Recent reviews by Plural

Is it everything I hoped for after kickstarting it nearly a decade ago and hyping it up with every small snippet of video released for years on end? Of course, not. It was made by one guy basically, how could it be? But it's a really good experience marred by some glaring flaws and an underwhelming ending. But I enjoyed it more than 90% of the metroids and dark souls out there.

This is the most I've enjoyed a Mario game since 64.

Half-formed in ideas and at the same time feels unfinished even in the small amount of content that it is providing. The idea of figuring out how to accomplish tasks with no direction just using the tools of the game itself is actually cool but it really is lost in the random nature and poor implementation of this game.

First off the game has no options for video, audio, or controls. I don't expect it to be scalable to large screens but an ability to map controls would've been nice but the fact that you can't mute the audio is very annoying for a puzzle title that is largely based on multiple retrials. I had to turn it down in the system settings to be able to listen to my own music/podcasts. That's one of the main reasons it feels like an unfinished game. Most flash games let you at least mute the volume. Anyway, let's delve into the game itself.

(this gives away the tricks) You are some kind of spaceman-person in this game who gets seeds when you enter a level outside of the hub. The seeds do different things that always end up building blocks to extend the ground and reach a star block. Both a block at the beginning and the star block contaminate the other blocks, blackening them and that spreads, if a black block is touched you go to an opposite world where the everything but the blocks you walk on are solid and the star turns into a key that unlocks a "door" at the black block back at the beginning so you go through at the star block and exit back at the beginning.

(this gives away more) The bright green seed makes bright green blocks that have hearts in them, when you go back to the minus world after getting the key the hearts are collectible and turn into seeds when you go back to the hub. You plant the seeds at the hub and go up to find spaceman-holograms that have cryptic sayings above them and more levels.

That's all I've found that this is. Which is not enough of a game to me and progression is largely based on the random nature of the seeds you're given and the way the seeds grow the ground blocks, both of these things can make an entire entry into a level pointless because you might get a bunch of good seeds at the beginning and then at the end you only get the dark green seeds that in later levels mean you lose because you can't dig them up in later levels to allow yourself to progress.

Also, you can complete a level and not get to the exit or collect a heart in time and then it just quits out the level and you lose because it's always good to make you randomly lose for no forseeable reason and again wasted time. It's also possible to enter at the star and completely miss contact with the key because it doesn't take up a whole block and then the entire time spent is wasted because the hitbox of the key is small for some unknown reason.

If it was easier I wouldn't have liked the game better but I wouldn't have disliked it enough to write this review in the negative. It was a small cheap game that became more unlikable the more I played because there was nothing there but more of the same except with even more limited options to arbitrarily make it harder instead of having variable gameplay.

I don't like feeling like my time is wasted. When the only thing I did wrong was miss the hitbox of a key when dropping into the minus world and I lose 5 minutes of my time for no real reason other than the key's hitbox is small or I got a bad order of seeds then it's not a game I would recommend to anyone and would, in this case, actively discourage it for that feeling of loss that comes coupling puzzles with random chance.

This is an excellent card game in the vein of Magic the Gathering. For something so new the amount of cards in it are staggering. With so many different choices in card selection it gives you a real feeling of options in strategy which is sometimes lacking in newer card games which have a smaller stable of options to choose from. I especially like the way in which you build decks which narrows your options of how many cards of which class/type you can have by a selection of three different commander cards and these cards are always "in play" when the match starts with that deck offering you even more strategic choices by knowing that those cards can always be made available as soon as the match starts without an element of chance attached to it, leaving you feeling less at the mercy of chance than you sometimes feel in a card game that relies solely on the first hand being completely random.

The build and barrier to entry is really smooth to me. You gain levels and money by playing matches against the computer at first in challenges or a campaign, while it's not really a straight forward story campaign and more of a series of ai matches with specific decks it still feels good to proceed through it because you gain cards of each type by completing the campaign of that type and you also gain cards by gaining a level, completing a match for the day, or specific challenges in the game. This creates a feeling of gaining a lot of different cards throughout play and that collection and expansion of your options continues easily without paying anything, at least in as far as I've played. Though from what I see in the shop you're not gaining items that are inherently better than what you gain through unlocking booster packs by gaining levels so paying doesn't seem like it creates that much of a power difference unless you're paying a ton. And buying booster packs or decks in the game through the in-game earned currency seems to cost a huge amount so the slow grind to be able to do that versus straight up buying may also contribute to a game where the top players are that much better because of the money spent but it's almost as if it's unavoidable in a game like this and losing doesn't bother me that much. You are, sometimes, at the mercy of random cards landing and I have beat people who have played a lot longer with the first deck I made so even buying your way to victory (in as much as having played the game much longer represents this similarly to buying your way to a better deck) isn't a clear path to an easy victory.

Matchmaking is a little iffy in that you seem to just get matched against whoever is trying to play at the time. My comparative lower level and playtime makes me unsure of whether or not I'm just bad at the game or if I'm always being matched against people who know the game better or have better decks. But there are so many ai options in the game I never feel too discouraged from playing the game at all by being consistantly outmatched in player vs player because that's not the only way to earn currency or experience.

If you like collectible card games at all give it a shot. It's free and I've had more fun with it that way than the previous Magic computer games I've played.

At first glance I had a lot of assumptions about what this game would be, not anything to do with story or characters, but the type of genre the game inhabits and how it goes about that. In many ways it met those assumptions and while I was right it still managed to exceed my thoughts.

A few screens and videos and to me this came off as a simplified metroid-like with a more straight forward beat-em up presentation. And my deep abiding love for any exploration based game was left mildly wanting to know that it really has more in line with Odin Sphere/Muramasa than Metroid it still has enough exploratory quirks to ever so slightly scratch that itch.

What brings this simplicity bright, to me, is the trappings that are around the basic structure. The combat is fine to me, I don't find it completely compelling but it is satisfying in the way your character feels powerful and the agency through which you give him that power is what compels me through the game. Items, leveling up, quests. The depth is not great but it's all deep enough to just make the rest of it so easy to breeze through and feel constantly in a state of needing to get more from the game because it has the ability to give you more. I feel this lust for progress on the mechanical/statistical spectrum that drives me through the game itself elegantly.

And that's not to say the story is creating any sort of roadblock to that. It's actually very well put together and while nearly cloying and childish at times it has an aspect that reflects back this younger version of yourself. Old Saturday morning cartoons, Disney movies, or even just any broadly aimed animated feature. It plays into that in a way that almost makes it okay to be so silly or ardent in child-like way. It's also interesting in how juxtaposed that is to the darker aspects of the story and how easily it accomplishes that without feeling overbearing or too self-serious. And it's startling how good the voice acting is in this game, disregarding some odd lines that sound re-recorded and not quite on point as the same voice from the same session.

The gameplay itself may not be memorable to me but it really is fun to play and progress through. It may feel a little simplistic to start or jarringly sharp or oppressive in its presentation but I think its just so out of our usual context for that type of over the top character expression that it feels wrong at first, though over time it felt right at home.

This is a frustrating game because there are so many parts of it that could be so good. But that was months ago for me and the longer I play and the longer I see what the devs are doing to the game the less I even enjoy the parts of it that I once did. Nearly every change since I started playing has been for the worse.

It lulls you into thinking that it might be easy or playable when you first start because the matchmaking and enemy difficulty seems to understand how to scale with you at that point but the longer you play the more all of that goes out the window. It becomes this banal uphill struggle for any foothold to just get a measly amount of ISO to level up. And that doesn't matter anyway, the better you do the harder they make they game so you'll do worse the next week until it evens out to just doing boringly.

I did spend money on this game, not a lot but that's not the point. This isn't a pay to win game, I mean it could be but only if you put in hundreds of dollars but before an input of that size you're really not getting that much, if anything, out of putting money into this game, Maybe I'm wrong and all the people that seem to win every tournament or even any PvE event are putting money into the game but I don't think so, I just think they started earlier when there was less competition.

That's all this game is, an endless and fruitless competition. I've gotten close to even winning a few tournaments but it was a really hollow thing to do that. You have to throw all your time and effort to come away with anything at all and if you play casually you'll get next to nothing because there is nothing outside of the prologue that isn't played against other people and unless you can throw hours and hours and hours a day into this game then past the prologue you'll just founder and flail.

It might seem appealing now but don't bother. It will suck the marrow from your bones and leave you wishing you never started. Just go play some old Puzzle Quest games and look up some Marvel Trading cards online to look at, it won't be as enticing but at least it won't leave as bitter as I am at this mess of a game.