Recent reviews by Naphtha

Its sad to see this get pushed out when it really isnt finished. The early access label at least gave me hope

Its so sad this was abandoned because its a genuinely beautiful game, a lot of effort has already been put in and if you really like the look of it then it might be worth your time. But its unfinished at its core, theres polish missing and a lot of stuff that was promised never materialised. This is THE Junji Ito style game and its so sad to watch it rot, I would have thrown money at this game to watch it be completed but thats not the reality we live in. The horror was the expectations we made along the way

Bought this game off the website from the get go, its an incredible sim and you can spend hours just smashing your head against a rock trying to make something work. A lot of fun 10/10

Really disappointing ending to a series I adored, it had some good moments and I think people are a little overly critical of portions of it but overall it isnt good. Its maybe worth playing, but absolutely not at the current price. Its overly edgy, short, doesnt develop characters nearly as much and the dev seems to know about these problems based on his discord announcements but doesnt care. I hope the anime isnt like this, because god I will be sad

Buy both, you will want to play both

I played this blasted off percs and dont remember it that well, I enjoyed it I think though

Had to come back because this had one of the worst endings and ending sequences to a game I have ever played in my entire life, made me genuinely wonder if I had brain damage.

Tbh I actually wanted to leave a positive review but I feel like the rating is way too high for this currently. Its a decent game, the atmosphere and world building is good, but the gameplay can fall flat.

The idea of having the squad be loosely controlled is fun in theory but can be incredibly frustrating if the AI makes poor choices, sometimes coming off as a halfbaked xcom rather than a fully priced game. It makes up for this with the real time combat being tense and somewhat scary in portions but the stealth mechanics are awful to work around and mandatory which almost counterbalance this completely. The consequence for failing the stealth isn't a cool fight, its usually a reload, the game keeps your resources scarce to make your combat feel important but this just leads to you being unable to handle substantial threats beyond essential encounters. I had times where I would fight my way to resupply at an armoury only to realise I had lost more ammo getting there than the three mags the game would give me. It tries to make up for this by allowing you to leave and redeploy with new marines and supplies whilst keeping progress, you will rarely do this however. Marines take ages to heal, you need to wait a full day to redeploy and there is an enforced timer on completing the game in a certain number of days. Whats meant to be risk reward becomes save scumming awkward stealth being more viable than playing the fun portion of the game.

At a 50% discount the value is there but at full price it feels fairly buggy and also quite repetitive. The xeno AI can be even worse than the marines, the praetorian especially goes from scary stalker to roving schizophrenic pretty quickly. The voice acting for a game like this tends to be low quality but the cut scenes are quite well done, however the in mission lines are INCREDIBLY repetitive due to how many actions you will be making in a real time RTS mixed with low sample numbers.

My biggest complaint comes back to the save scumming. The fact its sold in this tactical strategy form when in actuality you will spend a LOT of time reloading saves due to weird difficulty spikes, random bugs or mission events being INSANE and completely unpredictable isnt fun. Rarely will it feel like your fault that something has gone wrong and more that the game screwed you for minimal reason, you'll always be pressing the "Prepare for this event, its gonna kill you" button in a mission, finding out what it does and then preparing for what you now know is going to happen. Because these range from locking you in a random room, spawning a queen to just mass swarming you from everywhere all of which require VERY different strategies. Imagine opening a door expecting to face the big baddie so you set up all your turrets, then a cut scene plays, your marines walk in and leave all of the gear behind and it catches fire so you're fighting 300 runners alone.

Honestly there's a lot more small complaints I could make but if you're willing to put up with its clunky nature the experience is worth it at a discount.

Go ♥♥♥♥ yourself sony

I wish there was a neutral option because this game isn't BAD, it just feels very unfinished which is awful with all the potential it has. It still has a fair bit of content but you will find yourself bumping into things that were clearly never completed

Play this game with a couple drinks and invest yourself because its honestly a beautiful experience worth every last cent