Vagrus - The Riven Realms

Vagrus - The Riven Realms is a narrative-heavy RPG about trading and surviving in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world. You lead a caravan of people from city to city, encountering events along the way and managing your supplies, morale, and other indicators. There are a lot and lot of stats and knobs to turn for both your entire caravan as well as individual, more important members of it, yourself included. Death and disaster are ever-present, and there will be a lot of setbacks.

The game is focused significantly more on making decisions than fighting battles. In fact, the combat system is rather small and boring. While I definitely wouldn't call the decision-making side of the game small, I would still call it boring. Behind the large complexity of things to do, there doesn't seem to be a lot depth to it all. And this ties back to the game being heavily focused on the narrative, not the gameplay. From a story point of view, there are definitely a lot of different options to choose from, especially when it comes to the frequent and lengthy dialogue.

While reading everything is not necessary, I'm afraid it's the main virtue this game has. The worldbuilding is good, and I personally don't dislike the writing, but I can't say that at least the beginning of the overall story gripped me. Definitely not enough to keep me from leaving, but less picky people might enjoy it, especially on easy mode. But this is still a game, not a choose-your-own-adventure book, so much of the time is not spent on reading, but making these choices, which I found quite menial.

In the end, I don't like this kind of game. I'm pretty sure I could find many books in a similar setting with better writing and less forced interruptions to have to make decisions I don't care for. If you take out all the story, all the decisions you might make for roleplaying purposes, and just leave cold hard strategy, there isn't much to this game. A lot of boring decisions, leading to boring events. I think that even among games that try to blend worldbuilding, storytelling, and RPG / management elements, there are better options out there, so I can not recommend playing Vagrus.

ElecHead

ElecHead is a nice little puzzle platformer with one core game mechanic, and a lot of creativity around that core mechanic to build many interesting puzzles.
The rule is simple - anything connected to your head is supplied with electricity. This includes conditional platforms, elevators, traps, and even yourself, as you can throw your head to power things otherwise out of reach, or make sure you can cross certain areas without activating them.

There isn't really much to say. The game uses its one mechanic very well and manages to create new scenarios over and over again, letting you use old knowledge as well as figure out new ways to solve the puzzles given to you. The caveat is that it's short, at maybe only 3 hours, depending on how many collectibles you want to get. It's rather linear, but not entirely so, so missing a map is a bit of a bummer. Other than that, I have nothing bad to say about the game. It does what it set out to do incredibly well, even if what it set out to do isn't very ambitious. It reminds me a bit of VVVVVV, but not quite as good or long.

Overall, I think it's a worthwhile game for any puzzle platformer fans, even if it's a bit short. I'm not one of those people, so I can't personally recommend it, but I have to acknowledge that objectively speaking, it's pretty good.

Druidstone

Druidstone is another game that probably wouldn't live up to my wishlist standards today, but it did in 2019, and so here I am suffering for my past decisions.

I joke. It's not that bad. It advertises itself as a turn-based RPG or strategy game. It's not entirely wrong but I'm quite sure that most RPG or strategy enjoyers would not enjoy this game for those aspects. You control a small party and go through a series of missions, each requiring you to fulfill some objective and probably kill some enemies in the process.
The best part is that the levels are very handcrafted, and designed less like one would design an RPG, and more like one would design a puzzle game. You are expected to spend a lot time contemplating how to make your move, how the enemies are going to move, and how to beat the turn limit that most missions are on while also fulfilling as many bonus objectives as possible. There is a bit of power scaling through upgrading your abilities and passives, but at the core of it, none of your characters really change. This is important to keep the challenge of the puzzles, but this would also put off any RPG enjoyers.

While I was kind of expecting an RPG, I wouldn't even mind if this was a well-crafted strategy puzzle game, but it falls short. I find a lot of the character abilities bland, but even worse, I can't predict what enemies are doing. For an RPG, this would be fine, but for a puzzle game, I need to know ahead of time what the enemy can do against me, so I could plan for it. As it stands now, I have to complete each mission at least twice. Once to know what all the enemies do and what all the timed events and spawns are, and the other time to actually plan around them (if I still remember them accurately). This really does not fulfill the fantasy of being a brilliant strategist.

Overall, between low production values, boring combat options, and somehow managing to disappoint both RPG and puzzle game fans with their combat design, I don't really see any reason to recommend this. Whether you're looking for a turn-based tactics game or an RPG, there are many better options out there.

Dark Devotion

I'm gonna be brutal, it's been a while since I've played something as bad as Dark Devotion. The "Mostly Positive" reviews should have been a giveaway, but I decided to give it a try regardless.
I'm gonna be honest, I got less than 15 minutes into the game. And you may ask how I dare review the game based on such a short time, but I can confidently say that this is enough, based on how bad just about every aspect I experienced was.

So what are the problems I experienced during those 15 minutes? I can't rebind my controls, and the default ones are questionable at times. (R to pick things up? Why?) You can't really move backwards most of the time, just from one room to the next, which makes it a terribly linear experience. Might be fine, but not what I expected. Apparently there are platforming elements in the game, but there is no jump button? Even if there wasn't any focus on platforming, not letting me jump is a sin in a 2D sidescroller. The animations I encountered were kind of basic. I didn't even understand two of the times that an enemy had attacked me, but I had lost life. I had to crouch every time I wanted to pick something up. My bow could not be aimed. Stepping on/off a platform caused my character to rapidly jerk up and down.
It's just... everything gave off vibes that this was like a student project with cut corners and thoroughly amateur design and implementations.

I've already spent more time writing this than playing the game, so it's time to stop. There are so many more Souls-likes (if this qualifies for that title), and even 2D sidescrolling Souls-likes, that are available and better than this, that there is no reason to experience this. "Mostly Positive" isn't a high rating, but honestly, I feel even that might be generous given the review count and how bad it is.