Recent reviews by Azireal

The game failed to run for me, but would run down the time on my purchase while sitting at a black screen indefinitely. I tried to troubleshoot but I couldn't solve it.

Not sure specifically what caused it, but I refunded it because I'm not paying 40 bucks for a game that doesn't work.

I don't understand who this game is for.

There are really only two mechanics. Equipment degradation, set to "how the ♥♥♥♥ is this supposed to be fun" speeds, and managing the inventory which it seems like they set quite small to try to create tension in the idea of like, "do I save this item or scrap it, can I afford the space?" and like, there is absolutely none of that.

Weapon stats might be related to like luck stats and stuff, but the actual damage of them seems to be related only to progression and weapon class, so if you find a sword, no matter the rarity, later in the game, it's almost certainly better than whatever you found already because damage is obviously the most important stat on your weapon. You'll need to get used to it anyway since your equipment breaks at light speed.

But you can't like, not pay attention and let it auto battle for a while either. For one, you're doing runs so your character might die, but also because if you don't scrap the crap falling off the baddies then it auto scraps anything else they drop, with no attempt to sort at all either, so you can't really play the game, and you can't not play it either.

Both systems seem to exist to create tension in the player, but they absolutely fail in that regard, if anything landing on mildly annoying. I would recommend the dev(s) slightly increase the inventory sizes and then mix up the drop tables a little harder so there's any point in like, making decisions, something to create tension and decision making in the inventory management process. As it stands you just glance at items and trash them while getting more and more bored.

Never once did I have to make a tough decision about keeping an item or trashing it, never once was I engaged in the management of my inventory or character. About the most complex decision to make is which weapon to hold onto for when yours explodes into dust after a dozen swings.

I spent days trying to figure out why the game wouldn't save, and I emailed the product support who basically gave me ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nothing. Don't buy this game because if you can't get it to work, the devs will send you a boilerplate and leave you with a defective product and have no interest in fixing it. I finally mostly fixed part of it myself without ever hearing back in any capacity other than a boilerplate email telling me they'd get to it eventually.

The game should be taken off steam with the level of major issues I've run into. You can't use map markers and the game has no system at all to guide you so since you can't use the one you're given to make notes on the map you essentially have to remember the entire progression of the game (what do you mean you haven't played it yet?) or look up a guide.

I'm not kidding, don't buy the game until they fix the saving issues or get a MUCH better response team. I still haven't heard back and I've lost two playthroughs to this ♥♥♥♥♥♥ save system.

EDIT: After posting this they have fixed the map waypoint problem

EDIT2: After finally hearing back from nightdive, long after it would have helped, I managed to complete the game.

Still wouldn't recommend, but that's entirely because of the two final battles against SHODAN's cyborgs, and especially the cyberspace sequence. Whoever thought it was a good idea to glue me to the ground and give me a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ useless gun against the most flighty enemies in the game should be demoted. With the bugs 2/10 stars. Without the bugs, 7/10. Without the bugs and without the last two fights, 8/10

First off, you will need to press more than three buttons at once, and if you're on a keyboard, make sure your keyboard is capable of doing that.

Second, remap every key, whoever did the keymapping for this game should be ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fired.

Third, from the two hours I got in before realizing that I wouldn't be allowed to keep playing since there are mandatory inputs that my keyboard cannot do, I can say with confidence this game feels like absolute ass so far. Maybe eventually the combat would become fun, I'll never know cause I don't have a controller and this game literally doesn't support most keyboards.

There are two benefits of winning games in Heretic's Fork, the first is buying characters with abilities, the second is buying cards. You also unlock cards through in game actions like accumulating enough total "tower attack speed" or "Holy damage" etc.

Actually playing Heretic's Fork is a trap.

Instead of these cards being a benefit, they're a shackle the game foists on you for having the gall to actually engage with it. Upgrades are firmly delineated in their uses, so if you get a card that isn't optimal for you, it's not just not optimal, it's completely useless, it's only fuel for more merging or some character mechanic if you have one. There is no way to take a card out of the playable pool once it's unlocked, so very quickly cards with limited edge uses will outnumber the cards you need and every turn will be spent desperately recombining cards hoping you see just one card you can use. Doesn't matter if it's good, it just has to be usable, anything at all. Even the best cards in the game come in sets of two or three since you need one for each type of damage or stats, so even the best cards you'll only have a 1/3rd chance of finding even if you don't add any other cards than just those ones. You'll have turns where you see ten or more cards and none of them help you at all, having 0 effect on your board if not hurting it instead. You upgrade the quality of cards in game by combining lower tier cards to make higher tier cards, and you pick from a random reward. Because I've progressed so far, the highest tier, gold, is full of cards that are either useless or harmful, so on almost every game it's better to not upgrade my cards to gold, since I know I'll get something with 0 value, and a purple with some value is better than a gold with no value. The problem is so bad it's started to make other systems in the game less usable to unusable as well.

The lack of a card sorting system makes the game so tedious, so unfun, that I would consider it to become unplayable after you actually invest the time and effort to actually show that you enjoy this game.

That's the thing that bothers me, it's less playable than when I bought this game, specifically because I enjoyed it and kept playing. I wish I could like and recommend this game, but as it is, I would say pass it up, it's not going to be fun to play more than a handful of rounds.