Recent reviews by Blaze

A Metroidvania 'Souls type game, although not as infamously hard difficulty it's a unique story telling experience. Gameplay wise there is a small diversity in playstyle, mainly focuses on melee attacks with your sword and numerous platforming puzzles, certain beads provide buffs to your magic spells, defences, and effects on your surroundings. There are a number of quests, some with different outcomes depending on your actions and order of those actions, some more obvious than others that will require a 2nd or 3rd playthrough.

Perhaps the most interesting and biggest draw is the Latin-Catholic Christian themes which is something not often seen in video games, and is a foreboding backdrop of gruesome detail of the types of torture, punishment, and suffering the characters in the game go through with particularly horrible looking bosses and enemies that rival Souls games in terms of strange and unearthly.

If you can appreciate the aesthetic and some engaging combat for a 2D game it's definitely worth the buy.

This is the type of game that looks old but feels new. Charming visuals but with modern gameplay design that pulls you in with its retro 16-bit look, but gives you engaging, challenging combat and puzzle solving with tight controls, an interesting story with likeable and memorable characters, and RPG elements like consumables, skill trees, and equipment.

Drawing from predecessors like Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, and even Legend of Zelda style dungeons, Crosscode gives you what everyone who played those previously mentioned wanted, but was never made faithfully and with the same spirit. The game is set in a MMO-RPG world, think Ready Player One or Sword Art Online, you're given a taste of the genre and you're reminded that you are still in a single player experience at times, but it does shroud that experience very well for narrative effect. There's a bit of mystery surrounding the lore and backstory of the game and characters which eventually opens up as you progress and explore.

I'm amazed that this was made using Javascript/HTML5, often associated with more simple applications its impressive the developers made such a robust game. Given the 6-8 year long development cycle for PC and console respectively, the work definitely shines through, I hope they continue to release more updates and expand on the in-game world with some minor tweaks.

Pros;

• Fun action fighting
  
• Variety of enemies, locations, and characters
  
• Challenging difficulty but nothing over the top
  
• Variety of puzzles utilising different game mechanics
  
• Interesting story, charming characters, and quests

Cons/Improvements;

• Annoying depth perception when platforming. Perhaps the biggest gripe but it's not always bad and it's often fun to jump around to access new areas. But given the 2D artstyle and sometimes indistinguishable platforms you often end up jumping, or hopping I should say, to a ledge that is out of reach but otherwise looks reachable from your position, only to fall and have to make your way back to the ledge you climbed up to. Unless you intend on collecting all there is to collect in this game it shouldn't become as big as an issue as others might find.
  
• In-game currency doesn't feel useful after several hours of playing. Crafting items is more reliant on requisite materials you acquire by killing enemies, smashing plants, and exploring for chests containing more rare materials and items. Having materials or useful items be outright purchasable using all the credits saved up would be more useful than having to go out and farm enough material from enemies and plants, atleast for the most part.
  
• Mechanic for aiming projectiles could be more precise for controller use, it's obviously much better for Keyboard and mouse but it's manageable for the most part, it's mainly the charge shot that feels slow especially during intense fights.
  
• The map pins are a nice touch but I think the map should be more detailed, atleast showing major roads and landmarks so you have a better idea of which direction to go, especially for an area you've gone through multiple times.
  
• Multiplayer co-op would be interesting to add for overworld quests with dungeon races adding an extra competitive edge. Could be expanded further with developer or community updates that include new level designs that incorporate some co-op puzzles and dungeons.

A year late but I got around to finishing the game and getting through all the content including optional bosses, side quests and endings. Sekiro has the essence of a 'Souls game but doesn't play like one, and that's a good thing. Being a new player or someone already experienced in From Software games, mastering the mechanics of Sekiro is a rewarding experience of its own. Adapting differently to every new battle to learn weaknesses with death being only a few missteps away, fights become intense and engaging when you have no healing left, and the timing of your deflections and dodges in the midst of a flurry of deadly attacks becomes ever more critical and an exhilarating combat experience.

Given the several different sword arts, prosthetic tools, and items allows each player to lean towards their own play-style as a shinobi, while emphasising core mechanics and counters that let players stand out amongst others with satisfying deathblows for overcoming opponents.

Buggy asf. Even in official maps there are gaps where you get stuck. Try Golf It instead.

Advance Wars for the Game Boy Advance was my jam. Never really got into Fire Emblem as much: but Wargroove brings back a sense of nostalgia while feeling like a brand new game that's still faithful to the turn based strategy genre.

The gameplay is solid and the mechanics work very well, the new units and Wargrooves gives the sense of progression you'd come to expect from a turn based strategy.

The story is pretty straightforward although the layer of mystery turns out to be pretty uninteresting for certain characters and there's no real surprises, feels like certain characters could have been explored more, but I will hope for more from a possible sequel to develop the world and characters.

Only other complaint is the character dialogue does seem rather corny at times, some of the jokes felt like they were trying to be clever.

Like The Binding of Isaac but harder and even more rage inducing 11/10


P.s. yes the rat is a ♥♥♥♥, no you cant kill him (for a while)

Fun metroidvania style game. A charming experience with a unique underground world to explore. There's a story but a bit wishy washy as to what is actually going on.

Like a turn based, dungeon crawling, darksouls. You'll get the same sense of dread from your party's impending perma-death. Which is good.

But it can feel grindy when you get unlucky with the RNG and need to upgrade and train more party members, sometimes no matter how well you play you will be at its mercy.

The game that taught valve you don't need to create games to make money

Fun strategy game. Blasting aliens brains open is a joy. After hours of playing it does become a matter of learning what to prioritise and how to most efficiently beat the campaign.