Recent reviews by Sarkkan

I’ve just finished this game, and I think it’s a little hidden gem. Let's start with what you can expect: I’d describe it as a wholesome action RPG with a “Persona Lite” vibe, wrapped in charming graphics.

The day is split into four phases, each offering different activities depending on the time of the day. For example, in the afternoon, you’ll explore areas and complete dungeons, while in the evening, you’ll prepare for the next day and build friendships. There’s no time limit, and the game always informs you when an activity will transition you to the next phase, making it stress-free.

The battles are engaging, with a modern action combat system, and the puzzles add variety. The game experiments with many different ideas, not all of them worked for me, but I appreciated the creativity, and the variety kept the experience fresh.

That said, the game isn’t without its flaws. Some animations can feel a bit stiff, and the dialogue with characters is often disconnected from the story. I also wish the game acknowledged your daily actions more—a dynamic system like the one in "Hades" would have added more depth here.

Despite these rough edges, the game's charm, unique scenario, and innovative ideas make it an absolute must-try—especially at this price point. It might not be perfect, but its heart and ambition shine through.

As much as I loved the first Necrosmith, I'm a bit disappointed with the second game.

Necrosmith 2 is a strategy game where you create creatures from various body parts and direct them to perform tasks such as collecting resources, defending the tower, guarding areas, attacking enemies, and raiding lairs. You then watch them in action, upgrade your tower, create new creatures with newly found body parts, cast spells, and so on. This was fun in the first game, and the second one seemed to promise a more polished, prettier version with more content and features.

It is definitely prettier (I love the cutscenes and the artwork in general - they're awesome), and I appreciate some of the new gameplay mechanics. However, the game has become harder, and the difficulty seems to stem from it being more unclear and requiring a lot more control over your creatures, which have become less intelligent than in the first game. For example, in boss fights, it doesn't matter what commands you give them - they will run in random directions instead of attacking the boss. My solution was to manually control my strongest creature, move it next to the boss, and watch the boss's health bar melt away. Additionally, there is still no way to direct a group in a specific direction; they will likely run in the same, already discovered direction.

Besides these issues, I encountered some annoying bugs. The newly introduced artifacts seemed interesting at first but turned out to be quite irrelevant. Pausing the game takes a second to actually take effect, and the randomness has worsened (there is a difference between "RNG" and "good RNG." For example, the body parts you find are random, so it's possible to find 100 legs of the same type without finding a single head of that type, which is frustrating. Did you know that the shuffle feature of playlists isn't truly random because that would feel unpleasant to use?)

After 9 hours, I saw the credits (though I think I missed some/a lot of "story dialogs") and achieved 35 of the 38 achievements. However, you can reduce the time I played by 2-3 hours, which I spent farming unnecessary or unfarmable items. At the moment, I can only recommend buying the first game; it is a better, less frustrating deal.

A great, 2D-Zelda-like, twin stick shooter. Explore a world with a lot of secrets, cute "characters" (how can spaceships be so cute, and have a personality?), and reach new places with new skills.

The recommended difficulty starts easy, and becomes harder over time - but the game has great accessibility options, so it can be as hard or as easy as you like.

At the moment I'm about half way through it, but already thinking about playing it on the next harder difficulty, or would make a great switch game 😁

I really loved the game, not a big fan of FPS, but the setting was so interesting, that I needed to play it, and I loved it. For me, the setting was incredible, finally a good mage game, the story better than most other games of this kind, and I liked the humor.

Technically the game does look great, even with lower settings (sadly, in the late game it was required to lower the settings, but I had only one game freeze at all - so cannot really understand the negative comments about that).

Regarding the playtime, I just finished the game on the "default" level, and collected a lot of collectibles - but there are still many left, so I will have some more hours in this fascinating world.

A cozy little puzzle-like game, with a cute story, and a pinch of lovely details sprinkled over it.

The concept sounds so cool, but the open world is so empty, that the game let's you skip/fast travel the part between missions. So you start without much explanation, select a mission in your hub (only one at a time, you see something cool in the mission? "Finish your current mission first"), fly in the direction, press "A" to skip the flight over the empty ocean, fight against a couple of enemies for a minute, fly in the direction of your hub, press "A" to skip the flight, and do the same again.

Just finished my first (and probably last) playthrough after 8 hours, but to be fair, I watched a couple of YouTube videos during that time, as the game is a lite version of Anno, with a hint of dungeon building.

Lovely graphics and animations; overall, it captures the charm of the SteamWorld series. However, the gameplay is overly simplistic and lacks the tools to optimize or organize your city or mine effectively.

Since there are no detailed descriptions or explanations to understand your resources, production, or mechanics, the game makes it challenging to plan your city. How much does a building produce? Who knows? How much does a building need? Only Gilgamech knows. You cannot know it beforehand; the only way is to check the balance window after you build something, at least for the city. The mine provides even less information. This renders most upgrades useless, as they primarily increase a building's productivity or add a chance to create additional resources. However, this isn't a significant issue, as you will just build one more production line for a resource or have enough resources to spam what you need.

I could try a new map on a higher difficulty, but especially since there is no easy way to see or plan what a building will require to operate, I'm certain that this will not be enjoyable at all.

I looked forward to the game ever since I played the demo, and I provided a lot of feedback (I noticed that many others offered similar feedback), but it seems they either ignored it or didn't add it, as it would have made it clear how simple the game would otherwise be.

Edit: The EULA and privacy policy must be a bad joke...
Edit 2: Finished my second playthrough after 4 hours, but only because I'm sick at home :|
Edit 3: At least they changing there EULA

Lovely game, it's like a cozy version of the Power Wash Simulator - including cute Loddles! :-)

Besides the fact, that I expected more of a simulation/management game, I tried to like it as a relaxing puzzle game. Sadly, the puzzle mechanics don't work for me.

The goal of the puzzles is to connect stations in an optimized way, which means you need to connect as many stations as possible that do not affect each other until you can connect a station that will result in a "combo" of effects to grant bonus income. Also, there are cards that e.g. reduce the costs of tracks or bridges, increase the outcome of a combo,...

But the game has three problems for me:
1.) All the levels feel the same, as no new mechanic changes the way you play (at least until world 3 of 5)
2.) The cards are drawn random
3.) When you start a level you only see a couple of buildings that needs to be connected, when you progress through the level new buildings appear that needs to be integrated. This resulted in restarting a level after the first time that I knew who would appear, so that I could plan my rail network from the beginning.

I dislike point-and-click adventures, but this one was lovely. Telling an interesting story, without many words, and having different concepts, and gameplay mechanics, to vary as soon as you get bored of one.

I only disliked how you learn the last language, even if this is a really small part of the game/last part of the game.