Recent reviews by DivineHolinessjr

Major Order Completed, good job Helldivers

Man, this game is fun, but god is it hard to describe.

This game is a weird mix between a roguelike (the game is split up into runs) and an incremental game, stuff like Cookie Clicker and Antimatter Dimensions with a focus on more active play than idle, and leaning much more towards the incremental part of the genre mix than the roguelike.

The game also doesn't explain all too well how it works, although there is an official guide on Steam for it, and the game does incrementally introduce new mechanics and essentially (not so subtly) forces you to interact with them. The onlyt real issue the game has in my eyes is that the game is kinda slow as f'ing garbage, but part of the game is going further into the game at faster and faster rates.

Overall, fun game though, would recommend if you enjoy incremental games.

Edit: I just unlocked the fast forward button, so the game does get a lot faster as you progress, but the game is asking for a decently large time investment (although not that large considering the genre) to unlock it

I've played this game just enough to come to a conclusion. This game is sick af.

The gameplay is very satisfying with what currently seems to be a fairly high skill ceiling in the form of block/parrying (parrying is just a perfect block, but it's tighter than it is usually in games of this sort), and there are in fact actual combos that make the combat feel significantly smoother than you would expect. Just a fun game with some interesting mechanics

I found this extremely easy to pick up within my first hour, but I assume this wouldn't be the same for everyone, I can imagine some people struggling to figure out how to make the mechanics work even with the "tutorial" (it's entirely text based) and training materials available. If you can't figure it out and are therefore struggling to have fun, you might be better off refunding rather than forcing yourself to learn the game.

ngl game is pretty cool

While I haven't played either of the Jet Set Radio games, this is a hell of an advertisement for me to pick up one of them, because this game is fun and funky as hell.

Pick it up if you want a game with a compelling (not necessarily the best ever, it's not Disco Elysium) story and some fun gameplay accompanied by a style it absolutely rocks the whole way through.

Good immersive sim, would recommend to anyone who enjoys immersive sims

Using this to replace my original review due to dev reply, original review is gone due to character limit

They suck, and I'm going to try to describe it and actually explain why it's bad primarily through the lack of guidance.
So, lets say you want to play an actual round. What's the first thing you do? You want to play a simple unranked game right? So you would ordinarily look for a play/muliplayer button. This does not exist. What does exist is:
Leaderboard
Settings
"Ascension Handbook: VitalZ" [Some sort of general life tip collection?]
Premium Membership
And finally... Ranked Playlist. There is no unranked. This is a bit confusing as you would probably just want to jump into a stress-free game to practice maybe, get used to the game. But this just doesn't exist. So, the play button is your "Ranked Playlist" button, and that's the only way to get into the game instead of a "play" button or another option.
The Ranked Playlist menu has more issues though, because for some reason it's more than just gameplay related things in here. There's also the "Valkyria Records" button here for their lore. Why their lore is in the play menu I have no clue.

This also is a response to the developers, but I will reiterate this slightly at the end.
The graphical settings menu makes little sense. Some parts are fine, actually standard like "FPS Limit" and "FPS Counter." Others are not. Please tell me what "Bloom Dream Vision" means, and especially what the options "Crystal," "Supernatural," and "Awakened" mean, because this doesn't tell me anything. Under "Performance Mode" it's even worse because there is exactly zero explanation to any idea what this could ever be (unlike the last option, which likely is for the bloom in the game). There is 2 toggle boxes in this, the "Elysium" and "Mystical Elysium" options which do god knows what. There is no explanation at all for what these do. Generally the rest of the settings menu is okay, generally usable.

To sum up my feelings, too much of the screen is taken up by garbage. Only going to mention criticisms, if I don't mention it I don't see an issue in it.
2 of the elements in the bottom right don't look so well, expecially the character portrait taking up a ton of screen space in the bottom left. While it doesn't stop you from playing the game, it doesn't need to exist nor does it need to be as big as it is. Screen visibility in a competitive shooter matters.
Your crosshair is very usable, but simultaneously hideous and a mess. It's 3 seperate circles, one of which is animated spinning and huge and surrounded by 9 blue circles which represent some resource I don't understand. Sometimes it goes down, and I have no idea why.
Also, you can't quit midmatch. Pressing Escape midmatch leaves the following message below the Settings button:
"Please wait until matchmaking round is over before leaving"

Cyberlink: Hit-scanning pistol with what seems like a "homing" function that makes it hit as long as you shoot near your target. Also the only weapon with any type of knockback.
Sun&Moon: A shotgun? that's absolutely broken. The gun either does its max dmg, or doesn't hit at all. It seems to hit enemies in a cone with extraordinary range, hitting well into the beginning of long-range combat, making it the go to weapon for almost all encounters.
Firecaster: Projectile based automatic weapon, does less dmg than the Cyberlink at a slightly faster fire rate, honestly it kind of sucks.
CosmicAlce: A rocket launcher that, no matter what I do, does 0 dmg. It clearly has an explosion, hitting enemies far out of where it initially hit, but it does 0 dmg whether or not I directly hit the enemy.
LPA: A railgun type weapon with a slow firerate doing about 1.5x that of the Cyberlink, but due to the low firerate it might honestly be better to just use the Cyberlink instead.
DMG: The actual rocket launcher of the game. It looks like a grenade launcher but it doesn't seem to have any projectile gravity and actually does damage.
In summary, the only 3 guns you should actually be using are the Cyberlink, Sun&Moon, and DMG. The other weapons are useless because they are either outclassed by the other weapons or just don't do anything.
Divine Shield: Not really a weapon, but a shield with limited energy (displayed beneath the HP bar) that makes you completely invincible for a short period. During this period you also can't shoot. Not sure why you would use it. Very situationally useful.

"This reviewer is clearly here just to attempt creating a bad reputation for the game: (I wouldn't be surprised if this is from a competitor)"
I'm just trying to stop people from wasting their damn time, this game sucks compared to your best competitors, Quake, Unreal Tournament, and other free Arena shooters.
"The reviewer goes in great lengths to talk about how bad our menus are, but they are literally like any other videogame menu out there."
The play button still isn't very obvious, it should be fairly obvious and require literally no thinking. Every other game I have ever played didn't require me to think about where the play button was.
"I suppose the reviewer doesn't know what the terms 'anti-aliasing', 'texture quality', and 'shadows' mean." (in response to me criticizing the settings menu)
I was mostly talking about the performance settings, which I admit I wasn't being fair to generalizing to the entire menu. Despite this, as said above the settings menu has lots of ambiguity.
"We wanted to create a new art experience" (in response to my criticism of the use of terms like "Script" for kills)
This is total bull-crap, the immersion comment could have been used if this was a story-based game, but this is not that. This is a multiplayer pvp based game. "immersion" doesn't exist really here. Some of the reasons I mentioned this originally though have been remedied.
"In our first time tutorial, where all weapons are explained, it clearly says that this is a Locator/X-ray type gun..."
First of all, the tutorial didn't properly explain the guns. Second of all, what does this mean? Is it just meant to do 0 dmg to help you find people? Why not just have it outline the players for a second instead of making it do 0 dmg. A locator gun on first thought made me think it was homing... which it isn't.
"Actually there is ZERO bloom by default."
You're right, there isn't, but there is in the options and it's so, so, excessive.
"If you can't find how this is practically overpowered..." (talking about the shield)
This is the entirety of what they said. They didn't explain. I have no idea why it would ever be "practically overpowered" considering the fact you can't even shoot during it. It's a purely defensive maneuver that I can't figure out the practicality of.
"Killstreak only names"
This point I admit I either completely missed or they updated (in the case of the update, I applaud them).
[Part about shotgun, too long for character limit]
Never in the original review did I ever say to "default to the shotgun" or anything along those lines. I said to use the pistol, the shotgun, and rarely the other weapons. Besides, the shotgun has a huge range.
"This is absolutely false" (in me saying enabling performance modew creates lower frames)
My original statement was implied speculation, and I have honestly no clue nor care to want to properly test if it does because I still have no idea what the performance options do.

I admit, a couple parts were me being wrong, but this response only made me want to improve my review and actually refute everything they say or clarify everything. I hope they either take this as a solid criticism or people stop playing this garbage and play the other free alternatives (there's other free arena shooters out there with dedicated communities, if you want an arena shooter just search!)

Devs replied, disregard rest of review. Fun game, just not very obvious how to interact with the journal.

Was really interested in playing the game, and the set up for the story seemed pretty intriguing, but it turns out I don't get to play the game. If this is the same for others, I can't honestly recommend it. There's a beginning cutscene that was pretty enjoyable, but past that there's a journal you have to grab. You can press J to bring it up, but for me at least I can't interact with it no matter what button I press on the keyboard so I have actually no idea of what I should be doing. No clicking and dragging with left or right mouse does anything either.
Excluding all these issues, the basis for puzzles I found seem to be enjoyable. No clue if they are enjoyable. I can't find any hints for them in the first place unfortunately.

If the devs get back to me I'd be happy to cooperate if this is some sort of bug.

This is a game where you capture slimes, imprison them, and feed them.
And then you sell their poo. 10/10 game, super relaxing and fun.

This game has a solid basis, but as it is right now it's terrible.

First issue: Lack of balance.
This doesn't sound too bad, but it's very clear some weapons are better than others, and that one robot is clearly better than the rest.
Some weapons simply are more accurate, and more damaging than others. The base gun does okay damage, but in comparison to the other weapons it's absolutely terrible, as well as its abysmal accuracy, especially if you fire for more than a couple shots at once. Beyond this the flying character is absolutely broken due to its primary feature, flying. It may have near next to no hp in comparison to the other characters, but the ability to fly is simply so overpowered in a game where almost every character is grounded it isn't fair. Pair this with the sniper rifle in the game, and you have near invincibility if you fly to the top of the match almost confirming your team the win for TDM unless the other team has a person with a sniper rifle or another flyer. The variety of gadgets can help get around this, but it's hard to dodge the flying sniper you are physically incapable of hitting. Ignoring the flying character, the tanky character also has an issue. The tanky character is of course made to be a tank, it'd be useless otherwise. But they have so much hp in comparison to damage output that they're incredibly hard to kill. You need another person to actually kill them. This may not sound bad until you realize the matches are set in 4v4 if I'm correct. Meaning you need half your team to kill one person effectively. It's not like people are playing this game competitively either so it's simply not viable to ask your team mate to help kill someone.

Second Issue: Gamemodes
Beyond this, the game is still in early access and so a lot of the game is unfinished, the one time I tried control point as an attempt to get around the flying sniper issue, there was no control point so there was nothing to do. So, one of the gamemodes is broken, and another (TDM) is full of near impossible to kill snipers. What's left is TDM. The balance issue comes into play again, turns out it's hard for a grounded character to chase a flying character. It's not impossible to kill them though if they have the flag though. The issue is what happens when the flag is dropped. Anyone familiar with TF2 will know the flag can't be picked up by your own team and must be camped until it despawns, which takes forever. As anyone can tell by me bringing this up, same issue applies here. It's the same horrible system that makes defending the flag at its spawn location the only viable idea, as chasing the runner down isn't probably going to work if they get too far.
Every gamemode is flawed due to either balance, simply not working, or being flawed.

This may be discouraging the dev and I realize that, but again this game has a great basis. If the balance was fixed and gamemodes fixed up, I honestly think this game would be extremely fun to play.