Recent reviews by Rubyko

As it stands, Road to Vostok is a loot goblin simulator set in Finland, that gets its DNA from Tarkov. You'll spend most of your time going around from abandoned home to abandoned home, looting for anything useful while Bandits try to get the drop on you Once you've got what you need, you either go trade or go back home, to prepare for the next outing, sometimes taking the time to decorate if you have the chance. It's a fun game but as it stands it does feel static, and while it isn't "aimless", it is a sandbox in nature which means you have to come up with your own fun, there are no proper quests as of yet, only "tasks" in which you have to deliver certain loot. As far as performance, gunplay, visuals, music etc go, they all get a solid pass from me, the armor penetration system or the Ironman nature of the game might be off-putting to some, but they've created some real tense moments for me and that's always nice.

I heavily recommend anyone interested in buying this game to check out both the Roadmap and some gameplay videos first. Since in this current state, the game will only appeal to you if you're down for just looting and shooting some dudes from time to time. The Roadmap does promise more than that eventually, but right now it's just a nice way to release your inner loot goblin.

The most fun I've had with a singleplayer shooter in a while. The FMV stuff and the premise of the game are pretty fun, it's very indulgent in a way that I can get behind. The number of missions is limited but the maps themselves are pretty great, every map is open, really big, and has enough tools at the player's disposal to feel like a sandbox (within the limits of how sandboxy a shooter can be). It reminds me of Bad Company 1, or Medal of Honor Airborne, pretty neat. It does all the typical Starship Troopers stuff well, my only big complaint is that the Squad AI is really dumb, which is odd considering AI performers really well when NOT in your squad, which encourages me to just not have them follow along.

This was very cute, the gameplay is just some very simple platforming and "press X to attack" whenever an enemy gets too close. But I really liked this game's art and music. And the fairy tale reading format was really nice. A lot of the animations and art made me smile. The Princess and the Prince are really likeable despite how little dialogue they get, their interactions and the story in general are very cute, with a nice ending.

I think this is worth it for anyone who likes short linear games.

Overall it's a nice visual novel, good art, good ambience, fun setting and characters. There's some really cute gimmicks that I enjoyed and I feel like generally speaking, the game respects the player. However I will note that the game drops the ball a bit in terms of quality of writing in the ending sequence, due to what I can only assume are time or resource constraints right when things have to be wrapped up. Everything is still tied up in a satisfying way, but the execution of the ending was so-so, considering how nice everything was up to that point.

The best execution of strategy at this scale (platoon level combined arms operations) on the market. Much like in the case of Battle Brothers, MENACE has a wide array of very simple and straightforward systems and mechanics, that create a really engaging and strategic experience once they've become a sum of its parts. The sound design is crunchy, the music's fun, and the art direction is really good, balancing the obvious inspirations from Aliens, cold war era armament etc with new ideas that make the setting feel interesting. There's a lot of little things I could praise about the game, it already feels like a favourite because it just panders to me so much, both in terms of aesthetics and writing, but also in its execution of the gameplay.

I will note however, that it still deserves some criticism:
-Overbearing and very WIP UI. That has a lot of elements that clash stylistically with one another.
-No UI scaling option.
-Some OCI Upgrades for the ship feel so obvious they might as well be mandatory.
-AI knows your sightlines, range, and I suspect possible DPS in the source of those sightlines. Resulting in a very stiff and potentially abusable behaviour by the AI when you take up advantageous positions.

These things are part of the EA process as they feel like very WIP implementations. They certainly don't ruin what is an otherwise really fun and unique game, and I think it's worth checking it out.

It's a nice adventure game and I give it props for the setting and themes. The game frontloads A LOT of notes and flashbacks, and Tasi talks A LOT to herself to guide the player, both of these things can be incredibly frustrating and I understand why this would be unappealing to people. However SOMA and Dark Descent get passes for things this game does not, and I don't feel like that's warranted.

The game has a great setting, it's far more "Lovecraftian" than anything else that relies on slapping Cthulluian themes on designs and moving on. The game goes through a bunch of different environments, has a solid cast of characters and it gets a lot more mileage out of them than I'd expect from a Frictional game. There's a considerable upgrade relative to previous titles when it comes to animations and the scale of levels. The "horror" isn't very exceptional but this is coming from someone who didn't like the horror in Dark Descent much either. Voice acting is very hit or miss depending on the character and this causes a noticeable contrast.

I have give the game some props for having a story with themes that are unusual for games, there's the whole process of motherhood thing of course. But on top of that there's the clash between the running theme of the plane crash's crew (self-sacrifice) and Tasi's selfishness. The "moral choice" the game presents is not complicated from a pragmatic sense, but it's nice to explore it because it's a choice being made by a parent, which is the most biased kind of person one can be.

tldr; I think this game gets unfair flack, it's a fine enough Adventure game, doesn't excel in the horror department but I much prefer Bunker's style of horror over Dark Descent's anyways, and I found the game enjoyable enough for its setting and story.

I can recommend this if you're into short, linear stories. The game has a great sense of humour, an unique art direction, and it attempts to explore some fun ideas. The premise of this game isn't exactly common so I think it's worth experiencing from that angle.

However, and this is something that made me conflicted about this game, if you're expecting any sort of high level of interaction or reactivity, you're not gonna find it here; Which is disappointing given the game's length and some of the situations it presents to the player.

So really it's worth giving a shot for what it has, but it's likely to leave you wishing it had more going on.

Good art, GREAT music, very interesting setting, and it really messes with RPG Maker's combat system in a fun way to execute some of the game's ideas. There's a bunch of replay value in here, it's fun to meet the different characters and enemies because they always represent some cool or unique idea. I'd say the only major negative this game has is the limited amounts of dialogue, especially reactive dialogue; the cast of characters is very colourful and interesting so I would have really enjoyed getting to know them better through dialogue.


Audrey best girl

It's pretty good. The art direction is good, music's nice. I enjoyed the writing a lot, I feel like there's a bit of bias at play from the developers here but that doesn't invalidate the game's message. If you're playing blind and "get" the gimmick right away, you'll be rewarded for it, it's always nice to be respected as a player rather than having all the exposition dumped on me right away. Going for 100% can be repetitive at times, but I kept finding new things during my entire time doing so, it's a very dense visual novel in terms of quantity without having its quality suffer for it.

I also think that, if you're a specific type of person, or in a right state of mind, this will touch you in a way that will leave a bittersweet longing in your heart. And it was almost "mean" for the developers to write the Epilogue the way they did, in a good sense I mean. There's only a few games and books that have left me with that feeling and I'm glad this is one of them.

Prisoner best Princess.

I avoid giving negative reviews because I believe they have a disproportionate impact on Steam's algorithm. I feel less inclined to do so when I'm doing this for a remake of a childhood favourite. However I believe that having AI generated assets in a game, without using Steam's disclosure until someone else leaves a negative review pointing this out, is a very bad business practice that warrants being pointed out and this is my only way of doing so. This feels like an especially bad approach to the matter when the usage of AI generation is restricted to creating assets that stick out horribly due to not fitting the game's style, have no impact on gameplay, and would have looked more endearing if the developers had commissioned some low effort graphic designer to slap something together for a low rate.

I'll use this opportunity, in case the omission of using AI assets does not bother you in the slightest, to provide some feedback exclusively pertaining to the game. I believe the addition of new clutter to locations helps them look "lived in", but they were placed without much thought, resulting in objects like a Television not having the "Electrical" Fetter which is quite silly. I think Unreal Engine's Lumen is a bad tool and the game looks fine without it. NPCs get regularly stuck in doorways and are only broken out of that state by other NPCs giving them a "push" to change the pathing. The skill tree is poorly implemented, flat stat bonuses are boring no-brainers that involve zero decision making.

I will however note, that I did not experience the amount of bugs and crashes that a lot of people here mention after completing 3 out of 4 missions in Act 1, I assume updates fixed a good portion of those or they're just relevant in later content.