Recent reviews by StripeStooge

A little disappointed they haven't fixed a lot of outstanding bugs and issues with Generations, and I wished the Shadow campaign was longer. That is really my only two complains, because ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥* did they cook. Generations was already great, but having the extra campaign is even better.

That said, as much as I love it, if you've already played generations I'd say the $50 price tag is a bit much. It only took me about 3 and a half hours to get through the main shadow campaign (though granted I do tend to go crazy on sonic games), and as far as I can tell the post-game content is a little underwhelming.

I really loved Rivals of Aether 1, played it a lot with friends, online, single player, everything. So when I heard Rivals of Aether 2 was on Kickstarter and saw how good it looked, I jumped at backing it. Went with one of the higher tiers with beta access just so I could play it sooner as well as grabbing some skins that looked cool.

Immediately when I played it for the first time, it just didn't seem very enjoyable. I was having controller issues at the time for whatever reason despite my controller working fine everywhere else, so I figured whatever, I'll try it again later. Next attempt, still didn't like it. No more controller issues, but still really not vibing with it. I figured it'd improve over the course of beta, it's still in development after all, no big deal.

However, after every beta I participated in, and the next fest demo, and even now, the game still just does not feel right, and every time I boot it up and play it and try to pick it up, I always overwhelmingly feel like I'd rather just be playing the first game. I'm glad the game got made, but man do I regret backing it now. I wish I could've just said "oh well it's not for me" and got the refund at this point.

I sincerely hope it improves over the course of time, and maybe I start meshing with it later on. That said, for right now just go play Rivals 1 imho.

(Side note, it's not really relevant to the review but dude, I don't know what it is but so far everyone I've been matching with in Rivals 2 has just been toxic asf. Never ran into this issue before in the previous game. I assume it's probably just due to the increased reach of the game, but man even when I talk about stuff in the discord it seems like everyone is rude as balls for some reason? Idk what the hell happened to the community but that's a real bummer too. I really hope that as we get further into launch that things chill out a bit, I'd still like to keep giving it a shot as time goes on.)

Game bugged out threw me into comp for my first player match despite me literally not having it unlocked because I was still working on the quests to unlock it. (Which was merely a part of the beginner progress quests, when I had absolutely no desire to play comp) Did not help that my only matches up to that point were bot matches where I was trying to get my footing with the game. Subsequent normal matches all had players who would just absolutely clown on me and be very rude the entire time regardless of what character or role I tried to play.

Really tried to give this one a shot, but even playing bot matches and trying out all the characters I had available to me, most of the kits just felt really clunky and in need of some more polish. I think there was only one character that seemed friendly to newer players out of everyone I tried. (Shoutouts to Dubu) Positioning seems super important in this game, and unfortunately all the characters are so punishingly slow that even if you recognize that you need to move you won't be getting to your destination any time soon with the sluggish move speed. Even with characters that have speed buffs that held overwhelmingly true with everyone I played.

I ended up writing down a list that would summarize each of the character's kits for me and let me narrow down who I did and didn't like so that I could more easily decide who to try next, because the time to pick characters goes by a little bit too fast. You can say that for every single menu that requires you to read and make decisions. I'm sure it's fine for veterans of the game, but it makes it abysmally hard to learn what I'm doing. Not to mention unlike other hero-based games there's not really any time to breathe and try to understand your abilities more. Practice mode and bot matches were practically a necessity for me to even simply get my bearings, especially since the game lacks a lot of visual feedback that may help you understand what's going on at a glance.

Really wanted to give this one a shot, I enjoyed the short matches, but the lengthy matchmaking times leading into the people I played up against being so rude really killed my desire to continue giving this game a chance. I might try to stick it out and see if things improve, but for right now I wouldn't recommend it.

Additional note:
I will say my time in the discord started out very friendly and welcoming, and I was pleased to find a lot of friendly individuals... who then slowly as the day went on got completely flooded out by some just downright toxic individuals flaming each other and being generally hostile to any further questions I had. There are some diamonds in the rough, but good grief did that absolutely sour my desire to keep going. Especially since the toxicity of the discord seemed to correlate directly with how toxic the matchmaking was at that time of day.

Team Fortress 2 has been on a steady decline for many years due to Valve's unending neglect of the game. They have been content to let the game keep making money for them as it is plagued by botnets designed made to use aimbots and other hacks that ruins the experience of the game for as many players as possible.

It is common to see multiple bots in online matches who will not only halt the progress of the game with their cheats, but also begin kicking any non-bot member of their team until no human player is left.

Items and maps being added have been declining in quality, as it seems Valve is no longer doing any quality checks when they go to take content made by the community, instead favoring creators they've used in the past who have been beginning to just phone it in and submit works that are either amateurish or otherwise downright ugly and lacking an overwhelming amount of polish.

While the game is still technically playable, it is simply not worth it to attempt to engage with it, given how far they've allowed the game to decline as it just starts to be turn into a buggy, messy, cheater-ridden shameless cash grab that they have repeatedly refused to address.

This game is a completionist's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nightmare. It's mechanics appear decently well thought up, the main levels seem fun enough. It's generally a really light time. Solid platforming, you could probably breeze through it quite quickly.

However

The quality takes an absolute nosedive when it comes to any side content. The game seems to up the difficulty to an absurd degree for even the most basic and light gimmick with zero thought put behind it. It turns anything that could've been a nice change of pace or a fun challenge into a solid reason to put a hole in your monitor. I'm gonna continue trying to go through and complete this game, but let it be said that you should avoid 1G like the plague, and that the developer really needs to break every toe on both their feet for even ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ CONSIDERING putting the time requirement as high as they did on that level.


=====
Pure salt below:
=====

This game's inconsistent difficulty is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ dreadful. I play a lot of 3D platformers and a lot of games with grapple mechanics, but this game will go between being braindead easy to making me want to stop ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ living with how unnecessarily and inconsistently difficult it is. Oh and for that matter, it's not an enjoyable difficulty, these stupid ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ difficulty spikes come exclusively during portions of this game where there's some dumb ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ gimmick without a second of thought put behind it with an arbitrarily high ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ clear condition assigned to it.

The developer needs to go back through and give their game another play, because holy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥ I sincerely hope three years of experience would have knocked some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sense into them.

This game is a masterpiece, I love it, I want everyone to play it.


======================================
[Outdated, from previous review below, Ignore]
======================================

But also, it keeps wiping me and my friends' saves at the end of the game because it refuses to save all the way up to the end and throughout the post game, and that blows.

Quite possibly the best Super Sonic has been. The rest everyone debates to hell and back, I personally enjoy all of it, but Super Sonic in this game goes *crazy*.

I have been trying to get this game working for actual days now, and am still talking with support. It is so buggy and broken it is absurd. I literally cannot even get past the first objective of the tutorial, because the game doesn't even properly initiate after giving control to the player. All I can do is run around a tiny, barren area with nothing to do whatsoever.

This game is a joke. I'll be giving them a week and a half to help me fix this, and if they can't I'm getting a refund.

As someone who adores The Witness, recommends everyone try it, continues his playthrough even now attempting to perfect that time trial challenge, and is still exploring the island trying to find every hidden puzzle and neat perspective trick:

good game, lol.

Well I've been having great fun with the game so far... However, it appears that some endings never really "unlocked" for me. I never actually got the button on the main menu for the Epilogue ending : | . So there's definitely some glitches that'll prevent you from actually seeing parts of the game. Not to mention that apparently while the previous game prided itself on being able to see any (almost) any given ending at any given point, this new game actually has some semblance of progression, which actually prevents you from seeing previous endings in that progression line again. It's rather peculiar, all things considered. The new content is quite good, I just sincerely hope that they solve some of the current issues.

EDIT: I stand corrected. Including the spoiler. Exceptional, no complaints.