Recent reviews by reverend six

I just can't. Everything in this game seems so mediocre. It's like a gamemaker game without being one.

I don't like any of the characters, combat against map enemies is such a slog and you run so fast that it's hard to avoid them. Yeah, under 10 hours played and I'm already trying to avoid fighting. Plot doesn't seem very interesting and is basically just dropping weird names that you forget before the sentence is over.

Artstyle is ok but I didn't care for the labyrinthian route to next village where every nook and cranny look the same. There are many systems to upgrade but everything is just so plain. +10 here, +5% there, yay. The overheat system is mostly just annoying, not strategic - it's not fun if I have to defend instead of using a skill.

Guess that's my experience with the game - I didn't have fun so I stopped playing.

I'm one of those weird ones who liked the artstyle, didn't mind the smudged pixels at all. I never played Tactics Ogre when it first came around so I just went with "it looks like Final Fantasy Tactics and Triangle Strategy", both which I have finished before.

First 20 hours or so went fine. The story is nonsense and the names of places and people have been generated by mashing face to the keyboard. But who cares about such things, you're in it for the strategic battles and cards that you can pick up during fight, oh maybe not because of those, since those feel like super tacked-on addition. But how are the fights ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥!? Cool at first but then you start to see the cracks. You either hit, shoot or cast a spell, that's it. Shooting and casting spells is okay against units that shoot or cast spells but are pretty useless against anyone with defense. Healers can't heal enough to be useful in the long run.

There are two kinds of fights: You either have to vanquish all foes or a certain foe to win. So either you methodically pick enemies one by one or you rush to kill the boss in order to win. It gets old real fast. Doing the same thing for 30 hours was enough for me. In the last mission I was supposed to take out two targets... so I lied, there's "variety"...

Guess it all boils down what the framework of this game is. It's an old game with new paint but it doesn't hide the fact that there should be more. It would be a good game if there was more, if the classes felt more different, if there were different kind of missions and if there were a cohesive plot.

What did I like then? I can't remember anymore but it wasn't neither of the two missions I kept playing.
This isn't yes or no review, it's a maybe.

♥♥♥♥-My-Arse Civilization XXX. Just one more turn.

This is not a 2d Dark Souls or even souls-like. Withering Rooms is more like a very simple metroidvania in which you find the necessary item to move forward and do just that. There aren't really "builds" that you can do, you just switch for the better weapon (the one that deals more damage) and that's it. There's some magic but I found it kinda lackluster. The meat of the game, combat, feels very stiff and is not fun. Whack, roll, whack, roll, and the character feels janky.

Withering Rooms might've been a decent game in a world where there is no competition in this genre. Here it's just not enough in any area.

Fox Souls.

This is definitely one of the games of all times.

Pretty neat little game, more like a puzzle game than a full-fledged roguelike but that's not to diminish the games charm, quite the opposite. A great game for short-bursts or in-between other games.

You spawn to floor 1 with one Spell point and pick a spell from the menu, clear the room, get more points and branch out with your spells how ever you like. You can mix and match or min/max, some builds are better than others and it's fun to test different builds and fail miserably.

There are also usable items, shrines, spell upgrades and paths to choose to make each playthrough feel different even if you pick the same spells. Overall a fun game to lose few or couple of dozen hours to.

I started playing The Legend of Heroes -series from the beginning, loving Trails in the Sky, enjoying the Crossbell arc and finally diving into the Trails of Cold Steel. This is where the quality started to suffer. I adored the original isometric graphic style and it took some time to get accustomed to the 3D models, which I did but never loved.

Here the story starts to fall apart too. There is so much meaningless chatter and the gameplay loop repeats over and over again. No one ever truly loses a battle as everyone keep retreating or outright just deciding to leave the fight, lol. Former enemies can become friends no matter what atrocities they have committed earlier. But my main gripe is that the fourth instalment is just plain boring. I struggled to keep playing, dozing through loop by loop, putting the game down and trying to pick it up again but eventually I just realized I wasn't having fun anymore. There's just too much bloat. Too much extremely similar situations and topics, repeated lines and tropes.

I couldn't believe that I dropped the series when I got so far already but meh, I got other games to play and other things to do. I just wish I stopped earlier, right after the Crossbell arc, at the high-point of the series.

[edit:]

Now I have given up on this game twice. Characters keep saying the same things to each other, trying to get the group together for umpteenth time, visiting same villages, fighting mostly the same opponents who never lose, just give up and let you do your thing. No one ever dies or truly loses so there's no weight in any action.

Writing is awful. Steer clear of this garbage. You have been warned.

What a breath of fresh air to a stale genre. Easy to pick up but has many tricks on its sleeves. Makes killing monsters fun which is not an easy trick with mainly bumping-combat. Great first time roguelike since you don't need to use your entire keyboard like in some old-school roguelikes. And what's better, it's like Dark Souls was a roguelike: The quiet and dangerous world, lore for those that seek it, fantastic monsters and vial to heal yourself with!

I truly hope that more people will find this hidden gem.

The most bloated, drawn-out rpg I have ever played, one that made me question it's existence several times and yet I persisted and wouldn't change a thing. For the fans of Trails-series this is an absolute must-play, duh. Only a dumpster would play this game without experiencing the earlier titles since this game won't make much sense otherwise. There are too many characters, too much meaningless dialog, too many cringey moments about under aged girls and too many "endings" as in "does it end already... oh, guess not." There's also a megashitton of combat so either you're ok with that or you hate the game.

I need to play something else before diving into the fourth and last title of Cold Steel but I WILL do it, there's no doubt about it. I want to see where this is going and if it can get any more convoluted than this (I bet it can). This is the most slow-moving roller coaster I've ever been on, and here I am, cheering like a madman.

Played on Steam Deck, worked pretty much flawlessly.