Sol Cesto

Genuinely best art direction of any game i've played in awhile highly recommend for that alone. Game gets a little bit monotonous mid game not enough variety run to run

This game is pretty dope. The art, animations, UI and sound are spectacular. The sense of mystery and wonder as you crack its secrets is enthralling. The RNG aspect totally works. I do have two qualms preventing this from being one of my favorite games: 1. The artificial progress gating (literally) of needing to complete 90% of the game 3 times to unlock the final level was lame. It led to a pretty unfun midgame of grinding runs with the strongest character I had unlocked to farm money and wins. I wish there was more reason to experiment with different characters as you progress (more secrets only unlockable with certain characters?). Thumbs down on the gem-gated door. 2. I wish the gameplay/strategy was just a LITTLE deeper. Once I figured out the game and had unlocked most things (by ~10hrs in), all of my runs started to feel very similar. I want more reasons to keep coming back, trying different characters and builds. But the depth and variety isn't quite there. Despite the above issues, I still highly recommend the game. It's weird, it's good, it's fun.

I am writing this to collect my thoughts after 100% completing this charming, fun and frustrating game. I beat the game with all characters and got all achievements after slightly under 30 hours. I think I spent about 10 hours unlocking the most important unlocks, and then the rest on finding the secrets and figuring out how to consistently beat the game with all characters. In the end, I find the game has nothing more to offer after that. This compares poorly to something like Slay the Spire, which takes like 100+ hours to get all the achievements, and is still highly playable after that (over 1400 hours at the time of writing). I have two points related to this that I want to expand on. My first point, and my main complaint about the game (as with every game that implements this mechanic), is the meta unlock/upgrade system. I really wish developers would stop implementing this. In Sol Cesto this problem is exaggerated by the fact that unlocks are made by setting aside currency you earn throughout the run, that you would ohterwise use to buy items that are essential to beating the run. In theory there might be an interesting decision of whether to spend gold on items or save it for upgrades. But because a lot of upgrades are pretty essential to beating the game, you really do not have a choice. If you spend your gold on items, you are probably going to lose your run anyways with nothing to show for it. So this leads to about 10 hours of (mostly) grinding to unlock the actual game. There are so many other problems with this system, but the bottom line is that the game: -does not reward actual run progress -has a wonky difficulty curve My second point is that of replayability. I am not quite sure whether the game is not deep enough, or if it is just poorly balanced. Regardless, the game ends up having a very dominant strategy that allows you to consistently win with every character. This completely diminishes the interest in replaying the game after beating it. While it was fun figuring out and executing this strategy, every run feels the same once you figure it out. Apart from these two points, the game mostly holds up for the amount of time it lasts. Would I recommend the game? If you expect a highly replayable game where you do not have to go through a bunch of grinding just to unlock the full game, then no. But if you just want a small, interesting challenge with an uncanny atmosphere, and can forgive the developers for wasting your time unlocking its features, I will absolutely recommend it.

First of I'm so glad Epic made this game free so I can buy it full price on steam. (the proper way to use the Epic) If someone had told me, how would I like a rouge lite with the main gameplay being based on purely on RNG, I would have probably kicked them, but this game makes it work and it just is right at the sweet spot of being challenging but not too hard, items and abilities makes things easier, the only complaint I have of the game is the very rarely some interactions are buggy and you cannot engage with the main hook of the game (tooths) until you bought a couple of upgrade.

It's a pretty looking, quite simplistic, risk-reward mitigating kind of a rougelite. There is some metaprogression that makes runs easier, but there isn't any endgame really, like ascension levels. I am teethering between recommend or not recommend, however because of the complete lack of QoL features - cannot save & quit mid run, no controller support (would be perfect for the Steam Deck!), cannot change animation speed - I am giving it a thumbs down.

I'm a veteran roguelike player. Even though I'm not very skilled, I like to think I've developed a taste for what I like and what I don't. You will probably never feel powerful playing this game, but that's not the point. This is all about struggling against unfair odds to win. When I bought it, I let it get its hooks into me. I played nightly for weeks. I was noodling over what upgrades to unlock and which characters to pursue. Now that the save feature is here, I can recommend you let it get its hooks into you as well. The atmosphere is delightfully somber, and the art is exceptional. This is not a roguelike that'll be used for run-chaining, and the guides are pretty scarce since it's a niche indie. I think both factors add to the experience.

it could just be me, but pure output randomness is not fun, i would have enjoyed the game more if correct actions gave you a much increased chance of succeeding, but simply forcing one to play roulette is an insult to anyone's intellect