Epic Battle Fantasy Collection

“Adventure story: this game has neither adventure nor story.”

“There is no real story or exploration.”

“And if you want to view it like that, looking at the journey and development by this dev over the years it is interesting but as games they are all very rough, basic; the EBF entries are more just RPG battle sims with a vague story slotted in.”

“Each game in this collection requires a different set of skills, and you need to nearly master their mechanics to get far.”

“The whole game is on the harder side with hit points and lags, and all the mechanics.”

“There are points where, if you get unlucky, you can lose two whole areas and a boss to bad luck, as two of the bosses are capable of taking your party from max HP to totally dead in a single turn.”

“But one thing I do remember is just the art style.”

“Somehow, the most enjoyable part of this was looking through Matt's 20-year-old artworks.”

“If you haven't played one of Matt's games before, expect nostalgic flash gaming, enjoyable turn-based combat, solid and distinctive visuals, and banger soundtracks.”

“Sorry Matt, you're an OG from the Flash era and I enjoyed all the time I spent with your games on Kongregate, but the performance of this port on my machine is bad enough to call it literally unplayable, and I can't in good faith recommend it to anyone.”

“Epic on both is just annoying though, especially with the optimization issues.”

“Some games still need optimization though, as they tend to slow down until you restart them.”

“Now to address the big elephant in the room: the games I personally found either buggy or flat-out unenjoyable because of these problems.”

“For Bullet Heaven: that's the game I truly noticed the bugs and glitches. One of them being a softlock where the game runs, the stage is selected, but it's just a black screen. As far as I know, this issue has been already fixed with a recent update, which I am happy for, but oh boy, the slowdowns appear in this game the most frequently. For a bullet hell game, this can make the game either super easy or super difficult, depending on how good you are in bullet hell games. For me, it was the latter. The slowdowns would have been one thing, but the stutters and momentary freezes threw me off on more than one occasion. I spent way too much time on the last stage than I want to admit for the same reason I mentioned above. As much as I hate using cheats, I had to turn some on to finally pass the final stage. After that, I didn't even bother with the bonus stages. If my tone comes off as overly critical, it is because I am. I loved Bullet Heaven and playing it in my browser, and don't get me wrong, it's still a really good game, but the bugs, both visual (for example, the bosses having black boxes around when they are shooting their projectiles) and gameplay ones (like the above-mentioned slowdowns) really just make this an overall downgrade of the game. Yes, there are improvements and more characters added to the roster, but if the game runs poorly on modern computers, it takes away from the experience that you should have with this game, so for me, it's a 4/10.”

“Overall, my experience with the EBF collection has been one of a hit or miss, a mixed bag if you will. I don't think any of these games are really bad, far from it. Maybe it's nostalgia speaking from me, but I still find them good, especially with all the improvements in them. However, the bugs and glitches do take away from an otherwise really enjoyable experience. I see the dev publishing updates for the collection, so I'm hopeful that he fixes some of these issues of an otherwise excellent collection of old flash games. The collection is relatively cheap too for what you get in the box. I do recommend buying the game, but be aware that some of the games have some issues, which hopefully, once they are fixed, I can update my review to a much more positive one instead of a critical one.”

“When you're good at bullet hell, this game is easy, but grinding is the most annoying thing.”

“For the other two games, the cat cafe can be entertaining for about 20 minutes, maybe more, but the achievements are really grindy.”

“Grindy (60 - 100 hours)”

“It's simple, but a lot of fun, even if not very replayable due to the lack of a character progression system.”

“Once you've completed the game, there's little incentive to go back and play it again.”

“The game offers a great initial experience, but the lack of varied content makes replaying it feel redundant.”