Recent reviews by Chudler

Do not be mistaken by the price tag, you're paying a €40 entry fee for a freemium game that does not disclose the fact that most of its best content (weapons/equipment) is locked behind an in-game paywall of premium currency, Super Credits, totalling a whopping appraised value of €440+ (which they keep on adding to). Not only that, you're not directly accessing the content, you're unlocking the privilege to earn it through another in-game currency, Medals, this time tied to mundane daily/weekly challenges, which the game does not respect your time for.
The aforementioned premium currency is generally lauded by the community because it can be earned by grinding low-level missions and scouring the map for it for effectively much less than minimum wage.
The game could have been a fun pick-up-and-play experience if the developers were not so adamant about locking behind paywalls/grind the most reliable and fun options for beating enemies that have only been increasingly stronger and more annoying to fight every patch. It's a shame, since every harder mission truly is a spectacle to witness when all the bombs start dropping and the field becomes a bullet hell. Don't expect many meaningful interactions with strangers at that point, since the end-game loop is "solved" and you'll get to indulge in the worker drone trying to optimally extract in record time in order to get as many Medals/h as possible.

Completely worth the wait. Polished to a T, and continues on the legacy of the first game very well (which I also recommend you play before this one).

Valheim lures you in with a solid foundation only for you to find out that it recycles the gameplay loop of: 1 - Get minerals/materials; 2 - Craft armor/Expand farming; 3 - Defeat the boss to access the next area - too many times for comfort without any new mechanics. It's also proficient in sucking out the fun of everything that you *hope* is going to be fun.

Let me give you a "for instance":

• There are these huge ox/buffalo type creatures that you can tame so you can ride. You'd expect to be able to shoot arrows while riding, for it to carry cargo or at least attack on command. Nope, you can only run with it. Taking it anywhere beyond the continent on which it was tamed is a herculean task involving bad collision with boats and praying that nothing catches its aggro. There also a skill attached to riding, somehow shoehorning even more grind.

• There are wolves you can tame, which we went through the lengths to get an elite 2-star one, only for it to be destroyed by enemies beyond the region native to the wolf. There are no upgrades you can give them and they also have the exact same trouble to get across the sea.

• Sea? There are boats in this game and you are going to spend a lot of time travelling in them, and for all this time, all you can do is either row extremely slowly or pray that the wind carries your sails. There is no more mechanics beyond fighting the occasional sea serpent, which is just spamming ranged attacks from the deck. It's a glorified cargo cart.

• Speaking of which, there is a weight mechanic in the game which affect the carts. If you, god forbid, try to use it for the intended purpose of carrying huge weights, it will barely move. Moving it around without rolling it over is a whole 'nother story as well.

This all happens in the default, intended experience. I'd forgive all of these flaws if there were regular updates, but there are not. Every single problem you face may be resolved by an active modding community, having you spend time synching your group up for even the most basic quality of life changes such as allowing multiple people to access the same chest, using items directly from nearby storage to craft or a button to quickly stack everything non-favourited into nearby chests. You can play this in a Rust-like manner, but really, just play Rust for that, at least it gets updated.

Stay away if you want a single-player or co-op experience, the devs not only take forever to update the game but also insult your intelligence.

Seeing this boring, derivative, outdated, clunky, buggy, ugly mess winning Steam's 2023 "Most Innovative Gameplay" confirms to me that the public opinion of capital G Gamers is worth less than dirt.

Saw an ogryn named Big-Nuts.
All's left is giving us those Xbone Aquilas.

Simp Simulator.
If you aren't a Frenzied Flame enthusiast, go home.

You WILL live in the ship pod
You WILL drink the bug beer
You WILL obey management
You WILL mine the minerals

And you WILL happy

An absolute gem of an indie with solid punch-out mechanics and tense dungeon crawling. Art wise, both the tracks and the designs were incredible. I also didn't expect to like the characters so much! Who knew billboarding 2.5D sprites could have so much personality.

My only complaint would be the lack of visual clarity during more busy fights. It's simple to read an opponent when he's mostly alone, but the fact that most enemies have but a few sprites can make it so your timings are messed up when there's a bunch of them. Most have only one sprite used during the whole windup so you have to memorize the time it takes for the attack to connect, but various enemies have different speeds that you have to account for. You get the idea.
I think the issue could be solved with adding more animation sprites to most common enemies.

Addressing the colourful, pixelated, motion sickness inducing elephant in the room, there are various accessibility options for you to tone it way down (or way up) that are even present in the store page screenshots. I personally don't have problems with these types of visuals, I'd only say the camera jutting due to the tile-based movement can be the worst aspect of it since you can't tone that one down (though I admit the final stage is a bit daunting to navigate).

Overall, the game was made with passion and care. I enjoyed every hour of it and I'm sure you'll do too, since you've read this far.

The female protagonist we didn't know we needed:

Full of the exaggerated swagger of an itsy bitsy spider.

Recommending this joyous game just to irritate my Devil May Cry fan friend