Backlog 2025

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

It’s been a while since I’ve watched the first episode of a show, thought to myself, “wow, every character here is a hot mess,” and then proceeded to binge watch the rest of the show over a weekend.

Yakuza Fiance is the kind of show that revels in how over-the-top it is, while simultaneously delivering on its core premise in spades. The artstyle? Incredible. The character’s fashion choices? Immaculate. The storyline? Convoluted yakuza drama all the way through. And yet - in the heart of it all are two characters who, despite the protests from one of them, might be the perfect match for each other.

I was so caught up in the violent, soap opera worthy drama of Yakuza Fiance that I would regularly forget that these characters were supposed to be teenagers. The main characters are roped together by what may just be a marriage of convenience for two families to hedge their bets against an upcoming power vacuum in the yakuza underworld, but that’s just a background detail in a series that knows its genre and can’t wait to get to the messy parts, both physical and emotional. The major character arc for Yoshino, the female lead, shows that she’s not as ignorant about the world she was born into as the start of the show makes her appear, showing her in full control of a hostile situation and the dangerous men she’s involved with by the end. A major plot point is kicked off by the fact that Kirishima, the male lead, notoriously sleeps around, despite constantly declaring his love for Yoshino. The characters spend the majority of their time in designer clothing, using legally distinct language to not implicate themselves in whatever underground dealings they’ve walked into this time, with the air of young adults in their mid-20s whose sense of invincibility hasn’t quite worn off yet. The show ends on what is probably the raunchiest hand holding scene ever put on television, and I’m not exaggerating. Which brings me back to my opening point - in what universe are these characters 17-year-old kids?

But in a way, that just adds to the spectacle of the series. Going into this show, I’d wrongly assumed that this would be another “bad boy” romance fantasy. “He’s awful and kills people and is super dangerous, but he’d never hurt you!” I’d still be lying if I didn’t say that there aren’t shades of that present in Yoshino and Kirishima’s relationship, but there’s a lot more going on in Yakuza Fiance than that. It’s about the drama. It’s about the mess. It’s about completely forgetting that this is technically a show about minors until the series jumpscares you with a hard cut back to their classroom while they’re wearing school uniforms for once.

And at the end of it, I just hope a season two is on the way. That’s probably the most deranged thing this show does - tease us with a new story arc only to stop before it really gets started. For as ridiculous as this show gets, I have to say that I loved the wild ride.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½

A cute show about modern day brainrot and the YouTube influencers behind it that trips a bit at the finish line. It’s a great setup - vampires become YouTubers! Definitely no underlying social commentary behind that decision, not at all. The series gradually ends up focusing more on the human character who kicks all this off, ending with her realizing that she loves the process of creation and that letting internet critics live in your brain full time is a recipe for disaster.

But while the emotional side of the narrative works pretty well, it’s more of a recurring B plot to the show’s A plot about the vampires trying to save their house. It kind of reminds me of the original Love Live setup in a roundabout way, although instead of becoming idols to save their school, the vampires have to get a million subs or else lose their home.

However, this is also where things kind of fall apart for the show. Despite their deadline looming, the finale isn’t about that - it’s about the emotional part that I mentioned above. However, the show doesn’t really have a satisfying answer for the situation that it set up. The conclusion it seems to come to is, “haters gonna hate, do whatever you want,” which - yes, they’re not wrong there. But the show also brings up that it’s hard to thread that needle when you rely on the internet for your livelihood. What then? To which the show’s answer seems to be a shrug emoji.

To be fair to the narrative, that seems to be a question that society at large is trying to answer as well. You can be hated online and still be rolling in cash, so why not do what you like? But at the same time, if you become reliant on hate clicks, did you really ‘stick it to the haters’?

All of these are valid questions, but they also hit outside of Mayonaka Punch’s weight class. The show is much more comfortable teasing the lesbian crush one of the leads has on another character than it is grappling with the current social media landscape and its effects on creator’s mental health. In the end, it’s fun to see a series that so clearly loves YouTube make a fun supernatural-themed story around it, even if it does wade into the water over its head sometimes.

Rating: ★ ★ ½

Do you ever watch something and spend your entire time with it thinking about other shows in its genre that did the exact same thing but better? That was my experience with Nina the Starry Bride. I’m a self-admitted genre junkie - I know what tropes I like, and I’ll roll around in a pile of them to my heart’s content. It’s not the trope, it’s the details in its execution, et cetera, et cetera. But with Nina the Starry Bride, I couldn’t really do that. The flat court intrigue had me thinking about how much better handled the complicated workings of the secluded upper class was portrayed in Apothecary Diaries. The heroine jumping to conclusions and getting herself into avoidable trouble made me think about the main character’s arc in Ascendance of a Bookworm. Nina’s instant love for the brooding prince just because he pays attention to her made me remember when that trope was turned around a bit in the opening of Yona of the Dawn.

In short, after three episodes it was obvious that I wasn’t watching Nina the Starry Bride. I was watching my own genre familiarity and personal preferences tell me that I should probably move along. So I did.

After the high points of the last volume, it’s pretty funny to have Will and Meneldor open this volume like they’re on a clip show episode of an 80’s sitcom. “Remember when you did that thing?” “Oh boy, do I. Roll the clip!” Inherent silliness aside, despite this series’ multi-year ‘hiatus,’ this volume feels like it’s just tying up a couple loose ends before truly saying goodbye. The story came full circle last time, and I appreciate a series that knows when it’s time to pack it in as opposed to serializing itself into oblivion. While the previous volume is definitely “the end,” I’m glad that I got to see a bit of the aftermath and some smaller adventures with these characters one last time. This remains one of my favorite fantasy isekai series for how well it used the ‘second chance’ part of its theming, and if the author comes back with a continuation that builds further on that idea, I’ll be happy to give it a look.

Review crossposted on Bookwyrm

There are times when a predictable plot line is exactly what I want. There can be something comforting in turning to a story and knowing how each beat will play out, a balm to the nerves during tough times or just when trying to wind down after a long day. But even when that’s the kind of story I crave, I still want at least a little variety. Shake up the details just a little bit. Add some unexpected conflict for zest. For me, part of the fun in following a story where you already know the ending is in seeing the characters overcome the obstacles put in the way of that predetermined fate.

But seven volumes deep into My Next Life as a Villainess, I have to admit that even a change in circumstances is not enough to keep the boredom from creeping in. Katarina only knowing the bare-bones outline of the game sequel she’s living through should create more tension with the new people in her life, but in practice it’s just more of the same. She meets someone, they make an assumption about her, she breaks that assumption, and they fall for her. Admittedly there seems to be a twist this time around where someone falls for Maria instead, but the formula holds true. And while the writing has improved by leaps and bounds since the first two volumes, the author is still not skilled enough to stop drawing attention to the formula their entire series hinges on. And once you notice the formula, you notice that there’s little difference in the variations as well. And once that happens…it really hinges on how much you like villainess isekai stories if you want to stick it out.

As for me, I have to tap out here. The anime version brought a lot of nuance and detail that this version lacked, and after shaking off my initial surprise at how simple the original is, I’m not finding the fun in endless repeats of Katarina accidentally enthralling the world anymore. Maybe I’ll come back on a rainy day, when this kind of plot is exactly what I’m looking for, but for now, I’ve got a backlog calling my name.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

“I mourn the people we could have been if a different world had shaped us.”

A fantastic sequel, as well as a masterclass in how to continue raising the stakes in the middle of a series while not taking anything away from what drew people to it in the first place. While Iron Widow was a clear reimagining of the anime Darling in the Franxx, Heavenly Tyrant shows that the worldbuilding established in the first volume leaves more than enough room for the series to stand on its own terms as a fantasy sci-fi space opera in its own right.

This volume also addressed the only real complaint I had for the last book. To pull a line from that review - The book is already hundreds of pages - some extra space to properly flesh out scenes wouldn't be that much more to ask, would it? That wish came true in this book. While Heavenly Tyrant is a bit longer - Iron Widow was 400 pages, and the sequel is over 500 - there’s not a single wasted moment. There’s no pulling back from action scenes or conversations this time around. It feels as if the author has gotten the same boost of confidence as Zetian does in this volume, and it’s a treat to read because of it. Everything flows to the grand cliffhanger of this volume, and every scene serves its purpose in redefining character relationships, recontextualizing parts of the worldbuilding that previously came across as added flavor instead of deep foreshadowing, and raising the tension as Zetian realizes that she’s getting everything that she’d ever dared to hope for - but the fight is far from over.

I’m also in awe with how the relationship between Zetian and Qin Zheng is portrayed. It’s a truly toxic relationship with the blurriest of lines, and I’m glad that the good Qin Zheng does over the course of the novel is never used as a way to excuse the terrible things that he is responsible for. Instead, this deepens the portrayal of him as a complicated and divisive individual, the exact person that their world needs to rebuild, and yet simultaneously the worst kind of ruler who lives up to the name of this book. And Zetian is given the same treatment, even though she’s the perspective character for this series. No one is above reproach, and this book is a great exploration of the phrase ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ And while Qin Zheng has clear and obvious feelings for Zetian by the end of this book, this is not a romance. The way that they each use each other for their own purposes while an undercurrent of animosity flows between them, only held back by their shared agenda, provides some of the most compelling parts of this volume. By the end, no one would blame Zetian for continuing to go along with him in service of her own goals - but the catharsis I felt when she didn’t is unparalleled. “Now your fantasy ends” indeed.

There’s moments here and there where I’m pretty sure I recognize the anime tropes that the author is pulling from - the mention of the red sea alone was enough to turn me into the Leonardo Di’Caprio pointing meme - but Heavenly Tyrant soars past all of that to turn into an incredible narrative in its own right. I loved every moment of this one, and I can hardly wait for the next.

Place your bets now - what will Zetian blow up next time? A moon? A solar system? My money is on universe-sized robots throwing around galaxies like shurikens. IYKYK.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

It’s nice to be reminded that fantasy stories don’t have to have world-ending stakes to be just as engaging. Despite being exactly what it says on its cover - a low stakes novel about a former adventurer opening a coffee shop - I could not anticipate how appealing it would be. I blew through this novel in two days despite its simplicity thanks to continuing to say to myself ‘one more chapter couldn’t hurt.’ I loved the slowly building romance in the subplot, and the dual themes in the story of the power of change and finding people who see you for who you really are tugged on my heartstrings.

I do have a few complaints - some of the early problems set up in the story just kind of vanish thanks to the power of baked goods, and I was a bit sad that the stone ended up being some kind of magic after all. I think it would’ve made the points the story was trying to get across hit harder if the store’s initial success really had been a combination of luck and friendship the whole time.

But even with that said, I can’t recommend this book enough. I think the word “cozy” has gotten a bit diluted thanks to marketing forces being what they are, but this book is exactly that. It reads like a warm blanket on a cold day, the perfect way to unwind.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Muse reads Discworld in Release Order Part 7

“It’s like a whole great pyramid. But upside down, you understand? All that history, all those ancestors, all the people, all funnelling down to me. Right at the bottom.”

I didn’t realize until poking around at other reviews that this was the first standalone Discworld novel - not in the sense that the other books aren’t standalone, I’ve read enough of them now that I can see how people fell into this series sideways, but it’s interesting to read a Discworld plot that doesn’t reference back to other characters and other adventures. That hasn’t happened since I started this series.

That said, I’ll admit that I might’ve enjoyed it more if I hadn’t spent about the first half of the book half expecting the narrative to turn into a “the ancient cultures of the world are backwards and stupid - modern day Western civilization is where it’s really at” kind of plotline. I let out a sigh of relief when it became clear that, no, the book wasn’t here to use Egypt as the stand-in for that kind of commentary. Instead, this book is about tradition, the good and bad sides of it, how adhering to it too strongly can strip it of its original meaning, and that change is not the same as wiping the memory of where you came from. I was very happy to have my gut “oh no” reaction proven wrong.

From there, it’s a fun adventure book. I loved the sci-fi-esque twist with the titular pyramids, I loved You Bastard’s mathematical equations, and I loved how what was previously a throwaway joke about the Assassin’s guild in previous books became the basis for Teppic to bring his homeland into the present while still honoring his past. Even knowing now that this is a standalone adventure, I do hope for some small background updates in future volumes - I’d like to know how the bridge business plays out.

Review crossposted on Backloggd

As ‘cozy’ becomes marketing shorthand for ‘game desperately trying to chase a trend that has already left the station,’ it’s fascinating to play one that uses the framework of the ‘cozy’ experience to tell a story about burnout, trauma, and mourning a version of yourself that you can’t return to. How hard this will hit you will depend on your own experience with that.

For myself, I ended up relating pretty strongly to Alta. Even though I’m the furthest thing from a fighter, the way she talked about her relationship to fighting reminded me of how I feel about my creative passions, even almost word-for-word repeating some things I’ve said about them in the past. Certain scenes even gave me an unexpected flashback to some low points in my life. When I first started the game, I’d described it to a family member as “Kiki’s Delivery service but with tea,” but in the Ghibli movie, the main character’s burnout is a plot point leading into the finale. In Wanderstop, that is the story, and it has some teeth underneath the calming exterior of tea orders and squeak toy penguins that change color. This game isn’t just ‘about’ burnout - it shows it for the messy, frustrating, contradictory experience that it is, and how you have to learn how to sit with it. To let yourself breathe. To give yourself space until you’re ready, whatever that looks like.

It’s also interesting how Wanderstop chooses specific moments to completely disregard some current ‘cozy game’ staples in order to further its narrative. While the player is free to decorate the shop as they wish, everything that’s added gets removed as the story rolls on. The place may be the same, but how you decide to fill it - or not - is up to the player. Characters enter the clearing and can leave just as abruptly, without the player ever knowing what happens to them afterwards. This part is an interesting mirror to real life - sometimes you only meet someone once or twice before never seeing them again. Others are just passing through. Whatever their story is about, you’re not the main character in it.

This is not a game where you get to befriend everyone, max out everything, and make the perfect tea blend for the rest of your days. Wanderstop tells its story, uses its mechanics to underline it, and then rolls its credits. It’s not meant to be forever, just like everything else in life. But it reminds us that we do still have time to slow down and enjoy the present moment for however long it lasts.

Review crossposted on Backloggd

While it’s wild to see a game I backed on Kickstarter in 2018 rise like a phoenix under a completely different team than its original pitch, the new game itself is just okay at best. The art is gorgeous, and the voice actors do a great job with what they’re given, but neither of these things can salvage the story.

The main character herself randomly swings from being an anxiety riddled shut-in who has to have her phone on her at all times to a mature and self-aware adult who dispenses just the right amount of life advice to the vampires depending on what scene she's in. The other characters are a revolving door of VN dating sim stereotypes, and hardly get any development outside of that. The majority of the plot is slice-of-life with vampires until the main conflict comes crashing onto the main character’s doorstep, and from there it feels like someone hit a fast-forward button. It feels like this new team was given an outline for the originally much longer game and then just...did not expand on it at all. Nothing is really detailed, including the romances, which barely exist outside of two scenes in each route, and even less so in the secret endings. Only one of the CGs actually shows a kiss, and hopefully you get a good look or take your own screenshots, because this game doesn’t have a gallery.

There’s been a bit of a controversy over the pricing of the game on Steam - it’s selling for the equivalent of $8 in China and Hong Kong, but asks for $36 in the US and the equivalent of $40 in Great Britain. While I’m usually all for indie developers getting their bag, I fully cleared this game in four hours. Admittedly, that play time is because I opted to turn off the voices and am a fast reader, but my point stands that this is a short game with a high price point for its genre. If I hadn’t been given a code due to the aforementioned Kickstarter and had somehow paid full price, I would’ve been pretty upset.

Overall the game is a perfectly fine way to spend an afternoon, but the lack of a CG gallery and the underwhelming writing makes me side-eye the price point they chose. Wait for a sale if you’re truly curious, but keep your expectations in check.

Rating: ★ ★ ★

Review crossposted on Backloggd

A cute little interlude chapter rounding out the end of the first major story arc flavored with some new year’s fun! I like the new area a lot, and the story mission for that area were a lot more compelling than I’d expected at the start. It had some interesting insights into what makes a stylist, and implies that there’s a lot more variation to Faewish sprites than we’ve been led to believe. There’s also a bunch of little quality of life changes, which make it clear that the devs are taking feedback seriously and are paying attention to how players are engaging with the game - for instance, I was really happy at how many new photo opportunities there were in this new patch. Overall, it’s not anything that completely changes my feelings on the game, but it does make me more confident that the focus will continue to be on dress up and fun times with a layer of complicated lore in the background - which is exactly what I want from a Nikki game.

Rating: ★ ★ ½

Review crossposted on Backloggd

A much more compact update than the previous one, which meant that I ran out of things to do a bit faster. While I’m not expecting expansive new areas in each update, the story also felt a bit shorter this time around as well. While it’s nice to get some context about the abandoned castle hanging around at the bottom of the map, if we’re not adding new areas, could we add just a little bit more story instead?

My personal preferences aside, it seems like Infinity Nikki is figuring out what kind of game it really wants to be - all of the gameplay loops are growing more focused around getting pretty clothes and presenting nice backdrops to take photos of them in. I also appreciated the combat challenges this time around, especially the way they added the platforming aspects in. It’s a nice change from the few and far between boss fights on the overworld, and requiring more strategy than “spam purification orbs to win.” Even if it felt like it was over too fast, if rumors are true and this is vertical slice test of what’s to come, I’d love to see more.

Rating: ★ ★

Review crossposted on Backloggd

Now I feel silly for complaining about how ‘short’ the last update was. Eerie season was a whole novel compared to the main quest this time around. But even with that said, I’m of two minds about it. I appreciate that Infinity Nikki does not monopolize all of my free time, given that I’ve completed the main quests and have finished the grind for the two miracle outfits currently available. It’s nice to log in, get the dailies done in under five minutes, and decide if I want to do a photoshoot, clear up some remaining sidequests, or just log back out for the day. On the other hand, I can’t help but see missed potential.

Is there no way to loop these quests into the ongoing plot or at least expand further on the world building? This time around, we’ve got a festival that only happens every few hundred years with a magic mask that shows whoever wears it their dearest wish coming true. There’s an opening here to loop in more about the Wishing One and his disappearance and the relationship the sprites have to wishes in general. But what we get is a pretty generic plot about believing in yourself ending with a meme cutscene of Long Momo. Add on some time-gated platforming sections, and that’s pretty much it for the update. See you next month! Don’t forget to pull on the banner!

Like I said last time, I’m not expecting the Firework Isles with each update, but there’s now a trend of less with each update that’s starting to concern me this early in the game’s existence. It’s also starting to feel like Infinity Nikki is going through an identity crisis. Does Infold want to put out an open world game with a fantasy twist based around fashion, or the world’s most elaborate dress-up sandbox? I think the real indicator will be whenever the next area opens up, but in the meantime I’m still making my own fun with the camera feature. I’ll keep logging in so long as all those filter options are around.

Rating: ★

Review crossposted on Backloggd

The rollout and subsequent backlash to this patch is unlike anything I’ve seen for a live service game before. And it’s not without merit, either - I can’t even play the new content at the time of this writing because the bugs are so bad. I have a mid-range computer setup, but it handled Infinity Nikki pretty well since launch. As of this update, it’s having a hard time even on medium to low settings. I was prepared to blame my hardware and move on, but then I had a look at the online discussion. As it turns out, this update is so much worse than a glitchy cutscene and a buggy new area.

As of this patch, all players, new and old, were thrown into a cutscene leading to a new tutorial area. I liked this at first, because I thought it was just new story content that was automatically unlocked for me since I’d finished everything else.

The truth is, this is the new opening to the game.

The original cutscene introducing Nikki and Momo and how she was pulled into Miraland? Gone. The red dress foreshadowing Miracle Outfits, and the cutscene introducing Ena and the Heart of Infinity that was also used for marketing material? Gone. The opening tutorial of the game in the ruins? Skipped. Nikki seeing Faewish sprites as the first hint for the story material? Doesn’t happen. The original title drop for the game, introducing the open world to the player? Gone.

So what was it replaced with? A very confusing and buggy tutorial area that I spent more time playing with my settings to try and fix the issues I was having than actually engaging with it. It provides some very pretty set pieces, but the information we actually get is vague at best. Nikki accidentally destroyed the world with the Heart of Infinity but then the Seer rewound the world and now we’re in some multiverse thing. Sure. Nikki games have done this before - Shining Nikki also opens with time travel to save the world. The main difference here is that Shining Nikki explains itself because it’s the first thing players see in the game. In this new version, the Seer talks about the Heart and Miracle Outfits as if we already know what she means, which is why I thought it was the opening to a new story section. I wasn’t sure why she was telling me how to jump, but whatever. Finding out that this was the new opening for everyone stunned me. I’ve seen comments from new players asking old players if they can explain what they’ve missed, and current players who haven’t completed the current main story quests expressing frustration that they were taken out of what they were doing. As someone who is fully caught up, it’s the retcons that bother me the most.

The original opening adds so much mystery - how did Ena end up in chains? Does she know Nikki’s mom? The Heart of Infinity is clearly dangerous - why did she give it to her? Now, with the introduction of the Seer - who, thanks to blatantly dropping the multiverse into this game’s lore, is most likely another version of Nikki - everything is flattened. Through a series of unvoiced conversations, more lore retcons are given to up-to-date players. Ena? She’s just some person who gave Nikki the Heart, and was collateral damage from rewinding time or whatever, don’t worry about it! Just make some clothes and everything will be fine! Oh, that whole storyline with Giovanni implying that the Wishing One could time travel? Nope! He was just confused and always evil! He turned into a monster in another timeline, so just forget about him!

It is so disappointing to have a game tell you to your face that all those little hints you thought were leading up to something? Don’t matter! They’re gone now, they’ve been retconned. It’s so badly done that I can’t help but draw the conclusion that there never was a plan for the story, otherwise the company wouldn’t have thrown out all their dev team’s previous work in favor of…whatever this is supposed to lead in to.

After traveling through a black hole to watch a world ending - thanks to terrible writing it’s unclear whether this is supposed to be the world we played through pre-1.5 or just a previous world in general - all players are dropped onto the Star Sea map, opening up multiplayer.

And it is barren.

The Star Sea provides pretty backgrounds for photos, and that’s it. There’s a circle where you can slowly walk around as one of the animal models, a shell and coconut collecting basket where they spawn around you in an endless loop, and a very sad seesaw. Adding insult to injury, I can’t just leave and ignore the area, because now it’s tied into the dailies system, locking the Star Sea dress behind engaging with these boring excuses for minigames. It’s not as if the more engaging stuff is locked behind finding someone to do multiplayer with you - this is it. This is what all the marketing hype was for. And now it’s also the first impression new players will have of the game.

I would be upset just by what I’ve discussed so far, but unfortunately, there’s more! The long awaited dyeing system was added in this update, after being teased with the Bullquet event from a few months back. That version implied that players could take the materials that were stacking up in their inventories and use them to unlock new colors to dye their clothes. The actual released version is…half of that? There’s a new tab on the wardrobe that allows players to go surprisingly in-depth on how they can change their clothes, with different layering and pattern options, and in that sense it’s a great addition to the game.

The problem is the monetization.

A number of colors are unlocked by default, but the rest are locked behind a paid item in the game’s store. The color groups are named after plants and bugs found in the game, so it feels like at least some shades were meant to be unlocked with the collectible items, but nope! Gotta give Infold money if you want darker tones. Furthermore, some clothes just aren’t allowed to be certain colors unless you grind to level them up. So dyeing certain colors is both progression and money-gated. Thanks, Infold!

As I was finding all of this out online, I decided to ignore dyeing and the Star Sea for the time being and try the new area, Serenity Island. Maybe the bulk of the patch update would smooth over the bad feelings. Unfortunately, like I said at the start, I can’t speak to any of that because it’s bugged to the point that I can’t play it. Animations hung for minutes on end in cutscenes, the framerate tanked randomly regardless of how I changed my settings, and after all of the above, I couldn’t be bothered to try and make it work anymore.

I was far from the only one either. A lot of players are reporting game crashes, forced signouts, graphics errors that make Nikki’s body vanish, soft locks that prevent players from finishing the new tutorial section, and all of that is if the game even launches for them in the first place. I’ve even heard about an area lacking collision, of all things.

Underlining the disappointment with the bugs and the shock at the story retcons is the truth that I was really excited for this update. The drip marketing got to me. I think the new phoenix dress is beautiful, and I was excited for the Star Sea set, which has been in previous Nikki games as an important lore item. For a minute there, it looked like they were building up to a big turning point for the story, perhaps setting the stage for whatever the new region will be. I wondered if the teased “new lore” would be similar to how the stakes escalated in Love Nikki’s story, where you start to realize that the cheerful veneer of fashion and stylist battles was actually just the cover for a brutal and disturbing world. But then the patch actually dropped, and it became clear that the greed has already overrun this game, not even six months into its existence.

The $10 bathtub is getting openly mocked, people were already mad about the increased pity limit for the new clothing sets, and the empty Star Sea and glitchy Serenity Island makes it clear that someone higher up at Infold just wanted to push out multiplayer and dyeing for the Chinese holiday and Steam store drop, quality be damned. Even the name of this update, Bubble Season, points towards the new island being the original focus for this patch. The mermaid outfit makes more sense in this context as well. There’s a lot of hints at an underlying story between the mermaid and the phoenix in their own marketing material, but instead the outfits get plastered into the new tutorial opening. When the banners leave in a month, will they get replaced with whatever outfits they’re trying to sell next, or will this just not make sense for new players? The “pink star” nickname already seemed silly with Nikki decked out in blue.

I’m just venting at this point. This update is an ever expanding web of problems - when you focus on one, several more also pop up in tandem. What it comes down to is that it’s clear that there’s no respect towards the work the development team has already done, nor towards the player base who was invested in what they were building. It’s just about money, and how fast the company can get new players into the store.

Thanks to all of that, even if Infold decides to roll back the changes and pretend that it never happened, this may be it for me. I’m not sure if I’m coming back after this patch. The trust is lost. I’m sure some people looking in on this from the outside will think something like “gacha games are always predatory, you shouldn’t be surprised that they’re just aiming for your wallet,” etc., but I feel that there’s an unspoken understanding that the money only comes in when they deliver the experience that was advertised. Dropping a patch that was so obviously rushed and is so blatantly greedy makes me question everything going forward. Yes, I willingly walked up to the pretty slot machine, but I was promised something specific from the experience in exchange. If Infold is not going to provide that experience anymore but demand even more money regardless, why should I keep playing?

Old players are mad. New players are confused. My computer can’t even load the bubbles. What an update.

Review originally posted on Backloggd

A cute idle game about MMOs and the life cycle of fanservers. I really loved how the story of the game was told, using a lot of visual storytelling and player inference long before actually dropping readable text outside of the tutorial. I’m a little more mixed on the actual gameplay - outside of the already mentioned tutorial, Settlemoon does not give up the secrets to its mechanics easily. I would easily swing between feeling like a genius because I figured out a boss mechanic to searching through the Steam forums to try and figure out what in the world the game wanted from me in order to progress. If it weren’t for the latter, I likely never would’ve finished this game at all, since I was still finding out about things I could do in the final hours of the game. All of that said, it’s not a particularly long game - it just requires some patience and the willingness on the player’s part to puzzle out its mechanics. If you’re willing to do that, Settlemoon has a surprisingly heartwarming story waiting for you.

Review originally posted on Backloggd

There’s a point during the whirlwind introduction to Amphoreus where the characters are dropped into a fight in the middle of a city, with the newer characters yelling about how they’re about to fight a god, and the edges of the screen go red, and there’s a bunch of pretty cutscenes showing off how cool everything looks -

And I realized that I could not bring myself to care about any of it.

Which is wild to me, because in a vacuum the setup of “Greek mythology RPG in space” sounds like something that I would adore. But after sitting through hours of exposition dumping, fading in and out of black screens to badly cover up a lack of animation, and an underwhelming final boss that I easily cleared, I’m not sure how Hoyo dropped the ball this badly. The puzzle sections felt more like tedious busywork, coming across more like random roadblocks to story progress rather than acquainting players with the new area. There’s several huge set pieces for scenes and following fights that clearly were meant to be the big standout story moments of the patch, but thanks to my lack of investment in the plot and characters, it came across as all flash and no substance.

There’s a couple interesting story hooks, but at this point I don’t have a lot of faith in how they’ll be resolved. Unlike last year, where Penacony’s cliffhangers kept building towards the reveals in its conclusion, there’s been several patches worth of retcons and slow pull backs. Even what was promised in the most recent patch doesn’t come through here. Sunday? Doesn’t get to come to Amphoreus. Herta talking to Nous? Nope, she was actually practicing in front of a hologram, lol. The current cliffhanger does nothing for me for that reason. They’re probably going to resolve whatever’s going on with March 6th off screen. Why keep showing up when I know I’ll be disappointed?

While I think that Star Rail has had worse story patches to date, this one gets the lower rating from me because it finally broke the RPG illusion. I was no longer playing to find out what happened next. I was playing to get the patch over with.

It does not matter how cool an area looks if the player doesn’t have any investment in what’s happening in it. It does not matter how intricate your lore is if the player does not care about the characters it impacts. It doesn’t matter how pretty your game is if I can scratch the paint and see it’s all just an excuse to justify its gacha system to get the most money out of its playerbase for the least effort.

Penacony was great, but it’s clear that kind of story isn’t happening again. I’m pulling the cord and getting off the train. I hope everyone staying has a good time, but this game isn’t for me anymore.