Recent reviews by TenLetters

I love Monster Hunter, and hunting monsters is good, but wait for the DLC or a sale or something. The game runs terribly and doesn't have the graphical fidelity to justify that. There's an absurd amount of walking-and-talking on rails sections and so much awful dialogue and narrative that it actively negatively impacts the game. Playing co-op is still awful and too hard to do, even though Monster Hunter Rise previously fixed that. This is the first time with a Monster Hunter where I haven't grinded it out instantly on release, and it's cause they just put so many roadblocks in the way of enjoying the core, great game that is buried in here.

It’s a great puzzle game. To me, it's reminiscent of Superhot - takes an interesting FPS game premise, makes it a stage based puzzle game, gets in and out in like two hours. Each stage has some number of enemies standing or walking about, and you’re a telekinetic sniper who, once they shoot the bullet and hit someone, can redirect and reshoot the same bullet to hit someone else, so the game is about chaining headshots by finding out lines of sight (with more mechanics as the game progresses). Great style and visuals, satisfying puzzles, slick presentation for the solution of the puzzles, and a fun high score contest if you want it. There’s some little things that can be annoying, like having to walk back into the position you want to shoot from if you lose, or trying to find everyone in the level (that's part of the puzzle), but it’s minimal, and the game is satisfying and definitely worth playing.

It's the best "If you could only bring one game to a desert island, what would it be?" game of all time.

For the first 20 years of my life, I considered Pokemon to be my favorite videogame franchise. But for the last ten years, I've kinda started hating the genre as a whole, and thinking that maybe I was just dumb as hell as a kid as each Pokemon title I buy continues to disappoint. Even other indie game Monster Catching titles, like Coromon or Monster Sanctuary, didn't do it for me.

But Disc Creatures does. It's not a perfect or even particularly noteworthy game, but each time I entered a new zone, I was excited to see new enemies, agonize over if I wanted them in my team or not, and would check over the game's Pokedex to see if there were any monsters I missed on the route to try to find them. I enjoyed actually trying to find and raise monsters, and that's something games in this genre haven't done in a long time, and that's enough for me to recommend the game.

Giving a binary yes/no is a bit insane, but I wouldn't recommend this game at this price. If this game gets proper support and has more scenarios added that are well made, this game is fully worth it. The mechanics are fun and the aesthetic and theme are right-on. I enjoyed my time but was ultimately disappointed and didn't feel like the idea was completely realized in the game they currently offer.

I finished all three scenarios in around 9 hours playing each one only once. However, scenarios 2 and 3 are absolutely horrible compared to the first. The first scenario is much more about what I consider to be the core component of the game, namely how to survive in a resourceless wasteland that is absolutely freezing. Struggling to get yourself up and running by barely gathering resources and not having enough people to do everything, to becoming self sufficient, to trying to stock up for the final storm is really great. The final storm is really a high-point, and I won't go in depth as it can spoil some fun mechanics or surprises, but I'll just say that it feels like the proper "final boss" of the game. I was super excited to do the next scenarios, figuring they'd be cool twists on that idea. Maybe I'd be insanely restricted on the area I could build, or there'd be almost none of one resource, or I'd get very few workers, or they remove some technology, but the goal of surviving that last final boss is still the test to see if I succeeded or not.

But the other scenarios just... fizzle out. You start off with some unique conditions, but they end up going away pretty quickly as you establish yourself, and there's no real test at the end. In the first scenario I really fealt like I had to do everything. In the second scenario I played the same way but realized that it actually didn't care about almost anything, so my accomplishment of having all this great stuff was completely unrewarded. In the third I figured it'd be more of the same and kinda just durdled along. It's just very bizarre, as if you just went through the Demon King's Castle in an RPG and when you got to the throne room instead of seeing the Demon King you met a clerk that counted up the amount of potions in your bag and said "yeah ok you win."

I really, really hope this game gets proper support. With these scenarios retooled or a few added that function well it'll be a great game. There's even a "coming soon" slot in the scenarios tab, but I worry the scenarios this game needs are gonna be behind a paid DLC.

While there are a lot of games that harken back to the 8/16 bit era of rpgs, they’re mostly a facelift without a soul. Nadia Was Here is one of the few that, while it may not play like an traditional rpg or have the same scope, it gives off the same feeling those games did when growing up with them. The characters, setting, and story are simple and enjoyable, striking the balance of interesting enough to keep me engaged but not overly written to the point where I zone out. Combat is quick and lite while still challenging -- you’ll probably die a lot (although luckily not too punishing, as respawns are generous due to autosaving), and there are some interesting and not often seen mechanics at play that turn the battles into something more similar to a combat-puzzle than a typical RPG gear/level check. Which is an important note, since the game doesn’t have a leveling system or traditional equipment, but the various Final-Fantasy-Blue-Mage-esque ways to acquire new moves, along with the trinkets, a few collectables, and a single character’s weapons you can find hidden throughout the game still lead to a fulfilling sense of progression and growth while forsaking the idea of a grind. The non-combat puzzles, while a block pushing, rock kicking, ice-skating fare, are satisfying and end up quite rewarding due to their steady ramp of difficulty when going for chests, side content, or approaching the end of the game. Some points certainly dragged here or there, I encountered a game-stopping bug (that the developer said they will patch out next update, but said how to edit the save file to bypass it for now), and I might have quit a few times when I messed up a long puzzle and realized I’d have to redo all the previous steps, but I always came back to the game quickly and wanted to see it through.

I thoroughly enjoyed the game, finishing it around 13 hours with still side content left to do if I wanted it, and it’s well worth the full price of admission. It's really a shame this game hasn’t gotten more notoriety, since I feel it easily deserves it. I’m not going to say some cheesy crap like “you owe it to yourself to buy this” or whatever, but if you have enough disposable income to be shopping around on steam, this is definitely one of the better options if you’re looking for a game along these lines.

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