The Game Journal

I don't care if it's reputation is being a furry game where every character has outragous body proportions, I'll be damned if Atlyss isn't one of the best games I played in 2024.

It's a 3rd person RPG reminds me a lot of both an old school MMO and also ARPG games like Diablo 2 or Path of Exile, though admittedly much more shallow as far as loot drops go. The difference between those two and Atlyss is that Atlyss has a stronger focus on actually being fun to play. I will say though, the parts that do remind me of my favorite ARPGs are very shallow at the moment. Loot drops, while exciting for the first little while, start to remind me a lot more of terraria in the sense where you get the best item of whatever dungeon tier you're at, then reforge (enchant) it to fit your class.

It's supposedly only a third of the way complete though, so anything is possible.

Interesting mouse type character

I knew very little about Elin prior to actually playing it. I've heard of the game that came before it "Elona", but I'd never actually touched that either. What really sold me on the idea of the game was it's base building mechanics and it's randomly generated roguelike dungeon crawling. On top of those two, each bit more I've dug into the game has only gotten me more and more hooked and as of writing this I have around 75 hours of playtime. Learning how the game works has been a total pain in the ass though. So many of it's mechanics go unexplained and there isn't a ton of documentation on the game in english right now. I suppose part of the fun has been figuring most of everything out myself but some extra information would be nice...

Oh yeah, there are also like a million different unique skills to learn and level which is right up my alley for some reason. It's very satisfying to see a character level and progress in a game like this.

I haven't even learned every skill

I've never actually played a Shantae game up until now, I've only ever recognized the series for having great music. In fact it was a video game music quiz that got me wondering how much a key for the game would cost to begin with, which as it turns out, very cheap! Now I've got both this and half genie hero for less than 4 bucks.

The game itself isn't exactly the most special thing in the world but I do absolutely love it's art and music. I'm glad it only seems to be a pseudo-metroidvania too because I'm a little burnt out on the whole metroidvania genre at the moment. Regardless, I'm still having fun with the game. Between all of the roguelikes and RPGs I regularly play it's a nice change of pace.

I did kinda have to install an entire program to limit the framerate though, that sucked.

I finally caved in and actually bought early access to PoE2 and I gotta say... I don't regret it!

Diablo 2 is probably what I'd call one of my favorite games of all time and after the 3 massive disappointments for the Diablo franchise that followed it, I'd go as far as to think that it's safe to say the game that took Diablo's place is Path of Exile. There are other great ARPGs like Diablo such as Grim Dawn and Torchlight 2 but they never quite came as close as PoE...

Now with rambling aside, I can pretty confidently say I enjoy PoE2 waaay more than the first. One of my main complains of PoE was after awhile it hardly felt like I was playing a game but the sequel's combat and general gameplay was actually overhauled in a way I didn't expect...it feels like a normal action game! We finally got WASD movement, attacks make me feel like I have proper control over my character, boss fights don't feel like you're just throwing yourself at it over and over until it dies... it's amazing. And that's not even counting the numerous changes to things like flasks and skill gems. Not being forced to wear a pair of boots that are 16 levels below my character because they have 4 linked gem slots is going to feel SO nice.

We've never been so back