Recent reviews by ElDanteDelAnte

Supremely polished VR experience. Loved Russel. Ending was better than I could have hoped for.

The core mechanic of this game is wonderful. If someone couldn't see the map I was using, it would really seem like I'm doing some sort of mystical, very precise cooking. But the map system expresses the concept in an intuitive way that offers a surprising amount of depth when you factor in the variety of ingredients and obstacles that makes it both approachable and challenging. Brilliant design. Top it all off with a lovely art style and satisfying audio/visual "juice" and the game is already worth buying in its present state.

The foundation of the game is rock-solid, but I'm eagerly anticipating the future features. The talent system is currently threadbare, boiling down to profit and visual radius being your only returns. Free daily harvests in the garden is godsend, to be sure, but there's room for much more depth there. A friend has suggested that the Fast Growth or Bountiful Harvest potions could be used to enhance the garden's yield. Using the potions you make for your personal benefit feels beyond what the game is currently going for, but certainly still appropriate. For that matter, perhaps potions of Stone Skin could help you produce minerals in the soil so that you wouldn't have to buy them from the merchant.

All that said, I'm concerned about the direction of the haggling mechanic. The team says they are responding to criticism of it feeling out of place by introducing difficulty levels that give the characters more depth. I'm all for doubling down on the writing of the customers, but generally speaking, a team's response to feedback shouldn't be "we believe in this mechanic." As someone who went from completely misunderstanding the intent to very proficient at it, a rhythm-based system still feels like it clashes with the pace of the game. The tension is nice, but it's the only time where reflexes are the focus. I hope the developers consider a non-rhythm alternative to get the tension they want out of haggling.

The more people play the sooner the next update.

Wears its inspiration on its sleeve, but somehow captures and distills everything that made its source material fun while filtering out all the slog that plagues the genre. Not afraid of tropes and references, but still manages to feel fun and silly rather than tired and cliché. The developer keeps hinting that he put fun before balance, but somehow the balance came out right-side-up anyway.

For a game that doesn't often go out of its way to cement its own identity, the director clearly had his own vision. All his decisions seem to follow the argument "because it would be fun," and never "because it's an RPG."

Cute little program with all the bells and whistles of a game (achievements, Steam cards, and even cheat codes), yet with gameplay all but entirely removed. A nifty little challenge to how we define what a game is.

But if you're more a player than a critic, this is still a really soothing premium screen saver/lava lamp/virtual pet thing.

This game brought me to literal tears. I want to show this game to everyone, yet I feel guilty for wanting to do that. Never have I felt this kind of self-confliction. I feel guilty even just for having played it.

Never before has a shooter made me want to say "I'm so sorry" to the people I'm shooting.