Recent reviews by alsodanlowe

Aw no ending for Cecilia and Lambert? The latter was truly my exploity workhorse, raining down a string of 4-hit combos with multiple Hero Sigils on both hands. Had to hold him back just to steal from every enemy I came across. As one does.

Great game, easy to get lost in the way the old FF and DQ games would get you lost. (Took me about 40 hours to get everything but "conquering the ultimate evil" which I assume is a secret boss.) Might be because I play so many JRPGs at the same time but by the time I come back to one I can't remember where I was going. Ran around the world quite a bit only to go back to the last boss I had fought and see there were doors I could open behind them.

On to play Scarmonde, that's where I was going. Hope there's another game in the pipeline to look forward to after that one.

Advanced stats are going to be weird to justify with ghost park dimensions but if they really can simulate based on recent outcomes from IRL statcast then we really do have the true cabin baseball sim. What happens in this simulation could arguably be said to have happened in that universe.

Time for a physical release, then.

This game is way cooler than everyone who plays it except for maybe the devs, and me. Runs great at 2176x1444 on an old 5:4 panel with the GPU upscaling the resolution. I don't know if any of these numbers are accurate. I know ray tracing is noticeably more next-gen looking than when the game is running 1080p or 1920x1200 but I also like that it still kind of looks like the old PS2 games and you don't need anything fancy for that.

You probably need more than 60Hz to enjoy how much the streetlights in this game strobe but I don't so I don't know. More ambient lighting and shadows needed custom fan curves on a 3090 but have been fine since I did custom fan curves on the individual fans covering the whole card using a program like Firestorm. Seems like a silly place to mention separating the fan curves but this game does spin stuff up fast doing preloading of some kind but can also max out just fine if your fans are already spun up before the game even starts up.

It's fun when you're fast enough to catch up to rivals without losing and you can joy ride at pretty high speeds if you don't outpace them. But when you're slightly outmatched you have to push your gear, tires and nitro so tight that you can't really afford to drive rather than control a jet burn before winning or losing. That is fine, I kind of suck and still made it through the skill tree but there are two games in Tokyo Xtreme games: the game before and the game after, but this one on next-gen stuff can really be enjoyed just to chill. I wish it wasn't so easy to conclude races once you had won them, but not in the way that they're just a hair away from beating you the next time you have to go around a corner they don't have to. You need a rival to initiate the gameplay loop and I wish there were more ways to just drive around with them using their NPC characteristics but in a race that wouldn't have so many quick fail states. Or just let them have that behavior when they're not racing you. Little things, not even criticisms. Last of which being that I stream using parsec and most driving games are fine but in this one you need to be able to make really tight choices with no mistakes or you'll waste your time or not chain your victories.

https://v1.steam.hlxgame.cc/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3615843205

I play it with the Grindstone soundtrack.

"Ooh, bop!
No, you're never gonna get it
Never ever gonna get it
(No, not this time)
No, you're never gonna get it
(My love)
Never ever gonna get it
No, you're never gonna get it
Never ever gonna get it
(No, not this time)
No, you're never gonna get it
(My love)
Never ever gonna get it
Ooh, bop!"

[Would have nominated for best soundtrack 2025 if it was an option.]

The combat in Hyke:Northern Lights is faster than any promotion of the game suggests. Much faster, as quick as any ARPG since it just has to render beautiful little pixel art sprites that I could spend a whole review talking about, but I really want to go on about the combat. Because the game confronts the minmax abuse of the system that all bored JRPG players are quick to employ. Surely the devs understand how smooth and complex the combat is when abused like this, only for them to bury it.

(Watch a video of the combat here on Steam.)

Surely they know how smooth and complex the combat is since it has to be to navigate the game’s climactic events and New[ish] Game Plus content. The game, while mind numbingly easy at times, is also challenging, not just at key moments but in general if you screw up the skill builds you chose to level up. You get stuck in the mud just when you learned how to fly, cause there’s no place to flap your wings.

I think it’s too short of a game content-wise and I also think that content is good enough to justify selling expansions for a game I just said was too short content-wise. It could be rebalanced how it is to make the combat more challenging early on, but I also don’t want the actual execution of skills to get easier (for already easy mobs) when a thing I love about the game is something you’re forced to do because you’re vulnerable. Being weak makes you do the thing that is fun in this game, so fun that I don't think this game should get weighed down by thinking the pace of the game is anything like the trailer.

Or anything like the Hyke character herself plays, someone who absurdly/wonderfully never gets better but always gets forced back into key battles when you just spent hours getting used to not using her. I don’t know the correct analogy that everyone would understand but it’s much closer to a Risk of Rain game than some farm sim’s combat. If you had to also swap to a dumbass farm sim character who can barely do anything including dodge. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, I’m not mad, this is a peaceful, joyful game. She’s not stupid, she’s great.

I don’t think you could beat it without getting somewhat good at the glitchy exploiting of the global cooldowns, yet they choose to bury that style of combat in those few climactic or catch up moments of the game, perhaps even to the point of not requiring it at all if you didn’t play that way. Maybe so anyone could still experience the wholesome part of the camping and exploration, now that I think about it.

But it is buried, so that my only criticism of the game even at full smackin $25 buckos is that there wasn’t more meat to chew on once you find that perfect timing. Timing that I admit I used the whole time to blow through most of the dungeons inconsequentially. I’m beating around the bush but you probably won’t play it if I don’t just say it: it’s pretty much Enter the Gungeon, letting you gallop across whole levels and simultaneously whip around packs of mobs in close quarters. Except it only matters if they force you into clearing a room or a smidge towards the end. It’s a good smidge, a great smidge, I want more of this smidge.

It looks and plays like a JRPG game while maintaining that ARPG pace. It remains an RPG instead of becoming a bullet hell with RPG graphics tacked on. The story is cookie cutter with some clever surprises that suggest the devs know how these games are often written, but nothing too memorable beyond those plot twists. Heavily carried by the impact of the 10/10 soundtrack which along with the art makes this game ultimately frustrating in scope. I’d play a whole $50 for a whole version of game like this, with difficulty ramping within the first few hours instead of leisurely into the endgame. Which isn’t to say this game isn’t ‘whole’ or that I just want an endless arena mode DLC. I want more of the good parts of this game in a way that they still matter to a plot, unfolding across all of the maps that they pretty much already have in the game. (I have neglected to mention the small NPC towns are perfect.)

I whole heartedly recommend. And recommend that the devs make a sequel to this game with the same battle physics where attack speed lets you circumvent your dash/dodge’s cooldown. Everyone else I recommend considering this game as a deeper experience than it is, with a chance to get much deeper.

If you don't have some version of OOTP from the last 10 years, this is too good of a log cabin game not to have in your library. Especially when it goes on deep sale. I think it's worth it either way but I also think I like reading a baseball almanac better than I like playing video games. Internet is like $60/month these days and over $100 if you count your phone. This new version is starting to implement more advanced batted ball stats and isn't on the level of stathead or baseball savant but it's a full almanac of all the counting stats in MLB history that you can take offline. Is that worth it? If you only used the Internet for reading historical baseball stats, could you potentially replace your Internet bill with OOTP? Don't just take this as a joke, what are we really giving up any given day here, the X website? The 1000s of games I will never play on my wish list? Walter McCarty is not DMing you and if he does he will be gray and old.

Game's good. Possibly that good, but it's also good for me. It fulfills so many expectations about hobbies and leisure and gaming, and I haven't even played FTP leagues yet. I like the new ratings model enough to forget about the old one (from 24 and before) and I like the in-game graphics enough to play them when I’m watching balls in play. If you haven’t upgraded since 21 or so, it’s definitely an improvement in game and when generating player faces. I generate all my own player avatars on DALLE anyway, but the game lets you easily mod and implement custom user content. I am probably more of a JRPG player than I am a 2K or Show player and am probably wasting the insight, for whatever it’s worth, that Out of the Park Baseball might be the best JRPG on Steam. The emergent novelty of the game is more like the endgame of Suikoden or Final Fantasy Tactics. I could speak volumes about the whole history of JRPGs (including Japanese language baseball games), most of which I’ve played, and still attest that this might be the best one out right now. Especially if you play it like that and customize your team or leagues and so on. Such a shame to not have Nippon licenses, because I think it’s THEIR loss not to proliferate their brand to OOTP players or promote the JRPG nature of baseball or the baseball nature of JRPGs in a game and community that may or may not find this idea appalling. Which is hilarious as a bridge building concept. I love baseball.

And it sucks and I hate it. But that’s another story from 1000s of hours across a dozen versions that could equivocate to anyone’s particular gaming ouvre. You’re an idiot for playing these games this much when there are so many opportunities right now to utilize statcast or be a literal python dev in some front office for the amount of time it would take to play all of the game modes or commit to a historical playthrough week to week, inning to inning or dare I say even pitch by ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pitch. What is wrong with you? Now imagine you’re me and you’ve played it 100x more. And I still managed to play Civ and Fallout and GTA and I’m not even that much of a weirdo or gamer. But I want to live in this game and I want there to be much much better options for baseball sims given all the modern metrics we have. How are there no truly modern MLB games on PC? OR is OOTP truly the modern MLB game? Once it truly implements batted ball behavior, what will be left to want out of a franchise sim?

Because this game does not implement batted ball behavior, in any way shape or form. It can’t be a sim. No baseball game has yet and that shouldn’t dissuade you from playing it. It’s just its own thing cause as of right now it has to be. Next year or possibly some mod a few weeks or months from now and it won’t need to be. It’s both a lifetime apart from real baseball and the best thing out there as a game about the Green Fields of the Mind. Of breaking your heart and being “designed to break your heart.”

I don't think it's a realistic simulation of baseball moment to moment or inning to inning. I don’t think you can truly intervene as a gamer to beat the odds, even though you can certainly minmax to your heart’s content when team building. The outcomes can still betray you and save scumming in this particular game can actually lead to you missing content. There is as much meat in getting fired and dabbling in a foreign or independent league as there is winning the pennant. What other licensed sports game can you imagine that being the case.

It's definitely still a video game and not some advanced assessment tool, but within the game it simulates those elements of sports knowledge/narcissism well. I've spent about as many $100s in fantasy baseball as I have on OOTP over the years but I'd definitively say I like playing OOTP more, and feel more fulfilled when guys I "picked" perform well. I also play with as few "out of 5" stars in the UI as possible. To me OOTP's greatest achievement is presenting fallibility in a way that your decisions, when they do go right, feel like achievements. But I also really love it when my scouts are wrong and I have to wade through all my bad decisions.

There are certainly RNG elements to this game, which may feel magnified in the early play while all the real players and teams seem to suitably reflect their real world counterparts. You will dismiss the game over and over again because it didn't make this player as good as you think they should be. You might even play god mode and edit their stats, but trust me you'll enjoy it more if you let it play out and let guys get injured and let yourself be wrong or use a sub-optimal coach. Had you simulated it again, it would have turned out differently every time. The other GMs are imbeciles and somehow pluck MVP caliber players from me year after year. I think I’m good at this game and think I could explain the ways you could consistently minmax being good at this game (with no commissioner mode) but I also like keeping fan favs around too long or overpaying the 7th best free agent. I once blew a 3-0 series lead. I regularly trade all of my draft picks and go $20 million over budget on minimum contract vets willing to toil in the minors. When you five-peat with those teams, you’ve pricked at the tapestry from which baseball is woven. This game can’t properly animate a play at home plate, but it can do that.

Was curious to know why there are so few reviews (or none at all in the case of many DLCs) and it doesn't seem to be because of the quality of the game or bad support or anything. Just that when you buy the Season Pass it serves as a single DLC in your library in place of the separate DLCs so it doesn't appear that they are in your library. As far as I can tell from an early playthrough, the DLC content is there but I can't participate in the Steam meta of reviewing them (or turning them off separately using Steam's DLC management but this is a game that benefits from the item variety so why wouldn't you want them all).

I don't know if a refund review is worth much more than a note like this but I'll express why I wanted to try the game and why I think I'll eventually buy it for good. It's exactly what I was looking for back when minecraft was setting the mold, but admittedly it also suffers from my being out of that state of mind now. I was looking more for a game I could mold into a town or farm sim and possibly could with more time hoarding items but it also feels like a lonely project since that's not really what this game is. I'd essentially be role-playing a different game in an RPG about nerds trying to escape being stranded in a desert island dimension while setting up a bunch of caricature versions of the world they remember like in the movie Castaway. So items feel more like trophies to leave behind than items to populate our new possibly permanent home. But, again, refund review that might be unfairly reading into the intro plot, it reminds me a lot of Dragon Quest Builders.

Also I played with the setting that replaces hunger/etc with a more JRPG-like stats pool you replenish with items but noticed it didn't affect whether you die from swimming, which might be possible to avoid if you turn on invincible mode but that seems like an all or nothing solution. You get a raft almost instantly and you can craft underwater breathing stuff pretty quickly, but ever since you've been able to swim in video games I've always wanted it to be a tranquil place rather than a deadly border. And maybe it is. I don't know almost anything about this game and should not have the power to influence its sales with a review SO I'M MAD WITH POWER I SHOULD NOT HAVE.

It also seems to be a lot better in co-op but I'm burying this comment at the end because I don't want to dissuade someone from trying to play it alone. I'm sure the feeling of switching back and forth between characters to match their different strengths is meant to slow down progress when you're a bunch of people controlling those characters simultaneously, eating up the world like dwarves cleaning the dishes. It's probably not the game's fault that it feels like even more of a lonely chore in a game about waking up with your friends on a deserted island if you don't know anyone who'd want to play something like this. The discord seems fairly active, much more than the Steam reviews. It's a peculiar game that seems detached from the place and time when a larger community might jump to it and mod it into a true Jack of All Trades game for people who like 2D JRPGs more than 2D sidescrollers.

Check this box if you received this REVIEW for free because it certainly cost me nothing to write it.

Edit: This was not in fact the dev's first game, just their first on Steam. Highly recommend the others on here too. The earlier games aren't bad either but Venaitura really stands out for me.

This was the game you were looking for, digging through all those JRPGs, roms, f2ps and the like. There's never going to be another Final Fantasy IV, another Earthbound (ahem or Mother 3) or Undertale. Most RPGMaker games are as much of an emotional achievement as they are technical. But the genre is still wide open for new styles and new storytelling and it's worth digging through bad first impressions to find magic. The world feels mature for a game of the 8/16-bit era, but also mature for the standards of RPGmaker JRPGs from today. The game is self-aware (though not ironic or sarcastic about it), with NPCs struggling with the nature of being in worlds like these more than their counterparts from thirty years ago. But scaled to the microcosm of an 8/16-bit game. NPCs will change their dialogue and there are named characters who seem to persistently address the events of the game as they unfold. I always wanted a game with the apparent technical scope of an NES or SNES game, but with the depth of content you'd find in a CRPG of the time or a modern open world game. This hints at that depth in lore and presentation, but sticks to a good turn based system without other gimmicks. There's room to grow, and I don't think I'd declare this 'that game' quite yet, but it certainly seems like this dev could be the one to make it.

With this game you'll probably want to remap your keyboard using rewasd or autohotkey because this is very much a game to play with a controller on the couch. You may also need to change or override high DPI settings in the compatibility settings for the EXE to get full screen to maximize properly. The dev would do well to look into solving these issues with more than a suggestion in a readme. But in some ways it promotes that early 90s vibe, like it's a mail order game. Once you're setup, you'll forget you're in an RPGMaker game and I don't say that lightly. Looks and plays very much like the early DQ/FF games, somewhere between FF2 and 4.

The gear and skills are introduced quickly and you can start to flesh out unique combos almost immediately. It's easy to die but also easy to revive and rid yourself of status ailments. Enemies have elemental weaknesses but also weaknesses to weapon classes. Honestly I'm still on the first continent. I wanted to get a positive review out before the sale ended. Trust me, I'm not an anime fanboy or an obscurist trying to curate misunderstood games. This game is well-made, well-written and needs to be the first of many attempts at game development.

The Original Star Trek Online

In 2010 there was no Star Trek Discovery, no Picard, Lower Decks or Strange New Worlds. The J.J. Abrams Star Trek had come out the previous summer and in doing so supplanted the primary timeline for one that was sexier and more action packed, but in many ways less exceptional than the world Gene Roddenberry had been building upon throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. The last episode of Star Trek Enterprise aired in May of 2005 and besides a few dozen ‘beta canon’ novels and comic books, as well as an appearance by Ambassador Spock himself in the Abrams Star Trek film, we hadn’t been introduced to new stories about Picards, Siskos, Janeways or Archers in almost five years.

Before Star Trek Online came out there was plenty of speculation about what kind of game it would be. A Starfleet Academy simulator where you train to become an officer on a starship? A squad-based Away Team shooter where you explore new worlds and practice a mix of diplomacy and martial prowess? A Bridge Commander where you and other players operate a combination of systems like shields, weapons and engines in an attempt to outmaneuver ships with similarly complex priorities? But what Star Trek Online turned out to be was a blend of ground and space maps where each player would control their own captain like a World of Warcraft toon as well as their own individual starship on a 2.5D plane similar to what was found in Wing Commander or Freelancer.

The ground combat is standard tab targeting and skill bars that didn’t innovate much other than offering different Star Trek weapons like phasers and disruptors. You can give basic commands to an AI-controlled away team, crouch and aim in the third person or just run around and spam your skills at your selected target. The ground combat isn’t bad per se, better when played with other people rather an AI followers, but the main thing that seems to be missing was diplomacy or a sense of exploring the unknown.

This focus on combat carries over to the space-based maps, though this was honestly where fans already preferred more action. You control ships with different forward and rear-facing hardpoints that can be equipped with beam arrays, cannons, turrets, torpedoes and mines. Each ship will turn faster or slower, usually correlating to how much damage it can take. The game very much feels like naval warfare on a single plane. You can go above or below other ships but you always maintain a ‘right-side up’ and cannot maneuver straight up or down. There’s also no way to command individual stations* and every captain will instead control all of the ship systems from one console resembling the skill bars used on ground maps. There is some nuance to how much power you give to your shields, engines, weapons or “auxiliary” systems but they usually just result in bonuses or penalties to your overall stats.

Most combat happens at a range of less than 10 ’km’ with some damage dropoff depending on the type of weapon. You have to deal with a shield’s HP and resistances (four total faces to bow, stern, port and starboard) and then the hull with its own HP and resistances. Energy weapons do better damage to shields, kinetic weapons like torpedos and mines do more damage to hull, with plenty of additional effects that circumvent these rules unique to particular weapons and ship equipment. There are bonuses you can get from customizeable perks, equipment sets, completing side quests or advancing a number of skill trees. The main thing to know about space combat in Star Trek Online is that it’s why the game still exists in 2023. Certainly the brand drives a lot of traffic to trying it out, but once you’ve advanced even a few hours in the game you’ll realize just how fun it is to fly space boats, which will probably be the first place you’ll be drawn to spending money in the game.

STO: The Next Generation

In 2010 Star Trek Online was a subsciption based game. There was no cash shop or loot boxes. At the time however that meant it would have to directly compete with games like EVE Online, Final Fantasy XI, World of Warcraft, Everquest and other arguably more popular games. Final Fantasy XIV and Guild Wars 2 would soon come out, FPS games would introduce loot boxes and Star Trek Online would make the choice to transition to f2p to survive, a choice we’re mostly grateful for. Now new maps and story episodes are few and far between. New ships that do come out are either rewards for month-long events, cash shop items or can only be acquired at sub-0.5% drop rates from loot boxes. The loot boxes and ships can be traded on the game’s auction house (the “exchange”) and you can generate cash shop currency by trading “dilithium” earned through almost every activity in the game. But the exchange currency can be hard to come by without a dedicated revenue stream that many other Fereng-I mean players will have already perfected. And the dilithium exchange up until very recently had slowed to such an extent that you’d have to wait weeks or months to generate cash shop currency from other players willing to sell it.

The good news is that there are also plenty of ways to acquire perfectly good and fun ships that you won’t have to buy from other players. They won’t have the best “consoles” which allow you to perform unique skills and maneuvers in space and they won’t always allow you to use the best “specialist” bridge seats which add further variety to your combos. But even here there are quite a few options using free ships to be able to experience every kind of specialist ability that you can equip.

STO: Deep Space Nine

Star Trek or not, the space combat is very fun, IMO more fun than contemporary parallels like the X series or Starpoint Gemini. Though it is third person, you can use advanced camera controls to get exactly the angle you’d like to play. The game however is very much a Star Trek theme park, where you’ll run around dozens of worlds and navigate dozens more orbital locations to complete episodic missions featuring the cast of the shows themselves. You’ll see members of every cast from TOS to Discovery reprise their roles but in stories that take place many years after the events of Star Trek Nemesis and Deep Space Nine. While there isn’t any crafting or base building, Star Trek Online very much resembles the kinds of maps now seen in lobby royale worlds like Fortnite. The game has a fully iterated version of the promenade seen on Deep Space Nine as well as a handful of other less recognizeable hangouts. There is some role-playing, even the occasional IRL chat at one of the game’s many bars (LGBTQ friendly, if that matters to you, and you can avoid it if that matters more), and there are a range of fleet holdings that can be earned by advancing the game’s version of a guild.

Many of the early “seasons” have been updated to reflect new textures and voice acting. Almost every episode is infinitely repeatable and most special events seem to repeat at least once or twice a year for people who might have missed them once upon a time. You might not see the original rewards but many of these have been moved to the “Lobi” or “Phoenix” stores, which are expensive and in many ways less accessible than the cash shop ones, but at least you can budget for them consistently using purely f2p resources. Personally I find these markets to be more of an endgame goal than anything else. Every time you have the right Lobi balance to get a special new item it’ll seem like hard work has paid off, and when you finally get that “Epic Prize Token” and can buy just one ship it will feel like you’ve just won the lottery. (Or won it again. Since lobi passively drops from every lootbox.)

[Review continued in the comments.]

The world is one interconnected hub and unlocks different areas with the story's progression, but they all loop back round to each other and fast travel is conveniently placed. Given that the story is kind of a placeholder (name more than maybe ten stories in games that aren't), I kind of wish it skipped the explanations about why you're going from one area to the next in favor of an unspoken, Shadow of the Colossus/Legacy of Kain style, web of bosses you can choose to fight in any order you want to.

Could also use some more mob variety for the grinding to get to the harder side quest mobs. Gear variety felt pretty good though producing skill points to perform each character's unique abilities seemed to edge out trying other stuff. Shotguns and sniper rifles just don't produce enough skill points and you can only tank so much damage to earn it that way. Fun double-edged sword type penalties on many good weapons. Great art, love all the places you can just sit and chill. Wish you could customize the soundtrack though. Lots of good songs buried by the couple that play over and over. Or make different ones play at different chill spots.

I loved the atmosphere for what it was (about one town in Earthbound with all the caves and basements littered throughout) and would definitely come back to the game if more content was added. There are too many cramped corridors vs open courtyards, though the game does frame its interconnected overlooks well. It's an A overworld with C+ dungeons and feels rushed or unfinished in some places but never in presentation. I don't know if I experienced a single bug. More polished than the usual RPGMaker type game, too short for an SNES era title, but good enough quality to have published back then if the game was even twice as long.

I guess I will say one more thing about the story, because some people play RPGs for the story (or so they say, I'd play maybe four games just for their 'story' so I'm skeptical). If this game's story was a secret sidequest boss you had to grind dozens of hours in this game to defeat, I'd grind those dozens of hours, so long as there was no story. The atmospheric storytelling is excellent. If there was literally no dialogue in the game and it was instead dedicated to NPCs or animations, I'd be perfectly happy. Pixel artists everywhere: make whatever games you want, of course, but remember that games didn't have stories for decades (I draw the line at Dark Cloud) and yours might be better without one too.