Recent reviews by Threepwood

HOOK THIS ♥♥♥♥ DIRECTLY TO MY VEINS

Hour One:
Roguelikes are boring now, everything is a new Monster Train/card battler, so it's refreshing when something like this comes along. My only issue is that I get attached to the adorable cats and then have to say goodbye to them after 1 adventure (unless I'm keeping them to breed). Always love a good FFT grid battler as well, and this is a good one; it's easy to make bad ones. 14 years, yeah, I believe it. Good job.

This game is a love letter to 16-bit era side-scroller shooters like Contra 3, Contra Hard Corps, Sunset Riders, etc. It's all the good parts of T2, with several reasons to replay after the initial hour or so the game takes (more if you require extra time to learn the patterns). No "Ninja Gaiden 1 birds", the game doesn't try to trick you and isn't "unfair". Boss Rush mode is fun and I've failed 3 times so far but will prolly get it next time, the other 2 unlockable modes are apparently just kinda rehashes of the game with different characters/level order. I will likely spend 10-15 hours playing through it to get everything, and then maybe try it on Hard just to have "stakes". $30 is high, I think $20 is the right price for these kind of experiences, BUT they did a good job, respected the franchise, and I'm having fun. If this game had come out for $15 new on the Genesis in 1998 (equivalent to $30 today) it would've been the best 16-bit era side scroller that ever existed. As is it's pretty dang good but could've used more content.

The last few years have seen a glut of 2d retro brawlers, but very few of them have been worth playing. TMNT, GI Joe, Power Rangers, 2 new Double Dragons... all kind of meh. Streets of Rage 4 is the best one of the last few years obviously, but Marvel CI might be #2. I hope for a survival mode DLC with new characters, I'd buy it on principle.

The cursor isn't anchored to the right spots; while dragging cards/items the ingame arrow/cursor and the mouse cursor float wildly apart, making it very difficult to know where the "activation point" is for the task. Likely because they expect most people to play with controller, or it was mainly playtested for controllers.
No main menu, just "pick a class, start playing", a very mobile game decision that feels unprofessional/without polish.
Half the classes are locked behind gameplay (totally fine), but there's no in-game indication of which ones those are, so you could click on 4 of them, finding out 'oop, guess I'll come back to this one', before finding the ones they want you to start with. Basic QoL issue there, grey out things the player cannot choose yet.
Apart from all that, welp, it sure is a Monster Train/Slay the Spire, like the other 40 Monster Trains. I'm sure this one is very deep and unique and not at all like the others. Studios making "safe" games on trend is a boring new reality.
I know High Voltage can do better, I still have "I'm Solo" from Kinect Star Wars in my head 13 years later.

Pretty fun, can't wait for more.

The correct way to do a remaster. Some people are complaining about the $6 jpg dlc, they're right, don't buy that, problem solved.

It's incredibly slow and the battle pass/ F2P systems are awful, but it could be patched into something worthwhile. You can't play hotseat co-op against people online or even in their story mode. Just poor decision-making at every turn.

It's good, it's very reminiscent of Hades even though the developers did Dead Cells, so I dunno why they would take things like the exact same death animation, boons, weapons etc from a different roguelike rather than their own. I'll play more when there's more content.

Great game, great team.