Recent reviews by Lance

MMO raiding without any of the downtime or grinding, you get straight to the point. There's also cute bunny girls, what isn't there to love?

Absolutely incredible how this was made by one guy. Solid netcode too, as far as I'm aware it's using the same rollback netcode he had in his previous fighting game.

My only criticism is that it can be a bit hard to not be overwhelmed by all the different visual affects happening at once, especially as you get to the later bosses. Even with the higher contrast modes provided, there's a lot happening visually which can leave you confused in the moment. This is something I feel like I can resolve by just playing more and learning all the moves, but it doesn't feel intuitive to learn due to the cluttered nature of the visuals. That being said, because of how over the top things get at times, it does feel awesome when you do manage to avoid a series of attacks. If things were more readable then there's a good chance that spectacle would be lessened.

Overall, Rabbit & Steel is a fantastic game. I was happy to buy it full price just to support the developer for releasing a product that ran well, wasn't buggy, and had gameplay that respects the players time.

EDIT: Reworded some sections, and addressed grammatical errors.

These are my brief thoughts that I'm only writing down because Steam won't let me post a blank negative review.

I do like the idea of bringing back the Gothic franchise, especially after having played through them just recently, but I don't like what I see in this demo.

I'll give this teaser the benefit of the doubt because as far as I'm aware it was made 4 years ago (back in 2019). It was clearly rushed out to gauge the response to a new Gothic game, which in all fairness it succeeded in doing since development has continued.

That being said, this teaser immediately misses the mark on what makes Gothic, well, Gothic. Play the first 30 minutes of the original Gothic and then compare it to this and you'll see exactly what I mean. I'll be brief but here's a couple issues: conversations drag on, overuse of cinematics, can't even skip through dialogue if you're a fast reader, Diego was one of my favourite characters in Gothic and I dislike how he is portrayed in this, and the Nameless Hero talks more in the first 5 minutes than all 3 original Gothic games combined (and it's all useless commentary too). A big part of an RPG is the characters, it's world, and its story. These all play a big part in the atmosphere of the game and it's what immerses a player, so it's very important to not mess that up. Especially since the original Gothic did a very good job of that, and it's the last thing that needs to be changed or 're-imagined'.

I'm all for adding quality-of-life improvements, experimenting with a new combat system, and including modern visuals/graphics. However, keep the parts of the original Gothic that were good and only expand on that rather than change it needlessly. Off the top of my head the only things that really need to be improved on from the original were the later chapters since they ended up being quite linear and far less open-ended than the first chapter. You could also argue that changing the inventory system (and other ways you controlled your character etc.) would be a nice change to make the game more appealing to modern gamers.

Looking at newer trailers the remake does seem to be changing direction for the better, but knowing the current state of the games industry it's only smart to stay sceptical until we can get our hands on the final product.