Trying to wrap up a bunch of games before end of the year, been pretty smooth with the holiday but likely slow down again now that work is back on full.
Moonscars -
I liked almost everything about this except the boss fights. The boss fights were TERRIBLE. They aren't actually mechanically uninteresting, but they are absolutely massive HP sponges, multi-phased (with no checkpoints because lul soulslike), kill you in 2-3 hits, with unique attacks and patterns. Also the game teaches you early on that "red-eye" attacks are the only ones that can be parried except all the bosses (and a few enemies) have red-eye attacks that CANNOT be parried and have to be dodged (with parry timing) which is some bullshit. But the movement itself is good from the start, it has a good spread of save points (outside of one area for some reason) and fast travel, which a lot of these souls-vanias have done badly at. There are also a staggering number of shortcuts you unlock as you go. The combat is mostly good although it gets repetitive at the end because the strategy is 100% parry -> counter because enemies aren't always staggered by your attacks.
Ultimately, even though I liked it, I can only recommend it if you're willing to use cheats on the bosses, because the bosses are a complete and utter failure of game design and just dealing with the 4-5 of them is a waste of your time.
Ghost Song -
Another soulsvania. I really want to like this one, buttttttttttt man it makes it hard. Contrary to Moonscars, save points are few and far between and fast travel points even fewer. There are almost no PRACTICAL shortcuts you unlock as you go. Navigation is just tedious throughout the game, and I absolutely recommend using a map, because even using one it was a fucking pain to go back and explore. The combat is kind of whatever - there are interesting ideas, but the difficulty is incredibly frontloaded, and enemies either die easily or are massive bullet sponges that are just boring hit -> avoid -> hit x 30 encounters. Due to the lack of shortcuts and the pretty tight corridors you end up having to re-fight enemies a lot and it's not great after a while. Most of the weapons you get are also not strong, but at least they're distinct.
The modules are game-altering but a lot of QoL ones are locked behind eating up your module points (which I hate, why are enemy lifebars a compromise instead of just an option?), and unless you just farm money to buy levels it gets tedious switching things in and out all the time (even at very high levels you'll end up doing this some).
It's a good game with old-school mechanics in the worst ways, it's really close to like a 9/10 but for me it's another like 6/10, I only recommend it if you're willing to push past all the ways it tries to be bad.
The Spirit and the Mouse -
Not a soulsvania! Not even a metroidvania really. I know it came out at the same time as Stray and maybe it looks at first glance like Stray but I actually haven't played Stray so I can't compare. But this is a nice, reasonably well done adventure-platformer with no jumping (but some precision falling) that's pretty wholesome. It's not long, even to 100%, but I have no real complaints about it, and some of the lightbulbs (this games version of stars I guess from Mario?) are really well hidden and fun to find. If you like this kind of game this is definitely worth looking at for a fun relaxed time.
Spider-Man: Miles Morales -
I technically haven't finished it but I'm on the very last step. It's, mostly, Spider-Man but smaller, which overall I'm fine with. I think the combat is partly better, partly worse. Having two distinct enemy sides with distinct rock-paper-scissors-Spock-dynamite-lizard mechanics gets overly confusing. I played through this in the span of a week and I cannot tell you which moves you have to use to counter which mooks and it's a problem because actual combat is WAY more dangerous than the first Spider-Man, so I end up cheesing a lot of the "complicated" enemies instead. The purple shield guys are immune to everything except one thing, and the red shield guys are immune to everything except one other, different thing. Also they attack very differently. Also getting swarmed in this is nuts compared to the first because of how big the AoE attacks are, how much things hurt, etc. but you can basically always just go stealth mode and reset.
Aside from the "too many unique counters" thing, the only complaint I have so far is the second fight vs. a certain boss enemy - it's a semi-QTE thing except it's incredibly janky, and poorly designed. I had mook enemies literally stuck between me and the boss eating my punches so they did nothing (not even to the mook because) and that happened MULTIPLE times. That fight overall was just straight garbage and it really stuck out. Other than that, easy to recommend this, it's just a lot of fun. Although I was able to grab it for like, $33 dollars, which considering it's not "new" new felt fair.
Edit: I actually have a couple more games to write up brief summaries for too, but I'll do that later
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