Recent reviews by Riptide

Incredibly addicting game. Gameplay is very simple, but has a surprising amount of depth based on the number of characters, the abilities they hold, the ball combinations you can craft, the items you can get, etc. Rounds are short enough to scratch that "just one more" itch. Then on top of that, you get booted into a base-building peggle level to give your characters permanent upgrades.

And the variety of the ball... it's incredible. You don't just have one ball. You have many balls. You find a new ball in the pit. You can fuse a poison ball with an iron ball. You can find an evolution that makes your ball split into a dozen other balls. your ball can do full screen damage to the whole pit. it can ball through the other enemies while doing aoe damage to surroundings.

But after 20 hours, the loop changes. The village doesn't matter ball. The upgrades are meaningless. There is only the ball and the pit pit ball. The other characters? They just get in pit way of the ball. The story? It is written on the walls of the pit by the bouncing of the ball ball. I close my ball eyes and I see the ball. The sound is ball perfect. The thwack of the ball.
There is nothing pit. There is no game. There is only the pit. And the ball. I ball feed the pit. The pit is hungry. It wants the ball ball ball ball ball. I give the ball to the pit. ball. pit I must give this ball back to the pit. pit. pit ball and the pit. ball ball ball pit ball pit ball pit ball ball ball

i've been turned off from turn based rpgs for years...
turns out all you need to add is parry mechanics.
quite literally one of the best games i've ever played.

This would be a thumbs down if this was another game.
The performance of this game is horrendous, and considering the hundreds of millions of dollars this game has generated it is disgusting how they have not tackled any of the performance issues that have been plaguing the game since launch. Questionable graphics options and key bindings, lack of support for non 16:9 displays, 60hz frame cap, random frame drops, the lot.

(Please, if you don't think so, check Digital Foundry's video on the DLC performance for concrete evidence.)

With that being said, the gameplay really does the heavy lifting to compensate for that.
Never played any previous FromSoft or Souls-like game before, and it was great. They've crafted a sandbox that lets me play however I see fit, and a world that feels alive with the sheer amount of content it holds.

Fun to play with friends.
The live story makes things interesting.

getting nuked by your own space station...
whole enemies that have never been seen before but just start showing up...
10/10 would get gaslit by devs again.

i play as a doctor who runs people over with a wheelchair

10/10

f + shotgun mouse 1

That was an... experience.

Gunplay is great.
Movement/collisions a bit jank.
Actually fun to play.

Pretty abysmal.
Entire game feels jank, servers break half-way through the game completely resetting any progress made.
Just stream a board between your friends.

For a mod, this is outstanding.

The quality of this is almost on par with Valve, with maybe some minor polish missing.
If you've wanted more Portal since Portal 2, this is it.