Recent reviews by Jeff

Fantastic movement, combat, bosses, exploration, music, and presentation. Difficulty is questionable, as it starts off too hard and ends up almost too easy (though a few late game bosses are still quite challenging). Quest system is a bit of a let down, as several of them are nothing more than basic fetch quests.

Overall a great game. Recommend playing Hollow Knight first.

Terrific platformer. Perhaps even the best I've ever played.

If you just want a normal difficulty game than you can stick with the main story levels (Chapters 1 through 7) and still have a good experience. If you want a real challenge, there's a ton more to complete that will push your skills higher than most games dare.

Normally I don't enjoy such extreme challenges but the gameplay in Celeste is sublime. It controls beautifully and I rarely felt frustrated, even in Chapter 9.

I enjoyed the first few hours of Strange Horticulture, but by the end my feelings had cooled down quite significantly.

"Hey I need [specific plant] please."

"Ok, let me look for that in my encyclopedia. Huh, yet another entry that has a vague sketch of just its leaves. Alright, now let's look at my growing collection of plants (which I keep having to tediously rearrange) and find the matching one. Ok great that was the correct plant; now I'll manually tag that plant with the correct name and it can go back on the shelf, never to be used again."

Unfortunately this is how the majority of the game plays. It doesn't really build up to more interesting ideas. There are Elixirs, but those just require you to identify 3 plants instead of 1. And it's too bad, because I see a lot of potential in the concept of running a strange plant store.

There are other diversions, such as visiting specific locations on the map to find new plants, but the puzzles are often simple and the majority of your time will be spent scouring the map for whatever town, river, etc the clue mentions.

I'd also like to bring up the music. You're going to be hearing the same moody piano track looped over and over. Some variety would have been much appreciated.

One of the best roguelites that I have played. Despite the fact that you can experience the majority of the game's content in maybe a dozen hours or so, it continues to be fun for much longer as you master the mechanics, learn new strategies/synergies, and progress through the 20 Ascension (difficulty) levels.

Judging the game solely by the quality of its puzzles- I don't think it's worth it. Many feel like tedious filler where you (almost mindlessly) move jammers and reflectors around until the puzzle is solved. Over and over again.