Recent reviews by Luk

There's nothing I can add that hasn't been said already about the game. So to keep the review short I'll just list few bad and good things about the game, so we can all move on with our lives, and leave few tips if you want to 100% it.




I must emphasize, this is by no means a full achievements guide, nor should you follow what I say if it is your first time playing. These are simply tips that could prove fruitful and lessen your pain when doing all achievements.

1. Start a run on easiest setting. This is the run in which you will complete about 95% of the achievements
   
2. Be careful of points of no return. Certain points in which you can't go back to check on missed loot. Make sure you searched for every item, collectible and secret area. If you struggle to find everything, don't be afraid to use a youtube guide
   
3. Kill anything in your way, makes looting easier. Make sure to pick their pockets beforehand.
   
4. I suggest ignoring The City and Basso Jobs until after you've completed chapter 6.
   
5. After completing chapter 6, accept all Basso Jobs; so more windows and area open up; and start exploring the city.
   
6. You can ignore the "loot found" when exploring The City. That is only helpful within story levels and side jobs for the 'Thieving Objectives'
   
7. After you've collected everything and completed all side jobs, you can go and finish last 2 chapters.
   
8. For the "Modesty Denied" achievement, I suggest using House of Blossom map, Chain & Gain mod. Pick any 1 loot to extend time, knockout all guards first, loot top side then bottom until you have about 2.5M score, leave the bracelet located near finish line for last to pick.
   
9. If you've done everything right, the only missing achievements can be completed within a secondary playthrough, using the settings listed bellow

New game custom Master settings for last achievements:

• Chapter Saves Only -- Off
  
• No Focus -- On
  
• Stealth Takedowns Only -- On
  
• No Reticle -- Off
  
• Speciality Arrows Only -- On
  
• No Food or Poppies -- On
  
• Zero Damage -- Off
  
• Expensive Resources -- On
  
• Slowed Movement -- Off
  
• Iron Man -- Off
  
• No Upgrades -- On
  
• No Kills or Knockouts -- On
  
• No Alerts -- ON

For the last playthough just ignore the city, ignore any loot. You just have to complete the story within the parameters above, If you fail, you just have to reload last checkpoint, so make sure to abuse the quick-save (F5 on PC).
This will unlock last 4 achievements, or 6 if you did not complete "Mint Condition" and "Child of the Shadow" on previous playthrough. Should not take longer than 3-5 hours.


All Secret areas

All collectibles within the City

All loot locations for story chapters

5,000,000 Points Challenge Mode achievement

Health Hazard achievement


I did say I was going to keep it short, but there's much more to say about the game, many more things that I found frustrating, more things that just point to a half-baked game, especially when trying to complete all achievements.

Locks resetting, dead guards respawning if you load into another area, which happens too often.
The god awful windows and crawl spaces, which you will have to go through so many damn times. Why there's no setting to disable spamming interact button, and instead pressing it once?
You have a map, but can't place waypoints
Trying to loot an item, but Garrett decides to peek behind the wall or press a button nearby.
The awful audio design, or rather the lack of it. Sometimes voices become louder, almost ear-blasting. Plus no audio for guards walking, instead being replaced by a focus ability upgrade
Dialogues getting stuck when traversing into another area
The solution to the Great Safe from chapter 4 felt like a slap in the face.
Garrett's edgy remarks from the beginning of the game to the end.
Even though Side Jobs and Bank Heist are considered better than main missions, they are still extremely short and require little to no effort or brain power to complete.
And many, many more...
The worst being the clear similarities to Dishonored, but taking everything done well from Dishonored and doing it rather poorly in Thief.

But alas, it's not a terrible game, it's rather decent. If you forgo previous Thief games it's a good game even.
I did enjoy Garrett's sarcastic lines... sometimes.
I liked Ector and Vittori side-jobs and the Bank Heist, even though they were short,
Loved the swoop mechanic, it just feels great to use, and it keeps itself balanced by the addition of guard dogs and caged birds.
I enjoyed certain dialogues from NPCs hinting to loot nearby, wish there was more of that within the game, it would have given it more personality.
I did like the ending, even though the entire story feels like "♥♥♥♥ just happens" with no real progress to it, at least ending fit within that narrative.

If you want to fully enjoy it as your first experience, I recommend playing it on Master difficulty and taking your time exploring, but try not to care too much about finding all the loot.

I wish steam had a rating between Yes and No, it's not a game I would recommend nor telling people not to play it. for me the game is a 6/10

Palworld, while still in its development stages, presents players with a vast array of content while also giving you an enjoyable experience overall, which is not something usually found in most early-access games

An area where Palworld could use improvement drastically in is the AI of pals and their pathing. They will sometimes get stuck in trees, random furniture, find themselves somewhere high and drop to their death or just completely stop working. Even while attacking, Pals will just walk off or forget to attack.
It's also worth noting that Palworld seems primarily geared towards a multiplayer experience. Not really a big deal, but I would recommend adjusting your world settings if you find the grind to be too overwhelming.

In conclusion, Palworld shows great promise. While solo play is not as robust or adequately planned for, it still delivers a satisfying experience . With further development and refinement, Palworld has the potential to become a great game for both multiplayer and single-player.

8/10

It's the exact same game, same textures for most things, 80% same slimes, the music is worse than first game for whatever reason, does not feel as atmospheric. The map layout gave me a headache, nothing is as coherent as the first game.

If you played the first game, do not bother with this one, it's a waste of money and time!

I must address some "problems" with the review , before more confused individuals keep commenting . I like the niche mechanics and irksome aspects of the game, I enjoy the tedious movement and gameplay, but I am not gonna recommend it to the majority of people, for obvious reasons. If you do not know what 'obvious' means, google it.
I am also kicking the vote down to a 6 from 7, because it still has many issues, some of which were patched (I will most likely increase the score in the future when they release more updates), but some of the issues still persist and should've never been released. Also, this way all the people still finding their way around the concept of what a review is can stop complaining that I down-voted a game with a score of 7.
For everyone else commenting 'skill issue' or not understating the paragraphs above, ask ChatGPT to translate it for you.



The remake of Risk of Rain 1, or the modernised version as it has been advertised, does a lot of things right while also doing a lot of things wrong. I am enjoying the game, but they left in so many issues from the original.


You can finally strafe while attacking
No need to kill all enemies for the teleport to unlock.
The graphics and audio design are so much better. I can't notice much difference in the remastered soundtrack, but the in-game audio and visuals are fantastic.
New survivors, items, artifacts, enemies and unlockable alternate abilities added.
Better multiplayer system makes it easier to play with friends.
Manually crafted "mini-games" in the form of Providence Trials.
The game is definitely harder than the original or RoR2, depending on who you are that might be a good thing or not.


Still no way to quickly change your direction of attack, either by double tapping direction key or using a mouse or any other way to do it. You have to stop, change direction and start attacking. It's not difficult to get used to it, but it is bothersome most of the time. This has been patched
No animation cancelling, meaning you have to wait until an ability finishes casting in order to press another one, otherwise the game will completely ignore your second key input. Commando seems to be the only one not affected by this as much.
Bosses can drop equipment instead of items, which makes no sense especially how often it happens, this invalidates the usage of mountain shrines. Instead of making your life harder for better rewards, you make it harder to receive 2+ equipment drops. There should be a limit on how many equipment drops/equipment chests you can receive per stage.
Out of combat items do not activate while on ropes/vines. You have to either get off the vine or wait until the item activates and then start climbing.

Stages are made to waste your time. Some are way to big to traverse, especially on characters with no mobility. Others do not have a full loop mechanic, meaning if you fall down you have to traverse the rest of the map to go back up, Sunken Tombs being one of them.
In addition to the big maps, there will sometimes be a max of 2 chests and other times you will get 3 useless drones or 5 shrines which drop nothing. Coupled with a map like Damp Caverns, which has so many layers and is bigger than most, you will waste so much time searching for a chest that it's far more worth to just skip it all together.
Still no indicator on what number stage you are. This is not that big of an issue, but it would make it easier for people who want to 100% the game and gather all logs.

Now that enemies can climb ropes, plus enemies that teleport into you and the new enemies that dive-bomb you, makes kiting really important and harder to do. This reaches a point where, you need to articulate your movement in such a way to dodge everything or you get oneshot by certain mobs. Especially on higher difficulties like Monsoon, it feels more like a chore and I know some people like doing this (me included sometimes), but for most it's not a great time and it gets tedious rather quickly.

There are a lot more issues, I will just quickly list a few of them.

• Enforcer not blocking AOE, pierce attacks or even enemies standing in you.
  
• Huntress auto-aim is more of a nuisance than being of any help This has been patched
  
• Artificer simply sucks and is not fun to play
  
• Certain multi-hit abilities do not proc items multiple times
  
• Providence trials are fun for the most part, but some are absolutely horrendous to complete
  
• Bosses directly countering certain survivors, to a point in which you can't do anything about it.
  
• Most items are pointless, more so on other survivors
  
• Stages do not feel intuitive to travel
  
• Attacking, even if no enemy is nearby, cancels certain out-of-combat items like Red Whip and Bustling Fungus
  
• The game is capped at 60 fps and sometimes there are lag spikes pushing it down to 20-30, not that great for a 'modern' game.

The gameplay of the original RoR is vastly outdated. RoR Returns is basically 80% of the same game, but it does not feel and look like a browser game.
I do like the game and it is surely an improvement with a bit more content, but adding a few characters and items does not make a game better, that's just a DLC. The only important thing they fixed, is the ability to move while attacking.
I know Hopoo Games will release more patches for the game, but some of these problems should have not existed in the first place, especially when you call it a modernized version.

So should you buy it? If you loved the first game then yes. If you do not like platformers, dreadful RNG and learning gimmicky movement, then to do not buy it. If you just want to give it a try, then go for it, the game is rather cheap, but I would wait until more patches are released, before buying the game.

As it stands right now, I give it a 6/10

I'll be making several required analogies to the Soulsborne and Sekiro games to highlight their similarities and differences... Fairly so, since it attracts many characteristics and players from those games.

Lies of P follows the story of The Mischievous Puppet Pinocchio and Craftsman Geppetto, involving many of the characters found in the books. However, apart from subtle expressions and meanings, subtextually correlating with the books, the game doesn't have too many direct connections to its source material. I would argue the narrative of the game is far grimmer than any other adaptation (possibly even so than the original book). Which I love, especially in the context of a Souls-like game — it's definitely a standout feature.
When picturing a contrast between Lies of P and Dark Souls, the former does not have the depths filled with lore or the presumptuous storytelling, which leave many parts of the story up for interpretation, nor does it have the intricate world-building. With that said, it's still a fantastic piece-the-puzzle-together story, with great environmental storytelling and great dialogue, it just has bigger pieces to fill in the empty slots, and not as many missing ones. Which I believe to be for the best, it allows casual players to better understand the interpretations of the writers, without the need of reading 200 items descriptions, watching 5 videos and making 3 Reddit posts just to appreciate the lore of the game.

The soundtrack is absolutely fantastic. The game has records which you can find and play. There are not many, but they are surely magical. The first record you find and play (titled 'Feel'), really sets the tone and mood for the rest of the playthrough. It may not have the orchestral brilliance of Dark Souls or Bloodborne, but it blends in with the story just as well.

Alike Dark Souls, every NPC gets its own little fable, perfectly woven into the fabric of the story. Each one, portraying a different moral lesson. Very fitting seeing they are inspired by the animals from the book. There are also Window NPCs with little quests, but I feel they are not as interesting as the ones from Bloodborne.
One small detail I enjoyed, from certain windows you can hear people coughing, animals barking and sometimes music been played, showing that there are survivors in the abnormal world of Lies of P.

The parrying is definitely not as intuitive as in Sekiro, fairly so in my opionion. The enemies are not Humans with ostentatious martial arts attacks, they are puppets and insane monsters with crazy attacks, so in a way is fitting. However, it still is very annoying to parry certain attacks (they did make certain enemies attacks to be more intuitive). I do not find the bosses or enemies to be as annoying as Dark Souls or any other souls-like, but the frustration is there and will differ for each person.

The level design is way too monotonous. In Dark Souls you at least have some choices to avert and explore different roads. Lies of P is as linear as it gets, there's not much depth to the design of the levels, the game is a straight path with enemies put in the middle of it. Maybe it's simplistic design is more favorable to some people, than a maze in which you can't find the exit.

The idea of combining weapons together it's probably my favorite mechanic. Instead of having 500 weapons of which you will only use 5, here you get like 30. You can combine the blade of a weapon with the handle of another weapon, each having a different ability (most handles do share the same abilities) and overall making your own unique weapon.

Legion Arms are a prosthetic arm-weapon with different abilities that you can upgrade, but outside of cheesing certain mini-bosses and enemies, I found them to be mostly a novelty and not as usable as the Prosthetic Arms in Sekiro. I wish there was upgrades for the basic arm you first get, that maybe would've had more utilities.

The other mechanic of the game called Wish Cubes. Another devastatingly pointless novelty. You would mainly use them for "summons" that help with bosses, but the summons are just as useless as the Cube itself.

There are 2 types of leveling systems, one requires Ergo (echoes, souls), your usual level up system. And the other one requires quartz which further upgrades your damage, more defense, more sustain and so on. Very fitting when playing as a Puppet. I wish each upgrade would change the way your body looks, or the more upgrades you put on the more the aesthetic of Pinocchio changes, but you have Costumes for that.

There is one last thing I find weird about the game, from the start it tells you to 'lie', the whole premise of the game is about lying, because a puppet would always tell the truth just the way they were designed to, but you are different. Lore wise it makes sense, it builds up the story and the character of Pinocchio. But from a gameplay point of view, it just forces you into making choices you would've otherwise not made.

The game is great, but lacking in depth. Be it some gameplay aspects or the deprived level design. With that said, the game was clearly made with passion and it shows when playing it and seeing the amount of detail and work put in, which is rare these days.
I would rate the game a low 8, but the fact they keep improving and changing things based on community feedback, shows their love for the game which merits more credit. If you enjoyed any of the From Software games or dark fantasy genre in general, definitely buy it. . If you are not sure you will enjoy it, buy it at a discounted price.

Overall 9/10

A great remake of a great game. There are a lot of good improvements and changes made, but some which are not particular great in my opinion, mainly related to characters and story changes, which made some things feel less impactful.

Gameplay wise, the remake has done a great job, all weapons are now good, no need to use only the Plasma Cutter, you can have fun with other weapons as well. If I were to criticize it somehow, the laser aiming reticles took a turn towards generic shooter, I wish there was a toggle in settings to revert to original aim.

One last observation I'd like to make is that, the game seems to have a slightly less horror and gore factor compared to the original, if that's even a negative. This could be attributed to the fact that, I was a child when I first experienced the original. Other than that, there's nothing I can say which has not been stated already. It's a fantastic remake, but you can still go back and play the original game, it will most likely provide with a different experience.

9/10

While the first Subnautica still thrives upon its eerie atmosphere and compelling melodramatic ambiance, visuals and spine-tingling sound effects. Below Zero manages to detract from the game's unsettling immersion by focusing more on the story and adding some unnecessary dialogue, vexing land exploration and removing some aspects which made the first game the masterpiece it still is.

The game falls short in terms of its exploration, as it diminished the vastness of the ocean by compressing and consolidating the biomes, bringing them into much closer proximity to one another. This does make things easier to find and navigate through. However, it does not feel as intuitive to explore as the first game.
They have also removed most leviathans and other creatures which were once a threat to the player, and instead opting for new leviathans which were never presented like a possible threat, most of the time not even interacting with the player. In the first game, you felt the presence of a possible big scary monster watching you everywhere you went, which added to the allure of the game. Hell, even the biggest and scariest leviathan in this game did not feel like that much of a threat, especially when you only encounter it in the last area of the game and for what feels like 10 minutes at best. These shortcoming also render the existence of it's new vehicle The Seatruck rather pointless. I found it easier to explore using the Seaglide, because I did not feel the need of bringing a vehicle to hide within and the Oxygen plants made that even easier.

Speaking of vehicles, this brings us to the Arctic Area and the Snowfox land-mobile. While exploring a vast Arctic area may seem intriguing on paper... Well actually it does not sound good at all and it shows, as it fell hard in terms of providing an enjoyable exploration experience. The Snowfox felt pointless and hard to navigate with, while the PRAWN suit is a much better alternative to use.
Also, being bombarded with snowstorm and hearing "Harsh weather approaching" every 5 minutes was making it very hard for me to enjoy the game and also testing my patience. Especially when a whole new area is added and its as disappointing as this. Even the new Spy Pengling tool was underwhelming and served as an excuse to complete the anticlimactic story, which I will not go into much detail about here. But taking a turn towards a more conventional story telling, opposed to the silent narrative and the sinister vibes it successfully created in the first game, was very uninspiring.

This discord between the first game's intended horror immersion and the new additions and changes added to Below Zero, can ultimately diminish the overall effectiveness of delivering the suspenseful experience it aimed to create in the original Subnautica.
While adding new features like land exploration, voice acting and new vehicles may seem like an improvement and evidently creative, it seems to have been executed without a clear sense of purpose, at least when taking the previous game into account... Do they want to change the plot and narrative moving forward? If they do, I hope it will be depicted in a better way than it was done here.

Overall, as a huge fan of the previous game, I do not recommend this one. a disappointing 6/10

All my reviews so far are constructed with light-hearted one-liners, with no thought put behind them. Or a simple-minded quote, to echo the narrative of a game, or so a friend told me! However, this game deserves more than a whimsical remark.

Firstly, I must confess, the reason I even tried this game, is by searching "Pokemon like games on steam", because I am too cheap to buy a Nintendo switch for 1 game, and found Monster Sanctuary as a suggestion. But I must say, this game is not even close to being a Pokemon clone.
Sure, toying with the idea of collecting different monsters, participating in duels with other trainers, and evolving your monsters in different ways, may draw parallels to the Pokémon experience. Yet, this game main identity comes through its intricate portray of strategic team-building and synergistic mechanics that deviate from the traditional path of all Pokemon clones out there.

2 teams of 3 monsters can be equipped, you can have unlimited monsters in your inventory. However, you will most likely forget that the second team exists, until you reach Trainer vs Trainer fights or Online, where using all 6 of your monsters is, not always, but usually a necessity, especially later in the game.
Most monsters share similar passives, attacks and supportive abilities, but kind of shuffled around, some being unique to certain monsters, while others are found rather commonly in the majority of the creatures you encounter. This is mainly, because the game tries to balance all beasts, and forces the player to focus on team composition...but this is where my problem with the game comes to fruition.

After a couple of hours of trying different monsters, reading abilities and seeing what works with what. I created a fantastic team, quite early in the game I must say, which I used for the entirety of the play-through, without ever feeling compelled into changing it. I beat anything, everything and nothing stood in my way. Now, you must think "Why would this be a problem, you clearly created the best team" and I agree, that's pretty much what the game wants you to do... But this is where the problem comes in, the abilities and the monsters... most feel pointless. The fights revolve too much around applying status effects or having something that removes them.
The game tries too hard to balance the monsters. I am sure you can beat the game with anything you prefer, but what's the point of having such a vast array of monsters, when I don't ever feel like being pressured into changing my team. This is not Pokemon. I don't want to change my monster just because is cute, or it looks cool, it does not feel like it has that aspect to it (even though I did build some monsters because they looked cool). I want to try a new monster, because it could be stronger that what I already have, especially when some of them are called "Champion monsters"
I wish the fight mechanics and abilities were a bit more vast and more interesting, and each monster was more unique. I like the fact that is mainly focused on team building, but at the same time, because of that, you disengage most of the monsters from ever being used.

My other problem is, the pointless hidden chests which require a certain unique ability, from a certain monster you will get way, way, way later in the game, or if you are lucky some of those monsters you can get through reward boxes. Now you got that monster, you open the secret area, and you get a chest which contains... absolutely nothing useful to you. Yes, you are not forced into retrieving said chests, but if I don't have to, why do they exist... It's just a bad anecdote for an achievement hunter.

Yet, despite these problems, Monster Sanctuary thrives on its merits. Its combat mechanics remain consistently engaging and not at all repetitive, despite the lack of overwhelming creativity when it comes to monster skill trees. I loved the exploration and the fact that you do need certain monsters to reach certain areas even though some of the loot might be ludicrous. But the most captivating part about the game was the story

Not just a story, but a pretty intriguing one with mysterious aspects to it, which slowly builds up to an alluring ending, and it does not disappoint . Most characters do fall upon certain archetypes, but I never felt they were hollow or out of reason. It is the usual story of "prodigy comes and save the day", but it's still good nonetheless.
I am not going to dive too much into this, so I do not spoil anything. But this was one of the most engaging part of the game and I urge you to pay attention to it, do not just skip every dialogue to go fight the next enemy

Despite some vexing aspects and quite bland elements, the game left a great impression. The world is overall vast, it does not feel empty. Exploring new areas to see new monsters feels fulfilling for the most part. The story as I said is very pleasing, which is unlike this type of genre. The fighting is very satisfying. All monsters look cool and unique.

It also has a new game+ feature, or if you still have an itch to scratch with the game, you can start a new file with game-modes, which add new items and also a randomize feature. Overall a fantastic turn-based indie monster game, and because of that, I am excited to see the new game they are working on.

Personally this game is a 9/10, but I can see why people might dislike it.

Rock and Stone, brother!

A lot of risk, but no rain