Recent reviews by Xonot

The House in Fata Morgana isn't your typical anime waifu VN. The art is distinctly removed from the bug eyed anime style common in VN's and adopts a more western artstyle. The music, while a bit repetitive, often has a chant or other vocal component that helps it linger in the corner of your mind's eye while you read through the story.


Speaking of the story, this is one hell of a story. It's difficult to describe why it's good without spoiling things. One thing it does incredibly well is take information that you were given before and enhance it with the introduction of the next plot point. The story can get quite heavy at times and I don't just mean "omg so cray and grimdark" type of heavy. I'm talking about the kind of stuff where you just lean back, look away from the screen, and think to yourself "♥♥♥♥".


Honestly, prior to reading Fata Morgana, I had written off VN's as an inferior medium to other games due to the lack of interactivity. I'm surprised to say that a kinetic novel of all things managed to change my mind. While not the best piece of literature I've ever read, it definitely stands out from other stories in games and books alike.

Superflight is nothing groundbreaking but it tells you exactly what it sets out to do and does it extremely well. Don't let the minimal look turn you off as it is several marks above some of the less than quality games that sometimes come out on Steam.

The physics aren't as simple as "point to fly there" as your wingsuit genuinely feels like a wingsuit. Altitude is hard to regain without a severe speed penalty and you constantly feel the weight of your blocky flier. This puts a theoretical cap on your scoring ability and offers a more serious side if you're interested in score chasing.

The sounds are well done if a bit simple. You hear a nice ticking sound as you build up score and a nice deposit sound once your combo ends. The wind rushes past you and adds to that sense of speed.

The game runs on my potato rig that lacks a dedicated gpu. It's less than 3 dollars and still refundable after a dozen runs. The trailer on this store page tells you exactly what this game is. What's keeping you from trying it out? If you can spare the cash, go try it!

EDIT: I still largely stick to what I've said below and found that it hasn't really changed. That said, this game went on a pretty good sale during the winter and I'd wholeheartedly encourage other people to get it when it does go on sale.

Despite the fanservice and what not, this game is actually quite good. Simple mechanics, very high damage, plentiful resources, and a colorful, varied cast gives the game a very fast and exciting pace. While it's lacking a bit in the tutorial department, there's plenty of resources on the mizuumi wiki, youtube, and the training room for even a novice like me to sink my teeth in. After seeing it but never really playing it in my local arcade, I decided to give it a shot.

So why the negative review?

Simple answer: It's not worth the current asking price of 30 USD. It feels more like a 15 dollar purchase or less.

This game costs as much as Blazblue Chronophantasma right now and offers very little content for the casual player with a fraction of Blazblue's competitive playerbase.

There's 2 story/arcade campaigns, a score attack, traditional netplay, VS, and training room. That's it. No challenge mode, no unlockable super characters, nothing. The AI in this game is ok but you're not gonna get much longevity out of it. That leaves you with network mode which is about what you'd expect for a poverty anime fighter. This isn't Blazblue where you can find a dozen matches on discord in 5 min. or so; it's gonna take some time.

While Nitropluz Blasterz's strong points lie in it's accessibility, there's honestly not enough depth in the combat to justify such a whopping asking price. There's nothing fancy here, it's very much by the numbers. You get a "blast" which is essentially a burst+super mode. The combo system goes from light, medium, heavy, into progressively stronger supers with little varation aside from assists and blast cancel. There's not much innovation which makes this very much feel like a simpler Mahvel: Anime Edition. Sure, you get a guard break move and a dedicated defense button but those feel like quality of life additions rather than meaningful contributions.

If the price ever falls or you actually recognize a majority of the cast, feel free to buy it as it's quite fun at the end of the day. Just not 30 dollars worth of fun.

As a side note, you're probably wondering where the hell do some of these characters come from? wiki.mizuumi.net has most of the citations on these characters. Here's a few:
- hammer girl was in some gothic fighting game
- pistol girl was in some PS2 visual novel
- cross girl used to be in the company mascot role that Sonico is in?
- "Dragon" was in some eroge about "a boy-meets-girl story in a world under attack by dragons"

I'd recommend that you get this game but I strongly suggest you wait for a sale as it's not good enough in my opinion for a full price buy.

Don't get me wrong, it's a fun game. It throws realism out the window for arena styled shooting that has a surprising amount of depth to it (memorizing how many shots to kill an enemy, learning to crowd control, finding secrets, etc.). There's a colorful cast of enemies and a handful of genuinely funny moments. When the cheap rock soundtrack is going and you're dominating the monsters around you, it definitely gets exciting.

That said, it is a remake of a fairly old game and the age shows in certain aspects. Sam does seem to try too hard to be funny at times and the writing comes off as flat more often than it is funny. The game's design is pretty solid in most aspects but sometimes it just throws obscene hordes of enemies at you after it runs out of ideas, quickly devolving into frustrating tedium. The guns are also fairly mediocre for a classic fps as some of them tend to be used and handle in very similar ways (the tommy gun/minigun/laser gun are all essentially identical with dps and very slight chagnes in travel time being the only difference).

Side note: If your game hangs on the final boss, check to verify cache as the steam client seems to forget to download a 5mb patch.

The game is pretty devoid of content but it has some interesting ideas in namely the wall/ground/ceiling dashing. If you're really curious, buy it like me and then refund it after your 1hr of fun because you will struggle to get past more than that. Steam is cluttered with more than enough of these amateur, cash grabbing, trainwreck games but at the very least, this one had a spark of ingenuity.

This game came out after a failed kickstarter for it described it as a Metroidvania:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/63518568/blood-alloy?ref=nav_search

The developer admitted to being able to work on it "for a decade and make it slowly" but nope, gotta capitalize on that failure of a kickstarter and push out a game that clearly is lacking in so many ways.

This guy worked for 5 years on QA for Harmonix (lol what QA) and then had 9 months in a design position.

Good lord there is so much wrong with the design of the game. Why have intricate movement but provide nothing beyond 3 small sandboxes to utilize it? Why is a 2d game made in Unity, a primarily 3d engine? Why does the camera ever zoom in given that it's an action game? Why does the camera stick in weird and inconsistent manners? Why is the mouse in an action platformer feel so floaty on default and absolutely breaks in the alternate input mode? Why are there no rebindable keys in an action game? Why do all the enemies have color palletes that blend in with the industrial background? Why is there a wave slash mechanic that is never mentioned in the tutorial?

Why does the main character's backstory feel like some DeviantArt oc?

Why does the UI look like it was done in paint?

Why is the scoring system, the game's one source of replayability that isn't contrived, just 2 multipliers with expiration bars? You'd think a bit more thought would go into it such as slowing the bars when moving at speed or tracking net DPS or allowing faster energy regen on higher multipliers or literally any other tacked on addition to make it at least somewhat rewarding.

Why was this game ever released for 12 USD when I feel like I got ripped off for paying 6?


"But what about the gameplay depth" you ask? It's so barebones that I've exhausted my interest in the hour I spent. In essense, the energy meter is tied to your dashing and melee. Melee can be used to halt momentum and also move in a limited direction even in the air. You can also cancel out of a sheathing animation by shooting your primary fire but NOT by dashing.

Basically, the game is conserving your meter and using your dash attacks to clear the hordes(homing missiles and wave slash). There is a dodge mechanic in there but it lingers simply far too long and offers so little control that the I-frames are not worth the loss in mobility. I can consistently hit 8k score and the other options of slightly different pistols and slightly adjusted stats do not look appealing.

This game is somewhat misleading if you just go by the trailers. It's less of a traditional rpg and is closer to something like a visual novel/detective game. It is pretty short and it can be offputting if you are not in the mood for simple, sweet stories.

That said, if you enjoy:
- Creative RPG Maker games
- Well done art
- Cute things

then this game should be a few short hours worth of fun :)

Edit: The little girl on the front picture breathes fire not by roaring but by saying "GWOH". How is that not cuteness?

There's nothing particularly wrong with David other than the fact that it feels very empty. The content amounts to a flash game that you could find half a decade ago. It's a good game for sure but I'm starting to regret paying for such a limited experience that has been far surpassed with other games I could pull up in my web browser.

In short, it doesn't feel like it's worth the less than $2 that I paid for it.

While interesting in concept, the game is simply too unpredictable. The idea is that you can:
1. drain other pieces of energy
2. fire balls of energy to knock around pieces and deplete their energy
3. posess control of another piece when it's energy is depleted.

The problem is that the game is too unpredictable to complete consistently. At one point, it will seem as if the pieces don't mind you draining one of the random knights that happen to be around. At other times, the pieces will randomly gang up on you and murder you. If this is how the game is providing social commentary, it does so at huge expense of the gameplay experience.

Note: Only consider buying it on sale. I barely recommend it and bought it on sale to begin with.

I'm a bit on the fence with this one but I don't regret the purchase so I guess it's a recommend. Ultimately, it's a mediocre game with a handful of redeeming qualities. Unfortunately, it's more of a linear, 3rd person adventure game than a hack and slash. In other words, don't expect the normal Devil May Cry.

Cons:
The story has some political subtext HAMMED into it. The presentation of said story is also pretty bad with some very trashy lines filled with profanity to make it seem edgy or something.
If you are the type of person who analyzes games for their design, you'll notice quickly that the game is a compromise between the combat centric design of the first Devil May Cry games and something like Legend of Zelda/God of War. The result is a somewhat run-of-the-mill combat system, somewhat stale exploration, and similarly stale platforming.
Jump canceling is easier. This means that you can do stupid stuff like gain infinite height using the hook+JC combo with one enemy. It looks silly/game-breaking and is stupidly easy to pull off.
Metal music that doesn't sound that great for metal. It sounds like 2nd rate indie metal.
Weapons seem to fit very specific purposes against specific enemies rather than opening up options for player creativity. Furthermore, some of them don't even have that distinct of a behavior, making them mechanical variations of a more limited set of weapons.
The lack of a targeting system makes the controls feel pretty awkward.


Pros:
It tries to experiment with some mechanics to varying degrees of success like how you can pull to and pull in enemies at will unlike Nero's buster which was limited to enemy type.
Jump canceling is easier. This is also more welcoming to newer players.
The levels look pretty impressive and the color oversaturation is a nice mix up. It does get in the way at times but it wasn't nearly as offensive as some people claim in my experience. I never felt sick or anything and I feel ill if I play CS:GO too much :/
Lots of weapons at least keeps it fresh.
Lots of secrets to find.
Enemies give very clear tells. The dial up combo system that has been standard in Devil May Cry is now aided by a light up effect, letting the player combo more consistently.
Story has it's moments that made me chuckle for various reasons.
Faster rendering/loading times than Devil May Cry 4. Also, it's a finished game unlike Devil May Cry 4 and not an awful port like Devil May Cry 3.


If you're fine with a B-movie story and a decent chunk of optional exploration and mandatory platforming, DMC: Devil May Cry is a game worth picking up considering the amount of content and decent amount of interesting exploration.

Before we begin, I'd like to inform everyone that Proxy Blade Zero is not your conventional hack and slash. Rather than killing enemies stylishly, the main draw of the game is your ability to weave between enemies, block, dash, and counter. In other words, it is more focused on how well you can avoid damage rather than how well you can deal it, creating a relatively intense and novel experience.


Pros:
- No filler. There aren't any annoying puzzles (simple things like activate these 3 switches in 3 adjacent rooms), backtracking is minimal, no convoluted rooms, etc.
- Controls. Controls are responsive and work pretty well with either mouse and keyboard or a controller. I would like to note though that transitioning between the two is a bit awkward.
- Enemy Variety. There are quite a few enemies that you encounter that you develop specific ways to handle, each with their own behavior. Then the developer decides to mash up the composition of each group of enemies you fight, multiplying the types of combat situations you can find yourself in.
-Combat. Combat is very streamlined with only the bare essentials. You have a block, a directional dash, and 3 attack combos whose moves you can go to regardless of the combo you are in. The different combos have different effects with different trade offs between damage, mobility, and animation time. While most attacks are blockable, a few are not and require the player to dash out of the way. Mistiming a block or failing to do a dash can be punished with damage.

Cons:
- Length. While my first run took roughly 3 hours, it would now probably take less than an hour now. It's a very short game with no new game bonuses (as far as I know).
- Graphics. It doesn't look very pretty with very few textures and models that have very few polygons.
- Difficulty. While fair, it has a high skill curve and floor. The game expects you to fully understand the block/dodge timings for an enemy only after the first time you see the enemy. Furthermore, difficulty is very simplistic and only fiddles with numbers like how much damage an enemy deals rather than change enemy behavior.
- Occasional AI issues. While very infrequent, sometimes enemies go into a "stupid" loop where they just move in circles and soak damage for no reason, killing the intense pacing of the game.
- Jumping. There is no jumping. It's by no means a necessary mechanic but it seems weird to not have it in a third person game.
- Bosses. Kinda underwhelming to fight one predictable opponent after you fight a horde of unpredictable opponents.


Overall experience:
The game tests you constantly. "Barely finished a group? Here, let me see you handle some from that group and some from this group." As a result, every time you succeed, it delivers little packets of euphoria every time you master how to respond to an opponent, every time you dive into a horde of enemies while perfectly counterattacking everything, every time you barely eek out of a mission, every time you whoosh around picking off enemies one by one, etc. It has this sense of elegance and precision as you need to actually understand each mechanic before progressing. This game rewards you not with score, not with experience and levels, but by changing you, the player, from a clumsy fool to a dancing, robot killing expert.

All in all, while this game suffers from the fact that it was made by 1 person, I'd recommend any fighting game/beat 'em up fan to pick this up especially if it's on sale.