strifereviews-blog

[strifereviews-blog]

Possibly the best year in gaming

This is only going to be a short post.  This year has been undoubtedly incredibly for gaming on all fronts. A nigh on constant stream of fantastic games across all formats and pretty much all genres. 

I could go through game by game but that would make this a much longer post so I am just going to sum it up month by month. 

January 

January had the release of the reinvention of an old survival horror franchise and everyone loved it. Resident Evil 7 sets a new precedent for the series and was also a prime example of what VR could be. We also had Tales of Berseria which is easily one of the best in the series in a long time as well as Yakuza 0 which has had people losing their minds for pretty much the entire year.

February

Fire Emblem Heroes came out at the beginning of the month and brought a fantastic series to a brand new audience, while somewhat simplistic it certainly had some of the charm of the series embedded into it and many are still playing it now. We also had Nioh, and while I didn’t get on with it the game received fairly widespread praise. For Honor came out and has been doing fairly well since, the people who love it love it and by all accounts it is a fun game. We also had Hollow Knight which is a fantastic Metroidvania game, it is fairly difficult so is a great one to jump into for fans of a challenge. Horizon Zero Dawn came out at the end of the month and was just mind blowing, go play it. Torment: Tides of Numenera was released too and is still on my to play list because it apparently tells one of the best stories of the year. 

March

The release of the fantastic Switch brought with it one of the best games I have ever played in Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the game brought back all the memories of previous games in the series but made them reality by giving the players a stunning world to explore and the tools needed to do so straight away. We also had Nier: Automata which seems to have more and more people raving about it as the year goes on. Definitely another one on my to play list. 

April

Persona 5 dropped here and is a must play for any fan of RPGs. It takes the JRPG formula to some of it’s highest heights and was artistically one of my favourite looking games of the year, even the menus were easy on the eyes. What Remains of Edith Finch also came out in April and this list is making me realise how many games I have yet to play this year. 

May

May saw the release of Prey, Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Shadow Warrior 2 (lots of stupid fun if you can get some mates together) and just a whole bunch of Switch releases like Minecraft and Disgaea 5. Injustice 2 also came out and has been getting some awesome new characters throughout the year.

June 

June was good for fighters too seeing Tekken 7 released early in the month.  The Wipeout Omega Collection came out and really makes me want a brand new Wipeout game. Arms was released on the Switch and is generally a lot of fun, especially in local multiplayer mode. Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy also saw the light of day and got a great reception, hopefully we can get a new Crash Team Racing too. 

July 

The End Is Nigh is a fantastic platformer, it isn’t easy but then a lot of the great games aren’t. We also got Splatoon 2 which has continued getting support since and has had some great splatfests too. My standout game of the month wad Pyre though, a strange combination of basketball and challenging choices, the game was another great showing by SuperGiant and the music by Darren Korb is as glorious as always, 

August

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is haunting and at times unpleasant game to play, it stares into some incredibly dark things and does so wonderfully. The motion capture was fantastic and the people at Ninja Theory did a great job on this unique game. Nidhogg 2 came out, go get some people to play with and have fun. Undertale was released and is many people’s game of the year as it does such a great job of twisting so many tropes. Continuing Nintendo’s one big game a month streak we got Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, which is a very strange mix of Xcom, annoying creatures and Mario that just works. Absolver was released at the end of the month as well and is one of the best martial arts games I have ever played, it wasn’t perfect but it captured one of my favourite hobbies in a way no other game ever has and is well worth a look. 

September

Destiny 2 was released, a fun game with a fair share of issues, it is great for those looking for a long term project and probably a lot better for newcomers to the series. Divinity: Original Sin 2 was released, I literally bought the pieces for a gaming PC because I needed to play this, it is a nigh on perfect game and is one of the best sandboxes of the year. SteamWorld Dig 2 was released and was perfect on the Switch, it is an overwhelmingly great upgrade on an already fantastic game. We also got Doki Doki Literature Club, which is a must play and is free, go get on it.  The SNES Classic edition came out too, I love the nostalgic bursts that Nintendo put out and hope we get an N64 one soon. 

October 

Middle-Earth: Shadow of War was released to a mixed reception but is still a fun game to play. The Evil Within was another great horror title to come out this year and does a great job of messing with it’s players. We also got South Park: The Fractured but Whole which is a fun RPG for those who enjoy the South Park humour. The we had Assassin’s Creed Origins, Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus and Super Mario Odyssey all release on the same day, all incredible and in different genres. Seriously, an incredible month.

November

Call of Duty: WW2 came out to the usual fanfare. Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon were released which for me just served to make me want a Switch Pokemon game even more. Star Wars Battlefront 2 came out, I know people have enjoyed it and maybe the loot box nonsense was just marketing?

December

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 came out to bring strange voice acting to everyone around and a giant length RPG to the Switch. Romancing SaGa 2 was rereleased making it easily playable for the first time in a very long time, as was Okami HD. 

2017

Not quite as short as I was going for, what a year though. I still have a far few of these to try and get through. The must plays I would recommend are Persona 5, Zelda, Divinty 2, Pyre and Doki Doki. All bring something different and all are worthy of your time and money. 

I guess now we just hope next year is a littl quieter so we can catch up.

Happy New Year

[strifereviews-blog]

Destiny 2: Please just let me love you

Destiny 2, everyone’s favourite Nathan Fillion dating sim, is in fact a very fun game. The gameplay itself is always enjoyable and satisfying as with most of Bungie’s produce, the weapons generally feel and sound great, the music is incredible and this one even has an actual story and everything. The feeling of reclaiming your power and reuniting the vanguard was great. 

The new strikes were generally pretty enjoyable and I quite like a lot of the modifiers for the nightfall, I mean, except momentum, please Bungie, no more momentum. Sometimes you get the Torrent modifier and you get to feel like an absolute bad-ass running around constantly throwing grenades and just generally being powerful for once. 

I quite like the new twist on PVP, I realise lots of people don’t like team shooting but I think promoting work with your squad makes a lot of sense given that Bungie seem to be focused on making the end game of Destiny highly social. Generally, if you stick with your fire team and communicate well, you’ll do a lot better. Although the recent Prometheus Lens Trials Weekend negated a lot of that. 

Reaching the Power Level limit felt as good as hitting the level cap in any game does and doing the end game bits and bobs were a lot of fun with your friends. The issue with the game generally lies here. The end game just doesn’t have enough to do. We all knew Curse of Osiris was coming soon so a lot of people just waited around to see the legendary Guardian be awesome and also to get a bunch of new stuff to do. 

The DLC was a little disappointing. I didn’t watch the streams about it because I wanted to go in blind, however some mates talked about the Infinite Forest and some of the new weapons we could get and I started to get really excited. Add in some new PVP maps and a higher Power Level and we are on to a winner. 

Except we aren’t. Osiris felt incredibly dull, I enjoyed his Ghost Sagira being your sidekick for a while and she was by far and away the best written character and her interactions with you and your Ghost were fun and entertaining, which is a nice counterpoint to Osiris I guess?

The campaign was short, really short, I played through with a friend and was a bit bored throughout because, even though I was playing as my oh so squishy Hunter I never worried about my health, never worried about being shot. It just wasn’t challenging. Sure some of the bits after the campaign are harder but why wasn’t the campaign scaled up for end game difficulty? Give me some of the artificial campaign length of the old NES days. 

I am told the Raid Lair is easily the best thing in Destiny 2 and when I find myself some free time I will jump into it with my Clan Mates and no doubt enjoy it. However I still find myself disappointed by the lack of new Raid. Did we not deserve one Bungie? I know it is a lot of work but please give us a DLCs worth of content. 

This leaves me with the Infinite Forest. I love me some procedural generation, roguelites and roguelikes are some of my favourite games. I have put an ungodly number of hours into The Binding of Isaac and play the game to unwind rather than to flagellate myself for my sins. So I was looking forward to the Infinite Forest. However, it is an incredibly linear feeling experience, sure you get some new bits and pieces generated but I wanted to be travelling through portals and seeing different realities each time, not just following a path and occasionally killing an enemy with a different name to normal. 

If we cast our minds back to The Taken King for a while, actually can we just stay there? This expansion was what players wanted, what they were expecting, a new world that felt new and fresh and almost alive, not one that was a circle. The NPCs involved with TTK were enjoyable and memorable not just an annoying the fanboy that Vance seems to have become. 

I understand that building a game is an immensely difficult and undeniably maddening experience. The fans are all screaming for something different and you can’t address all of them at once. Some people like fixed drops, some like random rolls, some people want an endless grind, others just want to have all the toys already without having to still grind for the Orpheus Rigs. That isn’t me, I was lucky. Ultimately it just feels like Bungie aren’t sure what they want the game to be, it feels disjointed and mixed up. I have full faith in them and I do genuinely believe that at some point we can look back at this like everyone did with Vanilla Destiny from the lofty perch of The Taken King. But do we really need to go through this process every time? I don’t want to do this if/when Destiny 3 happens, please just learn the lessons and keep moving forward positively. 

I have hope and it is clear that you can make great games, but as it stands, I feel a lot like I did at this point in Destiny 1′s life cycle and I am annoyed that it doesn’t feel like any real progress has been made. I will still play this game, I still have the season pass, but I won’t keep buying stuff if it doesn’t get better soon.

PS Give us all more vault space please :)

[strifereviews-blog]

Monster Hunter World is here next month HYPE

This weekend is the Monster Hunter World Beta and good gravy is it great. I have been a Monster Hunter fan since I first started playing them probably around a decade ago. I have picked up every single one on Nintendo Handhelds and I could not be more excited for this game if it promised to go to the gym for me so I could stay asleep for longer every morning. 

The beta is split into 3 different missions as well as a Training Area which is a great place to get used to the controls as well as test out the variety of weapons and get used to the feel of it, this is true if you are a veteran or a complete newcomer to the series. You can do the missions online with people or just single player. 

The missions in the beta scale nicely in difficulty to give you a feel for what to expect from the combat and the exploration as well. The way the tracking now works is so much more streamlined and it reflects the effort that the developers have put into this game to make it more approachable. While I have always been a fan of the games it is nice to see these kind of changes to help get more people obsessed with this series. 

Going back to the training area, it is a fantastic inclusion, it allows you to see the various combos you can use with each weapon, see the kind of damage you are doing as well as get a feel for traversal and really adjusting to the controls and the speed of the game. It allows you to see which weapon you like the look and feel of and also check out each weapons special feature, whether that is the transformations of Charge Blade or the Demon Mode of the Dual Swords.

In terms of weapons I want to note that I have never been a fan of the long range weapons in this series, they have always felt to clunky to me and as such I have always stayed away from them. However, with the PS4 controller and the control scheme that we have been given, the ranged weapons feel so much better to use and I can’t wait to really test them out in the main game. 

The missions themselves have a twenty minute timer and give you a chance to play around with a lot of the features of the main game as well as exploring a couple of the areas in all of their PS4 graphical glory. Have I mentioned how stunning this game is, maybe it is just because I am used to MH on a tiny 3DS screen but it is eye wateringly pretty. The environments are lush and vivid and the monsters themselves are incredibly detailed and well animated. 

There are a bunch of new features coming in the game itself but I recommend checking out Arekkz Gaming as he is one of my favourite MH resources and he loves it. 

All in all next month needs to hurry the hell up so we can all jump in and start grinding away to get ourselves and our Palicos the best possible armour and weapons. 

Let me know if you will jumping in for the first time as I am all for helping people get used to the gameplay styles, plus, no hunt is wasted in this game as extra materials are always useful. 

[strifereviews-blog]

Nioh seems great, so why don’t I like it?

Nioh, which is widely touted as a Souls like in feudal Japan, is a fast paced, unflinching action game filled to the brim with all sorts of stuff I love. The gameplay is punishing, the enemies are tough, the levelling up is great, there are a plethora of weapons to use and play style to figure out, not to mention there are little floofy spirit animals and an actual Ninja’s cat. Yup, in his garb he has a cat, it is for telling the time apparently. If I kept my cat in my top she would probably tunnel into my body and take control. 

The graphics are stunning, each strike looks fantastic, the character models are great and the spirit animals are adorable. I really like the spirit animals. The sound is fantastic too, the sound effects and music keep you in the game world and keep the fantasy realm firmly routed in the real, as opposed to the abstract that it could easily fall into with the story. 

Honestly I found the story a little lacking, but I think that may have been my fault. The main character is a little dull, although he is more of a vehicle for awesome fight scenes than he is a main reason to play the game. The story isn’t bad, it just isn’t all that great either. I didn’t find myself invested in William’s quest and it didn’t really follow on for me personally. I think again, this may have been because I couldn’t get invested in it rather than anything else, lord knows I have played games with significantly worse stories and have never viewed that as an issue. 

With this kind of game, the gameplay is the essential bit, the combat is strategic and requires precise timing, both for dodging and striking, it is also fast and frantic and allows for some great looking fights. I enjoyed both the ranged and the melee combat and I also loved the loot aspects of the game, finding and upgrading various bits of weaponry incrementally as you go is always enjoyable done right and here, it is definitely done right.

I have been a great lover of Japanese mythology ever since getting into Dragonball Z as a child. I have voraciously consumed any games or anime on the subject matter as they come along and was delighted by some of the inclusions in this game. The yokai have recently started coming over to the west in a couple of different anime and a few different games too, Yokai Watch being a very obvious and low hanging fruit kind of example, but a good one nevertheless. 

If you combine all of this with the souls like nature of the game, a series which I absolutely adore, which I have put way more time into than probably any other and which I have completed every entry far more times than is healthy. I enjoyed Dark Souls 3 so much that just thinking about it in passing like this is enough to make me want to start another play through and go and kick all the enemies in the face again, with a fancy katana because dex builds are life.

I got sidetracked there, sorry. If you combine all of this with the souls like nature of the game, then the result should be a game I dive straight into and just roll around in like an adult in a ball pit, or a dog in literally anything you tell them not to roll in. I should love this game. It should be one of the best games I have played in memory. 

For some reason, none of this game clicked with me. I can appreciate that it is a well made and fun game to play. It just is not for me, I enjoyed it but it just didn’t grab me. It has so many things I like and I know it is a good game. Yet I got bored of it and struggled to push through in the hope it would hook me like so many games have done, it just never did. 

Honestly, it kind of annoyed me, here is a game which by all accounts should be a game of the year contender for me and instead it just left me feeling nothing towards it. At some point I will pick it up on PC and hopefully it can pull me in. But as it stands I just find myself a little disappointed with myself for some reason. 

I can’t think of any other game that left me feeling like this, I don’t know how common it is but I would love to talk to people who have had a similar thing happen. So let me know if any games have left you feeling like this and why.

[strifereviews-blog]

An Open Letter About Divinity: Original Sin 2

Dear Larian Studios,

I am sorry to inform you that I am abusing your hard work. I seem to spend every free minute I have enjoying the incredible sandbox you have made in this absurd and delightful game. I have three different save files with three different friends, in which I run three different classes and in each I find new ways to open up the combat and the gameplay by combining different combat abilities. My Polymorphing, Warfaring Summoner is fine taking on people above his lizardy level, he strikes fear into his enemies by creating a giant demon and giving it every buff his noble mind can think of. He then dives in like a phoenix to the fray becomes enraged and blitzes the enemies until they are nothing more than a bloody puddle to fuel the next demon; blood incarnate. 

My Elf is a flesh eating mage. Not content with one class of magic he knows all of them, spending lots of time keeping the tank alive does not dampen his ability to make it Rain, then stun an entire field of enemies with a Dazzling Bolt. If the enemies line up, oh so nicely, then with Laser Ray like focus they are all set aflame. Then, when they think it might be over, a giant Bone Widow rises from the earth, consumes one of their fallen and then gets to work destroying the remnants.

My human is a tricky fellow, all Cloak and Dagger, one second behind the enemy, the next somewhere else. No combat is complete without an enemy suddenly running away on Ruptured Tendons after being on the receiving end of a Chicken Claw. He can lock pick like no one else and thinks everything is a joke. His puns will make you moan, but sometimes they are crate enough to get him out of trouble. 

I have yet to try out a four player team because all of my characters have but one thing in common. They are all Lone Wolves. They all prefer a smaller group of people in exchange for the power it imbues them with. They can move further, get hit harder and ultimately learn more than other characters. Here we come to my apology.

I know you must have put a lot of time into the other beings that inhabit this glorious game. Lohse seems so incredibly interesting, but until I eventually start a single player run I will not know here story, or the things that haunt her. I will never be the slave the Red Prince wants me to be because I am always gallivanting around like nobility myself. Fane is one of the most entertaining characters I have seen and I am convinced I have seen nothing of him, his wit and attitude truly befitting and Undead and yet I have yet to see what gives him life because I am never there next to him.

I promise I will start a single player run, I will play with these characters, I will learn what makes them tick and hear them talk and be stunned by the writing of them. At some point I may even jump into the Game Master mode to see what that entails. At some point I will play the game and see more of the effort put in by your team. 

But it may not be soon, because I am having far too much fun with my three characters, lord help me if anyone else starts a game with me I will end up with an Undead Archer, who knows what else he will learn, although my money is on summoning demons to fight besides him and in front of him. 

I wrote this to say sorry, you have put so much attention into this game, so much detail into every point, yet I keep ignoring it in favour of finding out what happens next. Whether that be in the story or in the narrative my characters make as they go from place to place killing those who seem to be evil and looting everything that is not nailed down. 

What I am going to say instead is thank you, this game is a genuine sandbox, the kind of game which only comes around every so often, yet here I am, stuck in my ways, unable to break out of the Lone Wolf builds. Missing out on even more fantastic interactions and the camaraderie that a team of four would bring. The game is too fun as it is, I can not break out of this, I will one day hopefully. I hope you don’t mind the way I am playing, it seems as though you wouldn’t because I can play it like this, which must mean you wanted me to. I will explore the other options, I definitely will. 

Kind Regards,

Jason

P.S A battle-mage seems fun too, oh and a necromancer thief, or and a.......

[strifereviews-blog]

Nintendo is Nailing Nostalgia

I have always been a Nintendo fan. My earliest memories of gaming are of playing Kirby on the NES and just loving it. For as long as I have been gaming I have adored what Nintendo do and the kind of games they put out, Zelda has always been one of my favourite series and will probably always be one of the best in my eyes, especially given this years outing.

As everyone gets older they start getting nostalgic, I didn’t realise it until I started getting into retro gaming a few years ago, this was very much influenced by a friend of mine opening up a retro gaming store. Getting to go there and hang out with friends while playing through Streets of Rage, Super Mario World or beating each other at Street Fighter 2 was amazing and really gave me that warm fuzzy feeling you get when thinking of times gone by. 

We even played through Ghouls’n Ghosts together, taking turns when the other one died and actually managing to get the proper ending by going through the game twice because, I assume, the developers hated us for not getting through without dying at all. This is not necessarily linked to nostalgia, we were just incredibly happy with ourselves.

This year Nintendo released the Switch, which I think is fair to say, is pretty much everything everyone has wanted from them in recent years. I loved my Wii U but I barely touched it, save for Smash Bros which I am patiently waiting for on the Switch. Please, bring back Cloud vs Bayonetta. Along with this fantastic console came the release of one of the best games of all time. Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

To me this game felt like the Zelda games I remember. Because when you are younger playing A Link to the Past this is how the game felt, it felt open and free, like you could go anywhere you could see and do anything you could think of. Except this time it actually was. It recalled so many fantastic emotions from my days as a fledgling gamer and just buried me in them. I relished playing this game and still play it now fairly regularly because I can do so while my Wife has control of the TV.

The freedom the game gives you and the way it just sets you loose on the world is exactly how games used to feel, or at least how I remember them. It is truly something special when a game finally makes real how you see a game in the Rose tinted glasses of retrospection. This is by far and away the most impressive thing about the game for me, they made all of the memories of old Zelda games into a reality in this one. 

Along with a plethora of other fantastic games Nintendo have also recently released Super Mario Odyssey, which is nothing like I remember Mario games. It feels like a fresh new take on the platformer. I have always enjoyed Mario but I would never have said I loved the games. The 64 version and Mario World are fantastic games but they don’t feature in the top games in the list that is in my head. 

However, this game is incredible at invoking nostalgia for a few good reasons too. None of them have anything to do with the Shiba Inu in a hat. But, well, look at the floofy thing. I would regret not putting in this shot. Seriously, the game lets you play fetch with the dog. 

First of all, the game has a huge thing in the post game, or possibly during the game if you stumble on it, that is incredible if you have played the old games. I won’t mention it because it is a joy to find and when you do, you will know exactly what I mean. 

One of the coolest inclusions in this game are the 2d sections. These sections take you back to old school Mario and let you see a fantastic sprite of your high definition Mario as pixel art running around with the old controls and limitations that the loss of a dimension brings. They are a blast to play and every time you find one brings a huge grin to your face, or at least it did to mine. 

The juxtaposition of the two styles of graphics and the transition between them are incredible. You literally pop out of the wall in some sections when you leave them which sounds and feels great. Plus whenever you go into one of these sections you get to hear a brilliant 8-bit version of the music as you battle through the Bullet Bills or Goombas to the Power Moon usually at the end of the section. 

The feelings Nintendo have been giving me this year are some of the best in my recent gaming memory. I can not wait to see how they continue this trend and bring out the best of games like Kirby or Mario Party. 

Nostalgia is a tricky thing because it can often feel forced and like the company is pandering to you for no reason other than to pander to you. Nintendo have been including it in so many subtle and not so subtle ways this year that I feel like they understand why I love the games they make and what makes me love gaming. 

Long may the Switch remain a great place to play these great games, and long may I stay feeling warm and fuzzy because of them.

[strifereviews-blog]

Doki Doki Literature Club is a must play... If you can handle it

Doki Doki Literature Club is a dating sim with a twist, the twist isn’t something as bizarre as you dating birds, nor is it just an adult dating sim, or at least not in the way you would expect.

At the beginning of the game it presents itself as an incredibly charming visual novel with fantastic anime visuals and some of the best writing I have had the pleasure of reading in some time. The characters, while cliche in places, feel realistic and multi layered. These are not just your standard tropes, they are deeper than that. There are a total of four characters other than yourself and you can romance three of them. This is done usually through choosing words in your poetry writing with each of the girls having their own preferences for what kind of words they like. 

Poetry for the soul

Then based on this you get to share your poems and with the girls and then possibly share some very sweet moments with the characters that your poems speak to the most. You choose the words you put in your poems and then you get to impress the girl who resonates most with those words. Sayori likes bittersweet words and is incredibly bubbly with it, she is also your childhood friend. Natsuki is all about everything super cute but doesn’t want to be written off as being the fluffy one, and she shares your character’s love of manga. Yuri is into the darker things, she reads a lot and thinks deeply and writes in metaphors, she is a little socially awkward but warms up if you give her a chance. Monika is the head of the club, you can’t romance her, she serves more of a guiding voice and actually is kind enough to remind you to save occasionally too. 

The game’s length is largely dictated by how quickly you read more than anything else. I managed to get through my first play-through in around two hours, however one play-through is probably not enough to enjoy the game to it’s fullest. The game also allows for multiple saves so you can save before key moments and then reload earlier points to see how things might have turned out differently. This applies to how the girls react to you but not necessarily to certain key events in the story which are set in stone so you can keep moving forwards.

The music is incredibly cutesy and the use of the character models getting larger or smaller depending on how they feel or who is talking makes the novel aspects really stand out and help to bring you into the world. I loved the use of sound in the later parts of the game with the song being varied slightly to give a sense of the emotions you are feeling and honestly the use of silence in certain parts of the game are great for helping to bring the social awkwardness of teenage life to the forefront.

I completely loved the feel to the game and was enthralled by the characters and their interactions with each other and you depending on the poems you wrote and how you chose to spend your time.

Wait, there is a health warning first

Wait, I have gotten ahead of myself. Before all of this, as soon as you load the game, is a warning that this game is not for everyone. Some very mild spoilers, the game touches on some very heavy tones, things like depression, obsession and self harm. This is definitely not a game for children, nor is it for you if you feel like you aren’t in a great place. 

The game starts to take some darker turns as you go through and also starts to become a little more aware of itself than is completely comfortable. I genuinely shuddered at several points and would definitely recommend following this game up with something stupidly happy before going to bed. It is clever in a way that so many games try to be but can not quite manage. I won’t say much more on this because if you want to play this game you want to go in more or less blind. 

I actually have a couple of screenshots that I was going to include in this review, but I feel like the less you know the more incredible the experience will be, so I guess you only get the one from me.

So many possibilities

The advantage of the game being short is that the multiple endings and ultimately the complexity of it are very easy to manage. I will be playing again to get the final ending and I am looking forward to it. The game gives you the option to skip dialogue so you can get straight to the choices, this changes the time sink completely to more of a time tea cup, or a time espresso cup. It is such a great idea for a game like this that encourages you to make decisions and it is fantastically executed.

Given how small the time commitment is and how unbelievably good the story is, I can not recommend this game enough. In a year full of huge games like Zelda, Mario, Horizon and Divinity 2, this game will probably be missed by a lot of people. If you are feeling brave, make sure you aren’t one of them. You won’t regret spending more time with it.