While Void was definitely a better expansion with more classes, lore and a developed companion.....

You get to finally get revenge against the arrogant administratum crone that the base game gave you surprisingly little options for.

Finally and in so many different ways!

Pretty much worth it for that alone.

I adore the series and this will be a recommendation for the most part (it really is a great evolution) but there are so many problematic aspects you need to be aware of.

- PC performance has been completely ignored.
- They've weirdly time gated some important monsters, not even event related. Log in a day late, better wait months!
- Collabs seem to be more transactional than I recall? SF collab is essentially just paid DLC gestures/outfits on the surface.
- Cats don't cook. They just give you rations now. HOW CAN YOU CUT THE COOKING CATS?!
- Decorations are fubard. Not only are so so many missing (Barely any 3 slot but end game gear is full of 3 slot armour) but they've divvied it up between weapon and armour and armour gets the worse decorations. This limits builds immensely.
- Passive item income is so so so low and is a joke when you look at the options.
- Still can't figure out how to program an auto re-supply or let us wear more than ONE trap per hunt.
- Doesn't launch with layered weapons, top tier weapons look derp. Also only launched with 2 endgame armour sets/bosses.

The pros are pretty much the same as every MH game, notable standouts would be:
- Auto-drive, annoying at first but useful as you can take your prep drugs and sharpen while it gets you to the monster.
- AN ACTUAL PLOT, WTF?! Okay, it's still pretty ♥♥♥♥, but it's the best they've ever put out despite huge logic holes.
- PROTAGONIST-CHAN CAN TALK?! You're still a dumbass but not a mute one for once!
- Mall Goth Waifu friendly, zero struggle creating a great character, fishnets included >_>
- Support NPC hunters from Rise! Well, worse than in Rise but far more valuable than humans who will DC intentionally and NPC Hunters cannot cart you to failure.

My only real nitpick is the UI moves way waaaay too much. Trying to read a dialogue box while the dialogue box is shifting and warping is possibly either a test for ADHD or a surprisingly creative way to give you it.

If it could be slowed down or stopped that would be lovely, though I doubt it given how baked in UIs tend to be.

An unexpected metroidvania gem, that requires a little appetite for punishment.

Noreya is unusual as far as the genre goes. There's very little telegraphing what abilities you'll get and some are quite surprising. Enemies will seem very unfair until getting a chunk of these but it balances with a nice restart level/area option or just going back to your last resting place with all your coins so you can upgrade and come back. The 1.1 rework helped a great deal as well, you have some more traditional iframes now, less tedium and boss health bars at last.

The game's real weakness isn't from the game itself in my opinion. It's the lack of information around it. You'll typically find at least blogspam sites with guides on areas, abilities, tricky puzzles and enemies but for some reason Noreya hasn't spawned any of those. So finding the True Ending will be leg work, reading and some brute forcing for example. Hopefully this will change in time as the game gets picked up by more people as it deserves to.

I wouldn't often recommend a gacha to anyone, and in general well, you're best off not gacha-ing if you can help it.

Limbus Company however, is beautiful madness.

For a moment, ignore the gacha. Did you play LoR? Impressed by the insane yet emotional moments it popped out in a some sort of cyberpunk lovecraftian nightmare? Limbus is in the same world/city/hell. The lore is much more in depth of course, and the plot? The plot is actually good. Not good for a gacha. Bloody good, getting better each Canto (Act). If you aren't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ your pants by Canto 5 or 6, stop taking imodium.

Now the devil, the gacha. It's a mixed bag but on the better end. The pass basically mandatory because of the rewards, but it is once per canto, which is 3 months or longer and has infinite rewards, and I do mean infinite.

You have your bs currency as usual but then you have fragments. You get crates, you pick fragments from them (no key nonsense) and when you have enough you can bypass pulling entirely and just take the unit you want, and this is a frequently obtainable option once you catch up on the story.

The battle system is very complex, but also very rewarding and the animations in the later parts are just insane. Canto 6 has a few moments even your Imodium addiction cannot help against.

There are crimes, major crimes and then not letting you romance Sister Argenta.

The game - like most Owlcat titles at first - shines where it works. The later you come into this the better your experience is probably going to be. For brevity I'll do a pro cons list like the walking cliche I am.

PROS:
* Great story telling, with very surprising moments.
* Your choices matter.
* LOTS of passives talents, which means building a character becomes quite intricate.
* Companions are well written and the romances like Yrliet are pleasantly unusual, when they don't stop working because of bugs and you somehow find yourself alone in the epilogue without your Space Elf Waifu.
* When you click with the combat it can feel incredibly rewarding. Pump swaths with burst studs or heavy bolters, or unleash psychic devastation.

* High level cap. FINALLY FREEDOM from level <=20 jail. 55 seems to be it, though you'll likely not reach it.

CONS:
If the pros list got you, I wouldn't even read this part as I already mentioned bugs, but for fairness here goes.

* BUGS. This will be less and less over time, but I did have to manually progress using Toybox (MOD) a few times because of game breaking bugs. I was also romantically abandoned but I take that as a real life reflection for the lols apparently.

* Slow paced combat. You do figure out a groove eventually but combat can become a bit of a slog when everything is turn based and enemies start having huge health pools, or every warp you get attacked and can't farm insight to lower this.

* World map is, well, I mean, it's gorgeous, but like in the above, navigator's insight being a VERY finite resource is not explained. You have to be very careful on lowering dangerous routes or suffer considerably later on. Focusing on making direct routes from colonies to your capital is what I'd suggest.

* Reputation is ♥♥♥♥♥♥. Or was for you in the future. You CANNOT get max rep with anyone except the navy. This may be a formula issue or a "We forgot the 0" issue but considering how much equipment is locked at max rep, it's a great misfortune. The market system is very novel but you should absolutely be able to max 2 of 4 factions a playthrough. On my close to completionist playthrough most were at half, one 3/4. Even doing a HUGE favor for all the factions nets you a measily 500 rep.

* Psychic power balance. Minor gripe. Pyromancy is explained as the boom aspect, it isn't. It has great passives but fairly weak actives. Telepathy is the boom aspect. Biomancy has 0 offence despite being used offensively in cutscenes. Santic is awesome but sword of light is buggy and impractical. More importantly though, veil degredation is a little too punishing early on. You need your navigator to lower it (the only reliable way in the whole game) but even then you'll stop casting because of it a LOT. Alleviated later on with your own stat bloat.

* Extremely few classes. 4 classes. That's it? Kinda. They diversivy based on your origin (huge for navigator - which you cannot be) and you can mix and match them up with later sub classes but it still feels a little samey and barren. No archetype seems to be designed for Psykers (Willpower based) as well which is a bit disapointing but Soldier works surprisingly well, and Arch Militant does too if you excuse its main buff not working properly if you switch from single psychic to aoe psychic.


Honestly though, all these could be fixed with patches and the remaining DLC. Take out the bugs part alone and the game is so worth it already. This is a 120+ hour adventure and is fantastic. I would go in with Toybox for now though, or in the long run if you want "player sexual" characters.

The class is pretty great overall, voice acting is also good to above par regardless of what some people will tell you here. Her tone is authentic to the style, they aren't crazy battle nuns drooling and lusting, they're stoic with unrelenting faith in their actions.

As for the mecanics of the class, personally speaking: Boltgun sucks ass. The Flamer is "okay" but lacks both range and a stationary option, it also takes you out of cover constantly. The Flame Gun and Brazier though, they look derp, but are insanely powerful. Despite having only 2 useful moves, this is higher than most weapons in the game. Don't worry about which you pick though, you unlock all Battle Sister weapons early.

Acts of Faith are weird. They don't outright tell you if the passive works when the ability is not used, only when used or both, outside of one that explicitly says so. They also don't "sticky" your slots so when you weapon set swap from overheating your "acts of faith" will be rearranged to other keys, this is completely unavoidable if you use two different weapons and is quite ♥♥♥♥♥ when the move you want is a life saving shield but instead you hit the suicide button becauselols.

I'd still lean positive though. It has worms, it is PRICEY for dlc even if its a class, but it's fun and lets you be a "badass ♥♥♥♥♥" without being the flesh puppet of an assassin.

If you can get over the linguistic barrier (there are english subtitles) and the initial culture shock of how sharp Chinese sounds to even a hardened weeabo, you're in for a very unexpected treat here.

Combat is fluid, story is very VERY deep, crafting is quite extensive but only unlocks after 20 hours in and the game world is stupidly pretty. The quality and setting combine to give visual treat to the eyes every moment.

Less awesomely however, the game is always online (a big ugh) and will kick you out because of that. Customization is very limited with a single skill tree for each character that winds up being either identical or very small in choices. Difficulty spikes dramatically.

In the midling you have the minigames. There are entire minigames built for small sections, these can be fun, or tedious. The crafting research ones are especially annoying and you're quizzed on things you cannot possibly know (by your workers who clearly know bugger all themselves) and getting a single wrong answer means wasted materials and trying again.

Still, with all the caveats it's fantastic and a steal at its price. Swallow the linguistic bullet and take a chance on this one, it's something special.

Absolute game-changer, quite literally.

I write this mostly for those on Ultrawide setups. It's fantastic for UW beyond its already established features.

I love niche games, niche games have awful ports, awful ports typically stretch the image and break your aspect ratio which is the utter bane of everyone UW that doesn't like their anime waifus looking like they're on the dunk'n donut diet. For YEARS I've suffered with apps like "Borderless Window" often well, stretching the dang image, or aligning it left because it feels like it. Same result with every other popular app. UNTIL THIS.

This beauty will get you pillarboxed on even the worst ports. Set them windowed, set the integer to 1, hit the hotkey and bam, perfect.

An absolutely thrilling - and oft tear-jerking - adventure.

Brought to you by one-half of the minds behind the glorious Ever17 you might expect great things from Root Double, and those expectations are not misplaced. Although the Before chapter does start out very slowly (which is why it isn't recommended to start with) both it and After turn out to be amazing adventures that recreate that captured sensation, yet still manage to make you laugh and cry in the most uncertain of times.

Go in for a quality VN with hard choices, come out feeling like you beat the world.

Tl;dr: Buy it kthx