Recent reviews by PixelMaster

- pretty cool roguelike with nice meta progression
- more fun with friends
- some characters are easier than other. Especially melee characters often struggle with healing. Since it's much easier to avoid damage as ranged characters, I paradoxically have an easier time surviving with a squishy wizard. Although I guess it's not really that squishy, since I put my attribute points almost exclusively in intelligence and vitality.
- having to repeat character upgrades for every character is a bit tedious, given how gold-expensive the upgrades can quickly get
- I beat the boss in standard difficulty (not NG+) in about 15 hours with a level 20 wizard. Depending on your approach to the game and which character you picked as your main, your results may vary.

This game could be fun, and it is in many regards, but it's also a buggy mess with greedy developers.

Managed Democracy demands you purchase this game and do your part!
Anybody who doesn't is clearly a traitor and will be reported to the nearest Democracy officer.

For Super Earth!

Decent singleplayer game if you're into it, but unfortunately the multiplayer is quite lacking. There's no real shared base building (instead, you can only help build another player's base, but can't [properly] access it while they're offline), and I've experienced (or have friends who experienced) sync issues and other unpleasantries while playing.
I understand if the developers don't want to deal with storing and hosting tons of player saves, but it should at least be possible to implement dedicated servers that you can host yourself, which allow shared base building and a proper, stable multiplayer experience.

All this is quite unfortunate, because the singleplayer sadly quickly became boring for me. The story isn't all too captivating from what I've seen so far, exploring and collecting resources can get "grindy" quite fast, and if I've got nobody to share my creations with, I'm not all too motivated to spend lots of time building a sick base (especially since the building, while ok, isn't world-class either).
In the end, because my friends didn't want to put up with the limitations of multiplayer, I ended up not really playing anymore. It's still a good game, and the developers are putting in quite a lot of effort even long after launch, so in general I can recommend it - just not if you want to play it for the multiplayer aspect.

At first, the game seemed a bit boring, when it felt like all you had to do was left click.
Having played more since then, however, I do enjoy the game a lot more, as it turns out there is more strategy to it than just left-clicking :D

In general, but especially if you play this game with a dedicated group of friends, you may also want to consider rotating heroes. This will, of course, ultimately slow your progress as far as maximizing any single hero's level is concerned, but I think it will make the game more fun regardless.
At least, I personally started to enjoy the game more when I started played differing heroes in single player, instead of just one single hero all the time when playing with friends (all or most of which have, I think, lost interest in the game by now, considering there's little enthusiasm when W:V2 is suggested. Perhaps that's at least partly due to the lack of variation in heroes).

I finished my first playthrough* in about six hours, which isn't super long and which, given a purchase price of 13.50€, equates about 2€/hour. Other people may take more or less time, but I would expect anywhere from 3-8 hours for most people. Personally, I don't play 2D platformers very often, so I'm pretty sure I wasn't super fast (there's an achievement for completing the game in 2 hours).

Either way, 2€/hour is not a great value, yet despite the short playtime I would still recommend the game.
The atmosphere is great, the gameplay is challenging but (mostly) not frustrating, combat (including bosses) feels satisfying, and the mechanics are overall pretty creative and unique (at least, I haven't played any games that have identical gameplay).
Other notes:
- The game is very linear, and has basically no exploration except for very short detours for collecting "XP crystals" (which are absolutely optional, I finished the game with 19 spare levels. You can also XP-grind in some places if you want, but again, that's not necessary unless you want to get some upgrades earlier)
- Other reviews draw comparisons to Hollow Knight, Celeste, and Ori. I have only played HK, but I can confirm that there are similarities; most notably the tone/atmosphere, but some of the platforming sections also gave me path of pain flashbacks xD

Here's hoping that a sequel or DLC will be released at some point! The story does have an open end, which is clearly meant to be continued (presumably subject to Elypse being sufficiently successful).


* I likely won't play it through a second time, but that has nothing to do with the game. I don't really ever play through a game more than once (including games like Dark Souls, Elden Ring, or Hollow Knight). That being said, I'd say it has moderate replay value - while it is very linear, you can choose getting the 2 hours achievement as your goal. Also, some sections will still be challenging the second time, and I would expect the bosses to be just as fun the second time.

I finished the campaign on normal with 7.4 hours on record, while clearing all islands (as well as defending the vast majority of houses on them) and without losing any commanders (restarting enabled).
Like other reviews have said, it's a fun little game, but it lacks depth, as it essentially boils down to "how do I position my units so they fight favorable matchups", paired with a little bit of timing troop replenishments.
For instance, archers can absolutely destroy any melee units without shields, if the archers can shoot them before the enemies leave their boat. High level archers can even kill units with shields, by knocking them off their boat (though this takes much longer than killing those of an unshielded variety).
Infantry (troops with shields) are great against ranged units (except against giant archers, against those they just don't die *as* quickly as everyone else. F*ck giant archers), and pikes are pretty great against everything melee as long as they're in position when they get attacked, since they can't attack while moving.

Unfortunately, while quite fun for a few hours, this simple game loop gets very repetitive towards the end. Therefore, I don't really see myself replaying this game, especially as the only "new" things left to do are to unlock more items or traits for starting commanders when creating a new campaign.

In summary, I recommend picking up this game if it's on sale (I got it for about 4.50€) and you like the genre, but don't expect days worth of content.



PS: shoutout to Real Civil Engineer over on YouTube, through whom I discovered this game.

Alternative titles:
- Matrix Combat Simulator
- Superbeat Hotsaber
- BeatSaber John Wick Simulator
- Fitness 3D Moorhuhn

It's great, and you know it.

The graphics are pretty horrible, and the game has to download stuff via its own launcher. Combat seems really boring as well. I haven't finished the tutorial, and I don't think I ever will. Don't buy this game, it only blocks 100GB on your hard drive for no reason.

//edit: I can't seem to be able to reply to my review, so I'll just edit. Concerning the points raised by the developers:
- I own a RTX 2070, I doubt the GPU is the issue. The graphics are simply not particularly high-res or high-polygon-modelled.
- The combat isn't too complex, it's too boring, aka lacking depth. I don't need help with "the fundamentals".
Either way, I appreciate the reply. I guess other people might still enjoy the game, but I don't have enough free time to be willing to spend it on playing a game where I enjoy neither the gameplay nor the graphics.