game that had previously nailed a lonely, somber atmosphere. Environmental storytelling and gutpunch set pieces replaced with evil military guy being evil.

Subnautica: Below Zero feels like a mishmash of cut content from the original game taped together with a story that somehow manages to be too convoluted and too simple at the same time. Which is exactly what it is. While by no means a bad game, Below Zero really fails to live up to its predecessor, with environments and ecosystems that fail to blend together in the same way the original set of biomes did. It’s not terrible, but I can’t in good faith recommend buying and playing Sub Zero over replaying the original. It’s overall a downgrade from the original experience in most ways, and the Quality of Life changes I once praised the game for have since been ported over to the original, leaving me even less reason to revisit this sequel.

I'm so bad at this game it's infuriating.

10/10.

Little Witch in the woods is an incredibly cute and fun Witch Life Simulator in a similar vein to Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon. If you're into witchcraft, spooky stuff, or just general cottagecore aesthetic, you will adore this game.

Paladins is an extremely rewarding and deep Hero Shooter that I simply cannot recommend enough.

Pros:
-Heartwarming Story
-Cool Battle Mechanics
-You can date a skeleton
-Everyone already knows this game is dope
-Fluffy animals
-Furry bait
-You can date a skeleton
-sans.
-Sexy robot man
-You can date a skeleton
-LEsbians!!!!!!
-Tea parties!

Cons:
-None
-Nothing
-Literally no cons
-That's it
-Perfect game
-You can only date the skeleton once.

You can beat up God by throwing God at God, before proceeding to smack God across the face with 3 different tables, your entire house, and, obviously, your own sister.