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TL;DR Combat systems are confusing but the game is well worth your time and money, especially if you miss the Suikoden games.

For those looking for more of what Suikoden once offered, I recommend trying Eiyuden Chronicle but this comes with some pretty big caveats.

Firstly, if you were a fan of Suikoden, you'll feel immediately at home here. As it comes from several of the original creators, you likely won't be surprised that they nailed the feeling of building up a base, recruiting people from across the world, and getting to know all your many, many companions. The political storyline may be somewhat simple but it is still engrossing and the characters drive things forward, even when the overall plot may feel cliche to long-time fans.

Eiyuden Chronicle is also just a gorgeous game. The environments are varied and well detailed with the pixel art character sprites just bursting with characterization. Each recruitable character feels so distinct, an impressive accomplishment considering there are 120 of them and they ride on the back of a franchise with literally hundreds of characters in its time. The music is lively, although a bit more variety in the battle music would have been appreciated. What's there is solid but over the long runtime of the game, you may get sick of the one battle theme for all basic battles. I was already mindlessly humming it to myself after only a couple of hours.

The adherence to what came before is also Eiyuden Chronicle's biggest detriment too though. There are many quality of life improvements to the game, such as allowing plot-required characters to accompany you as non-combatants so you can use the fighting party you like rather than one required of you, but many things that were arguably problems have not been changed. Just like the Suikoden games, Eiyuden Chronicle comes with an extremely long prologue that leads up to the content most people came for. Looking forward to free recruitment and castle building? Expect it to take at least 10 hours to get there.

The primary problem though is the battle systems and how poorly explained (and possibly balanced) they all are. Your standard battles are similar to most JRPGs but you have 6 characters, more than in most games but standard in Suikoden. Battles are turn-based affairs where you choose all of your character's moves at the beginning of each turn and then the full turn plays out based on a visible turn order at the top of the screen. In the early game, characters don't really get any abilities beyond their basic attack, a defensive ability, and a special attack that doesn't feel very special early on. In the first 10 hours, I only had 1 party member that could reasonably use magic spells but the extremely small MP pool meant that after only about 8 heals, she was tapped out until I went back to stay at an inn. Remember you have 6 characters in battle so 8 heals means barely more than 1 healing spell per person and even at this point, 1 basic healing spell didn't even cover half of their HP.

Even later on, magic isn't a reliable option in the fairly long dungeons and boss battles the game throws at you. The 2nd dungeon of the game has 5 save locations spread out across its large maps and the boss battle took my average leveled party over half an hour to beat it. Needless to say, my mage was spent barely 3 rounds into the boss battle and I had to rely on items for the rest of it.

Perhaps the game simply requires more preparation or strategy than I was employing but that's where the obtuseness of the games' systems comes in. Despite having a dedicated Help section of the menu, Eiyuden Chronicle explains almost nothing about its many integrated systems. Each character comes with 8 stats and not once are these stats ever explained. Most are fairly obvious (Power = Physical damage, Magic = magic damage) but some, like Dexterity, could have many different possibilities, such as accuracy, dodge rate, damage with long range weapons, etc. In fact, some of the stats that seem obvious actually aren't as obvious as you may think. Above, I mentioned that Magic relates to your magic damage. You would reasonably assume this means that it impacts the damage caused by magic spells but that's actually wrong. From what the community has determined, spells don't scale with your level. Instead, this stat only has an effect on characters who have an elemental affinity as their basic attack. Things like this should be explained somewhere in the game but it just isn't and it's left to trial and error to figure out what the different systems mean.

On the other hand, some of the Help articles can make the system even more confusing. Early on, you're told that each character has magical affinities so give characters runes that fit their affinity. Not only are you given this information long before you're likely even able to change out anyone's runes, but you aren't ever actually told what any characters' affinity even is. In fact, affinities are hidden so you have to just experiment with different rune configurations for each character to figure these out. This feels so needlessly complicated when they could have just told you up front.

Lastly regarding the main battle system, the balance seems to pendulum wildly in a number of ways. With your 6-person party, you can put 3 characters in the front row and 3 in the back. Each character has a stated range so make sure your close range party members are up front and the long range characters are in the back. Seems simple, right? Unfortunately, the vast majority of characters are mid-range characters and can go anywhere. This may seem freeing but it means that new players who are still learning those hidden stats won't have any training wheels to learn where different characters ought to go.

Still, most will likely assume that your tankiest characters should go up front while the squishy ranged fighters and mages should go in the back so they don't get hit. This is how most games handle things but Eiyuden Chronicle has nearly every enemy able to hit the front or back row as often as they'd like. In every dungeon I've played, my front line fighters are typically fine while my back row rangers die frequently. It would be one thing if the game threw curveballs like this occasionally but this seems to happen everywhere. In fact, one of the most common enemy attacks has the enemy charge through your column, hitting your front and back fighter equally.

The TL;DR with all of this is that the standard combat system seems to assume you have extensive knowledge of JRPGs but also it assumes that you just know about the various nuances unique to its system that it never wants to tell you.

The War and One-On-One systems aren't much better. The only War tutorial you get is how to move units and that stronger units will beat weaker units. How can you tell who's stronger or weaker? I suppose you just guess? One-On-One seems to be a rock-paper-scissors match similar to the Suikoden games except I would find myself taking damage even when I was correctly guessing the opponent's moves. I'd counter his attack and only my health would drop so I'm not confident I understand that system either.

I realize this has been something of a deep dive in the nuance of these systems and it may sound like I'm bashing on the game but I really do recommend it. While my lack of understanding of the systems was frustrating, I was still able to regularly progress through the game and building up your base/recruiting characters is just as much fun as it has ever been. It's unlikely that Suikoden is ever coming back but Eiyuden Chronicle is picking up the mantle and running with it. I simply hope that in a possible sequel, a little more care is shown to these various systems and players are given the information they actually need in order to not feel like they're simply progressing based on luck.

A great narrative-based survival game similar to Subnautica or The Forest but with a backyard, Honey-I-Shrunk-The-Kids theme to it. If you've played one of these games, you know what to expect. Quests guide you through the story while you are encouraged to build up an ever expanding base to give yourself greater mobility and crafting opportunities. Crafting uses materials found from across the yard with higher tier items coming from further and more dangerous areas. The game can be played solo or in multiplayer although I only played it solo and it was mostly fine this way. I rarely felt like the game was stacked against me in such a way that demanded teammates.

If you enjoy that kind of game and are okay with a few flaws, Grounded won't disappoint. The theming is great and the environments are cool to explore. I will say though that the game felt a bit too railroaded at times. Obviously, this is an open environment and you can technically go wherever you want but I would often find that I would wind up exploring in environments that had numerous objects I couldn't access without higher tier items or they would have bugs that would absolutely destroy me with my current gear. When this happened, I would often be faced with a choice to either wander around more or less aimlessly until I found what I needed or consult a guide. I often chose the latter and while I never regretted this choice, I wish the game hadn't pushed me in that direction quite so often.

Part of the reason for this is that certain areas all but require certain objects to explore, such as the BBQ needing some level of sizzle protection to not get killed outright. All too often, these objects can only be obtained at one, specific place, such as the Sandbox in the case of the sizzle protection. To my knowledge, there is no way to get any protection against the heat anywhere other than the Sandbox, despite there being at least 5 different items that grant this protection I can think of off the top of my head. You also will quickly find crafting materials that require you to have a certain tier of tool, such as a tier 2 axe or a tier 3 hammer. There is only one type of each of these tools so if you find yourself in a situation where a story quest requires you to have a tier 3 hammer and you haven't found the items, or even the recipe, to make this hammer yet? Well, I hope you enjoy wandering around aimlessly searching for what you missed or consulting a wiki. There's also a mechanic where many recipes are locked behind finding special cartridges for an NPC. Some are required but some are optional and all of them can be technically found at any time, without any weight given to their order of importance. However, some recipes are absolutely vital to continuing and if you divert your focus from collecting these chips, you may not know why you can't build something you need to continue forward. These challenges can make the game honestly just harder than it needed to be. I'd find myself dying frequently because I was missing recipes I didn't even realize were available to help me.

This is my only real complaint about Grounded but it's a significant one that made progression, both story and exploration, frustrating at multiple times during my 60 hours with the game. In the end, I wound up getting to the last quest but not finishing as I simply didn't want to put in the time I knew it would take to beef up my character and farm upgrades to fight the last boss. Overall, I recommend the game especially to those who enjoy narrative survival games. If you're on the fence though or if you simply haven't played a game like this before, I'd probably recommend Subnautica first.

It single-handedly revitalized the farming genre and even years later, it's still the best around. Great art style, endlessly charming world, and a modding community that just never stops. Hundreds of hours in, there's still so much here. Stardew Valley is without question one of the greatest games out there.

Yummy cannibals go nom nom nom.

Definitely has the same artistic feel of games like Journey but it was deeper than I expected, both in terms of gameplay and plot. The climbing mechanics are similar to those in Grow Home but with added features such as being able to set pitons during your climb to swing from. These few simple additions actually provide significant gameplay opportunities that change the way you think about your climbing. If you haven't played a game like this before, it's well worth the adventure and you'll wonder why games like Assassin's Creed or Uncharted haven't started doing this.

In terms of the plot, I wasn't expecting much. It seemed like a vibe-game like Journey or Limbo. However, there's actually a pretty substantial amount here. It's mostly subtle, using environmental storytelling and collectables to tell the story of a society forced to change due to the environment around them. There are a decent number of letters to find but the amount told here is impressive, including numerous named characters and covering many years of life for different groups of people. I found myself honestly caring for the characters writing these letters, implying more than telling stories of fractured families, abandoned homes, and desperation for times long past.

Jusant is more than what it seems to be in all regards. The climbing initially seems like a fun, simple gameplay mechanic meant to give you something to do with your hands while you take in the vibes of nature and climbing. It definitely accomplishes that but also gives you traversal puzzles to solve, unique mechanics to contend with, and a story to legitimately care about. I wound up 100%ing this game and would gladly play a sequel, if that miracle were to ever happen.

Definitely a step up from the other paid DLC packs but it's still not even meeting the bar set by the free DLC so I still can't recommend it. The problem, in my opinion, is that there are no full room jobs here. The most memorable jobs for me have been Seventh Heaven from FFVII, the Trophy Room from Tomb Raider, or Santa's Workshop that was just released for free this year. Otherwise, the really big jobs are cool like the Mini Golf Course or the final Temple level in the main campaign.

Instead, the paid DLCs have typically given us a cool backdrop to do relatively small jobs. The Delorean was a necessity here, obviously, but Doc Brown's Van? We couldn't have something like Lou's Cafe or the Prom room? The Clocktower and Train were highlights in this pack and the Theater was cool too. Still, none of them would make my top 10 levels.

Just like the other packs, if you are desperate for more Powerwashing and don't mind shelling out 8 bucks for a few hours of game, this'll give you exactly that, no more, no less. I just wish that for the price of entry, not to mention the potential of these franchises, we were getting a bit more from these packs.

A fantastic metroidvania although it perhaps doesn't quite reach the heights of the original. The world is just as gross and over the top as before, with a whole host of new creations to interact with. The areas are fun to explore and the platforming feels fantastic, with cheap deaths being basically non-existent. Bosses are well designed although I found the increased aggression based on their current health to sometimes result in unfair hits. Never enough to be that frustrating but it can occasionally suck to get hit after the enemy fired three blasts instead of two without any real warning. The side quests are plentiful and just as opaque as the first game.

Where I did find Blasphemous 2 to be somewhat lacking is in the leveling mechanics. On top of finding items for HP and Fervour increases, you can become mechanically stronger through the use of Rosary Beads, Altarpieces, and Weapon Memories. While each of these are fine alone, all together it can feel like a lot to manage, despite Rosary Beads and Altarpieces being essentially the same thing. Weapon Memories are cool, as you use XP levels to increase your weapon abilities but most of the abilities aren't all that useful. It's unlikely that you're going to be using all three weapons regularly so once you upgrade one or two to their max, there's little incentive to keep going. Not to mention, many of the active abilities on your main weapon will likely go unused just due to the sheer number and specialty use of many of them.

Backtracking is only mildly less extreme this time around too. There were clearly attempts to improve this but many are half-baked. Early on, you receive the ability to return to town from any of the dias's which sounds good until you realize you start off with a prayer that lets you return to town from anywhere at all, rendering the dias ability redundant. In Blasphemous 2, you gain the ability to transport between dias's earlier than in Blasphemous, assuming you're doing the side quests, but it's still quite late in the game and the teleport rooms are still very far apart.

I do also have to bring up the issue of post-game patches. This has become a common practice in metroidvanias, with Blasphemous 1 and Hollow Knight being prime examples, where significant amounts of content are added later on, including new endings. In fact, the canon ending for Blasphemous 1 wasn't even added until later on. It's tough to say if Blasphemous 2 will continue this pattern but I can say that the good ending feels more definitive than the good ending at launch for Blasphemous 1. Still, the amount of optional bosses and end-game areas does feel light compared to the first game so I wouldn't be surprised to see extra stuff coming later on. If you want to play the game in its definitive state, it may be worth waiting for a while to see what's coming.

I have criticisms but overall, Blasphemous 2, like the original, is a fantastic metroidvania and should definitely be played by fans of Hollow Knight, Bloodstained, etc. If you haven't played the original though, play that first before this one.

Thoroughly recommended! Because if you want to run Steam games on your Quest 3, you don't really have any other choice anyway.

I recommend it for fans of visual novels with a significant amount of player choice and agency. There are a huge number of stats and decisions that must be balanced and weighed throughout the game that have a significant impact on what transpires. Be aware though that getting a good ending, or even just an ending that has you not dying partway through, is remarkably difficult. I'm impressed by how there isn't really an easy path to take, since all things must be balanced on some level. Even being a sadistic, selfish jerk isn't an easy way to get an ending.

While I'm overall impressed by the level of difficulty, there are certainly some elements of this that were frustrating. Some requirements later in the game seem odd and arbitrary. For example, you can do everything in your power to become head of your family but then if your family unity isn't high enough, you decide to just forsake your chance to be a noble? I'm not entirely clear why that would be the case. On the priest path, I'm not sure if there is a way to actually change sides to the new faith since even when I picked the Shield of the New Faith option, the story tied my faith to the success of the old faith anyway and then just killed me at the end for things that didn't seem within my control at all. These may just be cases of me missing details though and after only 2 playthroughs, I'm not confident enough to say one way or the other. That said, do be aware that without a guide, you will likely fail more than a few times trying to get your ideal path.

The other thing to keep in mind is that despite the overall polish of the game, there are a surprising number of typos throughout when I played in English. I'm sure there's a huge amount of dialogue but I'm still surprised by things like the country Eliria being spelled differently on the map than it is at the Noble's party introducing the countries. The first lesser death, something that 99% of players will see early on, has a very noticeable issue with the text not fitting on the page. There are missing or misused words sprinkled throughout the game which was by no means bad enough to ruin the experience but it occurred often enough to be surprising in a game that otherwise had so much attention to detail.

Play this game for the fantastic world-building, huge amount of player agency, and the narrative difficulty. Avoid if you aren't willing to risk a bad ending after 6-8 hours of game.

Think Overcooked but as a roguelike. Instead of a high score rush, one failed customer results in failure but levels are played in short bursts. The game is a blast with multiple people and has a lot of depth with different restaurant types and dishes to select. Having different numbers of people introduces different challenges organically just by the nature of having more people in the same small area.