Recent reviews by The_Breakshift

It's excellent!

The platforming is fluid and fun. The core moveset is broad and allows for expressive gameplay, with talismans to specialize into your preferred playstyle. You can blast through stages with crazy momentum or circumvent intended sections with some clever tricks.

The visuals and music are a mix of cute and edgy. It's fun to unlock and customize different outfits as a reward for finding collectibles.

Big recommend to anyone who likes 3D platformers.

This game is way too easy. I literally never lost a run until the final boss which took only two tries. This is a big problem for a roguelike with heavy meta progression. The meta progression obviously feels like a total waste of time when I'm already doing winning so much and have no apparent means to increase difficulty. My decisions during runs also feel borderline irrelevant since I can easily win irrespective of what blessings I pick. The game is also way too short when you aren't having to redo any levels.

Only a handful of enemies ever spawn at a time and they are all generally slow to move and attack. Just about every enemy attack is telegraphed with a big glowing mark that makes it trivial to avoid, especially since most characters start with multiple dashes and you can boost that number by up to 3 more with meta upgrades.

Difficulty aside, the blessing system is not very good. The special effects they apply feel incredibly unimpressive and offer little in the way of developing a unique build. At best I was just stacking as much damage as possible onto one of my attacks and then just spamming that move repeatedly. Combat in general felt very spammy, despite the durability system presumably intended to prevent that. You have two main attacks attached to two swords which have a durability meter that decrease per use. However, to refill the meter you simply need to switch swords, and nothing is stopping you from immediately switching back. This takes very little time and was at most a mild nuisance.

The meta progression is way over the top. This game has the following:

- Forging new swords from two types of materials
- Up to nine stat-boosting items per character
- Blessing rarity boosts
- Permanent base stat boosts assigned per character
- Permanent bonus abilities
- Unlockable spells
- Temporary boosts for the start of a run
- Upgrades for all of the above upgrades

There are more resources and currencies here than in some gacha games; it's completely ridiculous. There are also multiple systems to gain additional resources or swap them for each other. This was the one thing that made me glad the game was so easy because it meant I didn't have to engage with this bloated system of progression very much. That being said, even the little bit that I did use it was irritating. Any changes you want to make in any of these systems needs to be made before your run, mostly on a per character basis. That means you need to pick a character for each role, allocate your stat points, equip two swords in the right slots, equip nine stat boosters, equip two spells, equip the right blessing booster, and apply the right temporary buff. When your run is over you will probably do some improvements, maybe craft a new sword. Well now you need to go equip that new sword to every character individually, and assuming you had your former best sword in the main slot you also need to manually equip that one to the second slot for every character as well. You could not bother and instead try to remember to only kit out the character you actually pick before the run, but with all the other stuff you do between runs its easy to forget (this is what lead to my only loss).

There are some major issues with pacing as well. This is supposed to be an action game but the ratio of downtime to actual gameplay is way off. Individual runs are fairly short (and would of course be even shorter if you died), but after each run you will have a lot of things to do before the next run. Besides the many possible upgrades to purchase and reassign, including the need to potentially swap or otherwise manage resources, there are tons of cutscenes. At one point I was given eight events with lengthy cutscenes, only to finish the last one and then be given four more. If I hadn't gotten fed up and started skipping them, I would have certainly spent more time watching cutscenes and fiddling with meta progression than actually playing the game.

I can't recommend this game even on a significant discount. It's just not worth your time.

Easily the most fun single player mahjong game I've played.

The various special effects you can make use of are all clearly explained (you even get nested tooltips!) and can be referenced at any time, avoiding the confusion that ruined other similar games for me. Each run, I have been able to form fun, coherent builds that incorporate mahjong fundamentals as well as wacky shenanigans.

There are a LOT of characters to play as, each with distinct playstyles.

The aesthetics are good, with nice visuals and music. Score calculation feels weighty and satisfying, and there are special animations for yakuman.

My only complaint is some issues with the English text formatting. Sometimes text will overlap, spill out of its textbox, and other such things. In most cases I was still able to read the text at least, albeit with some difficulty.

None of the reasons I liked Elden Ring are present in Nightreign.

You have little to no ability to make a build beyond the rough template you start as. Gear is more or less totally random and stats from leveling are predetermined.

You have no time to do anything other than rush to your next objective. No planning how to approach an encounter, no exploring, no taking in the atmosphere, no reading the descriptions of your gear or carefully comparing them. You have to be really maximizing your time or you won't get strong enough to win. You also can't pause at all, even in single player mode, and runs seem to usually last longer than half an hour.

The map is not interesting. It's randomly generated and you are meant to blaze through it anyway.

Combat is obviously built around the 3 player mode, so you are expected to have other players drawing aggro and contributing damage. You will be at the whims of randoms online or be struggling solo.

As a Souls veteran, I was stressed and frustrated while playing; far more so than I ever was with any traditional Souls game. I really did not enjoy playing and can't recommend this game.

A really cool little game.

Combat, exploration, and mecha customization are all well implemented and fun.

The balance is a little goofy (a lot of parts/weapons are just worthless) and the difficulty is very low by soulslike standards, but it that didn't keep me from enjoying the game at all.

The gameplay is very fun, but the UX is extremely clunky.

This game kicks ass. You have an extremely versatile set of movement options and a large number of weapons to choose form, which lead to very free-flowing and expressive gameplay. My one and only gripe is that there isn't more (12 hours for 100% completion feels a bit short).

Great style, fun combat, an interesting world, and a fascinating story.

A stylish and frenetic action roguelike with strong core mechanics.

The rival system initially struck me as overly punishing, but after playing a bit more I've concluded that it's actually a very well implemented method of preventing slow, safe (and boring) play. You can still play slow if you want, but rivals who are ahead of you will occasionally add additional challenges to encounters, and when you catch up you'll have to face them in a tough miniboss fight. This means that as you develop skill, you'll begin deliberately putting yourself into more dangerous (and fun) positions on every normal encounter so as to keep ahead of the pack and avoid these consequences.

The writing and humor was also something that I initially disliked but changed my mind on later. As annoying as it was to hear the voice of a mysterious observer mocking me with unfunny quips for getting hit or dying, the fact that he slowly changes his tune as the run progresses and he gains some confidence in you is actually pretty cool. By the end he's encouraging you after encounters go badly and cheering you on when you do well, which was genuinely motivational.

I've seen a few people complain about the game increasing it's difficulty automatically even before you've won a run, but I don't think this is a valid complaint. The changes kick in after you reach a new biome for the first time, marking what should be milestones in your own skill development, not to mention the various permanent upgrade you'll have unlocked. It's really more like you're being slowly ramped up to the intended baseline difficulty, and only after winning a run do you unlock the Hades-style heat system to really make things hard.

I do have one major complaint, which is that the melee weapons feel almost useless compared to the guns. Guns are so much safer and are only a bit worse in terms of damage output. The game is still fun even while more or less ignoring the melee weapons entirely but it does feel like wasted potential.

Overall, I'm quite glad I stuck with this game despite my doubts at the start.

One of the greatest video games I've ever played. The music is incredible, the graphics are charming, and the gameplay is top-notch. Each game is full of wonderful little wrinkles that change the way you play as you move from beginner to expert, learning surprising new mechanics and developing skills. Obstacles become opportunities, benefits become potential liabilities, and your appreciation for the care put in to each sub-game grows the more you play. UFO 50 stands as an incredible accomplishment in game design. It is hundreds of hours of fun and an absolute steal at $25. No matter who you are or what interests you have, this game is worth the price.