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I sincerely doubt the anti-cheat is why Wildgate failed. It’s a multiplayer extraction shooter, that’s just a tough market to break into, and their gamble didn’t pay off.
Sunderfolk on the other hand, you’re probably right. A digital tabletop RPG, made for couch coop (although you can play solo and just control everyone), that you need a phone/tabled app for? And it’s $50/50€? That was never going to be a massive seller.
The thing you’re describing definitely happens. Just did a quick check with Steam in German and every game had a few reviews in English (just checking the preview of Most Helpful and Most Recent at the bottom of the store page). Other languages are more affected, like Swedish, where most of the reviews are in English.
I don’t really see a good solution to this. If Steam is able to correctly detect the language and only show your native one, most of the time you’ll probably end up with a handful of reviews, and then Steam has to show you something else (probably English) anyway. I think currently it’s good enough, since you still get the perspective of someone from (probably) your regional or cultural background, even if the language might not fit.
Didn’t really have a 2025 game “that I kept coming back to.” I played some story games, like FF7 Rebirth or The First Berserker Khazan, where I went through the campaign once, or twice in the case of DOOM: The Dark Ages, but otherwise it was older games.
I started Overwatch 2 this year (played a lot of OW1, then took a multi-year break) and have been playing it basically daily for a couple of months. It’s a PVP Shooter, so I wouldn’t say it’s some cozy chill-out game, but I’ve found a few Heroes that are just fun to play as, so I have (mostly) a good time.
Decided to check out VOID/BREAKER, a roguelite FPS, which just released into Early Access. The trailer makes it look like some crazy, super fast-paced, effects filled shooter, where you constantly destroy your environment, and maybe it gets to that point, but so far in my <10 runs, 6h, with the game, it’s been pretty basic.
Each run you choose a single weapon, so far I’ve unlocked a pistol (default), automatic rifle and shotgun, and then you’ll find different upgrades and abilities that you slot into your weapon to modify it.
The main thing of this game is the grappling hook. You can either grapple objects in the environment to throw at enemies, like explosives. Or you can grapple to specific points in each arena to fly around, but so far, for me, that hasn’t been as fun as it should be.
Then the destructible buildings, although they are really basic (mainly just boxes) and take a surprisingly long time to bring down, and even then it’s mainly in parts, not the whole thing. Unless you find some upgrades, your grenades (and the aforementioned explosives) will be the main way to destroy stuff, so you’ll have to constantly wait for the short cooldown to throw the next grenade or look for more objects in the arena.
I’ll give it some more time, because I can see the potential, but I haven’t really found anything like the “deep gun modding” or “deadly synergies” the Steam store page is talking about. 90% of the time it’s been stuff like your bullets fly faster, and your grenade deals more damage.
telling people to pretend Trails does not exist and to ignore them goes a little far
It doesn’t go far enough. These games should be laughed at and used as examples of what not to do.
I personally liked them better than Zero and Azure.
You are objectively wrong (although after thinking about it some more yesterday, Azure is now also on my Trails-shitlist).
Nobody should play Sky FC and think “that wasn’t very good, and the final act was garbage, but there are like a dozen more of these games, they have to get good eventually. Maybe the great world building I’ve heard so much about kicks in at some point.” NO! You can still turn back!
Nobody should get hope after playing Zero that the series might finally be on the up and up, and not hot trash. You will be disappointed!
Nobody should be like me, be literally held at gunpoint to eventually play the rest of the games, because of the hundreds of hours, that I’ve already wasted on this abomination of a video game series.
As far as I can tell, it just uses whatever language you use Steam in. If that language doesn’t have enough reviews, it defaults to all languages.
I also just tried and set German as a secondary language, but it still just shows the score for English reviews. It doesn’t even mention German at the bottom of the page, where you get the summary, only all languages and English (and recent). If I change the language for the store, it also changes the source for the review score.
The actual reviews at the bottom of the page (Most Helpful and Recent) are pulled from the languages you’ve allowed, so I now see English and German reviews (and a Korean one, but maybe that user just uses Steam in English, but posted the review in Korean?).
For SH2, I think it was specifically because Bloober Team was working on it. They had a mixed or spotty track record before this release, so people were worried, they’d mess up the remake for a beloved game.
I think Konami also kinda “left” video game development for a time, focusing more on Pachinko machines, their health clubs, etc. So this, along with some of their previous choices, meant they didn’t really have the best reputation (and still haven’t), and people didn’t know if it was just going to be a lazy cash grab.
Silent Hill f I don’t really know what people are saying, and I haven’t looked, but I can only guess that anti-woke mob is going after the game, because you’re playing as a girl/woman, which is of course DEI, forced diversity, woke, whatever, I dunno.
I like it, but currently I see two possible improvements, that I hope get added down the line.
First, being able to give a list of languages you want to factor into the score, so it’s not just your current Steam language.
Second, I’d like the toggle to disable the language filter and off-topic review filter to be separate.
Both are pretty minor for me, since I think the default settings are fine, but giving people more options is better.
Steam already marked review bombing as off-topic before, which don’t factor into the score by default, and you have to specifically select to see them.
You can disable this language filter, along with the off-topic filter (you should be able to disable them separately though, which you can’t currently).
Imma be honest, I played those games all back-to-back in 2020, Sky SC to CS3, 500 hours of Trails in two months, so I don’t remember a lot about all of these.
It definitely does have some of these terrible moments, which is why I didn’t like it as much as Zero, but I still liked the smaller region more than the other games, along with the rest of the characters.
The overarching story is just terrible and makes no sense, but the absolute worst are definitely the villains. You constantly get blue balled, every time you win the fights, but then lose in cutscenes, so you end up pretty much going nowhere.
Cold Steel constantly resets most progression at the start of each game, so you end up just spinning wheels for hours on end, building a relationship with characters that shouldn’t matter, until there’s a tiny bit of story (that contributes to the overarching plot) at the end of the game.
The exception in the series for me were Zero and Azure, which I genuinely liked, because of the much smaller setting and since it has nothing to do with the rest of the series, until the end of Azure, where some connection to the rest of the games is shoehorned in.
I played this for a bit last year (16h on Steam), and while I don’t think it’s bad, it does get really repetitive. Most of the weapons felt extremely similar, and eventually all my runs would play out the same, where I’d just find a choke point, funnel all enemies through there and mow them down, so it’s just a boring horde shooter. Having a dozen weapons all around your screen is only amusing for so long.
The only one I really played, but really got into was TCG Card Shop Simulator.
It’s really just another Unity asset flip, really nothing special, but I think the TCG theme is more compelling to me, compared to other games like this. Also, you can open card packs, which is really neat. Eventually, you can have employees doing basically everything for you, so you’ll just be in charge of ordering new stock and opening packs to sell individual cards.
Because it’s just another Unity game, there’s just a ton of mods already, even though the game is still in Early Access. Either QoL mods, Cheat mods, replace cards with whatever real TCG you want, whatever.
I played for around 50h shortly after launch and pretty much did everything the game had at that time, although I used mods near the end, which did speed up things somewhat. There have been some updates since then, but nothing really that made me go back to the game yet.
The game has a demo/free prologue, so you can check it out before you buy, but I don’t know how much stuff you can do in it.
Not playing yet, but I’m preparing for Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. I’m not gonna make my own builds, since I have basically no idea about PF or which of the thousands of feats, spells, whatever are good. There’s not a lot of info about this out there, or it’s outdated, so I’m compiling stuff in a spreadsheet, so I have easy access to everything.
So, apparently this headline is just totally misleading.
Browser games were huge in Japan, but that market collapsed (and probably all moved to Mobile), but the “hardcore” PC gaming we’d typically think of, has grown massively.
On Steam, Japanese language has grown from 0.85% in July 2015, to 2.56% in July 2025.
As I said, the video is about general types of SSDs, not specific games. It’s also mixed between first load after launch, reload of a save and sometimes fast travel, no real methodology.
When the game uses DirectStorage, a PCIe SSD will be a lot faster than SATA or HDDs. Games like Last of Us Part 2, Spider-Man 2 or Ratchet & Clank were shown. Indiana Jones doesn’t use DirectStorage, but still shows this kind of behavior.
Without DirectStorage, it mostly doesn’t matter, as long as it’s an SSD, although PCIe drives were almost always faster. If you reload a save, a lot of time, it often also doesn’t matter if you use an HDD, although you might still get the glitches and pop-ins from slow asset streaming.
Here’s a list of Steam games, that use DirectStorage. It’s not a lot right now, so you definitely don’t need to switch right this second, especially if you already have a SATA SSD, and you’re not playing the latest AAA games constantly. It is something to keep in mind, when you’re upgrading though.
Watch the video instead of talking nonsense.
This is not about specific SSDs, but a general comparison between SSD types (and some basic HDDs). It shows that some modern games actually take advantage of the increased speed, but once you’re using PCIe SSDs, it basically doesn’t matter if it’s 3.0 or 5.0, so just get the cheapest drive you find.
I played on default Nightmare and then some custom turbo mode (150% game speed with lower damage taken and dealt, and a bit more).
As the OP said, after a few levels you can get upgrades that destroys shielded enemies quickly and for some reason the game starts spawning mostly superheated ones anyway, so you can just instantly blow those groups up.
variety of enemies that require different weapons
I had a totally different experience. In my first playthrough I just switched weapons, when I felt like it (and for level challenges), because there’s just no reason otherwise. And the second playthrough was with only the SSG in the first half and Impaler in the second, and they just shredded everything.
I see that there has been a misunderstanding on my part. I agree with your last three points, but for some of the others, things you deem fine or good currently, I’d say they are rather mediocre (like your first point).
And in the end it basically all comes down to the combat, I think the most important part of these types of games, which you think isn’t engaging enough (it’s not, but that doesn’t bother me). I think if you did change it, and “fix” points two and three at the same time, you’d lose too much of what makes these types of grindy, rng loot games work in my opinion.
Which is why I think you’re wrong with saying
but not what most people want when they go to play a video game including in the ARPG genre
I think the mindless grinding, not having to pay attention, is exactly what most people want with this type of game. Of course, that isn’t to say everyone wants that and that there isn’t a market for something else.
However, I’d personally probably rather recommend the Niohs, the Khazans, the Wo Longs, the Remnants, the whatever of the world to those people (or try SSFHC or something, I dunno).
Most of them have barely innovated on Diablo 2’s core moment to moment loop and it’s something that seemingly everyone is aware of but no studio has yet to be able to fix.
That’s what I’m saying, because for many people there is nothing to fix, because they feel it’s not broken. That’s why basically all the isometric ARPGs still go back to the D2 formula and maybe add some QoL changes.
Also, your examples and expectations feel extremely unrealistic and mostly not what ARPGs are known for, and frankly some are even incompatible with the genre in my opinion.
From your comments here, it seems like kinds of isometric ARPGs aren’t for you. Last Epoch, PoE, TQ2, all don’t have good enough combat, so what are you looking for?
If you still want the loot and grind aspect, maybe a shooter is more up your alley, like Borderlands or Destiny. Or maybe something like the Team Ninja third-person action games, like Nioh, Stranger of Paradise, Wo Long (and games like that).
I’m not certain I have the faith it’ll ever have 30 hours of content
Does it need to? Nothing wrong with a solid 20-25h campaign, you play through once, maybe another time with a different class or in multiplayer, and you’re done. I don’t need everything to be a forever game with constant content drops, even a game like this.
MS is not going to get them back
Until they want to play a multiplayer game with their friends, that doesn’t work because of Anti-Cheat. Or maybe Linux is a bit more involved than they initially realized.
Most of those that switched probably won’t go back, but I think with Linux it’s going to be more than someone might think (however it’ll still grow, especially over the coming months with Windows 10 support ending).
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Looks like this actually works on Linux. Steam Deck rating is Playable, with ProtonDB rating as Gold. Not that this changes the other part, where the game doesn’t look interesting to you.