Recent reviews by Brave

Tepid recommendation, if you can get past how badly designed most of the bosses are and like replaying levels in Sonic this game is fine for like $20 or so. It turns out 2D Sonic bosses were always bad or boring, and tripling down on how they were instead of reworking them doesn't make the game better. But also turns out just making more well-done 2D Sonic levels is pretty fun too. Time trial avoids the bosses so it's the best mode. Trip is cute and I'd be happy to have her show up in other stuff, but I can't time trial her exclusive levels. The level themes and concepts are mostly just too conservative and dull as the main issue. Some of them have some more life like Lagoon City or the sky temple with Breakout sections, but you also get as much It's Just Another Pinball Zone or It's Just a Snowy Forest. And all almost purely 2D with none of the 2.5D style for the camera or similar like in other games. 2D Sonic can have the sauce or whatever kids say nowadays, plenty of versions have had it. But this just felt like trying make "more 2D Sonic" with some extra features thrown on top and a very basic artstyle that kind of looks like the Genesis art in 3D I suppose. It's just more 2D Sonic with a lot of bad bosses, worth a shot on the cheap.

Did you know they considered having this game be hand-animated 2D animation instead? Maybe next time.

This game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awesome go play it.

They should've ripped off Donkey Kong Country instead.

hell yeah. oh hell yeah. oh baby hell yeah.

Also it would be very funny if everything that points to Shadow Frontiers happening actually points to a Sonic 06 sequel in this style, because it can go either way with what's said.

This is an extremely good game, and a very strong start for the studio. Penny's trick-based platforming moveset is well-realized and most of the levels are very pretty, with strong level design that makes it easy to keep up the flow especially on a second run though. I especially like looking at the concept art that's more like a diorama view and really shows off the shapes and curves of it all. The concept art being the reward for the score challenge is mostly why I went back and got good enough at the levels after beating the game. Overall I think the pool-based world is my favorite because I loved the aesthetics the most there and it had that sweet spot of long levels where the objectives and platforming parts flowed into each other fairly well. But still just enough difficulty that it's a challenge to keep your combo meter up while navigating it. The sound effect for gliding across the water was very good too.

And I appreciate that they made their own engine for this game that only does what the game needs it to, does it very well, and it well optimized to the point I easily maintain 144fps at all times. I appreciate that a lot. I know on launch a lot of people had issues with collision and falling through geometry. In my main playthrough in May-2024 it only happened once while trying to jump into a tuba during the final world, and I can accept that. Replaying the levels for the score challenge and retrying them a lot showed a lot more of those issues however, especially in Pengoville and the last world. Not enough that I can’t play normally but it's just often enough while trying to focus and keep high momentum that it got frustrating.

Major complaints as a freak who mostly got good:

- Each level needs its own distinct music. What's there is very, very, good and reminds of things that will go unnamed but there just needs to be more if only so each level stands out better.

- The timing on the cutscenes, especially the ones using the 2D assets, felt like it needed to be a lot snappier.

- The boss fights are either slow and boring, like the sumo fight or Mr. Q. Or they're overcomplicated and frustrating to play like the final boss or the penguin mech. I will always skip these whenever I come back. Also, I am begging you. If you have mid-fight speech bubbles and cutscenes, make it possible to just skip them on every try after the first. Or just don't play them at all after the player dies the first time. I understand that the emperor is falling back after the QTE, please let me move on. Taboo's the best because it's just a platforming challenge where you're technically racing another Penny.

- Some of the later worlds either have some really frustrating gimmicks or level design, like Pengoville and Industria. Or platforming for the levels and the "helping people" side-challenges felt too tight to feel very fun with Penny's looser, flow-based moveset, like the lava court world. The LAST two worlds dialed it back and played much more to her moveset's strengths again, so it's more a mid-late game issue than a complete downturn.

- Penny's moveset is not well equipped at all for picking up a powerup or a quest item while moving and keeping your combo while doing it. Sometimes I can grab something with the double jump and keep the flow that way, but not easily and reliably. At this point I accept I just have to stop moving entirely, pick the thing up, and then start grooving again. This also seems to apply to most places when you need to spin, and all places where you need to latch onto an object. Very obvious thing to polish or rework in a sequel, unless the solution is just get even better lmao. Maybe it could be solved with a new main trick in the moveset?

Overall this is still a very well realized game that I highly recommend. It faltered in ways that seem relatively easy to address or are solved by putting more stuff in, And I hope I can see more from this team and studio in the future. It got a Steam review out of me which is very rare, and I started writing expecting just to give a paragraph.

She's neat.

Gameplay wise, slowing the combat down and zooming the camera in does not work for me. It plays similar to the first launch/"open beta" in the overall mechanics but so many of the details changed for the worse. Jason feels better than other characters since it seems like he was designed with this new gameplay in mind. But a lot of the old characters don't feel right. Speed down, combos even wonkier or even just gone, movement feels worse. You can't train with characters you don't own anymore. A ton of stats-based and training features are just gone too. Thirty whole frames of input buffer that you cannot change, presumably. No fully offline plan at all in a fighting game. It is a pure downgrade from what this game was in terms of gamefeel and functionality. That version was retroactively deemed the open beta, and this is meant to be the 1.0 base version. If that were the only real issue, I'd check out and see if the game got back up to par.

More importantly this is horrendous monetization even at a glance. I unlocked some fighters during the first launch and it's still overwhelming how much money and disproportionate time they want you to drop everywhere. Some of it is just unbelievable like the Smith "Seasonal" pass. Agent Smith in the launch trailer is not actually available to play at launch, but don't worry! There's a way to get him for free and a few weeks early! You will have to beat at least 20 different Rift (Event Mode) routes. Right now it looks like 4 difficulty levels across 5 Rifts, 3 of which are not available until later or MUCH later. Each Rift has also given be a fairly hard Gem XP wall after two runs and it looks like you have to settle in for a major grind of some kind. It seems borderline impossible to get the Gems XP you need for "free" without Joker (pay up with money, or enough Fighter currency for TWO other characters because HE costs double) or co-op (still not good for a mode that is 90% solo) to fill out that last bonus box that I assume will help you get to Gem Level 4™? And paying for Joker directly seems encouraged because after all the welcome quests and other sources, I have a solid 4k out of 6k FC necessary to get him for free. Hell yeah. But hey, each individual type of gems has two tiers of real-money XP packs in the store, just putting it out there. This all came up on the FIRST, smaller level gate for the very first Rift! Maybe daily bonuses “fix” this. Then the Rift grind and the videogame is simply part-time labor, woo yeah.

Even if you do pay for Joker or play Co-Op to potentially get the Gem XP quickly without paying directly for it, you still have to go through at LEAST 20 runs of the CPU filler Rifts for one character. Which I'm sure will reach input-reading levels of unfun difficulty on later stages. And the highest difficulty level (level 4 is "unavailable" completely right now as an option for some reason, so Level 5 seems mandatory at the moment) will have limited lives per day but "(You can purchase more)." Top to bottom hyper-repetitive, grindy, nothingburger content for what looks to be weeks. With the carrot on a stick being a character you may not enjoy playing in the end. The Rifts are ♥♥♥♥♥♥ they're just ♥♥♥♥♥♥ don't look in the Rifts the Rifts will stare back into you. Event Mode and how it's hooked into the cycle is terrible and it's the only new big feature after all that waiting. They blew it on what could have been a casual grind to do once a week for most players and then they get a free character and stay engaged with the game because of the occasional big freebie. Then they might drop the real money on skins besides the freebies. The grind and setup as is makes NO sense, they are bad at being evil. And the minigames are pretty bad too so far! At best the developers wanted this to be an actual free event but someone above insisted on all the pain points to make you want to pay for your free character in SOME way. At least Jason simply asked "did you play the old version?" If yes, have Jason. Jason’s good.

The direct in-store monetization is also jokes, just like the old version. A singular ringout animation for $12, but actually $15-20 minimum due to how the funbucks work. Joker, a whole new character, is $12.50 OR 6000 FC on his own. $20 if you get the bog standard bundle. But don't worry you can get that animation in a Shaggy-themed bundle for $24.44, where the main attraction is a $20 skin at basically no discount. No F2P option I could find for a simple ringout animation. A LeBron James taunt for 332 funbucks ($3.32) where the sound only plays in ONE ear, and you will NEVER be able to spend that exact 18 you "saved" on the discount. Want Superman to be the announcer? 5 stray Gleamium basically forever. You need to buy $10 of funbucks for a basic cel-shaded filter on the BASE model, but you can afford two! 100,000 "Prestige" currency for the Batman Who Laughs skin for whoever actually wants to grind that long for that. The monetization was fairly terrible the first time but this is maddening taken as a whole. The whole store is JUST swindling you for any penny or second it can get you to agree to part with. Usually there's at least a bit more than that.

"What about the free Gleamium" not high enough quantity, obviously. They aren't actually giving it away. Just enough in logins or alternate passes/tracks to get you a little something every 6 weeks maybe. That's how that system works.

"What about the battlepass Gleamium" they would be over the moon if you spent that stuff anywhere except on the next battlepass.

They quadrupled the types of currency and seem to have made everything worse besides maybe perks. However, the battlepass rewards are generally an improvement. But of course, playing the game on its own does not give progress to those better rewards anymore. Only with daily/weekly challenges do you get XP and thus only certain amounts of progress on a more planned schedule. It's always something.

I'm sure this is all normal or above-standard to some players younger to me. To be emphatically clear, this is a horrible skinner box of a system and even if it has strong IP you should want better than this for a game you play with friends. You cannot game it in your favor, even if they improve it a little by letting games give you BP XP again. It is designed to give you the least possible for the most time and money they believe can be extracted from you. And then the servers may just get shutdown within a decade and you lose it all, no matter how loyal a customer you were or how much you or the developers loved the game. That year long gap will be the rest of your life. They did not even release 1.0 with the ability to play any of it offline.

When the free welcome back period is up this will be a miserable vortex no matter how much the devs may have wanted to just make a fun, interesting platform fighter. If the roster was fully free and they only scraped for money with the overpriced cosmetics and Rift gimmicks, maybe it could be tolerated.

I don’t think Multiversus will be worth it if this is the state it launched in after returning to development for a year. Not worth it in terms of money or time. Both of those are valuable and will be better spent elsewhere, even if it's just other games that aren't this thin and stingy. I liked Multiversus well-enough in the old version and wanted to see the modern launch be good despite misgivings. This game will probably not make a No Man's Sky-esque revival if it flops here. This launch is meant to be that, really, this is the big revival. Either the game will not change in the places that matter and make money anyway, or interest will wane and die due to flawed mechanics and bad monetization just like the first launch. Whatever the artists and designers could do to more fundamentally fix and improve this game and its business model, they almost certainly aren't allowed to do because of words from the executives on high.

7/10 good game I like the movement (especially after I turn air momentum on because it was turned off for some stupid reason. Completed everything including Final Horizons which I felt improved a lot on what felt lacking in the base game.

Please make the bosses work next time :)

Bad ending but overall game was pretty fun.

Bought it from that Humble Bundle sale a ways back and finally got to it.

Episodes 1 and 2 easily put me in a trance state where my jaw goes slack because the gameplay loop was just that tight. Episode 3 broke me out of it cause they went with much bigger/intricate level design that didn't really work for me. What really really matters for classic shooters is the movement and weapons which were still great even in weaker levels. It was still good but the hooks were slipping out of my brain during EP3. Love the perk system and how hard they go with some of the level 3 ones. As-is DT's pretty great overall and I look forward to the full release.

And good aesthetics and music and vibes yadda yadda it's good game.

i love these lil buggy dudes.

95% of this game is everything I could have asked for from it, and the other 5% is the final level (Gameplay-wise, in terms of mood it's a slam dunk) and the main villain being a major letdown. The other 95% is the absolute non-stop torrent of side-content, bonus bosses, lore, and character development within the main trio so you always are getting new stuff to do, read, and learn. In a sequel I would hope that different chapters are more individually distinct/crazy like in Thousand Year Door, now that Bugaria is well established. And for more animation on these lil buggy dudes.

27 is a really weird level cap though i don't get it.