Recent reviews by Googily

On the surface, Half Sword is a medieval-style combat simulator, with many types of historically accurate weapons and armor to play around with. On paper and in plenty of promotional videos, the player can engage in fun, gruesome fights against NPCs and practice using interesting weapons in interesting ways, slowly mastering the game over time.

In practice, this game is an utter mess.

Once you get past the stage where you are unable to do anything but imitate a drunken homeless man, the "mastery" of weapons doesn't get you much further. With all weapons being controlled by the mouse, there is no way of precisely moving your sword or axe or mace in any way. For example:

What you try to do: swing your sword at an enemy's head
What actually happens: you swing a foot over their forehead, exposing your entire body to their next attack

What you try to do: engage a specific guard to block the enemy's attack
What actually happens: wobble your weapon in front of you limply, and have it knocked away from the slightest touch

What you try to do: hit a close enemy by keeping your arms close to your torso
What actually happens: weakly flop your wrists into their armor, bruising your arms and dropping your weapon

What you try to do: use a long weapon to keep distance from an enemy and hit them harder with momentum in your swings
What actually happens: you swing so hard you let go of your own weapon, and your swing stops halfway

What you try to do: back off from an enemy and recover from a slight injury
What actually happens: instantly collapse from stubbing your toe on a pebble and lay unmoving for several seconds, allowing your enemy to strike you multiple times

What you try to do: use a single-handed weapon in close range to cut your enemy many times
What actually happens: your sharp, bladed piece of steel bounces off of nothing and does no damage

What you try to do: grab a weapon on the ground to arm yourself
What actually happens: you trip over your own hand, clip the weapon into your leg and cut off your foot, and knock yourself out on the ground

Additionally here are some bugs still not fixed after years of known issues: weapons clipping into your body, corpse spinning, incorrect grab targeting, crashes during regular gameplay, weapons bouncing off of clothing, armor plates lacking gaps, letting go of your weapon while swinging, etc.

The developers have been working on this game for years, and the progress they've shown gives me 0 hope that this game will be anything close to what they are promising. I've tried again and again to give this game a chance every update, but the results of their work have felt like nothing but a joke from the start.

Very well designed, each fight felt interesting and unique in its own way. I was pleasantly surprised by the overall progression design. Every time I reached the end of what I could upgrade, it was still difficult to beat the next boss. Very well balanced!

A very fun, very relatable game. I always look forward to what the devs have in store with each update. Despite some players' expectations not being reached (honestly, some of them are very unrealistic/unfair) I think the devs have a very good idea of what they want to make, and are accomplishing that well.

Overall, it has been a lot of fun playing this game. While I can't say it's perfect, I think the devs mostly have their heads in the right place, and that matters a lot.

No expiration date on warbonds with easily obtainable premium currency, a huge ever-expanding selection of weapons to play with, and a very active dev team make for a game that is fun now and likely to still be fun in the future.

As somebody who has horrible aim and reaction time, this is the most fun I've ever had in an FPS. Since the game is PvE and the enemies are so large, it lets me focus on positioning and teamwork - things that I'm actually good at - far more than how well I can point and click a moving target. Not to say that good FPS skills aren't helpful (they definitely are), but I don't think they're as sorely needed as in other games. Thank you GSG for making a wonderful game.

I've tried several times to understand why this game would be enjoyable, and I've given up at this point. If you like exploration, you will find nothing but randomly generated planets with a few dozen randomly-generated plants, animals, and rocks. If you like narrative, you can explore a confusing story that leads you on meaningless paths that would be as exciting to follow as reading a Wikipedia article. If you like progression, you may be in luck, as the game offers many ways to upgrade your ship, suit, and multitool so you can do nothing faster.

In short: the whole game can be experienced by watching the trailers a few times.

If you like paying $60 for ASMR and some desktop wallpapers, then ignore everything I've said above.

Honestly, I think Rain World is a fascinating game, and I will honestly probably be buying the DLC at some point later. The developer's idea of creating a living, breathing world that the player exists within is a fascinating concept and I think they performed excellently.

EXCEPT

The main story. There are specific places in the world that the main story forces you to cross, and the way they have been designed completely contradicts the design philosophy of the rest of the game. These regions are 99% linear, so there is no motive to explore them as there is nothing to find but a two-way track and some vistas to look at and screenshot. These regions have no ecosystem, as everything in the environment exists only to kill you. The food you can harvest is only there to make sure players don't get soft locked, which happens anyways because of the level design. I have died dozens of times in the exact same places that I am unable to leave from and no longer find any part of this game enjoyable. The lore and intrigue that exists in this game is all but gone, and I have basically googled everything there is to find out because I have no desire to torture myself to find it, so the story has been utterly ruined since I am now unable to learn it myself the way it was intended.

If you want to explore the 60-80% of this game that is actually fun and interesting, please be my guest. If you want to find the story of this game through playing it, or if you are the kind of person that likes to explore 100% of games, or if you hate having to look things up, please DO NOT BUY THIS GAME.

One of the best games in my entire library, I cannot recommend this enough to anybody who is a fan of games similar to this. Absolute masterpiece.

If you enjoyed the base game then you will absolutely enjoy this DLC. Everything that I loved in the original: the mystery, the majesty, the horror, etc. was all present here. Absolutely worth my money and time

Definitely a very fun, creative, and relaxing game. If you like the creative building aspect of games like Minecraft, I think you'll like this game too.