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.
It's a casserole.
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?).
Unless there's a setting I missed, right now you can only change both settings at the same time.
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).
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.