Recent reviews by Karey Deary is Dependable

Once is an inspiration, twice is an obligation.

I'll start this review by saying the 1st game is probably my favourite game of all time. Almost everything I mentioned in that review applies to this, but not all of it. I also used a PC/Switch controller to play as I believe it is the better control scheme, just like the 1st game. And just like the 1st game, they have to reuse certain jokes and character gimmicks because they had to since they did it in the first game. So even though it's been roughly 5 years since I last played, I still remember and laughed at the recycled jokes that have new material now.

What's not funny is most of the 1st game's cast is barely involved in the story. Unlike in the 1st game, most of them are just hanging around, not involved in the story. I'm questioning why they are even in this game, but once again, the line at the beginning of the review kept creeping back into my mind as I played. The designers of the new cast of characters in this game seem to have forgotten that while the character designs in the 1st game are colourful, they still looked like how most humans look in real life. We now have big headed but short scientist, a giant deformed man in a animal mascot costume and a man with a square head. One of those has a reason to look the way they do, the other 2 are just designed that way. It's incredibly distracting. While thankfully, there are normal looking cast members in this installment, can't say I find them very interesting.

One of my favourite things to do in these games are to interact with the items in the various locations to see the funny banter between characters regarding the inspected item. Yet, I can't help but feel they didn't care as much this time around. The new areas and new characters rarely seem to bother giving a remark about the many items just stuffed into the area. Many times I'm just clicking everything hoping to see a scene but many times I'm left hanging. And yet, in the areas that are recycled from the 1st game, I'm having fun seeing the recycled interactions and jokes from familiar places that always had a reoccurring gag. It's almost as if they didn't have much to add in the new areas and just gave up. Like they said in game: "You don't have to say anything if you don't have anything to talk about." While true, it just feels like I'm wasting my time clicking all the items in this game, almost like an obligation instead of something fun to do while revisiting a new area.

What I also liked about the 1st game is that it's very linear, you won't ever get stuck. Somehow they screwed that up this time. The game feels like it hasn't been play tested, during certain parts of the game they give out these fill in the blank questions that are seemingly designed to block the players from advancing the story. And it refuses to let me proceed unless I give them the exact answer they are looking for. The game thinks they have given you enough hints to comfortably answer them, but they have clearly not. When I looked up the answers online, my only thought was: "I would've never figured this out." Because that's what I want in my games, being asked to solve ridiculous puzzles that I don't think are even fair. What happened to my linear experience? I'm sorry I'm not a genius, so I have to ruin my immersion to look up a walkthrough.

Now about that story, I enjoyed almost half of it. While I hated the other half. And most of it is due to the new cast of characters, more specifically the new team of Ryuki and Tama. These 2 are completely useless together and are not enjoyable to watch. Compared to the amazing pair that Date and Aiba were in the previous game, it's such a downgrade to be forced to sit through the new pair's investigations. Ryuki is a generic shounen protagonist. There's hardly anything to note about him except that he is annoying, not a great detective, and certainly isn't funny. He is clearly unfit for the investigation yet he's still on the case. He's constantly having delusions and passes out frequently. Clearly he isn't fit for duty, yet everyone around him seems to call him a genius or something.

His partner is no better. Tama, the new Ai Ball AI partner, is an assistant/consultant. She barely fulfills either of those roles. For someone that looks like a dominatrix, her personality is of a massive pushover that allows Ryuki free reign to do whatever, despite how terrible of an idea that is. Her personality makes no sense, sometimes she bosses Ryuki around by shouting at him, rudely mind you. Yet when the going gets tough, she just rolls over. As an AI assistant, she somehow is of no help in warding off or confirming what is real or delusion despite being in his left eye. It's almost as if she doesn't even exist sometimes.

I genuinely hated most of their segments, and the quality of writing in their routes are just bad. Inept duo aside, their investigation feels strangely bloated with horribly bland Somniums. There are exceptions but most of them felt really bland this time around. A lot of the joke choices don't give any funny results, instead we are reprimanded for not choosing the obvious answers. So much for a dream world. And the somnium design feels like they have gotten worse in some cases. A lot of them actively try to fail you right at the end, and if you spend too much time early on, you basically had to restart right at the end. They give out hints that eat up time, use them enough times and you were going to lose either way, so you had to restart.

It also extends to the writing of the mystery, the contrivances they come up with to block technology like GPS tracking, voice/video calls and cloud saving investigation data is maddening. It's almost as if everybody in that world actively chooses to not charge their phones and turn off their GPS so nobody can find them in an emergency. To be fair, the 1st game did this sometimes, but it feels so much more commonplace here. By the end of the Ryuki route, I started to question why I even liked the 1st game, it's that bad.

And yet, when I arrived at the Mizuki route, things changed. I really appreciated the dynamic between Mizuki and Aiba. They're fun to be around, Mizuki retains her super human strength and her personality is pretty much the same as before, very straight forward and gung ho about handling situations. Aiba returns and she's great! She's really useful and she's surprisingly thoughtful at times. It almost feels like a different writing team was responsible for their route. Most of the somniums for Mizuki's route feels a lot more creative and fun to play through. I was getting more banter when I checked items in areas. And in some of the somniums, the joke options in somniums yielded more funny outcomes. It reminded me of why I loved the 1st game, except it's just worse this time. I will say I enjoyed most of her route but at this point, it's already a worse game than the 1st one. There's no meaning in me recommending this game.

It's more expensive than the 1st game, has worse writing, a lesser cast of side characters and main characters that are just not as interesting or funny as Date and Aiba, the 1st game's pairing. It has forced fill in the blank segments that are designed to stumble player progress. It introduced a difficulty slider for QTEs and Somniums because they didn't want casual players to be stuck, yet didn't bother giving better hints for all the quizzes and fill in the blank questions. Even though it's been 5 years since my play through of the 1st game, there's this sense of deja vu as I'm constantly revisiting these areas from the 1st game. And with how few new areas there are, it just feels like I'm going back and forth in the same few areas. There's simply not enough new content to make this game feel like a sequel, despite the new mystery and cast.

Great scenes, would not play through it normally though. The gameplay is pretty tedious, thankfully you can just unlock everything in the options at the start.

Enemies have so much health, the shop refreshes everytime you lose/win and there's no reliable way to get money. Coupled with the card game RNG, you're destined to lose most of the time.

It's an open world movement shooter with a hookshot, double jumps and a surfboard that ignores physics and climbs walls. All of that somehow combines to make one of the most insane fps games I've ever played. The freedom of movement really allows your skills to shine, you'll easily find yourself doing things you aren't even aware you're capable of. You're essentially playing a 2d action game character in 3d is how I would describe it.

The game runs almost flawlessly at high refresh rates, making it a buttery smooth game to play. The graphics are simple but they get the job done, the animations on enemies look kinda funky though. Though you're not likely to see much of it as you're speeding past them on your surf board, desperately trying to avoid their gunfire.

Enemy variety is decent, you have the regular grunts, jet pack guys, mechs, a bigger mech and a gun ship. The gradual escalation of enemy types really help to challenge the player's insane movement kit. You won't find many enemies that can handle your ridiculous movement, but if you get sloppy you'll find yourself dying quite a lot on hard. It remains challenging throughout even as you unlock more movement options and weapons to further increase how ridiculous you can be.

I have to mention some of the map and arena terrain, as they really help distinguish fights from one another. Fights can take place anywhere from massive flat lands to tight corridors, to wacky structures that allow for some really fun monkey business as you leap from place to place. It being open world doesn't stop it from trying to inject some really unique levels to spice things up from time to time. And I really appreciate the variety the game has.

However I have to say, I didn't enjoy most of the boss fights. They are located in MASSIVE arenas that take FOREVER to traverse. You're just holding shift the entire time while you're waiting or praying that the boss starts in a location so you don't have to chase it down in the massive arena. And if you die, you have to chase it all over again. And every boss is the same concept, a giant super weapon with multiple weak spots, littered with grunt units and turrets. There is variety in how they present these bosses, some are focused on horizontal movement, some are in the air, etc. However, that really doesn't change how samey they feel.

To sum it up, if you love fps shooters, you'll love Echo Point Nova. It feels like a natural evolution of the genre, giving players the freedom of movement they didn't even know they could have. Soaring and flying through the skies through the use of hookshots, powers and your surfboard, there are few games that allow for this much freedom in the air.

The game has not received a patch it was meant to receive, and has been pretty much abandoned. Any issues in the game will never be fixed. Using a controller causes the mouse cursor to remain on screen for whatever reason, when the first game didn't have this issue. And the game looks worse than the first game somehow.

It's playable, but it's annoying at the same time.

Fun game, it plays like mega man. There's no stages, just choose a boss and fight. Use your hypno gun to stun them and do your thing, repeat and see the next scenes until you drain their health bar completely. Simple premise but well executed. Shoot, jump and dodge your way to seeing those juicy animations. Easily the best part of the game, it's very smooth to play and dodging feels very responsive. However, I do some nitpicks.

Filling the bar doesn't automatically mean they get stunned, they have to finish their long attack patterns before they are allowed to be stunned. It's really frustrating to see a full stun bar and the bosses start performing what feels like their minute long attack sequence. The later bosses especially, a lot of the harder bosses turn into waiting games until you can finally score some hits on them.

They're not as fun to fight compared to the earlier bosses, where it's all about the tight timings trying to score a hit while they attack you. It felt like you were rewarded when you played aggressively. The later bosses don't feel that way for the most part.

The health gating on the bosses during the scenes are annoying as well. I swear it's not possible to fully drain a part of their health bar. So you have to waste time trying to fill up another stun bar, just to drain that tiny bit of their health bar to proceed to the next HP segment. Maybe I'm just not spamming hard enough? Who knows.

And as a personal nitpick of mine. As expected, the robot girl Tam gets the worst scenes imho. I was looking forward to her the most, but her scenes sucked. I'll still recommend the game because the other girls have pretty good scenes, but I'm still bummed out. (The dragon princess had the best scenes.)

Keyboard and Mouse controls are lacking, the mouse control to aim the conical lock on is pretty much busted. So I'd advise using a controller to play, it's much better.

The game feels like an arcade game, something you play through in one sitting. And that's perfectly fine, I had fun. The story doesn't take itself too seriously, but it does attempt to have emotional weight to it's more serious scenes. Though it quickly goes back to the light hearted banter between the characters. The story's pacing is lightning fast, but it still manages to work for the most part, it's just trying to read the story while everything's happening is a little tough on your 1st playthrough.

Still, I appreciate the effort to include a story in the first place. Everyone's voice acted, and there's a few cutscenes near the start and end of the game to open and close out the story.

Gameplay wise, basically it's a shoot em up except you're in a mech that has a sword in addition to bullet spam. You can slash the crap out of anything, and dash into enemies without worrying about touch damage. And you have a special attack that either functions as a projectile shield or can be used for a special attack where the mech lunges at enemies using an omnislash.

It'll take a bit to learn, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes really natural to control. The game runs great too, very smooth 60 fps.

The World's Egg is a very linear RPG where you just do a bunch of fights to proceed with the main story. That's not a bad thing, but I can't help but feel the game's very lacking aside from the gameplay. The characters come off as very one note, even the main heroine herself seems to not really have a personality worth mentioning.

However, I still had fun with the game. It's very rewarding, the linear progression is very easy to get into. Getting stronger is very simple and there's really no chance of messing up. The characters may be lacking, but there's at least an attempt made to have a cohesive main story and that's at least commendable.

The scenes are good, though in my opinion a lot of them are a little odd. Nevertheless, there's a good variety, definitely worth the asking price just for the scenes alone. And the heroine looks cool, what else can I say? Just wish there was a more noticeable improvement compared to the previous entry.

The series has come a long way. From the somewhat less than appealing appearance of Shalith to her current glow up self, the series has gotten prettier. We finally got the queen from the first game as a playable character and the story brings everyone from the games back together one last time.

I still don't really like most of the scenes though, they are decently animated but they lack a lot of... feeling? And the fetishes covered are weird as usual, I never liked most of them, and I honestly wish they stopped cutting away to the enemy and cutting back to the scene, it's really distracting. I only found a few of them to be decent and this time is no exception.

Gameplay is team based, instead of the solo adventures of the previous 2 games. Naturally, the depth of the game has increased drastically. The game lets you swap between characters on the fly, and each character has their own skill pool. The queen is purely for support, while her other 3 companions are the damage dealers. It's a roguelike where the Queen retains all her exp and skills, while her dealers need to start from Lvl 1 every attempt. The game's pretty casual, but be prepared to die a lot early on due to the Queen lacking a lot of upgrades.

However positioning is insanely important this time, as your dealers are specialised in their roles. The newcomer is the only tank/vanguard, naturally you want her to be at the front always. While the mage and archer need to keep enemies away. Thankfully the game is fully equipped to allow the player full control over the group / specific characters. And the grid style terrain really lends itself well to some cheeky plays from both you and the enemy. It's fun, though a bit tedious admittedly when you have the whole group.

It's basically the 2nd game, except with more characters and more gameplay depth. Buy it for the gameplay and conclusion to the story, and maybe enjoy the scenes if they are your to your liking.

Surf, platform and shoot your way through this gorgeous dreamlike landscape with your cute wife (And other people) talking to P3. It's immensely fun! This DLC brings out the core elements of Atomic Heart, while shedding the unnecessary elements from the main game.

There's no pointless open world, it's stage to stage. Progress through the surf parts, engage in fights, do some platforming, surf more and fight more. It's fast paced as long as you're decently good at all of that. Even if you're not, the game is really lenient on checkpoints, so you won't be redoing too much if you keep failing.

You have infinite reserve ammo, so there's no need to worry about running out during combat segments. There's no need to scavenge for resources to craft bullets. Just go ham as you blast through all the enemies you've fought before in the main game, now with very goofy appearances. The segments themselves are simply: Eliminate a certain amount of enemies, or kill the boss, and finally standing in a moving circle while trying to fend off enemies. You'll be seeing this pattern a few times, though this DLC has more focus on surfing and platforming.

Surfing, if you have played this in CS before, I think you'll see the appeal very quickly. For those who are new to it, the first tutorial picture tells you everything you need to know. Find the correct angle to exit from, to either gain height or exit with more speed. Looking down slows your momentum, and looking forward (even backwards) keeps it. Very easy to learn, and the way they handled it is very casual. You gain a ton of speed just from surfing on the surfaces, and some parts are a little automated, in which you gain a ton of height from certain ramps. I enjoyed these parts the most admittedly, as I enjoy fast movement and free flying in games.

Platforming, easy enough. No explanation required, it's the same as in the base game.

The music choices in this is fantastic. From the fun and energetic themes used when surfing, to the more DOOM sounding themes during the combat segments, it's great.

The world around you is colourful, beautiful and most of all, very wacky while still making sense. They took the dreamlike segments of the base game and made an entire DLC around it. And it works! There are only a few parts where it was slightly confusing as to where you're supposed to surf to, but most of the time it's pretty obvious as to where you're supposed to go. And best of all, this DLC runs smooth as silk, the high refresh rate experience is amazing whether it be during the chaotic fights or speeding through while surfing.

And lastly, I don't like how the DLC continues the story, meaning the ending of the base game is not the end. But at the same time, I had a ton of fun regardless. P3's cute wife is entertaining to listen to. But, I can't help but feel like at times it sounds like she's narrating instead of speaking. Her delivery could definitely be better.

All in all, I feel like the best parts of the game are present in this DLC. A couple of more boss fights would've been great, as there's really only 1 boss. Still, I feel like I got my money's worth as is.

It's a bit rare to have a game to tell you that you can do anything you want, that there are no game overs.
There are a few fights here and there, but ultimately you cannot lose. As such, just do as you like. It's a pretty cozy and relaxing experience.

The simple sprites, colour palette and the calming music all come together to create this atmosphere. Surprisingly, there is an actual story behind these personality tests. You just have to replay the game 3 times, it's not tedious at all. In fact, you may find it disappointing that it's over so soon. You can replay it as much as you want though, to see what you missed on your first 3 runs.

Though I'll admit, going around doing things I never did in my previous runs was a little disappointing. The game is very simple. There's really not much else to do once you've seen the story. But even then, I'll still say it's worth a purchase just to experience everything the game has to offer.