Recent reviews by Otterhead

I'm mixed. This is an interesting game, it looks good visually and it is certainly a good first step for a first project, but whether its just me or its the game, some things feel clunky. Lets go over the good and bad;

What I dislike:
- The red flash that can appear on your screen with some attacks is honestly probably my biggest gripe. It lingers for far too long and it is fully opaque, so if it's on your screen you're not dodging anything intentionally.
- A boss I will admit filtered me and caused me to give up (possibly just for now) has an arena that is too slim for him, he is very consistently moving and has a decently wide range and wide berth shotgun attack that even at full health, if not dodged, will instantly kill you.
- Speaking of that shotgun, he will sometimes backflip before shooting, which will be impossible to avoid the damage of entirely. I could be having a skill issue here but even when dashing, you will take a tiny bit of damage from it.
- Some bosses are quite tanky, feeling more or less like damage sponges. Primary example is the shotgun boss.

What I do like:
- Visually, the game is very cool. Yes its obvious what it's inspired by but imitation is a form of flattery.
- The first few bosses are kinda fun, I dig the gameplay loop and while apparently the weapon selection is limited, the intended method of shooting to gain heat so your melee is stronger provides a great cycle of ranged to daring melee hits.
- You are rewarded for being able to master parry windows with the boss being generally stunned for a second or two, as well as parrying rewarding you with some slight health.
- You can re challenge bosses for better times, this is great, I am not too interested in doing that myself but I know many people who would love to do that.

What I'm mixed on:
- Audio mixing is sorta iffy. Voices are *so* low, and the music is quite loud generally.
- The bloom/glow is a bit much. Some things give off this glow that is personally a bit bright and hard to look at.
- Hard hard hard personal thing but I couldn't help but notice it. The first boss tip has two or three spelling mistakes.
- Options menu is scarce, there's SFX and Master Volume sliders, and a delete save data button. No window options, visual options being missing is nothing surprising considering the visual style.
- In game pause menu, is also very scarce. It's just a pause screen with a return to title button. No options.

Do I recommend this game? Kinda? Its hard to say, yes I do because its got potential, and it's not particularly expensive for what you're getting. If it looks interesting, take the dive and give it a go. Just another case where I wish steam would allow me to specify SOME in between of whether I recommend a game or not.

I really REALLY wanted to like this game more, but it has so much holding it back, and currently also has some insane bug where it just EATS cpu usage like nobody's business. Pathetically unplayable now as it repeatedly stutters where several hours ago it was perfectly fine. Even fresh installs have this issue and I can only assume its some save data thing as it seems to only ever happen after playing a save long enough. Given that the devs have abandoned this, I severely regret my purchase and recommend others do not make the same mistake. Fun game, but it's the gaming equivalent of a hersheys bar, good at first but gone in an instant and it'll leave you feeling gross after you've finished.

Story also is as most say, pretty dogass haha.

This is my first death game, and hot damn! It really makes me consider daganronpa (and even ace attourney a bit) now after finishing the content we've got (Act 2 Scene 1 at the time of writing.) It's such a blast and has some wonderful sprite work and background visuals, the music is punchy and suits the game's moment to moment gameplay. There's so much here to fawn over and quite frankly, I think it's super underrated. I have seen very few people talk about this, only reason I heard about it was stumbling upon Kieth Ballard's look at the game on his youtube. I saw that, watched the trailer and immediately got hooked.

Beat it almost 100% In about 21 Hours, thats going full on with the side quests on the paint route, and speedrunning through the thinner route. Excellent game, they managed to take the best parts of the old version and improve upon them, while completely removing the worst parts of it. You can skip going through projectors that transition to alternate hubs (I.e. mean street and bog easy) with 10 e-tickets and that is a HUGE time saver, the camera is insanely good compared to the issues the Wii had, the game looks positively GORGEOUS, adding in an NG+ is a fantastic addition, and in general the game ran smooth as butter. I personally experienced no bugs, and can't really think of anything to complain about seeing as it is a remaster that goes above and beyond to preserve the original experience while making it a much smoother experience overall.

I preordered it and while yes, $60 is reaching, I am going to say for me, nostalgia won out and as a huge fan of the wii original, it was well worth it. If you've never played Epic Mickey before and aren't sure about it, wait for a sale, it's a must buy.

I genuinely don't understand what compelled them to release a patch that changed so much of the fundamentals. Why you would EVER tie things to framerate is beyond me. Congratulations Gearbox, you ♥♥♥♥ out another fresh turd, and you're well on your way to having a steaming pile of them given that Borderlands 4 was announced. This game absolutely deserves every bad review it gets until this ♥♥♥♥ gets put back the way it was pre SOTS.

I fortunately did not play the DLC yet, but having heard from close friends who have, and seeing the numerous bugs reported in the reviews, I can safely say that the only way to salvage this shlock shot gearbox lazily ♥♥♥♥ out, is to give people refunds, and make the dlc free. This is absolutely unforgivable. I paid 15 dollars for this ♥♥♥♥, DAY ONE. It feels like it's still in EARLY ACCESS.

Gearbox doing what it does best, giving a HARDLY minimal effort and maximizing as much profit as possible, disappointing, yet expected.

You shouldn't have to join community hosted servers just so you can play a game of casual. Community servers should be a bonus, not a requirement, for enjoyment. You monetize this game on the regular even still Valve. Time to pay up to the community, so long as you keep monetizing, you owe it to us to clean up and make sure the game actually can be played.

I really really want to like this game but it feels like the devs are allergic to decent balance, or qol changes. In a climate where I have a million choices of games I could play, your game will not entice me by telling me that I need to grind to level up cards and obtain cards that are extremely useful. Anyone can see the playerbase has dwindled severely. Launch and post Baba's Laundromat the game was alright but every update, and the dlcs have only served to suffocate the experience and balance.

My biggest gripes:
- The devs are either completely incompetent or willfully blind to changes that NEED to be made to fundamental systems. As stated before, the grind is a huge problem. Having to grind to get roguelike booster packs for cards that impact gameplay can be done right, but in this case I should not be opening the best buyable pack, and getting an entire set of cards I've maxed out already. An EASY fix would be to have some higher chance of getting cards you either haven't maxed out or cards you don't already have. However this has never been introduced and likely will never be until it's too late.

- The most recent addition of the "perks" system is honestly dogwater, lmao. To anyone who hasn't played, multiplayer has a forced ranking system which only serves to act as a groundwork system for a flawed perks system. If you are of a rank lower than your opponent, you are given a seemingly random card or cards used at the beginning of the match automatically. The problem with this comes from the fact that the devs seek to revitalize the shrinking player base by apparently forcing ranked mode onto the general player base. Seemingly not many people agree with the perks system either, judging by steam reviews and the community tab.

- When drawing cards from a booster pack, if you get a card you've "maxed", you are at least compensated for it, however the compensation is so abysmal it may as well not even exist. What used to be a paltry 20 dollars per maxed card drawn, is now 10. Considering the packs you can buy are the "basic" pack for 250 dollars, and the gold pack for 550. Basic guarantees nothing but 5 random cards, and gold guarantees 5 cards but ONE is going to be a rare card (rarity seems to mean nothing when you have a substantial amount of unlocks, as one rare card might be one of the several you've already unlocked or even maxed out.)

- Gotta say, the dlcs are pretty poorly implemented. It's just a pack of 3 weekly quests that give 10 rewards per 3 quests completed. The rewards on offer are entirely cosmetic, and all in all it feels like you're paying the devs for the ability to grind out more skins. Not P2W sure, but its not exactly a "nice" alternative either.

- The Pot of Greed problem;
As stated some in the community tab, this game has a pretty terrible "draw x cards" card problem. To the point where even during an upcoming tournament (at the time of writing this) there was a vote called amongst the participants to either keep or ban a card that lets you draw 1 - 2 cards from the graveyard (depending on the level of profaner btw) and the vote cast had 8 to ban and 13 to keep. This just goes to show how deeply rooted the PoG problem is.

Brainwashed Goons please leave your "get better" comments down below I love hearing from the bootlickers!

Played a decent amount (about 11 hours as of this review, unsure if it'll be more later) of this game and I hate to say it but it just aint it. I keep finding these games that are similar to Slay the Spire but can't quite stick the landing one way or another unlike StS has. Somehow StS nailed the formula and all these other games that try to walk in the same shoes end up tripping up, I really don't get it. They often change something that works really well and then suffer for it. For instance Wildfrost is neat and has it's own neat gimmicks but can't balance to save its life. Banners of Ruin falls to the similar faults, but also doesn't quite work with it's progression system and the way bosses are. There's other issues I can't quite put my finger on, and its a GREAT game, its just really not particularly designed to work? I hope the devs keep at this, because its certainly a diamond in the rough, it's just a diamond *deep* in the rough.

Also the fact that it has DLC in the state it's in is personally not something im fond of at all. Its not even really worthwhile dlc either? None of the heroes are particularly worthwhile, you're better using the vanilla races.