Recent reviews by Traximore

Actually super solid. The focus system feels cool, unique, and rewards you for learning enemy attack patterns and exact damage frames. The setup is intriguing, music and atmosphere are great, and the pixel-art speaks for itself.

Highly recommend a try.

Hot characters, addicting gameplay and great performance. What more do you need?

One thing I can really praise NetEase for is how each hero feels distinctly them. Yes, it's the "you really feel like Spiderman" thing, but with each hero and they all feel overpowered in some way but it all just works together.
Jump in, get to grips with some characters, have a blast, then get out before it tilts you too much.

++ Beautiful finale
++ Great cast of characters
++ Immersive world-building that just gets more fleshed-out as you go
+ Challenging boss battles
+ Great music
- Outdated visuals
-- The first 30-40 hours of story are exceptionally slow
-- Retreading of the previous game's map with barely any changes
-- Missing quality-of-life features, especially fast-travel during chapter 8

As a sequel, Trails in the Sky SC delivers more from the same world and characters, uncovering more of their stories and developing some relationships, but reuses too much of its predecessor for the majority of the game. Particularly the early and mid-game stages require you to revisit locations while slowly introducing the antagonists one at a time, making those parts feel repetitive and dragged out for the sake of content. It's only the late-game that really takes off with the most compelling arc in the series so far, culminating in some epic (very anime) clash of characters and a beautiful ending.
If the rumoured remake is any good, I recommend that over this version for the improved visuals and quality-of-life updates.

7/10

++ Charming characters
++ Well-thought-out, immersive world
++ Great music
+ Good slice-of-life story with a crazy cliffhanger ending
+ Better turn-based combat than most other JRPGs of the time
+ Playing with just the mouse is intuitive and really comfortable
- Outdated graphics, although the design itself is quite good
- Missing quality-of-life features like fast-travel and inventory management
-- Slow-paced

7/10

I heard that the remake is fantastic, so I recommend getting that over this version just to enjoy the beautiful visuals, much improved cutscenes and quality-of-life updates.

Controls are really smooth, and the combo mechanic is super fun.

One of the finest JRPGs ever made, although not perfect.

+++ Iconic visuals
+++ Jazzy music, prepare to be endlessly replayed!
+++ Highly accurate average Japanese high-school life simulator
++ Camaraderie & bromance so you too can have friends just like in your Japanese anime!
++ Absolutely clean persona designs, with a peculiar interest in phalluses for some reason
+ Slick turn-based combat that's a tad too streamlined
+ Intriguing story, although quickly follows adolescent anime themes of friendship and determination
+ Royal content is a luxurious addition, most importantly adding best girl so P5 fans can finally stop waifu-warring...
- ... but romance tends to feel shoe-horned into most confidant dialogues anyway...
- - ... and Royal adds more hours to an already lengthy game that started feeling repetitive 50 hours ago
- - Nobody stays dead, which would be fine but the "oh no, x died" card is played way too many times, even twice with two separate characters

8.5/10

Fantastic game, well-deserving of a spot among the greatest Metroidvanias. Engrossingly beautiful, tons of content and impeccable controls. There is a bit TOO much content for my liking though, and I'm not a fan of losing resources at death then backtracking to recover. A later mechanic does solve this but really should've been there sooner.

Also f*** the Path of Pain and itsnon-existentreward, and f*** me for fondly reminiscing about it.

8.5/10

It really is in a class of its own, no other co-op game exists with THIS much work put into it.

9.5/10

A masterpiece in rogue-like design, never showing signs of repeating narrative during the dozens of runs it takes to finish. Zagreus is a charm to play and hang out with on his way out of Tartarus. Combat is fast and fluid, and the art is beautiful.
There's a lot of praise about the game's story structure and I see the ingenuity of it, but it's too sparse and disjointed for my taste, I can't really get invested. Also despite the lack of repeating dialogue, a rogue-like is inherently repetitive to a certain degree.

8/10

One of the best experiences gaming has to offer (especially with a friend), and it's not even fully released yet.

Will continue playing when 1.0 is out, hopefully sometime this decade still.