Recent reviews by Aug

The technical aspects of this game are marvelous: the way you can splice 2D photos into the geometry of your world is a fantastic concept when it's introduced. But everything else around it (the story, voice acting, mission structure, and the puzzles themselves) all fall really short. This game is best treated as a tech demo which doesn't really develop its mechanics significantly after its initial introduction.

Fantastic short platformer combined with a learn-as-you-go puzzler. Absolutely brilliant level design that you appreciate more and more as you go and learn the additional mechanics

It's a very unique animated adventure game crossed with the time loop mechanics ala Outer Wilds (though The Sexy Brutale is probably a better comparison.) I've heard it called a "metroidbrainia" in that your progress is linked to knowledge you gain and not items/abilities that your character is getting. The gameplay is satisfying and the "ah ha" moments continue at a good rate without you getting stuck. Each loop gives you more insight into all the weird stuff going on, ways to get around, and interactions you can do to try and save the world.

The other main unique aspect worth mentioning is the highly detailed 2D hand-drawn style. It's kind of weird and gritty at first but the charm grows on you. Your character does move in 3D across the 2D background, which can be frustrating during some light platforming moments.

A very novel approach to storytelling. You play as nameless/faceless characters trying to flee an authoritarian regime. While you, the player, are not a primary character, you influence the main actors and setting as you try to get to the border. The setting and topics are serious (the border patrol interactions especially are very uncomfortable), but it balances it out with a lot of really great characters.

Very unique and full of personality. Basic premise is you're a spaceship mechanic working for an increasingly demanding boss while also caught in a time loop that resets when you die.... which is often. All the spaceship fixing requires following complicated but also kind-of-logical-once-the-insanity-of-the-game-seeps-into-you sort of sense. As you play, you stumble across numerous side-adventures which still use the same game mechanics (HA get it? mechanics?) but they get real weird and goofy but it works because that's kind of what the game is all about.
Anyway, the gameplay systems mesh really well with the story. The fixing is satisfying, especially as you figure it all out. The roguelite element, while necessary and definitely fits with the story, gets a bit tiring as you strive to complete some of the long-term objectives. i'd recommend copying your save file, because encountering a new system for the first time usually takes time to figure out and that usually results in death, so restarting a run to retry or learn it can be tedious.

Take Firewatch + Subnautica and then make it infinitely worse and you have this game.

Gameplay-wise, it's basically a walking simulator. You're given a mission every day. You go out, do the missions. Doing the missions involves going to a nav point and then getting horribly lost trying to figure out exactly what you're supposed to do. The water is very murky so you can't see ♥♥♥♥, and the 3rd person camera struggles heavily in the confined passages you're constantly in, plus you're underwater and dealing with 3-dimensional space and it's all just a bad combo. Anyway, once you finally do the thing, you're sent off in another direction to do basically the same thing again. Every day. They added a crafting system for some reason that you basically never have to interact with and is just in there to tack on some mission objectives.

The point of the linear gameplay is that it's supposed to be a narrative-driven experience but... yikes the writing is awful. It constantly relies on hamfisting dream sequences upon you. You figure out the story about 1 hour in and it then proceeds to bash you over the head with it for another 8+ hours. Unlike Firewatch, you don't get to choose dialog options or anything; it just... plays.

Graphically, it's ok. The murkiness of the water means you can't see further than 30 feet in front of you, which eliminates both any sense of scale or grandeur (image stumbling across the Titanic, but you can only see the part directly in front of you) and also any way for you to start mentally mapping the area. It's all very claustrophobic, which is maybe what they're trying to accomplish, but it makes for a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ game.

I'd recommend it mainly for the simple but breathtaking scenery. As a puzzler, it seems pretty daunting at first when it presents you with its infinite nature. Once you get a handle of that, the puzzles become disappointingly simple and it doesn't really keep pace with the promise it shows in the first couple levels when it gradually adds mechanics. Not saying the puzzles are bad, but it can't stand on the puzzles alone.
Lucky then that it is an absolute technical marvel how it'll render your world repeating infinitely in all directions. It makes for some jaw dropping visuals. I took more screenshots in this than I have in any of the thousands of games in my library.

Mixed review. Maybe a 7/10. 9/10 except for the quest design (see rant at end).

A Spiders game in every way: developed by a small team but accomplishes a lot of what AAA devs strive for. Fantastic and unique setting (similar to Risen), great worldbuilding, story, characters, really fun and diverse combat + RPG options. There's a ton of impressive stuff here.
BUT also is a Spiders game in terms of the negatives. It's a small team so they re-use assets. There are only a handful of building interiors, and since you'll be going into hundreds of buildings, you're going to see a lot of repeats. Environments are pretty, but are all pretty much some variation of forest (oh the delight when you encounter the occasional swamp.)

The biggest negative here, and I cannot understate this: The quest design is absolutely ABYSMAL. Potentially the worst I've ever played. Quests have you nonstop running back and forth across the island for the most menial of reasons. This would be somewhat more bearable if you could quick travel anywhere, but you can't. You can only travel from designated spots to other designated spots, so approximately 80% of my time playing was spent just sprinting through woods. Again, I cannot understate how awful this is. There was one quest where you find someone illegally using slaves at a mine. Most games would just have you kill the slavers and be done with it. This one? Oh no. You have to run to an advisor (in another city, in the attic of the palace) who then tells you to look for the deed to the mine (in the basement on the complete opposite side. Why not just put it in his office? It doesn't even make sense!) That deed then leads to talking to the former governor (outside the palace) then to the mine owner (opposite end of the city) then back to the advisor (attic of the palace) and then back to the mine (other side of the island.) And you know what you do when you get back to the mine? Kill the @#%#^^ slavers like you should have been able to do immediately. And they are ALL like that. Maybe 20% of the quests have a quick travel option and man those quests are so much better. It's a shame because I really loved every other part of the game.

I'm not a fan of visual novels in general, but this really provides you with a ton of opportunities to make choices, some with major implications (and some not... but you don't really know which is which sometimes.) There is a LOT of reading (cuz you know... visual novel) but if you're into politics, it's pretty fun.

The best aspect is the sheer attention to detail and worldbuilding. You take over a country with a wide range of very real world problems (think like... Ukraine in 2020) with numerous other world powers all closely mirroring real world powers. Then it presents you with various other based-on-true-events issues and you have to carefully (or not) try to navigate your way through them. Meanwhile, it's all fictionalized and integrated into the story in a fantastic way.
My only issue with the game is it's pretty vague on the government budget. It gives you a -ton- of opportunities to spend money, but you never have like a "tax day" or anything to build the budget back up. Further more, it's not really clear on when costs/gains are coming. I ended up spending a ton of money to expand your education system, only to run out of money at the end and having to privatize the whole thing I just expanded.

If you're checking this game out, it's because of the super-stylized visuals. In that respect, the game nails it. Fantastic visual style, environments and music. It's really unique and does it very well.

Gameplay-wise, though, the game gets super tedious. My biggest gripe is there are only 3 classes, each with ~3-6 skills (depending on your level) and the skills honestly don't really differentiate or even synergize. Lots of them break down to "do a lot of damage in 1 hit" vs "do smaller damage in 3 hits" vs "do medium damage with a push effect". The environments are just a big flat square grid interspersed with barricades that don't even serve as cover in the X-Com sense. So you're usually just looking at all the enemy movements and then trying to remember where they are all going when you pick yours. It's dumb and tedious.
Much like X-Com, the game can heavily punish you if you make a mistake. But unlike X-Com, it doesn't really give you the tools to do anything about it. I guess it kind of fits the brutal stylings of the game visuals, but it makes for a lame gameplay experience.

The perfect encapsulation of the game is this: Your character health does not regenerate after missions. You need to sacrifice another character of equal or greater level in order to heal a wounded one. It's a very unique mechanic that fits great into the vibe of the game. But as far as how it actually plays gameplay-wise? It's awful. You're essentially wasting the time you spent on one character so you can sacrifice them to heal another.