Recent reviews by Ev0lutionz

A well polished game, with an addictive core-gameplay loop.

Unfortunately, it is currently in dire need of more content and item variety to stay fun past a few hours.

Probably great in a year or two.

How a popular ARPG such as this does not have a Force Stand Still button in 2024 is beyond me.

I know having movement and attack on two different mouse-buttons is such an innovative idea, but I should still have the option to use a classic-control style.
If that's not gonne be offered, then I'm out.

Simple, yet fun and engaging roguelike with a surprising amount of content.

The characters provide vastly different playstyles and the available episodes, plus the possibility of randomizing rules make sure that replayability is not an issue.

Definitely recommended for anybody that enjoyes roguelike deckbuilders and doesn't mind a bit of dice-roll based rng.

A very solid Anime-Style Souls-like.

Combat feels quite impactful and has the right amount of "sluggishness" to it. Equipment-options are exceedingly limited (3 Slots - 2 for Weapons and 1 for your Blood Veil), but there is a wide variety of weapons that do set themselves apart from one another. Particularly some boss weapons with elemental effects feel very unique.

While weapon movesets are VERY basic, the option to combine gifts and passives from various classes (that also differ wildly) ensures that you have a lot of different playstyles at your disposal and you can create a class that wreaks havoc however you see fit. Be it a Greatsword-wielding berserker, an elemental caster or a ranged ichor cannon.

The lore is fairly interesting and the world-building is well done. In terms of the overall story - it is serviceable but definitely nothing to write home about.

If you've played some Dark Souls or Nioh, the standard difficulty is probably not going to be very challenging for you. The addition of a constant companion that can not only draw aggro, but also revive you, paired with the generous i-frames and mostly heavily telegraphed moves makes it very easy to plough through most bosses.

Regardless of this, Code Vein stands as an above average souls-like and is definitely worth your time.

While it is a big step up from Disgaea 6, it suffers from a ton of problems that push it below most of it's predecessor in my opinion.

- The new Hospital Gacha System trivializes everything else.
RP are too easy to come by. Just 2 very basic evilites allow you to farm RP en masse, these can then be used for the hopsital gacha resulting in infinite money (you literally earn more money than it takes to heal), infinite item points, and items that are too strong too early on.
It also makes it pointless to farm innocents yourself, because the gacha system is 10.000x more efficient.

- The Postgame in D7 is a joke. Due to the RP System mentioned above, 10 million base stats from juice bar are a freebie, which makes class farming extremely easy. This means you'll have 20 million base stats in no time and this is more than you'll ever need.
There are literally only 4 Postgame Stages worth mentioning, and these are really just puzzles, that require you to equip the right evilities on all your units.
Unless you're going for max stats just for your own sake you don't need the item world or item reincarnation or Seal of Power at all to clear the post game.

- Bosses repeat way too often. Never before in a Disgaea game have i fought the same bosses so often and seen so many re-skin bosses. (Seriously, did anbody count how many "-fune" bosses you have to fight and how often each magistrate shows up??)

- Demon shogi is a convoluted system that does not get explained enough. You're probably going to do the first one or two difficulties by yourself, and then 95+% of players will look up a guide for the rest, because it's just plain annoying.

- While it is good that Auto-Battle has been toned down, i really feel it should have been removed entirely. I want to play the game not have it play itself and make it feel pointless to actually grind myself.

- The online battle system needs work. At times i literally thought my game crashed, because retrieving the only rankings took so long.

- Jumbification is fun for like... 3 times, then it just becomes annoying, especially because some enemy abilites will drag a battle out for no reason or force you to also jumbify to end it.

- There are now also less customization options for your characters and units than in Disgaea 5 - no more choosing colours freely.

- Predatory pricing and bundling.
If you wanted the "Full" game you pretty much had to get the ultimate edition, which had all the stories and the Soundtrack as well as the Artbook. That was the version with the biggest "discount". (20% and still more expensive than the non-discounted switch version). Of course, the majority of players would not have bought soundtrack and artbook - so they should go for the complete stories version, right?
Unfortunately the Complete Stories version (Base game + all DLC Characters) was only discounted by 5% making it relatively more expensive and still coming out at pretty much the same price for way less.

Well, you could only buy the Story for the characters you like, you say?
Here's the next anti consumer practice coming into play. If you, for example, love Disgaea 2 and you want only Adell and Rozalin as bonus characters, you now have to buy at least 2 Bundles, because they have been split up and paired with characters from other games, so you can't easily have just the characters from your favourite Disgaea.

Overall, it's a step up from D6, but not worth it unless you have already played all other Disgaea games.
Seriously get D2, D4, D5, whatever - this one is only worth it at a huge discount.

After reading Tally Ho (which is excellent!), i have to say that I am quite disappointed with Jolly Good: Cakes and Ale.

Firstly, because it is UNFINISHED. It is the first game in a three-part series. An Information that you are hard pressed to find on the store page.
Secondly while at first the game seems to make more frequent use of monies, giving it some actual value, I can't help but feel that a lot of options are set up in a way, to entice you to purchase the DLC to receive extra funds.
Seriously, for some choices i am not sure if you CAN even have enough monies by playing regularly.

Lastly I just didn't think the characters could measure up to Tally Ho - i certainly felt more drawn in and connected in that one, than i did in Jolly Good.

Overall it feels like a slightly worse and more anti-consumer version of Tally-Ho.
At this point, I would not recommend it - perhaps once it's actually finished.

Overall fairly enjoyable and well written!

Unfortunately the ending felt very abrupt and quite a bit less exciting than anticipated.
Also, many seemingly important choices have barely any impact at all.

Still, all things considered it's a good read and definitely worth checking out.

Surprisingly good!

With ~5 hours of playtime it's a little on the short end, but there are a lot of choices - many of which have an actual impact and lead to changes in the story.
The main cast is pretty good and the story is well paced and engaging throughout the whole playtime.

Definitely worth checking out.

I can't believe Hand of Kul is back...
What a day! :')

Solid foundation with a fun core-gameplay-loop and decent meta-progression.
However it is currently severely lacking in ability variety, which causes all runs to feel almost the same.
(You get 11 Power ups during a run and there's like 15ish unique ones, the rest are elemental differences - Fire, frost, poison - or simple stat, damage or speed upgrades)

Also, while playing with a controller works fine, there is no controller support in the menu and the Soundtrack is basically non-existent.
Still for the low-price, worth a few hours of fun.