Recent reviews by Axeon

Even though I've stopped playing Elite: Dangerous years ago, I had over 1000 hours clocked there - I don't think I'll be able to return to it after this. Compared to this game, Elite's flight model would feel downright arcade-y. I am playing with a H.O.T.A.S. though, which I highly recommend - with a flight model this good you just wouldn't be getting the full experience with a controller, let alone mouse & keyboard. It's a difference between playing as a pilot, and feeling like a pilot.

There isn't much "game" here just yet though - it is an alpha, after all. Orbital missions also get a bit tedious after a while - time warp maxes out at 20x on the ground and 10x when docked to a space station, which really isn't enough if you want to do back-and-forth runs between ground and orbit without sitting and twiddling your thumbs for 5-10 minutes every time you wait for a launch window. Free flight in orbit has no time warp at all, which is not a problem most of the time - but it is definitely a problem when you need to go to either the highest space stations or those 8,000+ km away missions. You can basically put yourself on the trajectory and go cook dinner, chances are you'll be just about there by the time you return. I just started to brute-force burn the fuel and trying to leave just enough to land in the end, cutting the time down to at least somewhat manageable levels for those.

Still, I really hope this game will continue to be developed. The core gameplay mechanic (you know, the flight) is already absolutely amazing - it alone, coupled with random procedural missions kept me going for hours upon hours. I know I will be coming back to this game every once in a while even in its current state just to fly for a bit.

The game is officially dead - the studio is closed, and no further development is expected, well, ever. I will not go into the drama here, there's plenty of that on YouTube and in other reviews, but suffice to say that regardless of what this game could have been at one point and what was promised - the early adopters really got screwed over, myself included obviously. Despite the fact that this game will never come to feature-parity with KSP 1, and forget all the promised features on top, KSP 2 is still listed at full price, and the publisher even had the gall to participate in Steam Summer Sale as if this game is still alive.

In a perfect world early adopters should be getting refunds when they were essentially lied to with a promise of full game down the line, but knowing that Take-Two would rather keep radio silence on the very fact that they closed the dev studio for KSP 2 and pretend that nothing happened, try your luck requesting a refund through Steam regardless of hours played. Some people have had success with this.



The "For Science!" update definitely made this game, well, a game, rather than a half-broken tech demo that it was before. I've put about 50 hours into it, and the vast majority of those were really fun hours. KSP2 is still an inferior overall experience to the original KSP (especially when it's modded), but not by much anymore, and man is this game on track to be truly great one day! The stuff that does work - works really good, and looks great to boot! It's just... not there yet.

I completed all the main science missions and most of the secondary ones as well. I would have beaten them all, but at some point I just got tired fighting against the game. The first 2/3 of the campaign were great - performance was solid (although definitely not stellar given my rather beefy rig with an RTX 3080 and Ryzen 9 5950x), and I haven't encountered any major game-breaking bugs... or ones I couldn't work around without much frustration. Not until later, at least - more on that later.


The game slowly started to become an exercise in frustration once I started getting into the latter missions and building full-on motherships with dockable landers and SSTO planes for taking on multiple missions to Jool moons at once. At that point I could basically forget what realtime physics looks like. It wasn't terribly complex (especially compared to the behemoths a certain creator from the zone of shadows builds), only just over 500 parts with the first stage included, but it still made the game absolutely chug. Launching that thing was a 5 FPS slideshow, but massive launches were a pain in the original KSP as well, so that I could live with. Having the entire game physics running at like half of realtime even in space doing nothing got old fairly quickly though. The devs would have to pull some serious black magic if they want to have any hope of those massive built-in-orbit interstellar crafts to not have their performance measured in seconds-per-frame.


All of that wasn't what got me to put the game down until further updates though, all of the above I could live with - I used to mod the heck out of the original KSP, so I'm used to taking things slow. What made me draw the line were a slew of borderline game-breaking bugs on those long missions. Here are some of them in no particular order:
* Loading a save that was made close to a planet (think landing descent) can have parts falling off or even completely dismantle your craft, forcing the load of earlier (sometimes much earlier) saves.
* After landing the SSTO plane mentioned above on Laythe - landing gears kept getting stuck in the ground and completely breaking when trying to accelerate. Fortunately I was near the shore, so I had to inch myself towards the water so that the engines would sink, and launch the plane Sea Dragon style (look it up, it was a rather badass real rocket concept).
* Delta-V calculations on stages don't seem to be at all reliable for multi-engine designs, often being off literally by thousands of m/s. This had me always taking way more than I thought I needed, and even then it sometimes was cutting seriously close.


I think the game is at the point where you wouldn't be totally out of your mind to get it at its asking price, though I'd still strongly suggest waiting for a discount. Yes, it's got more than a few kinks to iron out on the foundational level, but I now have faith that it will ultimately deliver on everything that was promised, even if it might take some time to get there.

Let me start of by saying that if you're new to the Neptunia franchise and looking for a place to jump in - this game is not for you! It's expected here that you already know most of the lore, because most of the story stuff just won't make sense to you otherwise. I highly recommend the Re;Birth trilogy as a starting point, and Megadimension Neptunia VII (or VIIR) after that. Now, onto the actual review.

I haven't beaten the game yet, but as of writing this review I have clocked over 20 hours and I have to admit I'm quite enjoying this game, despite some of the shortcomings that I'll discuss further.

Story

The story here is not the most intriguing out of all the other Neptunia games I've played, but it's decent (and let's admit you're not buying these games purely for the story alone). It's nowhere near VII in terms of story complexity and the amount of awesome moments, but it still has some interesting plot development points and Neptunia's trademark humor, so I'll give it a pass here.

Visuals

Let me first make a disclaimer that I have a bit of a soft spot for hand-drawn 2D games like Ori and the Blind Forest, Dust: An Elysian Tail and the likes, so the moment I first saw the trailer for this game way back when it was announced, I knew I was going to buy it anyway. But in all honesty, in my opinion this game looks just great. Animations are smooth and fluent, which is quite important for a visual game like this. World design is, for the most part, just beautiful to look at.. though they did cut some corners in some areas, and it was noticeable (assets were heavily copy-pasted in some areas), but not game-breaking or anything.

Music

This is a bit special to me, as my YouTube channel was pretty much raised on Neptunia metal covers. The music in previous games was really amazing, especially in VII. So how does it fare here? Not too bad actually, but nothing too catchy either. I agree with their decision to go for mostly orchestral composition for the world exploring, it fits the theme really well, and is actually quite beautiful. It's just... not that memorable. Unfortunately they couldn't pull an Ori and the Blind Forest here. Don't get me wrong, it's still pretty good! It's just that after being exposed to both the music in other Neptunia games and other 2D games in similar style, my expectations were kind of high.

Gameplay and combat

Oh boy, this is a tough one... unlike the actual combat (more on that later). Let's start with the cutscenes - instead of the usual visual novel style dialogues that all the other Neptunia games rely on, cutscenes here are actually all in-engine (or its 2D equivalent), meaning characters move around and interact as they talk, which is a nice change of pace. As I already stated above, walking around in the world is quite pleasant, and this game does have a bit of light platforming to it. It would be a real stretch to call this Metroidvania, but you will be returning to previously visited areas with new skills to reach some minor secrets.
Now, the combat... it's very easy. Like, embarrassingly easy - unlike previous games, there's basically no strategy element to it. You will have to switch up your skill sets to accommodate some enemy weaknesses for specific areas, but that's about all the complexity that it has to it. Once you get healing abilities in your party (which you do quite early on), you're basically immortal, and can safely run the combat at 10x speed pretty much all the time while spamming one or two attacks depending on the enemy, except when you want to see those flashy animations. Yep, 10x speed is a thing, guess even the devs realized how shallow the combat system is here. Oh, and if from previous games like me you were used to killing everything in your path (more than once usually) and doing all the side quests that show up, you'll be quickly out-leveling everything anyway. Seriously, I haven't even beaten the game yet, and my regular background health regeneration is enough to out-heal the damage of most regular world enemies. That's not normal. Thankfully the combat, though still important, is not the main selling point of this game anyway.

Final remarks

Should you buy this game? If you're never played any other Neptunia games and are still reading this for some reason - don't bother, just go get the Re;Birth trilogy and VII (there are often huge discounts on them), there's a reason I keep praising them, and then come back here if you find this franchise interesting. But for all other Nep fans that are still on the fence about this one - I'd say go for it. Sure it's not the best game in the franchise, but it's still a very enjoyable experience that I don't regret purchasing. And at the very least, the combat here will not be frustrating :D

I don't usually write reviews, but I felt like some things had to be said. Let's get this out of the way right now - yes, I'm a huge Darksiders fan, so take this review with a grain of salt if you want. That said, I will try to stay objective here. Now, on to the actual review.

Darksiders 3. I've been waiting for this game for such a long time after almost losing all hope when the studio went bankrupt, but here we are. I was really hesitant after seeing all the negative reviews, but I wanted to see everything for myself - and I'm glad I did. Is this a game that will absolutely blow you away? No. No, it is not. But keep in mind that this is technically not a AAA title, made on a budget by a small team, so I don't think it's fair to compare it to all the recent AAA titles by huge studios. And all things considered, it's still a good game! Though maybe $40 or at least $50 would be a more reasonable price for it, all things considered.

Combat.
I see a lot of people complaining about how hard this game is. And while I do agree that it is not an effortless stroll like most modern games are, it is not unfair, and definitely not worth calling this game bad over (there are other, real flaws, more on that later). The combat is indeed challenging and will require skill, but after getting used to it - it's actually quite fun. It's rewarding to become better at combat here, both visually and in terms of perceived difficulty. Take your time, get used to attack patterns of the enemies, and you will be dancing around them in no time. It does have a learning curve though, and even though I am by no means a stranger do these types of games - it took a bit of practice to stop being a punching bag.

Skills and arsenal.
There isn't much here - just 3 attributes of Health, Attack and Arcane (which is basically another type of attack) and a total of 5 main weapons including your default whip. Relatively simple, but actually pretty standard for slashers. You'll probably end up with one favorite weapon anyway, but to their credit - all of them are balanced and fun in their own way, so it really comes down to personal preference. Or you can literally juggle them mid-fight if you feel like it.

Environment and story.
All things considered, the environment in this game is really good, and the character design is, as expected of a Darksiders game, top notch. I also don't think that lack of a map is a bad thing - you actually get to learn the world you are in, and will quickly be able to navigate with ease if you try to be at least a little bit observant, picking up secrets left and right along the way. The story though... well, this is one real flaw that I can't really overlook. I mean, it's not terrible, but it's quite generic and overall falls short of the level of storytelling and lore building we came to expect from a Darksiders game.

Final remarks.
I liked this game. It's good. Not great, but good - it's an enjoyable experience, and I don't regret spending my money on it. And if you're still reading this - I do urge the community to be a little easier on this game in reviews. The team survived a bankruptcy for crying out loud, they're not really in their best shape as it is, and the reviews are not helping. I for one still want to see the story of Strife in Darksiders 4, and definitely want to one day see a 4-player co-op Darksiders 5 with all 4 horsemen!

Gonna be honest, when I first saw this game, I thought it would be a copy of Undertale. Well... just 10 minutes into the game and I realized 2 things:

1) This game is nothing like Undertale
2) I am about to experience something not less (if not even more) amazing!

So, I am not going to say much here for obvious reasons - go experience it yourself! But I will say that this game is brilliant, and simply amazing. It has its way to get you very attached to the main character, really makes you care. This is made even better, considering the main character is so adorable (at certain points I really wished I could give them a hug)! So what are you waiting for, just go, go play this game already!

A little word of warning though - to say that this game breaks the fourth wall would be an epic understatement. The wall is pretty much not there to begin with :D

Edit: This game also has great replayability value! Just take my word for it. Otherwise, minor spoiler - the game knows you're replaying it, and acts accordingly, while also adding some extra story elements! And I think it's not limited to 2 replays either.

Post Solstice patch edit:

If previously this game had great replayability value, now it's multiplied tenfold!

My god, this update just made me cry. Again. If previously OneShot was one of my favorite indie games, now it's officially my the favorite game! And I can't even call this a patch - it's so major that I'd just pretty much call it OneShot 2 delivered as an update, especially since it's triggered only on the secord (or later) playthrough.

I have never felt so attached to the main character...

Short version:

Should you buy this? HELL YES!

Long version:

I was actually having some doubts about this game when I bought it on sale a few months ago. And I still can't believe how stupid I was for thinking that way! I have tried many Vive games, but I have to say that this is definitely my favorite game by FAR!

I could spend hours exploring the vast world of Windlands. The gameplay is very fun and the game itself is incredibely atmospheric! The game would be very interesting even on a flat screen, but playing it in a Vive made it feel so much more involved! I was really feeling like I was saving that world!

So if you do own a Vive, this game is a MUST-HAVE! Just trust me, it is SO worth it! I plan to replay it again, and then again, and so on - it's THAT good! I just can't have enough of that magical atmosphere :D