BLAEO YEAR #2 - 2025 RECAP

As I expected and anticipated in my early access review back in March they addressed the only issue I had with the game at the time by creating a proper ending for the game that gave meaning and purpose to the gameplay loop. Plus they added a few more features that made the whole experience feel even more complete.

I’m really really happy with the game.

TBA. Sadly I'm still not inspired to write reviews.

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The premise is that the only Assassin’s Creed I’d played before this was Assassin’s Creed 2, and that was many years ago. Furthermore, I knew little to nothing of how the whole series evolved over time, so I didn’t have any particular expectation about this game. I only knew it was well received — better than the previous titles had been — so I added it to my wishlist and I was lucky enough to win it on SG.

Long story short: I enjoyed it.

I really liked how vast and immersive the world is. The whole setting feels real: the various cities, with the people that bring them to life, the impressive castles (I didn’t know I loved Japanese architecture this much), the wilderness and breathtaking sceneries. That’s what astounded me the most: how once you leave the beaten path, you find yourself immersed in an impenetrable bush, exactly as you’d expect from a land that hasn’t been fully corrupted by human presence yet. It just feels right, and it’s probably the best open world game I’ve played in that regard (not that I played many, but still).

Gameplay-wise, I was less impressed, instead. There are two playable characters: a shinobi and a samurai. The shinobi has a classic assassin style, with parkour, stealth kills, and such, which make it very similar to the protagonist of the other game I played. The samurai is basically an unbreakable walking wall; he smashes through almost any enemy with little to no effort. I felt a sort of dissonance playing with this one, not only because he seems unfairly strong, but also because his playstyle really clashes with that of the first character.

This feeling of dissonance was then exacerbated by the story. They built the game as if the two characters were equal, both with strong motivation behind their actions, to the point that once you’ve unlocked both, apart for a few very short sections of the game where you don’t have any choice, you can play with whatever character you prefer. But to me it didn’t feel like that at all. In my opinion, the shinobi’s story had a much stronger premise compared to the samurai’s one, so it made little to no sense to favour the latter in the major quest line.

I’m not saying it’s not fun to play as the samurai. Actually, it reminded me a bit of For Honor, and I liked that game at the time. But this one simply jars with the general perception I had of the game. I wouldn’t have made him a playable character and had him be more of a secondary character instead.

Another thing regarding the plot. We have to deal with two parallel narratives: (1) the one you often forget about: you being someone who’s reliving memories of the past through a simulation; (2) the one that almost the whole game revolves around: you being the very characters which those memories belong to.

About the first one: when I started the game for the first time, I was shown a very interesting cinematic, showing some sceneries, but filled with glitches and such at the same time, and a voice telling something along the lines of “they’re lying to you”. Then I ended up in the hub where I could select the memories of different AC games, including the ones I didn’t actually own. This whole thing really piqued my interest, but I soon realized that there was nothing more to it. They basically relegated the whole lore behind the assassin’s creed simulation to the memory selection screen. The game itself makes no mention of it, with the exception of a handful of secondary missions that are easily missable since their aim is to collect shop currency. I found it quite disappointing.

Concerning the second one: despite the strong premise I mentioned before, it fell a bit short in its delivery at the end. There’s a huge build-up about taking revenge on a group of men who basically took everything away from the protagonists, but the way they end up dealing with them and, most of all, their leader, felt a lot anticlimactic. (Mind that I played with the canon story option activated right from the start, so the “big” choices of the game were taken automatically by the characters. I assume you have a say in that if you can choose yourself)

To make things worse, after that quest line ends, you’re left with just a few personal quests for each of the main characters which feel more like side quests rather than main ones, and then the game just ends, leaving you hanging there like that. I just hope there will be more development and a proper closure to the story with future DLCs.

So, overall, I had fun playing it, but it undeniably left me a bit unsatisfied. Despite that, I would still recommend it.

Aside from the completism frenzy that took over me at the very end, I found this metroidvania mediocre all around.

The combat system is quite dull. It lacks an effective dodging mechanic, and despite presenting a good variety of monsters and attack patterns, I wasn’t able to find the fights particularly fun. That applies to the boss fights, too, because the bosses didn’t show any interesting mechanics and therefore it was rare to feel a sense of challenge.

Another sore point is the exploration. The developers went really overboard with the size of the maps, and so going through them has been a chore more than anything else, especially at the beginning, when I had little to no means of fast travel.

The selection of weapons and equipment was huge and gave the possibility to vary the playstyle a bit, but I ended up sticking to the same kind of weapon for basically the whole playthrough, so the whole inventory system felt a bit unnecessary. At least in my personal experience. The buffs you get from the equipment made little to no difference, which meant I basically ignored them.

What really disappointed me, though, was the story. It’s utter nonsense. It is often unclear what the characters are talking about, since they throw in the names of locations and other characters without explaining any of their lore. That also makes it hard to feel any kind of involvement in the story.

There was also an exaggerated amount of possible endings, and the first one popped up at a really unexpected moment: I was following the quests in the order they are presented, but when I reached a specific boss and beat it, bam! Credits rolling. The game ends like that, without the slightest warning. If you reload after that and beat the boss again, the same thing happens, even though the change in some of the dialogue lines would make you expect to get a different ending. But nuh-uh… If you want a proper ending, you need to collect some random object no one ever told you about and only then fight that very same boss again.

And it doesn’t end there. If you want to see the “true ending” of the game, you have to start a NG+ run (which isn’t a real NG+ but rather a sort of shortened version of chapter 2 in which you play from the point of view of a different character) and only then, you get some sort of understanding of the story as a whole and some sort of satisfying closure.

All in all, it’s all a bit too convoluted for my taste.

To mention some positive aspects, the soundtrack is good and the graphics have a strong visual impact. The drawings are really well made and the use of color is skillful. However, when it comes to the animation, the quality is not at the same level, and this is particularly evident in the few cutscenes, where you can see how they just forced the movement of portions of a still image without really putting any effort in creating a proper animation.

All things considered, I can’t recommend it.

It’s been a weird experience for me.

On paper, I should hate this game. Gameplay-wise, all you do is explore the map with your boat and fish. A gameplay mechanic that repeats in the same way day after day.

However, what made the whole experience bearable—no, scratch that—enjoyable, it’s the whole setting.

The mood is simply right. The lovecraftian dread the game is based on can be felt from the very first interaction with the locals, from the very first day-night cycles you survive and, most of all, when you experience for the first time the symptoms of your own insanity.

Even the world is well built. Exploring each single biome and discovering all the fish species and their mutant variants has been a pleasure.

Furthermore, the story, in its simplicity, has been effectively presented. I was left speechless by the plot twist at the end, and the bad ending… just, woah… I really didn’t expect that, but I found it to be the perfect closure to the game. (I may be heavily biased by the fact that I’ve been reading an H.P. Lovecraft’s tales collection lately.)

The only strange feature of the game is the inability to use a fishing setup that allows you to catch any kind of fish, even once you reach the endgame. The game forces you to go to port and change fishing rods/nets everytime—an unnecessary waste of time at that point.

And a side note about the developer: one of the DLCs of the game is just a badly disguised microtransaction. I’ve never seen something like this before, so I was a bit taken aback when I had to accept that this little masterpiece of a game and that kind of marketing malpractice came from the same people.

Anyway, aside from that specific DLC — really, avoid it — I can recommend the game.

I found it extremely effective in its delivery. The game is fast paced and packed with action that delivers a great shooting feeling.

The level design is interesting and the story straight-forward. Overall, it was really really fun.

A huge pro is that the difficulty can be fine-tuned to suit players of any skill level.

I didn’t find any particular flaw.

Strongly recommended.

The game is heavily inspired by the series The Room.

It lacks a bit of ingenuity in the puzzle building, though. Everything is quite linear and telegraphed, except for a pair of puzzles that end up being a random clicking fest.

The story could have been interesting, but it came to nothing in the end.

I liked the art style, but aside from that, I found it a bit bland.

The gameplay was a bit boring, the puzzles were not challenging enough, and the combat system was quite minimal in its mechanics.

The rhyming dialogues were well written, but the story was quite predictable since the very premise.

I wouldn’t recommend it.

The second title only shows some minimal improvement compared to the first one, but it’s enough to make it an enjoyable experience.

A good example is the removal of the power attack and its substitution with both a dash and a combo attack that make fights much more enjoyable.

Furthermore, the developers made it so that you can’t over-heal yourself. That is, if you’re at full HP, you won’t be able to pick up any healing orbs, as they’ll just stay on the ground.

The graphic quality has improved, and now the character models look a lot less flat in their appearence.

Furthermore, I think the story was more original this time around. It was less predictable and better written. I liked it a lot more than the prequel one.

I also liked the few songs featured in the game, and I had a laugh when I heard the one sung by the discarded opinions.

A weird choice they made: they didn’t put a controller rumble off switch in this one. (I usually play without it).

Recommended.

A very condensed pill of Portal’s craziness, without the clever puzzle part.

It’s just a tech demo for the Steam Deck and there’s not much more to it.

Just a fast -1 to the backlog.