Recent reviews by CelestialSynapse

I had an amazing time playing The Invincible.
It's really much a walking sim, slightly-more interactive than a visual novel, but oh wow. It's so pretty. I absolutely adore the retrofuturistic style, it's a more "reasonnable" and relatable sci-fi setting IMO. I could really feel like I was living the story, I was super immersed from the beginning to the end and no part felt particularly tedious.
Praising the story is a bit disingenuous since it's adapted from a novel, but at the very least I can praise the narration and the adaptation. It's not an easy task to make a compelling playable story and this game managed it with brio.

A solid narrative/mystery/adventure game. I reached endings 1,2 and 4/4.
I like the main mechanics of the time-loop, I feel like it's well integrated in the gameplay and, for the most part, doesn't feel overly complicated or arbitrary.
The graphics are pretty good, with the usual facial expression rigging being a bit stiff, but that's really hard to do and for the scope of the game, I'm quite impressed with how it looks.
Since I don't want to spoil the story, I'll simply say that I appreciated a new-ish twist on a classic tale. Many of the story elements were not new, but the presentation and the narration (in part due to it being an interactive medium) made it quite compelling. It's kind of cliché, but time-loop based stories tend to work quite well in an interactive format.
Overall, despite some slight jank in the few platforming moments and some skill issues on my end (namely not picking up a story-critical item because I thought I already picked it up and running around in circles frustrated at this situation), it's a solid choice that can keep you entertained for a very reasonnable amount of hours. Count 6~12h depending on how quickly you figure things out and how much you want to explore all endings.

Very much so so. I enjoy narrative games and it was a quick fix of that chill "let's play for two hours after work" kind of situation.
After finishing, I was happy to have an ending, I won't say I had a bad time playing, but it was not a great time, where I would've wanted to come back, get all the little mementos and find all the endings.
But I wasn't really hooked, the characters are very surface level, you spend so much time sniffing the ground for clues like a truffle pig you barely have time to talk to the NPCs. And that's a shame given the whole "mystery solving" aspect of things. I would have appreciated more depth in the characters.
The animations also felt weirdly rigid and uncanny at times? Also had the audio of a couple lines of dialogue messing up.
The main gimmick of the "mind palace"/imaginary friend is not so great either. Compared to LiS:True Colors for example, it doesn't really offer a new perspective on the situation, instead it works as Navi shouting "HEY LISTEN" with a fresh coat of paint.

Overall, I don't think it's a *bad* game, but it's not a *good* game either. It's very mid. It has okay everything, nothing shines and nothing fails terribly, making it all the more forgettable.

It really feels like a service game that values your time and money.
By that, I mean that I feel the many layers of content added with each passing update, but nothing seems to interact deeply with anything. And yet, it feels weirdly compelling to come back and play another 5h straight, just to see what's next.
It's really adventure in its most primal form. You see part of something (a story, a game system, a planet...) and want to see what's up with it. Most of everything is a story of its own, very much disconnected from the rest, but there are enough things happening at the same time at the same place to keep you hooked.

It's tough to give a positive/negative review on an early access game.
The game has a lot of rough edges currently, to the point where I would probably not recommend the game as is if it were a final release. It is, however, an early access, and very much so still in the development part of the game. New content is added left and right every couple of months, with fixes and optimization rolling out in between.
Overall, I like where the game is heading, if the devs keep their promises (and given what I've seen with the interactions with the community and how the updates are, they will, eventually, deliver upon their promises. It might take one or two more years to have everything, but it will be good).

I played ~4 characters right now, I've dabbled in most of the masteries and mostly played multiplayer.
The game is fun in multiplayer, it's the classic experience of stacking auras like a madman and sharing loot, it's great. It's, however, very much unstable. Random freezes and crashes, horrible rubberbanding, skills that become unusable, getting killed because there is delay between seeing your life go down, pushing the button to drink a potion and the potion taking effect, etc. It somehow got worse in the last updated, in my experience.
So, unless you're sure you have rock solid networking, I'd steer clear of the multiplayer experience until things get fixed.

Gameplay-wise, it's a very classic ARPG feel. Move forward, kill enemies, loot, level up, rinse and repeat.
There lacks a bit of variety for now (the devs are aware, and it will be addressed later on), many similar enemies, many similar items, lots of the same for long periods of time. I don't mind, but I know it can be a bit of a downer for people.
With regards to itemization, I like the idea of having "requirement" archetypes, declined in further subtypes that grant different boosts. For example, in "heavy" armor, there is heavy armor, which grants resistance to projectiles, and ornate armor which grants resistance to elements. Similarly with weapons as well.
I feel like this gives an easy to grasp way of building characters. It's way less intimidating than looking for specific affixes and such (even though, in practice, it's just one more affix to take a look at, but y'know, presentation matters).
Skills are a bit of a mixed bag for me. Some skills feel really useless, some feel overpowered, some I just don't understand wtf it's even supposed to be doing. The skill system looks a bit like Diablo 3 but more in depth.
You have (as in TQ1) two masteries, each with its own level ("Divinity"), unlocking different tiers of skills. Unlike TQ1 though, they don't provide any more bonuses, just unlocking new skills. Then, putting points in skills grant them upgrade slots which you can use to add modifiers to the skill.
Active and passive skills have their own points as well, which is definitely a choice that will divide people. Personally, I feel that it's fine, but I understand the argument that it limits build freedom.
Overall, I feel like the hidden layer of upgrades are super important because they can make or break a character, completely change the playstyle etc. But it is quite daunting to look at everything to plan a build. Imagine ~30 skills each with ~10 modifiers. You can, however, just try stuff out and respec whenever, it's quite cheap and can be done on the field to try things out.

On another note, the game is beautiful. Not the most detailed ever, but you don't need 4k textures on individual blades of grass that you'll see from a top-down view anyways. The lightning effects, atmosphere, and overall ambiance of the game are great. It feels very regal in a way. You could almost even say divine. Just like the computer you need to make it run well.
It's a modern title rocking UE5 and you will feel it. I used to have a GTX1050/i5-4590 with 16GB of DDR3, unable to make it reach 20fps stable on 720p with frame-gen. Now I upgraded to an RX9060XT 16GB and I get ~30fps on Ultra 1080p without frame-gen (and somehow I can't make it run >30fps, weirdly enough). So yeah. If you have an old setup, it's going to be tough to enjoy it.

Overall, my recommendation is that if you needed to read reviews on Steam to make up your mind, it's probably worth waiting for the end of the early access. It has a lot of potential, but I feel like it's not *quite there* yet for people outside the ARPG/TQ sphere.

Short and sweet, with a good difficulty :) I think I missed a part of the game before finishing it, but eh.
I think the main issue I have with it is that some parts of the game (the ventilation shaft mainly) are a bit of a slog to backtrack through to try and find missed map tiles.

I highly recommend it to anyone liking metroidvania!

In this day and age of video games, I have to admit that 15 bucks for 4h of gameplay is on the pricier side. However, it's well worth it in my opinion.
The drawings are gorgeous and feel like a hand drawn comic strip on every screen, the music is nice, and the story is very touching.
From what I understood, some parts of the story are explored in a different order based on the choices the player makes, but it works well within the whole narrative scheme.
Without wanting to spoil, the story was very well written, with charming characters and it's a nice refreshing pace to slow down for an afternoon. Perfect when you're a bit tired and want to chill :)

Very cozy and chill factory building game :) A tad bit grindy at the end, but overall very enjoyable!

I recieved this game as part of the July 2024 Humble Choice.

I was stoked when I thought I could play some retro shooter with a modern touch, however, it's not what I got here. Instead, it's menus, more menus and forever more menus with boring gameplay.
Let me elaborate.

The shooting itself is okay. Not bad, not great, but it works. The problem I have is that, at least for the two first levels (1h of gameplay), it's very easy until the first boss where it's heal panic while scrambling my way to equip a weapon that has ammo. Unlike the classic Doom for example, where some of the enemies are "hitscanners" (you can't dodge the bullet), most of them were shooting slow-ish moving projectiles, which encouraged skill and strategy. Here, it's a mission to see who has the biggest dps, and it's not fun.
But my biggest gripe, which makes me quit the game so early is the menuing. So. Damn. Much. Menuing. Every enemy, it's : press E to open the corpse menu; painstakingly take your time to take only the ammunition from most enemies; press tab to quit the menu, which is easily 4 or 5 seconds per enemy. So much longer than killing it! Also, sometimes killing enemies will make them explode, which destroys the loot as well! Talk about a reward for smashing an enemy to pieces at point blank with a shotgun! I feel like this could easily be resolved: when you open the corpse menu, just auto collect the ammo, it's that simple. If this game had that, I could recommend it, but not as it is.
Another point about menus: saving. When I wanted to save the game at the save points, many times I got out of the menu without saving, because we need to select the save slot, then click save, wait for a bit, click confirm, wait for a bit, and THEN leave the menu, otherwise the save will not have been made.
And about the graphics, it's quite generic, but I don't mind that much. I seem to have noticed though that when trying to shoot an enemy from above, they can't really be hit because of the flat sprite they have.

In conclusion, it has potential to be a decent game, if not for the horrid UI/UX chokeful of useless menus.

I didn't cry, you cried!