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Recent reviews by BitterCupOJoe

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3 people found this review helpful
14.5 hrs on record (5.0 hrs at review time)
You wanna fight? Hah! Fight me!

Great little love letter to 80s and 90s Hong Kong films, especially those of Jackie Chan. String together combos, throw motorcycle helmets at hooligans, and smack villains around with a broom. I have quibbles with some mechanical choices (building towards strikes seems to be the way to go), but this isn't one of those games you play because it's the nes plus ultra of game design; you buy it because you remember sitting down with a copy of a copy of a copy of a VHS tape that your older brother got from his college roommate and having your mind blown at the crazy stuff these guys whose lips didn't match their words could do with their fists and the occasional frying pan. It evokes nostalgia in a way few other games have managed to for me.

Seriously. It's five bucks. That's less than the cost of a matinee showing of Rumble in the Bronx in 1995. Buy a copy and thrash some ruffians.
Posted 1 November.
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3 people found this review helpful
10.0 hrs on record
Early Access Review
TL;DR: It's not a bad game, it's just not a particularly great game. Maybe on sale.

Good things first: I like the art style. The setting concept is fun and fits well with a roguelite experience. The character designs are nice, if generic. The core ideas aren't bad. I really liked that the gameplay is set up in 3-5 minute bites. I only ran into one major bug, and it was due to some weird combination of keypad and keyboard buttons being hit at the same time.

Now the bad: It feels wholly inessential. Get guns, strap them onto your mech, upgrade them with pickups, improve your core stats. Get some non-gun upgrades to improve some stats and maybe lower others. Pretty standard Survivors loop.

The problem is that there's just... nothing there.

With two exceptions, I went through four whole runs (one unsuccessful at the beginning, two successful "regular" runs, and one done as fast as I could) and I could not tell you why you should prioritize any stat over another. Pick four random mods per each gun and go; it just doesn't matter. Oh, they might change what the gun does, even in a visible way, but I literally picked random guns on my fourth run and threw random mods in. No difference.

There are four characters in the game, of which it looks like you can currently only unlock three. One says its under development, but who knows if that's accurate. Each character has slightly different stats, a different starting gun (which any character can find in pickups), and a special that sets them apart. The first one has a dash, the next has a big missile attack, the last has a character-centered AoE. That's it.

No "this character does more damage with close combat, that character does more with beams, the third likes fire weapons." Oh, one of them says she really likes explosions, but that's just a way to say "this is their special." Certainly nothing as interesting as "this character carries more guns but gets fewer mods" or "this character gets a bonus for having the same type of gun on multiple slots." Nothing to lead you to build one character different from the next, or at least nothing major.

The missions at first seem like they might have something interesting going on. You have to survive a certain minimum amount of time in a mission before you're allowed to exit, and each mission has two bonus objectives. The bonus objectives are pretty anemic, though: activate one of two different types of helpful structures, which you're already incentivized to do; or destroy X number of some type of enemy, all of which are actively running towards you anyways. There's one that's a little different, killing nests, but you just kind of sit next to them and wait for them to die.

Speaking of waiting for them to die, the bosses are dumb-as-rocks bullet sponges. It's trivial to get the charger stuck on a rock or a light tower and shoot them from behind it. The ranged bosses have a ridiculous windup, so as long as you keep moving, you'll be fine. You can get fast-moving or charging bosses stuck on other bosses, too, so it's possible to literally hide behind your enemies. Even the big boss at the end offers no significant challenge.

There are some interesting ideas here, but none of them gel into an exciting game. I wish they did; I'll be keeping an eye on it as it moves to 1.0. Absent some huge changes, though, I can't see it being worth buying unless you can either get it very cheap, really love mecha, or have exhausted all the A- and B-tier roguelike/survivor games out there.
Posted 29 July.
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A developer has responded on 31 Jul @ 2:46am (view response)
4 people found this review helpful
9.1 hrs on record (9.0 hrs at review time)
This is one of those times I wish Steam had a "maybe" or a "qualified no."

It's not that the game is bad per se; if it were bad, I wouldn't have played it for 10 hours. It's that it commits one of the worst sins a game of this type can: it's complex without being deep. There's no "there" there. It's like a backlot at a movie studio, all fake storefronts with nothing inside.

Let's get the good stuff out of the way first: it's pretty, it's got tons of stuff to unlock, there's a bunch of numbers to crunch, and a bunch of systems to play with. Sounds good, right?

It's not.

None of those systems matter. You can blithely ignore most of them and get a clear. There are no interesting choices to make. You COULD minmax the systems, trying to get the most optimized version of a build going, but there's no reason to. I've died twice, total, in almost 10 hours of play. The first was on my first run when I didn't realize there was both a dash ability and a super ability. The second was on the hardest default difficulty (there's a Hades-like heat system past that, but I was already bored by then) when I got distracted. Not distracted for a few seconds, but "having a conversation for a couple of minutes" distracted.

There are five characters, but they all draw from the same pool of skills. They all have some +/- to stats, but none of them actually play differently. They all have six weapons, but those are all also just +/- stats. They all have a dash that dashes. They all have a super ability, but all them are pretty much a reskinned big AoE centered on the character.

There are skills, but they almost all act as some variation of "forward attack," "character-centered AoE attack," or "summon a dude/trap." They might apply a debuff or do more or less damage, but hell if I know; I looked at "is this a strength or intelligence skill and does it have synergies with my other skills" and that was it. A frost build on the archer looks the same as a frost build on the swordsman looks the same as a frost build on the mage.

There are synergies. Tons of them. They all do stuff, some of them more interesting than the others, but I couldn't tell you what; they're almost all + stat buffs. None of them have downsides, like having your fire synergy reduce your frost damage. Each skill has two synergies, like "frost plus shatter" or "fire plus death." You'll pick a synergy early on that all your other skills will have, usually determined by the weapon you picked, because the weapon gives a bonus to one type of damage. Then, you'll pick six of the seven or so available skills that use that synergy.

There are artifacts, and even a pretty neat system where you can save artifacts after a run so you can use them again later. The artifacts also apply to your synergies, so a "godspeed" artifact will increase your "godspeed" synergy, which increases move speed and... something else. Hell if I remember. Some of the artifacts have negatives on them, but those don't really matter; you're going to be grabbing every artifact with a synergy you even vaguely care about, so the negatives will probably cancel out. None of the synergies change how you play in a significant way; at best, they're just "and now energy explodes out of me every once in a while for some reason, which I can't control."

The optimal strategy, from what I can see, is to go either all strength skills or all intelligence skills, then buy one of each artifact that doesn't nerf your chosen stat so you can get as many synergies as possible. Maybe you'll skip a few, like fire, which only enhances fire skill damage, but given that several artifacts have two synergies, you might end up getting fire synergy anyways; it won't hurt you. You don't need to avoid it. There's no real decision to make there.

There are three bosses, as far as I can tell. Well, four, sort of, but the fourth one is just the second phase of the third boss fight, when an additional boss shows up. All of the boss mechanics are some variety of "dodge the red shape." There are lots of elites whose red circles you'll also have to dodge. There are lots of little enemies that are indistinguishable from each other outside of their model.

Why is this a "qualified no?" Because it's not a bad game. I didn't hate it. If you want a power fantasy where your choices don't really matter and just want to bowl through hordes of enemies without much effort, you can have some fun with it. But, man, there's a great game in here just screaming to get out.

I don't recommend it for that reason: if you're like me, you're going to be thinking about the game it could be the whole time you're playing and just kind of disappointed that it's not that game. Maybe with some balance passes, new bosses, and a complete overhaul of the existing ones, it could be, but it's just not right now. I'll keep an eye on it, but I'm doubtful that'll change.
Posted 18 April.
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1 person found this review helpful
14.0 hrs on record
TL;DR: Very simple, but that's not a bad thing.

Yes, it does just look like an asset flip game, but it's actually pretty solid. There's no story there, but the mechanics are reasonably tight. Not very challenging, at least on medium difficulty, but that's okay, too. Not every game has to be Dark Souls.

Kick back, manage your tavern, hire staff, do research, send adventurers out to get ingredients. It's a fairly forgiving game, so it's great to have running in the background. Every few minutes, you need to take a look at it, but even then, there's not a ton of actual management to do, and most of it is pretty straightforward. Maybe the higher difficulty or the winter mode (where you also have to manage heat sources) are more difficult, but I haven't tried them yet.

If you're looking for something pretty low-intensity and not worried about a story? Pretty good for ten bucks. Otherwise, give it a pass.
Posted 23 November, 2023.
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7 people found this review helpful
0.0 hrs on record
TL;DR: It's... fine.

I liked the base game a lot. It's rare that I get all the achievements in a game, and I did with Dredge. For its price, it was a great little 20 hours. This? Not so much.

The value of the Pale Reach DLC can be determined by how much of the main game you have left. For someone that's done everything in the base game, this adds maybe two or three hours of real play, a couple of items that have no utility outside of the DLC, and a couple of marginally more useful ones. The new zone is a pushover, but it does have a couple of fun bits of lore. There are more fish to catch, but that's as much of a crapshoot as it was in the base game; you'll find yourself going in circles trying to trawl the last fish up, just like with the other islands.

On the other hand, if you're either just now buying the base game or maybe at the midpoint of it (on the first, second, or third biome after the starting island), it's probably worth picking up. The two items that are middling for an experienced player with a built out fishing boat are actually very useful for someone who isn't quite there yet, and the expansion zone will probably feel more challenging.

I gave this a thumbs up, but it's a very tepid one. For the cost of a Starbucks, it ain't bad. It's just not great, either.
Posted 16 November, 2023.
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1 person found this review helpful
2 people found this review funny
13.6 hrs on record
Fun and silly. A bit grindy but not too bad. If D4's necromancer disappointed you because you could only command a small band of undead, try the 250+ strong poisonous chicken armies in this game!
Posted 14 July, 2023.
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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
52.3 hrs on record (51.2 hrs at review time)
Hands down the best shooter I've played in the last five years, and that includes both of the recent Doom reboots. I could talk in more detail about its tight controls, enormous arsenal, huge replayability and more, but that would be time not spent playing Nightmare Reaper.
Posted 29 May, 2022.
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6 people found this review helpful
10.3 hrs on record
This is a weird one. I enjoyed it, but almost in spite of itself. The gameplay is just fine not good or bad. There's a good flow once you master the skills, but mastering them is trivially easy. It's a roguelite, but it's one that I finished (including the "secret" ending) within 10 hours, with barely any additional weapons or skills unlocked, and without even having seen three of the biomes, according to the achievements. If you can get it on sale, go for it. The atmosphere alone, especially Ron Perlman's voice acting and the soundtrack, make it worth getting on the cheap. But don't pay full price.
Posted 10 April, 2022.
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2 people found this review helpful
7.4 hrs on record
I'll admit that I came in expecting something different. I was hoping for more of a pulpy mystery in the South Pacific, which this isn't. Instead, it's yet another spin on a very, very well-trod H.P. Lovecraft story, which would be fine if it did something new and interesting with the story. But for the most part, it just doesn't.

Within the first 10 minutes, I had guessed about 80% of the major story beats. While there were a few lovely touches within the script, especially as acted by Cissy Jones and Yuri Lowenthal, neither that nor the gorgeous art are enough to salvage this game. And the puzzles don't help much, either, swinging wildly between far too easy and one or two baffling ones. One of them also, a musical puzzle, is not set up to accommodate people with hearing loss, so that's a problem, too.

If you haven't been exposed to Lovecraft's work much, whether in print, film, or games, then go ahead with this one. Same if you're much, much more interested in the visuals than the story. But if you'd like something that tackles some very similar subject matter in a way that really does something new with it, I'd instead recommend the book Winter's Tide by Ruthanna Emrys.
Posted 27 March, 2021.
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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
144.5 hrs on record (92.4 hrs at review time)
TL;DR: It deserves every single Game of the Year award it got.

I run hot and cold on the roguelike genre, but this game just absolutely gripped me from the first second. I cannot think of a game that has gotten me going "well, I'll just clear one more room" and having the time slip away from me more. Maybe Civilization, but that's about the only one that is in the same class. Great gameplay loop, great story, fun voice acting, varied play styles, probably the perfect mix of roguelite permanent improvements and per-run choice making. Also, probably the best informational drip of any game I've ever played. Cannot say enough good things about it.
Posted 10 March, 2021.
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Showing 1-10 of 29 entries