Kristala

Every once in a while a rare timeless gem comes around and for me this was INSTANTLY one of those. It's memorable, charming and unique from the get go. From the aesthetics, to the AMAZING voice acting, dialogue scripting, the music, the level design, the use of verticality and death from above, the kitty stealth (no matter what class you chose), the satisfying combat system, and of course CATS! So much aligned here to make just a flat out amazing game with insane replayability. I'm jaded when it comes to games so I'm not easily impressed but by golly you can really feel the passion in this game. I'm on my 3rd playthrough with 100% achievements-can't put it down. Kristala is an absolute gem and there is still more to come in the game. Can't wait to see what they add next. If you're a soulslike fan then this one truly stands out. Even if it wasn't all cats it would still stand on it's own but the cats truly make it unique. If you're on the fence just get it you wont regret it.

I was SO pleasantly surprised by the fight mechanics and the challenge level this game offered!! I'm always complaining that a game's hardest level isnt hard enough - that was NOT the case here! soooo much fun strategizing in order to beat a tough boss. I do wish there was a mapping system but I know that's a really big ask for a small indie game :) Maybe one day!! I hope we get more content in subsequent updates. The plot is very original and all the voice acting was top notch

This has the makings of an amazing game. It's got good gameplay, combat feels like the classic Dark Souls experience. However! I cannot recommend purchasing this game in its current state. Allow me to properly give my critique below: expect a book. NOTE: I played on Stray, the "intended difficulty" of the game. As of 1.1.0, this game is filled with bugs, missing content, missing features, and a lack of variety. There are only 3 weapon types, 2 of them feel good to use and are responsive, one feels downright awful to the point it's borderline unusable. The claws are fast, short-range, and have very little hang-time to use. They are your finesse weapons, they feel fun and are responsive, and you can infinite combo with them very easily. The Greatswords are slow, long-range, and packs a punch compared to everything else. It plays very similarly to Ultra Greatswords from Dark Souls 3 where you are rewarded for spacing and timing. The Sword and Shield (S&S) feels absolutely awful. It has a shorter range, like the claws, but had massive hang-time like the Greatswords. They have a bizarre problem of having no input queing, and a small input timing, meaning you can actually press way too early and way too late to follow through with your lights or heavies, a problem that doesn't exist on the other weapons. It's also slow, and seems to do about the same damage as the claws can, which... makes me wonder what the purpose of this entire weapon type is? It's such a strange issue that I have never seen before, and it feels overly clunky and stiff to use compared to everything else. Magic is incredibly weak. Building into magic strictly is not really an option, not unless you feel like casting a single spell, then waiting 45 seconds, and casting again. The game rewards aggressive play where mana recharges as you deal damage, but the issue is that it's never enough, and trying to spec into magic leaves you incredibly squishy (I will get to that balancing later) so you need to be masterful in your play or get swamped by everything that's not a wet noodle. Status effects are... there. They exist. They do basically nothing to enemies, but chunk your HP like mad, or just straight do nothing to you or the enemy. The animations in this game overall are pretty good, some are really good for an indie studio. However, if you want to know what sullies the experience really early on is the ladder climbing animation. It's incredibly jank and you WILL see it often. This is not the only animation with issues, see the S&S, but this one in particular really kills the mood of the game early on. Enemy pathing is very broken, to the point you will see enemies stuck floating or t-posing, and they frequently get stuck on the terrain or random breakable objects. Why can't they break these objects by attacking them, Dark Souls style? Stealth is INCREDIBLY powerful, overly so. It's very early on that you can get 2 upgrades that just straight make the game a total breeze outside of bosses or scripted forced encounters, and even then you can easily escape their sight and backstab insta-kill them. And finally, the biggest problem: The overall balance of the game. Stray is the recommended and "Intended" difficulty of the game. However, I cannot in good conscience recommend ANYONE play this difficulty, even if you are good at the game. Enemies become sponges that you have to spend extended periods of time on, damage becomes greatly skewed against you to the point that it feels like you deal no damage whilst everything that isn't the starting enemy types 2 shot you. Or 1 shot. I am over level 70, with 43 Vigor, why is a random enemy able to chunk 80% of my HP? Some of the bosses and common enemies are really not properly thought-out with this in mind. for example, a Wraith screams CONSTANTLY, and this scream effects a large area around it. if you get caught in it, it will hit you 4-5 times and you cannot escape it, and there goes about 90% of your HP. All the while, it is spamming this attack, and there isn't much of a tell as it sits perfectly still (the same as its idle animation) and then suddenly AOE's you. The very boss of this area I also had issues with but for a different reason. It did hardly any damage at all, a single melee strike from it did 70% of my health, but the scream it loves to spam did hardly anything. I was genuinely having a problem figuring out what was going on. Was it my armor's defenses? Nope! Because even in heavy armor I would still lose all my HP in 1-2 hits. Also, the Crystal Guardians are required to be defeated in order to get spell upgrades and unlock 2 or so "better" spells, and these guardians will very often 1 tap you if you fight them when you unlock them, instead go grind a while and then return 20+ levels later, then you'll be on par. All just to get very minor upgrades as your weak spell now deals 30% more damage. 30%... of what feels like 20 damage. That's not all that much lmao All of this to say, this game feels like a passion project that the developer(s) just lost all motivation for later in the development cycle. Early areas feel polished, fun to explore, and are well thought-out. Later areas are just... nonsensical, like they slapped things into place just to get it over with. Why is the white climbing marks on a light grey wall surrounded by white? It becomes a total nightmare to be able to spot them at times, to the point where several times in the later areas I had to ask "where do I go?" because the path forwards was obscured by poor design choices. ----------------------------------- TL;DR The game is a gem that has yet to be properly polished. It's incredibly rough around the edges, needs a lot of work, more variety to weapons and spells, and needs more time to make it actually worth buying. The early stages are fun and interactive, the later stages are just confusing and feel like the dev(s) lost all patience with the game. Some effects and statuses don't work, an entire 1/3rd of the weapons feel awful to use, level design was kinda thrown out the window in later sections, the balance is really poor where you get 2-tapped by everything, and the sheer lack of polish in the later stages really hurt this game. it doesn't feel like a 1.1.0 game, It feels like a 0.6.0 game, and it really shows. Buy on a sale, or wait for the game to be polished more. Right now, I sadly cannot recommend it to anyone.

Basically, Sekittyro: Shadows Pspspspspsps

It's a tough game to judge. A lot of the times it's an okay game, but a lot of others, it shows its buggy side. I got all the achievements in the game before this review, just finished my Feral Mode run. It's far from the worst Souls-like ive played (that goes to Hellpoint), but it's not great either. Its lack of polish definitely makes the $40 price ambitious. Like many others im sure, i got this as part of a bundle from Humble Bundle Firstly, the playtime. It's a decent length game, but yet it feels like only half the game is here. From the start, youre told to visit the SIX Kristals, yet you can only meet three. In Myr, the second area, youre told to go Tandar, Kyo, Lyu, and Syko, yet only can go to Tandar after that. The final boss is decent, but doesnt seem like a FINAL boss. The game just....kinda ends. The store page has a roadmap that says more is coming, i honestly feel like this game should be in Early Access. The thing about roadmaps, they dont always get honored. Difficulty and playstyle is odd. You can deflect, parry, block and dodge. Parry is a skill you have to buy and feels awful, so bad i refunded the skill on the tree. It says it will interrupt enemy attacks, but that's not always true, and with a game with 6+ hit combos, parrying a hit will get you killed by the others. I cant imagine playing dodge for the same reason, unless you dodge to avoid combos altogether instead of each hit to try to sneak in an attack of your own. It also cost a lot of Balance to play that way. Simple deflecting was the way to go for me, played like a Sekiro game. With my first playthrough on Stray and next on feral, yes you take a LOT of damage, and enemies have quite a bit of health. The claims of getting 2-3 shot are true. Much like Sekiro, i focused on draining the balance meter of the enemy for the critical rather than focus on health. Combat does feel a bit stuff and clunky. Admittedly my build would have benefitted greatly from using a Greatsword instead, but it felt awful! The hardest boss in the game imo is Samwise, he's an early game optional fight that, most players will assume is mandatory (i sure did at first). He spends half the fight disengaging and spamming magic at you, which ramps up to abysmal levels in the last stage, making it a hard, punishing waiting game until you can actually attack again. THEN after you beat it, the quest will be buggy and wont complete for several minutes after you beat him. https://imgur.com/a/ELpHbpP SPEAKING OF BOSSES, having you pass areas blocked by blood wards you cant access adds mystery. Then when you beat Ove (which is admittedly a good fight) and get the ability to dispel those blood wards, that "mystery" turns to disappointment as you're greeted with....Ove...just reskinned.....twice. Ove, Marrow-Maw, and It Beneath the Bog are 98% the same bosses. I was just speechless and shaking my head at that for awhile... Some enemies will bug out and simply become unresponsive, even Bosses. Or they run in place and get confused, multiple examples shown here. https://imgur.com/a/vcWiRbN Even something as simple as climbing a ladder is difficult, and sometimes impossible https://imgur.com/a/BMMRXbG Some smaller issues like getting stuck (there is an unstuck button or i would make this a larger issue), aomehow attacking the wrong way even when locked ona some typos and subtitles not matching spoken dialogue. The fact i somehow bugged the Cursed Realm quest and never got it my first playthrough because i activated the font as the cutscene played. Alt+tabbing and getting the game to read the controller again is odd, i had to actually select something in my inventory with my mouse, and THEN switch to the controller to get it to work. I even got some nasty stutters in Tandar that the rest of the game didn't give me. It's not great, but not terrible, i didnt hate it. If it wasnt dragged down by the bugs, i could give it a thumbs up and say "not for everyone, but okay enough". Given the quality and the incomplete story, i'd call it a pricey, indie Early Access souls-like in disguise

Fun game with a lot of character, quite buggy though. The bugs don't ruin it, and they get better with each update. If you like sekiro/lies of p/khazan i think you'd probably like this game. Definitely looking forward to more from this developer.

Very very rough, and too many bugs.