Recent reviews by yverthel

I have no real connection to Castlevania outside of what I have absorbed through pop-cultural osmosis. I suspect that I'm missing some references and some of the secret hints would be easier if I were more aware of Castlevania and it's lore.

That doesn't matter though. Strictly from the standpoint of Vampire Survivors content, this DLC is an absolute steal. There is so much content packed in here. In the patch notes, Poncle pleaded with people not to try to 'ironman' all the unlocks, and I kinda thought they were kidding. They weren't. There are *so many* things to unlock, tons of new playable characters, a positively massive map, more secrets than you can shake a kobold at, more of the broken gameplay you love, and more of the signature nonsensical humor that you've come to expect from Vampire Survivors.

You should buy this DLC.

A mediocre semi-idler with poor quality AI generated "art", extremely slow progression, and massively overpriced microtransactions to speed up progression and reduce how active you have to be- sure you can eventually get them all without spending money, if you want to play for months at a painstakingly slow rate.

There's a lot of better idlers out there, so I would recommend playing one of them instead of this one.

This game isn't for me.
It's a light weight little time waster in a more classic almost arcade game feel.

For me, personally, luck is a little too important a part in how long you last (certain upgrades are vastly superior to others), and I'm not much one for just pushing to see how far I can get. If it had a meta progression system where you could have persistent upgrades? I'd probably play it for entirely too many hours.

So if you like the idea of a classic arcade-adjacent time waster, by all means give this a go.

If you've ever played one of the other monster catching games and thought "man, it would be nice if I could give this cute little guy a machine gun" or "what if I could run a sweatshop with these guys?" then Palworld is the game for you.

While still in early access, it's more stable than some bigger name games have been at launch... or still are 12 years after they released. >.> It's got plenty to do, and you can fine-tune your game world settings (if you're playing single player) to suit the experience you want. Depending on your play style, you can easily get 50, to 150+ hours of enjoyment out of this game before feeling like you have nothing left to do- far higher if you want to get really in to base building.

Base building is still a little janky, and worker management needs some love, but over all, I think it's a solid game with a ton of potential. I say it's well worth the asking price, even if you're not normally one for survival/crafting games.

As an added bonus, the modding community has taken almost as much of a shine to Palworld as it does to Bethesda games, and are creating a variety of mods including visual updates, quality of life improvements, and even some that alter the core game experience.

First of all, the translation is buggy and plenty of things still show up in Chinese despite my language being set to English, and I know it's not just incomplete because sometimes they show up in English, sometimes they show up in Chinese. I found myself having to use Google lens to actually be able to read things several times.

On top of that, in less that two hours I've had the game just randomly bug out and prevent me from playing until I closed and relaunched it.

Outside of those issues, it seems like a neat little deckbuilder with some cool concepts, it's got a lot of potential, but it needs some serious polish to make it worth playing, IMO.

This game is fun enough for a while, I suppose. Unfortunately it gets really old after a while.

So this is basically Slay the Spire meet Peggle. Instead of a deck of cards, you have special balls that behave in unique ways. Neat conceptually, unfortunately there's really almost no variance. A few of the orbs and relics can really influence the way you play, but most of them really don't. You're supposed to be able to unlock other characters with unique abilities, but the unlock requirements seem virtually impossible to achieve through anything but sheer dumb luck.

Speaking of luck? There are so many luck factors to this game that you basically can't plan for anything. Just pray that RNGesus is kind to you... in your map layout, the orbs you're offered, the relics you're offered, the enemies you face, the bosses you get, the order your orbs are dealt, the way your orbs bounce...

It gets just straight up frustrating at times, especially when you have a really good run, right up until the last boss and you're even doing good on that boss which you've never beaten before... then the game just decides that... you're done.

On top of that, I don't feel there's enough content to warrant the price tag. At full price the game feels incomplete. I say wait for at least 50% off.

*edit to add:
I finally managed to complete the objectives to unlock the other 3 playable characters, two of whom don't really seem any different than the base one except you're more restricted. The third, I can't tell you because the game decided not to register me winning a battle with over 100 Ballwark, which took me forever to achieve because of how many times the game was just like "LOL, no Ballwark generation for you."

At this point, I've uninstalled the game, and have no intention of ever going back to it. I'd rather just roll a d6 and declare that I win if I roll 3 6s in a row. Less frustrating use of my time.

A decent entry into the subgenre with potential to be an amazing entry later.

It has a satisfying gameplay loop, more of a story than most entries have, and a decent amount of personality. It lives up to the 'Pathfinder' name fairly well, in my opinion.

There is plenty to grind for, and a lot of meta progression to advance.

Currently both the playable characters and the weapon/upgrade assortment is a little lackluster, so I'm hoping there's more to come in that department.

I would love to see an update offering multiplayer as well, it would definitely fit thematically.

A solid entry into the subgenre.

At a glance this looks like Yet Another Vampire Survivors clone, but it has enough differences to make it stand up on it's own. There are currently a total of three types of meta progression:
Every 10 achievements either unlocks something or adds a buff to your characters.
A VS-like gold shop where you can purchase a wide variety of upgrades that apply to all your characters.
Each characters also has their own skill tree that you can level up to improve them, while also providing smaller buffs to all the other characters (so you have incentive to play the classes you're not keen on enough to max out their tree, at least).

The different maps offer different styles of play, so it's not just 'play til the time runs out', additionally there's a unique challenge mode available that I've yet to see in any game like this.

There's currently 6 characters available, they have their own sets of skills, but it is worth noting that a lot of the individual skills feel like they've just been reskinned for the different themes- I would like to see a little more variation in the play styles of the different characters.

The developer is also on point and quick to respond to bugs and other issues. I brought up a bug late night late night, the developer replied in the morning, and the bug was fixed in a patch less than 24 hours after I brought it up.

Oh, there's also kitties, so.. GOTY? ;)

TL:DR: It's a middle of the road entry into the genre, that went a little too far in copying Vampire Survivors' homework, IMO.

Once again I find myself wishing Steam had a 'neutral' option for recommendation. This has aspects I like and aspects I don't. I play a lot of entries in the genre and really enjoy it, so I'll keep playing it. If you're looking for another game to play while waiting for the next updates from several of your favorite entries in the genre, go ahead and give this one a shot, but there are, IMO better entries in the genre if you're just getting started in it.

The pros:
The settlement is a nice way to handle meta progression.
Individual mercs have persistent progression and upgrades that last between missions.
Merc class doesn't define their starting gear.
Enjoyable gameplay loop.

The neutral:
Merc permadeath. It's frustrating to lose a merc you've put so much work in to, but it also creates a nice risk vs. reward push your luck element to the game. Do you play it safe and evac early, or do you try to push it for the next chopper?
Weapon+passive=evolved weapon. The system works, but sometimes it's frustrating to be tied to certain passives. I'm also not sure it fits thematically.

The cons:
Some weapons are just straight garbage
This means some of your mercs are just not going to be good because their starting weapon is Bad.
The enemy spawn patterns are straight up lifted from Vampire Survivors.
Many of the weapons are also straight up lifted from Vampire Survivors. Not just 'oh, this weapon does the same basic thing', but the weapon, the passive it evolve with, and its evolved version are *all* the same.
Only partial controller support.
Really feels like it should have twin-stick controls, but doesn't, rendering some weapons much less viable.

Over all, I'll keep playing it for now and hope that the updates improve things. If they balance some of the weapons better, improve controller support, and maybe make some adjustments so it doesn't feel like they pasted a new theme on Vampire Survivors, I think I could actually recommend it.

I'll be the first to admit. I have a problem. I am borderline addicted to these stupid bullet heaven/reverse bullet hell/garlic-like/whatever else you want to call the games spawned from the popularity of Vampire Survivors. It's a fun, simple, relatively mindless subgenre.

This entry has found it's way in to my favorites of the genre. Lots to unlock, a wide variety of skills to use, characters with unique abilities, and a fast gameplay loop make Soulstone Survivors a game well worth picking up if you, too, crave the dopamine rush of watching thousands of digital creatures get incinerated and shiny little achievement popups telling you that You Did The Thing!

It's got some flaws, but it's also still in active development with a dev team that is responsive to player concerns and is actively trying to make their game better.