Recent reviews by Syndralix

Okay, yes, the rumors are true: this game will suck you in and never let go if you give it the chance. You want to spend thousands of hours on a game? This one's a solid pick. That being said, let me temper your expectations so you know what you're getting yourself into.

Firstly, there's a free trial. You may have seen memes about it. It really does let you play as long as you want (up to level 70, as of this writing). Go play that first, so you can see if the game is your cup of tea. If you like it, you can pick up your subscription at any time. If not, no money wasted!

The presentation of the world (including, but not limited to, the main story) very much hearkens back to old-school Final Fantasy, for better or for worse. You may love it, or you may hate it, but you need to get through it regardless before you can run those high-level raids you may be clamoring for. Me, I love an engaging story, and this one checks my boxes - especially when it picks up leading into Heavensward. But hardcore content being story-locked is the biggest point of contention for getting into this game.

So here's my advice: treat it like a single-player mainline Final Fantasy to start with. You'll customize your avatar and pick a job at the start, of course, but you don't actually NEED to interact with other people to progress. Every dungeon required by the main story allows you to bring NPCs to fill in for other party members. (You can, of course, queue up to run the dungeons with other real players, but you might be waiting a while - especially if you rolled a DPS job.)

Long story short? It's not any old MMORPG. It's Final Fantasy. Take your time. Smell the roses. The raids aren't going anywhere.

It's funny how I took this long to jump on the Hades train. This game and I are a perfect match. Oh well, hindsight is 20/20.

For the purpose of being as helpful as possible, I'm going to put my criticism first. Even with the wide variety of weapons and aspects to choose from, the combat loop does get fairly repetitive after a point. There's a LOT of grinding to do, which may wear on the nerves once you figure out how to clear a run consistently. The voice acting is merely so-so 90% of the time. And the fishing minigame is the same one that it seems like EVERY non-fishing game uses: wait for the bobber to splash, then react as quickly as possible to reel the fish in. None of these make a bad game, of course - in my opinion, they're all small nitpicks compared to the good stuff that Hades has on offer.

The strongest element on display in a run is strategy. From before the run begins, to every chamber up until the final boss, you are constantly making decisions about the next step of your power growth. Should you prioritize raw damage or debuffs? Is max health worth more than some permanent currency? Should you take the easy room for a small boost, or the hard room for a large boost? Can you afford some HP loss and a debuff for a potentially game-breaking powerup in the near future? All of these and more are questions you will ask yourself constantly throughout each and every run. It's wildly experimental at first, but with maturing experience and personal preference you should eventually figure out the stuff that works best.

The really genius part of this is how the game gives you incentives to try everything at least once: the Dark Thirst mechanic gives you a bonus to permanent currency for using whichever weapon it's attached to, and Prophecies reward you for reaching certain in-game milestones such as "use every boon that Zeus can offer" or "reach the final boss with such-and-such weapon aspect." I found lots of fun and unexpectedly strong combinations just from doing those things. No two runs are completely identical, and much of the fun in Hades comes from embracing the chaos.

Beyond that, this game is just OOZING with style and personality. With a clever combination of 3D character models and 2D environment art, the game pulls off a flawless isometric style which isn't too stressful on modern systems. Everything on display here looks really good, but the real stars of the show are the character portraits. Even if they're only on screen for a few seconds during dialogue, these portraits are so detailed and charismatic that they're almost lifelike. The main character Zagreus, in particular, has a few different portraits depending on his mood as he speaks. It's a small detail in the grand scheme of things, but I find it charming nonetheless.

As for the story, it's not overly complicated: Zagreus wants to escape from the underworld, and he has to fight through his father Hades's forces in order to do so. Individual character motivations make things more interesting than what's on the surface, but what really makes this one something special is how it's tied to the gameplay. Hades is a roguelike (roguelite if we're being technical), so you're going to die a lot. But rather than being a hard reset, each death advances the story a little bit. The fact that you're dying repeatedly is no secret to anyone back at home. The characters there will often have something new to say about your situation, offering advice or encouragement. You'll even get the chance to open up some character-specific plotlines and sidequests once you interact with everyone enough. For me personally, this actually went a LONG way in keeping things from getting frustrating early on - death moves you forward, and in a meaningful way to boot.

I could go on, but I think those are the main points to cover. Hades is top-notch, and I can't recommend it enough.

Just what I needed for my mashups!

COMING SOON: We Are Number 1.0

I have no nostalgia for Mega Man, but this game is REALLY fun and addicting. There is a brief tutorial, but the game as a whole is a very "pick-up-and-play", "learn-as-you-go" kind of deal. The presentation is intuitive, the controls feel good, and the difficulty level is just a touch easier than the average rougelike.

The art and animation do their jobs just fine, but the overall aesthetic of the game reminds me of Flash a lot. Whether that's a problem or not depends on taste. Also, being a rougelike, there's a chance that you'll get a level layout which completely screws you over if you don't have the right platforming abilities. It's part of the rougelike package - you either deal with it or see yourself out the door.

IN SUMMARY: If Mighty No. 9 disappointed you, 20XX might just cheer you up again.

THE SHORT VERSION: It's good and you should buy it if old-school FPS games are your jam.

THE LONG VERSION: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5sLJcYiVik

I was on the fence about this game for a while. I liked Pandemic, but I didn't know if I was willing to shell out $15 for a premium spiritual successor. Then I found JackSepticEye playing it on YouTube, and I realized this thing was a lot bigger and better than I gave it credit for. Several infectious apocalypses later, I'd say I got my money's worth.

This is a strategy game where you play as a disease with the singular goal of wiping out humanity. Your first plague is a bacteria, and if you've played Pandemic the mechanics are identical. But as you win with each infection agent on Normal or higher, you unlock more stuff to play with. From viruses which mutate new symptoms rapidly, to neurax worms that can attack specific countries regardless of barriers, and even a plague that lets you start the zombie apocalypse (!), it's safe to say there's plenty of variety. You can tweak the gameplay even further with unlockable perks and special scenarios.

My only serious gripe with the game is that there's plenty of waiting to do while you wait for your disease to infect or kill everyone. The fast-forward function alleviates this, but I wish it went faster. Impatient button-mashers stay away - this is a thinking man's game.

Once upon a time, I would have recommended this game in a heartbeat. Back in the day, it was a challenging, fast-paced action RPG which encouraged you to push your skills to the limit. This game did not pull its punches, and you had to pay attention and play intelligently in order to overcome the challenges set before you. You had to consider gear to upgrade, skills to level up, items to bring into battle, all that jazz. It was a GAME, man. My Steam profile says 118 hours played, but I probably logged THOUSANDS of hours in this game before it migrated to Steam, and those hours were justified because this game was AWESOME. Sure, it suffered the usual free-to-play trappings of the time (wherein systems were built to incentivize paying real money for certain items to make life easier, especially on the upgrade side of things) but I could look past that because I was having fun.

Now, though? Now, Vindictus is a brainless slog. The vast majority of early- to mid-game content has been nerfed into the ground, which appeals to precisely the kind of person Nexon wants to attract: not a *gamer,* but a *customer*. Somebody who wants an easy time throwing monsters around, and is probably gullible enough to get sucked into the pay-and-grind treadmill that's been set up here. Progression has also been sped up to a breakneck pace, so that new players can get to "the fun stuff" faster. But there is SO MUCH to slog through that you're still HOURS away from "the fun stuff" if you're starting from square one, and that many hours of NOT "fun stuff" is gonna leave you feeling numb pretty fast. This is the sort of thing that usually happens with F2P games which go on for years and years of patches and updates to the point of critical-mass feature bloat, so to see it happen here is tragically unsurprising.

So, to conclude: Vindictus in 2022 is not worth your time. If you want to play something resembling what this game used to be, check out Monster Hunter World instead.

Skyrim is a lot more awesome than the game I expected it to be.

If you played Oblivion, Skyrim takes quite a bit more time to get used to, but it pays off in the long run. This is because it's more like a hybrid of Morrowind and Fallout 3/New Vegas. To egregiously over-simplify it, you gotta work harder to get the same results as in Oblivion. But that just makes the rewards all the sweeter.

Obviously, the main draw of Skyrim is becoming a one-man dragon genocide machine! But the real beauty of this game is that there's so much more to do besides that. For example, you can craft your own weapons and armor, stick fancy enchantments on your gear, buy and decorate a house, ride a horse through the beautiful snowy countryside, or rob entire cities blind - whatever your heart desires, really.

Is it a perfect game? No. There are bugs here and there, and spikes in the difficulty curve will make you scream at the unfairness sometimes. But it's still a game well worth sinking your teeth into.