Monthly in a Month #17: The Timeless edition

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Thanks again for the event.

Thank you.

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Done! with time to spare for once

Thanks CJ

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Done, and with not long to spare. :)

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Had to swap some stuff out but done.

Done, thank you :)

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Besides how silly and constricting Stem's binary review system can be, I don't really see a reason not to publish these as steam reviews. Come on! :D

Reviews:

Panzer Paladin - Panzer Paladin was an homage to retro games, specifically similar to that of Mega Man. The plot was decent and the cutscenes were beautiful as small forms of pixel art. The game play was solid with aerial moves including an upwards thrust to gain height as well as a pogo. The durability and changing of weapons was more interesting that I thought it would be, though I was unaware that you can access stored weapons later until near the late game. There were a few obnoxious spikes in difficulty, particularly noticeable due to long levels, instant death hazards, and far too few checkpoints. The level design was interesting and I particularly enjoyed mini areas with 1-ups as the reward to add some amount of value to a collectible without watering the experience down with useless collectibles. There were issues with poor enemy patterns, hazard locations, and the overall usage of the pilot. The bosses were fairly lackluster in depth and destroying a bunch of weapons to gain buffs in the fights meant I could tank most hits and pretty much just spam attack (I played on Normal). The game overall felt okay lengthwise, but I think too much of the game was spent in the ending areas and not enough in the earlier stages. While I did have a few gripes, the game was pretty fun and something I could see playing more of thanks to additional replay value from modes. If you enjoy modern retro games or particularly like Mega Man, I'd recommend it. It's a blast from the past, so if you want new, this might not be your jam.

A Hat in Time - I could not say enough good things about A Hat in Time. Everything that I was hoping for from Yooka-Laylee was beautifully displayed here. This game was a wonderful example of how to do a collect-a-thon 3D platformer in the modern era. The music and worlds were beautiful, the gameplay had some tricky platforming and the movement was a little bit worse than I would've wanted (it was good, but a small step down from Super Mario Odyssey), but the overall package was amazing. The game has some fun humor and was just an absolute pleasure to play. I honestly was only letdown that it wasn't longer, but there is some DLC for the game that I am likely to pick up at some point in the future. In addition to DLC, the game also features a wide array of community mods that are available to play and mess around with inside the game itself. I completed the main game at nearly 100% (may have missed cosmetics) and I am sure to come back to this game eventually. If you enjoy 3D platformers at all, it would be a disservice to not play this game.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York - Similar to V:TM- Shadows of New York that I played a few months ago, this game was another excellent visual novel. I won a copy of Shadows a few months ago and figured it would be a good game to play in one of these. To my surprise, I found out that I rather enjoy visual novels. The game had some excellent story-telling and was able to keep me invested in the story, though it was a bit of a surprise in when some of the twists happened and the ending leaved a bit to be desired. Also, having such limited character options for a VN felt a bit disheartening (would've loved the option of either male or female for each clan), but I did enjoy a lot of the elements. This seems to have been the first of these two games, and while many elements were excellent, it was hard not to feel it was a bit cheapened by the reuse of many assets. Luckily, the enthralling story was enough to mitigate those feelings and the game as a whole was still a very fun experience. If you enjoy visual novels, this is a pretty fun one. It does struggle from linearity and picking different characters and quests only gives a small amount of replayability, but I would recommend it to fans of V:TM or visual novels.

Ikenfell - Ikenfell was an interesting game that I wanted to love, and sorta did. Ikenfell is an RPG with turn-based combat utilizing both action commands and a grid-based (12x3) system. The idea was interesting and I enjoyed it at first, but there were numerous flaws with it. The system of moving around traps with little counterplay hindered movement, the constant action commands became exhausting, and just the huge leaps in power creep in the mid and late game really hurt the feel overall. The action commands were either Oops (no effect/damage or low amounts on attacks or not blocking), Nice (a middling amount for both attacks and blocks), and Great (the best effects, damage, or block) Some of the timings were obnoxious, especially in cluttered grids where the enemy could potential block the visual cue for when to time things. There are some controls that were able to mitigate this. Semi-Auto (guaranteed Nice, but still try for Great) and Auto (guaranteed Great). The system is pretty equivalent to a hard, medium, and easy difficulty. I think the complexity of the combat was good enough to not need action commands, or it could've been fine with just action commands and no grid. Combat being a huge part of the game made it a bit of a letdown. There was also an option to auto-win fights, which I used for late game grinding because I was more interested in the lore and bosses than annoying enemies in my way. The game has a fairly good story with a lot of LGBTQ+ characters and relationship dynamics, which I personally liked. The music was wonderful and the graphics were decent. It was done in pixel art, and it was very stylized, but I think it really suffered from lack of depth, specifically shading, in character sprites. I still think it looked nice overall, though. Would I recommend it? I would say yes, but with the caveat of using auto or semi-auto for the combat. The combat is a lot of fun, until it isn't. I would definitely start with semi-auto, but I think there is a lot of good to be found in this title. If you dislike RPGs, grid-based combat, or are against LGBTQ+ people/characters, I'd avoid this game.

Shantae and the Pirate's Curse - Shantae and the Pirate's Curse was a wonderful 2D action-platformer filled with enemies to squash, puzzles to solve, and items to collect. The movement and controls felt pretty good overall, with late game power-ups making it feel absolutely enjoyable to combine to move around in wild ways. The game was rather short, only taking as long as it did so I could go through for the true ending and get all the collectibles, but the game really didn't have much more it could reasonably add from my perspective. The biggest hinderances I had while playing were the lack of any sort of defensive upgrade, making a lot of hits start to deal a ton (final boss taking 20% health on every hit), but the overall system of store bought upgrades for damage increase felt like it could've been better utilized as a collectible or rewarded in other ways. The game features some beautiful pixel art and some well-drawn images, though it was a bit risque for my liking. I think that the lack of a checkpoint system and only utilizing saves from each save point was an issue that exists far less now than it did in the SNES era. Those issues aside, I would still recommend it to most 2D platformer fans.

Supraland - Supraland is a 3D action-platformer, potentially considerable as a Metroidvania even. It was an interesting game filled with a lot of puzzles, abilities, movement options, and enemies to fight. The world itself is fairly simplistic with somewhat low-poly textures and a lot of assets reused in numerous areas, but it was still a fairly enjoyable game overall. I think it struggled in giving enough guidance leading to some frustrating parts where I ran around having no idea what to do. Combat was also miserable for the most part and didn't feel very satisfying to partake in, thus I avoided combat whenever possible. That brings me to the controls, which were serviceable, but felt lacking and it's hard to pinpoint why I felt that. It was just a bit off for me personally. The exploration was somewhat satisfying, but it also was hard to indicate what to do in some spots and it was hard to tell if I was just doing something wrong/not seeing something or if I needed an upgrade. I think the game was solid and I could see it being a reasonable recommendation to some, but I would suggest trying the demo beforehand. It's an interesting game that is hard to recommend for or against without letting someone try it for a bit.

Game of the Month: A Hat in Time

I finished State of Mind for this event today. I loved it, I hope you will too ;)
Congratz for beat the 6 games