Recent reviews by TheDanidem

I’ve been playing Diablo since I was 11, starting with the very first game. I played an absurd amount of Diablo II, which remains one of my favorite games of all time. Diablo III had a very rough launch, but over time it evolved into an excellent “Gauntlet-style” ARPG that I truly enjoyed. I love this franchise. I really do.

Now, Diablo IV.I genuinely feel sorry for the artists, programmers, musicians, and everyone involved on the creative side of the project. Their work is undermined by the people calling the shots at a higher level: those responsible for the gameplay direction, progression systems, and monetization strategy. Diablo IV is clearly designed around battle passes, cosmetic shops, endless checklists and artificial engagement systems that have no place in a Diablo game.

Cosmetics make your character look as if this were World of Warcraft. In a Diablo game, your character is supposed to look powerful and unique because of the gear you earn, not because of something you bought. Instead of meaningful progression, the game bombards you with infinite objectives, challenges, and to-do lists that feel more like a shopping list than an RPG. The result is a game built to retain players, not to challenge or inspire them.

I bought the game when they announced the Paladin. The Crusader was one of my favorite classes in Diablo III, and I had an absolute blast with it. Seeing how similar the Paladin looked and played I decided to jump in. Since Diablo IV is an open-world game, you’re encouraged to do side quests, roam the map, and engage with small time-limited activities like world events (those red zones on the map with waves of enemies), alongside Nightmare Dungeons and other scattered content.

By the time my character hit level 50, I was only halfway through the campaign. I reached level 60 early during the final act.

I literally one or two-shot every boss in the game. Every single one. That includes Lilith, both phase 1 and Phase 2. I have no idea what these bosses actually do, what their mechanics are, or what their movesets look like because they die before any of that matters. The story itself was painfully boring (also, a Diablo game without Diablo?), and the in-game cutscenes felt cheap and underwhelming. There are maybe two proper cinematics that resemble the classic Blizzard quality (those that hype you up like Diablo II or Diablo III).

I finished the campaign with seven Uniques, and the rest of my inventory was Legendaries. White, blue, and yellow items were completely worthless. Legendary items are so common that calling them “legendary” is laughable. Uniques drop so frequently that I already had duplicates. So much for being unique.

After finishing the campaign, I kept pushing the difficulty, hoping the game would eventually reach a point where enemies could survive more than one or two hits. I made it halfway into Torment II, running Pit levels around 30–35. Here, Belial could take more than two hits.

But here’s the problem: whenever I died, it was always for one of two reasons. Either I got instantly deleted by one-shot mechanics (constant ground explosions and overlapping AoEs flooding the Pit) or Belial landed an attack that turned my health bar yellow and drained it to zero over time with no meaningful counterplay. This is incredibly lazy game design. The game throws endless waves of identical mobs at you. There are no memorable enemies, no distinctive encounters, nothing. The world is visually beautiful, yet completely hollow.

Everything feels the same. The entire game exists to stroke your ego and tries to make you feel like an unstoppable god, without ever earning it. I walked from point A to point B for over 30 hours, pushing through the campaign and endgame content, waiting for the game to finally open up or become interesting at higher difficulties. It never does. There is nothing there. Literally nothing.

Seeing all that art, all that polish, it’s heartbreaking. What an absolute waste of talent. Blizzard truly deserves every ounce of hate it gets.

Path of Exile 2 and Diablo II Resurrected completely blow this game out of the water.

If you're constipated, this game is a hell of a laxative

Would recommend 10/10

I've been playing Wildfrost for the past couple of months and let me tell you: this game is amazing. Everything is polished like a diamond, it looks and feels great and you can tell a lot of care went into it.

I love how original the game is. The charms mechanic (these are my favourites!) lets you tweak card attributes and the bell system adds layers of difficulty similar to slay the spire ascension levels, but more like Hades where you can choose how the game screws you over. I think the game is like Hearthstone but with a roguelite spin.

My only piece of feedback for the developers: the one thing that bugs me is the lack of notifications for lethal damage. I've lost many runs because I didn’t notice one of my units was going to die. That, at times, can be frustrating. I wish the game took care of the mental gymnastics and allowed me to focus on just the decision making.

Give it a try! It might be a bit confusing the first few runs.... at least it was bit tricky to get into for me, but! once it clicked, it was really fun and easy to understand. It's SO FUN to play, the art is so good and charming, the music is good to the point where I preorder their LP, the mechanics are really unique and everything is super polished. I hope these devs get buried with money so they can keep on creating diamonds like this one.

POOLS delivers precisely what it promises: a sterile expanse with little more to do than press forward, rendering it more to a tech demo in Unity than an engaging game experience. The first two chapters did pique my curiosity... but after that it falls flat. It feels like it's building up to something that never comes to life.

Such a good game! I don't even know where to start!

· The turn-based gameplay is super original and engaging. Messing up in the hardest difficulty is quite punishing.

· You can unlock new ships and crew members. Each ship has a different structure and gimmick; each crew member has a different specialization. The combination of crew members and ships makes for a lot of interesting ways of playing.

· I did not expect this at all, but I find the characters and their interactions/dialogues SO FUN. This alone is reason enough to make me try to get all the endings. One of the strongest points of the game for sure!

· Superb music and SFX.

· All of the above combined with all the different environments, encounters, and artifacts makes every run feel very unique!

I came in blind, recommended by a friend, and I didn't know what to expect... I'm so glad he did! One of my favourite roguelites for sure!

I really hope the devs get all the money so they can push the art a bit more (animate those ship thrusters!), looking forward to new titles from Rocket Rat Games! :D

One of the best FPS out there, the reason Apex Legends exists. The campaign is what I consider my gold standard for single player games: all killer, no filler. Straight to the point.

And when you're done with the single player campaign, you can play the *cheff kiss* multiplayer for hundreds and hundreds of hours.

Must have!

If I click on a tiger, it says tiger

10/10

Such a fantastic game, I feel like I robbed the developers by buying it on sale. The environments are awesome, the gameplay has been quite fun and the atmosphere was very... RE. Which is awesome.

I wish there was the option to set the fov a bit higher. Also in Hardcore, a couple of bosses felt like bullet sponges. Other than that 10/10

Gimme more FPS RE, Capcom! I'll buy it on release!

You control a MOBA character where you go from point A to point B. The art is great and quite polished, but when it comes to its gameplay, it feels shallow, boring and short. There are much better options out there.

This game has no right to be as good as it is, much less for this price. I hope the developer gets buried with money so that they can continue creating gems like this one.