2.5/5 ★ – guished_foobi's review of The Bleakest Keep.

Bleakest Keep is in a lot of ways, true to its name. There are definitely some good things happening here, but my God is this game bleak, and not in a good way. Starting with a general overview, this game is a roguelike. So, you'd think that the main draw SHOULD BE replayability. However, the main issue here is that you have seen virtually everything this game has to offer once you've completed a single run. And that takes at most about 45 minutes. There really is no meaningful incentive to replay it or try a different run once you've seen the credits roll. Sure, there are minor cosmetic rewards or slightly different weapons, but none of them really seem worth it. Gameplay is fun, but runs are incredibly repetitive. As a plus side, the combat system has really good bones. The block mechanic feels good and rewarding, your strikes feel satisfying and have weight to them, and the ranged weapons you're offered add some cool versatility to your kit. At the same time though, there's very little diversity to enemies from one run to the next which makes everything feel incredily bland and "same-y". And that's before even mentioning the fact that most enemies have super simple attack patterns that you can memorize or intuit almost immediately. This blandness and repetition is made even worse considering there is literally no music. Not sure if that decision was motivated by budget or something else, but a solid soundtrack really would have helped to add some character to this game. This might be a little cynical, but it really feels like the creators just assumed that the character of Juliet alone would be enough to get "people" (goth simps) to play the game and used that as an excuse to take shortcuts in a lot of other areas. To be fair, I bought the game. So I guess if that was their plan, it worked.