Recent reviews by The Purple Pantywaist

You move boxes. Into each other and outside of boxes, into the player character, into... paradoxa? Not sure. I did beat the final levels just by trying out, I did not understand what actually was happening anymore.

I applaud the idea to remove the fee2pay and fomo-aspects of what probably was a run-of-the-mill predatory mobile phone game.

However, the generic run-and-gun game, which remains, fails to capture what made Mega Man great or interesting.
And the game still requires a lot of grinding - each weapon, card, chip, skill (all characters use the same of those), characters and individual parts of the armour (including boots) need grinding. indivdually which different currencies.

While the levels and bosses sometimes require a certain level of skill, without a lot of grinding you eventually your progress will grind to a halt.

But the games has robots in bikinis and bridal dresses, if that is important to someone.

The game tries to be several different things at the same time and does a pretty decent job.
So let's review them each of them on their own:

as a Soulslike:
Since you are a Jedi, you fight a lot of comparably weak opponents, eg Stormtroopers. Therefore the game usually throws a bunch of them at you at the same time. This works.

The soulslike is very accessible (a necessity for a game with such a wide focus), that includes difficulty settings. Those are not merely damage taken and dealt, but also a slider for how strict your timing needs to be. (I have not played Another Crabs' Treasure yet but all future Soulslike should copy at least that).

There is barely any "RPG" in it - there are upgrade points, but they are mostly tied to learning a few single moves or make a few of them a little stronger. New abilities are mostly learned by progressing through the game. You can upgrade your health and Force points, and can find more refillable healing items.

Dodging did not really work for me - you have a "small dodge", which often was not enough, and a roll dodge, for which you have to press the button price. Then you are too far away for a counter attack. Blocking/countering with the light sabre was more fun anyway.

as a Tombraider-like/3D-Metroidvania
You explore exotic planets, learn new things and access new areas. Many locations have to be visited at least twice, so you can use the new ways to access new areas.

There are very few puzzles included. Those are either rather easy or can be solved by just trying the things the game allows you to do. There is also a hint system (you can ask your robot for a hint), which I did not need.

The backtracking has been critized often, so I expected much worse. Yes, you have to go back after finishing whatever you came to do. In soulslike-fashion the paths somehow loop back, so it is usually not that far and sometimes the new shortcuts are fun themselves or you are chased while hurrying back. Sometimes it is unclear what is the best way. There is a map, which helps. (The sequel has quick travel.)

as a cineastic Star Wars spectacle
Lots of cameos, cross-references and what not to other Star Wars media, from Rebels to whatever the last trilogy was called.
Various types of stormtroopers, AT-STs and many more really fit well into the game.

There is a bunch of "videogamey" things, which do not mesh well with the setting. And I do not mean that you find in enemy bases parts you need to upgrade the robot, could not get in any other way (you have a spaceship), recognize in an instant and upgrade the robot while stormtropers are around the corner, which should be looking for him. This brings me to my biggest - although still very mild - gripe: Most places include a lot - and I mean really a lot - of bottomless pits. Everywhere, even inside villages and bases. And then you have a single storm trooper standing around on a floating island in the air, unclear how they could have gotten there without double jumping or jetpack. While 3 island further 5 more storm troopers are doing exactly the same. But as I said, it has to work as a video game, and that it does.

In regards of cineastic quality, it has in the beginning, the middle and the end very good scripted parts, and all the locations look very good, scenic and different.

The story is also good, the ending is coherent and makes sense, although it is without much fanfare. The inner conflicts of the characters are plausible and fitting, although lack on the narrative side.

Resume
As said, it does many different things, all at least decent.
So overall, it is a clear recommendation. It does not really excel in anything, but it does not have any weaknesses either.

It's Fallout in Space - everything looks even kinda retrofuturistic and postapocalyptic (although the scenario is neither.

It does not bring anything new to the table, neither one the side of game play (RPG-stats, time dilation first person gun fights etc) nor story/setting (eg the turbocapitalistic hellscape is neither new or newly presented).

But it is an competent game, which does not have any glaring weakness either.

What is it?
In Sunless Sea you are a captain of a ship, travelling on the titular underground ocean. You steer the ship from a top down perspective and travel from islands and cities to one another, exploring the sea and sometimes fighting pirates and sea monsters. When docking in a harbor, the game changes to some sort of text adventure, where you have to decide what to to using your abilities and/or cargo to have more options or better chances to be successful.. There is also trading involved, and some RPG-elements, as both your captain and your ship have various stats, which you can improve and officers, which you can recruit. Terror is a very important game play mechanic: When traveling on the sea or making certain decision, your terror rises. If it rises too much, bad things happen, options disappear (but new might come instead). Too high terror means too high risk of death. Reducing terror can be very costly, depending where on the sea you are.

What genre is this?
I'd say Lovecraft meets Steampunk with a little Kafka and mythology. If you have played their browser game "Fallen London", it belongs in that universe. There is no real main story, but many stories parallel, e.g. most of your officers have their own story, and several of the islands. While you might die from time to time, and your next captain can inherit various belongings or stats, it is not really a roguelike: Often there is luck involved, but seldom in a game deciding way. When you get the hang of it and play rather cautious, you do not need to die at all. The position of the island changes from game to game.

How does it look and sound?
This qualifies as an Indie game. Graphics are very dark and atmospherical, sometimes gruesome. The topdown view is simple but mostly well-arranged, in the "text adventure" mode you have pictures, which again catch the atmosphere very well. There are very few tracks, but they fit the overall theme. There is no voiceacting.

Game length?
This is my main criticism: The game is great, but once you got the hang of it, it gets really, really tedious. Let me give you an example: According to the games wiki, the best trade route nets you 13 Echo (the games currency) per traded item for which you have to travel most of the map, and the ships are not very fast. The largest ship can carry a maximum of 100 items, but you need at least a third for fuel and provisions to not die. You do not have a warehouse anywhere, so you have to carry everthing with you (eg quest items, munitions, candles) all the time. Let's be very optimistic (or take a big risk) and say, you can use half of the hold for your trade good. That means from this trade run you can get 650 - ignoring the fact that you have to buy fuel and food and maybe hire crew and somehow have to reduce terror. And that you need the biggest ship for it, which costs 29 000.
Let me say it in another way: You have to grind for money and stats, and these grinds take very, very, very, very long. The whole pacing feels like that they gonna railroad you with microtransactions, time saver dlcs and premium content any second. They do not, however.
On the plus side, the game can be modded and it is easy to edit your savegames.

TLDR?
Fresh concept, awesome setting. Many, albeit small wall of texts. Getting from A to B takes very long and you have to get from many As to many Bs very, very often. Even for a little progress you have to invest a lot of real time (and make notes). If you are not botherd by this and have lots of free time (or are willing to edit your saves), it is a great game. 7/10

What is it?
It's a tower defense game, but only in the broadest sense: you have your (two-dimensional) space ship, consisting of various hexagonal spaces. On these you can build propulsion devices, weapons, shield, generators or place your cargo. On each mission your ship flies automatically from A to B (faster if you build more engines) in real-time, and you have to defend your cargo and your ship from being destroyed by enemy ships and asteroids, which can come from 360°. Destroying them brings you resources which you need to build more devices.

So, is it any good?
Oh yes, it is. It is actually great. In the first missions you have only a few devices and a small ship. Later the ships get larger, the devices get bigger and need more energy, so you have to place bigger generators next to them. That might sound a bit cumbersome, but it is not. The game leads you from mission to mission to the more complex setups, and you can choose in which order you unlock new devices and upgrades. Later missions are difficult and a little grinding is necessary from time to time, but the balancing of the game is very well made, so they never feel unfair.

What about game length and replayability?
There are about 30 missions to do. There are achievements, which are a must these days. You can replay all missions to get a better rating and to unlock new devices or upgrades (=grind). Considering the price, that is more than fair.

Obviously this is a recommendation. Any criticism?
This qualifies as an Indie game. So in regards of graphics, music and sound design, you can expect solid work, but nothing extraordinary. The story is pretty basic and generic: acerbic trucker and android sidekick quarrel with pirates. Voice acting was good. The game can get rather hectic, and the design of some of the devices makes it hard to keep track of everything: A few times I built the mid size shield and not the mid size generator, or forgot to build a missile defence, because I saw too late that the enemy ship had a missile launcher. Enemies and asteroids can come from 360° degrees, but in most mission they do not. But even when replaying, you have to remember the directions.

Final Verdict?
I really enjoyed the game and gladly recommend it. I am looking forward to the sequel. 4,5/5=9/10

Sure, it has great voice acting and a distinct graphical style.
That it is not much more than a walking simulator can be overlooked in regard to its great storytelling
That many episodes feature parts, which are longwinded and/or boring and only serve the purpose, that the game is 5 episodes long and not 3 can be forgiven, because it is a solid concept in an fitting setting.

But the game
- be warned, a slight spoiler cannot prevented, so if you want to play it anyway, stop reading -
breaks its basic promise, that your decisions matter.
Sure, characters remember in the later episodes how you behaved to them in the earlier episodes. But in the end all your decisions are erased, one way or another, depending on how you decide at the end of the last episode. And this decision feels really, really, really very forced and is at best far-fetched.

if for whatever reason you want to read more ranting about this, including spoiler for the whole game, follow this link[forum.kortz.at]

Best Pinball/Something other than pinball - mashup since Odama.

Basically, in this game you use pinball mechanics to collect money, mana (sometimes loot) and fight the baddies.
The balls represent your characters, who are a Street Urchin, a fallen knight, a healer and many more. They have special powers (sometimes multiball) and can be upgraded by finding treasures (using pinball mechanics) or buying upgrades.

There might be some room for improvement here or there eg replayability is rather low for a pinball game, but overall it is a well rounded experience.
Most definitely it is a unique experience - there is so far nothing like it, so if you are at least a little intrigued by the concept, give it a try.

Murdered Soul Suspect is a 3rd Person Ghost Walking Simulator. You are a cop, who has been murdered in the intro and must now try to solve your own murder (and several others). As you can barely interact with real worlds objects, you mainly walk around and look at things. From time to time you have to answer questions about the things you looked at, these questions are normally either embarrassing easy or the answers do not make much sense.
There are some nice "ghost mechanics" included, mainly walking through walls, but they do not carry the game for its full (or half or quarter) length.

So, what else can carry a game with stale gameplay?
Visuals? They are nice, but no unique sales point.
Music? There are mostly mysterious sound effect.

That leaves us with: Story. And the build-up is great. Your dead cop character has a checkered past and is full of hurt, you have your run of the mill serial killer to follow, your teenage side kick complains a lot etc. The first third of the story is good, then not a lot happens, then a few foreseeable plot twists and it ends with ... a deus ex machina.

In a nutshell:
+ really good concept, no open end
- gameplay is mainly walking around looking for stuff
- story starts out good, then becomes less so and leaves you unsatisfied

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified is a squad-based 3rd-person cover shooter, where you are part of an elite US-agency, fighting an alien invasion in the 1960ies. There is not a lot good about that game, and a few bad things.

Gameplay and controls
You have your base, where you can walk around and talk to a few people. Sometimes you have to look for someone or something, and it can get tedious. But the main part of the game of course is fighting aliens. As said, it is a cover shooter, so cover is king. There is a twist in the mechanics, as you do more damage if an alien is flanked (and you receive more damage, if you are flanked). This leads to the frustrating effect, that even if you shoot at some aliens head, it might take you up to a whole magazine to kill it that way, if it is not flanked. To flank aliens, you are supposed to use your squad mates. Problem is, they are not very smart: If you try to flank the aliens yourself, in most circumstances, your squad mates follow you automatically, so everybody again ends on the same side of the aliens and no flanking. By pressing space you can enter command mode, where time is considerably slowed. In this mode you can order your squad mates and use abilities. So you can tell your squad mates where to go eg to flank the enemy. Again, problem is, then they do not watch out, if they are flanked, so you end up micromanaging their every move. This was what ruined the whole flank/cover thing for me. As mentioned, there are abilities, like Heal, Mine, Shield etc. All those abilities have to be activated manually. I felt they were not well curved, meaning abilities which were very useful when you get them become ineffective later on, but there are often no new abilities to replace it. If health reaches zero, the characters do not die, they start to bleed out. You have a short time to revive them, otherwise its permadeath for your squadmates or game over if its you. Reviving team mates is one of the few things, your squad mates do even if not commanded (sometimes). By killing enemies you gain experience and level up, which means more health and new powers. Controls are okay, there are a few little things, which I found annoying, like if you want to plant a mine, you have to move the cursor there as if you were walking, that means around covers and barricades, although mines are thrown within a indicated circle; you can assign buttons to functions, but some are fixed. There are quite a few different enemies, but besides that some are a little stronger or have shields, there are only 4 different types. The covers might be on different places on the battlefield, but again, they are always similar - so most fights feel the some as the one before or after.

Presentation
I found the music forgettable and underwhelming. The voice acting was as good as can be expected, although I found the characters and their execution somehow generic. Also your squad mates always have the same voice actors, no matter who you pick - it feels lazy, when you hire a Russian agent, who does not speak English, but as soon as the mission starts he speaks with the same American voice as everybody else. Graphics are technically up to par, as far as I can judge. The surroundings are generic - there are basically three different kinds of surroundings in the levels, and although they obviously tried, they seem the same. The faces of the characters, including some of the aliens, are well done, but as there are only very few alien types - partly with generic variations like "elite" or with shields - they again lack variety. I found the resolution of the pre-rendered cutscenes surprisingly low - but there are only very few.

Story, game length, replayability
As said, you defend the earth against an alien invasion by being part of some semi-clandestine organisation and characters are somehow generic. The story has its moments, but on other instances has plotholes and dei ex machina and is not improved by being told very elliptic. The first 2/3 of the game the story is as can be expected by the setting. But then there is a plot twist and the story becomes something very different. Not bad, but the two parts don't fit well together. Also there are multiple endings - at some point you have to choose, but you have no idea, what and why, and no indication, which decision brings which ending. As the game saves automatically, you can not go back. It took me a little over 10h to beat the game including all side missions on Veteran (2nd hardest) difficulty. I already mentioned, that the game feels rather repetitive, therefore I do not feel any inclination to every replay it.

Difficulty and DLC
You can pick between 4 difficulties. Two extra missions DLC are available, with both of which I did not bother. But there is an extra weapon DLC. Is the game intentionally unbalanced, so you need this weapon? I personally found the game unbalanced, but mostly in the end: As said, several of the abilities lose their usefulness later in the game, but there are not enough to replace them, while the enemies become stronger and more numerous. So the final battles are frustrating, but the extra weapon is only useful in the first half of the game, before you get better weapons "conventionally".

Overall 5/10
The basis of the game is mediocre, with a few good ideas sprinkled in here and there, but more flaws - some very minor (controls), some a matter of taste (story) and some unexpected (unbalanced and extra weapon DLC). I played it with very low expectations, even those where not fulfilled: 5 of 10.