Recent reviews by Brave

The colors are nice, buy them as part of the season pass instead of separately. If future DLC color packs cost 15 dollars then we have a problem here.

This is a very good videogame.

Lobbies kinda suck.

8/11/2022:

Pros:
The patches have helped the gameplay a lot so far.
Great DLC so far, especially for stages.
Every time Daisuke says trans rights we get a circus on social media thanks to angry weebs. Even if he's not in complete control anymore we still got the heavy metal spirit in Strive.
Goldlewis Dickinson is in this game.
The music continues to slap. Strive getting consistently snubbed for best 2021 OST was criminal.
The netcode is still some of the best in the genre right now.
ArcSys is fine with cosmetic + audio mods.
They finally patched the initial loading times down to 20 seconds so Totsugeki isn't necessary anymore.
ABA might be in the cards.


Cons:
Lobbies still suck. Rating Update still sucks. Fishing still tedious.
No new colors after over a year. Even if you can mod the game it'd be nice to have more slots or ArcSys colors.
Still nothing to really do besides online. Arcade Mode is there I guess.
Playing against Millia makes me feel pain.
A ton of quality of life stuff that should have been in a year ago looks like it's only starting to get work done on it, based on the recent change in leadership and recent surveys.
Elphelt might be in the cards.

Pretty good game a year later.

Buy it you ♥♥♥♥♥ this is a great game on the cheap, and we need as much of Atlus's catalogue as they can port. It's an extremely accessible game overall, with fun cliche characters that have just enough depth and texture for you to stan till death do you part. Gameplay overall is that right mix of social sim and deep-but-not-overwhelming turn-based combat that makes hours melt. Honestly the major flaw to the game is that the endgame is just kind of a squib overall because the ideas are bolted on and by that point the social sim aspects are finished, the combat doesn't have any real new tricks, and the randomly generated dungeons REALLY have nothing new going on.

Strong 8/10 game, I feel Persona 5 was better but that's not on Steam now is it?

Good:

- Uses Build Engine for the game feel and aesthetic, plus the dev's expertise with it, not just copying how the old games were with no new ideas. Just cause it's old doesn't mean it's invalid.
- Fun combat with good weapons
- Bowling Bombs are really cool as heck.
- Big levels that push the Build Engine to what feels like its limits to really flesh out the environments.
- Despite size, most levels are intelligently designed so that even if they're open ended, they orient you along the critical path.
- The "Zone" method of constructing levels feels like a logical extension of how Duke 3D tried to emulate reality, and helps the game's pacing a LOT.
- Feels like a "lost" Build Engine shooter that would have slot right in with the others in a good way
- Bomshell's design is a "less is more" aesthetic instead of that disaster from that other Bombshell game. If Duke can be cool in jeans and a tanktop, Shelly can be cool in a somewhat-stylized set of body armor.
- Sound design is near perfect, combat wise.
- Bombshell's voice actress is very good, and most of the lines she gets are at least entertaining.
- Main villain is voiced well-enough.
- Music ranges from "Not great but not so bad that I notice" to "bops."
- The moment you wander out into a Half-Life esque canyon was honestly striking somehow.

Bad:

- This style of gameplay naturally leads to tedium when you get to a point where you can't find the critical path and spend multiple minutes just meandering till you find enemies to indicate that's where you're supposed to be. Happened about two or three times across playthrough.
- Puzzle-puzzles, instead of just keycard/door-switch hunting, are rare and they're far between.
- Bombshell doesn't have quite enough "generic" quips/one-liners to not get tiresome by the end of the game.
- Main villain's quips aren't as entertaining most of the time. Probably could have used a couple direct conversations with Bombshell to give him more to say than "You are a ♥♥♥♥♥" in so many ways.
- Feels like it's about 2 or 3 enemies short of what you'd really want or expect by the end game. A set of enemies are introduced in the late game who feel like they are about 10 hours late to the party.
- Devs put some stupid gay jokes into the game, panicked when they got called out, and then went with the "censorship" victimization route to justify keeping the jokes they meant to include. Spectacular display of lack of PR skills. The jokes themselves are whatever, Ogay is just a dumb pun and the "♥♥♥ bag" one was not planned and out of bounds so of course you remove it when people find it. But the devs made everything worse with how they handled it.
- Not helped by the personal opinions of some devs regarding social justice-related topics definitely being volatile, considering the current mainstream consensus on the topics.

Play this game if you like or are interested in:

- Duke Nukem 3D or other Build Engine games that you played on XBLA.
- Doom 2016, and you're open to an OLLLLDDDD school FPS made in modern times as a result.
- FPSes as a whole, instead of just more modern takes on it.
- Seeing how old technology is used in new ways with modern tech and technique.
- Kewl gorls

Do not play this game if:

- Are a misogynist, of course. No other reason could possibly explain it. Ever.
- You know you hate old-school/ Build Engine style FPSes. This isn't gonna change your mind more than likely.
- Are addicted to modern 3D graphics and are physically incapable of tolerating sprites.
- You cannot stand disagreeing politically with a person who helped create the media you want to consume.
- Bowling Bombs sounds like a stupid idea to you.

If you can get it and the Season 3 characters you want on sale, it's not a bad game for the price point. Just really slow and simplistic, but still fun enough. The costume DLC is overwhelming and criminally overpriced if you actually want a lot of them. Very mediocre tutorial but the combo trials are pretty enjoyable.

Buff Juri and her theme in SF6.

In all seriousness, Dota 2 is not a bad game by any stretch of the word. The problem is that for it to be as good as it is, there can't be any simple way to teach someone how to play it. You just have to "Get" it, and how long that takes varies from person to person. I took about 35 hours before things really started to click for me. The main thing is that there are so many heros, around 100 or at least getting there, and you have to learn at the most basic level what they are ALL capable of, and what that means in regards to the hero YOU picked. Then there's Roshan, knowing when to Gank and where, Runes in the river, item builds, skill builds, and all this other ♥♥♥♥ that you just have to practice until it can become second nature.

Dota 2 wouldn't be nearly as good if it didn't ask this of you. Dota 2 is a game of nuances, and it don't give a ♥♥♥♥ if you think it's too complicated. I'd recommended looking up DotaCinema's guides on mechanics and Hero builds so you can get it in the most layman terms possible. PurgeGamers's videos are also good to look at because he usually explains what each hero he plays does, how they are generally played, and you see legit pub play from a player who is not terrible so you know what to expect. Once you figure out just what this game IS, it becomes a thing of beauty. A good indicator of when you "Get" Dota 2 is when you havet the balls to play Invoker, Invoke spells other than Cold Snap and Tornado, and it isn't a train wreck.

Bots everywhere still after 5 years. Valve has at best one employee and one contractor working on it to try and plug the holes, but Valve as a whole will put no weight into any meaningful maintenance of what used to be a flagship and is still played today.

TF2 nowadays is a look into the future of a game like Deadlock, after Valve as a company moves onto another new live-service but still wants to farm microtransactions from a playerbase trying to hold onto a game. Whether you want to keep playing it a year after Valve stops doing content updates, return to it after enjoying it in the past, or try it out for the first time, good luck.