Recent reviews by Aona

This game has a story I never quite noticed the first time around, and on the second, the third, and the fourth time. I started to see how it all came together, perhaps it went a little deeper each time. It's told in a series of imagery, the art is beautiful, absolutely just perfect.

The art style is nice, and I enjoy every bit of the experience, infact I've completed the game, and gotten all the achievements as of writing. It is a short game, but also a long time. With 4 play throughs at the bare minimum to achieve the best result. (Imo) Although I might play a bit longer.

I'm a bit of an incremental game enthusiast so I've been looking forward to this game for quite some time, since it was posted on r/incremental_games

Quite honestly, this game came from nowhere it took only 30 minutes for me to love this game. It is.. wonderful. I Just want to keep playing. It will test your creative abilities as much as your courage.

I loved this game, I played Armored Core, I play Dark souls, I've been playing the franchise since the psx days and ended at Last Raven for the PS2. (I skipped the later versions 4 and 5)

The first mission in the game is unfair, and quite honestly, barely offers you a chance to really learn how to customize yourself, or really adapt to a more comfortable playstyle. For me now, that I've gotten all the endings of the game, and beaten it 3 times now. It's not very hard, but I still think it unfair, it was my only strong complaint that I had

Most of the time, you can adjust your tactics/strategy and adapt to your playstyle. Being flexible is key, and sure yes.. you can punch things, or be like me, incredibly stubborn and end up running a mostly melee build for the longest time, until things to difficult to deal with.

... And for the first time I am enjoying pvp, and having fun. I do wish there was a co-op feature, mainly for the addedd social benefits and fun? But, lets be honest, considering the engine its built on. Someone will prob mod it in, and the network code exists in some fashion. We'll see what happens with the modding community.

As someone who tested the game and kind of worked on it near the tail end of its development, I have a fair share of my own bias. The game is surprisingly better than I first realized, when one of the developers showed up as I was playing the final build, they pointed out there is now a settings menu.

The real appreciation comes from the fact all I knew from the game was the 24fps experience, but once you move it to the 60fps experience, you realize how much that transforms your perspective. How much it affects gameplay and even ambiance, it sets the style and mood so perfectly. This is possibly one of the greatest highlights I can measure.

There are a few number of easter eggs and all of them were enjoyable, some of them were silly. I loved seeing them. The game does have its flaws, and I will criticize it for that, but for its price, and length. As a complete package It slam dunks in both first impressions and overall experience.

I did not play the games it was based off of, but I am vaguely aware, so my appreciation for them isn't particularly spot on. But I do have a love for horror, and while I feel the ambiance of horror could been improved in various ways to tantalize, and gently nudge the player into some mild directions of paranoia. Even without all that, I like the game. Would have bought it myself.

where did 94 hours of my life go, i just sat down for a quick second.

Game is good. What year is it?

I have not completed this game, and I do not think I will, I recommend the game, because if it is what you want, it is there. But if you want to know why I won't complete it, continue to read on.

The game does a fantastic job of encapsulating the soulslike experience in terms of.. bosses, with a few.. egregious exceptions. There is always a boss that does something that isn't particular, or great. The first bosses are challenging, they're difficult enough to maintain the desire to die, and retry, and keep on going.

Which in my experience is great. Now as the further you get into the game, some of the bosses will have a sin, actually all bosses have a sin, some worst than others, you could say I'm just complaining. You'd be right, I am complaining, but in the same vein, there is still enjoyment to be had.

Some of the arenas are very confining, this is okay some of the times, it can be dealt with, some of the arenas are just to large. I am avoiding spoilers by mentioning anything to specific here. Among the sins, is overwhelming projectiles, and the inability of seeing visual clarity with some attacks. Especially if those attacks share the palate of the environment, which further frustrates seeing them. I don't have any form of color-blindness, but I do suffer from an inability to different some shades of colors from each other in high-tension situations where everything is moving very fast.

Some attacks are hard to see, and very difficult to see coming. Some bosses are very well illustrated and telegraphed, while some feel sloppy, and aren't always so telegraphed. There is a boss I quit upon, after taking care of 4-7 bosses. That has a bunch of attacks, and multiple phases, making the fight tedious. Honestly, I do not want to relive an experience like Sister Frieda from Dark Souls 3. I'm good, I'm done.

I have enough trauma from stuff like that, but again, the game is good, it has some rockiness to it, it's beautiful to look at, sound design, and music is clean. Controls are fluid, and responsive. I have no super big complaint from the mechanical nature of the game.

Most of it comes down to visual clarity, and sloppy telegraphs in certain aspects. I normally wouldn't compare a game to Dark Souls, or the soulslike genre, but seeing as how it's written in the description, and its drawing a clear inspiration from it, I have to make that connection.

I finish this game in the future, but it serves a point of contention that the idea that difficulty is fun, isn't always the same. Horizantal difficult is not the same as vertical difficulty. Horizantal is preferred since its ultimately more mechanical, tho. That is subjective, and ultimately everyone has personal preferences.

If you want to suffer, this game is for you. If you're looking for picture perfect- or better Dark Souls like boss design, try to go in with a grain of salt, and lower your expectation. It is a 2d game, and translating 2d and 3d, effectively, may not come as naturally. But some of its hiccups, turned me off from the game, and for others it might make it thrive, and continue to push for enjoyment.

But this game has made me rage harder than any Souls game I ever played, even bloodborne. Like, I don't know, I feel like less of my deaths are my fault, and usually I feel that is the case in most of those games. I had moments where I healed up and still had HP, but it still decided I died. Many, many times. And its a bug. But it still left me with a lot of frustration.

I'll prob just wait for Elden Ring, not that I'm super excited for that yet, since I want gameplay. :P But, All in all, I'll just say Eldest Souls, tries really hard to do exactly what it wanted to do best. And it hits the mark, but in someways the game could use some TLC, for visual clarity, and situations that overwhelm the player through visual, or cognitive overstimulation. (to many projectiles/things going on at once. Thus making it hard to play through blind information, as well discerning information cleanly in the midst of a fight.)

Still, A lot of bosses Ir eally liked. Bot Multiple boss fights sequentially, I'm just scarred thanks to From Software and Sister Frieda, my mental health takes critical hits. >.>

This game is plain good. I avoided it like the plague, thought it was all hype, and trash. Turns out it's really good, real fun, the pacing is fantastic. The game does have some negatives. It poorly explains some of its mechanics and functions, but quite honestly it's gameplay loop is addicting and very fun.

I've played it for 17+ hours to this point and plan for more.

As a summarized rating, I'd rate the game about average from a ten scoring system, it has nice retro 8bit snes style aesthetic, and the co-op for me saved it a lot. Affordability helps for terms of it's cost, lowering expectation. It's score 6, but I expect that to go up if the game is polished in terms of enemy balance ( Mushroom enemies) But if you're a fan of roguelikes, and looking for something to play, and have money to spend. I'd have bought it.

This game is cute, it has a nice aesthetic, but it isn't all great. The sound design could use more love, but for its price it's actually quite good. I'd especially recommend it, to play with a friend, especially using "Remote Play Together" with steam. I had a decent time. Although I admit, my attention span does not stick to things well, I got a few hours of enjoyment from it.

It plays more like a traditional roguelike, with class unlocks available to you as you progress further into the game. There is cosmetics that appear much the same under various conditions, the length of the game overall isn't very long, the controls are a little strange at first. But the experience for me was best played on a controller.

The camera is a bit weird and takes some getting used to when starting the game in multiplayer, and there is definitely same balancing and QoL adjustments I think that can be made to the game in terms of accessibility. Some enemies are a bit to difficult for me to handle, and maybe that was just my experience. It is pretty easy to get strong, but with my playstyle, being slow-paced, and careful movement. It was still pretty easy to die, if I made a heinous mistake, or got to cocky.

Still, I liked the game enough to play it for 2 hours, however I also received the key for free, streamed it, reviewed it essentially. I was actually looking to buy the game anyway, but I got lucky with an opportunity to try it out, and experience it.

I love it, also want a badge.