Recent reviews by Jukebox Hero

Happy 10th anniversary to one of the best stories I've ever partaken in! The music is incredible and I'll love this game forevermore.

This game… isn’t good, nor a game. It really seems to think “more words = more good” and is just a choose-your-own-adventure novel.
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The ending I was most interested in (100% obedience, I’m here to do a job) resulted in the game showing me a child’s drawing with “good ending” written on it with a condescending, super-long applause track playing in the background. And then a second playthrough where the game showed a bit more of its hand… that being that this a time loop? I guess? I genuinely stopped caring almost immediately after that ending as I saw that there were over 100 achievements for this. There was something about a mirror and I’m sorry-not-sorry to say that it’s just boring and uninteresting as all hell. Also the voice acting is just okay at best, and the Princess at worst.
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All in all, this was SUPREMELY disappointing. I had no prior knowledge going into this and the intro music really made me think I was genuinely gonna love it. Oh well.

I'm only going to play this game until my membership runs out in two months. After that, I'm well and truly gone. Sailing has got to be literally the most braindead thing they could've possibly done besides EoC again. This game is an absolute time leech and I genuinely recommend you don't let it sink its fangs into you. Go play other things, things that you can have your fun with and move on like a normal person in UNDER 2,000 hours.

UPDATE: After having spent some more time with the game, I still think it's really cool, but a couple things hold it back from being truly great: For starters, nothing besides her very base form has animations beyond "idle" and MAYBE "sex." Secondly, I think it's pretty clear that the dev's first language is NOT English. There's a lot of weird grammatical issues that stick out to me wherever they appear. And lastly, no Steam Cloud support is simply an odd omission given the game's save files cannot be more than kilobytes, right?

I've been waiting for this game since the moment I found out it existed some time ago, and now that it's here, I love it! It's so fun to try out different drinks and see what happens, and while the sex scenes aren't too terribly well-animated (on average), the fact they're there at all gives this game a unique spin. The art style is really nice and it's certainly worth the low asking price.

I also love the black and white artstyle, the very fitting music, and the fact that the girl is default crazy. The only question I have is who is the girl's voice actress? I have a hunch it's the developer given that I haven't been able to find a name anywhere.

Last thing: Her just being "the girl" has led me to say that in the same way Kratos says "boy."

[EDIT 2] The AI dub has (allegedly) been removed. That still doesn't change how I feel about the game. When you literally have a finished product to iterate upon, outright deliberately ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ up is unacceptable.
I'm about to be extraordinarily negative about this game, so I want to preface this by saying that it's not unsalvageable - if the devs update this game, it could be good. HOWEVER...
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How in FATE'S NAME DID YOU MESS THIS UP IN THE FIRST PLACE?!
The original games are barely more complicated than the rocks that were processed into the 2005 PCs we played them on and there are STILL plenty of things wrong?! I coincidentally just so happened to finish a re-playthrough of the classic games the very same week this launched, so I'm acutely aware of how things ought to be.
I had the following questions within the very first floor I cleared:
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Why does FATE 1 start you off with a shortstaff and a spell instead of an Identify scroll?
-Why is the Grove portal by the Dungeon gate and not the fountain?
Why is equipment sorted differently than it used to be?
-Why do I have to click and drag items instead of click to pick up and place?
(The above leads to not being able to quickly swap cursor-held items by placing one on the other)
-Why can't I open my pet's inventory without first opening my own?
Why are my spells capped at 6 instead of 12?
-Why is my quickbar capped at 4 instead of 6? (Literally the first thing I noticed from trailers)
Why oh sweet merciful Fate WHY do I have to leave my inventory to re-cast Identify?!
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Beyond the gameplay, why is the world so saturated? The game looks like what a college student would make for a school project. The portal going to the dungeon looks more like a blue (Valve) portal with some effects on top of it. With consoles included, I also expected things like healing charms to have uses marked on the HUD, but that's not here, either.
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It took me a little while to articulate precisely how to sum up this game, and I've reached the conclusion that it feels like someone remastered FATE based off of their 20 year-old memories of a sibling playing it. The base of FATE is admittedly there, but it saddens me to say that there are FAR too many problems with this for me to ever want to play this as opposed to the originals. If someone is playing for the first time then I bet they'd still be able to have fun (as I said, the very foundation of FATE is there), but as someone who knows exactly what FATE really feels like, I just can't stomach this.
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While playing through the two expansions I never did as a kid, Traitor Soul made me think to myself "It's like I'm already playing a FATE remaster!" And that's a good thing, because it truly does feel like what this game should've been. My advice is to just buy and play all of the originals, and if you only want one to play, then Traitor Soul is basically just the first 3 games all together (damn shame Cursed King didn't carry that on), only really missing out on mercenaries from Cursed King.
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All in all, I'm extremely disappointed. I had very high hopes for this game, particularly given that it's on Switch, but I was also anticipating this outcome given I know WildTangent isn't itself anymore. But again, I still hope that they didn't just drop this to walk away and will update it as none of the issues have been downright unfixable or anything.

I absolutely adore this game, from fishing, to dungeon crawling, to savescumming. I've crashed it so many times that I've received messages from three separate people on my friends list asking just what the hell I was doing.
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FATE thrives on a design philosophy I've always loved since I was a tiny lad - wide as a puddle, deep as an ocean. Yeah, the entire game is literally just rooms connected by hallways that you sprint thought to bonk stuff, but it can go so much further than that. You can bonk stuff at lightspeed with enough enchantments and gems and hearing that Critical Hit! clash sound effect a million times per second really nails the "classic dungeon crawler" feeling in my heart.
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And ooh boy, that sound design! The music is wonderfully ambient, underscoring the feeling of adventure while you do your crawling. You may even recognize a few sound effects from other places, such as Persona 3 Reload using the "Defense Magic Spell" sound somewhere. The voice acting is minimal and done exceptionally well, with particular note given to the narrator as he's practically only ever done this. Him saying "Will you tempt fate?" has been burned into my brain literally since I was about 4 years old and is so perfectly emblematic of the franchise.
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I only ever played this and then Undiscovered Realms when it came out as a kid, and I decided I wanted to finally see what I'd been missing. I spent a lot of time working up a save file to be nigh perfect and set off. The "sequels" are really just expansions, complete with save file importing! It really is funny how I went from Fate reusing assets and making me do the same thing to Destiny. Now that's poetry.
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I'd say to play the originals in order if you haven't already simply because the atmosphere is incredible and importing save files makes it a breeze to clear the later games. I'd also imagine that the retirement process is a lot faster. Now, with that being said, I'd genuinely say that Traitor Soul is the best value simply because you get a couple more equipment slots, your pet's inventory gets greatly expanded, and the entire first, second, AND third games are all there. Oh, and the performance/load times are what you'd actually expect out of such an old game for once.
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This game is definitely worth the asking price, particularly during a sale. You can easily get 100+ hours out of it if it's up your alley. Now it's time for me to check out the remaster.

This game is everything a remake should be - extremely faithful to the original with all changes being quality of life / actual improvements. Everyone saying it's "the exact same as the original but prettier" have never played the original. OG POSTAL 1 stopped you whenever you shot a weapon besides the standard SMG and grenades were equipped like your guns, meaning no "just press this button to toss a nade."

As for the game itself, I absolutely ADORE how dark and edgy it is. The best way to describe it is "playing an '80s-early '90s heavy metal album cover art." Everything is almost comically bleak and the narrative of believing yourself to be the good guy as you slaughter innocents is very novel. I understand why they didn't keep making games exactly like this, but I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't be interested in a new POSTAL game that takes this game's tone.

I've played this game since it released and it's frankly astonishing to me how many issues are still here that haven't been addressed. I took a long break (at least 6 months or so) and it's genuinely disheartening how much is still wrong with the game. From getting ragdolled to minimum and maximum graphics setting literally not affecting GPU utilization whatsoever, this game is a hot mess. The only way I can even approach having fun with it on any difficulty above 7 is to use heavy stim armor and a supply pack so I can hope and pray my healing out-♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ their ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Oh, I also upgraded from a Ryzen 7 3700x / RTX 3070 to a R9 7950x3d / RTX 5080 and the game performs the exact same. This is actually legendarily terrible. With said top-tier hardware, the game's LOADING SCREENS will take up so many resources that my entire PC will lock up for 10+ seconds.

(List from my original review)

1. Repetitive to the point of insanity
   
2. Unbalanced in all the wonkiest ways
   
3. Entirely unoptimized to the point where I can go from lowest to highest settings with literally ZERO difference in performance and only a slight change in visual fidelity
   
4. The most bizarre and painfully obvious bugs making it to release
   
5. Half-baked battle passes that you buy for one item out of the entire thing
   
6. Planets that are only different in literal surface-level ways
   
7. A "planet liberation" system that is literally just the GM deciding whether or not you're allowed to actually do anything (if it's not what they want, then no, you can't)

I could keep going on, but I believe my point has been made. I went out of my way to get all the achievements and I believe I've gotten what I want out of this game. It's such a damn shame, too; HELLDIVERS could've been the pinnacle, shining example of a live service game that actually needed to be one, but as it stands it's only worth it if you're looking for a 10-30 hours kind of game.

This game is extremely ambitious and I love how destructible everything is. That's about where the positives end, though. It is HORRIFICALLY unbalanced and it feels like this game is a sampler platter of downright stupid game design ideas from the past couple decades.

This is a pathetic display of a launch. Forcing even solo players to be online means tons of people who otherwise wouldn't be online are now taking up even more server space. This was inevitable and everyone knew it, yet Overkill just had to ♥♥♥♥ up.