Recent reviews by milton friedman

Good

*Ignore my time played, I've been playing since the beginning of the closed play tests*

Spectre Divide is a competitive shooter that brings a new mechanic to the genre by way of it's Duality mechanic. This mechanic allows you to switch between two bodies at the press of a button. You can reposition your currently inactive body by throwing it's puck as you would throw a grenade. The inactive body can still be shot and killed and can also be used as a quasi alarm system by positioning it behind you to let you know if you are being flanked.

The Good:

- Duality mechanic feels truly fresh. It's exciting and after the first few games you will start to adjust to it and begin thinking outside of the box. It opens up a new vector of player skill and allows for some truly exciting out-play potential.

- Hit reg feels good, much better than many games this early in their life cycle

- General netcode seems solid, I've had no issues with feeling like something "unfair" transpired as a result of the software.

- TTK feels very good.

The Bad:

- Gunplay is not well designed in my opinion. Having full accuracy whilst ADS'ing feels really out of place in the genre of game. It felt strange having ADS in Valorant, but I appreciated how they balanced it with a slower fire rate. In Spectre Divide, you often feel forced to ADS, as it is so evidently superior to hip firing.

- The maps feel OKAY, but are far from exciting or interesting. They play out like Valorant maps, where map control feels very unimportant when compared to something like Counter Strike.

- Abilities are not very well telegraphed to new players. It's confusing to understand what each ability does - again similar to Valorant though I do think Valorant generally does a much better job of having a consistent design language which helps.

- Sponsor design (these are the "Agents"/"Heroes" of the game) are totally uninspired. There isn't a single one that feels memorable of interesting. I never looked forward to getting the Sponsor I wanted in game, because I didn't care for any of them. I think a larger point here is that the Hero aspects of this game feel totally pain-by-numbers, to the point where I wonder why they went this way with it. There's clearly no passion in their design, so why bother? Surely allowing people to buy their abilities (like you buy utility in CS) would allow for more player creativity/expression and lead to more interesting usage of the core Duality mechanic?

- The Defusal game mode once again feels like something they just decided to inherit from Valorant because that was clearly their major source of inspiration. Theirs nothing wrong with the way they've implemented it here, but again it feels uninspired. I think a fresh take on this to better celebrate the Duality mechanic could have been very interesting. Like maybe a game mode where both teams are attacking and defending at the same time? This would make the Duality mechanic essential to the formula, instead of feeling just a fun-to-have add-on to the experience.

- The UX is really odd. The UI is wildly derivative of Valorant (down to fonts and shapes), but the UX is dramatically worse. The buying feels clunky since you're buying for both your main character and spectre at the same time. I think it would have been better to just give you a normal buy menu and let you buy for one body with left click and the other body with right click. Then bind sell to something like ctrl+click. They could highlight which body has which equipment with colour (say blue and purple) and use this consistent colour scheme across the entire game, where ever the Duality mechanic comes up.

Summary:

Overall I don't recommend this game. I think it feels like they had a single good idea and then went ahead and very competently built a deeply mediocre game around that one good idea. Unfortunately I think this game will fail and I seriously doubt it will be around in a year's time (which certainly calls into question the predatory pricing of the in-game shop!).

I remember day dreaming about a theoretically perfect game that combined the isometric, turn-based elements of x-com, with the tactical feelings of door kickers and the puzzle elements of Into the Breach.

This game is dramatically better and more interesting that the one I thought up. Every element works tremendously well. The stakes a relatively low as you play (thanks to the rewind feature) which means this game isn't slightly fatiguing. You can take your time and experiment without ever being punished,

I've been a fan of Tom Francis' games since Gun Point and (at least somewhat) played all of them since then. This one is, for me, the best. It is also the best writing of any of them. The dialogue is funny without trying to hard and the story is interesting without weighing the game play down.

This game really feels like it was made for me. It's enthralling, yet relaxing. Tactical, yet goofy. Unique, yet familiar. I really hope we see DLC or a sequel to this.

100% worth the asking price, in my opinion. Some may say there's too little content on offer, but I do think the quality of the content here makes up for that. I'd suggest going for it - you can always refund it if you really don't like it.

Incredible follow up to the first game (which was one of the best puzzle games I've every played). Difficulty takes quite a lot of time to start creeping up, but even within the easier puzzles some of the solutions are deeply satisfying. In terms of puzzle design, TP2 is much leaner with how the puzzles are set up and it relies much less on red herrings. I think most will prefer this - personally I'm indifferent. Overall: a very good game!

One of the best puzzle games I've played. Tonnes of puzzles to solve, some interesting themes and lots of little secrets to find.

The DLC is also really great, especially the final secret grey puzzles

I'd say overall it's a little on the easier side, though certainly some puzzles are a lot more challenging. Very much worth playing.

Probably the most calming game ever made. But not possibly worth full price, even after the reduction. Pick up on sale!

Very fun and addictive coop rogue like. Very fun single player and better with friends.

Pros:
- Good gameplay
- Interesting build potential
- Some mechanically interesting bosses
- Lots of difficulty levels

Cons:
- Too much meta progression for my taste, others may enjoy the grind
- No way to reconnect to game if you get disconnected!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- Some bosses are pretty boring. More variety here would go a long way.

In terms of raw emergent gameplay, this game is a 10/10. Personally I don't care about some microtransactions in a single player game (btw you can acquire nearly all the items for sale within the first 2 hours of the game). And performance for me has been solid, though I'm runnning a 5800X3D and rtx4090 so definitely would expect it to run well.

Maybe wait for some patches, or a sale, but definitely I recommend you get around to playing this game at some point. Just awesome.

As of writing this review I have completed A20 Heart with 2 of the 4 characters.

On steam I have about 100 hours, on PS5 I have a further 300 hours for a total of 400.

Outside of CS:GO/CS2, this is comfortably my most played game and I have to say, it is perfection.

The cards and events are perfectly balanced (Ascension 10-15 is probably the sweet spot). The game length is perfect to make for an addictive rogue-like loop.

This game is the deck-builder GOAT for a reason. A must play for any card game fans, and even those who are just a little curious about the genre.

Extremely good game.

Compared to Slay the Spire, the card mechanics / deck building are a little shallow. But there's a lot of strategic depth found in placement and the order in which you execute your plan.

I've completed it through about 5 or 6 times now, though yet to do so on any difficulty above "Hard" (and btw, Hard is pretty easy to be honest).

I'd say if you're just looking for a strict StS clone, this isn't it. But it has tonnes of other ideas on offer that really makes it stand out as a unique and intriguing entry to the genre. Highly recommend and excited to see what else the devs have to offer us in the future.