Recent reviews by NCS

Pretty fun.
Mistakes are punished quite hard, but if things work out your way, it makes taking some risks all the more worthwhile.

To start with, there is not enough backpacks for all players, meaning that despite every player having the same moveset, players will automatically take on different roles, as people with more weight can not climb as long, meaning the other players can scout ahead and help out the players carrying the backpacks, Brilliant design.
Although, assuming your backpack wearers don't die and lose their bags partway through, you'll eventually have enough backpacks for everyone.

In its core, it's Megaman.
However, despite no more micro transactions being needed (or even possible), all the underlying systems are still present, so if you want to play the game at the recommended difficulty, you need to constantly go back to the main menu, level up (or buy new) random stuff (character, skills, weapons, armor, and more that I'm forgetting or haven't unlocked yet) with random currencies for 5 - 10 minutes, then go back to the next level. Rinse and repeat.

Each level is Sonic Forces levels of length (because it was made to be played on-the-go), so the levels are over before they can really start being good. Sure, you can enter the next level immediately after finishing one, but it still breaks the flow, and some of the difficulty is taken out of it by having these levels be so short.

Also, aiming is automated.
In a series that is known for having to jump and shoot. Shooting is essentially automated.
Not that it matters too much, since your skills are where a big chunk of your damage comes from, so you're only shooting while your skills are on cooldown (which is a lot of the time, but still).
I know they had to simplify shooting, since it was made for mobile phone touchscreens, but that does not mean that this design is disappointing for a PC game nonetheless.

But my biggest gripe is the aforementioned upgrade system.
Levels are balanced around them, so if you wan to play early levels, you will be disgustingly overpowered (or need to spend time to unequip stuff to become weaker, if even possible), and if you want to play later levels, they are literally impossible unless you are leveled properly (though you need to unlock them first; but e.g. the events, which you unlock at a certain player level, are impossible at the time you unlock them).
So replayability is heavily decreased compared to regular Megaman (X) games, where you can replay any level at any time (outside of the final levels), and the only thing stopping you from succeeding is your skill.

Long story short, even though you cannot spend any more money on this game, and even though the game is balanced around the fact that you cannot spend anything anymore and showers you in upgrade materials, it is not enjoyable to still have to interact with all the gacha and microtransaction mechanics the game was initially designed around.

I really wanted to like this game, but there are so many small things that frustrate me.

While you have 3 different buttons to use your spells, spells are assigned randomly to your spell buttons instead of each button having a different type of spell.
This means that in hectic combat, you need to direct your eyes to the bottom right of the screen to see which button has your defensive, bullet clearing spell, only to get hit in the mean time.
This is due to the game's insistence on giving you a "deck of spells" rather than being able to equip spells directly.

Weapon type spells have a duration. This duration is displayed in the TOP LEFT of the screen. Which is important, because there is a spell that refreshes the duration of your current weapon.
So now your eyes need to locate the refresh spell in the bottom right, then dart to the top left to see how much duration is left, all the while being shot at with dozens of projectiles.
All of this information should be located near/ around the character.

The more MP you get, the more spells you are forced to take with you, and considering how your base attack feels pretty useless, you want to have more MP to cast more costly spells.
I upgraded mostly my physical stats/ basic weapon stat, and it still felt useless compared to spells. If your weapon spells are also affected by the physical stat, then it makes these upgrades worthwhile though.

After dashing, you cannot immediately cast a spell. If you dash to avoid projectiles/ buy yourself some time to check if you have a bullet clearing spell, and then want to use said spell, you might get hit because you are not allowed to cast spells yet.
I'm not sure of the cooldown exactly (it might be only during the dash itself and my inputs were badly timed), but it is still frustrating to get hit when you were fully intending to clear the projectiles.
Also, you start with 3HP, so any hit matter greatly.

While this is a metroidvania, due to also being a shoot em up, you have the ability to fly from the get go.
This makes a lot of the level design kind of boring, and worse yet, 2/3 of your progression upgrades are "interact with thing to open gate". While these upgrades CAN be used in combat, the sword is too slow and has pitiful reach to be used in combat reliably (though I have used it a bit), and the cat spirit that allows you to shoot your spells through it I have never found a use for,

World 2's water segments only allow you to shoot left and right, while constantly placing enemies above and below you. There are objects that help you fight these enemies sometimes, but if there are no such objects, you better have the correct spell ready. Or not, after all, it's random which 3 spells you have out of your equipped spells.

The art is pretty good though, but that's kind of the only positive thing I can say about the game.

It's a decent Legend of Zelda style game, but the writing felt mostly just like "isn't this video game trope silly" and other such meta humor.

The dungeon layout was kind of bland, which is really disappointing, since the second to last dungeon gives you an item that's really cool in concept, but you get it too late.

Combat (until I realized you can upgrade your weapon after beating the second to last dungeon) was mostly just "hold out your sword and get the enemies trapped against a wall", because that was the easiest way to deal with most enemies.

You get familiars in this game, but most of them (that I got) just run into the enemy, take damage alongside the enemies, and then run off because they are too low health. And even worse, the familiars hitting the enemies knocks enemies away, which makes the afformentioned "trap enemies against a wall" a bit more annoying.

The graphics are fine, I liked the artstyle.

It's not a bad game, but at least for me, it doesn't quite hit the mark due to many small annoyances.

The best survivors type game I have played so far, and even outside of that genre, it is a very fun game.
The music is fantastic, the sprite work is adorable and very well animated
But most importantly, each character feels fairly unique, despite its large and still increasing cast, despite the shared pool of weapons and items. This is due to each character having 3 unique skills, which provide them character specific passive abilities which incentivise you to pick up weapons and items you wouldn't for other characters. On top of that, each character has a unique starting weapon and special attack, which, while less influential on choice of load out, still makes the characters feel different from each other.

Overall, I can only recommend this game.
It has tons of replay value, all for the low price of free. So why not give it a try?

This game is an arena brawler that can be divided into two segments: enemy waves, and boss battles.

The stages are rather boring and consist mostly of button mashing against five waves of enemies each, as you will stun lock any regular enemy; there are some enemies that cannot be stunned until you hit them enough, then they get stunned as well.
These segments are just tedious button mashing segments that do not know when to end.
While each stage has five waves, each wave continues to spawn new enemies once you defeat one of the enemies, making each wave last way longer than they should. Defeating an enemy doesn't feel like you make any progress, since you never know how many more enemies will appear. And this happens five full times, until you finally face off against a boss.

The bosses will kill you if you try to button mash.
This would normally be good in my book, but considering the stages tell you that button mashing is the way to go, this creates a huge contrast between stages and bosses.
All in all, though, the bosses are rather enjoyable...

Except for the final boss, which is ridiculous.
Not only do stages not prepare you for the bosses, but the bosses also don't prepare you for the final boss.
I completely forgot that jumping, or even running (which the game wants you to bind to L3!) are a thing, and guess what, there are attacks that can only be avoided by jumping and running respectively.

The game itself is rather short, only clocking in at 1 - 2 hours for one full run (I spent 45+ minutes on the final boss alone).

Considering that the game felt mostly like a grind, and the final boss like a bad joke, I cannot recommend this game.

I bought this game on Steam as soon as I read Denuvo had been removed.
Good job, Capcom!

While I grew up with the MetroidVania style Castlevanias and only played the classic ones way later, I can still state that this game is a perfect homage to the classic Castlevania games, especially Castlevania 3.

The 8-bit artstyle looks very clean, the soundtrack is amazing and has just the right Castlevania vibe to it, and the gameplay is just like you expect it from a classic Castlevania game.

The game is a bit on the easy side compared to its inspiration, but that doesn't mean the game is a breeze.
You get to play as up to four different characters, each with their own unique abilities; not only has every character a different set of subweapons that help cover their blind spots, but each character has a different weapon with different ranges and attack speed, too.

All in all, I can only recommend this game to every fan of platforming games.

First of all: I think this game is mediocre, and would give it a neutral rating. However, since the Steam review system forces me to give a binary "Recommended / Not Recommneded" rating, I have to say it's not recommended, as I have found too many problems with this game.

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The Disappearing of Gensokyo is a decent game riddled with many questionable design choices that prevent it from being a good game.

My biggest problem with this game is the fact that you have a regenerating health meter.
Why is that bad?
Because this means that, in order to provide a challenge, the developers decided too often to include attacks that drain your health in no time (especially for the bosses) to keep the game a challenge.

I've only played the game on Normal (the second out of four difficulties), and some of the encounters and boss attacks seem ridiculous already. So I can only imagine the harder difficulties to be even worse in bullet density and damage dealt per hit.

That said, especially for the bosses, it does force you to learn the boss attacks and develop a strategy, rather than just brute forcing your way through (which works for the first boss due to the health system, but from then on, the bosses get instant death attacks, then become ridiculous, and then mellow down a bit again.)

I can't say much of the story. Some exposition (mostly to introduce characters to people not accustomed to the world of Touhou, but not only) is provided in badly formatted walls of text that I couldn't be bothered to read because it actively hurt my eyes trying to read it.
Also, the game committed the cardinal sin of provided dialog during the stage during active battles. Without voice acting.

Would I recommend this game to anyone?
If you're a Touhou fan and like this kind of action genre, then maybe.
Then again, both for Touhou fans and people trying to get into the series, there's far better (fan) games of this series out there, including this game's genre.

In the end, the game is rough around the edges, but there is a good game buried by questionable design choices.

That said, I still enjoyed the game, but I can't recommend it to anyone but big Touhou fans and the really curious.

I'm not a fan of those "choose a girl to romance, school setting" type of VNs, but I've been assured that this game would do something interesting, and that it's worth my time.
I can't say that claim was wrong.

Go into this game as blind as possible, but even that statement can be too much, I fear.
And even if the beginning drags a little, give it a chance until you reach the festival.
I did just that, and I'm glad I kept going until then.

The art style of the game is fairly good; it's drawn in an Anime kind of style, as expected with VNs,. I found a graphical hick-up every now and then, but it's nothing game breaking. Overall, the art is really pleasant to look at if you're into the Anime art style.

The game cleverly makes use of the music it has. While I can't say that I'm too fond of the tracks on terms of genre, the music is definitely fitting and used appropriately.

As for the story, you join a literature club, where you meet a couple of girls that you can befriend. The rest is best left read by yourself.

I don't know who to recommend this game to, since I'm not part of the game's general target audience, and I still liked it, so... give it a try, at least. After all, it's entirely free, so there's little to lose here, even if you don't like it. There's a good chance you will, though.