Infernal Radiation

I did not expect to enjoy this game as much as I did, given the perspective it also sort of reminds me of Paper Mario but set in the Asmodev Universe (as there are characters you'll recognize if you've played the devs other games). Cardinal Godspeed the main character too, already seemed like a cool character based on his appearance in the Priest Simulator DLC, and this game solidifies him as my favorite character in their universe so far.

Let me start off by saying this game isn't all bad, it had effort put into it and it's not just some cash grab or student project type of game. I had a few glaring problems with the description which was part of the reason I decided to try this game out.This game is NOT a clicker game. This game is NOT an arcade game. This game is an exploration story based walking simulator RPG with a simple battle sequence that becomes more difficult as the game progresses. (I played this game for about an hour, but Steam glitched and erased all the time on it so I had to reopen the game and let it run for 5 minutes to do this review) Pros- the atmosphere is solid. It's exactly how it looks, giving you the immersion of sort of Lovecraft horror using exorcism to defeat enemies- the battle style, while simple, doesn't make the game feel like a complete breeze even on easy difficulty- if you're into storyline, it seems to be well themed and I didn't notice any grammar or spelling mistakes (I found it kind of hard to say good things about this game because of the cons, but also because it's not really my style of game. I honestly thought I was getting a clicker game, and it's very much so not that)Cons- they have the "I'm going to force you in this direction" way of the game unfolding. There's no real pathing the game pushes you toward, so once you finish a battle, you have to walk around the entire area trying to find what fire went out or what path became clear for you to progress. It's more walking simulator than anything else, but the area you're exploring is the same area you've walked through multiple times to go to the next fight. I'll give an example; The only way to go in the beginning is up the stairs and into a building. You clear the building, then you have to go back out and a new path opened up outside. There's no indication this happened, nothing points you in this direction, and this is every single section. You're locked into doing exactly what you need to in order to progress, and that's always a fight.- The fights are all the same. The difficulty raises, sure, but it's always against one enemy, they all throw orbs at you with various effects that you can reflect, and you have to hit them in between reflecting. That's every fight, and every fight is not only mandatory, but they lock you into it when you go into an area (as in you lose control of your character and it walks up to the enemy like it's an old school cutscene) and you have some cheesy dialogue before a fight, then every fight feels like a boss fight, then the same effort of dialogue after the fight before you get to progress. Is this game even a game? Or is it a story with a bit of gaming aspects thrown in? This is a terrible situation for me as I normally go for gameplay and skip dialogue, but that's the majority of the game I've seen- The battling aspect makes almost no sense. It's very clunky. You have to wait until both you and the enemy are glowing to attack. Sure, makes sense there I guess. Why make it both though? I spent the entire time watching myself instead of the fight because the focus is drawn to just you. That's not really a big deal because you're never glowing if the enemy isn't, it just seemed like a waste of time to make both glow. If you try to attack when you're not both glowing, it will stun you. You can't attack or block while you're stunned and if you try, it will continue to stun you, starting over the stun sequence. This is a terrible flaw in a game where your only main aspect of gameplay besides walking around looking for the next path is this fighting, and if you get off beat once, it can ruin the entire fight for you as you try to fix your problem. If you're making it so I can't attack or block while stunned, Why make it so I can continue to stun myself by trying? That's like pushing someone onto the ground, and if they try to get up, they'll be punished, but they're prone so trying is their only chance of helping the situation. Then, the worst part of this aspect; reflecting attacks back at the enemy does NOTHING to the enemy! So you're saying if someone throws a grenade at me, then I throw it back at them and it explodes right at their feet that it will do nothing? That's some insane friendly fire tactics in a game that's fighting is 70% reflecting. I hate the way the fights feel, every aspect of them. They're drawn out, uncomfortable, repetitive, and mandatoryI got bored very fast. I'm sure if I was into storyline, it might be a slightly different answer, but I can't see a story that will make me want to play the bland fights over and over while also exploring the same place looking for the next path that didn't seem like a way I could go before the fight. It didn't get too difficult, I didn't get stuck looking for the next place, I just lost all interest in this game from the format being 80% exploring the same area and 20% locked into a battle system I hate. It might get better later on, and it might improve the fighting as the game progresses as well, but you're supposed to draw a person in with the beginning of a game, not deter them from playing before it builds into an okay game. If this had a $1 price tag, I could see some sort of appeal for someone to take a chance on it, but when it's not on sale, that's a steep price to pay to potentially get disappointed.