HIGH The atmosphere is top tier.

LOW Repetition and recycled content.

WTF …Happened to my save file?

Like every games writer approaching the end of the year, I’ve started to compile a list of my top 10 games of 2025 in an effort to appease the algorithmic gods that give this writing hobby of mine some semblance of meaning. As someone who is less constrained by the new release schedule than many, I like to focus on my top 10 experiences regardless of release date, so I don’t have to overlook any titles that impressed me. With that being said, here’s a sneak preview:

Pacific Drive is likely going to take the gold.

Loading into the original title, I expected a narrative heavy driving adventure. What I experienced was an extraction-based survival challenge with a large splash of SCP and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

The player’s time is divided between maintaining their car’s condition by avoiding dangers in an anomaly-filled forest and looting every resource they can find in order to upgrade the car for even deeper ventures into a mysterious place called The Zone. I’m not a car guy, but I loved every second of my time exploring and learning about how the world worked, and by the time I was set to leave my garage for the final time, I had an appreciation for a game that tried something different and nailed the atmosphere it was going for.

With the recent release of the “Whispers in the Woods” expansion, I took the opportunity to grab my car keys and hit the road for another journey… and I have thoughts.

As an overview, the DLC adds an 8–12 hour side story campaign to the main title alongside new anomalies, new mechanics and a fully voice-acted narrative. The original mix of cozy and unnerving from Pacific Drive‘s initial release has been replaced with a spookier, more sinister tone as we learn more and more about a fanatical cult operating within The Zone. 

For players who read “Pacific Drive but spookier” and are already sold, then feel free to stop reading here. For everyone else, I can happily report the atmosphere in Whispers in the Woods has been amped up and the visuals continue to look phenomenal. However, there were a few bumps in the road… I was initially taken with the DLC, but as I started to settle into the new, poorly-explained gameplay loop, cracks started to appear.

There are two new main systems to contend with. Instead of collecting energy to form an exit gateway as in the original Pacific Drive, the player now needs to collect a certain number of “artifacts” that will be sacrificed at an altar to open an escape route. These artifacts each have their own quirk that will apply to the player and their car, with the effects ranging from good to ‘get rid of this thing as fast as possible’. I do like the fact that the player can no longer tell where the level exit will appear. Previously the escape could be trivialized by plotting a clear route, now the player needs to adapt on the fly, leading to far tenser rides.

Secondly, holding on to too many artifacts will gradually increase The Whispering Tide. If it maxes out “they” will begin hunting the player across the map, I will not be elaborating further because that’s part of the experience, but thankfully, this aspect can be offset this by equipping the remnant with attuned parts which will help hide the player’s presence from “them”.

In theory these are both fine systems, leading to more varied escapes and encouraging veteran players to update their car. Sadly, these new attuned parts are just glowing versions of existing parts, so I was forced to unlock everything again, minus the joy of discovery and added frustration because they are harder to repair. While different artifacts do have slightly different impact levels, the player almost always has the ability to choose either a positive one or an ignorable negative effect. This leads to the gameplay loop feeling very similar to the original Pacific Drive — simply collect enough circular energy sources to escape through a portal.

This repetition is not helped by the story missions being essentially the same task repeated seven times. Go to a new area and find an audio file, listen to it to unlock a trial with a special gameplay condition, complete the trial to unlock a new area, and repeat. The areas each have their own quirks and the trials often come with substantial restrictions, but I was left wanting when it came to the diversity I had hoped for from an expansion. The new anomalies are interesting but I had encountered the majority within a few hours of play and none caused me to change my approach to the maps, which are still heavily filled with well-known anomalies.

When it comes to the actual narrative, I prefer the story of the main game. However, I do want to acknowledge that the DLC offers strong voice performances to accompany the player throughout their journey. I was a disappointed to see there was less environmental storytelling than the first go-round and that it was almost all contained to audio logs, but the characters are at least interesting. For newer players, the story is completely separate from that of the original Pacific Drive, so players can drop in and out without concerns of spoilers.

I wanted to be able to write this review and profess my love for Whispers In The Woods as a reason to revisit one of my favorite titles of the past few years, but it left me wanting. On paper it’s more Pacific Drive with a Halloween skin, but I wanted more from an expansion. If it had been marketed as a smaller ‘trials’ pack my expectations might have been more in line with the actual experience.

There is clear care put into this expansion and it’s easy to see the vision Ironwood Studios had, it just didn’t land with me. However, I do hope they continue trying to experiment because I would love this studio to create a new experience as much as I love the original Pacific Drive.

Rating: 5.5 out of 10

— Adam Sharman

Buy Pacific Drive: Whispers In the Woods — PC — PS — XB

Disclosures: This game is developed by Ironwood Studios and published by Kepler Interactive. It is currently available on PC, PS5 and XBX/S. This copy of the game was obtained via paid download and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 9 hours of play were devoted to the expansion, on top of 32 hours in the main game, and the game was completed. There is currently no multiplayer option.

Parents: The game has an ESRB rating of T due to Fantasy Violence and Language. Pacific Drive can be very unnerving when the player is unaware of the world around them and the expansion has a horror theme including ghastly enemies that can ‘charge’ the player as a mild jump scare, although their threat level is minimal. The visuals and soundtrack of the expansion further play into this horror element but no violence is shown to the player character.

Colorblind Modes: There are colorblind modes alongside a host of accessibility features.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game has subtitles for all dialogue, which is the sole way the story is conveyed. No audio is essential for gameplay and the subtitles cannot be tweaked beyond on/off. While some anomalies have audio cues, these are all accompanied by some level of visual cue. It can be helpful to hear certain anomalies without looking, but this has minimal gameplay effect. The car can develop quirks which include the horn being honked as an effect, which may be more difficult to identify for players with hearing difficulty, but this is a rare occurrence and there are ways to identify the quirk without hearing the sound.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls on both keyboard and controller.

The post Pacific Drive: Whispers In The Woods Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Adorable slimes and fantastical environments.

LOW The frustrating progression system.

WTF The ethics of my “ranch”.

All the way back in 2016 I picked up a Humble Bundle containing the original Slime Rancher and tried it on a whim. Stardew Valley had only just been released and the indie farming mania had yet to fully take effect. So, while it had some problems, Slime Rancher felt fresh and I was quite taken by it thanks to the whimsical charm of the Far Far Range, filled with all its gelatinous inhabitants. Many hours were spent enjoying the feeling of discovery as I explored new areas, built up my ranch and let it devolve into Dickensian work standards as overcrowded cells of slimes generated income for my capitalist vices.

Over eight years later, Slime Rancher 2 finally got its full release and I was eager to get back and start rounding up some colorful creatures. After finally making my way through the main content, let’s just say I have some thoughts…

To set the scene, the player reprises the role of Beatrix LeBeau, an intrepid slime rancher who has made her way to a new land with a conservatory most could only dream of, ripe for turning into a brand new Slime Ranch. Alongside is her trusty ‘Vacpack’ — a gun capable of sucking in and firing out nearby food, slimes and the occasional decorative pot.

The system is quite simple — catch a slime, feed it food and out plops a ‘plort’ which can be sold for sweet, sweet cash. Different slimes have different food preferences and conditions needed to keep them, so if the player wants to “catch ‘em all” they’ll need to expand their ranch with a number of different environments. Amateur geneticists can also crossbreed slimes by feeding them each other’s plorts (I would advise not dwelling too deep on this) creating a larger and feistier, but also more profitable Largo Slime.

For the first act of the campaign I was enjoying myself as the trappings feel immediately similar to the original Slime Rancher. I was a little disappointed to find the majority of slimes were reused from the first game, but SR2 manages to maintain the same whimsy and comical interactions as slimes bounce around looking for food and bumping into each other. The initial areas are relatively colorful and diverse, and the player will have some immediate goals to fill out the ranch and get a few key upgrades.

On that note, Slime Science is back from the original and has a much larger role to play. Alongside stockpiling plorts, the player will need special science materials that randomly spawn around the map. Initially this added an element of excitement as I stumbled across rare resources and hurriedly carried them back to base. (Slime Rancher 2 assumes the player loves running, by the way — it forces them to do it a lot!)

One of the main areas Slime Rancher 2 has evolved is in the use of this Science to unlock both utilities and decorations. Warp devices move people and resources, utilities to help recover health or stamina, and aesthetic pieces liven up the ranch and bring it to life.

Overall, there’s a lot to like here. Slime Rancher 2 is split into two distinct acts, and the first is certainly a continuation of the original formula. Act 2, or “The Grey Labyrinth”, is where the story truly starts — and frankly, I consider this section to be actively harmful to the overall experience. Judging by player reviews I might be in the minority, so allow me to defend myself.

As I made my way further out from my main base, the sheen started to wear off as trekking through the same landscapes time after time became frustrating. There are a couple of portals and shortcuts that help skip some of the journey, but the ability to create teleporters is locked until almost the very end of the game. An issue, since Slime Rancher 2‘s primary focus becomes less about ranching and more about exploring as the adventure progresses.

Worse, there are not one, not two, but three RNG resource grinds in order to get to endgame, which just means running around in circles to find the needed items — and maybe I’m just going crazy, but I’d swear the RNG odds decrease for areas that have already been explored until time passes to reset them. This often resulted in me having to go back to base and do a long runback to grind more resources because I hadn’t found all the rare spawns I needed.

With limited stamina that takes slightly too long to recover, these grindy late game utility unlocks, and lack of focus on the actual ranching, Slime Rancher 2‘s second half was not a great time. Achieving these goals were often met with relief that I didn’t have to grind further or deal with frustrating mechanics any longer, rather than being excited about finally getting a cool, new toy. It’s just not enjoyable, and feels like such a weird design choice in an otherwise cozy title.

It’s not all bad in the back half, though. The later stages do feature the most impressive environments the series has to offer, and numerous times I stopped in awe to admire the scene before me. The dynamic soundtrack is also consistently good throughout. Some of the new slimes have interesting designs and quirks that immediately made me want to add them to the collection. The story… well, the story doesn’t actively detract from things and does justify some interesting world events and settings.

Ultimately, Slime Rancher 2 is a strange beast. On paper it has everything the original does, and more. More slimes, more unlocks and more imaginative environments. Sadly, the frustrations overshadowed many of those positives for me, as many of the new additions actively work against the tone of the experience. Quicker access to fast travel or unlimited stamina would go a long way to easing these complaints, and make me feel less like my time was being wasted.

I’ve been rather negative on its latter sections, but for those who enjoyed the original Slime Rancher, it manages to hit many of the same pleasant notes — but maybe have a guide handy to minimize the travel and grinding. 

— Adam Sharman

Rating: 6 out of 10

Buy Slime Rancher 2 – PC – PS – XB

Disclosures: This game is developed by Monomi Park and is self published. It is currently available on PC, PS and XB. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 15 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There is currently no multiplayer option.

Parents: The game has an ESRB rating of E10+ due to Fantasy Violence. Evil slimes known as Tarr that will consume friendly slimes are able to be toggled off on game start, however the player can still be damaged and bitten. All “fighting” is done by launching enemies away or shooting them with water. 

Colorblind Modes: There is no colorblind mode.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game does not offer subtitles, but there is no audible dialogue — all story is conveyed via text. (See example above.) Slimes do make noises but they do not affect gameplay with the exception of the lucky slime which does have a jingle to indicate its presence. Without a matching visual cue, it is not fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls on both keyboard and controller.

The post Slime Rancher 2 Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

No Rest for the Wicked is Moon Studio’s latest project, recently released into Early Access.
This new title from the creators of Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Will of the Wisps
breaks away from their platforming/metroidvania roots and pivots into a new third person,
open-world semi-isometric soulslike direction.

In No Rest for the Wicked, players control a silent protagonist on a journey to a land called
Sacra. As a warrior of an ancient and mysterious cult, they’re tasked with purging a strange
plague that’s turning the people of Sacra into monsters.

The story is mostly told through cutscenes that are a real treat thanks to the heavily-stylized,
and somewhat cartoonish art style. The world and its characters look like hand-drawn figures
with exaggerated features such as big noses or long hands. Though a bit strange, this artistic
choice lends it a visually unique vibe.

No Rest for the Wicked’s gameplay is can be simply summed up as a fusion of Diablo and Dark
Souls — combat is mostly melee, but there are some magical weapons with limited ranged
attacks, such as magic staves that shoot fireballs.

Like most soulslikes, No Rest for the Wicked tries to manage the pace of combat with a
stamina bar, so as expected, rolling to avoid enemy attacks or swinging a weapon will
consume it to prevent spamming.

Each weapon has a special move that deals higher damage or causes elemental status buildup
such as ‘burn’ or ‘frost.’ There are also weapons such a heavy sword that are infused with
elements, and the special attack deals both more damage and elemental status
buildup.

The rest of the gameplay in the Early Access build largely follows common soulslike
systems, such as such as inventory management, managing equipment load, and leveling up
using experience gathered from defeating enemies. Perhaps the only notable difference here
is how No Rest for the Wicked deals with player death.

Rather than the usual corpse run to regain lost souls (or soul equivalents) the penalty for death is losing some durability in the player’s equipped weapons and armor, causing them to underperform until they’re fixed by a blacksmith. For a soulslike, the abovementioned penalty is too soft and devoid of challenge since it doesn’t result in a heavy loss of ability.

The game also has a basic crafting system in which some throwables such as bombs can be
made. Materials to repair and craft weapons (such as wood and steel) are also gathered
through exploration.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of No Rest for the Wicked is the isometric camera. At
the start of play, a message from the dev team is displayed that talks about their hopes and
dreams of advancing the ARPG genre. However, I have to say that the camera perspective
causes difficulties in both combat and exploration, holding that advancement back.

When engaging with groups of enemies, the viewpoint makes it difficult to see where the
protagonist is when and rolling out of enemy melee range. Targeting enemies is also difficult
since there are no target lock options available. Worse, in its current state, parts of the world and its assets turn into hollow black objects so that the player can see through them when in
small, closed environments. It feels like the devs are undercutting their graphics work with a perspective that doesn’t do it justice — just imagine owning a beautiful painting, but hanging it far away and backwards.

While this is absolutely still an Early Access title that has plenty of time and room to grow, I
feel that No Rest for the Wicked will ultimately be a divisive title. The design choices such as the camera angle and the painterly visual style have definitely made the experience somewhat different than one might expect, but at this point, I’m not certain that “different” necessarily means “good”.

The post PREVIEW: No Rest For The Wicked appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Getting a weapon strong enough to one-shot the skinless hunters.

LOW A few quests have confusingly-worded instructions.

WTF The ancient ancestors left behind… sokoban puzzles?

As gimmicks go, DYSMANTLE’s is well worth naming the game after it.

While other entries in the crafting-survival genre have allowed players to destroy a world’s elements — houses, cars, and so on — and repurpose them into resources, very few of those elements start out as something the player might feel bad about tearing down. Instead of procedurally-generated shacks and scattered resource piles, DYSMANTLE gives players a huge open world so meticulously and delicately hand-crafted that it almost feels like a shame to tear it all apart in the name of staying alive — assuming, of course, that they have tools strong enough to manage it.

DYSMANTLE is the new top-down zombie survival game from eclectic developer 10tons, and it’s an impressive achievement. At its core, this experience is about finding the tools necessary to complete a set of tasks. This might have resulted in a collection of busywork had it been in less confident hands, but the developers have so perfectly managed the difficulty curve that what should be a chore winds up feeling like a pleasure.

In DYSMANTLE, every item has a health bar and a minimum damage threshold — a single hit with an item below that threshold does not deal damage in any way. For example, a wooden chair might have a damage value of 6. In order to get the wood resource it’s made of, the player must figure out how to build something strong enough to deal at least 7 damage.

This system feels vital and engaging thanks to each area being littered with items of every level of toughness — while there are always low-level things able to be broken down, players will constantly be temped by items that would be very useful if only they could harvest them. At one point I was spending half an hour busting up porcelain plates because I hadn’t yet devised a way to crack any of the bathtubs I’d come across… Until I managed a baseball bat. Every type resource has a kind of “super tough” deposit, and the delayed gratification of finally being able to reap them makes the late game a delight.

DYSMANTLE’s combat is above average for the genre, although it’s fairly basic stuff — the player locks onto targets and then chooses between a strong attack, a weak attack and a dodge roll. Damage scaling is based on what kind of tool or weapon they’re using. Bonus items mix things up a little, with the player getting access to limited-use throwable or place-able weapons to help deal with the zombies.

Instead of worrying about ammo or additional crafting, each item’s use is refreshed when the player rests at a campfire — of course, as we now live in a post-Souls world, resting also brings every enemy back to life, so players have to be thoughtful when deciding how to use these refreshes. There aren’t a huge variety of zombies but that feels appropriate, as fighting zombies isn’t really the point of the game — they feel more like environmental obstacles than specific threats.

While these system all work wonderfully, the one thing DYSMANTLE is relatively lean on is the narrative. The player starts the adventure as the last survivor of a zombie apocalypse now living on an island, and the game doesn’t stray far from this structure. Players learn about the world via the standard radio broadcasts, notes, and environmental storytelling, but to be fair, there is an interesting story being told. Solving the mysteries on offer are a pleasure, even if the main character remains a disappointing cipher for most of the game.

Despite this light narrative, DYSMANTLE remains an accomplishment — it’s a crafting adventure that doesn’t just have a destructible world, it makes destroying that world important and satisfying. DYSMANTLE may just be a gimmick stretched out to full-game length, but it’s a hell of a gimmick, and it certainly deserves praise.

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by 10tons. It is currently available on PC, PS4/5,Switch and XBO/S/X. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 75 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode. The game was completed.

Parents: This game was rated T by the ESRB, and it contains Blood and Violence. It’s a game about a zombie apocalypse, so there’s a core bleakness to it that means younger kids shouldn’t play it, and innocent deer can be hunted as a resource. But beyond that, it’s completely inoffensive, and the violence isn’t particularly gory at all.

Colorblind Modes: Colorblind modes are present.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played almost the entire game without sound and encountered zero difficulties. All information is delivered through text. While some information text cannot be resized, UI elements can!

Remappable Controls: Yes, the game’s controls are remappable.

The post DYSMANTLE Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Finding a machinegun just before I ran into an armor-clad behemoth.

LOW Finding out the hard way that it’s possible to drown!

WTF Is that a speaker growing out of a mound of flesh?

The zombie apocalypse is a perfect thematic setting for a roguelite — what better way to feature scrappy survivors constantly scrounging for equipment, renewing hordes of enemies at every turn, and the risk of familiar, safe locations becoming sinister deathtraps? The Last Stand: Aftermath incorporates all of these things and then does one better — it narratively justifies the endless series of heroes common to rogues by positioning each one as an already-infected survivor who’s volunteering to go into the undead wasteland on a one-way trip.

An isometric twin-stick shooter based around survival and crafting, The Last Stand: Aftermath has the player controlling a series of exiles — they’re human survivors who’ve been infected with the zombie virus, and are just days away from turning into flesh-hungry ghouls. They’re given a car, bare minimum equipment, and told to go out and locate as many supplies as they can. They then mark the cache they’ve collected so that it can be recovered by uninfected humans after the deteriorating volunteer has either succumbed to the virus or been torn to pieces.

This zombie virus is a central mechanic in The Last Stand. The volunteer’s health bar is broken up into segments, and their infection gradually consumes one segment at a time. Every time a segment becomes fully corrupted, the player receives a mutation — basically, a perk that compensates for the fact that they’ve just lost a big chunk of their maximum health. These perks can range from a camouflaging smell that makes it harder for zombies to detect the player, to suddenly-musclebound arms that crush zombies while slowing movement speed. The player is always able to choose from a selection of three possible mutations, and new ones are added as milestones are hit. It’s a great way to constantly mix things up and ensure that the player is constantly experiencing new challenges.

The Last Stand keeps its roguelike formula compelling by offering some great zombie-fighting gameplay. Faced with degrading melee weapons and limited ammo, players are encouraged to use every trick in the book to avoid the attention of their foes. They can throw items to distract, crouch behind cars or furniture while zombies shamble past, and use the cover of darkness to sneak into locations unnoticed. The stealth options are fab, but there is a heavy cost to them — at every moment the player’s infection is spreading, and sneaking around takes much longer than going in guns blazing. Aftermath has balanced the risk and reward of each playstyle exceptionally well — the only thing missing is an ‘execute zombie’ move to use on unaware foes, which is notable in its absence.

While players will begin encountering familiar locations after just a few runs, The Last Stand has an impressive amount of maps to cycle through. There are four zones, each with a half-dozen unique location types, and each of those offers a handful of possible layouts. Naturally, the loot is always randomized. As a consequence, in the thirty-odd hours I spent with the game, I never had two runs that felt identical. Keeping things interesting are ten unique story missions where the player must infiltrate a one-off location to keep the plot moving forward. The result is a roguelike that manages to feel epic in scope, even if the player is only ever controlling a single person smashing in zombie heads with a nail bat.

Supporting this feeling is how completely right the developers have gotten the presentation. Every location is meticulously detailed in its decrepitude, gunshots have loud cracks that serve as a dinner bell to zombies, players can make quick getaways by busting through store windows, and cash registers go flying as they vault over counters. The worlds feel authentic and lived-in, and the farther the player travels from home base, the stranger and more utterly wrecked the locations become. It’s clear that the world is on a steep downwards slope, and every new stop the player takes just reinforces just how hopeless things have become.

While it’s largely fantastic, I do have a few misgivings about Aftermath. The game absolutely demands that players use a controller to play it — combat is baffling with a keyboard — but aiming thrown weapons is inexplicably difficult. When I’m sneaking around using bottles to distract, it works fine, but every time a horde of zombies was charging towards me, tossing a molotov cocktail became an ordeal. A simple ‘throw grenade’ button that automatically tossed in the direction I was aiming would have helped in dealing with hordes of bulletproof zombies that the late-game areas throw in. I also felt like batteries (a resource the player needs to power high-level equipment in the field) were a little harder to locate than they should be. These are small things, though, compared to just how much the game gets right.

The Last Stand: Aftermath is as good a zombie roguelike as I’ve ever played. Scrounging for ammo and crafting materials never stops being a desperate struggle, and the balance between virus-fueled perks and ever-dwindling health ensures that every combat encounter is a tense struggle. Exceptionally great design, balance, and gameplay turn this into one of the best action rogues I’ve ever played, and it’s a clear high-point in the survival horror genre.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Con Artist Games and published by Armor Games Studio. It is currently available on PC/XB1/PS4. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 30 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode. The game was completed — and there is a TON of post-game content after the story ends.

Parents: This was rated M by the ESRB, and it contains Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Violence. Keep kids far away from this one, folks. Non-stop brutal violence, human experimentation, heads on spikes, zombie children that explode when shot. Hardest possible recommendation that this is adults-only.

Colorblind Modes: There are colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played almost the entire game without sound and encountered zero difficulties. All key information is provided via onscreen text, which can be resized, along with the game’s UI. I’d say this one is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, the game’s controls are not remappable on a gamepad, but can be remapped on the keyboard.

The post The Last Stand: Aftermath Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Fi is SO ADORBS!

LOW The base inventory limit is shockingly small.

WTF Would two years of farmwork really render alchemy skills that rusty?

A direct sequel wasn’t always a startling thing in the Atelier series. Iris got three games all to herself back on the PS2, after all. But for a decade, the franchise has followed a fairly strict formula — they make a trilogy of games, each on a specific theme, and each game in the trilogy will star a new protagonist with the previous stars appearing as support characters.

Not anymore! Now the current trilogy has one star — Reisalin “Ryza” Stout, a plucky young alchemist who longs to leave her provincial farm life and see what the world has to offer.

Had she been the protagonist under the old system, her arc would have been covered entirely within a single game, but now that she’s heading up three of them, everything needs to be stretched out a little further. So, where the first entry, Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness and the Secret Hideout was about giving Ryza the motivation to leave home, this one is about giving her the opportunity to do so and letting her experience life in the capital for the first time.

Structurally, Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & The Secret Fairy is incredibly similar to its predecessor — Ryza sets up an Atelier and starts helping out the locals before stumbling into an adventure. Last time it was looking into why her island was running out of fresh water, and this time she must discover the secret of an adorable fairy that hatches from a mysterious stone she’s hired to investigate. This cute creature leads her on a journey through the ancient ruins of a dead civilization, turning into an experience focused as much on archaeology as it is alchemy.

Ryza 2 handles its alchemy crafting system elegantly. It uses the same chart-based system as Ryza 1 did, showing players a constellation of ingredients that can be used to develop an item’s stats and abilities, tailoring them to fit a given situation or the details of a request.

Gathering ingredients to use for creating things is an open-world affair. Like the last few Atelier titles, time limits have been removed from the game, allowing the player to wander the world at their own pace. Many areas are locked away until they become relevant to the narrative, but right from the start there’s a surprisingly large amount of exploring the player can do, with only the increasing strength of monsters putting limits on things.

‘Elaborate’ gathering is back as well, with the player able to use five different tools to pick up ingredients, with different tools allowing the player to get an entirely different set of ingredients from the same sources. Thankfully, the player can equip all of the different tools at once this time, rather than being forced to decide what type of gathering they want to do before leaving the hideout, as they were in Ryza 1.

These are great tweaks, but the devs’ most impressive accomplishment is the way they’ve made crafting incredibly simple and accessible without removing the accomplishment from making a high-quality item. Because the rules for how to add items are so clear and simple to understand, players can see the impact of ingredient quality on their work, making the time put into the ‘gathering’ gameplay more meaningful.

The fast-paced combat of Atelier Ryza makes a return as well, and it’s even peppier than it was last time — the player controls one character while AI takes control of the other two, hammering away at foes, and it remains one of the most intuitive JRPG combat systems I’ve encountered.

In addition to damaging enemies, regular attacks earn action points which allow the player to execute special moves. Using special moves earns item points( so players can throw bombs or heal their party) and also raises a ‘tech’ meter. The tech meter increases the player’s maximum action points for the rest of the fight and unlocks an ultimate technique capable of wiping out anything but bosses in a single strike. JRPG style turn-based combat doesn’t get much better than this.

Least surprising of all, for me, at least, is the fact that the developers have again come up with an incredibly affecting storyline.

Ryza 2‘s cast is growing up, and gradually learning that their upbringing doesn’t define who they’re going to be. This is most notable in Lent’s narrative arc, as he struggles to remain an open and kind person while putting his violently abusive childhood behind him. Bos and Tao’s journey also has quite a bit of depth to it — back in their hometown they were (respectively) the rich-kid bully and his favorite victim, but in the Capital they’re just two rubes from the middle of nowhere and wind up becoming friends based on their shared history.

While the plot might not rise up to the level of the character work, it’s still an interesting trip. Fi, the adorable fairy, is so cute that players will be compelled to see his journey all the way to end, and the script does a great job of reinforcing the overarching themes of the series — specifically that the comfort of today is bought by the pain of yesterday, and that the sins of the past aren’t as distant as people would like to believe.

The Atelier series is the most consistently-excellent brand in the JRPG genre, and Atelier Ryza 2 is another big win for the developers, as each new iteration finds a way to keep the gameplay fresh and interesting. All the developers had to do this time was not drop the ball after the excellent Ryza 1, but by digging in and developing their wonderful cast, they’ve gone above and beyond in setting up a fascinating journey to come.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Gust and published by Tecmo-Koei. It is currently available on PS4/5. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 75 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Fantasy Violence, Suggestive Themes, and Use of Alcohol. As in the first game, drinking comes up in a largely negative context, and the suggestive themes are more playful than lascivious. This should be safe for even younger teens!

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played most of the game without audio and encountered no difficulties. All dialogue in the game is in Japanese, and there are English subtitles. Text cannot be resized. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, the game’s controls are not remappable. Players control movement with the left thumbstick, jumping, attacking and collecting with face buttons, and select tools with shoulder buttons.

The post Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends And The Secret Fairy Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Interesting premise. Cute visuals.

LOW Combat never evolves.

WTF It’s riddled with bugs, many of them severe.

 The Wild Eight is an open-world survival game with light RPG elements recently released for consoles, though it’s established an audience on PC over the last few years. However, this version suffers from numerous problems that keep it from being a recommended experience.

As the game begins, the player must choose from one of eight possible protagonists — they were all passengers on a plane that crashed somewhere in Alaska, now forced to adapt and survive in the freezing cold. Each of the characters differs from the rest in starting stats and bonuses, including resistance to cold, movement speed, melee damage, and so on.

After picking a character, the story begins as said hero slowly gains consciousness after the plane crash. Immediately noticeable are the cute but minimalistic visuals, which remind me of a 3D art book in motion. Every elevation of snow-covered hills seems like a folded piece of a paper, and all of the world’s flora and fauna like origami figures. This presentation is accompanied by a soothingly sad piano melody, establishing a somber tone that’s further emphasized by the presence of the day-night cycle.

Crafting is the order of the day as a series of tutorials prompt the player on wood and ore gathering, as well as how to construct a shelter where new abilities can be learned. Ability points are gained by performing the activity for each of the skill trees (gathering, offense, defense, hunting and mobility) but, the choices are fairly unexciting – almost every unlock gravitates towards basic tropes like “increased defense” or “increased stamina recovery speed”.

Hunting for resources is necessary in order to keep up with the unforgiving difficulty. Some critters won’t attempt to fight back (deer and rabbits) and will run away quickly, while others will prove hostile the moment they spot the player. Unfortunately, combat is fundamentally uninteresting, and doesn’t evolve one bit throughout the adventure.

All of the melee weapons have the exact same wind-up animations, and each swing must be dealt while standing completely still. Attack combos do not exist in The Wild Eight, nor do shields. As a result, trading blows with an adversary is inevitable, and yet, even the most basic enemies are capable of killing the player in seconds.

Thankfully, death on Normal difficulty isn’t the end of the world. After respawning, the player keeps all of their unlocked upgrades and can find their own corpse with all of its accumulated items. Also, in what must be an attempt at humor, the corpse itself can then be cooked on a campfire and consumed.

Ranged weapons are much safer to use, but the ammunition required is hard to come by. The basic arrow is made of bone, but enemies can withstand more than just one arrow — therefore, any ammo carried by the player will soon deplete. This means they must rely on RNG and pray that defeated foes drop the bones needed to restock. However, more often thаn not, the big bad wolf that tоок nine arrows will drop only skin and meat, and at that point, it’s back to melee again.

Both melee and ranged combat feel cumbersome on the PS4 thanks to an atrocious control scheme that can’t be tailored. The shoulder buttons are dedicated to turning the camera left or right, while the selection and consumption of items is done with the directional buttons. As a result, when desperately trying to escape a beast that’s giving chase, the player must remove the thumb from the L3 button (the move stick) and – while panicking and standing still – select the correct life-saving item, and then use it with a different directional button!

Needless to say, when a fast enemy appears out of nowhere, death is more than likely thanks to this setup. The absence of a more suitable control scheme or of a customization option is baffling. Admittedly, one might make the point that this constraint ‘accurately’ portrays the difficulty of being lost and stranded in an unwelcoming environment, and I do confess to experiencing occasional feelings of satisfaction and triumph after small victories.

The Wild Eight’s biggest issues lie in its technical shortcomings. This PS4 version is loaded with bugs, some of which are of the game-breaking variety. The list is long and includes disappearing environment components and objects, ‘reachable’ items positioned behind solid walls and closed doors, and important NPCs that fail to spawn, effectively blocking the completion of some sidequests. The worst of all is a glitch that corrupts whole save files! During my time with The Wild Eight, I experienced four data corruptions – it was so severe that I simply stopped trying to complete the game.

While the plot interested me and I would have preferred to see it through, The Wild Eight‘s technical and design issues cancel out its charm and atmosphere. Aspiring survivors be warned!                  

— Konstantin Koteski

Disclosures: This game is developed by Fntastic and published by HypeTrain Digital. It is currently available on Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, PS4, Linux and Classic Mac OS. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4 Pro. Approximately 40 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes on the PS4.

Parents: This game has not been rated T by the ESRB, and contains Fantasy Violence and Language.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game can be fully enjoyed by anyone, as any sound cues are accompanied by visuals. Dialogue is subtitled.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.

The post The Wild Eight Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Perfecting my all-bamboo watercraft.

LOW Dying because I was too weak from hunger to hunt for food.

WTF Seriously, how is there not a hunger meter separate from Stamina?

I’m a fan of games about exploring archipelagos. Give me a canoe, the open ocean, and some kind of a weapon, and I’m happy. Windbound seems like it would be an ideal title for me — craftable canoes and rafts, randomized islands to explore, and a gorgeous cartoon aesthetic? It had me right away. As I worked my way through it, though, I found too many issues to make it an easy recommendation.

Windbound starts with a terrifying cutscene. As a flotilla of rafts do battle with enormous Nautili, a woman gets knocked into the water as her ship is smashed. As she drowns, she finds herself whisked away to a mysterious island. From this point, it’s up to the player to guide her through building a grass canoe and setting out to explore. Each major island contains a tower which holds a key to open the the next stage of the Nautilus’ world. Climbing these towers and progressing to subsequent areas is the main goal of the narrative.

Gameplay is built entirely around scavenging resources and transforming them into valuable tools. This involves cutting grass, chopping down trees and slaying monsters for their oh-so-recyclable bones.

When this system works, it’s a thing of beauty. My character would find some rocks and grass, make a sling, use it to kill a boar, then turn that boar into a bone spear to ready herself for the larger beasts inhabiting the next island. There’s a wide variety of weapons and tools to be unlocked, as well as food recipes to deal with the character’s ever-increasing appetite.

Speaking of food, hunger is the perfect place to start discussing Windbound‘s problems, almost all of which come down to balance issues.

For starters, the main character gets hungry way too fast. Her stamina meter drops a chunk every minute or two, and it doesn’t have many chunks to start with. This transforms Windbound into a constant rush to find enough food to keep from starving to death, which is easier said than done since there aren’t enough plants to satisfy the character’s hunger — it generally took me more energy to find berries and mushrooms than was recovered by eating them.

As such, the only reliable way to get food is to hunt animals — or it would be, if it weren’t for the fact that the developers have failed to give the character a Hunger bar separate from the Stamina bar. It’s a strange choice for a game with stamina-based combat.

That’s right, fighting enemies involves sprinting, dodging, and finding the perfect moment to strike with a melee weapon. Every one of those actions requires stamina, of course, so the longer the player has gone between meals, the more difficult a time they’ll have hunting down their next one. This transforms would should be an intriguing experience about gradually exploring mysterious islands into a constant rush to stuff the main character’s face, lest she fall into a failure spiral in which she’s too weak to track down her next meal.

This is all exacerbated by the way Windbound makes it impossible to build up a stock of food — edibles degrade even faster than the main character loses stamina, and while food’s condition can be reset by cooking it over a fire, the moment it goes into the player’s inventory, the decomposition clock restarts.

It’s possible there are methods for cooking longer-lasting food or items to preserve the food that’s cooked, but Windbound‘s slightly off-kilter crafting mechanism made it difficult to uncover new recipes. Instead of talking to NPCs or finding them written down, the game teaches players new crafting recipes as they find or construct the prerequisite items, which would be a fine system if the randomization didn’t create islands bereft of resources.

I got halfway through the campaign without finding any of the small creatures that transform into string when killed. There’s a giant toad that drops a plate which can be turned into boat armor, but since I only saw one in my entire run, I never managed to make my raft shark-proof. Axes are necessary for harvesting the logs key to high-level raft construction, and they can only be built from the jawbone of a teleporting poison lizard. I made an axe in the second (of five) zones, but it ran out of durability in the third, and I didn’t see another lizard until the final area, at which point I was ready for Windbound to be over.

When conditions are favorable, there’s so much to like about Windbound. The combat was a blast when the character had enough energy, and I had a fantastic time taking a grass canoe and transforming it into a six-hulled behemoth that sped me across the waves. It’s just unfortunate that every moment of joy has to be sifted out from a pile of annoyances and frustrations — the developers had a beautiful exploration experience within their grasp, and they diluted it with some of the harshest survival mechanics I’ve seen in ages.

These are all simple balance issues that I’m sure could be patched out, but for now, Windbound just isn’t the game it deserves to be.

Disclosures: This game is developed by 5 Lives Studio and published by Deep Silver. It is currently available on PC, PS4, XBO and Switch. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4. Approximately 12 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB this game is Rated E10+ and has no content warnings, which is weird, because the game has plenty of violence. Parents, as long as you’re fine with your kids hunting some fairly frightening monsters for food, I can’t imagine there’s being anything objectionable about this game for them.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played the majority of the game without sound and encountered no difficulties. Sound is a useful cue to let players know when a monster is attacking them, but there are onscreen indicators to help them when combat gets started. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, the game’s controls are not remappable. The game uses standard controls for third-person games. The left stick moves the character, right stick the camera. Face buttons are used for attacking and dodging, as well as selecting options in menus. Shoulder buttons aim ranged weapons and open crafting menus.

The post Windbound Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH “Why are you even here?”

LOW Muddling through unclear clues.

WTF Are you sure this basket came out of a pot? Because it’s obviously woven.

The next time an Atelier game comes out, I’m just going to change the character names and republish the previous year’s review. That’s not to say that Atelier Lulua doesn’t have anything new to offer — there are some interesting aesthetic changes and a new narrative angle — but it’s more a reference to the fact that the developers at Gust have so thoroughly nailed their gameplay and their stories that I’d be tempted to describe them as being on autopilot if they didn’t turn out such consistently excellent work.

This history of excellence is clearly weighing on the developers’ minds, as evidenced by their decision to built Atelier Lulua around a return to the Arland setting of Ateliers Rorona, Totori, and Meruru – frequently referred to as the best trilogy in the series. The new alchemist Lulua (Rorona’s adopted daughter) lives in the shadow of those who came before her, both metaphorically and literally, and constantly struggles under the pressure of trying to live up to their legacy. How can a person strive to be exceptional when they’re surrounded by heroes — and is that even a goal worth pursuing?

A more laid-back experience than the norm, Lulua questions the assumptions that go into fantasy narratives. The main character doesn’t start with a tragedy to recover from, or a mystery to solve. Lulua is training to be an alchemist because her mother is an alchemist, so it’s expected of her. While the plot points are fairly traditional — Lulua helps people solve their problems and investigates ancient technology buried under her town — the question of why Lulua does any of this hangs over the whole experience. What makes her think that she should have these responsibilities?

This willingness to question the basic concepts underlying a JRPG even make their way into gameplay elements.

While Lulua features traditional JRPG turn-based combat, there’s a strange sense that the combat is only there because it’s supposed to be. However, the narrative questions whether characters should be killing creatures for resources at all.

At the outset, a quest finds Lulua learning to speak the language of Punis (the Atelier world’s generic ‘Slime’ creature), and she quickly discovers that they’re not psyched about humans constantly invading their lands and harvesting them for parts. Lulua doesn’t stop fighting monsters, of course, but between the Puni mission, a legendary creature who poses the question that sends Lulua into existential crisis, and some other things that I won’t spoil here, giving non-villainous ‘monsters’ such an active role causes the story to grapple with a profound question — if Lulua is about improving people’s lives and making the world a better place, should wholesale slaughter be part of that journey?

The alchemy section of Lulua is predictably stellar. The puzzle and tile-based elements of item crafting have been removed and replaced by a more basic system of each material having an elemental value, and raising and lowering those values to hit a threshold on a given item. It’s intuitive and does a great job of gradually layering in more elements that allow players to tweak their finished products in specific ways, making it feel like they’re not just getting access to better items over the course of the game, but that they’re actually learning alchemy. The only drawback (and Lulua‘s only major flaw) is that she gets new recipes by unlocking clues in a book. While most of the clues are clear — craft an item of a certain quality, kill X number of a given monster, etc. — a few were written obliquely enough that I struggled to figure out what they were going for.

The production values, like the alchemy, are also stellar. While there are still plenty of well-written conversations between the characters, the static framing of those conversations is completely absent. Instead, every character has a fully-animated model, and a great amount of thought has gone into using movement and camerawork to bring conversations to life. Anime techniques abound with characters peeking over obstacles, sliding in and out of frame, and using exaggerated body language to sell moments of comedy and emotion. The Atelier series has a long series of well-told stories, and Lulua proves that the devs are able to use modern animation tools to help communicate with the player, rather than just showing off a higher budget.

Atelier Lulua is more than a case of ‘Gust has done it again’, although that’s obviously true. It’s a great game with a brilliantly-told story full of great twists. More than that, though, it’s notable because it takes the chance to question an element at the very heart of the genre — why is combat so central to the experience? Is it a necessary part of the story being told, or does it wind up limiting the kind of adventure that developers can to craft? There’s no clear answer here, but the fact that the question is being asked in such an interesting way deserves a huge amount of respect.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Gust and published by Koei Tecmo. It is currently available on PS4 and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4 Pro. Approximately 60 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Fantasy Violence, Mild Language, Mild Suggestive Themes, and Use of Alcohol. There is drinking in the game, and of references to drinking alcohol being a signifier of maturity. The suggestive themes are tame by JRPG standards, and don’t amount to much more than the odd wink. As always, the violence is completely bloodless and fantastical in its presentation– it’s safe for even younger teens. Honestly, I didn’t notice the language at all. Was there a ‘damn’ in there somewhere?

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played the majority of the game with the sound off, and had no trouble whatsoever. All dialogue has subtitles, which cannot be resized. It’s fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable. There is no control diagram. The left thumbstick controls movement, the right stick controls the camera, the face buttons cover interaction with the world and navigating menus. Shoulder buttons change camera distance and change movement speed, and the the D-pad is used to open the map.

The post Atelier Lulua: The Scion Of Arland Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Finally getting to an environment that isn’t swamp or snow.

LOW The first time I fast-traveled at moderate health and got killed by enemies before the world finished loading.

WTF How does this arrangement of swamp, blazing hot coal fields, and bitterly cold snow zones even exist?

In the first moments of Smoke and Sacrifice, its hero Sachi offers up her son as a sacrifice to the “Sun Tree” that preserves her small settlement from an encroaching ice age. Years later, it transpires that the altar on which Sachi placed her child is actually a portal to a dark and dangerous smoke-polluted underworld that powers the tree. In order to rescue her long-lost son, Sachi will have to gather various resources to craft weapons and armor that will allow her to take down the evil system that has enslaved him.

Despite being locked beneath the earth, the underworld has trees, wildlife and light, for reasons that aren’t clear. By gathering various materials, Sachi can scale up from punching things with her fists to slicing them in half with a chainsaw sword. However, there is an approximate day-night cycle brought on by the titular smoke that fills the underworld, making the ordinary wildlife more aggressive and unleashing ghosts and other monsters. The smoke will also slow Sachi down, so it’s vital to protect her from it by crafting protective gear or standing near a light source.

Smoke and Sacrifice uses an isometric camera with 2-D sprites. It looks absolutely beautiful, and all of the character art is rich in detail and personality. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the story. Although it’s a nice change of pace from the dad-centric first half of 2018, Smoke and Sacrifice mostly proves that a “mom rescues kidnapped son” plot can be just as perfunctory as “dad rescues kidnapped daughter”. Almost none of the characters have a personality, desires, or even interests outside of the central narrative. The core crafting mechanic also gets short shrift in the story, making the script feel tacked-on.

The crafting also feels underdone. Essentially everything in the game can be made from plentiful primary materials — not only is there no need to, say, make a steel plate from steel scraps, there’s no way to do such a thing. There’s also no way to experiment with creating new things. If Sachi doesn’t have the recipe for something, it can’t be made. The result is a flat and uninteresting crafting system.

Unlike some crafting games, Smoke and Sacrifice takes steps to ensure that most resources stay relevant throughout the runtime. The downside is the need to keep a stock of all of that stuff permanently, which rapidly butts up against the limited inventory space. Smoke and Sacrifice’s inventory limit is somewhat alleviated by the ability to store materials in chests, but the need to carry multiple weapons and shoes, along with a bevy of goods to heal Sachi, repair her equipment, decode new recipes, and protect her from smoke and various kinds of elemental damage led me to run out of space regularly. That Smoke and Sacrifice offers no means for sorting the inventory only made this more painful.

Another issue is that when prioritizing for a limited inventory, it helps to have comprehensive information. If, for instance, Sachi has a knife that deals ice damage it would be helpful to know if the cumulative ice + physical damage is going to outweigh the pure physical damage of a more advanced weapon. However, Smoke and Sacrifice never provides numerical or even graphical analysis for weapons or armor. This uncertainty incentivizes carrying around an extensive arsenal “just in case”, again making the inventory seem especially tight.

Of course, one can always experiment with loadouts, but actually fighting in Smoke and Sacrifice has little to recommend it. The traditional annoyances of isometric combat are all here — enemies attack from offscreen, transparency behaves strangely at critical moments, and Sachi sometimes strikes in an unexpected direction. In addition, most lifeforms range from very aggressive to extremely aggressive, and their tendency to make huge leaps or teleport around causes a cascade of aggro that turns many one-on-one duels into massive melees.

All of that would be fine, perhaps, if the combat had any grace or style, but it’s a one-button affair in which most attacks turn out to be an awkward combination of a swing and a lunge. A swunge, if you will. Reading enemies is fairly trivial, so combat is mostly dodging away at the moment of attack and then dodging back into swunge for a bit. It’s workable, but the animation and rhythm consistently feel a bit off.

Smoke and Sacrifice even manages to misuse its best asset, the art, by repeating environments. When Sachi arrives in the underworld, she lands in a swamp. It takes some time before she can craft equipment that allows her to enter a nearby snowy area. From there, I got move on to… another swamp, followed by… another snow field. A brief visit to a town leads into more swamp followed by yet more snow, and swamp, and so on. While occasionally there’s a gimmick, like a swamp that has a special cactus or an ice field that has just a really unreasonable number of grotesque birds, these environments basically all look the same. Eventually things move on to other biomes, but the dreary uniformity kept rearing its head even in the game’s deepest reaches. It goes without saying, I suppose, that none of these environments are arranged in a way that makes any coherent sense.

The non-swamp biomes also share a gimmick in that each one of them can only be traversed using special shoes. One needs to craft snow shoes for the fields of snow and rubber shoes for the electrified industrial floor and so on. Enter an area without the right footwear, and Sachi’s movement will slow to a fatal snail’s pace. That’s a minor annoyance at zone boundaries but it means certain death if her shoes break in the middle of a zone. Since items that are about to break give no more warning than flashing a dull red that is easy to miss during combat and against certain color palettes, this happened to me more than once.

All of this came with some basic software problems. I played the Switch version and felt it was not particularly stable —Smoke and Sacrifice crashed about five times during my playthrough, and additionally locked up once when I died simultaneously with a boss. The game’s reliance on sparse save points only made this more of an annoyance.

Smoke and Sacrifice also had an irritating habit, when fast-traveling or loading a save, of creating the world and spawning enemies before allowing action. On no less than six occasions, enemies camped out at fast-travel spots and killed Sachi or took her down to critical health before the world finished loading and permitted me to move. An additional two times this happened when loading a save, and it’s vital to know that Smoke and Sacrifice only allows one save slot.

All of this turned Smoke and Sacrifice into an unpleasant grind, a game I was heartily tired of long before it came to an end. It’s a shame that such lovely art is paired with monotonous environments, a rudimentary story, and subpar combat and crafting elements. My advice? Smoke something else. Rating: 4 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Solar Sail Games and published by Curve Digital. It is currently available on PC and Switch. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Switch. Approximately 20 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains blood and violence. I feel this is the ESRB erring on the side of caution; the violence is not gory or explicit. Some monster designs are a little frightening but overall I see this as being fine for preteens.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Smoke and Sacrifice has no spoken dialogue and dialogue boxes are white on black. Because the field of vision is narrow, sound alerts play a big role in letting the player know she’s near an enemy. Additionally, sounds serve as the sole notification when the player activates certain terrain features, e.g. mines, and are a prominent part of the legibility of certain enemy attacks. I expect the game will be slightly more difficult for hard of hearing players.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable and there is no control diagram.Movement is on the left stick and actions are on the face buttons. The D-pad (on the same side as the left stick) is used for crafting, map, and inventory access. Crafting requires a press-and-hold. Inventory switching is performed with the bumpers.

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