Recent reviews by Psychotronics

I've been a Civ player since Civilization III. This is, hands down, my favorite series in gaming. Civilization VII, in its current state, is the worst Civ game I've ever played (for reference, I have also played V and VI when they launched).
A persistent problem in the Civilization series is the late game. If you know how to play the game, you get to a state where you know you'll win a few eras before the game ends, which makes the late game boring as you're just waiting for your win condition to trigger (or, if you're going for a domination victory, just pushing through the A.I.'s defenses as it is incapable of offering meaningful resistance to a decent human player). But this is a case where the cure is worse than the disease.
The eras system isn't fun. It tries to reset the board to a more neutral state, which, in theory, would make it easier for lagging players to catch up to whoever's leading. The problem is, it makes the game feel disjointed. Civ VII presents objectives for you to pursue on each era, which give you bonuses on the next one. But they aren't strongly connected: the wonders you build for your cultural objectives in the first era and the relics you get on the second one do not contribute towards a cultural victory on the third era. The goals they present are also frequently not fun to pursue. To get an economic victory, you just build railroads and factories in a bunch of cities, slot a few resources and wait until they generate enough points for you to get a unit which you need to take on a tour around other players' capitals. I'm bored just writing about it.
I'm also not a fan of the civ switching mechanic the game is built around. I didn't like it on Humankind and I don't find it any better here. Now, "immersion" is something very subjective, but, to me, something breaks when I see Benjamin Franklin leading Egypt or Napoleon leading the Ming. And, sadly, immersion isn't the only thing lost with that change. Because your picks are era-specific, the game lacks in variety. There are, currently, 21 leaders, but only 10 civilizations per era. With the largest map size (standard) supporting 8 players, you'll be seeing the same countries over and over and over when playing the game.
Speaking of maps, maps are terribly samey in Civ VII. Before, the game would generate a random map and place players on it based on their picked civilization's starting biases. Now, it generates maps around the players based on their starting biases and then fill the rest.
The worst thing in the game is, easily, the UI. The game simply doesn't give you all the information you need to make choices. I frequently have to go to Reddit or to Civfanatics to ask other players because the Civilopedia is useless.
Finally, this game suffers from another problem the series frequently clashes with: eurocentrism. The Exploration Age is designed in a way that forces you to replicate European colonization of overseas territory (unless you're playing Mongolia), which is a weird design choice. There's nothing inherently wrong with replicating European colonization as a mechanic, I play Paradox games too, but it's not what I'm looking for when I'm playing Civilization. It's also weird that the resources you get in your homelands are always resources avaliable in Asia/Europe, while the distant lands you unlock in the Exploration Age are resources associated with the Americas, like Cocoa and Sugar (which was introduced here by the European colonisers, but let's skip over the history lesson).
I'm sure this game, as all the games in the series, will benefit a lot from its development cycle. Civ VII is bad now, but that doesn't mean it will always be bad. I am still sure it'll be my least favorite Civ: you can't take the ages system/Civ switching out of the game and I don't think I'll ever like it.

Blasphemous 2 é um jogo muito bom, mas não atinge o mesmo patamar de qualidade que o primeiro jogo. Muitos aspectos da jogabilidade foram melhorados: os movimentos são mais fluidos, você tem mais armas que abrem mais possibilidades dentro do combate, especialmente com as combinações variadas que dá pra fazer com as peças do seu altar. Mas ele deixa a desejar em áreas que tornaram o primeiro jogo especial.
Em particular, a arte está bem abaixo do patamar do primeiro jogo. As cutscenes em pixel art foram substituídas por uma animação meio anime, que não têm o mesmo charme. No geral, o jogo não consegue recriar a atmosfera do primeiro. O mapa é bem maior, mas as áreas no geral não conseguem se conectar tão fortemente com os chefões que contém. Por exemplo: a primeira área que eu explorei direito foi o Palácio das Bordadeiras. A área é coberta de teias feitas de fio de ouro, inclusive com pessoas presas em casulo. Mas quando você chega na chefe da área, ela não tem nada que remeta a um aracnídeo, é só uma espadachim.
Os chefões, aliás, são a pior parte do jogo. Além de serem muito mais fáceis do que no primeiro jogo (já que, no começo, precisam ser possíveis de vencer com qualquer uma das três armas), eles não são tão icônicos. Enquanto no primeiro jogo os chefões, quase todos, gigantescos, com designs muito diferentes entre si, em Blasphemous 2 a maior parte dos chefões são penitentes com mais ou menos o seu tamanho. Por terem, todos eles, um design baseado no penitente, eles são meio parecidos, fáceis de esquecer.
Por fim, esse jogo é muito mais explícito com o lore. Enquanto no primeiro jogo você tem que ir juntando informações que são dadas em itens diferentes, este jogo te dá histórias mais completas em cada item. Isso tira um pouco do mistério do jogo.
Eu ainda recomendo o jogo, eu me diverti bastante jogando e pra um fã do Blasphemous original é imperdível. Mas, se você está esperando algo tão bom quanto ou melhor que o primeiro jogo, se prepare pare uma decepção.

Some games make me wish I could neither recommend nor not recommend a game. Football Drama is a mixed bag. It has a certain charisma, mostly due to its characters being good concepts that reflect well the real world of football, but this charisma can wear thin when some conversations are repeated at the end of the week in exactly the same way. The gameplay can get quite boring, with a feeling of lack of control over the match and tactics that don't seem to impact your performance. Not only that, it is shallow: you can't hire new players or change the positions they play in (in fact, the game doesn't get into the players at all), you can only change your formation when you randomly get cards, you can only scream from the sidelines and hope your team will listen.
If I'm being honest, this game has more bad things than good things. So why am I recommending it? Well, with all its flaws, it's a game that has a soul. The devs had a very unique idea and they went for it, and that's something that counts to me, that the studio wants to make new and interesting games. If you're the kind of person who likes to try new things and rewards idiosyncrasy, go ahead and give it a try. If you want value for your money, though, wait for a sale.

This is a very interesting game. The setting is very well executed. The characters are very fun, with strong personalities and interesting designs. The first mini-game is quite boring, but the bartending parts are very cool. I really have only one problem with it: it needed more. The game is quite short, I finished it in around two hours. The ending came quite abruptly. Everything seemed bigger than it is, so I was quite surprise when a cutscene turned out to be the end of the game. Now, this is an indie game, so being short is understandable, the team probably doesn't have the resources to make it more than it is. But the story needed to be better paced, to give a sense of progression tied to how long it is.
Still, though, it's very enjoyable and, most importantly, very original. I always welcome games that try to do things different from other games, and this one surely did.

I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hate this game. Never before has a videogame made me so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ miserable. It's an unfair piece of crap that takes away your agency by placing your survival on the hands of RNG ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that's clearly rigged to favour the enemies. I have a tattoo of it and keep coming back for more.

Almost everything about this game is great. The setting is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awesome. It's not just based on Lovecraft's work, it really gets it. The writers were able to perfectly translate the themes covered in his writing into the game, weaving it seamlessly with the mechanics. Due to the RNG based mechanics, no matter how good you get, no matter how prepared you are, no matter how well rounded your party is, things still can, and do, go wrong. You lose characters through no fault of your own. You are not in control. And while this may sound like a fault to some, isn't that what Lovecraft is all about? This is not to say, however, that you are at the complete mercy of the game. As you play, you will learn which party compositions are more effective, you will learn which characters are better suited for each situation, you will learn what's the best course of action for each battle. You can minimise the consequences of the RNG, its presence jusr guarantess that you are never perfectly safe.
The art is simply perfect. I even, as I said, got a tattoo of it (the Occultist, in case you're wondering). I remember the first time I entered the Warrens, and how I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hated these pigs the moment I laid eyes on them. They are disgusting, abominations that could only be brought to this world by a mind twisted with the desire of power. It's very visceral, and it couples brilliantly with the writing.
The sound, of course, doesn't lag behind. First thing I need to mention is Wayne June. Everything that comes out of the narrator's mouth is pure gold. He has a deep, raspy voice that creates a sense of gravitas. You will find yourself not just saying his lines with him, but remembering them during your day. A lot of the sound effects are great at conveying what the attacks do. And the music, despite not calling attention to itself, is very atmospheric.
The problems are mostly in the DLC. While the Crimson Court brought about amazing enemies and a very interesting interpretation of vampires, it gets very annoying to see all dungeons overrun with bloody mosquitoes. The Crimson Curse further takes away your agency, and the benefits it gives are not enough to make it worthwhile having a cursed hero. The Shiledbreaker, while a nice character, brought stealth as a mechanic, and I felt it didn't match well with the rest of the game. Her restrictions on camping also make her a character with limited use.
In summary, Darkest Dungeon is a great game. It's absolutely worth playing, easily one of my favorite games ever. It shows how strong the indie gaming scene is, and how a small team can bring about absolutely fantastic works.

Doki Doki Literature Club is a very interesting game. I am not a fan of dating sims, in fact, the only other one I have ever played is Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator, which is also somewhat a deconstruction of the genre.
I already knew that Monika was aware that she is a character in a videogame, but that didn't affect my enjoyment of the game since I don't value the element of surprise that much. Rather, I value how things are built up during the narrative. And Doki Doki does a very good job at that. I first noticed Sayori had more to her than she lets on when attempting to impress Yuri, I picked the word "depression" when writing my poem, instead pleasing Sayori. It felt very organic to me, and made her actions later on Act 1 seem that much more natural.
Act 2 interested me a bit less. I liked the beginning, with your saves being deleted and Sayori not being present. Initially, I expected this to represent how death is permanent, and was surprised to see that the game had "reseted" but without her, as if she had never existed at all. But the way the plot develops, for some reason, didn't hit me as hard. Yuri's slow descent into madness and Monika's increasing obsessiveness were well executed, but the use of glitch aesthetics to represent the game being increasingly broken by Monika's actions, despite being coherent with the plot, felt a little cliché to me, having been used by other metanarrative games before. Way more interesting to me were the blending of other types of animation to create very creepy visuals, such as realistic eyes of mouths being imposed on the two-dimensional characters. This reminds me of the cartoon "Courage, the cowardly dog", which used similar techniques very effectively, and I feel this effect could have been more used instead. This is, of course, my personal preference, and I'm pretty sure many players were very satisfied by these aesthetic effects.
The true ending is fantastic. I absolutely should have seen it coming, but I didn't. It drives the point that Monika, despite being the antagonist, is not the villain. Instead, the true villains are the people who created the game. The "evil" is in the game itself, and thus the deletion of her character will only thrust a different character, a character many players will be emotionally connected to, into the same deranged path. The Literature Club is truly a place where no happiness can be found.

The writing is terrible. It feels like the author got the general direction of social commentary in the cyberpunk genre and tried to replicate without really thinking about it, so it's all terribly heavy-handed. As far as I played, there was a general lacking of "show, don't tell". So much poorly written expositive dialogue.

The writing is terrible. Pseudo-deep nihilism, shallows angst, a (purposefully) disjointed narrative that is just not rewarding to advance through.
Still, great art, fantastic ambience, excelent music. If you're willing to ignore the story and play just for the visuals, it's worth it.

I absolutely loved the first half of this game. It got me right at the beggining: I hadn't read much about it, just a short review in a "best indie games of 2016" list. I expected the protagonist to be silent, without any personality, one of those characters you project yourself on. Of course, that's absolutely not the case. The game gives you small choices on your life before the actual game, not meaningful in the sense of having any impact on story or gameplay, but they get you emotionally invested on your character.
The voice actors are amazing. Dellilah is delightful, I was frustrated that my character didn't want to talk to her on our first conversation and so I couldn't keep it going any longer. Henry didn't catch my attention as much until later in the game, but I won't tell what did it in order not to spoil.
There's not much in way of gameplay. There are no enemies, no health bar, no ways to die, you just walk around, but it's not an exploration game either, there's not much to see besides what is connected to the story and the invisible boundaries can be really annoying sometimes. This is not, however, a problem. Not at all. Firewatch is much like an interactive movie, you're just bringing your character where it needs to be for the story.
Now, what I didn't really like about this game is the solution to the mystery. I get what the authors were trying to do, but it felt underwhelming. The explanation was a bit convoluted for me, I didn't really buy the reasons for what happened to have happened. I also felt it lacked closure. Some people may like this about the game, in this sense, it's much like real life, but I think if that's what they aimed to do there was no reason for the whole mystery thing, I'd be more than happy to be just Henry, doing some chores around the park, trying to deal with my past and developing a relantionship with Dellilah.
Now, of course, it's important to talk about the lack of choices in this game. I have absolutely no problem with it being an interactive movie, but if that's so, I needed to have a lest a few choices on what'll happen. No mater what you say, your relationship to Dellilah will be the same. You'll go to the same places, find the same clues, have the same problems. And if falls short on that. Having such wonderful voice actors, why couldn't they focus more on the characters, let your decisions affect, if not what happens, how they react to it?
Though most of the reviews are very positive, I don't think this is a game for everyone. I think it has very clear problems and, depending how much they bother you, your experience won't be pleasant. Everything I love about it is in the first three hours, but this was enough to make my experience worthwhile. Still, don't pay the full price, wait for a promotion.

This and Poland should've been a single DLC. Damn, it should at least have come with an alternate leader for Norway.