Recent reviews by L

Normally, my MO is to wait until I have finished the game until I review it, but by the time that happens, this game will likely have had several more updates and I'll have to play through that content, and it will lead to a never ending cycle that leads to the game never being reviewed (if reports of 2026 content are true).

Starfield is a wonderfully large game that fits in perfectly with every other Bethesda game that has been released. If you are looking for Fallout 4 in space, well, this is about as close as you are going to get! The game has several things it does better than Fallout 4, and several things it does worse. Here are a few bullet points if you don't feel like reading all of my thoughts.

The Good:
* Dialogue actually matches what you want your character to say
* Tons of planets, with some relatively diverse wildlife
* Picturesque views
* Satisfying gunplay
* Maneuvering on planet surface is easy
* Relative lack of bugs for a Bethesda title (only had one major bug and I have since fixed it myself)

The Bad:
* Ship combat in outer space is needlessly complicated and unfun.
* Ship travel from planet to planet is boring and done poorly
* Story is pretty forgettable so far (side content though isn't bad).

Ultimately, I have played 88 hours, and fully explored 3 of the roughly hundred solar systems in the game. So large is this game that if I continue my current rate of exploration it will take me 3000 hours to give a comprehensive review of every planet the game has to offer. The reality is that there will be many planets I don't touch to this level, because I cannot imagine the random generation gets more varied later in the game, and once I hit max level and have the highest level gear, the reward for exploration will just be the exploration itself.

For a gamer like me, this is fine. I love games that are built for explorers, even when the content itself is procedurally generated, because you can find some unintentional beauty in procedural generation sometimes. The human generated content that was done by hand is done well, and the worlds do feel lived in, although given the vastness of space, this is understandably few and far in between. If I have any complaint with this, it is that sometimes the game feels a little too large, and could do with some condensing to make the content that does exist shine more.

The gunplay is the most satisfying of any Bethesda game I have played, and it keeps me coming, even when I'm being swarmed by 10 Terrormorphs on a planet that the navy tells me I absolutely should not land on. I do fear later sections of the game being a bit repetitive, but that is why they allow you to edit reviews. I will edit this review if I need to in another 1000 hours.

I paid about 40 bucks for this game on a sale, and it has been one of the more efficient video game purchases from a dollar to time spent ration in 2025. This will get more prevalent the further I play, as this is a game I am going to continue playing for a long time.

My hope is the expected 2026 content makes this game feel more alive, and that more players who are on the fence will give it a try once that happens. But even as the game currently stands, it is worth a purchase. I would advise paying 40 dollars for this, however, as 60+ is a tough sell for most anything these days.

When it comes to Blue Reflection, I had higher hopes, because the concept is solid. RPG where you play as a magical girl, make friends, save the world, etc. This formula is one that lends itself well to emotional high points and strong, character based storytelling. Don't be deceived by my playtime, I actually had to start over because my old computer died and I didn't have a cloud save.

Blue Reflection follows the story of a girl who has lost the ability to dance. She attends a school that segregates each of its grades into a special class for gifted students (such as ones who are amazing at ballet) and a regular class (for non-gifted students). Due to this traumatic injury, our heroine is relegated to the regular class.

It is in this class that she meets Yuzu and Lime, who the game expects you to believe are her closest friends. The only problem with this is the game does not really do a good job of building their relationship in any meaningful way. Yuzu and Lime essentially give our heroine her magical girl super powers, and that is the extent of their connection until basically the end of the game.

In between, Hina makes (almost entirely optional) connections with her classmates. These classmates all fill very generic stereotypes (the athletic one, the rival, the weirdo who is in love with her, a high functioning idiot savant, and a tsundere actress) and only the first half of their relationship is ever insisted upon by the game. I went through all the story beats, so you do not have to. They are largely wastes of time, surface level style friendships, that follow predictable tropey behavior. You are best served mashing through the dialogue, and getting your friendship points for your level ups.

I will grant Blue Reflection one bit of praise, their way of leveling you up is relatively unique. While most games are content to let you grind monsters for EXP, and leveling you up through this system, Blue Reflection locks their level progression behind making friends and completing side quests, which fits in perfectly with the theme the game tries (and fails) to nail.

I think where a lot of my apathy for this game comes from is that a core mechanic of the game is the beliveability of the relationship between Yuzu, Lime, and Hina... but again, this is largely absent until the end of the game. You report your magical girl progress to them, and have a couple lines of dialogue each chapter related to the mission you previously cleared, but largely, your relationship with them is very distant, as they are the only unique NPCs in the game you can't even hang out with, or have bonding events with.

It leads to the climax -which is supposed to be very emotional- falling incredibly flat. It's disheartening to say, because again, this is a game that had a lot of potential to be truly interesting and hit on a lot of emotional story beats.

The game can be completed in about 12 hours by an experienced RPG gamer once they get a hang of the broken battle system (by mid-game you should basically be doing the same thing in every single fight, and the boss battles are laughably easy, I never "died" once, even though there are no true game overs anyway), with 100% completion being possible in 20-25 hours depending on how long it takes you to understand things.

If I were to slap a monetary value on this game, it would be no higher than 20 dollars. Any further is a complete waste of your money, and even at 20 dollars, I think you can find significantly better games that fit anything you may be hoping for out of this game.

Moonlighter is a pretty basic, but addictive game, with a clear and easy to understand flowchart through to the end of the game. In a sentence, I would describe Moonlighter as a good first entry into Action RPG Rouge-"likes". There is some nature of randomization involved, but this rarely impacts the game, and you can usually count on a few things: length of floors, a healing room one or two rooms before the "boss" of the floor, and for the mini-bosses/bosses to be the same.

The game can feel a little intimidating at first, if you try to brute force it. While you can absolutely beat the game using the base weapons you start with, it requires a level of dexterity that most ARPG neophytes just won't have. So how do you progress? Obviously, by buying better equipment at the store, then upgrading those items.

Money isn't earned like it is in other RPGs, however. I like the added twist of having to actually sell the items you loot from enemies in a store you run, "Moonlighter". You can set the price of the items you sell, and see the reactions of your customers. If their eyes light up, you are selling an item way too cheaply, and if they look disappointed, you need to drop the price in order to reliably be able to sell the item. There are subtypes of customers, like rich customers, who affect what is acceptable and what isn't.

But you shouldn't sell everything. Some of the items you get will be used to craft new weapons and armor that you'll need to get by in the game. This process of looting, selling, saving, upgrading, etc continues through 4 dungeons of action, with each requiring better equipment (or better reflexes) than the last, leading into the final dungeon.

You can beat this game in around 12-15 hours, 20 if you try to do everything, and collect every note, and really absorb the game world. There is a pretty loose story, but there is some hidden lore to be discovered. My only gripe with the game is that it doesn't have much story until the end, and then it has a lot of story all at once, which makes the ending overwhelming (and kind of makes you wish they'd had a bit more story than "main character is curious about 5th locked door")

There's some depth beyond the main game, in a new game+, but this doesn't really add a whole lot to the experience, if I'm being honest, from what I've seen so far. I don't think I'll finish a NG+ playthrough, but it's nice that it is included. Primarily involves items selling for more, and dealing more damage. Enemies are tougher?

It's currently 6 bucks on Steam. If you are finding yourself wanting to play a discount game that is simple and easy to play, with some slightly interesting mechanics, then it may be worth a try. I enjoyed my time with the game, even though by the end it was a bit of a drag.

If you ever want to smash your head against a brick wall, but are considering playing Mighty #9 instead, let me tell you to just smash your head against the brick wall, because it's more fun, doesn't drop frames, and doesn't try to reinvent the wheel.

My playtime isn't really indicative, I've played this on other platforms, and it's just as bad on PC as it is anywhere else. Don't play or buy this, or even mention it. Forget you even read this review, please.

I instantly clicked with Evelyn.

I hated Emily from the start, because she was a cold mistress in Emily 1.

Emily whined when I didn't send her a message back in .7 seconds while she was drunk, after choosing to talk with Evelyn.

I got together with Evelyn. We got along well, and I'm pretty sure I got laid on prom night. Emily, being the massive jerk she always is, tried to finagle her way into a relationship with me, after I finally got the girl of my dreams.

Screw you Emily.

Signed, legacyme3.

-----

Now, in all seriousness, this was a fun, albeit short, experience. I think I can move on with my life. A life without Emily. I had that choice. I declined it of my own free will. Let Jeff, Brad, or whoever the hell she meets in New York have her. She's a cold, mean, demanding attention hog, who decides it's a reasonable solution to get ridiculously drunk to solve her problems while still in high school. Evelyn is a sweet, caring woman with goals, who wants to settle down and have a family.

Be like Evelyn. Do not be like Emily.

I loved this game as a child.

Unfortunately, I can't tell if I liked it because I was a kid, or if because it's a good game, because the Steam version just simply doesn't work. It crashes at every turn, and if you use a controller, there's a 50/50 chance it's going to tell you every 10 seconds to reboot the game to update your control scheme.

So good luck playing with a controller, maybe you'll have better luck than I did.

Time to go find a GameCube and a copy of this game, I guess.

This is a good game. Steam stopped tracking my hours for some reason, so my play time is not accurate. I put in about 10 total hours into the game, and have beaten everything but the DLC (I'd be interested if I didn't have to grind some classes to level 40. It would be easy, and quick, but I'm just not that interested).

Be forewarned. This game does not feature ANY carryover from the first two games, as it was developed by a different studio. Your custom character from the first two, also does not make an appearance or cameo, and is only barely spoken of, at all. For all intents and purposes, pretend you finally found a home, far far away from Tycho and Gabe, and thus, are safe.

This game, I feel, is much better than the first two. Instead of relying on mediocre combat mechanics involving timing blocks and having to farm items, you have instantly replenishing items (thank you!) and a simple JRPG battle format, involving a simple turn based gage system,

The game is really simple and very easy if you have any idea how to juggle classes. The UI is kind of poor, but once you have the classes down, it's fairly easy to think out a good combination in your head. From what I understand, the DLC is a challenge, so if you find the base game too easy, perhaps you will find your challenge in the post game.

Having more of the humor that Penny Arcade is known for, with a more engaging story line, that feels to be the perfect length, this is probably the best game in the series (although I haven't played 4 yet, so...)

Pick it up when it's on sale, which it seems to go on, quite a lot. I bought this game for like 50 cents, and it was an incredible value (5 cents an hour just cannot be beat).

Screw Brad.

I'm very torn on how to review this game, since quite frankly, I haven't played enough games similar to this to compare it to. So keep that in mind as I try to jumble through my mixed feelings on this game.

For starters, let's start with what the story is about. You are a senior, named Miley. You love comedy. You want to start a comedy club. Jerk president of the student council or whatever says you need 5 members to establish a club. The conflict comes in here. You only have 2 members. Yourself and your best friend/roommate, who never is a big part of the game.

So you, alone, have a month+ (something like 40 days total?) to convince 3 other people to join your club. You accomplish this by getting their "friend level" up to level 5. They all start out at level 1 when you meet them. There are 6 prospective members you can have join you. You can convince any of them (or none of them) to join your club, through various odds and ends.

One example, and the one I expect most everyone will do on their first (and probably only) run, is the story of a little girl, and her grandfather's candy shop. These stories progress in 5 steps. Step one is the introduction to the character. Step two is the introduction to her story. Step three is the continuation of this story to the point where obvious conflict has arisen. Step four is another continuation of this branch, that usually results in you giving advice, or being helpful to the story's subject. And step five is the conclusion, where the prospective member thanks you for your help in the matter, and then hands you their club signup form, guaranteeing themselves a member of your cult of weirdos.

You need to do this for at least three of the six potential members to "win". If you get all six, you get the "good" ending.

Generally, this is a very easy task requiring absolutely no thought. You wake up in the morning and follow one of two schedules. You have a school schedule, and you have a day off schedule.

On school days, your three blocks of time are as follows... you go to school (and conveniently have most of the characters you wish to recruit in one place, to learn about their likes and dislikes, though this can be uncommon at best), you have a block of time where you can walk around the town and do one special task (whether this is talking to the member you wish to recruit, building your "skills", or spending time eating and doing absolutely nothing), and then finally go home, and sleep/talk to girlfriends on the phone/make beads for money (which is pretty useless honestly.)

On off days, you do roughly the same thing, except instead of going to school, you get an extra block of the free do whatever you want period.

Now, the game sounded compelling in a way, and I'm a fan of anime-style graphics, so this game caught my eye. I went in with the understanding this game is very short (2 1/2 hours per playthrough at best?) and that the characters aren't to be taken seriously, but this feels like a pretty sloppy piece of work, considering how short the game is.

There are various magazines you can purchase, or movies you can watch with the intent of upgrading your skills... but this is mostly pointless, as I barely touched my skills, and managed to beat the game with 4 of 6 characters recruited into my club. I'm sure the books may play a bigger part when you are trying to broaden your horizons and get all 6... but even then, it's pretty simple to get any character into your club, given the stereotypical nature of all the characters (the ones who look like they like sports like sports, and the ones who like smart stuff like smart stuff).

By far the most interesting character in the game is the punk rock girl, Cindy, and her story is so short, that I feel unsatisfied. This is in contrast to Sara's story, which feels long and drawn out, and less interesting.

I don't know, this is more of a synopsis on gameplay than a real review, so I may as well leave my final verdict here. The game is fun for about all of 20 minutes before the repetitive nature gets to you, and you lose interest in the story or what happens to the club. Should you manage to complete the game, (which isn't hard, the game is laughably easy) you can go into a NG+ mode I haven't touched yet (and don't plan to touch.)

When a game offers me more content like that, and I say, "no thank you", it generally doesn't bode well for the overall replayabillity of the game. Unless the characters interests change, and the game gets harder (which I doubt on both accounts) I don't think I'll give this game another look.

If you really must try it, get it during a Summer/Winter Sale when it is wicked cheap, and not at the current price. Paying full price will lead to massive disappointment for all.