Publisher — Mad Mushroom

Platforms — PC(Reviewed)

There’s been a lot of debate for a long time about ‘soulslike fatigue.’ Whether you’re tired of the genre or not yourself, there’s no denying that soulslike titles are everywhere these days. I’m personally in the One More Soulslike and I Might Just Spew camp, but luckily, developer Rogue Snail’s new title, Hell Clock, isn’t a soulslike! It’s a- oh, dammit, it’s a roguelike.

Yes, roguelikes are the other genre that we have an overabundance of lately, but Hell Clock is one of the more enjoyable live, die, repeat titles I’ve played in recent memory. With its unique setting, stellar visuals, and satisfying gameplay loop, there’s plenty here to satisfy and intrigue fans of the genre. 

My favorite part of Hell Clock is definitely its unique, grimdark setting. It’s set during and inspired by the real-world War of Canudos, an armed conflict from the 1890s between the residents of Canudos and the First Brazilian Republic in Brazil. I don’t know nearly enough about Brazilian history, and I love that this more obscure historical setting serves as the game’s backdrop. I’m only slightly ashamed that I have to wait for a unique video game to inspire me to learn new pieces of world history, but that’s just how my brain works.

During this conflict, you play as Pajeú: a man who finds himself quite literally in hell as he attempts to save the soul of an old friend and mentor. Your objective is to battle through the various rungs of the underworld, gain power as you progress, and, hopefully, save your mentor before it’s too late.

If there’s one thing that Hell Clock does at an above-average level compared to other roguelikes, it’s the story. The writing is strong, characters have plenty of intrigue, and wanting to see more of the eerie, hellish events play out is largely what kept me playing.

Aiding the nightmarish narrative and unsettling atmosphere is the game’s gorgeous art style. This is one of those games that delivers its visuals with such skill and panache that it makes you wonder how it was even done. The heavy use of shadows and thick colors brings comic book artist Mike Mignola to mind, and that’s a style I’m a total sucker for. When 2025 comes to a close, this is one of the games I’ll fondly remember for its visuals alone.

The visuals are also an enormous boon to gameplay. You can tell these developers have played their fair share of ARPGs and rougelikes, because you can clearly see what you and your enemies are doing at all times. They, like all of us, have played one too many titles where parsing the battle is, well, more of a battle than the battle itself.

Navigating the eerie environments and dodging hostile attacks? Delightful. Working your way toward the game’s ending? Ehhh, not as much. The game’s progression isn’t awful by any means! In fact, Hell Clock takes the best type of notes from Hades and makes each run feel meaningful. There are plenty of permanent upgrades to unlock between runs that help you get further, and you can create some truly unique builds with the items and abilities that you find.

Additionally, the game features fantastic accessibility options. You can cruise through the game in its Relaxed Mode, or test the limits of your sadistic soul with Hardcore Mode. Hell, you can even pause the game! That shouldn’t feel like such a fantastic feature in 2025, but it really is.

All of this is great! The only problem I have is that, much like your fifteenth run through a roguelike, everything feels very routine. I understand how nitpicky that sounds, and how crazy it is to say, “The problem with this game is that it works exactly as it was designed!” but I suppose I’m experiencing some roguelike fatigue in addition to soulslike fatigue.

Again, the game’s incredibly unique setting and story were my personal highlights. The art and animation are well done, the gameplay loop is solid, and there are plenty of things to discover that can wildly alter the variety of your build. Hell Clock is easy to recommend to players who want a solid, enjoyable, and polished roguelike, but it’s definitely not the lightning in a bottle that will reinvent the tried and true genre.

The post Review: Hell Clock appeared first on Rectify Gaming.

Publisher — Prime Time, GrabTheGames, CyberStep, Inc.

Platforms — PC (Reviewed)

Review code provided by Developer

As an enormous From Software fan, I have a soft spot for soulslikes. As an equally enormous Darksiders fan, I have an even softer spot for action-adventure RPGs. Third-person hack and slashing with an emphasis on world exploration and some big boss fights? My money isn’t safe. I’ll take ten copies of Smacking Things With a Sword Simulator, please and thank you. 

As a fan of these genres, I’ve been eating especially well lately. There’s no shortage of studios attempting to put their own spin on the souls formula, and I’ve noticed a growing trend of returning to design elements from the seventh generation of consoles which included titles such as the original Darksiders and Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. As a result, I was very excited to jump into Bygone Dreams, and I’m pleased to report that, for the most part, this ambitious indie title is a worthwhile time for my fellow action-adventure fans.

In Bygone Dreams, you play as an intrepid spirit called Wa. Your objective is to save the world of Lume from an encroaching and all-consuming Nightmare. I’m not bashing the game’s story or writing when I say this, but the narrative wasn’t something that kept me playing. By no means was it poorly done, but it didn’t succeed in grabbing my imagination. Characters are ho-hum, voice acting is merely serviceable, and cutscenes feel particularly rough. While it didn’t do much for me, there’s plenty of effort in the story that others could find compelling. 

What did keep me invested, however, was simply exploring the world and meeting new enemy types. Upgrading Wa and their abilities was good fun as well, since I do find getting stronger in these types of adventures to be great fun. However, my favorite bit was simply duking it out with overworld enemies and the game’s bosses.

The combat might feel familiar with its light attacks, heavy attacks, dodge rolls, and stamina management, but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, says I! While some of the attacks don’t have the oomph to feel as precise or enjoyable as one might hope for, I think there’s enough charm and polish in the game’s overall aesthetics to carry it. 

The world design is basic but in an engaging way, and the animation work (outside of cutscenes) is very enjoyable. In fact, the sheer number of different animations is incredibly ambitious for such a small title. Not only for the variety of enemies, but Wa can be equipped with a number of different weapons that feature unique attacks and combos. 

I briefly mentioned the bosses a moment ago, and I do think they’re the absolute highlight of the game. They feel entirely unique from one another, and they’ve got some great music! However, my game crashed more than once during different boss fights. It never happened more than once during a specific fight, but it wasn’t exactly great for a climactic battle. 

That air of slight bugginess existed outside of boss fights, but it never led to a full crash. Some of the game’s environments have strange invisible walls or terrain bugs that would send Wa skeetering across the floor. Again, these were infrequent, but they happened often enough to reinforce the idea that Bygone Dreams needs a fair amount of polish. 

Of course, the game isn’t all about fighting. Some light puzzles occasionally break up the action, and they’re, in a word: fine. I didn’t love them, and I didn’t hate them. The best part of the puzzles was simply the change in pace they offered to

Despite its occasional, technical shortcomings, I think Bygone Dreams is a great, action-filled RPG romp for diehard fans of the genre. It’s also easy to recommend for those who are curious about soulslikes but who want an easier experience. Of course, those aforementioned and often sadistic diehards can enjoy a greater degree of challenge by unlocking harder difficulties and challenges.

While the story didn’t wow me and there’s plenty of jankiness, there’s so much effort, heart, and enjoyable animation that I enjoyed my time with the game. I look forward to Prime Time’s next game, and I’m hoping it will be another action-adventure to sate my endless appetite for smacking things with swords.

The post Review: Bygone Dreams appeared first on Rectify Gaming.

Publisher — Square Enix

Platforms — Nintendo Switch 2 (Reviewed)

Review Copy provided by Publisher

In my humble opinion, RPGs and handhelds go together like peanut butter and jelly. Enormous adventures filled with loads of battles, quests, and level grinding are perfect on systems that can be taken anywhere. Have some empty time you need to fill? Hop into a magical world for a spell and slay a few goblins! Delightful.

This is exactly the type of fun I was hoping to have with Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster on the Nintendo Switch 2. As my first RPG on Nintendo’s shiny, new system, I was eager to explore the world of Luxendarc. Unfortunately, despite some strong gameplay systems, this was an adventure I wasn’t often eager to return to. 

I don’t want to upset fans of the original Bravely Default (released back on Nintendo’s 3DS in 2012), so I’ll start with what I enjoyed. As an RPG published by Square Enix, it’s basically a given that this game’s environments and music are fantastic. I never played the original release, but I could plainly see how much love and care was put into the gorgeous, painterly backdrops. Whether you’re in a town, the overworld map, or even the comparatively drab dungeons, the scenery is a constant highlight.

Similarly, the music is pitch perfect. It’s exactly what a classic, medieval adventure filled with magic, bravery, and peril should sound like. It has moments of gentle and mysterious twinkling, and chunks of high-energy accordion playing that make you want to fight for your life. In all honesty, I think the game’s soundtrack is my favorite part of the entire experience.

However, the combat’s not too bad either. It’s a turn-based affair, of course, and it features the titular abilities to either Brave or Default. When you decide to ‘Default’, you’re essentially skipping your turn to give yourself an additional action on your next turn if you choose to ‘Brave’. You can even ‘Default’ multiple times in a row so that, eventually, you can cash in on your defensive investments and unleash a flurry of ‘Brave’ actions in a single turn. 

It’s not the deepest system in the world, but it is an interesting way to give the game’s simple turn-based combat a tad more strategy. Of course, there’s also an immense job system that adds plenty of different combinations and abilities to your battles, but I’m not the biggest fan of job systems.

On one hand, they’re a great way to give you loads of creative freedom in how you battle. Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster does this very well with a whopping 24 different jobs to discover and master. 

On the other hand, mastering that many different jobs would be an enormous investment of one’s time. I did what I always do when job systems appear, and I only worry about enough to keep my team alive and moving through the game. As much as I love RPGs, I need a deeper reason to grab a shovel and dig deep into the grind than simply watching my stats level up. 

Usually, it’s a game’s story or characters that inspire me to crawl through every dungeon and tackle every optional challenge. Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster had nothing for me in either department. The grand journey to gather four elemental crystals is painfully generic and bland. There’s this intangible sense of dreary boredom I couldn’t shake that would appear any time the plot’s critical points cropped up. Hell, the game’s “shocking” twist was done with such unenthusiastic simplicity that I feel uninterested to even bring it up.  

While towns are loaded with personality thanks to the visuals and music, their citizens are all expressionless, uninteresting, and vague. A pretty-looking and sounding world is nice, but I never felt compelled to actually save it because it was such a dull place to explore.

All of this might sound harsh, but I have saved my harshest words for the game’s playable characters. Oh, how I despise them. Your primary protagonist, Tiz, has the personality equivalent of the flavor of water. Similarly, Agnés, Ringabel, and Edea are La Croix flavored water in that they’re almost indiscernible from normal water. Each one of them feels like a textbook example of how to create two-dimensional characters. In that sense, I think all aspiring story writers should play Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster so that they know what not to do. 

For the life of me, I could never understand why the game so regularly wants to interrupt you by encouraging you to engage in the optional side conversations with your party. In these little chats, the characters use a thesaurus to rephrase and repeat plot points that were just barely introduced. These conversations, and the overall plot itself, are all tell and no show. How do we know a character is sad or determined? Don’t worry! They’ll tell you roughly 18 times before you can travel to the next town. 

I definitely think that hardcore RPG fans will find a lot to enjoy with this game. For fans of the series, it might be worth revisiting as well. The jump to HD might appeal to some, however, there’s something to be said about the loss of the game’s nostalgic, chunky pixels on the 3DS. I looked up various pieces of gameplay for comparison’s sake, and character models look significantly worse in HD thanks to their rough polygons that were made for a specific system.

Then again, longtime fans might love to see the game they know so well in a new light! As a newcomer myself, I wasn’t terribly impressed. While the combat is just fine and the job system offers neat combinations, I found the story and its characters so crushingly uninteresting that I started to dread picking up my Switch 2 to continue the journey. Thankfully, the gorgeous music is available for streaming, as I don’t plan to revisit Luxendarc anytime soon. 

The post Review: Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster appeared first on Rectify Gaming.

Publisher — Rowye

Platforms — PC (Reviewed)

Review code provided by Developer

NOTE:

The following game is being reviewed in an Un-Complete Early Press Preview State, the game may change after the release of this review, this review reflects the game at the time of publishing. Due to the Early Preview , the following review is unrated.

We’re seeing more and more solo developer projects these days, and that’s fantastic! It means game-making is becoming more accessible, and we get to see more titles with that purity of vision that comes from a single creative mind working on a project. 

Enter Darkenstein 3D: a retro-inspired shooter created by one person. While it’s still in development, the game’s alpha build is a wonderful example of how much work a solo dev can accomplish, and that not every artistic vision will resonate with all players.

Set during the peak of WW2, you take on the role of the Hobo Guy—a down-on-his-luck American who has somehow found himself deep behind enemy lines. To make things even worse for the poor guy, his faithful canine companion is stolen by Nazis. You’ll have to shoot and kick your way through Nazi soldiers, zombies, and more to get your good pal Gunther back.

It’s an outlandish premise, yes, and it immediately brings the irreverent wackiness of Wolfenstein 3D and its infamous Mecha-Hitler to mind. While fans of classic Wolfenstein titles might enjoy the absurdity, it certainly isn’t for everyone. In fact, the majority of the game’s tone isn’t for me.

Personally, I think the game’s attempts at humor always fall flat. Hobo Guy has a strange fixation on both pie and piss. If he isn’t spewing a random line about pie, it’s a random line about piss. Or, of course, there’s the incredibly odd piece of dialogue that mentions “piss-soaked pie.” Coupled with the uneven voice acting, I found all of these so-called jokes only made Hobo Guy increasingly annoying over time. 

Again, some folks might enjoy the crass humor accompanying their boomer shooter action. Speaking of which, Darkenstein 3D is doing a fine job on that front. Weapons feel nice and distinct from one another, enemy variety is introduced at a nice pace, and the level design, while simple, is laid out smartly enough to encourage some light exploration.

My biggest nitpick for the gameplay is that you have to reload your guns. That might not sound like a big deal, but this is a boomer shooter and I’m a boomer shooter maniac. Something about fast-paced FPS combat being interrupted by a reloading sequence makes my skin want to turn inside out. It’s just not natural! 

However, the no-reloading idea might work best for fantastical settings like Doom and Quake. I understand that with the WW2 setting, Darkenstein 3D might want weapon reloading to ground itself in reality a bit. That’s fine, if so, but the game really ought to learn the difference between clips and magazines. 

While it’s not completed yet, I have to say that the amount of work already poured into Darkenstein 3D is admirable. Fans of retro FPS titles will undoubtedly find a lot to love with the game’s punchy weapons, pulpy action, and quick pacing. Yet, for me and a few others, the game’s tone and obnoxious writing soils the experience.

The post Review: Darkenstein 3D (Press Preview) appeared first on Rectify Gaming.

Publisher — Fulqrum Publishing

Platforms — PC (Reviewed)

Boomer shooters, arena shooters, retro shooters, or whatever you want to call them, are loads of these FPS titles. Characterized by fast-paced spraying and praying, a varied arsenal of guns, and maze-like level design, one would be forgiven for thinking that each boomer shooter plays roughly the same.

However, subtle nuances in a boomer shooter can heavily alter the overall game feel. Viscerafest, for example, has all of the genre-specific traits, but it definitely has its own flavor that sets it apart. Unfortunately, that specific flavor might not appeal to all players.

Before you begin bunny hopping and blasting aliens, Viscerafest opens with a brief bit of background. You play as Caroline: a not-so-mentally-stable mercenary who wants to marry her boyfriend. Sadly, the perfect ring is a tad too pricey, so Caroline accepts a job to nab a high-paying bounty.

This is a goofy premise, which is good! As with most boomer shooters, all we need is a simple story explanation of why we’re shooting, and that’s it. The game’s story quickly and politely gets out of the way, but its hyper-wacky tone is never absent.

Caroline, for example, is a regular chatterbox during gameplay. She’s full of quips, wisecracks, and the occasional stint of singing. I found most of it enjoyable thanks to her actress’s strong performance, but it’s easy to see it getting on one’s nerves after hours of gameplay. 

Hilariously, you can adjust how frequently Caroline interrupts gameplay with her commentary in the game’s settings. Options for one-liners range from ‘Never’ to ‘Bubsy’, a great choice for those who hate gaming in silence.

While I found the game’s story and dialogue inoffensively goofy, the rest of the experience didn’t sit well with me. Shooting each weapon felt nice, but managing ammo never did. You have an extremely limited amount of ammunition for each gun, and enemies often have specific weaknesses. Throw in the fact that most enemies have strangely large health pools, and each fight became a drawn-out slog to get through.

You can purchase a ‘cheat code’ upgrade to increase your ammo capacity, but I found enemy health to be a persistently irritating issue even as I upgraded my combat ability. As an experiment, I tried multiple levels on lower difficulties and found that the only real change was how much damage enemies dealt. Ammo management and enemy health remain frustratingly skewed on each difficulty.

It constantly felt like Viscerafest didn’t want me to play it like other boomer shooters. That isn’t necessarily bad, but it does mean that Viscerafest wasn’t my jam. It has an odd prioritization on melee combat, which definitely isn’t the game’s strong suit. 

This title feels tuned to appeal to speedrunners or those looking for an extremely specific high-skill challenge. I imagine the game’s developers and some enthusiastic boomer shooter masochists love its breakneck speed and “Play it the right way or hit the highway” design.

Unfortunately, I found the frustrating design choices to continue piling up. Your default movement speed in Viscerafest is just barely too slow, and the only ways to move faster are a dash button and bunny hopping.

Holding down your jump button causes Caroline to cruise along at a much faster pace, and, to be fair, it is easy to control! The problem is that I don’t particularly enjoy seeing my screen persistently bounce up and down just because I want to move a bit quicker in a game.

The art for Viscerafest is lovingly pixelated but largely bland and repetitive. At high speeds of constant bouncing, the blur of pixels made me motion sick during each play session. The game’s uninspired and obnoxious music didn’t make navigating each confusingly laid-out level much better, either.

Viscerafest could easily appeal to boomer shooter fans who want a high-speed challenge that demands mastery of specific gameplay. However, the game’s obtuse design choices with gunplay, ammo management, enemy design, traversal, and level layout might leave most players feeling more alienated than the actual aliens Caroline crushes. 

The post Review: Viscerafest appeared first on Rectify Gaming.

Publisher — Oribe Ware Games

Platforms — Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 (Reviewed), Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Steam

Code Provided by Publisher

While I’m not a video game developer myself, I have to imagine that one of the most complex types of video games to create is a 2D fighter. These titles require frame-perfect animations and programming to deliver the high-speed gameplay and action that fans of the genre expect.

The highly technical design and gameplay is probably why we don’t see many indie-made 2D fighters. Challenging development be damned, however, as Oribe Ware Games certainly gave it the old college try with their game Mostroscopy. Unfortunately, this game is an example of why 2D fighters aren’t often seen on the indie side of the industry.

Mostroscopy isn’t the catchiest title in the world for a game, but the game’s theme is certainly unique. The visual aesthetic of the setting and each character is heavily inspired by Mexican luchador and horror films from the 50s. As a result, you have luchadors going toe-to-toe with sea monsters, robots, vampires, and a few more.  

As someone who constantly desires more unique visual styles in their games, I love the idea! However, the unique theme is sullied by a frightfully ugly art style. The game’s 2D splash art for characters and Story Mode cutscenes aren’t awful, but they aren’t enough to make up for the character models you control when playing.

One could probably argue that the hideous 3D models are a touching tribute to the schlocky monster movies of the 1950s. One could, but one shouldn’t. Whether it was an homage to rubber suits and old filmmaking techniques or not, these models have poor texturing, odd proportions, and character designs that range from uninteresting to hideous.

Yes, monsters should be hideous, but not in a way that makes them look half-baked. Stages are equally unappealing and offer barely any visual interest. It’s a nice touch that you can play on each stage in either black and white or Technicolor, but the constant old-film effect only feels irritating as time goes on. 

The saving grace for the art in Mostroscopy is its animations. A heap of thought was put into each character’s animations to make sure they move distinctly from one another. In some cases, they actually look really great! 

Kukamon is a giant freezer robot with some of my favorite personality-filled animations. One of its moves involves Kukamon opening its chest as chunks of ice fly out toward its opponent. This lighthearted and wacky energy is most evident in the game’s animations, and it makes the actual act of playing feel much better than it really is.

Controls are generally responsive in Mostroscopy, but it’s got plenty of jankiness. Hitboxes are all over the place, some animations happen way too fast or too slowly, and, on occasion, my character would stop responding to button inputs. 

Additionally, Mostroscopy went for a unique approach and tried to deliver a game that combines the format of a traditional 2D fighter with some of the control scheming of Super Smash Bros. Being able to access one’s special attacks without directional inputs sounds nice, but the Smash Bros. style of button pressing makes 2D fighting combos much more uncomfortable to pull off.

As a result of the general jank and strange button decisions, no fight in Mostroscopy was ever much fun. Whether trying to crack off combos or simply poking at an enemy, I constantly felt as if I was fighting the game itself rather than my virtual opponent. 

Fourteen different fighters, fourteen stages, and a Story Mode campaign is an impressive amount of work. However, each of the game’s campaigns is brief, uninteresting, and plagued by the gameplay and visual issues addressed above. 

While Oribe Ware Games definitely has a clear vision for Mostroscopy, the execution is sorely lacking. The gameplay feels inconsistent, imprecise, and janky. Throw in the rough and unappealing visual style, and this is one 2D fighter that simply isn’t fit to step into the ring. 

The post Review: Mostroscopy appeared first on Rectify Gaming.