Ravenous Devils Review – Disturbing, Dark, And Different

Reviewed on: Xbox Series X/S
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC
Publisher: Troglobytes Games
Developer: Bad Vices Games
Rating: Mature

The aroma of seasoned meat makes stomachs rumble, and you soon find your restaurant filled with hungry patrons. They dig their teeth into succulent entrees, wondering why they’ve never tasted anything like this before. Word of your establishment’s exotic tastes spread quickly, and you soon have to expand your operations with more tables for guests and better meat-chopping capabilities. This thriving eatery is strangely attached to an adorable little tailor shop that doubles as your meat supplier. Anyone going in for a fitting tastes a sharp blade, and their corpse is tossed into the basement, chopped up, and turned into a tasty steak or meat pie.

Ravenous Devils tells the story of a serial killer tailor and his loving chef wife who both want to get rich no matter the cost. This game is as disturbing and gory as it sounds – you see the brutal killings, the chopping of the bodies, and witness story moments that are downright chilling. Part Sweeney Todd and part cooking simulator, Ravenous Devils won me over with a tale that dangles the question of “will they get caught?” and intense timer-based gameplay that continually rewards you with new interactions and possibilities. Developer Bad Vices Games has created a dark and breezy experience that nails progression, so repeated gameplay interactions don’t feel like they overstay their welcome.

The macabre cooking flows nicely, unfolding like an old point-and-click adventure game, where all you do is tell the characters where to go and what to grab. The simplicity works, allowing Hildred, the chef, to grab a slab of human meat, mix it with other ingredients, and then place it in an oven. Percival, the tailor, can sew clothing, murder people with his scissors, and tend to a garden. With just the click of a button, you can freely switch control between these twisted souls.

The goal is to keep the clothing shop and restaurant’s shelves stocked with items. When people enter either establishment, a timer appears over their head and ticks down while waiting for the item they desire. The faster you supply them, the more money they give you in turn – an exchange that lights a fire in all of your movements, making you bounce quickly between the two jobs to make sure both Percival and Hildred are hard at work. Should you not get to them in time, and they leave disgruntled, you take a hit in reputation.

 

The flow of play is broken up into days, each lasting no more than 10 minutes. This short burst of hustling and bustling feels just right given the upbeat pace. None of the murderous duos' tasks require much handholding and are all about timing. You don't want any seconds in a day to be wasted. The goal is to maximize time and figure out how to bounce between tasks to take care of every guest. It's a fun and chaotic dance of cooking and sewing.

At the end of the workday, you lock the shop's doors and it’s time to spend your hard-earned money on handy upgrades. You can improve your meat grinder to deliver more meat, add more mannequins to sell clothing, and plant new vegetables in the greenhouse. You can also splurge on things like booze that calms the nerves of waiting shoppers, hire an assistant to serve tables, and even adopt a cat to catch mice (which you can turn into a treat for guests).

Most of the upgrades lead to more money coming in per sale and up the overall difficulty – a nice design touch that increases the tension simultaneously as the rewards. For instance, adding more ingredients creates a more expensive dish that takes more time to prepare. Adding tables for people to sit at makes a backlog of orders you have to scramble to serve – a fun process that makes time fly.

As simple as moving a cursor is, some frustration comes from its accuracy and the timing of being able to link to the next task. I would periodically run into moments where I would click on the meat I wanted to serve up and then the workstation to put it on. Rather than grabbing the meat, Hildred would go to the workstation and grab the plate instead. It's only a 15-second mistake, but it's enough to create chaos.

As all the cooking and sewing madness unfolds, you periodically receive letters from a mysterious someone named “J.” He knows what you are up to and is a massive fan of yours. His interest in you grows more disturbing with each document you read. The game's ending leaves much to be desired, but the narrative journey building up to it was fun to follow and helped me stomach the twisted content, which impresses in how carefully plotted and fleshed out it is.

The gore may be too extreme and nauseating at times, but the decent animations, nice-looking restaurants, and compelling narrative kept me pushing through to the last cuts. Ravenous Devils is unlike anything out there, and it won’t be for everyone, but there’s no denying that it’s a nicely made and oddly enjoyable experience.

Score: 7.5

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Rogue Legacy 2 Review - Generations Of Greatness

Reviewed on: PC
Platform: Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PC
Publisher: Cellar Door Games
Developer: Cellar Door Games
Rating: Everyone 10+

Rogue Legacy 2 doesn’t make the biggest initial splash. In fact, at first glance, you’d be hard-pressed to see what’s changed from 2013’s Rogue Legacy to Cellar Door Games’ sequel. Despite switching from 2D sprites to a 3D rendered world, it veers close to the previous game’s aesthetic. While this lack of deviation from the original’s template proves to be a theme throughout Rogue Legacy 2, there are a lot of changes that add up to a bigger, better version of the original in almost every way.

Everything may be rendered in 3D this time around, but Rogue Legacy 2 retains its 2D platforming roots. As an heir to a long and somewhat tragic bloodline, you run, jump, and attack using the weapon of that character’s inherent class. To add some more tools to the combat repertoire, each heir has a special class ability and a random spell tied to separate face buttons. There’s also a nifty spin kick used to bounce off enemies or dangerous objects that’s critical to master to make it far into the dicey dungeons. The controls are tight and precise – making jumping and attacking curse-free affairs. The game is easy to pick up and get used to and, more importantly, easy to return to after some time away.

At the start of a run, you choose an heir to your bloodline with specific hereditary traits that make that character’s generation their own for better or worse. I love all the different variations of warriors these traits create, and that you’re rewarded for choosing someone with “bad” genetics. It adds a lot of depth to the rogue-lite concept. One fighter might be a have the characteristic of a giant, towering over their peers. Another may be colorblind, shifting the presentation to greyscale. Someone with unfortunate vertigo flips the world upside-down for that run. Any traits that make the game more difficult result in a significant modifier, allowing for more gold to be accrued throughout that lifetime. These modifiers deliver more than enough wealth to make up for the extra effort given.

With that gold, you can build up the bloodline’s castle, and the port town below it. Skills can be purchased after each run, adding permanent stat increases to every character you play as; strength, intellect, health, and more can be increased along with unlocking more classes to play as. In town, you can craft new gear – which also offers stat bonuses and more with a full set of armor – before forfeiting the remainder of your cash and heading off on a new adventure. I’m glad the persistent upgrades are back, but I do have some problems with the system overall. As more ranks of an upgrade are purchased, the price for the next tier increases for the same flat stat increase, offering diminishing returns on character improvements as the cost to upgrade skyrockets. There are also far too many repetitive upgrade nodes featuring the same stat boosts as others that set you back an even greater amount of gold. By the late game, the castle building menu is cluttered with redundant slots and ends up being a far messier system than it needs to be.

However, class identities are more straightforward and have been greatly expanded upon from Rogue Legacy. This time around, each heir’s class determines which weapon type they use and an additional ability they have at their disposal. Knights comes equipped with a big sword and can block attacks with a shield, while Mages sling fireballs from their wand at a distance and can use two spells instead of one. Rangers can aim and fire a bow and create leafy canopy platforms to fire from in the air. The Pirate can fly around in an airship shooting cannonballs at the foes in its sight. I adore each class identity, even if I found about half of the choices hardly viable for my playstyle. I gravitate towards a specific few like the katana-wielding Ronin and the Boxer, who builds up quick-fisted combos and finishes off-targets with a devastating haymaker. Classes like the Bard, which creates music notes that you detonate with a spin kick, or the Gunslinger, which fires a volley of shots from their pistols, need a bit too much finesse for my liking.

Like Rogue’s visual style, Cellar Door Games decided the gameplay loop wasn’t going anywhere, which is great because I wouldn’t have it any other way. The heir platforms through ever-shifting, increasingly challenging areas to take down six Estuaries, the big bosses guarding each biome. During these battles, you’ll often die, upgrade your castle and gear, then repeat the process. Each trek into the citadel is a chance to progress, collect gold and treasure, and search high and low for ability-enhancing Relics to better your chances of survival. The world’s layout changes every time you die, making every life in Rogue Legacy 2 mostly unique until you understand how the world populates.

Each area has a unique aesthetic and feel. You start in the stone structure of Citadel Agartha and move to the surrounding areas, such as the linear and waterlogged Axis Mundi to the east and the cold tundra of Kerguelen Plateau at the other end of that. There’s a tall tower to be climbed into the stormy skies, offering fun and challenging platforming to reach the Estuary at the top, and below the citadel lies a deadly and dangerous area that I hated going into, yet I love the difficulty it provides near the end of the game. Exploring each area rewards you with armor blueprints to craft in town and important mobility powers that unlock access to the subsequent biomes. These include various types of dashes, double jumps, and abilities that interact with puzzling items in the world that halt your path forward. I found it incredibly satisfying to have a form of progression borne of exploration rather than only being tied to the power gained with castle upgrades. Not to mention these moves make getting around a lot easier and more fun, so I was always ecstatic to stumble across one. Those little nuggets of joy only happen a few times over an entire playthrough, but what keeps an heir’s life interesting are persistent items for that run that affect attacks, abilities, or stats called Relics.

Like the various weapons that come part and parcel with each class, Relics are another addition to the Rogue Legacy formula the original didn’t have, making each run more entertaining. Special rooms in each major area can be found that offer up a Relic. Some are minor changes like increasing the critical hit chance for attacks or granting a maximum health increase at the cost of some HP, while others warp the way you play.

Items like the marble statue, which causes a small projectile-nullifying shockwave whenever your feet touch the ground, are a blast to find and strategize around. I’m also a fan of the poison and fire effects that deal damage over time to add a little extra zing to every attack. However, collecting Relics has a drawback, and it’ll cost you your HP. Relics feed off a stat called resolve that’s tied to a given heir’s vitality. If you have enough Relics in your possession, your max health drops in relation to the resolve cost of the magical item. It’s a risk/reward system that I understand would be too powerful if Relics were unchecked in some way, but I did lament that the game doesn’t let you go wild with every enhancement you find as other rogue-lites do.

 

Even after spending tens of hours scouring the dungeons of Rogue Legacy 2, there’s a lot to do and find beyond defeating the Estuaries and the final challenges that lie after. Story rooms hold diary entries giving backstories on the Estuaries and the area they lord over, which is intriguing, though not all that essential to enjoying the game. Your seaside port town also offers enemy gauntlets, enhanced boss encounters, and class challenges to test your skills beyond what’s available in the core explorable regions. I know I’ll be going back to uncover more and try to clear these more difficult scenarios.

Despite my nitpicks, every new discovery unveiled, skills obtained, and boss defeated wipes away any grief and replaces it with deep satisfaction. There’s a lot to clean up with the core progression systems to make the ramp from beginning to end escalate more evenly, but I’ve enjoyed most of my hours struggling through countless generations of my goofy little bloodline. I am overjoyed the entertaining heritage of this series remains firmly intact.

Score: 9

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Trek To Yomi Review – Slog Through The Afterlife

Reviewed on: PC
Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Developer: Leonard Menchiari, Flying Wild Hog
Rating: Mature

“Fall seven times, stand up eight,” says Trek to Yomi’s hero, the orphan-turned-samurai Hiroki. The line represents not only his caricature-like perseverance, but something players should take to heart if they want to reach the end of this journey. However, I wasn’t always sure seeing the finish line was worth getting back on my feet. The eye-catching art direction can’t hide the title’s lackluster gameplay, empty characters, predictable story, and antiquated design. Indies are typically fertile soil for fresh ideas and distinct experiences, but Trek to Yomi comes up disappointingly short here, with very few concepts I haven’t seen a dozen times before.

The opening is one of Trek to Yomi’s high notes. Flickering film. Melancholy music. A burning town. I didn’t know where I was and what was going on, but the game had me ready for an old-school, Kurosawa-inspired samurai adventure. The tutorial is cleverly tucked into a sudden flashback scene that transported me to a time when the now-devastated city hummed with life.

I ran through the combat basics with my sensei, Sanjuro, who embodies all the well-worn tropes of the aging samurai and father figure. He helped me master some basic combo-centered techniques tied to my stamina bar. My repertoire eventually grew from humble two-button attacks to more intricate strings of commands, and I added a slew of ranged weapons to my arsenal. However, fighting never changes much from these early moments, and, after just meeting him, my teacher was called away on urgent business.

Introducing pivotal characters, like sensei Sanjuro and his daughter Aiko, in a moment of peace – knowing that soon the city would be in flames – could have been a great way to attach me to them emotionally. However, the five-hour-long game doesn’t take the time to set up any deep connections, relying mainly on implications and backstory included in collectibles’ descriptions. The tranquility is shattered too soon, and I have to fight through an all-too-obvious and uninspiring narrative. Hiroki sets down a worn path of duty and revenge that leads him through the depths of Yomi itself. And the game, like its underworld-exploring protagonist, only descends from here.

Trek to Yomi is a 2D side-scroller, which means exploration and combat both take place on a narrow plane. Whether battling through sunny fields or supernatural swamps, fights consist of enemies awkwardly running into your line of sight, then engaging you. Moment-to-moment gameplay essentially amounts to: Confront groups of enemies, run down a linear path, find collectibles or ammo, beat the boss, repeat. Everything is technically sound, but there’s not a lot to get excited about.

This tedious loop, along with the graphics, put me in mind of a PlayStation 2-era game, with all of the faults and little of the nostalgia. Characters stare off blankly even in dire circumstances, the few in-game choices I had felt mostly unimportant until the very end, and I had to stop off at save points every few minutes. This last issue was particularly galling.

On the one hand, I was happy to find a health-restoring, progress-saving shrine after almost every encounter. On the other, it took me out of the world and had me asking why there were so many conveniently placed structures around, even in the depths of the underworld. Despite the abundance, dying – which I did a lot – was always a chore. Every time I perished, I had to run down the same passage, hear the same dialogue, and defeat the same batch of baddies until I broke through to the next section.  

While it doesn’t wipe away all the flaws, I can’t deny there are shining visual moments where the game captures the cinematic atmosphere that inspired it. Among these is a wonderfully framed scene where I faced an opponent in the middle of a river while flashes of lightning illuminate the stormy sky. Or another, which places me between wind-swept grass dancing in the foreground and a looming torii gate in the background, weaving in and out of ominous, swirling fog.   

Sadly, Trek to Yomi looks and feels noticeably outdated for such an aesthetically pleasing game. And its archaic gameplay can’t be completely covered up by its artistic black-and-white filter. Trek to Yomi tried to reach the heights of lauded Japanese filmmaking, but unfortunately, it falls almost as flat as its 2D combat plane.

Score: 6.75

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