Recent reviews by WolfSamurai

Routine is a fun game, though one with a few flaws. The pacing is uneven, the onboarding is not as good as it should, and the narrative gets ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ weird in the confusing way. But in general I enjoyed it more than I disliked it. It definitely scared the absolute hell out of me on several occasions and the atmosphere was great, Overall a worthwhile experience.

Have you played Castlevania Symphony of the Night? Did you love it? So does this game and that's not a bad thing. More than a few elements of this game feel like they were a direct homage to SotN, so it had a very comfortable and familar feel to it from pretty early on. The gameplay feels very smooth and responsive with both movement and combat. The guns feel really nice too and are a nice addition to the SotN "formula". The story isn't really deep or detailed, but it's plenty for this style of game.

It's not a really long game, but it also doesn't outstay its welcome. I do wish there were a few more secret rooms or areas, but it's hard to complain too much given how much fun I was having killing monsters and exploring the map. It's not a terribly difficult game either, with the exception of a couple of the bosses and a few specific areas.

Overall, one of the best metroidvanias I've played in recent years and I hope we get a sequel sometime.

Basically makes me think of Castlevania III but as a metroidvania. It's not a perfect description, but it gets you pretty close. The difficulty curve is a bit odd, starting off damned hard, getting better as you collect power ups, getting really hard again at various points, before evening out towards the end again. There are some other things I could probably nitpick, but overall it's a solid game.

Why review a game you can't get anymore? Mostly because people might have it in their library and don't know if it's any good. And the answer is... yeah, it's pretty solid. It's hardly the greatest metroidvania, but it's pretty fun as it is. The art and animations are nice and the gameplay is pretty fun despite being pretty basic for the genre. No part of the game will blow your mind and it's pretty easy, but sometimes you need something that just works. And unlike a lot of other games I could name, I didn't run into any bugs or crashes. Although there are a lot of other metroidvanias out there and it's not a huge blow that this game isn't available anymore, it still is kind of a shame because it's really not bad either.

To tl;dr this, it's a great and cathartic experience once again.

I wishlisted this game the moment it was announced and bought it day one, so it's safe to say that I had a lot of expectations for it. I played the first game for about 275 hours, so there was definitely some adjustment to the changes for this game. A lot of them are good, some of them I didn't like but couldn't objectively call bad, and not a lot is outright bad.

The changes to the control scheme I didn't care for, though I did appreciate that you could get *most* of the old scheme back. Changing nozzles was unintuitive all the way to the very end of the game for me, though that also became less important once I got the uber nozzles that you really didn't need to change much. I do really like the soap changes, especially before you do get the best washers and nozzles. It makes a huge difference and you avoid the first game problem of using the yellow nozzle for everything until you get the triple nozzle by making the yellow and green nozzles much more useful because the unlimited soap makes things easier to clean.

The game looks better, especially with the water/soap effects, and I think the jobs are a little more varied and weird and unique. The sound seems about on par with the first game. I think the new utility items (scissor-lift, abseil) are interesting, though I am one of those people who never has liked using the ladders or scaffolds more than I *absolutely* had to in the first game. The length of the game is really solid up front with the initial release, taking me a casual 50 or so hours to finish the game with 100% achievements. I did *buy* all the furniture, but I didn't really engage with the decorating mechanic at all and if they patched it out I wouldn't mind even a little. I did appreciate that they had a separate currency for cosmetics and for washers though, so you can actually buy cosmetics way earlier than I expect most people did in the first game.

The game is a bit buggy as of this review (about 10 days after initial release), though I haven't had quite the same catastrophic problems that some other people have had. The cats are also great, but... uh, a little too vocal at all times. I also kind of wish you could have them hop on while you're cleaning, but that's a bit much to expect.

This game is just unhinged and disturbing and horrifying on many levels. There's a hell of a lot going on and it takes a while to really get to the full understanding of what's going on, who the characters really are, and how bad things can somehow get worse, but it's worth the experience. It's definitely best to go in fully blind to the story and characters, but it is also worth checking a list of trigger warnings because it can be rather overwhelming. The game contains mentions of or depictions of rape, suicide, murder, physical and psychological abuse, alcohol abuse, and probably more that I am overlooking.

As far as RPGMaker horror games go, this one is pretty solid, if nothing really spectacular. It's kind of creepy, it's got some nice art screens, the story isn't too bad, and the characters are okay too. The main thing that lets this game down is the combat, which is absolutely awful. Thankfully there's not much of it, but it's really really bad. Which is especially annoying given that there are achievements related to doing the horrible combat encounters perfectly. If you can ignore that problem, it's a decent game.

Have you ever watched a movie or TV show that's "fine" or "good enough" while you're watching it, but you totally forget about it a couple weeks afterwards? This is that but for Resident Evil style survival horror. It's *fine*, but it's not good. And it's memorable mostly for what's not good about it rather than what is.

The combat? Mostly okay. Kind of janky, but works fine most of the time. The story and characters? They exist, definitely. Not good enough to be high quality, but not bad enough to be "so bad, it's good". The visuals range from kinda bad (character models and animations) to pretty decent (backgrounds). I can't remember any of the music, the sound effects are fine, and the voice acting is mostly straight up bad.

But while you're playing it, it's reasonably fun. It's not as good as basically any Resident Evil game, but it'll do for a few hours if you need something that feels kind of similar.

I found this game tremendously frustrating despite having all the elements I could have wanted in a game. I liked the mystery/noir/horror genre mashup. I liked the visual design. I liked the plot setup. But it just was frustrating to play. I felt like there wasn't enough health or ammo even when I was playing relatively optimally. I straight up lost my first time playing the game, then immediately started up again because I figured knowing where to go and what to do would help me be more effective and efficient. Going in blind, sometimes you're not going to do things perfectly, but after gaining some experience I really thought it would go a lot better.

But that just didn't happen. Just being near enemies (even ones you can't see because of camera angles or which have gotten stuck in walls) hurts you, so you can't just run around them and save ammo. Enemies can just randomly decide to dodge your bullets, so even if you're shooting perfectly the same can just go "lolno". I got to just about the same place as my first time playing in roughly the same condition except for having not died as many times, but that was useless because without health and ammo I couldn't get further anyway.

There were no real difficulty options to make things a bit more forgiving and the game basically mocks you for even wanting them. I'm not afraid of difficult games, but this just didn't feel fair enough to be fun. If you like games that are that hard, you might enjoy this. For everybody else, I think there are better options. Up to and including classic Resident Evil 1.

It's nice when there's a mystery game that expects you to actually solve the mystery, not just solve various puzzles that stand in for investigation. This game wants you to actually put in the effort. You have to search very carefully for the clues as well as actually pay attention to what the clues mean and how they fit together. The game will record some things for you, like diaries, letters, and newspapers, but you'll have to do all the rest. The in-game camera helps, but having a way to write down notes yourself can be a great help to keep track of passwords, addresses, things you can't open/access, and so on.

The game's not perfect, with a fair few typos and some weird bugs, but nothing is game breaking if you have some patience. There's a lot of repeated assets and the fact that so many buildings are so full of stuff despite most people having moved or left town is a bit of a headscratcher narratively. Why did everybody leave boxes and boxes of stuff in their homes and houses full of furniture if they've moved away to a new town?

The music is minimal in terms of the number of tracks, but excellent in terms of creating atmosphere. You'll hear the same tracks over and over but they don't get annoying like you might expect. Visually, aside from repeated assets, it looks good and has a good sense of what a small town might be like. The narrative and central mystery is well written (aside from typos) and all the characters make realistically frustrating decisions that bite them and everybody around them in the ass.

Final thoughts, this is a game that wants you to earn your fun through putting in a real effort. If you want to turn your brain off and treat the game like a walking sim, you're going to be disappointed, bored, or frustrated. However if you like the idea of solving a mystery without a lot of handholding, you'll be rewarded with an interesting story of small town killings and the web of character interactions that made them come to be.