Recent reviews by Cecilff2

Perhaps this game will finally answer the biggest plot hole of Half Life 1. Why DO they have to wear those ridiculous ties?

Now that the game is out, updating this to give this game a very positive endorsement. Entertaining and very fun with friends. Some skills seem to level incredibly slow to the point I'm not sure you'd ever hit max on them in a normal playthrough(Crafting in particular would require a ton of grinding), but you generally don't need very high levels for most things, they just help in minor to mid ways(Though high accuracy is very useful), and you'll hit most of it just playing the game normally. The environments of the game are excellent and it definitely feels like a great representation of a hidden science facility similar to Black Mesa.

Looking forward to future content updates as they come out.

Don't really know much about the Touhou series other than a couple characters and some of the music, but I'd recommend this game even if you don't.

The basic premise seems to be a fantasy world where humans and different types of monsters live. Some humans and all monsters appear to have some sort of special ability they can use. The main character is a sparrow monster that runs a little food cart in the mountains with one of her friends. The game starts with them both opening a restaurant and a particularly angry ghost shows up, demands a bunch of food all at once, and then trashes the place after getting impatient. Time then goes back a few months to when you're just running your food cart in the mountains. You get roped into taking on several debts and start running your izakaya



The gameplay consists of day and night phases. During the day you can buy ingredients, forage for ingredients in each location, or talk to the inhabitants of the area. Some inhabitants will have quests for you to do for them, others are what are called "rare guests". These people have a friendship level and at each milestone will teach you a new recipe and a request to serve that recipe to them. Talking to them once a day increases friendship, but the best way to raise friendship is during the night phase when your restaurant is open. Maxing out friendship levels can get you some nice benefits, so it can be worth it to hang around an old area til you finish making friends with everyone before moving on to the next one. One of the first rare guests you meet will also upgrade your Izakaya so that you can have more guests and cooking space. Another shopkeeper you meet later on can upgrade your cooking equipment.

During the night phase, you choose workers to help you. You'll only really have one at the start, but you'll get more as you get further into the game. You can also choose to work alone, as helpers take a small cut of each night's pay as well. Each helper can be set to serve drinks, serve meals, or help cook. You can have up to three helping out and can put every single one on serve drinks if you really want to.

When you open your izakaya each night, you pick a menu for guests to choose from. You can put a set amount of meals and a set amount of drinks. Then you pick your cooking equipment for the night as well. The basic food cart can't hold every type, so you'll want to make sure your menu isn't too diverse at first. Once you've finished your setup, the izakaya opens and customers can start showing up. Each customer has a preference for type of food they like so they'll tend to order that food more often than others, but they'll always pick something from your set menu. They are pretty simple to deal with, you pick the menu item and drink they want and serve it to them before they run out of patience. The game is very generous on customer patience, and I've never seen it even reach halfway on the meter.

The more complex orders come from the rare guests that live in each region. Rare guests don't really know what food or drink they want, they just want something with a specific taste. They have a variety of flavors they like, but will only ever tell you one of them at a time. This is where you start to customize your cooking. Every single ingredient you have can be added to a menu item. The most basic food item rice ball just consists of seaweed(Where she gets the rice from, who knows). That leaves 4 slots of ingredients open for customization. Riceballs are vegetarian, cheap, and taste like homecooking. One of the characters, Reimu, loves these flavors, but if she requests something sweet for example, the plain riceball is going to be good for her, but it won't get the best rating since it doesn't have what she requested. So I can make a riceball, and with one of the four other ingredient slots I can add honey to make the riceball also taste sweet. Getting the best food rating on rare guests comes with a bonus. They will use their own special power to provide a buff for you for a time. For example the first few rare guests will give you random meat items, random fish items, or increase the likelihood of guests appearing for a time. Likewise, giving a rare guest a dish that they absolutely hate will have them use their power to punish you. Scaring away guests, restricting your cooking ability, or simply stealing ingredients from your pantry.

After a set time, the shop will close for the night and show you a tally of everything you've sold and the money you made for the day.

Now your character also can buff themselves while cooking too. For the first couple days you'll have fairly basic operations, but eventually your character will start to sing while cooking as well. This takes the form of a very small rythm minigame that provides notes on beat with the music of the area. These are very simple and are actually very generous. Sometimes you won't even see a note pop up. Each time you sing while cooking you can buff yourself. These can come in the form of unlimited patience for guests for a time. Guests finishing meals immediately. And the ability to throw food and drinks to a table without having to walk to them. If you have all three buffs, they combine into a super buff called hyper mode and reset the buff timer to full. In hyper mode, you no longer get the rythm minigame, and certain cooking utensils actually have special functions while you're in it.

Daily restaurant openings are actually fairly simple and relaxing compared to most other cooking games. However there is a story in the game that pushes you to certain challenges. There's a time limit to pay off your weekly debt until you get to the last part of the main story. Once you get to the end of the main story, it halts until you decide to take on the final challenge. And while I've mentioned the game is fairly simple and relaxing, this final challenge is an actual challenge and becomes quite hectic. You get minichallenges throughout the main story that give you an idea of what it will be like, but they aren't quite the same as the real thing. And while I enjoy the basic gameplay loop, I really like the challenge that came with this and the end of each of the DLCs.

The game's artstyle works well for it, nothing really seemed incongruent when I played and there definitely seems like some good care went into making the environments. The music, like the bits of touhou music I've heard before, is very good and gives each area its own unique feel to it. In particular the final challenge music while sounding somber and dire really fit well in its context in the game.

The story was easy to follow, even without knowing who these chars were, the game did well in explaining in the world and each characters place in it. It did well in selling the main story beat of a conflict that only a master chef could resolve.

Definitely recommend this game if it sounds at all interesting to you. Its fairly cheap. I got 100 hours total from the base game and the three DLCs that were out at the time of this review. There is a fourth one on the way that I will probably pick up when it gets translated. If you like the base game, each of the DLCs adds 2 new zones with 3 rare guests each and a challenge at the end similar to the end of the base game. Each of the challenges work well with altering what you know about how the game works. They all felt pretty fun with DLC3 in particular giving you a challenge for those that want more on the rythm minigame side of things, though it also adds a cool new cooking challenge too where you get to play as other characters that have their own set of buffs different from Mystia's.

Probably the best brawler combat RGG has put out to date. Good story, great antagonist, and plenty of content. The DLC story with Kaito is a nice addon as well. I got it in the judgment/lost judgment bundle so the cost was basically already covered, but I don't think I would consider it worth the full $30 as it is pretty short.

I was skeptical that they'd be able to pull off an RPG from the Yakuza series, but this game turned out great. Continues the tradition of serious main story, but silly side missions. Ichiban is a great new character to the series and his team are all well voice acted japanese or english. If you've put off the series because brawlers don't interest you, but took notice of this one due to it being an RPG, 7 is mostly standalone. There are references to previous games, but nothing important for you to be able to follow along. The difficulty for most of the game is pretty low but does get tougher in the last third of the game.

If you're looking for a good rpg with a good story, Like A Dragon is a good pick.

"The game is fun"
-Reggie Fils-aimé

The game at its heart is a beat em up. You build up a super meter for blocking and hitting opponents and it lowers when you take hits. The super moves can be absolutely incredible in execution and even if your characters supposedly never kill anyone I'm pretty sure most of them are never walking again.

But besides all that, there's dozens of minigames for you to take a break from the main story from. A couple are a little weak, but most are rather well done and you might find yourself actually focusing on completing or mastering some of them.

The story in this game really shines, following two characters wrapped up with the yakuza. One attempting to thwart their efforts to protect his adoptive father. The other attempting to earn his way back in to the family. Both seeing parts of the big picture and eventually both stories come together. The localization team did an amazing job with the translation, using slang and humor to great effect.

If you like beatemup games, you owe it to yourself to try this game out. Doubly so if you're easily distracted.

First of all, you need to understand what sort of game this is. It is not a platformer. This is a survival game first and foremost. And you're considered food by most of the living things. Two, this game will give you very scant information on what to do and how to do it. Many mechanics are not explained, just simple movement and action controls, and how to eat and survive the devastating rain. There is a guide trying to help you out, but he communicates in symbols which you will have to learn, and tends to direct you to the quickest path to something and not necessarily the easiest. If you find he's leading you astray in an area, ignore him and explore on your own.

In Rain World, you play as a little slugcat seperated from his family by a rainstorm. Normally that might seem a bit strange, but rain in Rain World comes down with bone shattering force. The world has been devastated by these rain storms, and brief forays into the surface occur when the storms let up. You seek food, shelter, and time permitting a path closer to your family.

Now on to the big feature of the game. The wildlife runs on the premise of Radiant AI, except it actually works. Creatures in the world all have their own agency and decide how to pursue their own goals. Each of them wants food and shelter, just like you. The catch being about 2/3 to 3/4 of them see you as food. And even the ones that don't could be frightened enough of you to lash out and kill you anyways. Creatures have their own behaviors and tactics. Observing some creatures could clue you in to what they're communicating. Hisses, gestures, postures, all of them have a meaning. Some may technically be predators, but prefer protecting their territory to hunting the area. And each of them has an invisible reputation system that dictates how they view you. Some predators can be convinced that it's more beneficial to keep you alive than to snack on you, or even actively follow you around and protect you. Actions you take towards any creature in the game will determine if they see you as prey, friend, or perhaps something to be afraid of.

The animation system is reminiscent of games like flashback and another world. The game has a physics system applied to models which have a priority to keep limbs on the ground. While it can produce some janky looking movements, for the most part it results in some fairly realistic looking movement. This same system also applies to your slugcat. So careful with your movements, you can accidentally carry yourself off a cliff with your momentum, or roll off the edge because you edged a little too close to it. It takes some getting used to, but once you start getting a feel for the controls, situations like this will become less and less common.

Sound is beautifully done. Music stays fairly ambient until something that could be a threat emerges. And once it spots and decides to chase you, the beat picks up and you're treated to a tense music track until you manage to lose it. Animals all have sounds they make, from the hissing of lizards and the snap of their jaws, to the sound of large wings flapping in the air above you signalling an approaching vulture, the sound design of the game is often giving you as many clues to whats in your environment as just the visuals.

I've seen reviews critical of the controls of the game. And I've heard the controller controls are somewhat more difficult. As a keyboard and mouse player, the controls seemed very responsive so long as you understand that every input will matter. Controller seems to have some issues with movement with stick controls. Ducking is a toggleable action by pressing down and it slow you down, so accidentally moving the stick too far down could easily get you killed in a chase.

As a last note, the game difficulty varies greatly. If you're used to memorizing set patterns to pass an area, this game is going to chew you up and swallow you down into one of its food slots for hibernation. The game rewards those good at adapting to a situation and utilizing their surroudings. Rote memorization will help only for knowing the map. Since the AI of the game is entirely emergent, an area that seemed clear one day may be swarming with predators the next. This can lead to some frustrating situations where something extremely dangerous is blocking an exit. You always have a brief period of time to leave an area immediately when you come into it, but it does feel a bit cheap at times. Like nature, sometimes the game is simply unfair. And this is something you'll have to accept when you play it. If that's a big issue with you, you may want to look for another game.

But if you're willing to accept that sometimes death's just going to happen and there's almost nothing you can do about it, you'll push forward into an amazingly crafted world and ecosystem. And those that keep pushing will find some incredible experiences by the end.


Edit: This game has updated since I wrote this review. There is now an easier mode called Monk and an even harder mode called Hunter. Monk has less enemies and you need less food to hibernate, so if you were put off by the difficulty, it may be more palatable now. As for hunter, he can only eat meat and needs more food than the others. But he can also carry spears on his back unlike the original or monk. Enemies are more aggressive in this mode. There are other changes to the character, but those may be considered spoilers so I'll leave them out.

Sort of a first person Recettear without an annoying little girl trying to scam your items from you at 50% their cost.

It's fun and early game will keep you busy trying to find ways to finish quests and make sure thieves aren't running away with your stuff. Trying to get the next shop upgrade will keep things hectic for a while. There's not a lot to do in the late game though. By then you should have nearly everything except ordering automated giving you time to sell directly to people instead of keeping your shop running smooth, but leaving little else to do besides hope for a barbarian attack so you get a chance at a rare item and sending your champion out.

It's neat to see the villagers eventually come walking by with better and better gear as time goes on, but eventually some day they'll decide that despite paying 1000s of gold for equipment, that 15 gold potion is worth risking their life for and will steal it prompting a lightning blast that ends their life. It's rare you'll see anyone sporting the full set of any of the higher level equipment because they have so little sense of self preservation.

Alchemy is a great addition too, but unfortunately typically results in you hoarding ingredients until a quest comes along that you can use them for. Some ingredients don't have a reliable method of getting a large amount of (Such as gold vials/bars). As such you're unlikely to be able to stock gold armor as a shop item reliably. Though you can get mihr needed for the enchanted items fairly simply through mana potions.

The game is fairly solid otherwise but needs a bit more to keep you playing. New shop locations/items/milestones would go a long way.

Does what it says on the tin. You will know pain.

Great story, humor and soundtrack. It will beat you like an unwanted stepchild and you'll still love it.

It's a shame that more sites aren't picking up on this one. Then again it's hard to write a good review about this one without spoiling the charm. I wanted to wait a few days after I beat it just to see if it was some sort of post game high and would wear off and allow me to see flaws a bit better, but it really is one of the best I've ever played. Battle mechanics are clever and often changing without becoming confusing. Any new mechanics are introduced in a way that it comes naturally. The humor is great, the writing is great, the music is great. There are multiple ways to play it that will vary the outcome of the game drastically. Given you can play through without killing a single monster or intentionally hunting down and killing everything, you'll see major differences in how your character acts and how the world responds to it. Leave friends in your wake or gravestones.

A warning to those looking to play this game though. If you want to play this like a typical JRPG where you grind encounters and EXP for the next level, you're going to have a bad time. Give your enemies a chance and you'll have a much more rewarding experience.

Also this game has the best possible steam background you could ever hope for.


Edit: Editing this one year on and I still feel the same way. Game's come into some pretty big acclaim since and I'm glad to see it succeed.