Recent reviews by the1mason

the best dating sim by this day

🤡

9/10

I have started playing the game without expecting much, and I was impressed. This game has very deep combat system, beautiful art style and very interesting lore.
Surprisingly, my summary is very similar to the one of Hollow Knight. I think than if you have enjoyed HK, you must try this game because you'll likely enjoy this game to. It has differences in combat and various mechanics, making it fresh and interesting to play.
The only minor issue for me is that platforming is a little rough. It's not the strongest part of the game and sometimes might feel frustrating. But exploring the map is still very interesting and rewarding!

Skill issues btw: I have spent much more time on a certain miniboss ( the one in the gardens, the room with the dragon water thingies ), than I have spent on the first 2 bosses.

I am writing this review when I have (story/progress spoilers) beaten only 3 sols out of 9. I might update my review when I'll finish the game once.

I have bought this game 5 TIMES and I DO NOT regret it

It was good while it lasted
The game is currently abandoned by its devs. There were no updates since may 2024.
At some point challenges got broken and they haven't even fixed them
I won't speculate why there's no updates, but just say this: this game is not worth buying now and is effectively dead.
I am not going to play this game until it receives an update.
Thanks everyone, it was nice playing with y'all

This game is actually great!
- Price is really low
- The story isn't quite interesting but story islands are funny to explore.
- Survival aspect is really cool as you have to value each and every single resource you have, while research and progression makes survival less routine and more fun.

But there are serious downsides which made survival more frustrating that is should have been
- The game wants you to value each resource and it does it well, but it makes building and expanding your raft a late game privilege. This means that for a majority of your playthrough, your raft won't look like you want it to.
- Walk speed is ridiculous. When you running it doesn't feel like it. Your character is REALLY SLOW and it hurts.

I do recommend this game but I do NOT recommend getting all achievements:

Steam achievements either have not been tested at all or they were just some sort of stupid afterthought.

There are cool progression-based or just interesting achievements. It was really interesting to dig out all totem pieces or developer paintings. As well as finding secret rooms on Tangaroa island.
But some achievements are almost impossible to get without weird cheesing or cheating/modding. For example there's an achievement that requires you to kill 50 anglerfishes. The problem is that they can spawn ONLY ON ONE STORY ISLAND and there's about 4 or 5 of them. And you have to unload the island (by visiting other story islands) to make everything respawn and re-visit it to kill another 4-5 fishes. Now imagine doing it 10 times without any progress (as the achievement doesn't have any progressbar). And there are more stupid kill 50 *something* achievements, like screechers - big flying birds, throwing stones on your head. There's usually one on some big islands, and there's not so much different islands so you will find this boring really fast.
... Yes I have 103/104 achievements with the last one being "Surviva 365 days" and I am going to complete it

Counter-Strike 2 is objectively not a good sequel
I've got the early access and played the beta for a while. The game did and still does feel awesome.
But it's the lack of features present in CS:GO, that makes CS2 a bad update.
There are a surprising amount of people claiming, that "nobody plays DZ" or how "nobody cares about demolition", but I disagree. DZ makes a great flavor of battle royale with cool features and really fascinating gameplay loop. It is cool that you people [claiming we don't need arcade and more casual modes] don't enjoy fun and are going to play MM for 25 hours a day 8 days a week, but not everyone is like that. Arcade modes are an interesting way to practice or to just chill after very tight competitive game.
An update, removing core features is a bad update. And I am not even talking about lack of communuty/workshop content!

But I can hear people screaming: they are going to add most of removed features, they just need time!
Welp, I'll update my review then, but for now CS2 is objectively worse than CS:GO feature-wise.

Really challenging game!
I am not a fan of NFS games but this one is actually good.
I have started on medium difficulty but switched the highest after the second qualifier. Bots were REALLY challenging and interesting to race with. In Forza Horizon for example bots are easy even on the "Unbeatable" diffuculty.
Cops are great and really tough to get away from, but at some point they are just annoying. Getting away from 5-level heat while literally whole city is looking for you for the first time is funny but when it's your 10th time it is just annoying.

The story is... confusing, but who actually cares?
(But some jokes are funny though)

The only problem of this game is drift. I have skipped EVERY SINGLE drift event and drift zone because they are literally impossible if you don't have a separate car for these things and I bet you you don't. You have barely enough money to upgrade your main cars and pay for buy-ins. At some point I had to sell my prize cars to upgrade the main one.
AT THE SAME TIME you shouldn't go all the way into grip setups! Almost in every race you HAVE to drift and grippy car fill fly towards the closest wall or slam into parked cars. So the best options are 45-65%+ drift (i.e.35-55% grip). That just feels weird.

I think that I can recommend you this game. If you don't really into drifting

It could be 10/10 but you can't nuke flying manta rays...

Ever wanted to simulate a whole living city on your calculator?
Good luck with that, because this game will beat crap out of your CPU by simulating every living *thing* on the screen and for a good reason! An outstanding level of simulation allows you to build a very realistic city with a very realistic problems:
Poor public transit, lack of mixed zoning and inefficient street planning will turn your precious city to a big traffic jam.
This game forces you to learn city planning, but there's also some issues with this part:
The original game is car-centric as hell: "one more lane™" roads, poor public transport, no pedestrian streets, etc...
But after you buy every essential DLC, it's a whole new game! You actually have to buy DLCs, so prepare your wallet.

I will recommend these DLCs if you want to get the most from this game:
Plazas&Promenades - pedestrian streets, better pedestrian infrastructure
After Dark - Leisure, better city plannin/zoning, especially "old town" policy
Mass Transit - Mostly trams, but also trolleys, ferries, cable cars, helicopters and blimps
Industries - Better industries, more money
Parklife - Custom parks, more tourists
Content Creator Packs - a lot of nice improvements

Additional challenge DLCs:
Snowfall - now you have to care about temperature
Natural Disasters - Imagine your city (which is below sea level) is being destroyed by a hundred meters tall tsunami...