Unsouled
I was a backer of this project and have play-tested the early builds before the developer has announced that this game is going to be published by Neowiz. If you really want to see the game that pushes the limitation of stamina-action game mechanics (AKA souls-like), You guys need to play this game. Imagine someone mixed Hyper Light Drifter, Sekiro, 3D Ninja Gaiden, and Tekken in an iron pot and condensed it into 5~8 hour game. Definitely one of the best action games in 2021, even without the context that this game was developed by one person for five years.
– Real player with 33.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Difficult Action-Adventure Games.
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Review by Gaming Masterpieces - The greatest games of all time on Steam.
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Is this game a masterpiece? No, I don’t think so, at least not for everyone. It is a very combo-focused, fast action RPG. The pixel art is good (your character and enemies are quite small), but the combat is something to get used to. You won’t get very far with just normal attacks, you really need to learn those combos and execute them lightning fast and with good aim. If you like that, and normal button mashing combat is too easy or repetitive for you, then take a closer look at this game. You will not be disappointed.
– Real player with 11.8 hrs in game
Color War
Long ago the rainbow relic was shattered, taking away all of the worlds colors with it. The shards of color found it’s way into some lucky hands and color factions were formed. And for some reason, it’s your job to help fix it. You play as a cat dude and fight your way through extremely difficult bullet hell style boss battles in an attempt to get back home and out of this strange world. In the process, you’ll make many friends and enemies.
The game switches between a lively top-down overworld to a straight on bullet-hell boss rush type game. You’ll fight many different bosses while attempting to bring together the color shards. There is different modes for varying levels of difficulty, so if you just want some casual play there are options, as well as a very difficult mode for those seeking a challenge.
Read More: Best Difficult Funny Games.
Thymesia
Story
A kingdom once thriving on the power of alchemy enters an age of calamity. After discovering the price behind alchemy, an attempt to stop the use of it backfired. Within a few days, the kingdom was in chaos and the streets infested with monsters.
The key to understanding all of this is in Corvus’ hands, but he has lost his memory. The truth can only be found within his memories, but every time he dives back in, he only finds more secrets.
Features
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Harness the Plague: Seize the disease from gruesome bosses and wield them as weapons. Give them a taste of their own medicine. This is the only way to survive this desolate kingdom.
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Embrace the Raven: Shift into your raven form during battle. Throw your feathers like daggers and execute enemies with the swiftness of a raptor.
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Fight Your Way: Upgrade and modify your basic movements and plague weapons. Build your very own play-style and prepare for the challenges in your way.
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Shattered Memories: Recover your memories through adventures. With different choices you’ve made and items you’ve collected, you’ll get different endings. Stitch together your own truth.
Read More: Best Difficult Third Person Games.
Watcher Chronicles
Oh, ye poor gamer, I pity thee… for in your journey through Steam, you have found yourself on a dark page where the straight way is lost… You can not turn back, for you’ve found the suffering you yearn for… Prepare thy thumbs and trigger fingers for your penance has begun…
Purgatory has been invaded by an unholy threat. A group of fallen ones called “The Watchers” now seek to transform it into a new hell. Lost souls must unite or face utter annihilation…
Features
Fast Skill Based Combat - Challenging but fair souls-like combat with tight and finely tuned controls. Dodge, block, and slice your way through enemies.
Large Interconnected World - Explore every crack of a purgatorial realm filled with secrets and game changing loot in a non-linear fashion.
Powerful Magic - Incinerate enemies with waves of fire, lightning, and void or summon the horde with powerful necromancy.
Unique Weapons - Giant swords, blade staffs, scythes, polearms, and more to discover and master. Weapon types all have different move sets that completely changes up the gameplay.
Robust Streamlined RPG System - Carefully upgrade your hero to match your play style and build out your own unique character class. Discover 100+ upgradable armor, weapons, and rings to specialize your build.
Relentless Bosses - Battle over 20+ finely tuned and challenging bosses that require careful planning and significant skill to take down.
New Game Plus - Keep your gear when finishing the game and continue the journey with increasingly harder difficulties.
Oh and you will die… a lot…
Now go forth gamer… Existence itself hangs in the balance… Hit the Wishlist button and the first step of your long journey has begun!
Curse of Eternity
⚔️ Brutal Combat - Engage in stamina-based combat where you have to dodge, swing, shoot, and cast at the right time, or you’ll get your face stabbed clean off.
🔥 Epic Boss Fights - Overcome adversity and face off against Midrhada’s Guardians - beings of great power that have fed on the life force of the Cursed for 100 years.
🏹 Play to your Strengths - Begin the game with a misfit that strikes your fancy (Gladiator, Assassin, or Mage), then spice up your build with your favorite arrangement of weapons, proficiencies, skills, and spells. Your base class is just a starting point.
🧭 Explore the last Remnants of Humanity - On your journey through our handcrafted world you’ll find monsters, traps, puzzles, locks, keys, secrets, vistas, and more!
📜 Game Features
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Your journey is your own; you must venture out and find your path without quest markers or compass blips.
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Choices and consequences are permanent; progress is saved automatically.
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Our world seamlessly loads from one area to the next to keep you fully immersed.
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Defeat horrors, collect loot, and grow stronger as you move from one challenge to the next.
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Varying weapons and skills make up a unique play experience with several combos for you to try.
☠️This World Burns.
Nearly all who still survive are magically enslaved by the demigoddess, Midrhada. Whether it is luck, strength of will, or some blessing of the Gods, you’ve managed to resist the Curse for now.
The only way to achieve true freedom is to dethrone Midrhada. You must travel to every edge of the Viridian Empire, find her guardians, and slay them in order to cleave a path to the Empress herself. You’ll face countless enemies and beings of incredible power. Your tortuous path is laid with traps and obscured by tests of skill and wit. Can you defeat Midrhada and overcome this Curse of Eternity?
Grid Force - Mask Of The Goddess
Grid Force is an all-female grid-based tactical Beat Em Up RPG with dozens of unique characters and with a deep story full of humour and loss, where every decision counts.
THE SPEED OF A FIGHTING GAME AND THE DEPTH OF AN RPG
The frenetic real-time combat requires quick-strategic thinking. Explore the deep Class and Elemental systems to get an edge in combat and build your dream squad from the dozens of recruitable characters, each with charming storylines and game-changing abilities.
A STORY LIKE NO OTHER
Guide Donna in her journey of self-actualization through a beautifully animated Manga Style narrative. Who will Donna trust and who will she betray? It’s up to you to write the end of her story. Grid Force tells a story of inclusion, personal growth and responsibility through an epic journey to the multicultural fictional world of Gora.
MAKE GAME-CHANGING DECISIONS AND BUILD RELATIONSHIPS
Each playable character in Grid Force has its own paths, traumas and aspirations. Get to know them and they may help or surprise you. Gain enough of their trust and they will join you. Their presence in your squad can radically change the course of the story, opening previously unavailable paths and revealing deeply hidden secrets.
THE POWER TO CHANGE GORA
Recruit and level up each individual attribute of your units to unlock a variety of active and passive skills.
The right squad is the key to defeat the Goddesses of Gora and claim their Masks and the ultimate power they contain.
Primitive Hunter
If you want to become a primitive hunter you have to:
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Learn how to create the ancient weapon and tools to start the hunting. You can only use your imagination and your hands to make it by using wood, metal and material elements.
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Learn how to search and recognize traces of individual species of animals. It requires many hours of wandering in the woods and looking for similar traces of the same animals.
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Master the technics of tracking the animals by hiding in the woods and using camouflage. You will learn how to create your hideout and use natural materials, for example the branches to create your unrecognizable image.
Hope Trigger
“ This is a beautiful country, where people always have a smiling face. It is also a high-tech country with world-class alchemy and magic. But it had fallen on the night of the barbarian invasion, they betrayed the oath. I’ve lost people and country and was imprisoned in the dark. ”
The story started a thousand years ago, an ancient prosperous civilization ended overnight, leaving nothing but ruins. Today, after a thousand years, a girl comes here and meets another girl who claims to be the queen of the subjugation. They will discover the secret of the subjugation, but all this only happened in….
Feature:
1.Equip two different combos and switch between these combos in battle,use different weapons in combinations to fight various monsters, and experience a
refreshing battle.
2.Special magic system-get red elements from monsters, convert them into magic power and use more powerful and gorgeous magic to attack monsters.
3.Enchanting equipments through various production systems. By defeating monsters to get items and using them to make enchanting jewels, equip them to
increase status or get special skills. You can create your own playing style.
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We highly recommend playing Hope Trigger with a controller.
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First phase:
The picture above is the screen of development
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Sands of Aura
Review written as of patch 0.01.02, 48 hours after EA release.
This is a relatively lengthy review, with significant details on many game mechanics and aspects, but I’ll stay as spoiler-free as possible.
First Impressions:
Having played 20 hours in this game, I’ve played through most, but not all of the content. In its current state, the game’s story Isn’t terribly long, maybe 5-6 hours, but there’s easily twice that much again in side content and extra areas to explore. Overall the game is very soulslike in gameplay, but with more than enough to set itself apart. Fun to play, fun to explore.
– Real player with 130.9 hrs in game
(This Review is based on 12 hours of gameplay during Early Access release patch + Patch 0.01.02, played on a custom controller, no experience on keyboard/mouse)
Sands of Aura is an isometric action RPG and does a great job at utilizing classic souls-like elements for its level and enemy design, combined with a sense of world- and island exploration akin to The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. Let’s get more into some individual aspects, their current status in this Early Access, and how I personally would like to see them being improved upon.
– Real player with 33.2 hrs in game
Tails of Iron
I absolutely adore this game. I’m going to break it down in to sections
Story:
I like the story, its the typical hero has to save a kingdom. However with their use of characters and different locations it helps you move away from from that stereotypical hero also being a rat fighting frogs and bugs helps this as well.
Narrator:
Special mention the narrator is brilliant in this he adds some grit to the story and i feel like its another great layer to this game.
Combat:
I love the combat in this game. Its brutal, this game really punishes you if you make mistakes but once you master it you can have a lot of fun. Its a very simple combat system but it works so well. I will admit i sucked at the start but once i got through it i really started to enjoy the game. Another great little feature is executions. Each enemy has a brutal execution that you can do on them
– Real player with 19.9 hrs in game
Grabbed this up after reading a few reviews and watching the trailer and glad I did!
I went into the game with a curiosity for how they would handle RPG elements and combat in a traditional side scroller. It reminded me of old school Wonder Boy meets that classic book series RedWall. It was a nostalgic hit for me.
The mechanics were simple but well executed. Combat was just challenging enough to keep you on your toes but not so intense to need breaks (Ahem.. Dark Souls) I found the art style both endearing, charming, and savage as they didn’t pull any punches on cartoon gore – which I respected.
– Real player with 12.6 hrs in game