Disappointment Double-Feature ("Necrophosis" and "Eternal Strands")

Hello and welcome to another double-feature review! This time around, the connecting factor between this article's subjects is that they were tremendously disappointing. So, let's not waste any more time.

Publisher: Dragonis Games

Developer: Dragonis Games (Ares Dragonis & Adonis Brosteanu)

Platforms: Microsoft Windows (Reviewed) 

I don't take any joy in providing negative feedback on indie titles. In fact, there have been times where I've abstained from reviewing a bad game if the team is too small. There's no moral victory to be had, and I'm not enough of a psycho to feel like a big man for doing it. There are, however, times when I feel the effort has to be made. In the case of Necrophosis, I feel like doing a review for two reasons: 1) it isn't bad, just mediocre, and 2) there was a staggering amount of potential that just didn't come to fruition. So while I still don't like that I have to be tough on a small team, I feel that by laying my thoughts out, it's possible that somebody reading will keep from making the same mistakes that Dragonis Games made...and if it happens to be Dragonis Games reading, I can only hope that they might find a way to take the clear atmospheric visions they have and mold them into something good next time, because the talent is most certainly there even if the execution wasn't.

Longtime readers will know that there's a specific kind of game/movie/show/whatever I've always wanted to experience: a wordless, atmospheric alien landscape wherein I have no clue what's going on. The closest that gaming has ever gotten to this was Scorn a couple years ago, with the film world getting fairly close with Phil Tibbett's Mad God. None of these ever hit the mark just right, but I always give them a shot. Enter the trailer for Necrophosis last year. With its bone-shattering throat singing music and desolate hellscapes, the trailer put this game at the top of my wishlist from day 1, so promising was it as a contender for that experience I've always wanted. Then, I played the demo and was pretty disappointed, but not totally discouraged. What I'd expected to be be a densely atmospheric horror-adjacent world turned out to instead be a fairly ho-hum desert where eldritch horrors quote poetry and everyone talks about how horrific everything is. What's more, I wasn't expecting anything gameplay-wise (and after Scorn, I definitely didn't want anything), but what gameplay there was ended up being needle in a haystack item-finding that proved more frustrating than anything. So as I said, the demo disappointed me, but I still had hope that Dragonis Games could turn things around before release. And I'm sad to say that apart from some improvements to the item-finding, nothing really improved.

I won't be saying much about story or characters in this review because, frankly, there isn't much of either. And that isn't actually a negative. After all, a characteristic of that experience I've always wanted is that I should have no idea what's going on! But the problem is that Necrophosis tries really hard to get you invested in its world, and while it doesn't try to make you care about characters, it sure does push a whole lot of them at you. In regards to story, there are logs scattered throughout the levels...but they all read exactly the same. It's all "tormented" this and "bleak" that and "existence" this, it's all a bunch of tryhard grimdark word salad....and I would like to take the time to remind readers that this is a Greek team and therefore English isn't a first language...however, the sheer inundation of grimdark word choices has this distinctly self-important feeling to it (a feeling not helped by a quick look at the team's "about us" page). What I've just said about the logs can also be said about the characters, but to an even worse degree. Half of Necrophosis is just having your gameplay forcibly interrupted and the camera wrestled away from you by some poor soul who blabbers on for over a minute to say something that could've been said in a quarter of that time. They'll talk all about how much of a tormented existence they live, and how much they would like to end this tormented existence, and it would really be swell if you could get them this thing from the other side of the level to help them continue to tormentedly exist in this tormented existence (in this tormented existence). Every time it seem like they're finally going to stop talking, they'll have yet another navel-gazing line about how terrible everything is just to pad things out even more in this tormented existence. It's almost nonstop, and it actively gets in the way of what should be the primary focus here: the art design and atmosphere in this tormented existence. 

That's the real kicker in this tormented existence. All Necrophosis needed to do was have some top-tier art design and atmosphere in this tormented existence, and I would've been happy with it being the slowest walking simulator in the world in this tormented existence. And it does have that design and atmospheric strength in this tormented existence, but it sabotages it every chance it gets in this tormented existence. I can't walk around a desolate hellscape taking in the visuals if every couple of steps the camera gets jerked away from me to focus on some guy in this tormented existence. And I especially can't take in this painstakingly crafted world when technical flaws get in the way in this tormented existence.

See, despite having the PC specs required to run Necrophosis in this tormented existence, I couldn't move past the third area because of a consistent graphical crash for about a week in this tormented existence. Eventually a patch was put out that addressed this, but it wasn't the only issue I found in this tormented existence. There was plenty of audio stuttering throughout as well as small framerate dips in this tormented existence. Then there was an audio balancing issue in one particular area in this tormented existence, and it happened to be one of the coolest areas in the game (as well as in this tormented existence). The area sat on the accretion disk of a black hole, which was awesome...so long as I was looking at the black hole itself (and doing so in this tormented existence). If I turned away from the black hole, 100% of the hole's noise would be funneled directly into whatever ear was relevant at full blast in this tormented existence. It made what should have been an awesome segment an auditory nightmare...not unlike this existence, which is tormented. It's like every time Necrophosis stands poised to impress, it stumbles right when it matters most (in this tormented existence).  

I would talk at length about gameplay, but there's not much to discuss in this tormented existence. It's basically a bunch of "puzzles" centered around finding key objects in the world (which, by the way, is in a tormented existence). They tend to be incredibly hard to miss, so most of your time will be spent scouring the floor (and only the floor) of this tormented existence looking for a minuscule indicator that you're looking at the right thing. Not great, but it's at least better than Scorn's gameplay loop, and it makes this particular tormented existence less tormented than other tormented existences.

I think by now I've gotten my point across and more than adequately demonstrated how annoying the writing is. Necrophosis is proof that you can have all the vision in the world, but it doesn't mean much if you can't execute. Some polish would've made this a decent experience. And some basic knowledge of show-vs-tell would've made it a masterpiece in my book. This could've been one of 2025's best games, but because of the specific ways in which Dragonis Games failed to deliver, I've found that I like it less than Scorn despite it being better in some ways. This being a (tormented existence) much smaller game, I'll be using my 2x scale where I can take off a maximum of 2 points for any one issue.

Let us review:

Technical flaws in this tormented existence - 1.0

Unplayable until patch in this tormented existence - 2.0

Terrible writing in this tormented existence - 2.0

Gameplay woes in this tormented existence - 0.5

The final score for Necrophosis in this tormented existence is...

4.5/10 - Slightly Below Average

In this tormented existence, Dragonis Games, in this tormented existence. 

Publisher: Yellow Brick Games

Developer: Yellow Brick Games

Platforms: Playstation 5 (Reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, Microsoft Windows

Anyone who knows me well knows that my favorite game of all time is Dragon Age: Origins, and people who know Dragon Age: Origins well likely know that the creative director was a guy named Mike Laidlaw. Laidlaw was one of the people who left scumbag publisher Electronic Arts in what would eventually be known as the Great Bioware Exodus several years ago, and his lack of direction was clearly evident in the failure that was last year's Dragon Age: The Veilguard. So, imagine my surprise when, out of the blue, Laidlaw formed a new studio and released a debut game earlier this year! Beyond even this, imagine my surprise when I learned Austin Wintory of all people (the first composer ever to be nominated for a grammy specifically for a game soundtrack) was handling the soundtrack for this out-of-the-blue game! Now...imagine my surprise when I realized that, despite all of this pedigree, the end result wasn't exactly good. Just like with Necrophosis, it isn't bad, just not good in any notable way. Unlike with Necrophosis, however, I couldn't find it within me to finish the game in question, Eternal Strands...so this won't be a review where I give a score at the end. It also won't be a super-involved review, but my intention is to as least write up something for everything I spend any time with. So, here goes.

Eternal Strands takes place in just amount the most generic fantasy world you can imagine, containing some of the most ho-hum ideas possible. It's the kind of fantasy world where you have locations named things like "the hearth" and factions called "the bastion-sworn." It's like the writers at Yellow Brick Games just put "insert name here" at multiple points in the script and didn't both to actually think of anything creative. And the fact that those names are the only aspects of the story and world I can remember says everything you need to know.

So, it's beyond disappointing that a game under the watchful eye of Mike Laidlaw could have such a subpar setting and plot, but maybe gameplay makes up for it?

Nope. The best way to describe the problem is that Eternal Strands is a hodgepodge of disparate systems, none of which are particularly well-made. There is, for instance, a not insignificant amount of Breath of the Wild influence where it is neither warranted nor beneficial. Things like breakable rocks and trees just for the sake of them. There's also quite a bit of Monster Hunter DNA to be found in the overall structure. This is because the basic gameplay loop outside of completing missions in a given area involves picking up resources until you've filled up your relatively small storage space, then returning back to your hub area to use those resources to upgrade your weapons, armor, and storage space. So it's a gameplay loop in the most literal sense of the word. Gathering resources to be able to increase your ability to gather resources. And in terms of combat, there's serviceable melee stuff and a magic system as underbaked as everything else. I can think of no better way to describe it than to bring up the ice spreading spell. Enemies are constantly darting around, so the ice spreading spell is meant to be a way to keep them from moving for a little while. Here's the problem, though...you take damage when you come into contact with the ice. And guess what you'll be doing a lot of if you're hitting an enemy incased in ice with a melee weapon? So your best bet of circumventing the issue of enemies constantly creating distance is an active problem. You're also meant to use this ice spell as a way of circumventing hazards by creating walkways. However, the ice is always uneven and unreliable, and again, you take damage from coming into contact with it. So, just about nothing in this gameplay model works in a vacuum, much less in conjunction with other aspects.

So, that's kind of all there is to say. Technically speaking there's not a lot to write home about. It's an unimpressive art style that holds up a rather flimsy framerate, and if I remember correctly, I also had maybe one or two crashes. Normally I'd give a studio a bit of a pass if it's their first game without AAA funding...but as we saw with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, that isn't really an excuse that works anymore. So...better luck next time, I guess.