Finished Valfaris from the current bundle. Good game, last boss took me way too many deaths to beat.

HP 2

A tale of two reviews. Evaluating this purely as a match-3 game, HP2 is well done. The mechanics do add both a level of strategy and a level of difficulty to the core game. You can still be sunk by an unlucky chain (or just a poor move) at the wrong time, but for the most part it feels like this part of the game is well-balanced and well done.

Other than some recurring hanging during launch, everything runs smoothly, so it's not a technical issue. The game is well built, and as above, the main component of the game plays well, so ...what's the problem?

The problem is....really everything else. Even if this game didn't inevitably stand in comparison to its predecessor (in the light of which it suffers badly) the rest of this game is at turns obnoxious and boring. On it's own it's maybe a 3 out of 5 carried by the puzzles, but compared to the first game it's a 2.

Where HP1 succeeded was on a few fronts (no entendre intended):
1) As odd as it is to say about a game of this type, but appropriate for Valentine's, HP1 had "heart." While the characters weren't "real," at least in Act 1 of the game, the human characters were interesting characters with nuance and dialogue felt at least roughly like, well, dialogue.

2) Similar to #1, the game let you play it at least to some extent the way you wanted and at least half the art was not specifically sexual, as it portrayed a progression. The question of whether it was censored or uncensored applied to maybe 30% of the art.

Here, all that's out the window. This game wants to be over the top and in your face from start to finish and...there's just no nuance, no depth, and frankly nothing really interesting. The creator of lingerie apparently commented that seduction is as much about what you don't show as what you choose to - this game could have benefitted from that lesson.

The greatest sin is that, other than Kyu's opening monologue (and even that is arguable), the dialogue isn't really dialogue and it's mostly terrible. The voice acting is professional but the actual choices they made (also over the top in most cases) are puzzling.

HP1 was a pretty good platform for telling a story that they could've simply chosen to re-mine with a new group of female characters, or males, or both, or pigeons, or even adapted to something like The Great British Baking Show. Assuming the writing stayed solid, I think any of those could have worked and ultimately been an enjoyable sequel or DLC - either way much better than this evolution.

I give the creator/devs some props for challenging themselves, but the result, while technically sound, just isn't really a very good game, imo. While a very small part of my brain would like to replay this on higher difficulty for the puzzles, I just can't see doing that when I either hated or was bored by close to half of the content.

Just finished The Medium through Gamepass and honestly found it pretty enjoyable. It was a lot more walking-simish than I thought it was going to be and not scary at all. If I didn't get it for "free" I would have disappointed though.

Is the game called HP 2 or is it just acronym of something else?

Oh yeah, I came here to report game before and I forgot to.

Divinity: Dragon Commander

I did not like it much. RTS part is not fleshed out too well and the way dragon was used was not much well done IMO either. The characters are 2-dimensional caricatures, don't have any depth to them and are not much fun. The board game part of the game is fine I guess but nothing exceptional as well.
I played on hard and it was quite hard and last chapter was exteremely difficult while leading battle but thanks to money I had saved it was steamroll with auto-resolve, so I only did single real-time battle that whole part of the game. Probably for the better but also not optimal if the game aimed to be good in all aspects.
4,5/10

Full list

Judging from the review, assuming it's Huniepop 2.

Doriath. This is a C64 game in which you control an old wizard who must explore a huge cavern/fortress full of monsters, trying to assemble the eight parts of a scroll so you can vanquish the Ice Dragon and claim a mystical treasure. I found it compulsively playable in the sense that once I started playing, I couldn't stop until I was done. Something about games in which you're just dropped into a cave and have to explore grabs me right away, especially when they've got solid controls.

The game is nonlinear. To progress you need to find spells that will allow you to kill specific monsters, stamina potions to replenish health, and keys and potions that unlock certain things. Your guy isn't fast-moving or agile, but he does have a nice, long jump in the sense that he can levitate a good distance (and can fall/float any distance).

The world is 16x16 screens, so it's huge and making a map (or downloading one from online as I did) is recommended. The game isn't particularly hard, it's just that to win you need to get a sense of what you need, work out a good sequence for doing things, and be conservative about how you use your items. As I found out to my consternation, there aren't enough portcullis keys to cover opening all the doors in the game, so I got stuck in a walking dead situation after investing a good amount of time into it and unknowingly opening doors I shouldn't have.

As with a lot of games from this era, it was apparently made by precocious teenagers who sold it to a publisher and probably made enough money to cover a family dinner for a couple of nights, so it has some issues, primarily that it's not entirely finished. For one thing, one of the spells in your menu wasn't ever put into the game. The monsters the spell was supposed to kill mostly guard the second half of the map, and there are a few spots in which you can evade them, so it doesn't break the game, but it's an issue nonetheless. The other major issue is that the game is actually too big - the second half of the map is mostly pointless and just takes up room. Literally all of the chests in that section of the map contain stamina potions, more than you'd ever need while playing the game normally. If they had just mixed up the chests a tad, to give some breathing room on the other expendable items, it would have gone a long way toward preventing that walking dead situation I got into but nope. But for the most part, it's enjoyable and easy to recommend if you're into ancient 8-bit PC games.

Oh. Thank you. When I wasn't able to discover what game it is I skimmed over it but looking at it, there were clues.
Only thing I could was Harry Potter but that didn't feel right considering the desription. :-)


Yesterday I played through Kid Dracula. It is spoof of Castlevania and is part of Anniversary Collection that came out on PC few years ago. I had the game when I was kid on NES (some bootleg version in Japanese) and I loved it so I had to try it.
Well, it wasn't the same great experience as it used to but it was still quite fun. It is still cute and nostalgia played big part for sure as I was gushing over it most of the time but I think there is some fun to have either way, although bit simplistic one.
As you proceed you get several different abilities but the game is quite short and simply and except homing shot I used most of them very rarely, usually only in 1 or 2 instances where it has to be used. It is quite simple in most aspects, in gameplay and in level design both and most bosses doesn't require too much of special tactics either (with few exceptions where you just use one of the powers to win).
It took me less than 3 hours to beat the game and about 1 and 1/2 was spent on final level where I got stuck for quite a time. To get to the final level was fairly quick and easy, ven though I haven't played the game in some 25 years.
As for port, it wasn't too good, as I experienced noticeable slowdown in many parts of game. Mostly when there were enemy projectiles on screen.
P.S. Even in English I still don't understand all of the mini games.
6,5/10

Full list.

Finished Spiritfarer 2 nights ago, recieved in a generous giveaway last month. I was really excited based on trailers. At first I wasn't sure I liked it, the pacing seemed so slow, it had some obvious flaws (no control mapping and awkward controls that took me awhile to get used to, constant flashing everytime you pick get an item/blueprint/skill). I kept playing, as it still drew me in. By the 10-15 hr mark, I was hooked. I cried at the credits. Some spirits impacted me. This game felt like art, and I was still thinking about it yesterday. So slow burn, great game and it sounds like the flaws might be resolved in the coming months if accessibility is part of their "quality of life improvements" promised in their just released roadmap. Really glad I got the opportunity to play it!

Just finished Blood Omen: Defiance. I now understand why fans don't like it. It was so boring to play. I just finished it for the sake of completing it.

Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory

I keep telling myself to not buy rhythm games because I always injure myself trying to play on the hardest difficulty, thankfully this game isn't as intensive as say... Guitar Hero or Donkey Konga. Melody of Memory is a rhythm game featuring the songs from 10 of the other Kingdom Hearts games in the series. The gameplay has a party of 3 characters running along a track as enemies approach, you attack enemies with one of 3 buttons in time with the beats of the music, you can choose which of the 3 buttons to press, sometimes you need to press 2 or all 3. There are additional times when you need to jump, glide or use magic which uses 2 other buttons. Each track has 3 missions you have to complete ranging from "Defeat 40% of enemies" to "Complete the hardest song in the game on the hardest difficulty making fewer than 10 mistakes" (Not as hard as it sounds thankfully). Difficulty wise, it's not that difficult to clear a song on the hardest difficulty, the real challenge comes in perfecting it, though there isn't much of an incentive for it other than pride.

The enemies almost always line up perfectly with the beat in the song (There was one I swear I was hitting at the right time that never registered). The difficulty of each track increases as the song goes on, at the beginning of the song enemies will only appear on certain notes, whereas later in the track (especially on Hardmode) they appear on every beat. The Kingdom Hearts series has some of the best songs in gaming history, however for some reason character models and the majority of songs from Kingdom Hearts 3 are missing, which is strange because they couldn't get that, but they could get 'Let it Go' and 'Circle of Life'. Let it Go is by far the worst song to play to because of its length. Of course you should really only get it if you like the franchise, like all Kingdom Hearts games, they add new lore right at the end, because why not, why shouldn't a rhythm game contain important story content?

LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2

You know what you're in when you play a lego game: silly (in the good way) dialogues, tons of characters, tons of unlockables... And this one doesn't disappoint.

The problem is, since I'm not a big fan of Superheroes anymore (still like them, but not like before), I felt a bit... overwhelmed. Too many characters, to be honest, most of them are unlockables while playing and are not given to you during the story modes. I simply didn't care anymore, by the end of the game. Too many ulockables everywhere, meaning that in free-roaming mode, you constantly get distracted. It's a good thing, to have many things to do... but I was looking for a more story-focused game.

It's still a very solid game, with a decent amount of gameplay hours (even more if you try the 100% !!) but I must admit it felt a little blank and random to me.

So far in 2021: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2021/post12

Heretic and Hexen

First one is Doom in fantasy setting, other is some kind of wall sniffing (1 out of 9 puzzles solved! Somewhere...) and puzzles with mobile obstacles called enemies.
Respawning on top of that, and I'm not a fan of these.
Some maps have little to no mana orbs here for some reasons. Not an issue for the warrior, others - quite opposite.
Played as a mage, bad choice tbh, his icicles shotgun wasn't that powerful and often get stuck in the obstacles while lightning had bad RNG from time to time, and also can miss.

Now it's time for Hexen 2, already started and reached the castle.It's already better than first one because you do something else beside switch hunting.

Don't like classes system in Hexen 1/2, little arsenal makes it a little boring after some time.

The Franz Kafka Videogame

It took me about two hours, using some times the hints, a short adventure game to play an afternoon. The story is a bit confusse. Recommended on sales.

Eliza (2019) (Linux)

I started the game long time ago, now I've just finished. It's made by Zachtronics, but totally different than their puzzle games. It's kind of visual novel, extremely linear; not sure, but I guess there's no real choice here. Perhaps the only moment of control are decisions made at the very end. Gameplay-wise – it's terrible. It's not a game actually.
But it's interesting story and it shows some interesting problems. It's like an another story written by Phillip Dick – a bit distopian, a bit philosophical. Intriguing and worth reading. Interesting characters with their own stories and views. I liked it. It caused me to re-think some important aspects of work and life. I suppose it's quite an achievement for a 6-hours game without actual gameplay.

List of all games completed in 2021.