Recent reviews by Meoz

Edit: It's been a long time since I wrote this, pretty sure it turns out I was wrong and a lot of what I complained about in this review changed significantly and the developer has/had no intention of abandoning it and probably hasn't stopped looking into ways to make the game more in line with his vision for it. I already acknowledged it would be a pain in the ass to optimize, so props to him for keeping at it. I'll pick it up again some day in all likelihood, but you guys can keep giving me free steam points. I like clowns.

I've been looking for as many good and challenging Rogue-lites as I can, and have been loosely following the development of this title for some time now. Conceptually, everything about this game is right up my alley, and I feel that it's definitely a very solidly built game on that level. However, as many are continuing to point out, this game has a significant chance to have impossible to ignore performance issues that render the game at certain points unplayable, even on higher end PCs.

This has a serious optimization problem. Still, with how this game is built and processes its math, it might be too late at this point to really go back and patch everything up nice and perfect. Given the timeline of development, I'm inclined to suggest they likely felt this was simply good enough relative to how long it took to put together. If that's really the case, I'd be hard pressed to disagree.

Some things really stick out as generally too busted to fully enjoy, like the Arena unlocked after Jade Tree. I actually kinda liked the Gradius minigame beyond the disjointed and time wasting wormhole system, but it should have been reworked or possibly even scrapped because of how it's functionally capped by crashing when the waves inevitably spawn too many enemies that are doing too many things at once. I really wanted to keep going and completely make the arenas my ♥♥♥♥♥, but the game just couldn't handle how hard I was rolling after getting a bee shooter with 72% leech and 75% increased missile size.

In terms of its execution, the game really needs more of quite a few things, especially since certain elements like Topaz Tree are an absolute chore that I doubt many people will ever like pausing their high-speed boomer shooter to play a minimalist Pokemon homage. It's just not fun, and keeping track of which NPCs are where is another total waste of time. The interface itself isn't really that great either, and I set myself back by accidentally releasing the pet I spent 2k topaz on. My mistake, but the fact that you can execute actions with keybinds and mouse controls in all three minigames means those mistakes are probably gonna happen for more people than just myself.

Overall, this game shows the developer is full of really cool ideas that are sometimes harder to implement than they might have appeared during the earlier development stages. While the minigames felt clunky, they added tremendously to the overall atmosphere and helped drive home the kind of sincerely broken set of lenses the protagonist has to view and interact with the world. One of my favorite parts of this game was the hospital, and I hope that if something like this is attempted again, that significantly more detail be added to the subtle changes and quirks of the hub world because there was such a particular feeling to seeing the developments and getting access to other places.

Ultimately, I think this is a solid 7.5/10 and would be much higher if the endgame wasn't throttled by performance issues and full on crashes, meaning I'll have to call it early on in New Game +. I really can't complain since I received this as a gift and it was half off, but I don't recommend it at its standard price point. While my playtime is 58.3 hours, I probably spent less than half that actually playing the game (bad habit of leaving games running and doing other stuff). The last few hours were repeating the same levels that kept crashing until I gave up.

In a nutshell, the game is great in concept and aesthetic execution, but performance issues mean it's not nearly what it could've been and if you haven't bought it already then either buy it on sale or hold out hope for a patch or expansion pack; I'd even be happy with a full sequel if it would just touch up and refine everything offered here.

tl;dr: If it's on sale and you're still curious or if you just really like boomer shooters and might be running out of options, I would say yes. Otherwise, no.

Difficulty is wildly inconsistent, and for the most part it's the exact same game as Spelunky HD only with an overcrowded 1-1 through 1-3. Only one song per level, so it can get old very quickly. Personally not a big fan of most unlockable characters, and a lot of traps and enemies are difficult to identify from the background to name one way the game seems more unfair.

I'm on the whole very disappointed, it doesn't feel new enough to engage me and what is new is making me bored with dying more than I'm getting frustrated. If you never played the first, you might like this. If you did, you'll probably be disappointed and grapple with why for a little while after purchasing or playing this.

The game still needed development time and to actually listen to player feedback. Even the multiplayer still doesn't work consistently. Derek Yu really needs to break tradition and listen to feedback on this one or else a lot of fans of Spelunky Freeware and HD probably won't look forward to his next projects.

Everything about the game could be fixed by buffing some of the gag guns, making them drop far less frequently, and/or picking up the overall pace of the game. If just one of those three things were tweaked, I'd happily give it another chance. I really wanted to like this, but it just drags its ass so hard. I'd keep at it because there's legitimate challenge to be found later in the game but it just doesn't consistently reward successful gameplay enjoyably, interestingly, or often enough to feel worth it. It's also hard for me to call it a real bullet hell. Sure, there's lots of stuff to dodge, but the pace just feels too slow for it to really qualify for me. It's a real shame; On the whole, they crafted one hell of a likeable universe here and every aesthetic touch from the art to the soundtrack are very nice. I just couldn't get hooked by the poorly tuned gameplay.

Edit: I'm leaving this review up for posterity, but the game improved so much through content updates that it ended up as one of my favorite roguelites of all time. This may seem unforgiving, but once it clicks it's good to the very last boss.

Buggy, never to be legitimately complete, downright scummy developers, unsatisfying for those without a community to hop into (even then, eh).

Wish I could get a refund.

Yeah, I have nothing funny to say. Stop giving these ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ money.

If I had to sum my opinion of it up when it was all said and done, I'd say "Meh". I don't regret buying or playing it, and $5 is a fair price just to see what all the hype was about. Personally, I didn't relate much to the setting, the characters, or the story. I'm told that would probably heavily detract from the experience. Either way, I think this was mostly overrated by game journalists and somewhat unfairly demonized by many gamers, but I still love games like these so I'm willing to forgive its faults. I wish I could've played it without ever hearing anything about it because way too many people are going to have their opinion influenced about this one way or another due to how damn loud both camps are. REALLY excited about the game from everything you see on the Steam page and don't mind that you're going to get 2-3 hours of playtime out of it with no replay value? Go ahead, $20 might not bother you. Apprehensive because you've heard about it before and aren't sure if you'll like it or not? Wait until it's $5 or below.

If nothing else, I hope this game encourages more developers to further explore the genre.

Edit: I don't remember recommending this. Don't buy this unless it's 75% or more off, it's not a good game.