Yuppie Psycho

My dislike of horror games grows. When I started playing Yuppie Psycho, I had apparently forgotten that it was a horror game. I just thought it was an... eccentric? adventure game. The pretty pixel art and "Overwhelmingly Positive" reviews lured me in, and so I started it up. It's not even that I hate the horror aspect. There's just always been some problem linked to the horror.

The game's about a dozen hours long, and I quit an hour in, so anything beyond my complaints right now will be secondhand experience as per my research before shelving this game for good.
The game just deleted my entire one hour of progress without so much as a warning. And about 15 minutes of it on my first try playing it. See, the game nicely warns you at the start that there is no autosave function. It does not elaborate further. This is fine. Not every game needs autosaves - checkpoints or manual saves are often completely acceptable. The first time, I crashed. Well, I actually crashed about 5 times before I realized it disliked me alt-tabbing or streaming the game, but this was near the start, and wasn't too much of a hinderance.
The seconds time, I was well into the game, and just thought I had had enough for the day. I figured that, surely, the game would at least allow me to save on quitting, and then delete that save on returning. Failing that, I would be reminded that I needed to save my progress before leaving. I've already spoiled that there was no such thing. The game exited without so much as a complaint, wiping an hour of progress. That was just about all I needed to quit. I will not play a game that does not respect my time.

You see, not only does Yuppie Psycho have checkpoints you need to manually save at, it also has a currency (paper) that you need to spend for saving. If you do not have any paper, you can not save. In my hour of playing, which I will admit was mostly the introductory part, I received a grand total of one paper, and this was only through careful checking of everything in the environment. The rest of what I say will be what I read, not what I experienced.
The papers aren't actually that rare in the game, but there's no indication of this. There aren't, however, enough of them to save at every convenient opportunity, and they can also be used as another currency, making it a choice if you want to replay less of the game, or get some other benefit.
This is bullshit, and a complete waste of people's time. I don't care about the excuse of this creating suspense and reinforcing the horror aspect by making you wonder if the journey to the next save point will be manageable. This isn't that kind of game. And most importantly, I lose the ability to play in short bursts, because I need to play for as long as it would naturally take me to want to create another checkpoint.

Most everyone seems to agree that the adventure part of this game is great. The story's good. But the gameplay is a lot more polarizing, and I didn't see a single thorough review of the game not mention the save system. If you're selling me a good story, I want to experience that story in a way that is comfortable for me. "A horror game is supposed to make you uncomfortable." By being scary or unsettling, not by making me do the same stuff all over again for no good reason.
So there. I didn'y play this game. Not because it's not good, but because I don't have time for this nonsense. If you do, I hear the story's great, and you'll probably enjoy it, but I can't personally recommend this horrible design decision.

Omensight

Omensight is a hack-and-slash game, but more than that, it is an investigative story game about finding out why the world has ended. Armed with the power to repeat the last day of the world, and enough combat prowess to make your way into just about anywhere, you will slowly uncover the reason for the calamity and put an end to it.

The game was a tough sell for me at first, as I was put off by the very cartoony artstyle, the non-human cast of characters, but most importantly the subpar gameplay. Movement and attacking felt rather unusual and uncomfortable, caused mostly by the very... custom camera angles. The game took it upon itself to fully control your camera, but I daresay failed at the task. Additionally, combat was a combination of mostly button mashing for attacking, interleaved with reaction-based dodging, as enemies made very swift attacks at you oftentimes from a considerable distance. Perhaps some would enjoy it, but it was too twitchy for me. I got somewhat more used to these issues as I played further, but they never really went away.

I was going to quit after a couple hours of the rather unenjoyable gameplay, but something else had happened. I had gotten invested in the story. I think there were two main things that caused me to really enjoy the story, even as someone who nearly always hates story in games.
The first was that everything was fully voice acted, and at a pretty good quality at that. Every line of dialogue, every single character.
Secondly, I felt a sense of freedom. I'll admit that the game didn't have a branching narrative, and probably required me to go through very concrete plot points to advance, but I was never told where to go or what to do, and I felt the characters and surroundings always reacted to my actions quite naturally. I could present the evidence I had previously found to any of the major characters, and they would act accordingly. I was rewarded for exploration, and even dead ends and wrong decisions, which were the majority of the possible outcomes, played out to their conclusion. I really think what saved the game for me was that they went the extra mile to ensure a proper reaction to any action I could take.

Overall, I have mixed feelings about this game. I did end up giving it at a spot in my best games list, which automatically warrants a recommendation, even if the spot was on the lower end. From a gameplay perspective, don't expect anything innovative or enjoyable, but despite there being plenty of combat and platforming in the game, I would still say the story is the main focus, and the excellent storytelling should carry Omensight to be an enjoyable experience overall. For better or worse, it's on the short side, clocking in at maybe 8-12 hours, depending on how thorough you are, and if you're going for the good ending.
Oh, and don't you dare interrupt Ratika's song.

For The King

I found this indie-looking turn-based RPG called For The King in my Steam library and thought to give it a go. After a failed campaign, I realized it might be better with friends, so I invited two along and did the next two campaigns with them. It was fun, but despite some variety, I really wouldn't go for a third campaign.

The game has about half a dozen campaigns in total. You pick one, pick three characters from a collection of around a dozen classes, which differ by passive abilities and starting stats, and then set out to complete whatever quest this particular campaign asks of you. Most of the game is just running around the map and fighting enemies, earning loot and levels to get stronger, and completing sub-quests until you get to beat the main objective. It takes about 8 hours per successful campaign playthrough if you're alone, and a bit longer if you're coordinating with friends.
The combat is a basic "your turn, choose your action, choose your target", and then you roll a bunch of d100 against your stats to determine the result, with the occasional consumable use thrown in. There's also an unlocks system to get more content - weapons, armor, events - after you've gathered in-game lore currency from campaigns, but it doesn't change the core of the game.

So the main thing I would want to talk about with this game is the illusion of all the choices it gives you. Equipment is not class-locked, but you will be highly inefficient if you use equipment not meant for your class, so it might as well be. Each of your party members gets their own turn on the overworld, so they could move separately, but with how tough enemies are, you almost always want to have a full party for each encounter, removing most of the point from splitting up the party. Similarly, everyone needs very tight cooperation in multiplayer to make things work, but since all actions are sequential, there won't be a better tactic than letting one person decide what everyone does.
At the end of they day, the game just gets repetitive. Once you get down the rhythm of combat, who to focus, how to optimally path around the map, and other small details, you just repeat it ad nauseam.
That said, it was quite fun to figure this stuff out for the first time. The first campaign, it was a mystery what various buildings did, how to approach certain enemies, and the variety in equipment actually seemed to be pretty large. I also found the difficulty to be excellently balanced, as well as the game hurrying you along at a moderate pace to stop you from going the unfun route of farming yourself too strong.

So, what do I think of the game overall? Despite the very low-quality appearance, For The King is quite well-made. It suffers mostly from sticking to a very standard turn-based RPG formula which many people are already familiar with, yet not quite providing enough depth to make it replayable for a longer amount of time without feeling like you're just doing the same thing over and over without much thought. In conclusion, it earns my recommendation and a (low) spot on my best games list, because I had fun for the first campaign or two, and could share the experience with friends.