I’m always happy to try indie games, because often they surprise me and end up delivering experiences that I never would have expected. I think about games like Vampire Survivors, because it looked so terrible to me, but then I tried it and ended up putting more than 50 hours into it. So I’ll always give an indie game that looks interesting to me a shot. Sadly, sometimes a game really is as basic and bland as it looks. This is the case with Mimi the Cat: Mimi’s Scratcher (Scratcher) from Wise Box Studios.
There really isn’t much to say about this game, because you can totally get what it is just from watching the one-minute trailer. It’s a casual, low stakes puzzle game that feels more like it should be on mobile rather than a home console. While I played it on the Nintendo Switch while docked, it absolutely makes more sense to play this in handheld mode while doing something else, like watching TV.
Visually, Scratcher is fine. It’s extremely minimalist in its visual style. The levels are floating squares in a single-color void with a few gridlines underneath to help you better manage your positioning. But since the game is pretty simple, the additional gridlines aren’t really necessary. You can change the background color of the world at any time just by pressing B. You don’t even have to go into the menu to do it, which is a nice accessibility option coupled with very convenient QoL design. But overall, it’s a pretty bland, barebones looking game.
The cat’s movement animations aren’t great, but I wouldn’t say they’re terrible. Given the scope of this game, they’re certainly not a hindrance. You’re definitely here for the gameplay rather than the graphics. Which isn’t really an issue for a level-based puzzle game like this. Even the menus are extremely barebones, giving you little in the way of options. It’s just start the game or go to settings. And the settings are only setting the volume for music and sound effects and changing the language. Kudos to the studio for providing translations in eight different languages, but since there’s no story, it’s really just the few controls in the tutorial; and you could easily figure out pretty much all of them on your own in a couple minutes. But the text is a very readable sans-serif font, so at least there’s that.
As for writing, there isn’t any to speak of, the gameplay controls notwithstanding, so that’s all I’ll say about that. They don’t even explain to you why Mimi the cat is in this weird void of nothingness pushing boxes around to reach a magical floating cat scratcher. But that’s fine. The trailer was honest about what I’d be getting into, so I won’t fault them for that. However, a story might have motivated me to push through to the end of the game.
The audio experience is also pretty simple. There are a small number of effects, which mostly amounts to pushing boxes around and reaching the goal at the end of each stage. I feel like they could have done a bit more with the cat making sounds, but that probably would have gotten annoying eventually. Even navigating the menus is a silent experience, save for the chime you hear when you select something. I was impressed by the song that starts playing when you first load up the game. It was a more intricate composition than I would have expected from a game like this. That said, it’s the only song the game has. It just plays in an endless loop as you pass through the levels; and yes, it does get old. Honestly, you could play this game silent while watching TV or listening to music and the experience wouldn’t be much different. It certainly wouldn’t be worse.
The gameplay works for what it intends to be. It’s a straightforward puzzle game where you’re trying to reach a clearly marked goal in every stage. The trick is that the goal is basically always floating in the air. So you have to move boxes around in order to place them in such a way that you can climb up and reach the goal. The concept is simple, but these puzzles do get progressively harder with each stage.
You can only climb up one level at a time, which is defined as the height of one box. Boxes can be stacked to make stairs. However, you can’t move stacked boxes. Boxes can be unstacked, but only when the cat is on the same level as the top box in the stack. Meaning that in order to unstack a two-box high stack you have to have a third box next to that two-stack. You climb up that one box and then push the top box of that two-stack off. Boxes can only be pushed forward; and they cannot be pushed off the stage. Meaning that you have to be careful of dead ends and trapping yourself with stacks you can’t climb. Boxes automatically stack when you push them into each other, so it’s important that you watch what you’re doing. At level 21, you encounter crates. Crates differ from boxes, because they can’t be pushed. Crates can appear in single and double stack instances. Boxes can be stacked on to crates.
A second aspect of the gameplay is jumping. You can’t manually jump, but you can clear certain gaps. While you can only climb up one level, you can jump down two. Or at least two, since I have yet to encounter a three-stack scenario. You can also jump across gaps that are one square wide and one level below. Meaning that if you are standing on a box next to a hole that is one square long, you can jump from that box to the other side of that hole. You can also jump across a gap from a two-stack, but you can still only clear a single space gap when jumping. Additionally, you can jump from a two-stack to a one-stack across a gap.
Interestingly, you can carry boxes when they’re stacked on top of crates or boxes, but only for as long as it takes to carry the box off the crate. You can even jump over a gap while carrying a box, as long as it’s on top of a crate or other box when the action starts. You stack boxes by pushing one box into another one. It stacks automatically when this is done. The same thing happens when you push a box into a crate.
As with most puzzle games of this nature, a big part of the experience is trial and error. Thankfully, Scratcher has one of the most convenient restart mechanics I’ve ever experienced. You can restart a stage at any time by pressing X. Again, you don’t have to go to the menu to do this. And the loading time is nearly instant, so it’s not troublesome when you get stuck and have to reload. That’s probably why they kept the graphics so minimal. I only cleared the first 26 levels before I got bored with it, so there may be additional aspects to the gameplay I haven’t encountered. But there are only 55 levels in total, so I can’t see the gameplay getting much more interesting or complicated. Scratcher is what it is; and what it is, sadly, is pretty boring. I will say that I appreciated the fact that you can basically play the game with one hand. Especially since you have to use the d-pad rather than the joystick to play anyway.
There’s not really any replay value in this game, as there’s little in the way of variation to the gameplay. I’m sure some of the puzzles have more than one solution, but they would not be so wildly different that you would be able to call it a different or dynamic experience. Once you clear the 55 stages, that’s pretty much it. And I was able to clear 20 of them in under an hour. Meaning that unless you get stuck on certain puzzles for a long time, this is at most a two-hour game. With the $5 price tag, I can’t say that it’s worth it.
Mimi the Cat: Mimi’s Scratcher is not a bad game so much as it’s a mediocre game. It feels very much like a game jam type of project rather than a commercial project. Something to try but not to buy as it were. And if you do buy it, the game won’t last long anyway. This isn’t some hidden gem indie game that’s short but tells an amazing, emotionally impactful story. It’s really just 55 puzzles that you’ll solve once and then be done with. While playing this game, I was reminded of Freshly Frosted. It is more expensive, with a $10 price tag, but it’s also a superior puzzle game experience in pretty much every way. It has more than double the number of stages, a story, and much more dynamic and interesting gameplay. If you are looking for a casual, puzzle game with more depth to it, I’d definitely recommend that over this one. I rate Mimi the Cat: Mimi’s Scratcher a 4/10.
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I’m a Final Fantasy fan, but what that means in 2024 is a bit debatable. The reality is that I have been playing FF games regularly for more than a decade. My first Final Fantasy was FFX, which I still consider the best overall game the franchise has ever produced. To date, I have played X, XII, XIII, VII, XV, and I in that order. I’m also currently playing II for the first time. I have played some of the spin-off titles, like XIII-2, but I don’t want to talk about those in this post. While I consider myself a fan of the franchise, and continue to purchase and play the games, the reality is that I have loved only half of the games I’ve played in the franchise, liked one of them, and hated two of them. Not to mention the fact that of 16 mainline titles, I’ve only played through six of them. Though I am currently playing through the Pixel Remaster collection, so I will have added five more games to that list hopefully by the end of this year. I identify as a FF fan, but I can definitely see why that statement could be considered questionable.
As I just recently finished FFI for the first time, in the Pixel Remaster collection, I decided that I wanted to do a post that was somewhat akin to a review, but really it’s more of a discussion on classic JRPGs and how it feels to play one in 2024. So while I will comment on my experience of playing the game in this post, I will not address all the aspects of the game that I would in one of my normal reviews.
The first thing that really stood out to me about Final Fantasy I is that it actually holds up really well today. Honestly speaking, there are a lot of things the game does, for better or for worse, that we still often see in modern RPGs. The turn-based combat, which I love, feels both dated and modern at the same time. A lot of the same practices are used, such as elemental weaknesses and resistances, critical hits, and the ability for attacks to miss. Any Pokémon player can easily walk on to FFI. Yet the combat offers things that many later JRPGs lack. For starters, your party has four members. My first FF only had three party members available in combat at the same time. The same is true for VII, which is many people’s favorite game in the series. Alongside that, the favored turn-based FF titles tend to max out at three enemies. FFI has battles with up to nine enemies at once.
Combat capabilities in FFI are limited by class; and that part isn’t fun. Especially when it comes to magic. I chose to have a red mage instead of a white mage alongside my three other party members, and that was a major mistake. It was super irritating not being able to learn spells like any level of group heal. Meanwhile, most of the black magic spells in the game can be learned by a red mage, so the experience felt very lopsided. I used more items in this game than probably any other FF I’ve ever played. It was the only way to make up for the lack of group healing magic; and it absolutely made the game harder.
Something that I really appreciated about FFI was how streamlined the experience was. Today, every RPG, Japanese or otherwise, feels way too long. I don’t actually think it was intentional for this game to feel so respectful of my time, but being able to finish a AAA franchise JRPG in under 20 hours was very refreshing. Even with the bit of grinding I had to do, the game never felt too long or slow paced by comparison to many modern titles. And I do get that many people today are split on that issue. In my youth, I too wanted games to be as long as possible. Now, as a busy adult with a hefty backlog, I only want games to be as long as they need to be. I’m over pointless fetch quests, monotonous collectibles, and unfulfilling side quests that add nothing to the experience other than time spent. FFXV, as the latest installment in the series I’ve played, is filled to the brim with side quests that just wasted my time. FFI sent me around the map multiple times, made me find secret locations, and even had me revisit dungeons all while still keeping the entire experience under 20 hours. I will acknowledge that the Pixel Remaster version of the game removed the bonus dungeons, for some odd reason, so the game should have been slightly longer, but I’m fairly confident that it still would have been less than 30 hours total.
I appreciated how coherent and complete the story is in FFI. It’s definitely a much simpler narrative than many of the games we get today, even in this specific franchise, but it was also better written in many ways, because it was a clear narrative with a fulfilling ending. No open-ended nonsense. No moral ambiguity about whether or not slaying the final boss was a righteous decision. I knew why the characters were there. I knew what they had to do. And I never felt like they were unjustified in why they had to do it. Too many games today have fallen into the “Are we the baddies?” trope. And many of the ones that don’t just don’t take their writing seriously at all. Neither is good structure for writing in a video game, in my opinion. I shouldn’t feel confused about why my actions are my actions in a video game. And I should never feel like an asshole at the end of a game, unless it’s a game with morality options and I’ve chosen to play as an asshole, which I almost never do.
I don’t want to talk about the graphics, because this is a remaster of a port of a game from 1987. So all I’ll say on that front is that the dated graphics were in no way a hindrance to my enjoyment. But that’s obviously a personal preference issue, so I’m sure some people will find this game unplayable today; and those people are wrong.
I don’t know if the original version of the game had this, but being able to save at any time is always a pleasure that all games should have at this point. That said, I found the save vs quick save function to be odd and pointless. You can save when on the world map, but not when you’re in a specific location. Whether it’s a town or a dungeon, you will not be able to save. But you can quick save at any time in any location, except for while in combat. Quick saving works exactly like saving, save for the fact that you only have one quick save slot vs the 20 regular save slots.
There were little things that I didn’t like, such as the fact that you can’t buy elixirs, but these sorts of issues didn’t prevent me from completing the game. Apparently, you can farm elixirs in the bonus dungeon, but again they removed that from this version of the game for some reason. This definitely made the final boss more troublesome, because it was a pretty unbalanced fight without a white mage. Yet the game still took me less than 20 hours to complete.
All in all, I really enjoyed Final Fantasy I. I’m glad to have finally been able to play it. As it stands, it’s probably in my top three FF games, that I’ve actually beaten. As I write this, I’ve already started FFII, so I’ll probably end up doing mini-review of all six games in the Pixel Remaster collection. However, rather than giving them number grades, I’m going to rank them all among the mainline FF games I’ve beaten. So as of right now, here’s my current ranking.
1. FFX
2. FFXII
3. FFI
4. FFVII
5. FFXIII
6. FXV
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A couple weeks ago, Marvel announced that a new game leveraging their beloved IP was on the horizon. As any gamer who likes Marvel can attest, this can be great news. Such as with Marvel’s Spider-Man from Insomniac Games. Or this can be bad news. Such as with Marvel’s Avengers from Square Enix. In defense of Square Enix, we don’t always know at announcement which type of news we’re getting. I’m happy to admit that I was very excited about Marvel’s Avengers at announcement. Conversely, I was absolutely not happy with the announcement of Marvel’s Midnight Suns from Firaxis Games. It’s wasn’t until I got to try the demo that I was sold on the game. You can read a blog post about that here, if you’re interested. All that said, Marvel quickly confirmed that this new game was absolutely bad news.
Marvel Rivals is a PVP hero shooter; and everything about that description is everything that’s wrong with this announcement. As was said by pretty much the entirety of the internet on the day of the announcement, “NO ONE ASKED FOR THIS.” Not a single person actually wanted this game to happen. Not even people who play hero shooters. There’s no reason for Marvel/Disney to try to compete with an already bloated market filled with popular trash like Overwatch 2 and Apex Legends. And honestly, it’s a stupid choice to even try.
Here’s the reality of trying to launch a PVP hero shooter in 2024. No matter how good your game is, it’s not going to succeed without investing a butt-ton into not only marketing, but more importantly the competitive scene. People don’t play these hero shooters because they’re actually fun. They’re terrible games. They play them because there’s money to be made. They play them for the esports opportunities. They play them because they get views on Twitch and other gaming streaming platforms. People are not still playing Overwatch 2 because they genuinely think it’s a good game. They’re just hoping to get a seat on that gravy train. Even the 40-something year old dad who only plays a couple hours a night after a long day at work only plays because in the back of his head, he wants to believe that eventually he could get good enough to make it at the competitive level. He never will, but that hope keeps him coming back. Because at least he has something to hope for. The point is that without building a lucrative esports community, which is entirely driven by money in 2024, there’s no hope for this game, or any other new hero shooter.
People will definitely try Marvel Rivals. The latest thing is always appealing. Assuming it’s F2P, I’ll probably download it and try a round. The important thing is that people won’t stay. Unless there’s money to be made, all those Apex Legends and Overwatch 2 players will quickly return to their equally mediocre, but already established and potentially lucrative niches. Why would you start from scratch if there’s no money to be made? What irritates me is that this is another textbook example of the gaming industry having good ideas, but fumbling the execution.
Let me be honest in saying that the gameplay for Marvel Rivals looks really interesting. In the trailer, there’s a sequence where someone playing as Doctor Strange opens a portal that allows someone playing as Spider-Man to jump through and land in the center of a firefight, completely disrupting the situation. There’s another sequence where someone playing as Rocket Racoon jumps on to the shoulder of someone playing as Groot, allowing them to do a cooperative frontal assault. I want to play a game with this sort of dynamic gameplay! Every Marvel fan does. What I don’t want is to play a PVP hero shooter filled with microtransactions and no story campaign. This looks like the gameplay I wanted Marvel’s Avengers to have. But instead of making a cooperative story focused game, they made a PVP shooter. What were you thinking, Marvel? You nearly struck gold. Then you turned it into shit, like some sort of reverse alchemy scenario. Why doesn’t the industry ever just give us the nice things we actually want?
I would happily pay for a game that has the kind of gameplay shown in the Marvel Rivals trailer but operates like Lego Marvel Super Heroes. That’s really all they need to do. And again, that was supposed to be what Marvel’s Avengers was. But they cheaped out on the execution. And now Marvel Rivals is just straight up executing the wrong thing. It’s all so tiring at this point. I know the skills to make the Marvel game the people want exists. I also know that such a game could be profitable. The problem is that the people in charge will always say that they want it to be more profitable and then screw up everything as a consequence. At least we have Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra to look forward to.
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When I first heard about Princess Peach: Showtime! (Showtime!), I was skeptical, until I saw the announcement trailer. The idea of a game where the character could transform into a large number of different variations, each with their own unique gameplay, is a great concept. In fact, it reminds me of an old favorite of mine from the XBOX 360 days called Kameo: Elements of Power (2005). After playing the demo, I was sold. Granted, I buy a large number of the first party Nintendo titles, so it wasn’t really a tough sell for me to pick up this one. However, what I did not expect was how easily I would be able to add it into my current play schedule without making any serious adjustments.
In my younger days, I only played one game at a time. Unless you count mobile games, which I’m only ever playing one at a time as well, I used to spend all my gaming time on a single game. I’d play it until the end and then move on to the next game. Starting a second game while in the middle of one was unheard for me. Now, I’m running four different games, plus a regular mobile game, concurrently.
My “main” game right now is Starfield. I play it just about every night before I go to bed. At work, during my lunch breaks, I normally play an indie game that I can play without sound. I’ve written about this in a previous blog post. Currently, I’m playing Cursed to Golf, which I’m determined to beat, even though it’s really tough. Recently, my commute increased by double the travel time and now requires me to spend at least an hour on the subway every day. During that time, I’m currently playing Final Fantasy I in the Pixel Remaster collection on Nintendo Switch. When I watch TV, I’m often playing something on handheld. Either my ROG Ally or Nintendo Switch. Currently, I’m playing Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, which is excellent and definitely worth your time. That’s four games at once. So when I decided to preorder Prince Peach: Showtime!,with a voucher, I wasn’t sure when I was going to actually have time to play it.
To my surprise, I was able to implement Showtime! into my play schedule rather easily. And the reason for that is because of how it’s structured. Showtime! is a single game, but it doesn’t really feel like one. Instead, it feels like a collection of short games. Not mini-games such as those you find in Mario Party or WarioWare. The stages in Showtime! feel more complete than that. Yet, they’re still short, casual experiences that you can easily pick up and complete in under 30 minutes.
Each stage in Showtime! is its own play in a theater. I could go into the details about how this is shown visually, but it’s unnecessary for this particular post. What’s more important is that every stage is comprised of its own unique world, gameplay, and story. Each play has its own villain, victims to save, costume for Peach to wear, and gameplay changing power. When you finish a stage, it feels very complete. You experienced a full story, new gameplay, and, assuming you found the collectible, unlocked a new costume. The experience feels complete at the end of every stage. As such, the game feels great to play just one stage at a time.
Rather than sit and play Showtime! for an extended period of time in a single session, I’ve played only one stage each night since I started it. If I don’t get all the collectibles in a single attempt, which happens at least 50% of the time so far, I’ll replay that stage for the 100% completion. But after that I stop. Even if I do have time to play more, I don’t. At that point, I load up Starfield. And playing it that way feels great. I always leave the game both satisfied and feeling like I want more. When I play it again the next day, I know that my experience will be entirely different, complete with a new story, new gameplay, and a new reward. It’s the perfect casual gaming experience. Honestly, I should probably end my days with Showtime! instead of Starfield. Then at least I would get a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day.
I don’t know how many total stages there are in Showtime!, but playing it has been a great experience in every session. It’s the perfect casual game that still feels like it has substance. Because you are still playing towards a larger goal and story. It’s just broken up into several pieces that can standalone as their own experiences.
This post isn’t a review, as I’ve only played the first five stages so far, so it didn’t seem appropriate to write one. But I do highly recommend the game to anyone looking for a casual gaming experience that’s fun and fulfilling. So far, I’ve really enjoyed all the costume powers I’ve tried, save for maybe Patisserie Peach, but I still appreciated how different that stage was from the others I’ve played up to now. Princess Peach: Showtime! is definitely worth checking out. And since there’s a free demo, you have no reason not to give it a try.
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A couple weeks ago, I published a post about how I had to learn how to mod Starfield, so I could play it in ultrawide resolution on PC. While that was the first time I ever modded a game in my life, I ended up adding two additional mods to the game about 20 hours into playing it. They aren’t really important for this specific post, but they do speak to the fact that this game needs a number of adjustments to be fun. To be clear, with the now three mods in place I’ve implemented, I do now really enjoy playing Starfield. However, my current biggest issue with this game, and many other western RPGs, is inventory management.
Hoarding is a big part of both Western and gaming culture. We all know the meme about playing a JRPG and not using the epic potion, because you may need it at some point down the road, only to end up completing the game having never used it. This doesn’t really happen much in Western RPGs, as they don’t tend to focus on consumable mechanics the way JRPGs do. If anything, I’d say Western RPGs suffer from the opposite problem. That problem being an overabundance of stuff and by extension the need to spend countless extra hours of gameplay managing all of it.
Starfield’s weight limit system, like in most RPGs, is trash. In the case of Starfield, it literally ruins the game to the point of almost making it unplayable. In fact, after getting the ultrawide resolution working, raising my character’s weight limit was the next mod I implemented. I didn’t go overboard. I saw people online raising their weight limit to like 50,000. For reference, the game starts you off with the weight limit at less than 200. I only turned it up 1,000. I didn’t want to remove inventory management from the game completely. I just wanted to make it so that I would never have to do serious inventory management in the middle of a mission. The mod worked exactly as I intended and has made the game a much better experience for me. However, even without having to worry about the weight limit, I’m still forced to spend an exorbitant amount time in Starfield doing inventory management.
While a lot of negative things have been said, by me and others, about Starfield, I want to make sure that people are aware that the gunplay is awesome. The shooting in that game feels great. And there are a ton of different gun options. Not only are there lots of guns to choose from, but there is also a decent amount of gun customization via manual upgrading. The problem with all these weapon options is that you have to constantly swap them in and out with guns you find. However, determining which guns are actually better is often more difficult than the firefights. And therein lies the problem.
Starfield is thorough in its presentation of different weapons and armor items, but it lacks any sort of tool that helps you quickly decide which piece of equipment is better. Even when using the compare equipment function, you see lots of numbers, but the number often don’t make comparing two pieces of gear any easier. You constantly find drops of the same gun in Starfield. Often, the damage is exactly the same. It’s actually the mods, as in in-game gun modifications, and innate buffs that make two models of the same weapon wildly different. But that assumes you both know the differences between various equipment mods at a glance and want to take the time to thoroughly compare two weapons, often in the middle of a mission. The reality is that it gets old fast. I like shotguns in Starfield a lot. But there’s at least four different shotgun models that can have up to seven specific mods on them at the time of picking them up. Even if you know which types of shotguns you prefer, that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to easily determine which one is best when comparing two or more shotguns currently sitting in your inventory. And you know what? Dealing with that process over and over again is not and has never been fun. Not in this game, and not in any game, if we’re being honest.
I have to ask if anyone actually likes doing inventory management as a gameplay mechanic at all? When I think about the countless games I’ve played in the past that forced you to spend large amounts of time managing items in your inventory, for whatever reason, I always think of that time as external to the gameplay. That is, it’s something you have to do in order to continue enjoying the gameplay, but not actually part of the gameplay itself. That’s a weird differentiation to make when I put it into words, but that’s always how it feels. Nobody plays Pokémon and says one of the things they love the most about the game is having to make constant trips to the Poke Centers to buy more balls. The gameplay is finding, battling, and capturing Pokémon. Going shopping for more balls is just something you have to do to get back to the gameplay. I don’t think I’m alone in this opinion, but maybe I am?
The thing that I wish Starfield, and countless other games with massive inventory management components, had is a clearcut grading system for all items. Not a rarity system. Starfield, like most Western RPGs, has an item rarity system. What I’m talking about is a system that assigns a total point value to every piece of equipment that’s balanced to the overall gameplay experience. That way you could quickly see which gun or piece of armor was objectively better at a glance and then just throw away/sell the one with the lower score. No reading lists of stats. No comparing mods. Just a very simple single number comparison system. If that were available, the amount of time I spend looking at my inventory in Starfied would drop by no less than 70%. While Starfied does have a value figure for each item, this only reflects the sell value of the item. Not its general effectiveness in combat. There are mods in the game that literally don’t improve a weapon’s performance at all, but still increase the gun’s value when implemented. This is because it costs resources to craft mods, so even useless mods have to give some sort of ROI in the game’s economy.
While a clear rating system would be nice, implementing it would be tough in a game as convoluted as Starfield. Though I do believe this would work for the guns in Starfield, making scores relative by specific gun type/model, I don’t think it could be done with the game’s overly complicated armor system. Armor, or spacesuits to be specific, is an annoying mess in this game. There are lots of clothing and spacesuit options, and they all have some level of cosmetic value, but the important part is their protections stats. The game features three different types of weapon damage and four different types of environmental damage all running concurrently. Meaning that your full set of armor needs to account for seven different types of damage plus mods and innate traits all at the same time. Sadly, you rarely find a piece of gear that protects against everything. Usually, each piece of gear specializes in certain types of damage. So you have to hold on to several pieces of gear and mix and match them based on the conditions of the specific planet you’re currently on. It’s a mess in every sense of the word. And there’s no armor sets function to hot swap gear either. So you have to keep spending a ton of time in the menus changing your gear around each time you visit a different planet with harsh conditions. Ultimately, I gave up on the whole exercise and constantly wear a legendary spacesuit that does multiple types of protection all at once. It’s not the best at anything, but it meets a minimum standard for most things. But I wish there was a better way to manage this inventory.
The real question that I think needs to be asked is why? Why do games have these convoluted inventory systems. Why do games have mechanics like encumbrance? While they are two different issues, they are clearly relevant in the same discussion. I don’t like these things. But I have to assume that someone does. Otherwise, what’s the justification in putting them in games? Logically speaking, there has to be a decent number of players that genuinely do like spending hours of their time sifting through menus trying to decide which items to keep and which to drop or sell. I don’t know who they are, but they must be a large group. Otherwise, game developers are actively making game mechanics that people just don’t enjoy . . .
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The reality is that a major reason that I decided to review this game is because of the title. How could one pass up trying a game called Attack of the Karens? I don’t even play bullet hells that much. Because I’m usually terrible at them. Sometimes I wonder how I ever managed to beat Returnal. In any case, Attack of the Karens (Karens) is an indie bullet hell by Studio Primitive. I had the pleasure of reviewing the soon to be released Switch version, courtesy of Flynn’s Arcade, the console publisher for the game.
Karens leverages a retro art style that feels low budget, but not dated. I was very impressed with how modern it looks even while clearly emulating classic SHMUP games like Life Force (1986) or Darius (1987). The graphics are not pixelated, but feel like they want to be, if that makes sense. The color pallet is simple and limited, but executed with care. Funny enough there is an option called “CRT Filter” that lets you add scanlines to the game.
As the game is themed around Karens, as in annoying, entitled women of late 2000’s memes, the settings, obstacles, and enemies you encounter all play around with this theme. The levels, of which there are at least five, but I’m still not sure how many total, are set in everyday places you’d expect to encounter Karens at, like the suburbs, the bayside, or downtown. Yes, these are the actual names of the stages. Obstacles are things like high heels, make up utensils, and other stereotypical adult female items. Enemies include things like lesser Karens coupled with robots that fire lasers and bombs. At the same time, the game’s story has numerous sci-fi elements to it, so the visuals are often enhanced by this. The bosses, for instance, are all women that have been turned into cyborgs.
Studio Primitive mixed sci-fi with American suburbia very well visually. The bosses being the best examples of this. For instance, one of the bosses, named Jordan (none of them are actually named Karen) is a social media influencer. One of her attacks is using her cellphone to throw selfies at you. Really, that’s the whole game from a visual standpoint. They took normal objects and made them look sci-fi without making them look particularly cool; and that style works very well here, because it allows for a lot of variation in enemies. In a game where you’re fighting volleyball players, you’re also fighting tanks. While dodging shoes, purses, and lipstick, you’re also dodging missiles, bombs, and lasers. It’s funny, but absolutely not lazy in its execution.
The UI is simple, but effective. In the top left corner of the screen, you can see your HP, presented both numerically and visually, your current progress towards leveling up, your current level, and the total number of modules (in-game currency) you currently have. On the right side of the screen, there’s a vertical bar. I really like this because it’s the progress bar for how close you are to the boss of the level, with a break in the middle to show your progress towards the mini-boss. But when you reach the boss, the bar becomes its HP bar. This is a nice touch, because it gives you two different types of information clearly without taking extra space on the screen.
The menus do suffer a bit with this dated visual style. Text and icons could be clearer, but they’re certainly readable at a fast enough pace. All-in-all, I was happy with the graphics in Karens, for what it is, because it works for the game they set out to create. That is to say, it certainly could look better, or more expensive, but that wouldn’t add to the experience in any meaningful way.
This game deserves so many points for audio. From the start menu, you are immediately hit with an intense beat that feels both sinister and futuristic at the same time. I’ve played many indie games with low budget graphics leaning on the “retro inspired” tag that open with an impressive song. More often than not, those games only have the one song. Not so with Karens. This game has a full soundtrack of impressive background music consisting of 18 different tracks. You can even buy it on Steam as DLC. And it’s solid music. It’s not a Final Fantasy OST, but it’s much more impressive than I expected going into this game.
I was also very impressed with the voice acting. Normally, a project of this style and scale would lean almost exclusively on text to convey its story and feature little to no voice acting. Especially a game in this genre. Karens goes the complete opposite direction and has voice acting for every piece of story/dialog in the game. All five of the bosses, your handler, and the upgrade notifications are fully voiced. The dialog is recycled, meaning that you will get tired of hearing the same boss intros over and over again, but you can skip them. You can also turn them off in the main menu option screen, but then you won’t see any dialog you’ve previously missed, if you get farther than you have before. It’s a great option for replays though. In any case, I absolutely appreciate the fact that the dialog is fully voiced and voiced well at that. The sound effects are standard fare, but they are exactly as good as they need to be. I have no notes.
There is a surprisingly large amount of writing in this game. And again, it’s all voice acted. The general plot, which does start out with a cutscene, is that an alien parasite has made its way to Earth and infected four women, turning them into evil cyborgs. It’s not clear why an organic parasite turned them into cyborgs rather than mutants, but sci-fi gonna sci-fi. These evil cyborg women built robot armies and want to destroy humanity. The funny part is that they were already terrible people before being infected, thus the title Attack of the Karens.
You play as a member of the KDF, which I believe stands for Karen Defense Force, but don’t quote me on that. You are tasked with defeating the Karens to save humanity. Your handler, Amanda, briefs you about each of the Karens at the start of their levels and speaks with each of them during their boss fights. She also occasionally comments on what’s happening with scripted reactions during the course of play. There is an actual story here. I won’t spoil the ending, but there is a major plot twist that, while not being very surprising, does put this game a cut above many other 2D side-scroller bullet hells I’ve played. And that includes titles in the genre that aren’t/weren’t indie projects. Also, a lot of the dialog is funny. It’s not the most hilarious game I’ve ever played, but Studio Primitive clearly put effort into writing this game; and that should be celebrated, given what I’ve come to expect from many projects like this.
Karens features your standard SHMUP gameplay made considerably better with the addition of several QoL options and roguelite mechanics. While this game is challenging, it gives you the benefit of being able to unlock permanent upgrades. You’ve played some version of this basic concept before. There are four stages, each with a mini-boss and boss. You fly your little ship from left to right trying to avoid obstacles and enemy attacks while continuously firing your attacks. You do have to hold down the weapon fire button, but you have unlimited ammo and can’t change weapons. Think Galaga (1981) but horizontally instead of vertically.
There are a total of four stages in a run, but there seems to be more than four maps available. Bosses are not tied to a specific map, and they don’t always appear in the same order, making each run feel slightly different. Mini-bosses, however, are tied to specific stages. I really like that the game tells you the order of the bosses before starting each run, so you can plan accordingly. For me, the order of the bosses definitely factored into my ability to clear all of them in a single run. The constantly changing boss order was very helpful, because not only did it allow me to experience all the story content, regardless of how far I could get in a single run, but it also allowed me to practice against each boss continuously, making it easier for me to get farther much faster than I otherwise would have. Of the four Karens, two of them were very easy for me and two of them were very hard. Eventually, one of the harder ones became much easier for me to tackle, because I got to keep practicing without having to make it past multiple other bosses before facing her. The fifth, and final, boss is always the same, as that’s story specific.
As you play, you collect modules. These are the game’s currency for buying permanent upgrades, and they carry over from run to run. Upgrades consist of several things such as improved damage, additional HP, and faster movement. There are also some more niche upgrades like a consumable rocket attack. There is a limit to the amount of upgrades you can buy, as is the case with most roguelites. I actually really like how quickly you can purchase all the permanent upgrades, because it makes the game feel very practical. You can see the light at the end of the tunnel very quickly when it comes to reaching the end of the game.
There are also run specific upgrades that reset when you get a game over. There’s a decent variety of these, and they can be upgraded during the run. Once you learn which ones you really like, prioritizing them makes the game feel much more manageable, difficulty wise. You get run specific upgrades every time you level up. You get XP by killing enemies, and you can choose between three random options every time you earn a new upgrade. I always prioritize getting the credit card as early as possible, because it speeds up XP acquisition, getting you even more upgrades faster. Both run specific and permanent upgrades have maximums, but generic HP, attack power, attack speed, and movement speed run specific upgrades don’t.
Another QoL feature that I really appreciated was the “Kurses & Kushions” menu. These are a set of modifiers that you can toggle on/off between runs at your leisure. Kurses make gameplay hard and net you more modules faster as a result. Kushions make gameplay easier and reduce the amount of modules you get. Meaning that once you unlock all the permanent mods there is no sacrifice to be made by using Kusions, other than pride of course.
Make no mistake, this game is challenging. It gets easier as you learn the patterns and better understand how the upgrades work, but it’s still quite difficult. Your base HP is only three hits. Many of your upgrades, such as shields, have cooldowns as long as two minutes, which is an eternity in a bullet hell boss fight. There are no continues. You have to clear four levels, each with a mini-boss and regular boss, plus a final boss in a single run. Yet the game doesn’t feel unbalanced. While difficult, I did not end my time with Karens feeling like it was something I’d never be able to beat. In fact, I almost beat the final boss after about six hours of total play. And really the final boss is the only part of the game that feels truly unfair.
Every boss has two forms. However, the final boss has four. Honestly, it’s a pretty ridiculous fight compared to the rest of the game. During the other four boss fights, you only have to deal with one full life bar and can still get upgrades during the fight, if you manage to level up mid fight, which is rare but not impossible. In the final fight, you have to deal with four full life bars. And the final form goes into multiple prolonged invulnerable states. At the bare minimum, each phase of the fight should give you at least a few hearts when beaten. Had that been the case, I would have absolutely beaten it the first time I got that far. The game doesn’t even refill your HP going into this fight, for crying out loud. I did eventually beat the final boss after several attempts over the course of probably nine hours of total play, across several sessions. And I managed to unlock all the permanent upgrades except the very last one before doing so. Additionally, I did it without using any modifiers. But again, outside of this one fight, the rest of the game feels very fair and balanced.
There is certainly an argument for replay value in Karens. The various upgrades, modifiers, differing order of bosses in each run, and the variety of upgrades you can get in a given run all help to stretch this game out longer, if you want that. Karens isn’t a long game, if you can manage to beat it in a single attempt; which you won’t. A successful run will take you about 30 – 40 minutes total, unless you’re playing very conservatively. My game winning run took 30:47, as reported by the game. That said, unlocking all the permanent upgrades took me more than eight hours, giving me my money’s worth for the $5 price tag, had I not been provided a review key.
Aside from the final boss fight, I was pleasantly surprised by this game. It delivered in ways that I never would have expected, and it made me feel confident in my bullet hell abilities, which is very rare. I played the Switch version, but you can also find it on Steam, with a free demo available. Overall, I give Attack of the Karens a solid 8/10.
As always, thanks for reading. Please take the time to follow my blog, leave a comment, and check out some of my other channels if you enjoyed what you read.
I’ve been playing PC games for a long time. The oldest PC game I remember playing that I specifically relate to the PC as a gaming platform is Hocus Pocus (1994). However, I did not identify as a PC gamer until I built my first DIY system back in 2017. Recently, I built a new rig to replace that first one, as it was no longer performing up to modern gaming standards. I wrote a post about that new system a few weeks back, in case you’re interested.
In the seven years that I’ve been doing serious gaming on PC, I have never once used a mod, or software mod to be more specific, as I have done a small amount of hardware modding for practical reasons. I’ve never been into the idea of game mods. I understand why they exist. But for me I actually like to play games as intended by the developers, a majority of the time. I also rarely if ever replay games, so I’m not usually putting in the time to warrant changing a game from its originally intended version. Additionally, the concept of downloading software from random people online in a world of so many scams, viruses, and nefarious digital happenings really freaks me out. So I spent the last seven or more years of PC gaming actively not using mods, save for those built into the game as a native option by the developers. I’m talking about things like big head mode in Ratchet & Clank. Otherwise, I’ve been completely mod free . . . until playing Starfield.
While I did not build my new PC to play just one game, Starfield was the motivation that finally made me commit to upgrading to a new system. To be clear, I did not believe that this game would be nearly as good as the community expected and Todd Howard promised. With the exception of id Software and the DOOM franchise, I learned long ago not to trust Bethesda’s promises. That said, I did get to try Starfield before building my system, and this demo experience managed to sell me on it. Or rather, sell me on the idea of using my several months of free XBOX Game Pass for PC subscription to play the game. I knew I couldn’t run it on my old PC, so I had to build a new one. Funny enough, if they had released Starfield on PS5, as originally announced, I probably wouldn’t have built this new PC when I did. And I would have actually bought the game.
As I always build my latest system to near the top of the current spec market, I opted to upgrade my previous setup from dual 27” monitors to a single 49” curved ultrawide. Like it or not, this seems to be the future of PC gaming; and that’s why I went for that display. At first, I didn’t like it, but it has quickly grown on me. That said, I was not aware that so much media, gaming and otherwise, just doesn’t support the 32:9 aspect ratio. I can understand this for movies and TV, but the fact that so many (modern) games don’t support it is both surprising and, now, irritating to me. I will admit that I didn’t do enough research on this, as I just assumed it was a given for a medium that’s supposed to always be near the cutting edge of technology. But that doesn’t make this fact any less disappointing from both a personal and technological standpoint.
As Starfield was my major motivation for finally building a new PC, I wanted that to be the first game I played on the system. When I had everything ready, I activated my free Game Pass for PC subscription and downloaded the game. I started it up to discover that “the greatest game of all time” does not natively support the 32:9 aspect ratio. “25 years in the making,” and Todd Howard made an epic space game that fails to allow players to fully try to capture the vastness of space in their gameplay experience. Even more irritating is the fact that he had the nerve to tell people, in an interview, that his game required them to build/buy better PCs to fully enjoy it. Well I did build a better PC, Todd Howard, and your game isn’t up to my rig’s standards.
I was very angry to learn that I couldn’t play Starfield natively in 32:9. However, I also refused to settle for playing it in anything less. So, I angrily turned to the internet to find a way to play this game at the resolution that a space game in 2024 should be played in on PC. Unsurprisingly, there were multiple fixes listed on Reddit to make Starfield play in ultrawide. Because of course there is. There was no way I was going to be the only person angry about this. I was happy to learn that there were not one but two fixes that allow you to play Starfield in 32:9 without having to download anything. Those are barely mods, and they come with no risk of downloading a virus. Music to my ears.
This is how Todd wanted me to play his game . . .
I tried both of these fixes, and, sadly, I couldn’t get either to work. I watched multiple videos, read multiple Reddit posts, and followed all the directions to the letter. I restarted my system multiple times, but Starfield refused to render in 32:9. I was crushed, and angry. So, so, so angry at Todd Howard, who I’ve never really been a fan of to begin with. I genuinely refused to play the game at a smaller resolution. I was ready to just delete the game and give up. Ironically, I was considering playing DOOM Eternal, another game published by Bethesda, to christen my new PC. But my desire to see my goal of playing Starfield on my new PC was too strong. So, I went against my long held practices and opted to download a mod.
Throughout my research to run Starfield in ultrawide, the same mod kept coming up. A free mod called Flawless Widescreen. Researching this is how I first discovered that a lack of 32:9 support in games is a super common issue. Which really depressed me, since I spent so much on this monitor hoping for a revolutionary gaming experience moving forward. After doing my due diligence, I opted to download this mod. It’s actually a collection of dedicated plugins and tools to manage them with the soul purpose of making games playable in 32:9, like the good Lord intended!
I installed the mod, followed the directions, and Starfield still wouldn’t run in 32:9. I was crushed. I didn’t understand what I was doing wrong. I knew objectively that all these fixes should work, but I didn’t know why they didn’t. Again, I have no previous experience with modding. Finally, in a fit of desperation, I started the game with the mod running. Immediately, and this only worked out for me because Starfield starts in gameplay rather than cutscene, I discovered that the game was in fact running in 32:9. The menus don’t, even with the mod. In both menus and cutscenes, you get 1920×1080 resolution with the rest of the screen filled with massive black bars. But the gameplay runs in 32:9. It was at this moment that I realized that the previous fixes I had tried most likely had been working. I just wasn’t realizing it, because I was using the start screen as my testing environment.
This whole ordeal probably sounds really stupid to people who mod regularly. I, now, assume it’s fairly common that mod fixes only affect gameplay, but not menus and cutscenes. But why would someone with no previous experience with modding ever think that might be the case? Something I realized during this whole ordeal is that modding documentation, or rather modding tutorial documentation within the gaming community, is very lacking in terms of hard directions. There was not a single post or comment I found that included a disclaimer stating that the ultrawide fix for Starfield wouldn’t work for the menus or cutscenes. Even Flawless Widescreen doesn’t actually clarify this in its Starfield section. You just have to know. A guy even tried to help me via DMs on Reddit, and couldn’t understand why the fixes weren’t working for me. At no point did he clarify with me if I was looking at the menu or actual gameplay. Similarly, I couldn’t really find anything telling me about running the fixes. There was plenty of corroborated documentation about setting them up, but nothing about actually stating them and making sure they’re working. I assume that modders just assume people know how to use them once set up/installed. Which is a terrible assumption to make for people new to modding games.
How it was meant to be played.
I may not be a modder (Or maybe now I am?), but I have been a gamer for decades. I have also worked in tech for nearly a decade. I’ve created tutorials. I’ve written and checked documentation. It’s important. It needs to be done, and done thoroughly. What took me multiple hours to get working should have taken me less than five minutes. And it would have with clear, step-by-step instructions and clarifications. I’m happy to say that my first attempt at using mods for gaming was ultimately successful, and it’s definitely made me more open minded about using them in the future, but that doesn’t change the fact that they need better SOPs for new users. In any case, I am currently playing Starfield in glorious 32:9 aspect ratio. So, thank you to Flawless Widescreen.
As always, thanks for reading. Please take the time to follow my blog, leave a comment, and check out some of my other channels if you enjoyed what you read.
There are way too many JRPGs, and I buy too many of them, most of which I will never have time to play. If I never bought another JRPG again, I’d still probably not be able to finish all the ones I currently own by the end of my life. That, among many other reasons, is why I’m often skeptical when it comes to picking up new JPRGs. Especially those that aren’t part of ongoing franchises I’m already tied into. That said, some of my favorite JRPGs are tiny, A or AA projects that few people will ever talk about. For example, I’ve written blog posts about the Voice of Cards series and Dungeon Encounters. Both are JRPGs that very few people ever talked about, even though they were all published by Square Enix. Yet I’d absolutely buy a sequel to either series; and in the case of Voice of Cards, I already have . . . twice. So while I actively try to find reasons not to buy a new JRPG, I am happy to acknowledge the ones that are actually worth playing; and as has always been the rule, I will try any free demo. It is with this mentality that I went into the Unicorn Overlord demo.
The major problem, in my opinion, with JRPGs is that they are a combination of long and repetitive. Some people like this, and in my youth I did as well. But today, with such a massive backlog of games I actually want to play, the prospect of playing something long with boring gameplay becomes less and less appealing. Note that I’m not saying turn-based or any specific type of gameplay is boring. But when something repetitive with little to no variation seems to drag on for too long it can get really boring, regardless of how good it was at the beginning of the game. This is why Square Enix opted to move away from turn-based gameplay with the Final Fantasy series. Whether or not the decision was wanted by fans of the franchise, the logic behind the decision was inarguably sound. But for those games that are still turn-based, many developers have tried to streamline the model in various ways in hopes of making the experience feel original and less repetitive. While I would not argue that Unicorn Overlord reinvents the wheel, I would say that Atlus has figured out how to separate all the chaff out of the wheat that is traditional turn-based JRPG gameplay. But let’s not dive fully into the gameplay aspect of the review just yet.
As far as graphics, Unicorn Overlord is good. Arguably great for what it is; but what it is falls into the lower budget JRPG graphics category. This is your Octopath Traveler/Voice of Cards territory. The art style is very nice and highly detailed, but it doesn’t feel like a AAA game visually. Which is fine when a game is not being sold for $60+, which it is on all platforms. Let me be clear, I don’t think the graphics look bad. They just don’t feel like something I’d pay top dollar for.
The graphics can be broken down into two phases of gameplay: map and encounter. The map phase has an HD-2D feel to it that absolutely works for what it’s trying to convey. You have an overworld that features numerous details including locations, terrain, structures, animals, and NPCs. It all runs very smoothly and looks fine for what it is. I wouldn’t call it ugly, but I wouldn’t call it impressive either. There is a version of this game I can imagine where the graphics look like Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord or Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV. In fact, I can absolutely see the PC community modding the game to look like that.
The map phase is used both in and out of battle stages. Outside of battle, it’s very simple. You basically just have the mini-map in the top right corner. When idle, the controls will appear in the top left corner. The mini-map shows you everything you’d expect from a mini-map, but I didn’t use it much, as the map was pretty easy to remember. I did make use of the menu map a lot though, as it showed a lot more distance and allowed for fast travel to previously explored locations. When you’re at a specific location, additional information about that location pops up in the top left corner of the screen. Interestingly enough, when idle while standing at a location, the controls pop up below the location information.
During battle stages, which still uses the map phase visual style, the UI adds a lot more information, but I didn’t feel overwhelmed by it. Honestly, I ended up ignoring a lot of it once I understood the gameplay better. In the top left corner, you will see your valor points. This could have definitely been designed in a much smaller form, but the style of presentation is nice and clear, using both text and visuals to display the same information. In the top middle of the screen, you will see the battle timer. In reality, the time limits for battles, at least in the demo, were so long that it was almost unnecessary to have a timer. I will go into why I believe there’s a time limit a bit later in the review though. In the top right, you have the same mini-map from the overworld gameplay, except now underneath it you are given terrain information. This is because terrain plays a major part in battles. At the bottom, you can see unit information.
As this is a military strategy game, battles are broken down into units rather than individual characters. That said, individual characters are what units are comprised of. Each unit can have up to six individual characters, each of which is specific and intentional. When you move the cursor over a friendly unit, the unit’s information will appear in the bottom right corner of the screen and be coded in blue. The information shown in the foreground will include the name of the unit’s leader, along with their portrait, and the amount of stamina the unit currently has. In the background, you can see the layout of the unit’s members and their individual level and HP bars. Once you learn how the appearances of different characters and types of combatants look, this UI becomes very easy to read quickly. When you move the cursor over an enemy unit, you will see the same information in the bottom left corner of the screen, coded in red.
In the encounter phase of gameplay, the graphics change to the same style of graphics as the game’s cutscenes with a bit of UI added on top of it for data purposes. It ‘s very nice images with a large amount of detail, teetering on hand drawn appearance. As impressed with the art style of Voice of Cards as I was, this is that same style cranked up several times. However, none of this is interactive, as the encounters all run automatically. I’ll talk about that more when I get to the gameplay.
The additional UI elements in the foreground of the encounter phase are graphically the same as those in the map phase, but the information is more specific to the individual encounter. In the top left and right corners of the screen, you will see red and blue flags. Your side is always the blue flag. In my experience, it’s always on the right side of the screen. On the opposing bottom corners of the screen, you will see the unit members layout and HP bars, similar to how they look in the map phase when you move the cursor over them. In the bottom middle of the screen, you will see the current action being taken by whichever character is currently taking their turn.
Cutscenes look almost exactly the same as the encounter phase, and even use the same text boxes for dialog. The only difference is that cutscenes don’t have all the battle UI in the foreground of the image. The movement, both in cutscenes and in encounters, is quite smooth. Funny enough, they even took the time to animate boob physics for female characters in this 2D art style. I played the demo on the Nintendo Switch, and I didn’t experience any lag over the course of the 7.5 hours that I played for. Finally, the font used for dialog and menus is a very nice, highly readable sans serif font. All in all, while I wouldn’t necessarily say that the graphics wowed me, I honestly don’t have any complaints about them.
I was very happy with the audio experience in this demo. More specifically, the dialog. Every cutscene is fully voiced acted, but there is also a lot of other voice acted dialog. For instance, the vendors all have spoken dialog. It’s not much, but it’s there, and of good quality. There are also lots of call outs from characters during encounters. The sound effects and music are top notch as well, as should be expected from an Atlus JRPG. I don’t really feel the need to say more about it, because it’s great, and that’s enough said on the subject.
As for the writing, Unicorn Overlord hasn’t done anything revolutionary. It’s a very commonplace plot about a kingdom in a world of multiple landlocked countries that is taken over in a coup d’état by the monarchy’s lead general. The reigning monarch is killed in a final battle, after sending their only surviving son away to avenge them and retake the throne years later. You of course play as that son in a quest to liberate the world from the evil empire that has taken hold of the map from the seat of your former kingdom. As with a great many JRPGs, I’d say the relationships between the characters are much more interesting than the game’s general plot. One of the interesting things about the relationships between the characters is that they form based on how you structure your units. The more two characters fight alongside each other, the closer they get. Over time, this not only grants you synergistic effects between those characters, but it also unlocks special cutscenes between them. For instance, the game started me out with a Thief and a Paladin, among other characters. For reasons that will become more apparent later in this review, I kept them in the same unit for the entirety of the demo. That particular unit was also one of my most used units across all the battles I fought. This unlocked a cutscene for me later on in the demo where those two characters had a private conversation that the protagonist wasn’t even present in. This presents the opportunity for a large amount of replay value, if you care to see various cutscenes featuring different combinations of characters.
Finally, let’s talk about the gameplay in Unicorn Overlord. While this game is being sold as a JRPG, which makes sense, I think it’s more accurate to describe it as a resource management battle simulator masking as a JRPG. What stood out to me most in the demo was that very little comes down to chance and the classes of soldiers are extremely important. Let’s talk about the latter of those two things first.
Usually when I play a JRPG, or really any turn-based RPG, the classes don’t really matter that much. And this goes all the way back to the beginning of JRPGs. Yes, there are different class names for characters, but it really just comes down to fighters and mages. All fighters are functionally the same, save for the equipment they can use. And mages either heal party members or damage enemies with attack spells. You can pretend that it’s more complicated than that, but it really isn’t. I’m literally playing Final Fantasy I for the first time right now, and while all four of my party members have different class names, they can really be summed up as physical attacker 1, physical attacker 2, physical attacker that uses healing magic sometimes, and magic attacker. It’s just that simple. Move forward to Final Fantasy X, and while the number of party members may be much larger, they can still be summed up much the same way. A bunch of physical attackers, a healing mage, and an attack mage. And if you played the sphere grid correctly, you probably taught Tidus a healing spell, like Curaga. This is not how things work in Unicorn Overlord.
What I really enjoyed about this game was that every single class is distinct, and those differences between them matter a lot. We’re not just talking about physical attacker versus magic user. Even among physical attackers, there are several different classes with various strengths and weaknesses. And I don’t mean stat wise. I mean performance wise in combat. These differences are not tiered, however. They’re all balanced quite well with each other. Early in the demo, you get a class called Hoplite. This is a greatshield wielder with a spear. His defense is amazing. Not only is it hard to damage him, but he defends other members of the unit as well. At first, he seems unstoppable. Then you encounter a class called Warrior that wields a war hammer, and the Hoplite gets trounced immediately. But the Warrior just as easily gets taken by a number of other classes. Thieves and Gryphon Knights are great at dodging attacks. But they struggle to damage certain types of enemies while excelling at damaging others. The point is that there is no best class. Instead, you must examine each unit you face in a given battle and use the appropriate classes against them to maximize effectiveness. Yet this is not always possible, as enemy units move dynamically and can choose to pursue units that you didn’t want them to. This is where terrain plays a major factor in the gameplay.
Different types of units move at different speeds on specific types of terrain. The unit leader determines the movement type of a given unit. Often, I wanted one unit to attack a specific unit and another one to attack a different specific one. Yet their differing movement speeds, coupled with the differing movement speeds of enemy units, often forced my units into encounters I didn’t want them in. This is where the battle timer starts to matter. Units are limited by stamina. Stamina determines the number of encounters they can handle before requiring a rest. While the timer was never really burdensome to me, it does force you to use multiple units concurrently in battle. Meaning that you can’t just spam the same unit over and over and then let them rest before spamming them more. This strategy will ultimately lead you to running out of time. Instead, you need to staff units with compatible characters that have synergistic strengths and techniques.
At the beginning of the game, I was given a Knight class character. This is a mounted lance user. At first, he seemed terrible. I paired him with a Solider that had the ability to heal party members for 25% of their HP. Even together, these two were mostly ineffective, and I rarely used them. Then I later recruited a Gryphon Knight, and they became my second or third most effective unit. Because the Gryphon Knight was able to draw most of the attacks from enemies and dodge them, save for when fighting certain specific classes. Character placement within units is a major part of the gameplay. Every unit is comprised of a 2×3 grid. You can place up to six characters in whatever position on that grid you want. However, every unit in your army starts out with only two of the six spots available. You must unlock the other spots by spending honors, which is a currency gained through victories and completing tasks and quests. That Gryphon Knight was placed at the center of the front row of the unit grid, with the Knight and Solider placed in the back row on opposite sides of the grid. Additionally, the Knight was the leader of the unit, as this gave the unit horseman speed to move around the map during battle. All of these aspects of unit formation can be customized both in and out of battle, but during battle it can only be done under certain conditions.
Now let’s talk about the lack of chance in the combat I mentioned earlier. What really surprised me about Unicorn Overlord is how the encounters aren’t actually the important part of the gameplay. It’s the strategy leading up to encounters. The individual fights within battles aren’t at all dynamic or surprising. In fact, the game flat out tells you what the outcome of the encounter will be before you start it. No, I’m not exaggerating. When two units meet, they are forced to battle. You cannot escape the encounter. However, if another unit is in range, you can choose which unit participates in the encounter. Before the encounter commences, you are shown exactly how much HP each unit will lose, or gain in some cases where a unit has a member capable of healing. There’s no surprises. There’s no chance. A random critical can’t mess up the battle for you. Critical attacks do happen in the game, but they never change the outcome of the encounter as shown before you started it. That’s why I think it’s more appropriate to call this a resource management battle simulator than a JRPG. Because you don’t have to account for bad luck within an encounter. You don’t have to consider the possibility of an attack missing or choosing the wrong spell. In fact, you don’t even control the characters in encounters.
That’s right, the encounters are automatic. You don’t tell characters which attacks or techniques to use. They always do the exact same thing in the exact same order. The only thing that changes is how they react to the specific characters and layout of the enemy unit. You do have some power over customizing the behavior of characters, but this must take place outside of battle. Once an encounter has started, all you can do is watch. Or you can skip it, since you already know what the outcome will be. The only reason to watch encounters, other than because you enjoy watching them, as I did, is that you can learn about how characters fare against certain types of enemy units; and whether or not changing the placement of characters within a unit might make it more effective. Most of the game is managing your characters and units in terms of formation and equipment. During battles, you tell units where to go and who to attack. But you have no power over how the encounters will go once they have started. The only exception is that you can use valor techniques. Every character has special techniques that take valor points to use. These must be initiated before an encounter has started, but they can affect the outcomes of them. For instance, the Hunter class has a valor technique that damages all units within range of the attack. By using this technique, you can lower the HP of a unit before an encounter. This could potentially change the outcome of that encounter.
It’s not completely accurate to say that there are no surprises in the combat. While the game does tell you the outcomes of encounters beforehand, it only tells you the results in terms of total HP. Encounters consist of every character in both units exhausting all their action points. Normally, this consists of each character taking a full turn in addition to any special actions they have, like guarding other characters or healing. Once all characters have used up their action points, the encounter ends and the unit with the most total HP is declared the winner. Encounters do not have to end with characters dying. In fact, they often don’t, depending on how much HP characters in either unit have. As you can only see how much HP either unit will lose in an encounter, you don’t know what the distribution of that lost HP will be. For example, say you have a unit with three characters, each with 30 HP for a unit total of 90 HP. And say the encounter preview shows that your unit will win the encounter with a total loss of 33 HP. Now that could end up being a loss of 11 HP to each of your three characters in the unit, which is easily weathered with anything from items, to resting at a base, to valor techniques. However, that loss of 33 HP could also be 30 damage to a single character followed by 3 damage to another character and 0 damage to the third one. In this scenario, your unit won the encounter, but one of your characters died. This can be remedied in battle, but it’s much harder to deal with. Again, this is why the game feels more like a resource management game than a JPRG. You have to make adjustments in real time based on data given to you, but all of the information is transparent and little of it is up to chance in the way a traditional JRPG handles combat outcomes.
While the gameplay might sound a bit odd or even boring to both traditional and modern JRPG fans, I found it quite addictive once I got the hang of it. The streamlined combat system became really enjoyable for me, because it didn’t have the monotony of spamming attacks over and over again like you do in a turn-based JRPG like OG Final Fantasy games. While you feel like you’re doing less overall in Unicorn Overlord, everything you do actually do feels a lot more important and impactful by comparison.
This game is filled to the brim with replay value in several ways. For starters, I’ve already discussed how pairing different characters together can affect their relationships and unlock special cutscenes. But there are also countless unit formations you can implement with the large number of classes available in the game. The demo implies that there are at least 80 different classes of characters available in the full game. Also, the narrative has choices. Most battles start out with a request being made by a new character. At the end of most battles, there is an encounter with the enemy leader. These two characters often require you to make choices at the end of each battle. Sometimes, it’s whether or not to recruit a character to your cause. Other times, it’s whether or not to execute an enemy leader. It can even be both at the same time in some situations. These choices affect the narrative, both in that they can add new characters to your roster and that they can affect future battles. For example, in the demo I faced a bandit. After winning the battle, I chose to imprison the bandit rather than freeing him. I don’t know if choosing to free him would have made him join my army, but I do know that he ultimately escaped from prison. Then, I was forced to fight one of his friends later. I assume that there are many more choices like this throughout the full game.
Though I went into Unicorn Overlord almost hoping that I wouldn’t have any interest in buying it, by the end of the demo I was hooked. In terms of gameplay, this JRPG is different than pretty much any other game in the genre I’ve ever played. It certainly borrows things from other games, but this is absolutely an original gameplay experience from Atlus. I won’t give a numerical score to a demo, but I will say that I’m definitely buying this one. Though probably not at the $60 launch price.
As always, thanks for reading. Please take the time to follow my blog, leave a comment, and check out some of my other channels if you enjoyed what you read.
I continue to be impressed by Nintendo’s dominance of the digital presentation game. From the very first Nintendo Direct, the company has always handled the model better than every other brand that has even tried to do them in the gaming space. As the title suggests, Nintendo continues to be direct with their Directs. This latest partner showcase, though a little misleading with the core messaging presented at the beginning of the presentation, was still a master class in how to do it well.
The very first thing said in this Showcase was that you are about to see a presentation of games from publishing and development partners that will be released on the Nintendo Switch in the first half of 2024. This was slightly misleading in the fact that some of the announcements shown were for games that will be releasing after June of this year, but all the announcements are releasing in 2024, and the bulk of them will be releasing within the first half of the year. The more important point is that Nintendo opened with a promise that was clear, concise, and immediately relevant to the viewer.
The second thing I really liked about this presentation was how it was organized. This Direct was broken up into sections by not necessarily genre, but something close to that. It was really nice knowing beforehand if the next series of announcements would be interesting to you. While I always watch the entire presentation, this transparent structure made it easy to skip over the parts of the presentation you knew you wouldn’t care about. Assuming, of course, that you weren’t watching the presentation live, which I never do.
Third, and this goes back to the timing of releases structure I already mentioned, Nintendo Directs are awesome because when they make announcements, they often follow them up with information that will potentially affect you the day of the Direct. There’s nothing I love more than a presentation announcing a game, a release date, and then dropping a demo during/soon after the announcement. In this Direct, Nintendo announced three demo drops and just straight up launched nine games during/within 24 hours of the presentation. And I downloaded all of those demos.
Finally, and this is always the most important thing about Nintendo’s presentations compared to those of Sony and Microsoft, the Direct uses it’s time efficiently and effectively. This presentation was just under 24 minutes. In that time, they showed 31 games. 32 if you count Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection as two games. And every game, even the small indies that were shown for less than a minute, got enough footage to make me understand the project and potentially grab my interest enough to look further into it, if I was interested in the genre.
Honestly speaking, most of the announcements shown in this Direct weren’t that impressive. But the way they made those announcements was top tier. Even XBOX had multiple showings in this presentation. Because Nintendo is so confident in their business that they have no problem spotlighting the competition on their own platform.
As far as the actual announcements are concerned, I won’t take the time to go through them all, as again there were several. But I will note that there were several ports, remakes, and remasters, which I’ve already stated my concern about in past blog posts. The industry is clearly stagnating towards IP and easy nostalgia sales. What I’m more interested in is some of the smaller titles I’ve not seen before like Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure and Penny’s Big Breakaway. I’m also impressed with what they showed of South Park: Snow Day. Though I will probably regret the purchase later, I’m definitely going to end up buying Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble. I like those games, but I’m sure to get bored before clearing 200+ stages.
I have to admit that I was underwhelmed by the closing announcement being Endless Ocean Luminous, but I respect Nintendo having the gumption to do games of all sizes and expectations a solid. It’s easy to close a presentation with something like Zelda, God of War, or HALO. It’s risky to close with something most casual players will simply overlook or not care about.
All-in-all, I consider this a very successful Direct, and I’m sure that I’ll end up buying more than one game that was shown in it. And this was released on the same day that Bandai Namco published the trailer and release date for the Elden Ring DLC. Only Nintendo has the balls to do that; and for good reason.
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I’m keeping it very light this week and giving a personal gaming update rather than my normal serious posts. As the title says, I finally built my new PC. I built my previous gaming rig nearly eight years ago. At the time, my specs were top of the line. I had a GTX 1080 GPU, an i7-6700K CPU, and an X-99 motherboard with all the fixings. That PC was good to me over the years. There were the occasional problems, like when the AIO cooler finally gave out towards the end of last year, but all in all I got nearly a decade of solid gaming out of it. That said, it was clearly time to build a new one. Technology has changed so much since I built that system that upgrading wasn’t even practical.
Building this new system was difficult for so many reasons. For starters, getting the parts I wanted was quite a challenge. You may have seen my blog post from November about how impossibly difficult it was to get an RTX 4090 GPU. I was finally able to get one, but I had to do so through a distributor via my work connections, which absolutely should not have had to happen. And I still had to pay full price for that card, even while calling in a work-related favor. But there were also just a lot of issues I encountered during the building process that just weren’t concerns when I built my previous system.
I have spent the last eight years using a full-tower case. This was an intentional choice, because of the large number HDDs I had in my previous system. With the power of M.2 SSDs, and a motherboard capable of housing a whopping six of them, I was able to increase my total amount of storage space while reducing the amount of real estate needed within the case to achieve it. This made me make the grave mistake of choosing to go for a mid-tower case instead of sticking with full-tower. I wanted to reduce the total amount of space my system was using. My full-tower build sat on the floor under my desk, but my mid-tower case can sit on my desk. It seemed like a great idea, but I regret it immensely.
Building in a mid-tower case with high spec components sucks. Even more so when you have large hands/fingers. For example, my 4090 GPU is much fatter than I expected it to be. The length is fine, but the height is so big that it covers the use of my second PCIe slot on the motherboard. The simple solution for this would of course be to do a vertical installation, but I don’t have the space to do that with the other components I have installed, such as an Elgato internal capture card, in such a small case. The case I chose allows for eight fans. This was crucial considering my 360mm AIO liquid cooler. However, fitting the power and RGB cables (still not sure why those can’t be managed through the same pins at this point) for that many fans + the cooler itself is a nightmare in such a compact chassis. On paper, all my specs are compatible in the case I chose. In practice, this is a bit of an exaggeration.
While it was a struggle, and I’m still setting things up software wise, I am happy to report that my PC is up and running. I went with a 49” ultra-wide monitor, which I hesitated about for a while. While clearly a natural progression from a dual 27” setup, it is very different in many respects. For instance, you have an unlimited amount of monitor real estate for multiple applications at once, which my system can definitely handle with the GPU, CPU, and 64 GB of DDR5 DRAM I have installed, however, many individual applications look terrible in full screen on such a wide monitor. Internet browsing in full screen looks horrendous on sites like YouTube, that fill all the extra horizontal room with white space. I was never a dark mode type of user, but I can see myself using it now.
It’s always annoying having to redownload all your games on Steam and other launchers. The fact that you can’t just manually copy them to your new drives is honestly just stupid. There are some work arounds for this, but, with the exception of GOG, due to their lack of DRM, it’s really just easier to redownload games manually on most launchers. Especially since I’m transitioning all my storage from HDD to SSD in this new build. Thankfully, my internet and read/write speeds are good, so the process has gone pretty smoothly so far.
I fought the transition to Windows 11 for as long as I could. My old system was still running an inactivated version of Windows 10. But I decided to take the plunge with this build and bought a key, on sale of course. So far, the transition hasn’t been too bad. There are settings issues that I find inferior/worse in W11, but nothing that had made me unable to accomplish the things I want. The only thing I was not able to do is install the Zune music launcher software. Microsoft has gone out of their way to kill it off, but I was still actively using it in W10. Sadly, the amount of extra effort it would take to install Zune in W11 just isn’t worth it. The truth is that Windows Media Player, which was obviously developed by Microsoft alongside the Zune software, now has most of the features that I loved about Zune. I was even able to maintain my playlists without having to recreate them. I just had to store all my music files in the same drive letter as in my previous build. If I was still actively using the device itself, which I still have in working order, I’d go the extra mile to install the software in this build. But since I use the software and not actually the player these days, it just wasn’t worth the effort.
As I write this, I have yet to actually try out any games on this new system. I want to finish all the setup and installation first. But hopefully I’ll be ready to actually play something soon. I’m planning on doing Starfield first, since that’s the game that actually motivated me to finally commit to building a new system.
For those interested, here are my specs:
Operating System: Windows 11 Pro
Motherboard: ASRock Phantom Gaming Z790 Nova WiFi
CPU: Intel 14th Gen i7-14700K
CPU Cooler: MSI MAG Coreliquid E360
DRAM: 64GB (16GB x 4) XPG Lancer RGB DDR5
Storage: XPG Gammix S70 Blade 4TB X 4
GPU: GIGABTYE AERO NVIDIA RTX 4090 OC
PSU: XPG Cybercore II 1000W Platinum
Case: XPG Invader X
As always, thanks for reading. Please take the time to follow my blog, leave a comment, and check out some of my other channels if you enjoyed what you read.
If you read this blog regularly, then you know that I’m both a fan of Ubisoft games and specifically the Assassin’s Creed franchise. I have mentioned the company and the franchise countless times over in the decade that I’ve been writing this blog. I have played every console release Assassin’s Creed game, in order, going all the way back to the original game, with the exception of Assassin’s Creed Mirage, which I already have and just haven’t had time to start yet. A large part of that is because of how long it took me to finish Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. I originally started Valhalla in September of 2022. I finally achieved 100% completion of the base game in February of 2024.
Now let me clarify a few things to start off. First, I played a lot of other games between the day I first started Valhalla and the day I finally finished it. I did not spend the entire last year playing only this one game. Second, while this game did take me a long time, in terms of dates, I only played it for 140 hours total. I played Assassin’s Creed Odyssey for 195 hours before I finally finished that one. However, it only took me five months to do that. Interestingly enough, I completed 100% of Odyssey, including all the DLC. In fact, I consider ‘The Fate of Atlantis’ to be some of the best DLC I’ve played in the last decade of gaming. Not just great for Assassin’s Creed DLC, but in general. While Odyssey is not my favorite game in the franchise, that DLC is absolutely masterful work. All that said, while I did play most of the DLC packs in Valhalla, I have opted not to play the ‘Dawn of Ragnarök’ expansion. That’s really what this post is about.
I’m pretty big on story DLC in games. I hate that it exists. I wish all games launched with the story fully finished and included at the base price, but because I play games for the story, and care deeply about staying up to date on canon, I will usually play story DLC for any game I really enjoyed. Non-story DLC, I can take it or leave it. If I really like the gameplay, I’ll often do it. But if I’m not in love with the game, I’ll usually pass on it. For instance, I really like soulslikes. I have a love-hate relationship with them, but I play a lot of them. With the exception of Elden Ring, I’ve played every FromSoftware soulslike to date, and I’ve written a lot about them on this blog. Yes, I will eventually play Elden Ring. Ironically, I’m waiting for the DLC to launch, so I can get the deluxe edition at a discount. That said, I’ve never played through the DLC for a single FromSoftware soulslike. Since the story is ALWAYS mediocre in those games (yeah, I said it), I never feel compelled to play the DLC. By the end of them, I’m just happy to have reached the credits. Whereas I always play the DLC in Team Ninja soulslikes. I’ve played all the DLC for Nioh and Nioh 2; and I’m very confident that I’ll play through all the DLC for Wo Long Fallen Dynasty, which I plan on finally starting this year. Because those games actually take narrative storytelling seriously. The point is that I usually take the time to play story relevant DLC. Yet I still will not be playing the final DLC pack in Valhalla.
Obviously, the problem with Valhalla is not that it’s too long. In fact, if I went on to complete the Ragnarök expansion, my total play time would probably come in almost exactly the same as that of Odyssey. That said, by the time I finished Valhalla I was really ready for the game to be over. I don’t consider the issue to be the gameplay though. In fact, I didn’t like the gameplay in Odyssey. I feel that Valhalla definitely has superior combat to Odyssey. And I also feel that way about Origins in comparison to Odyssey. So I wouldn’t say that the problem is that I burned out on the gameplay. In my opinion, the real reason that I don’t want to play the DLC is that it’s story DLC that doesn’t actually matter, even a little bit.
Story DLC is funny because if it matters too much, it’s insulting to the player base. If you have to play it to understand the plot of the series, then it shouldn’t have been DLC. On the flip side, if it’s posing as story DLC, but accomplishes nothing, then it feels like a waste of time, assuming you’re playing it because it’s being sold as story DLC. And that’s really how I feel about the Ragnarök expansion. DLC is nothing new to the Assassin’s Creed franchise. It goes all the way back to Assassin’s Creed II. I haven’t played all the DLC in the franchise, but before the Ragnarok expansion, I had played everything going back to at least Syndicate.
What all the previous DLC had in common was that you always played as a major character in the plot, usually the main protagonist of the specific game the DLC was featured in. In Valhalla, this is not really the case. While it does try to justify it within the plot, there are several sequences in the base game where you play as Odin, the Norse god. But if you know Assassin’s Creed then you know it’s not a god. It’s actually an Isu who was named Odin; and Norse mythology is really just humans misinterpreting the past, believing that a past civilization was divine rather than just highly advanced. In my opinion, all the Odin sequences in Valhalla are boring. They’re not super relevant, other than the fact that you sort of get a glimpse into Isu culture. And you have limited use of your skills and gear, making the gameplay feel like a step backwards from where the actual protagonist, Eivor, is at any given moment in the game. The Odin stuff just isn’t that interesting, and it has no bearing on the plot of the game. Not even at the macro assassin’s history level. It’s just filler to pad the run time. As such, I don’t care about it.
The ‘Dawn of Ragnarok’ expansion drops you into an entirely new map where you have to play as Odin for an extended period of time. While all the previous Odin sequences, and DLC in general, also do this, the map for this final expansion is much larger than previous DLC packs in Valhalla. It’s very much an actual expansion as opposed to just some DLC, which is why they titled it appropriately. All the previous Odin sequences would have you play as him for at most four hours; and that’s if you’re doing every little thing. When I completed the introduction to the expansion, it was clear that we were probably looking at anywhere from 10 – 20 hours of straight Odin gameplay. Even then, I still considered playing it, thinking it would affect the plot in some way meaningful, but Reddit was in agreement that it was just filler that wasn’t going to change your perception of the plot in any way. I just couldn’t be asked to waste my time on that sort of content.
I think it’s pretty sad that the Odyssey DLC was so good only to be followed by a game with a lot of extra content done in such a disappointing and mediocre way. There is an incredible amount of extra stuff to do in Valhalla. They literally added an additional roguelike gameplay mode as part of the DLC. But it’s not worth doing story wise. It’s all just content with no real substance. When you play the DLC in Odyssey, it matters. The story changes because of it. Knowing what I know about the canon because of that game makes me sad at the thought of all the people who care about the story of Assassin’s Creed but didn’t play it. I can’t say anything like that about the Odin sequences, DLC or otherwise, in Valhalla. What’s even worse is that not all the DLC in Valhalla features Odin. There are DLC expansions where you still play as Eivor, and those are really good. It was really fun to travel to Ireland and France as part of Eivor’s journey in Europe. I appreciated this content a lot. So it’s not that the team wasn’t capable of making good content. It’s just that they wanted to do more Norse mythology stuff but couldn’t make it meaningful the way they did with Greek mythology in Odyssey. Hopefully, they don’t screw up the inevitable DLC in the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Red, because Japan has a lot of cool stuff they can use for DLC based on local mythology.
As always, thanks for reading. Please take the time to follow my blog, leave a comment, and check out some of my other channels if you enjoyed what you read.
In many ways, this game feels like the perfect follow-up to Inkulinati, which I’m still playing, even after having published the review back in December. Pyrene is a tactical card battle game that combines deck building, roguelike elements, and a dash of RPG mechanics, which, surprisingly, actually make the game more accessible. While I went into the game expecting to like it, based on the press kit I was given, I did not expect to enjoy this demo as much as I ultimately did. Please note that I reviewed the currently available beta demo of this game, so aspects of it are subject to change.
At first, Pyrene looks a little cheap, for lack of a better word. The opening cutscene is not very compatible with the more cartoony art style. However, the game itself works very well in the style the developer, Two Tiny Dice, ultimately went with. It’s simple, but not lazy. The cards look like they could be real cards that you’d use in a tabletop gameplay scenario. The landscapes are similarly drawn. Even though it’s a fantasy game about fighting monsters, some of which are meant to be horrific, it’s a very pleasant game to look at. I also want to take the time to mention just how readable the text in this game is. The font chosen is extremely easy to read and equally pleasant in the feelings it evokes when seen. They used the same font for the text on the cards and in the menus.
I really appreciate how distinct each of the many monsters are from each other. Each species of monster, and really all the cards in the game, have their own identity. There are no reused monsters rendered in different colors. No lazy iterative evolutions of the same monster with horns added. Each creature is its own monstrous thing. Note that this does not mean that you encounter each monster only once in a given run. You will refight the same monsters several times in a given biome. However, the same monster will not appear in multiple biomes. The demo had four different biomes, named “Grasslands,” “Dark Forest,” “Mountain,” and “Snowy Plain” respectively. Like the creatures, each biome is distinct in its setting; and each one has its own specific gameplay characteristics to go with it.
Pyrene runs very smoothly. Not just for a card battler, but in general. There is quite a bit of movement in this game. From cards to attacks to constantly changing stats on the cards, the gameplay is pretty dynamic. At least for this genre anyway. That said, this is not a very graphic intensive game. It ran perfectly on my old GTX 1080 GPU, bless its heart. I really can’t say that I have any notes for the graphics outside of the opening cutscene. I really like looking at this game.
From the time the menu screen loads up, this game delivers a solid audio experience. The first thing you hear is a perfectly appropriate song that has a distinctly fantasy vibe to it. The opening cutscene, though visually underwhelming, is fully narrated with solid voice acting from multiple actors. As it’s a card game, you get the typical card swishing sounds as you move them. However, the sound effects also lean heavily into the battle aspects of the gameplay. Attacks have distinct sound effects, as do the follow-up effects caused by them. While I can’t say that every monster has its own distinct sounds, there is enough variety to be more than satisfied with. You can alter the sound mixing directly with volume options for music, ambience, and sounds as three separate sound types. While I would not say that the sound is what makes this game worth playing, it absolutely measures up to the rest of the game in quality.
This is a narrative driven game complete with various quests. The opening cutscene sets up the plot quickly and effectively. A small village is attacked by monsters during a not so natural disaster, causing most of the buildings to be destroyed and nearly all the villagers to flee for their lives. You start off the game as one of these villagers with your first quest being to make your way back to the village. From there, you meet another villager and continue to fulfill quests as you discover what caused the natural disaster, rebuild the town, and rescue other villagers from surrounding areas, all of which have been overrun with monsters. It’s a simple plot, but it works effectively for the gameplay without bogging the player down with dialog like a traditional text-based narrative system might.
As you progress through the game, you will meet and talk to multiple characters, including some monsters. Other than the tutorials, all the text in the game is dialog based. You learn the story through the conversations the characters have with each other, rather than having to read/watch random info dumps to get the story moving forward. Once you learn the gameplay, you technically can play the game without caring about the story at all, but as the story is far from burdensome, there’s no real reason to ignore it. As with the sound, you might not be playing the game for the writing, but the writing is not bad, all things considered.
This is one of those games where the mechanics seem simple, but the underlying strategy required to excel will push you to think in new ways and adapt constantly; and that is absolutely a compliment. The basic idea is that your character is a card with an hp stat that doubles as your attack stat. Meaning that if you have 10 hp, your next attack will deal 10 damage. However, the same is true for the enemies as well. If an enemy has 3 hp, it will deal 3 damage, whether you kill it that turn or not. Every time you attack, you also take damage, unless you have armor, which you can gain during play but never start with. The map is broken into zones. Each zone is a random grid of card shaped spaces. You can only move to spaces occupied by other cards. Spaces can contain enemy cards or object cards. When you attack a card, and it dies, it will always be replaced with an object card, though the object is semi-random. It can be coins, wood, or, less often, a few other things. Your goal, technically speaking, is to clear all the cards off the board so that the grid is all empty spaces, but it’s actually a bit more complicated than that.
The way you complete each zone, during normal play, is to find the altar. Zones never start with the altar showing. You have to “spend the night” multiple times until the altar finally appears. Then you have to reach the altar. If you can do this without dying, you will have cleared the zone. If you clear the exit zone in a given biome, you can move on to the next biome. Spending the night requires supplies. Supplies are a resource that you collect from item cards. The amount of supplies it takes to spend the night increases each time you spend the night in a given zone, but the cost resets when you start a new zone. In fact, your hp, status, and starting supplies resets with the successful completion of each zone. The catch is that you have a maximum amount of supplies you can hold at a given time; and spending the night without enough supplies will cost you hp in place of the missing supplies. When you spend the night, every empty space will refill with new cards. Every remaining enemy card will gain additional hp when you spend the night. So your ultimate goal is to kill as many enemies as possible before you spend the night. Another important part of the gameplay is enemy behavior. Most enemies are stationary, but some behave in particular ways. Some chase you. Some attack when you enter their specified line of sight. And there are other behaviors you can encounter as well. You also have to consider status effects. Things like poison, burn, freeze, and bleed can drastically affect the outcome of enemy encounters. That’s the gist of the gameplay, but there are a lot of other factors you also have to consider.
Deck building is a key factor in the gameplay. Your deck informs the order that non-enemy cards will appear on the board in a given zone. The amount of cards you can have in your deck is unlimited, but the amount of cards that will be dealt in a given zone scenario is based on your endurance. Your endurance can increase as you progress through a run, allowing you to select more cards for the deal. Your cards can include a huge number of different item cards. Healing items, weapons, supplies, special technique energy (called spirit), and magic object cards can all be part of your deck. A really cool part of the deck building is that cards can be evolved as you progress in a given run. The numbers, such as the amount of healing a given card will deal to your character, can be increased. You can also add features to a card. For instance, I once got an upgrade to a healing card that also added supplies to my inventory. Meaning that every time I moved over that card, both my health and amount of supplies increased, up to my current maximum. Upgrades to the numbers have to be purchased from special vendors with gold, while additional card features are available at random by unlocking them with spirt at shrines.
Another major part of the game’s strategy is relics. Relics are semi-permanent buffs that stick with you for an entire run. Relics can change so many things about the gameplay and how you approach enemy encounters. For example, there’s a relic that turns excess supplies into armor. Armor absorbs damage in place of losing hp. A relic like that coupled with upgraded supply cards makes it considerably easier to weather large amounts of damage. While the number of relics you can start with is limited, based on your talent points, you can carry an unlimited number of relics in a given run. It’s just a matter of finding them.
While the game has you start with only one playable character, the demo shows that the full game will have more than a dozen playable characters. The demo only had two. Different characters are more than cosmetic. The second character you unlock in the demo has less hp but fights alongside a companion, allowing you to move in multiple directions separately and cover more ground before spending the night.
What I really like about Pyrene is how the game is structured. While this is a roguelite of sorts, it is not built around the traditional concept of starting the game and trying to make your way to the end of it in a single run. Instead, the game is broken up into quests. Each quest has its own completion goal and set of biomes you have to clear. Each quest appears after you complete the previous one. You can only pursue one quest at a time.
The best way to think about this game is that it’s not a roguelike so much as a collection of micro-roguelikes; and I really love that concept. It’s a much more accessible game than a traditional roguelite, because each task is not nearly as daunting as having to restart the entire game each time you die. You just have to restart that one mission. Missions include multiple biomes. In the demo, some missions require you to clear three biomes and others four. I could see the full game having even longer missions. Overall, I really love the gameplay. At first, I wasn’t fully grasping the tactical concepts at play, but it became addictive once I fully understood all the factors I had to consider when making moves. I played the demo for four hours before I finally stopped.
Pyrene has a decent amount of replay value, based on what I saw in the demo. Not only are there multiple playable characters, but there are also ways to change the gameplay. The only resource that carries between runs is wood. Or rather, you can keep the wood you collect after a run, win or lose, but if you don’t spend it before starting your next run, it will be lost for good. Wood can be used to unlock services. One of those services is the ability to play with special rules that can be toggled on and off. You can also unlock a mode that adds victory conditions to each zone. This gameplay is much harder, but it absolutely adds another layer to the experience, increasing the replay value by a considerable amount.
Currently, there is no listed price for Pyrene, so I can’t comment on the value proposition. But I can say that I absolutely loved this demo, which is currently available for free on Steam, and I absolutely plan on playing the full game when it finally releases later this year.
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