BALL x PIT

Is Ball X Pit a good game? Definitely. Is it a great game worthy of an Overwhelmingly Positive rating? Eeeeeeeeh. I get why it has it, since you only get asked whether you recommend Ball X Pit or not, and it's a hard game to root against. But to me, this is the textbook definition of an enjoyable timewaster. The main reason that it doesn't reach those upper echelons of gaming for me, is how sloooow the gameplay feels. Despite the clear Vampire Survivor inspirations in the entire gameplay philosophy, this game does not get me nearly as excited, and it comes down mostly to the speed. Despite what the trailers might show, the gameplay is not nearly as hectic as it appears. I don't find myself frantically dodging out of the way of things, or trying to catch a ball at the last second, because the ways I lose come down to simply falling behind in DPS. And, yes, that is something that could be improved if I put in a little more effort trying to catch these balls, or aiming better, but the problem is that none of those things are immediately all that noticeable. They're just slight improvements over the course of a long game. Which is another thing, in that these matches feel simultaneously too long, and too short. It never feels like I have enough time to complete the build I want to do, but it also feels like I spend way too much time doing the exact same thing, without the difficulty noticeably ramping up. And the primary contributor to both these problems is that XP rates feel very slow, especially later in your run. You can go the entire way from the second boss to beating the stage, gaining maybe 2 levels along the way. Which not only makes it so that you don't feel yourself getting too much more powerful, but also means that you are surprisingly dependent on the RNG from the chests for the strength of your builds. The difference between 1 or 5 upgrades can be enough to allow you to level an entire extra ball, or get another fusion or evolution in before the end, and it's not really up to how well you play. The meta-progression suffers from a similar pacing problem, where I feel like I'm not unlocking things quickly enough. I've played about 6 hours of this game, and I'm already getting a bit sick of the basic balls I have access to. I know there are more evolutions I haven't found, and more basic balls I've yet to unlock, but every game starts off with the same few options, and it barely feels like they're different to start with. Now, don't get me wrong, I do actually think the balls feel different enough - even though the gameplay rarely differs - but my problem is with how I'm just forced to pick up the exact same ones over and over, because the game is holding out on me. If I beat more stages, I can unlock more balls and items, which is all good and well, but the ratio on in feels way off. I would have wanted at least double the amount of balls to start off with, because I am quite frankly bored of "Freeze" or "Poison" every game. And looking at just how much content I have left to unlock, I'm pretty sure the problem isn't with there not being enough, but with the way it's divvied out. And that's a problem in the basic gameplay as well. It feels like those hectic moments, and the overwhelming power, both of those are locked behind unlocks of later levels and upgrades. But in an ideal version of this game, what the meta-progression would do, is give you both of these things up front, and then scale the difficulty so that it keeps up with your progression, and you continue feeling hectic yet powerful throughout a much longer gaming experience, while allowing you to blast some lower levels with your scaling if you want. That's not how it has turned out for me though. For that, the final bosses especially are way too weak. They theoretically have the kits to kill you, sure, and I did die once to the first and second stage final boss, because I didn't know what they did, but after that first time, they became a cakewalk, to the point that I beat the third stage boss without even trying. The problem is that, whereas the first and second boss in a stage have the time pressure of needing to do enough damage before they reach the bottom row, the final boss does not appear to have any such timer, and you can go as slow as you need to, focus entirely on dodging and letting your balls just randomly hit the boss whenever they feel like it. Which doesn't make things very hectic or frantic, especially considering that the boss attacks feel very slow as well. So why the hell do these bosses take sooooooo long then. There's not even a bunch of normal enemies forcing you to hurry up, since the boss add spawns don't move like regular enemies. But I can easily spend 5 minutes on a final boss, even though the stage is supposed to take '15 minutes'. And I know I could cut down on that time if I played better, but I still don't think it's a good thing that these bosses can take up a fourth of your time, where you're gaining 0 XP, getting not a single bit stronger than you were before, and all you're doing is dodging the slowest attack patterns imaginable. It's entirely possible that every single problem I've come up with here gets fixed later in the game, and I do still plan to play more Ball X Pit, because it's an easy game to just play a quick - or rather, slow - run of, but that doesn't erase these problems existing right now. They're not enough to make this game unenjoyable, even despite everything, I'm having a decent amount of fun! But it's not the absolutely amazing game that it [i]could[/i] have been. Overall, I'd say that, so far, Ball X Pit has been worth about €10 for me. However, with the amount of content it has, I could see it reasonably rise to the base asking price of €15. It's all about whether you're willing to spend enough hours into it to make it worth the price, because I don't think this is the type of game where the gameplay is so incredibly good that even a shorter time with it can make it all worthwhile.

Very intense game. Enjoyed overall. Soundtrack was great. Would recommend.

Very easy to pick up and play! Love that its very low commitment type of game. I do not have alot of free time so a game where i can play a round in 15 minutes and feel like i accomplished something really is great! 100% recommend. it is one of those games you just keep installed and is a great refresher In between maybe more intense story focus games.

They gave the vampire survivors guy a pinball machine

addictive

The game is super fun and feels great to play. Even when I lose a run, I am excited to do another one. Only issue I have with it is the whole base building stuff. I never wanted to do any of it and just wanted to focus on doing more runs and unlocking more stuff. Still 90% of the game is the runs so I still highly recommend.