StormEdge Steam Charts & Stats

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fantastic!

Game-Wise: It's a pretty good game with a few negatives. The game doesn't tell you ALL certain effects (like wtf is Flow), and it can get kinda repetitive. I quite enjoyed the Bosses, except Zackerow Phase 2, Spammer of All Shields. Other than those points, games a solid 7/10. Achievement-Wise: Only really a few difficult ones where you gotta invest time in to get cause a single run can last up to on average 30-50 minutes depending on your pacing. I say that because after you beat the game once you gotta beat the game again in Master Mode which is slightly harder than normal with the only intimidating thing being the life system (Reaches zero, game over on save). Other than that, pretty normal to get achievements.

Very, very fun gameplay loop, played with a friend in coop all the time and overall had alot of fun.

Not worth it at all, really hard to see during combat and the story is meh.

Interesting gameplay and storyline but fs gotta play with 2 people. Impossible to pass some levels alone

This game isn't terrible but I can't recommend it as it gets repetitive pretty quickly. The build options don't mix up the gameplay very much. There are different characters but once you've played them a few times they don't individually have very interesting gameplay mechanics to keep you hooked. The enemies aren't that much of a challenge and don't vary much. It's a game that starts interesting but quickly tails off due to lack of depth which is a shame.

very repetitive. same fights. short game loop. little content.

This game takes a slightly different concept than what we're used to in roguelikes: here, dashing isn't just a way to evade danger, but a way to attack enemies. It's quite easy and satisfying to do so, too, as the enemies glow a really bright red once they're about to attack, and the window is relatively generous. The game is quite pretty too, in its pixel art style. A touch beneath Children of Morta in this aspect, but it's mechanically a lot better. The game kinda falls flat in its structure, though. It's as if they tried to take a little bit of every game -- they have a few standalone levels that end on a single final boss, and then they have the "actual" roguelike mode in which you need to go through these same biomes and beat them consecutively. And, in a similar vein to Hades, you need to beat the game multiple times, this time increasing your "heat". That... is kinda boring. The first times I cleared each biome were fun, but seeing them recycled in the "endgame" weren't so much, I'd had enough by then. There isn't enough variance in the runs to really justify having to beat "endgame" 5x to reach the story ending (maybe it's more, I got tired by the 4th). And the roguelike progression isn't that strong, the things we get to unlock in between runs are cool and all, but kinda slow and not too impactful. Another thing that annoyed me a bit was how, if you're using any character that isn't the MC, he'll just appear instead of your character out of nowhere during cutscenes when you're finding a boss. But that's honestly kinda minor. All in all, the game's greatest strength is its combat dashes, which are incredibly satisfying by themselves, and any structural issues I have with the game don't change the fact that I had a ton of fun playing it. Also, I have in total about 6 hours of play time, but I played some of it offline so Steam doesn't count it, apparently.

[h1]On the edge of recommendation[/h1] [h2][u]Overview[/u][/h2] [i]StormEdge[/i] is a rogue-lite action game. While I generally don’t mind and even like short games, this one just fell a little short of expectations while also doing enough missteps to cause me to decide not to recommend it. If there was an option to give a sideways “maybe” option I’d go with that. I did have fun with it but by the end I was just happy to be done with it and wasn’t really looking forward to more without anything new to spice up some longevity. [h2][u]Story[/u][/h2] StormEdge follows a group of heroes (really just the starting character, Ulrich) that formed a guild called StormEdge. Now my quip in the parenthesis isn’t just a joke. While you do recruit 3 other characters in the story and there is supposedly more to this guild, from a story POV all that really matters is Ulrich , a shoehorned romance with Lily and the main villain which I’ll get to later. So the first main problem I observed is it literally does not matter who you choose to complete runs with. The game will jarringly force Ulrich into every cutscene and hide whoever you were playing as. Why is anyone else even an option? I guess there are minor gameplay differences but the variety from different heroes isn’t all that spicy – I’ll get to that later. Aside from that taking me out of the immersion, the story was OK. It serves the point in getting you to continue the game. There’s a problem – villain causing storms. Your job is to stop the stops and save the people. There’s also a reason for the rogue-lite gameplay loop of starting back from the beginning and repeatedly fighting the same final boss. Nothing to write home about, but it’s decent enough. [h2][u]Presentation[/u][/h2] I was initially inclined to try this game due to the beautiful pixel art. It is very nice looking. Unfortunately, it gets in the way of the game sometimes. I often have zero clue what is happening on screen, what hit me, and how it hit me. The visual clarity is lacking which is hugely important for a game like this where dodging is so critical. Additionally, I found myself annoyed by some decisions in the game such as the boss fight against a certain snowy woman. Every phase change she will spout some dialog which is kind of cool the first time. But on repeat runs (because for some reason she can show as a boss again after you beat her which is one repeat boss that makes no sense but whatever) it’s infuriating. It’s not story time anymore, why do I gotta pause and listen to her yap and force acknowledgement of said yapping? Just let me play the game, man. Totally breaks the combat flow. [h2][u]Gameplay[/u][/h2] At first the game seemed rather simple with not much scaling factor. This was eventually corrected once I hit the final act and the actual gameplay loop was unlocked. But then I realized it was basically just playing the same run over and over and there isn’t much variety. So the action mechanics come down you can move around, attack or dodge. That’s essentially it at first and the simplicity isn’t a bad thing. There’s also a special move button unique to each character but I found it was not worth using 99% of the time which I’ll explain in a bit. Attacking without dodging between build up combos and the attack chains get stronger with heavy strikes and finishing moves. Dodging will reset the combos and build up its own combo meter (focus?) and do stronger counter attack moves as the dodge-combos build. It's an interesting mechanic that’s further enhanced in the true game with relics and move enhancements to increase the damage and abilities of the individual types of strikes or counters. In the early game the simplicity is kind of boring because there is only one act and a boss and then the run ends. The true game will have you go through 3 acts with a boss at the end of each. There is more time to actually get a build going here and it was fun a few times. The problem is that true game is also the end game and literally all there is left to do at that point is just climb difficulties/ascensions which I’m already not a fan of. Especially in this game with the visual clarity problem. There are still some bonuses to unlock to help make the game easier or improve quality of life, but nothing really game changing or spicing up the variety. So there are other characters. They have different combos and signature moves. But in the end they all use the same sort of relics and similar enhancements. But the real problem is when you realize the optimal way to play the game is to just spam dodge 90% of the time. So where is the variety when all you’re doing is playing dodge simulator? And not a good one because I’m not even timing the presses since I can’t see shit. There’s also an ultimate attack but I loathe how annoying it is to pull off. You have to have a full combo and full dodge combo. It’s so easy to accidentally reset one of the chains because again, there’s too much shit on the screen. If you stop dodging to build up the combo there’s a high chance you’re getting hit by some bullshit move you can’t even see coming. This all comes to head with a terrible final boss that made me ultimately decide on the negative rating. Sure, it’s a classic to have a final boss be a sort of test that you learned all the game mechanics. Doesn’t make it a fun one. In fact it’s the opposite when dodging is literally the only reliable system (as in guaranteed to have to dodge – but of course going to get hit half the time anyways so not so reliable there!). Having to stop dodging to be forced to do other mechanics felt terrible and generally got me killed. Pulling off the ultimate move was a huge chore. The greatest sin though? The final boss is literally just the boss with no build up before hand. There is no scaling or act to play through to get stronger first. You just go in and raw-dog it with basic vanilla starting moves. The entire fun of roguelite games is the scaling. Why would you remove that for the big bad? [h2][u]Specs[/u][/h2] No issues. Operating System: Windows 10 Processor (CPU): Intel Core i5-3570K CPU @3.40GHz Graphics Card (GPU): NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Memory (RAM) 16 GB [h2][u]Summary[/u][/h2] I can see this a small indie dev’s passion project and I commend them for making a beautiful game and a good first effort. There is the potential for a good game here but there are just too many missteps that really miss the fun factor and damper the experience. I hope they can learn from this game and make something even better the next time. There are some neat systems in place that are just in dire need of rebalancing, clarity, and variety. This game is not worth the asking price, but may be worth a glance on a deep sale if you’re interested in the genre at all.