Recent reviews by ToasterAssassin

Gifted from a friend, I didn't know much going into this game other than it was an "RE Clone".

Absolutely floored at how good this game was. The atmosphere, art/backgrounds, enemy design, level design and replayability is absolutely top notch, soundtrack too. The gameplay has a few tiny minor nitpicks but nothing that takes away from a satisfying experience. The story was decent and had me engaged.

This is one of the best games in its genre/type and I cannot recommend this game enough for fans of fixed camera angle survival horror. Its a love letter to classic games like Resident Evil 3: Nemesis and Dino Crisis 2, with a sprinkle of other classics in there.

The devs knew what they were aiming for and delivered a feast of a game.

Easily in my top games of the year.

There's two sides to every story

I had a blast playing this and was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed it.

The atmosphere, presentation, music are all top notch. Its also a very pretty game.
Story was decent, characters too. Gameplay doesn't have crazy depth but the mechanic of blood for ammo is cool. Enemy design, while very limited, I liked a lot. I also enjoyed the puzzles a bunch.

Being able to create a custom difficulty is super cool!

Some nitpicks/complaints:
Unreal Engine
While I was able to tweak some stuff to get the game to run smoothly, trying to get it to change setting was a bit of a headache, which leads into the button prompts. Sometimes they were sticky or just outright janky.

Hitboxes, for the most part were fine, there were a few instances of eyebrow raising hits.

Yellow paint EVERYWHERE.
While not a major issue for myself, it was a tad bit odd having it nearly every vault, crouch, climb, unlock etc. Would be fantastic for a toggle in a future update if possible.

Boat section.
I don't think I need to say much if you've experienced it. Please reconsider the control scheme or adding an option to increase speed. It really scuffs the pacing of that section.

From what I saw, there was no New Game+, which I think would be nice for cleanup runs.

I think this game was worth the price and time invested. I actually want to go back at least another once or twice and try to aim for 100% achievements.

Doom

Edit: Leaving old review underneath my updated review.

I've played for an extra 209 hours, coming back a few months after the release of the Elderwood patch.

Elderwood is awesome and they did a top notch job with it. Visually beautiful and the story is decent. Lots of stuff to collect and do.

Communication with community seems to have improved, which is great to see.

I have a few nitpicks.

Creature AI logic is horribly scuffed. They reach a dead end or bump into sometime and most of the time, the game teleports them 50ft in a random direction and it can cause for some very frustrating hunts (Looking you Ogopuus). This also happens for the other huntable creatures (minus the shrooms).

Going out of bounds (in any means) has teleported me across zones, which is more funny than frustrating.

Connectivity issues don't happen as often, which is nice to see, but there are hiccups here and there.

Some texture issues have arisen recently and I'm not sure if this is patch related or my own game glitching.

I would also like to add, that having inputs not work and having to use "unstuck" a bunch is annoying.

Overall, Palia is in a good spot right now. They are improving a lot here and there, and continue to do so. I would love if there was proper trading in the game and not the very awkward roundabout way of trading (Request system and trading tables). I have been enjoying my time back with it and looking forward to seeing where the game goes.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Man, I was really hoping to have this as a recommended game.

Palia was recommended to me by a friend a while back but I added to my backlog of "Will play later" games. Fast forward a year or so, they mentioned I can play it on steam. So I grabbed it.

I started playing towards the end of October (2024) and I absolutely adored what I was playing. It just ticked all the boxes in a chill game I was looking to play, after being burnt out from what I was currently playing at the time. The art style is simplistic but super nice to the eye. The soundtrack, while limited, is easy going and not overwhelming.

Not only was it the kind of game I was looking for (managing a plot of land, farming, foraging etc) but it also has really good characters, with good stories. The main story actually had me intrigued and I was happy to dive in and learn more about the world and why we were, the player, were there. The voice acting, is great and also has an impressive cast, a bunch who I knew and was surprised to see here.

The community in Palia is top notch. Very beginner friendly and super helpful.

Fast forward a month or so (270 hours over that period), having done every characters personal story, most of the romance stories, finished the bundles, got all of my skills to 10 and beyond, a beefy plot with a consistent cashflow, caught most of the fish, all of the bugs, mined all the stuff, etc etc. I really want to recommend this to people, but the big thing stopping me from doing it is the bugs and dev team.

Bugs pop up frequently. Stuff that requires either a full game restart or a patch to fix. Which are very little of, btw. Which leads me into the dev team.

The lack of communication or acknowledgement to issues is disappointing. Updates that are massively game breaking, fixes that break the game even more, and, bugs that were present in last years Christmas event, have not even been fixed and is now present in this years.

I get it: Its a free to play game, currently in its beta phase. However, if this game is to expand and get better, there needs to be more time on fixing stuff and communicating with your player base, than pushing out shoddy patches and premium outfits.

Elderwood is supposedly the next major patch coming in early 2025, and while I want to be excited for it, I can't, knowing how every patch has gone so far since playing and hearing the stories of other patches througout the life cycle of this game.

Palia has a lot of potential to be an excellent game within a genre that has games of titanic volume, but it needs to start knuckling down and tackling issues before it starts to dwindle the playerbase.

Super nice to see this finally on all platforms with a fresh coat of paint and some quality of life changes. The game runs buttery smooth and the load times are non-existent.

However, the AI in this game is still as wonky as it was in the original, for both friendly and enemy NPC/things. Some of your team have a habit of getting stuck in certain rooms, and you either have to nudge em forward or spam the follow/stay command.

I wish there was more achievements and maybe some extra stuff thrown in to make repeat playthroughs feel fresh (Randomizers, permadeath, etc).

If you're a fan of The Thing movie series (both the OG and the prequel they made in 2011) I think you'll enjoy this as a sort of conclusion to the series.

If you're not a fan/don't know what The Thing is, and you're looking for a third person horror shooter, it might be a miss, as I feel the latter portion of the game starts to sink a bit. Its also a short game, clocking in at 4-6 hours.

I love The Thing, its my favourite horror movie and I have fond memories with this game from back on the PS2, so its awesome to have this on a modern platform.

Pleasantly surprised by how good this was.

I have some minor complaints/nitpicks but nothing that takes away from the entire experience.

A very polished Remake that pays a lot of respect to the original.

Down by the River/10

Caprisun ✔️
Eating my a** hole ✔️
La Campana ✔️
Gloria a Las Plagas!

Hoo boy.

This game has glimmers of actual fun through becoming one of the super bio-weapons, but is dragged down by pretty much everything else this game has to offer.

2 maps and 1 game mode for a full release is mind boggling. The same music track over and over (I LOVE Looming Dread, it's one of my favourite tracks, but not on repeat for EVERY character). Characters need their own music themes to make things feel a bit different, and not have it feel like an annoyance after sometime.

The MMR system needs serious reworking as it doesn't really offer much for winning and harshly punishes you for losing.

The gameplay balance in this abysmal, characters who are just outright better and have very little counter play against other survivors/bioweapons. Getting stunlocked by 95% of everything in this game, even as a super creature is beyond frustrating.

The roadmap shown needs to be reworked as the game is severely lacking content for a release that was delayed for an entire year. It needs a lot of updates and soon, otherwise I see it being a dead game in a few months.