Kriptini 最近的评测

Inspired by recent roguelike classics, Katanaut offers a unique blend of high octane action and eerie cyberpunk aesthetics that cement it as a bespoke masterpiece in the genre. The variety of build options are vast enough to keep tens of hours of playthroughs unique without feeling like you're repeating the same things over and over again.

(Full review coming soon.)

NOTE: Kill the Music has received significant changes to its gameplay since the posting of this review, and my experience with the game that I used to write this review is no longer consistent with the game in its current state. I still recommend the game, but some of the specific points of my review may no longer be accurate.

A symphony of aesthetics and gameplay somewhat held back some balance and design issues.

The rockstars at Nikko Nikko Ltd are back with a new game, combining the roguelike and bullet hell genres with funky rhythm action gameplay. In Kill the Music, players take on the role of Roxie, a plucky guitarist locked in a battle with Death to save the souls of her bandmates. By becoming "possessed" by the ghosts of her friends, she's able to wield a variety of instruments and powers to fight against the dark forces that would see her performance end before her friends have a chance at an encore.

Every single component of Kill the Music absolutely oozes with style. Menus are fast, snappy, and beautifully animated. Sound effects have rich textures that combine with high octane multilayered music tracks to create a concert-like experience. Enemy designs are reminiscent of rock band logos and character designs overflow with personality in every aspect from their clothing to their silhouette. Even the terminology of game elements are stylized: levels are called "songs," meta upgrades are "inspirations," and difficulties are "absurdities." All of these elements come together to create an aesthetic experience that feels bespoke on a level that even AAA games rarely reach.

Gameplay is easy to learn and difficult to master. A run in Kill the Music consists of playing a fixed number of levels (called songs), obtaining upgrades in between each in order to face more difficult challenges. In each song, players are either tasked with defeating a set number of enemies or surviving for a time limit. Enemies continuously spawn during the levels and are automatically attacked by Roxie's instruments as she moves within range of them, but successful inputs to the beat of the music can increase the damage she deals or trigger additional effects. Combined with a dodge roll, solos, double beats, and holds, the game creates a high technical skill ceiling without ever feeling too complicated. Each of the 12 equippable instruments boast different attack patterns and upgradeable abilities, giving players interesting strategic choices during a run, and a wide variety of enemy types between each song and difficulty level require players to adapt their playstyles, keeping things fresh.

Unfortunately, there are some issues that keep this great game from becoming a masterpiece. There is a distinct lack of balance among the game's instruments and upgrades; some instruments are relatively weak and difficult to use while other instruments control much more easily and are also much more powerful. Bosses are complete non-threats due to player power completely outscaling boss HP pools, and the "hardest" difficulties feel significantly less challenging than the middle difficulties due to choice of enemy types and spawn rhythms.

In short, Kill the Music is an incredible product by true auteurs. I would highly recommend this game to anyone who is a fan of rhythm, action, or roguelike games, or to anyone who loves rock music and punk style.

An immersive narrative experience that arrests your curiosity and drives you to uncover more, though not without some pain points.

DISCLOSURE: I received a copy of this game for free from Critical Hit PR. Thank you so much!

The Necromancer's Tale is a meticulously well-crafted role-playing game that boasts a staggeringly large degree of autonomy for the player. Taking place in a fantasy country adjacent to 1730's Hapsburg Monarchy, the player character returns to his or her home town from a career abroad upon learning of their father's death. However, not all is well in the city of Marns. The circumstances of their father's death begin to falter under scrutiny, but the city authorities seem to stand in the way of the player character's investigation. With no other leads, the player character turns to a strange book in their father's study - and the dark magics slumbering within.

In terms of background history, the intersection of main and side objectives, and the interactions with non-player characters, The Necromancer's Tale accomplishes a level of texturing that cements itself among the greatest titles in the genre. Players have a wide degree of freedom to interact with the Marns and her inhabitants, with their decisions and actions opening up more narrative paths in future chapters of the game or providing access to secret avenues of discovery. Every NPC has a distinctly unique personality and the quality of the written dialogue is superb, brimming with character. Even the player character grows in changes in subtle ways depending on the actions the player takes, and I found myself truly immersed in the role-playing aspect as a result, carefully considering my choices in order to guide my character in a direction that I saw fit. Though the performances of the partial voice acting was hit-or-miss, overall the narrative elements of the game are phenomenal.

Artistically impressive, the game combines medium-poly models with an oil painting filter to create a unique style that combines the brush strokes of Rembrandt with the colors of Van Gogh. It is a joy to wander the streets of Marns and appreciate the details in the architecture of the cathedral or to listen to the calming flow of the canal. Unfortunately, the game's UI and icons aren't as appealing, with aesthetics that feel distinctly more generic or "video-gamey" than bespoke art. Still, they don't take away too much from the visual and aural experiances of the game.

Progression-wise, The Necromancer's Tale is a slow burn. The plot is in no rush to advance, and you would be forgiven for questioning whether or not there was actually any necromancy involved in the game at all during your first five hours of play. Despite that, the everyday interactions and little intrigues in Marns do a good job of keeping the player engaged as the pressure begins to build and signs of coming conflict arrive. The slower moments of The Necromancer's Tale in which I search the city for ingredients for my next ritual or discover the seedy underbelly of the harbor were still interesting, but the tedium that comes from needing to travel vast distances in the land outside Marn's walls was not. Unfortunately, the final third of the game is filled with much of that tedium, and I found myself wishing that I could just skip to the end of the story rather than needing to walk all the way from the southern graveyard to the northern fores with my retinue of minions in tow for the nth time.

For RPG gamers that are looking for deep, tactical combat - you will not find what you are looking for here. Combat in The Necromancer's Tale is likely its weakest asset, with little opportunities to employ interesting tactical decision-making and mostly devolving into slugfests that require an uncomfortable amount of micro-managing. Although there are secret spells that can be discovered to unlock more abilities in battles, they don't meaningfully change the combat experience. Luckily, combat situations are fairly rare (until the last third of the game, at least), and there is an option that allows players to auto-resolve combats based on the combined strength of your character and his or her allies. In any case, the narrative elements of The Necromancer's Tale are strong enough to keep the burdens of combat from being too much of a barrier to play - at least for one playthrough.

Overall, The Necromancer's Tale is a fantastic story in a beautiful package that gives the player the true feeling of narrative autonomy. Though there are some aspects of tedium and disturbing anachronisms* that negatively impacted my experience, I still quite enjoyed my playthrough of approximately 24 hours and would recommend the game to RPG enthusiasts who appreciate deep narrative texture.

* Regarding the "disturbing anachronisms:" I will not go into detail about them in this review, as they were a matter of personal distaste that I don't think impacts the quality of the game as a whole. However, I would caution lovers of accurate historical tradition that this game does contain some themes that don't fit in with the setting whatsoever - despite the prevalence of magic and necromancy.

A dazzling, snappy, and charming action rougelite.

Wizard of Legend is an 2D action fantasy rougelite. The player battles their way through the Council of Magic's Chaos Trials to earn the title of Wizard of Legend. Wielding "arcana," magical skills representing six different elements, the player must complete four stages filled with aggressive enemies, devious traps, and powerful bosses. Should they fall in battle at any point, they'll need to start over from the beginning, but the layout of the Trails changes between each attempt.

Like most contemporary action roguelikes, Wizard of Legend allows the player to choose a loadout of basic abilities before embarking on a run, but the unique specialty of Wizard of Legend is the ability to set four individual abilities (arcana) for use before going on a run, rather than restricting an ability moveset to a particular weapon. As the player progresses through the game, more arcana will be unlocked, allowing players to create thousands of combinations of skills for every run. Additionally, more arcana can be found during runs of the Chaos Trials, along with helpful items and somewhat-helpful cursed items which add a decent amount of variety between games. The visuals of each arcana are beautiful, and their sound effects and hit stuns are extremely satisfying during play.

The combat itself is very fast-paced and snappy. Hitboxes are tight and projectiles are fast, creating a high-octane and thrilling experience. Hit stuns and fast execution of arcana allow players to inflict devastating combos on enemies, but the same is true for the opposition; bad positioning can lead to the player getting caught in an extremely powerful opposing combo. Bosses are extremely well-designed, with clearly telegraphed attacks that nonetheless require precise timing and strategy to dodge, requiring a good balance of both strategy and reflexes to defeat them.

The other aspects of Wizard of Legend, while not taking up the spotlight like the arcana and combat systems, are all great in their own right and deserve mention. The soundtrack, composed by Dale North, is full of energetic tracks perfect for fast-paced action combat that blend electronic beats and leads with gorgeous usage of strings and brass. In addition to the beautiful effects of the arcana, character and environment designs are portrayed in beautiful pixel art, brimming with detail. NPCs don't play a large role in Wizard of Legend, but the few lines of dialogue that each are granted are brimming with charm and personality.

Overall, Wizard of Legend manages to cement itself as a fantastic title to stand among its contemporaries in the action roguelite genre. I would recommend Wizard of Legend to anyone who likes 2D action combat, experimenting with different movesets, and wizards!

P.S. I sincerely hope that Wizard of Legend 2 will continue to embrace the components of the first game that have solidified it as a unique and bespoke experience, and not try to copycat another, more popular game in the genre...

A challenging old-school dungeon crawler that rewards note-taking and experimentation.

Demon Lord Reincarnation is a traditional dungeon-crawler in the fantasy genre. The player must defeat the reincarnation of the titular Demon Lord with a party of adventurers recruited in the dungeon. Along the way, the player will need to carefully map their exploration through the dungeon, participate in turn-based tactical battles, and replace any unfortunate adventurers that should perish during the journey.

The gameplay mechanics of Demon Lord Reincarnation are relatively simple and straightforward. The player explores the Demon Lord's dungeon, recruiting adventurers who participate in turn-based battles and make use of unique skills to gain tactical advantages. Winning battles awards experience points which are used to increase the statistics of the individual party members, which will eventually make them powerful enough to challenge the Demon Lord. There isn't anything particularly novel about these mechanics, but they create a fun, streamlined experience that make it easy to jump into the game without needing to spend too much time deliberating on tactics or party customization. For those that like experimentation and discovery, there is a reasonable amount of hidden mechanics related to combat that can give curious players a significant tactical edge.

Each floor of the dungeon is navigated in the first-person, though scarce details and labyrinthine corridors necessitate the use of mapping out one's exploration using tools outside the game, like pencil on graph paper. This adds an additional element of interactivity, that is equal parts zen and exciting. Though this sounds contradictory, it's undeniably enjoyable in a way that many contemporary dungeon crawlers aren't able to capture.

There isn't much to say about aesthetics. The music and sound design are serviceable, and the first-person environments aren't very visually interesting. Noteworthy, however, are the character and enemy portraits - these gorgeous sprites paint pictures of both heroic adventurers and terrifying creatures that stimulate the imagination in spite of their basic 2-bit color.

Demon Lord Reincarnation pays homage to the dungeon crawlers of old while being a respectable bite-sized entry in the genre that stands on its own. I would recommend the game to both fans of old-school crawlers and anyone who has wanted to give one a try.

An inspired strategic and narrative experience from the mind of a true visionary. In short: a masterpiece.

Inscryption is a strategic roguelite cardgame that additionally incorporates elements of the traditional adventure game genre alongside an intriguing narrative with a dash of horror. The player engages in a tabletop-style card game where they collect and upgrade a deck of cards to participate in tactical battles in a series of levels, culminating in a difficult final encounter. Along the way, the player has the opportunity to learn more about their mysterious gaming partner and the environment in which they find themselves in.

The first thing that should be mentioned among Inscryption's many positive qualities is that it boasts both a narrative and meta-narrative that are exceptionally well-written. Secrets and intrigue abound that uncover important features and tactics about the card game, but also challenge the player's perception about the game itself. As the game progresses, these discoveries compound into a legendary paradigm shift that stands among the titans of video game narratives. It is of the utmost importance that this review stays vague when discussing the narrative elements of Inscryption, as they are meant to be witnessed firsthand with no prior context, and they deliver an incomparable experience.

Due to how core and intertwined the narrative is with the other gameplay elements of Inscryption, this review must continue to be vague when discussing them as well. The card-based gameplay is deeply tactical and satisfying to participate in, with a host of significant and somewhat randomized choices the player can make each run in order to maximize experimentation and replayability. Beyond the card game, there are curious interactable puzzles to solve which can add new features to the card game, and these puzzles blend in seamlessly with the rest of the game world.

There is much more about Inscryption to be praised; it is a beautiful symphony of every single aspect of game design, culminating in a truly unforgettable experience, and I wouldn't dare to spoil these elements for a prospective buyer. If you like card games in any capacity whatsoever, or if you like puzzle-based adventure games, or if you like groundbreaking narratives that push the boundaries of storytelling in games, do not pass on Inscryption - it is a masterpiece in all of those areas and more.

Frustrating, shallow, and uninspired mini-games and puzzles hold back an otherwise incredible creature battler RPG.

Coromon is a science fantasy creature collector role playing game. The player takes on the role of a newly-hired researcher with the goal of learning more about Coromon, a group of over 100 unique species of fantastical creatures. Finding themselves thrust into a globetrotting adventure, players can expect to collect a variety of creatures, customize their skills and party for strategic battle, and explore a variety of aesthetic environments... when they're not being forced to participate in horrendous mini-games or inane puzzles.

To start on a positive note, Coromon's creature collection and battle mechanics are among the best in the genre. There are a large variety of creatures to customize one's party with, and each creature family feels unique with their own distinct strengths and weaknesses. Creatures can memorize four skills to use in battle from lists of skills unique to each creature (adding more skills to their lists as they level up or use certain items) alongside a special passive or active trait. When considering skill and trait loadouts, there are thousands of combinations to choose from when customizing Coromon, creating deep, tactical depth. Battle mechanics are intuitive, though the in-game guides are also great at explaining mechanics in detail if the player doesn't completely grasp them at first. Also noteworthy is how reasonable it is to "retrain" aspects of your Coromon that are normally notoriously difficult in other creature collection games.

The art and music for Coromon is nothing short of exceptional. The game is illustrated with beautiful pixel art in every corner of the world of Velua, with animations that breathe life and personality into every creature and battle skill. The variety of tracks in Coromon is a pleasant surprise, with memorable musical themes throughout the experience. Composed by Davi Vasc, the combination of synthetic strings, brass, and even electric guitar alongside bright piano melodies creates a soundtrack that perfectly services the different moments of the game and becomes instantly nostalgic.

Unfortunately, this is where the positives for Coromon end. Though I typically restrain myself from using the first-person perspective and histrionic language in my reviews, I cannot understate how utterly detestable the narrative experience in Coromon is. While the writing of the narrative delivered via dialogue and worldbuilding is serviceable, the player character's participation in the game world's events manifests in unpolished out-of-genre gameplay, the inclusion of which feels utterly inane. For example, one chapter of the game's narrative involves infiltrating a palace in a desert country, and requires the player character to traverse a heavily-guarded barracks building without being spotted by enemy NPCs. Upon being noticed, a Coromon battle is not triggered - instead, the player gets a game over screen and must restart the segment from the last checkpoint they reached. This shallow "stealth" gameplay (and I am really reaching to use that term here) has no place in a creature battler RPG like Coromon. Though it may have been designed as a way to add variety to the game's narrative, it only served to make me miserable and desperately wish to get back to the main gameplay of Coromon. This is only one example of such an unenjoyable diversion, others include a more frustrating variation of the board game Mastermind and a series of mind-numbingly dull fetch quests in a snowy village, which felt like artifical time wasters as opposed to fun gameplay, and these side errands must be completed in order to progress through the game.

While I loved the aspects of Coromon that were related to the core promise of the game - creature collection and tactical battles - the amount of other nonsense in the game is so vast and frustrating that I was unable to complete the game. While I do not regret my purchase, and I believe that Coromon has made important strides for the future of the creature collector genre with its innovative mechanics, I cannot in good conscience recommend anyone to actually play this game, as I don't think they'd be having fun half the time.

An immersive an unique - though buggy and repetitive - tactical adventure.

Wartales is a low-fantasy turn-based tactical RPG with open-world exploration and light survival elements. The player manages a mercenary band and adventures across the various regions of a war-torn continent, finding fame and fortune along the way. Between small skirmishes and larger battles, the player will need to make sure the band earns enough food, wages, and resources to keep its fighters healthy, paid, and safe.

Combat in Wartales is deep and satisfying. There are a handful of different classes available to your adventurers, with each class having multiple specializations to further customize them. The unique skills and strengths of each unit create meaningful decisions when moving them on the battefield and engaging with enemies, whether that be through control-heavy melee attacks, powerful ranged attacks, or various support abilities. Although Wartales is relatively light when it comes to active abilities in combat, a unit's basic attack skill changes depending on what type of weapon they have equipped, leading to a large variety in tactical playstyles between even units of the same class. There is a moderate amount of enemy variety to keep things interesting for several hours of play between humans, animals, undead, and beastly monsters, though the variety does start to stagnate after completing a few regions in the game.

Speaking of regions, each of the seven regions in Wartales boast their own self-contained narratives that piece into the conflicts of the larger continent. Although these narratives are not particularly inspired, and there are very few interesting NPCs that stick around for longer than a few conversations, they provide enough variety from one another to keep things feeling different from region to region. For example, one region tasks your band with assisting in the solution of a refugee crisis, while another region recruits your adventurers to investigate an important political assassination. In all these narratives, players have the ability to make decisions that impact their outcomes, though these can feel somewhat hollow or unfulfilling since they don't impact the narratives of the other regions.

The light survival mechanics of Wartales are quite enjoyable, and add a lot of immersion to the experience of managing a mercenary band. Units can specialize professions such as blacksmithing, cooking, or mining to generate important resources for the squad outside of combat. Prioritizing basic necessities or equipment improvements, spending additional time to gather materials as the deadline for a quest approaches, or deciding which injured unit should get the last bottle of medicine that the party can afford are just a few of the important and meaningful decisions players will need to make as they travel the continent.

Although the core gameplay loop of Wartales is gripping enough to entertain for tens of hours, Wartales is at its best when it's introducing new locations or customization options to discover, such as the ancient ruins dungeons or quests that unlock rare weapons or new specializations. However, these eventually dry up before the game's narrative content, which can make finishing the last region or two feel like a chore. Additionally, it is not uncommon to encounter occasional frustrating bugs that may require the player to restart the game. In particular, in October 2023, I encountered (and reported) a bug that softlocked my game unless I reloaded a much earlier save, and at the time of writing this review, this bug unfortunately has not been fixed.

Despite its content that eventually overstays its welcome and occasional bugs, Wartales is a fantastic adventure that I would recommend to lovers of tactical RPGs - especially those that would rather flex their agency with meaningful choices instead of be beholden to some kind of sophomoric narrative.

A classic and nostalgic adventure, but fails to learn from the past's mistakes.

The End of Dyeus is a fantasy open world action adventure game reminiscent of classic titles from the NES and SNES era, but in a 3D environment. Players explore a world filled with a variety of enemies, treasures, and secrets in their quest to find the mysterious Dyeus.

The world design of Dyeus is quite strong. Immediately upon entering the game, the player has complete freedom to choose where they want to go, and there are plenty of incentives to stray from the main paths and explore. Almost no second of exploration is wasted as the world is jam-packed with various enemy camps or interesting geographical features that contain treasures or secret tidbits of lore. Many areas contain enemies that will be too difficult for the player to defeat at the start of the game, but as the player obtains better equipment, those areas become more manageable, offering a sense of progression in an otherwise completely open world.

Combat in Dyeus is extremely simple. In addition to basic movement, the player can attack or block... and that's it. There are a variety of weapons and accessories in the game that slightly change the player's approach to combat or give advantages against certain enemy types, but nothing that significantly shakes up the combat formula throughout the game. Even so, combat is fast and snappy enough to never feel too repetitive or tiresome, though it can make some enemies feel unfair due to fast attack patterns that are unblockable and don't have clear telegraphs.

Towards the last two-thirds of the game, Dyeus begins to suffer from two major flaws. The first is progression-related. Enemies start become so tough that only a specific shield can be used to block their attacks, and this shield is hidden in a red chest somewhere in the game world. Red chests contain powerful items in them, but require red keys to open them, which are also scattered around the world. It is entirely possible to open up the wrong red chests with the keys you find and be unable to progress in the game until you find another red key to open the specific red chest with the specific item you need inside. This system does not synergize with the openness of the world and leads to a frustrating feeling of being "stuck" in a game that otherwise gives the player a lot of freedom.

The second major flaw is that the last two bosses of the game are incredibly difficult and frustrating in ways that equipment upgrades don't really solve. One of these bosses is a flying enemy whose attack patterns become faster and leave the player less time to retaliate as its health decreases. Its AI also doesn't safeguard against starting these attacks in areas where the player has no time to dodge them, leading to frustrating experiences where the player is doomed to die no matter how well they've been fighting up to that point. There is a particular weapon that can be used to greatly help in this fight, but again, it is locked behind a red chest and very difficult to find, and it doesn't guarantee that the boss will play fair and not use its undodgeable attack patterns. The other boss has similarly frustrating attack patterns but is even faster, and the player's equipment selection is even more limited, requiring them to either abuse the world's geography in order to "cheese" the boss fight or simply get lucky that the boss doesn't use certain attacks.

A third, albeit more minor flaw, is that there are a lot of unexplained mechanics in The End of Dyeus. When acquiring a new piece of equipment, only an attack or defense value is shown to the player, but all of these pieces of equipment have hidden properties. A few of these properties are referenced by obscure hints in notes scattered around the world, but many of them are completely invisible. For example, there is a particular weapon that allows the player to damage the second boss through their thick armor, but this feature is unintuitive and not hinted at by any in-game means (that I could find, anyways).

The graphics and music are serviceable, and manage to create a variety of unique locations and moments. There is no dialogue, very little monologue, and no friendly NPCs (outside of silent shopkeepers), so narrative is extremely light, but this isn't particularly important for a game focused on exploration, which is what the game does best.

Although there's a lot to be enjoyed with The End of Dyeus, there are enough points of frustration that make it tough for me to recommend for most players. Still, old school gamers with a lot of resiliency for being lost (or who don't mind using walkthroughs to make sure they obtain the necessary progression items) will probably enjoy this game.

Deep, immersive, and extremely satisfying.

The interactive fiction genre, despite being one of the oldest genres of PC games, has always been a niche subgenre, but that's no reason to give Roadwarden a miss; it deserves a place in the mainstream. By combining RPG and survival mechanics, a vast and detailed world to explore, and an engaging open-ended narrative, Roadwarden solidifies itself as a gem of not just an often overlooked subgenre, but an incredible title in its own right.

The player controls a titular roadwarden - a half-adventurer, half-pathfinder tasked with securing the dangerous roadways of the northern peninsula, establishing alliances with the locals for your powerful merchant benefactors, and uncovering the land's painful and guarded history - all within a time limit before summer ends. Your character's background is customizable, including their motivations for becoming a roadwarden and the skills they learned from their previous endeavors, all of which has an impact on the way your character interacts with the world. As you journey through the peninsula, you'll have to make choices between acquiring resources for your own survival, helping the various tribes, and fulfilling your obligations to your bosses back in the city, and all of these choices affect the narrative in a significant way.

Roadwarden's writing is excellent. Descriptions of environments, characters, and situations are detailed without being monotonous or redundant, character dialogue overflows with personality, and exposition is kept to palatable amounts without being overwhelming. All characters feel individually distinct from each other while still sharing similar characteristics, such as their tribes or motivations. Conversations feel realistic and most characters react to information in a realistic way (unless they're hiding a secret that you don't know about yet).

Pixel art graphics teeter between the border of serviceable and fantastic. Environments and landscapes are beautifully detailed, but there is almost no character artwork, and the few times humans or animals do show up in the artwork, they look significantly less detailed and out of place. Maps of labyrinthine areas are both functional and artistic, as well as a clever lighting system that helps you keep track of your position while exploring. The sound work is phenomenal - almost every location has a unique music track accompanying it that helps differentiate one area from another, and atmospheric sound effects do an impressive job of intensifying the immersive feeling, regardless of what kind of environment you're in.

Where Roadwarden shines most of all is in the amount of agency the player has over the narrative. After a brief introduction scene, the player has full control over where they go and what they'd like to do. There is no "right order" to do things, and players will enjoy finding ways to efficiently explore or complete quests as they race against a time limit. There's also a moderate amount of enjoyment to be have in replaying the game; although major events don't change between playthroughs, different choices can be made during these events that can significantly affect the narrative, and it's possible to ally with different villages or make others your enemy to experience different perspectives of the story entirely.

Ultimately, Roadwarden confidently meets every expectation anyone could expect for an interactive fiction/RPG hybrid. I recommend this game to anyone who enjoys text-based adventures, and even people who normally don't, especially if they're looking for a world full of depth and player agency.