UnEpic

“Starts out strong and challenging, and continues to be decent fun for a good while... until you reach the latter half of the game where it takes a steep nosedive: the gameplay becomes nothing but a chore, seemingly for the sake of wasting time, and the game turns utterly unenjoyable.”

“The actual gameplay, however, is where the game seriously starts falling apart; the controls are a bit stiff and take some getting used to (jumps are not adjustable at all; you will always jump exactly the same height and distance, making platforming sections either painfully boring or painfully difficult dependent entirely on whether the developer decided to give you their standard half-body-length margin of error or cut it down to pixel-perfect); the combat is slow and boring, despite there being many weapon types (they all feel pretty much the same--attack speed, range, even animations--making the game way more about raw stat values than personal play style preferences, and making you wonder why the game forces you to choose a weapon group to spend points in to raise your proficiency when it all seems so arbitrary, especially when the game throws out the window any sort of sense it had been making before, when it starts giving you daggers that are stronger than axes of comparable level); enemies, while having many different appearances, tend to fall into very general categories (runs-at-you, shoots-at-you, doesn't-move-at-all, or ignores-you-and-patrols), making the already slow and boring combat now also tedious; boss encounters are incredibly boring, having very basic attack patterns you learn in just a couple seconds and essentially being damage sponges with unfair expectations of positioning using the stiff and monotonous jumps to avoid attacks that deal 30% or more of your maximum hp.”

“The gameplay is lackluster, being bogged down by clunky menus and controls that require too much work to get a good configuration.”

“This game has a pretty bland story, combat, and a god-awful platforming.”

“The story feels like it was changed in a completely different direction at several points.”

“The story is shoddy, filled with unlikable characters and completely unfunny references to the stereotypical nerdy works.”

“The graphics are maybe 20+ years out of date, though not unappealing.”

“Graphics are nothing special.”

“The 2D amateurish graphics are noticeably dated and the controls are pretty simple.”

“The entire skill system feels like a superfluous, tedious piece of vestigial RPG wonkery.”

“However, it quickly devolves into a tedious and monotonous game with little substance, especially in the final act of the game.”

“Your only strategy becomes: do some damage, die, come back, do a little more damage... etc. It's so time-consuming and tedious!”

“Alas, the soundtrack is limited to certain regions.”

“Boss music is a 5-second loop that made me mute the music.”

“The music is okay, but definitely nothing special.”

“Even though this creates a fair level of replayability, nothing else about the game world or enemies therein changes, making repeated playthroughs dull and uninteresting in comparison to the first time around.”

“The game has no replay value, yet success requires that you make all of your important decisions upfront.”

“But the gameplay is poor and only driven by the story, so the replayability is low.”

“The game starts okay enough, but the smug overly self-aware humor wears thin quickly, the difficulty isn't worth the payoff, and in the end I uninstalled after a mid-game boss battle caused glitches that resulted in the loss of too many of my resources to be worth continuing.”

“I tried to play it on Ubuntu and Windows, and both are buggy.”

“My biggest problem with the game are the glitches that prevent you from doing what the game wants you to do, such as lag issues starting you in danger of the next map, and the inability to toggle the targeting feature on or off which we have yet to figure out the cause.”

“This game represents a mixture of nerdy humor, old-school gameplay, and an atmosphere of continuing intrigue.”

“Spoiler: after the first few minutes, you can find a checkpoint to save and rest without worry and continue later as you delve deeper into the dungeons. The atmosphere is sinister, reminiscent of Diablo 1's catacombs, which I love, but the jokes are just okay.”

“It also has a great sense of humor (or terrible, depending on your view), which will at least cause you to smile. Despite being full of comedic references, it still manages to maintain a serious atmosphere, and the puzzles for each quest are cleverly designed, forcing you to think outside the box rather than blindly completing the quests.”

“While you have non-linear character development, you have a very linear storyline and the skill set required for progression.”

“The character development also offers a number of hooks to become invested in either the player character or its unlikely sidekick.”

“But enough about story and character development, let's get to raw gameplay.”

“You experience delays of 1-2 seconds, and you get randomly teleported across the screen. Projectiles are calculated from the host without any leniency for lag, which makes the gameplay frustrating. The game's code does not feel optimized for multiplayer at all.”

“The optimization is severely lacking, leading to frequent stutters and frame drops that ruin the overall experience.”

“I often encounter long loading times and performance issues that make the game feel unpolished and frustrating to play.”

“Advertising the 'next developed' game inside your 'first developed' game is really tacky.”

“The monetization strategy feels overly aggressive and detracts from the overall experience.”

“It's frustrating to see so many paywalls that limit gameplay unless you spend extra money.”