Recent reviews by Battler Baskerville

Absolum blends the roguelite and beat-em-up genres together so naturally it's like they're soulmates.

The combat in this game is phenomenal. Character control and buffering feels excellent, the attacks and combos are meaty and satisfying, and the substantial set of defensive options available to the player give you a ton of control over your playstyle and approach. The build system encourages you to be adaptive and try new styles, and every character feels distinct from one another in some very impactful ways. Enemy movesets are also great and quite diverse, and the game in general has a ton of room for mastery.

Exploration is a treat, especially initially as you first uncover the map. Meta progression is handled superbly through events and quests that it has spread throughout the world, that heavily impact areas permanently and unlock new things. It creates a lot of diversity throughout all your runs, giving you different incentives to travel down certain paths even after you've already uncovered the whole map.

The art direction on display here is simply breathtaking. The scenery is on par with Hyper Light Drifter, and all of the animations are gorgeous. It's even won me over on some designs I didn't like when I started the game, because the world is so immersive and breathtaking and the artstyle so captivating. And that is in large part because of the writing, which is much better than I was expecting. It's not telling a deep complex story here, but it builds the world incredibly competently and smoothly fleshes each character over time. It does a good job leaving you with some questions about people or the world, and feeding them to you with cool boss fights, climactic quests, and/or secret areas.

I absolutely adore Absolum, and it's probably going to be my Game of the Year for 2025. After many years of searching I'm overjoyed to have finally found BOTH a beat-em-up and a roguelite that I love and enjoy, and I can't wait to pour many more hours into this game, up to and beyond 100% completion.

As a final message to the devs on the off chance they read this, I love your game to death, please keep adding stuff to it!!! I would be oh so willing to buy content DLC should you release any in the future, and I would love to see more characters and areas (with their respective Rituals, bosses, new quests, etc.)! Maybe even some endgame updates to the game if you're feeling really generous.

Magic conch shell game balancing.

You can parry your own shotgun's pellets as they leave its barrel to create an accelerated-shotgun-punch-parry-explosion,

If that doesn't get you to buy the game I don't know what will, it's simply peak.

ur like a little cat guy and I love them

Heart Machine stays goated. It's not a masterpiece like HLD but I still thoroughly enjoyed it. Beautiful music and art direction to noone's surprise, and the gameplay is laid back and enjoyable. Movement feels satisfying, and exploring each area was a treat. Good game.

Dogma 2 creates a lot of its gameplay out of inconvenience. Fast travel is limited, the save system is limited, your inventory capacity is limited, etc. If you view these things as purely time wasters/annoyances, you will HATE this game. However, if you are open to these systems, and accept that this game's world is not here to cater to you like most games do, you will find something truly special. These systems are not here to annoy you, or waste your time, the game is simply inviting you to explore and live in the world. The NPC systems and all of these "inconveniences" do wonders to give the world a sense of personality, and creates a very punishing but interesting sandbox. It still has plenty of Dogma jank as did the first game, but honestly for me, that's all just a part of the charm.

After beating NG+ and sitting on the game for a few weeks, I can confidently say this is one of my favourite games of all time. I'm a huge fan of Dark Arisen, and Dogma 2 feels like a pretty direct improvement on the design of that game. If you played DA and weren't a huge fan, or had a lot of problems with it, I can basically guarantee you that you'll feel the exact same way about DD2. This series really isn't for everyone. But if you loved DA, you will very likely love this game as well. And if you're new to the series, and are interested, I encourage you to give it a shot. There really isn't anything like Dragon's Dogma, and there may never be again.

Anyway if you want to read about the things that make this game so special, written far more eloquently than I ever could, go read this write-up:
https://cohost.org/dreamcastaway/post/5275166-abandon-all-delusion
It helped me cement a lot of my feelings on the game, and it has some interesting things to say about modern gaming as a whole.

So unlike most Steam reviewers, I've actually waited to beat the game until giving my thoughts on it. Unfortunately, they're not as positive as I was hoping they'd be.
I won't be covering performance issues as those will assuredly be patched out and fixed (if they aren't already).
This review will contain minor gameplay spoilers. I will hardly be mentioning the story at all.

Overall, unfortunately middling game. Visuals and designs are really good, but it falls flat on its face when it comes to the combat, which matters a lot for a game like this. It's also quite disappointing as a survival horror game, in large part due to the combat being too easy. The story was also very clichéd and boring, but that didn't really bother me as I wasn't expecting much in that department in the first place.

Let's start off with the visuals and story.
The game is pretty. I don't think I'll be making any enemies with that statement, as the graphical fidelity and art direction in this game is truly top tier. It's what the game does best by far, which is partly why it's so sad that it's severely lacking in most other areas.
The story is pretty... not great. There are a ton of clichés, and the characters and their relationships feel extremely one dimensional. That's more or less what I was expecting, but it doesn't change the fact that I was pretty uninterested and bored throughout. It made some cutscenes a drag, which can suck in a semi cutscene-heavy game such as this. But overall who really cares, we're not here for the story right? It serves well enough to create the setting to facilitate the gameplay, which is all it really needs to do in a game like this.

Now let's move on to the combat.
Combat in this game is far too easy in the 1v1. You literally just hold left, right, left to dodge, mash attack until you knock them away, and repeat, and that will basically kill every enemy in the game. It gets extremely monotonous and boring, and I lost interest in it before even hitting the halfway point. But, that's not even getting to the good part.
In ganks, the combat completely falls apart into a janky confusing mess, leaving you unable to tell where enemies are, position yourself how you want to, or respond effectively to any enemy that isn't the single one you're targeting. The game clearly has a focus on 1v1 combat, but then backhands itself by making that so easy it'll put you to sleep, yet still leaves ganks feeling horrible and unintended.
Endgame areas were absurdly frustrating because of the combat not being built to deal with multiple enemies, so you'll be trying to stop an enemy from mutating, but if you stop dodging you'll get hit by his friend, and there's also a guy behind you that you can't defend against whatsoever but if you try to turn to him then you'll just be hit by the enemies in front. It leads to some absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that feel like they are completely out of your control, and anything you do will just lead to taking a hit. There were times in ganks where Jacob just didn't dodge an attack despite me holding sideways on the analog stick, because the enemy was slighty too far to my side despite being well within view. It functions terribly, and it honestly feels like pure luck of the AI whether you win or not in some of the final encounters.

To wrap up, let's talk a bit about survival horror.
The real crime of this game is losing that survival horror essence. The terror in your chest from those tense, suspenseful moments that were caused by your own action and inaction. Picture Dead Space. You haven't been to a bench in thirty minutes, you're running low on supplies, your health is in the red, and you're scared there's a fight coming up that you won't be able to survive. You're walking down dark hallways, jumping at every sound, petrified by every vent, terrified of having to deal with even a single enemy.
That experience is something that is completely lost in Callisto, partly because of its presentation, but mostly because of the way it treats resources and how easy its combat is.
In Dead Space, when an enemy jumps out of a vent in front of you, you panic. Why do you panic? Because you have to run away, make space, and shoot their limbs off before they can close the distance. If you miss too many times and fail to ground them or kill them, they'll close that distance, probably get a hit, and then you're forced to scramble away and the situation snowballs. Each and every enemy is a threat, and requires specific, somewhat precise actions on your part to defeat them. They also have a position where they have the advantage, i.e. up in your face, so you need to maintain distance from them or you will be put in a losing position that you need to then escape from.
In Callisto, when an enemy jumps out of a vent in front of you, you hold left or right on the analog stick and you become invincible. A single enemy cannot be of any threat to you on their own, so what is there to possibly be afraid of? Even further, their desired range is also your desired range, as that's where you can use your workhorse, the Stun Baton; so, you don't even have to fear them getting up close, as they're just putting themselves right where you want them. These two things completely ruin the tense atmosphere the game is trying to stew, because the enemies themselves aren't giving you anything to be afraid of.
Besides the issues with combat, its other most glaring sin against survival horror is its resource management. Suffice to say, the game gives you far too many resources. I was never strapped for supplies until the very end of the game, where they starve you a bit, but by that point I was able to last fairly easily with the money and supplies I had already obtained. I barely ever had to do any inventory management besides making room for valuables to sell at the 3D printers. The game just doesn't have that survival horror essence of barely making it through on your last leg, your last bullet, your last heal.

In conclusion.
The Callisto Protocol doesn't feel like a survival horror game, it feels like a lame action game with jumpscares that don't even make me jump. It reminds me a lot of Dead Space 3 actually, except you can't play Callisto with your friends.

Honestly though, the real reason this game sucks is because the stomping is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lame compared to Dead Space 2. Jacob needs to learn something from my man Isaac Clark and put some heart into it, that ♥♥♥♥ is never going down that drain.

Infernal division.

I finally decided to sit down and actually beat this game after many years of playing it on and off, messing around with mods and whatnot. Now that I have, I can finally truly recommend it to all my fellow masochists out there.

It's got some of the best atmosphere and artwork in the business, and the management systems are pretty interesting and very fun to master. It can be unbelievably ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, and probably will be more often than not, but that's all part of the CBT experience that you signed up for when you clicked play.

Game makes you laugh, makes you cry, and makes you wanna kill yourself, but in the end it's always so worth it. ♥♥♥♥♥♥ love Darkest Dungeon baby.