Recent reviews by Daremo

Short length wave based dice battles.
Lots of flexible unlockables.
Systems showing up one by one at a nice pace.
Smart dice manipulation thanks to the increasingly complexe mini scenarios, systems added from each character and the shop.
It does what it has to do very efficiently.
An excellent kind of minimalist game.

But really, can the music be that good ?
Some tracks are so epic you get more chills than you would ever get in most big cinematic games.

Let me begin by saying that the game is fine, but I recommend playing the first instead.
It's more focused.

The added ship "exploration" is, ok at best and just gets repetitive much faster than the main game which, personally I'm here for.

But there's one glaring issue related to it. Having to constantly go back to the tavern to sleep to be able to go back in battle. It gets old immediately and serves no purpose. It doesn't make the game easier or harder. It just has a couple of systems related to it (rewards and forcing the player to use more characters) which could be done differently if not just removed altogether.

At first I thought the open class system would be an improvement but it turns out, as I forgot with most games like that, that you spend more time trying to get new skills than actually putting to use any "amazing combination" you're trying to achieve.
It also dimishes the identity of characters who have their own strength and weaknesses on the first game.

Al they have now is personal skills you unlock fairly late (the second one especially) which is nice but not enough for me.

Make the same game without the tavern trips and the whole ship system and I might recommend it.
There were plenty of ways to improve on Heist, this is more of side/diagonal step that improvement.

A satisfying game.

Picking the right upgrades is very important as it can make some tricky parts much faster/easier and reaching a score of 2 millions becomes the norm, with builds you got right.

That's what you can work on whole you unlock every powers, shields, weapons...

It could probably have some more variety but at the same time there are many little hidden builds you can find it stays fresh for a long time.

I'm not really into good looking games especially but this one is an eyesore.
It tries so hard to be Persona 5 without being Persona 5 it doesn't know what it's doing.

The UI is all over the place almost hurting the eyes and you wonder why they made more open areas if it's to make them look and be much worse than in SMT5 where you could explore and jump around at least. The little sword play/dodge you can do before fight is pretty mediocre to be kind. It is pain to play through and doesn't serve as a good transition to the battles which are just a classic "every Atlus main games" system plus/minus very small details.

Can't say much about the story but it doesn't begin well at all.
You have a hero who acts like the weakest thing ever, ok, why not, weak hero.
But then you learn that you've been entrusted a crucial mission from important people. It makes no sense.

The first minutes have more or less intriguing animated movies and then very boring gameplay. You run around for a while.
After a lot of ok-ish scenes and reading you get to do some dungeon/battle and... it just feels like a cheap version of Persona (which already isn't the most impressive or advanced series visually and mechanically) with again, horrible UI that takes the whole screen and screams at you "LOOK HOW COOL I LOOK".
...All that just to have an attack and a spell available.
But it's the beginning, so... ok.

Still, nothing really sets it as a hit.
On the contrary, it feels like it doesn't really try to have its own identity and novelty.

That is, without mentioning the poor performance despite ever poorer visuals and animations.

The feeling of playing and having fun or excitement is just absolutely not here.

Best Arena Survivor I tried.
It's everything I wished Vampire Survivor would be.

This is a big "on sale" recommend because the game is nice and cozy, but can be finished 100% in a few hours, which feels a bit weird considering its genre.

But 100% might not mean much with good replayability which is what this game lacks.
Once you understood how to best play, you can't lose and you just repeat the same thing with not much variance (procedural map doesn't change enough to carry it all).

So if you feel ok to pay for 6-12 hours of playtime at a specific price and then probably never touch it again, then it's fine.

It's my first Early Access and I have no regret with my choice to try with Cross Blitz

The game oozes charisma and despite still in the process of adding contents, is giving me a ton to do.

Story mode is fun, presents varied situations and begins simple but fun to introduce you well to the game, with difficulty slowly ramping up.
The Roguelite mode is quite less forgiving and asks you to be a lot more careful, which is exactly what you want from a roguelike card based game.

The art style is gorgeous and so lovely, while the music shows good variety and some shockingly amazing tracks here and there.
It's really a good mood game that you always go back to with a smile.

I'm playing on steam deck. There are some hiccups here and there maybe and a small UI thing to fix, but it's pretty close to flawless and I very much enjoy my mix of trackpad + trigger to right/keft click as a mouse, which is fast and snappy.

I'm auite happy each time I get into the game and look forward to everything I didn't try yet as well as the tons of future updates that are in preparation.

Serious project, clearly full of love and care so far.
If it continues like that, the final release of it should end up in the big league of roguelikes, in its own genre.

Note : I will update the review later down the line when/if it is updated.

I played until I reached the first war battle and duel
Before these 1 events, it was already a mixed bag and I was already not sure if I'd recommend at all.

But the war system is just so slow, not fun, and the duels horribly bad, less interesting than a rock paper scissors now, which is not an easy thing to do, and yet... that I just lost interest in continuing.

I don't expect them to change those systems unfortunately, but at the very least fix everything else, from game breaking bugs to smaller ones like the useless unite attacks and more.

Before that it feels like playing that game will only feel like half a bugged chore when it was coming from initially Suikoden.

Tedious dungeons, weird balance sometimes, farming of materials, random battles far too often making backtracking horrible... and so far a very okish story, just makes it all very disappointing.

Too bad because it's still exciting to recruit characters and have the Suikoden "feel" supposedly coming back.

UPDATE :

After a much needed pause, I de ided to continue. I even wanted to and overall, not much have changed, except that now I also got introduced to the minigames.
They all range inbetween mediocre and terrible.
Cards have the "best" system and it's a just a very basic and slow game with 0 depth.

Beigoma and fishing suck so hard, so so hard and both are needed to recruit characters.

Cooking is like in Suikoden 2 more or less but that is also a problem. Who the hell needed to keep a 50 seconds button mashing each time you try a duel ? Nobody.
Trying to choose which dish will work for each character can be almost decently fun but it's a meager vague price surrounded by minutes of waiting for no reason.

The scenario is never getting exciting and character recruitement is ok-ish.

The systems are at the worst in the series partly because of menu/UI issues
Menus are SLOW, unbelievably so. The main especially is one od the crapiest I've ever seen (or remember of).

I can replay Suikoden 1 to 5, possibly even 4 (I'd have to check) much easier than it is going through this disappointment of a game.

It's even sadder considering the circumstances before the release. We'll try and remember Murayama for its older work unfortunately.

It could have been a renewal of the genre, Instead it just became an uninspired jrpg like many others.

R.i.p

Wildfrist is simply excellent.
It is easily one of the top deckbuilder rogueliked out there with Slay the Spire and a few others.

Like other great games it requires the player to learn the mechanics. In that case the main point is to pay attention to each character's and enemy's number before acting and think ahead.

The difficulty is just good and actually quickly get very easy if you grasp the concept well.

Do not get frightened by the supposed difficulty peak sometimes mentioned.
The game gives sooo many opportunities to create monstruous strategies that you can almost always be far above the level of the enemies.
A 100% win rate is very easy on base difficulty.

Now if you like challenge, there is a lot.
You can add cursed bells that will strengthen enemies or weaken you in several ways.

The devs are amazing, they listen to the players, just enough, added already a lot of content to the game...

And last but not least, it looks charming, the art is full if life and the music excellent.

Do not sleep on Wildfrost !

I played the game 1500+ hours on Switch, with most of it on Ascension 20 runs, before migrating to Steam Deck and now goes at it again.

It's just the reference when it comes to roguelike deckbuilder no mater if you like it or not.
It's well calibrated for newcomers at base difficulty and balanced for people who learned and learned, at higher ascension.

The learning curve IS the game, and I loved going through it and still doing.