Recent reviews by Autolycus

A pretty decent, though sometimes frustrating, metroidvania that would be right at home on the NES.
It's around 4 hours long, but could probably be at least half that with ideal sequencing. Speedrunners, have fun!
Worth its price, especially if you pick it up on a sale. That said, it comes with a caveat: the game has a bevy of minor issues and some glaringly absent quality of life aspects.

* No Coyote-time
* One (but only one) game crash on a respawn. No progress lost, though
* Some platform inconsistency due to perspectives
* Some platform inconsistency due to outlining/art style
* There is a lot of backtracking, and sometimes it's very tedious. Some levels feel like they were just made to take time to traverse.
* One particularly easy-to-miss entry to a whole section of the game. For me at least, this meant... a whole lot of pointless backtracking.
* Music is quite simple and the loops are on the shorter side. It's not bad, but some tracks get a little tired when coupled with the backtracking.
* More than one instance of taking damage from an enemy hurtbox after it was killed.
* The flies are really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ annoying (but I guess that's the point, huh)

There's an audience for this game but I'm not in it.
I found a lot of the songs to be obnoxious, which is only made worse by the fact that they feel stilted and staccato as you play, even when you're nailing the notes to "exact" timing.
If you'd like to change the view template you play to, you can! But there's no way to see what you've changed it to until you've actually started playing a song. I'd say that isn't a big deal but maybe I would've found at least one template I liked if there had been samples during selection.
Some of the charts are really cool, and the more difficult ones are satisfyingly challenging. The difficulty, however, is all over the place. A song on "Hard" boasting itself as level 6 might be a breeze, compared to an earlier song on "Easy" classed as level 4. It seems arbitrary at best.

This lands for me as a competent rhythm game that just doesn't feel or sound particularly good. I wouldn't say you should steer away from it, but potentially prepare for disappointment if you're looking to pick this up.

Didn't get far before I lost interest, so don't take this review as comprehensive.

What I did observe in my short time is a stock standard Western RPG, for all that might entail.
Combat is a little clunky, and reasonably repetitive. To the point that the first time you unlock new abilities, one of them is literally "the same pattern again, but this time it's on fire!".
Most characters are one-dimensional and oozing machismo. Every time you meet a new one there is a forced ♥♥♥♥ measuring contest, abundant with hammed up, gruff "badass" type voice acting. I don't think these scenes are skippable either, though I'm not certain. In addition, the dialogue itself is awkward at times. Think, "So anyway, how's your sex life", but not quite that bad. At least, not in the first hour or two.
Environments are rife with invisible walls, and are... brown. Very brown. In the second stage there is some dark green, which was a nice change.
The skill tree system doesn't appear to be complex in any regard, but I did note that the early stages were well managed and flexible enough to cater to different play styles. It mitigates the repetition of battle to a degree, but mileage will definitely vary on this one.

In conclusion this appears to be a serviceable but generic RPG. Not offensive, not impressive. Expect a middling experience at best.

This is my game. It was made for me.
This is weaponised 80's and 90's action nostalgia in its most volatile form.
I cannot recommend this enough.

In my opinion, walking simulators need to be very compelling, very quickly. This didn't fit that bill. In my short play time, I got to experience stunning observations such as "This boat is badly damaged. It would be a bad boat to use." The most exciting thing that happened was that I found a hat. I gave up Team Fortress 2 a decade ago.
Couple this with some strange options (game starts in a tiny window, and the resolution and windowing options aren't actually under the "graphics" menu) that made my opening minutes awkward, and I'm just not willing to continue.

Recommended I played with a controller. Plugged in a controller, didn't work. Restarted the game. Worked just enough to continue. Asked me if I wanted to use XBox or PlayStation style prompts. Selected PS. Every prompt after failed to work.
Told me it was going to be a "personal experience", then asked me to choose a body build between "normal", and "husky". No other options.
Tried to then select a gender, and a height. After selecting, it would throw me back a screen to remake a previous selection. This continued, arbitrarily throwing me back after making selections. Never consistent at all.
I literally can't comment on the actual quality of the game, if there even is one. This was annoying enough that I uninstalled, and refunded.

Great concept in an intriguing world. I want to know more about the characters, but because of the way the game plays I don't really get to.
My first and only run took an hour. The first in-game day or two was mostly floundering. Learning what to prioritise and what to ignore, given your limited resources, felt unrewarding, and even frustrating at points. Calling somebody to discover clues is more important than is emphasised, and most of those clues feel arbitrarily doled out. Spending time in conversations to actually read what people are saying advances time in game, meaning you're incentivised to just... skip reading? While trying to piece together a conspiracy? This could be a nightmare for slower readers.
By the time you realise you've made mistakes, you've already sealed your own coffin. If you assign someone a job, they're stuck in it until it's finished. There are confusing elements like having a large amount of "rats" available, but only being able to utilise them a few times before they're taken from you. Near the end of my run, I had an opportunity to point my finger at a mastermind (the goal of the game), but I wanted to be more certain of my choice. When I next went to try, the option had been taken from me.
Despite these gripes, I'm giving this a thumbs up because it really does deserves a look. The issues I've listed aren't problems as such, but part of the difficulty of the game. I personally wasn't compelled to overcome it, but I'm sure many players would embrace those elements and enjoy the challenge.

Pleasant visually, has lovely music, but overall falls a little short. Some of the puzzles are interesting but mostly they're pretty basic. A hint system is included - it requires spending gems that you find by exploring levels - but for me it went unused.
As for those gems, there are achievements for collecting all of them per level. You aren't given a counter, and only find out how many there are, and if you missed any, after completing a level. This was particularly frustrating in a sprawling valley level, with a large maze in one section of it. The extra time I put into finding the ones I did went completely wasted. What made me laugh is that after that I gave up on the gems, yet managed to find them all in the next level without even trying.
Controls are fine but a little wonky, when some puzzles require you to have relatively precise footing. Bafflingly, there is an option to change the camera Y inversion, but not X.
Also missing from the options menu is a way to reduce or remove bloom. I spent the entirety of the second level squinting.
I'd give it a neutral rating if I could. Would probably be a great game for kids of a certain age.

A solid room escape styled puzzler that can be cleared in roughly 6 hours. A couple of sequences were a little [too] light in direction, or had elements that were easy to miss on first pass, but in general they were very cohesive conundrums. The setting is perfect for this sort of game and allows for some gorgeous, elaborate object designs and narrative intrigue.

I don't know if I'd say the game raises the bar for the genre, but it definitely holds it high.

Not worth it.