I can't hold back anymore... I can't handle this kind of gaslighting online that has been going on recently full of revisionism and blatant rabid MMO fan shit. Fallout 76 is pure slop to the highest degree. It's an insult to the players time and intelligence. The gameplay is worse than 4 extremely unresponsive and braindead. The quest design boils down to grabbing something and then taking to it another location. Every. Single. Time. Not even the main quests are interesting. The map is insanely goofy for what a fallout game should look like. You're telling me California looks the same in fallout but all of a sudden West Virginia has shit piss and vomit colour scheme forests everywhere? Yes I DESPISE this game. I always have and no the updates didn't fix shit. Now you can talk to extremely bland NPCs with wastelanders who are comically good or comically evilish. They couldn't even make the faction quests interesting like the enclave is just talking to a really lame computer and doing his chores around the map. Guess what? More MMO slop where it needs to make you take up as much time as possible doing multiple super insignificant quests to pad out your playtime and make you artificially feel like you're getting somewhere. No this game ISNT "good now." This game ISNT just blindly hated on. Its just your average MMO fans who wasted hundreds of hours doing absolutely nothing trying to find any reason to justify themselves from doing jack shit.
Yeah this is a super heated review but because this is genuinely everything wrong with a video game. Taking a franchise which already got dummed down with fallout 4 and then turning it into pure slop with an online only MMO. How fun. I wouldn't even hate on it if it wasn't extremely boring from every way you look at it. And no. It's not "fun with friends" either. Fallout is shit and people who unironically defend this game after everything Bethesda has done are the reason why.

the worst shit ever. fuck those fucking bear traps and fuck that guy with the gun. actually unplayable without a guide and even then there's like never a moment it's not miserable. only fun I had was streaming to friends and pretending to be a 3 subscriber youtuber and being fake scared at everything and even that i was completely tired of less than halfway through

good for realigning your perspective on what a 1/10 is

edit: this is $40 on steam what the fuuuck

Alright, guys, I can't add it to IGDB due to their rules, but I just played the griffpatch Scratch demake/remake of this game, and, holy shit, it's like if this game was actually good.

This is probably one of my wildest takes yet, but hear me out. Switching back and forth between the Scratch remake and the actual game it's imitating is night and day.

The Griffpatch remake feels so much better to control while still asking a lot of dexterity from the player (much more friction, and hammer movement doesn't have a noticeable delay), with the bonus of feeling a whole lot less cynical and combative. The narration is largely about the creation of the game itself and fighting with the Scratch engine, which is a lot more directed and triumphant than the bitter and dour free-association rambling of this. Another really striking difference is the usage of bright Scratch assets instead of assets reminiscent of Unity asset store shovelware, which does a lot in terms of invoking a sort of hopeful and optimistic naive creativity, rather than the unfeeling and gloomy energy exuded here.

I played a bit of the Scratch version and thought "oh this is actually pretty good, maybe I should reappraise the original", so I booted it up, and I'm sorry, it's just absolute dogshit to control. Weird mouse acceleration settings, the hammer slips around on literally everything, and you can accidentally launch yourself with nothing more than a sneeze. I mean, I guess that's the modus operandi here, but I just never could get over that initial frustration, even as I had climbed higher. I just never really felt like my mistakes were my fault (which is the intended result), whereas there it was much easier to understand what I did wrong and what I could avoid next time.

Highly recommended if you want a version of this without hate or malice in its heart.

A good reminder to never drink from Randy Pitchford's J.O hand.

I played this with a friend my entire play-through because, at least for me, the main draw was that it was a soulslike game with an emphasis on co-op. We also played on Hard difficulty for our first playthrough, which the game doesn't recommend but it ended up not really mattering (more on this later). First time we played was fun, combat was smooth enough, environments seemed pretty nice (I at least liked the derelict city in autumn look), the guns had some good weight to them, and the lore was fine. Second time though we started getting weary of some of the design choices. We had reached ~5 hours by this time, and it felt like we hadn't progressed much at all. We were still in what we originally thought was the starting area, and it lost its luster quick. This is when you start noticing that they reuse a lot of the same assets, and since this is also when the it begins bearing on you that the game is incredibly linear, all the sections in this one area feel like unnecessary padding. We also hadn't fought any bosses that had any unique design from the regular enemies you fight normally. Our third, and last, session we were supremely disappointed, and ultimately, bored. When we asked each other what we thought of the game, our initial responses to each other were "I'm the most neutral I could be towards this game." This was apparently a lie, as we sprung into an airing of the grievances towards the end of our playthrough. We had FINALLY reached a different area after our 7th hour or so, and it wasn't getting less linear. To top it off, the PTSD I got from serving two tours in Resident Evil 5 kicked off when this area immediately greets you with a prostrating middle-eastern woman and shooting people who are actually chucking spears. A nitpick, I know, but it was a funny note to end it on for me.

This is just a broad overview of what our time playing it looked like. I remembered before buying the game on sale that it had decent user reviews on Steam, and I was wondering why now. What I saw beyond people creaming their fuckin jorts over some npc we mustve missed, was people saying it was a well-done mix of a Souls game and Borderlands. I saw one person also mention Fallout in the mix. I cannot fucking fathom that we have played the same games. Even if I think Borderlands is dogshit, I'll give it credit where credit is due here and compare the mechanics of the three games listed and how Remnant doesn't match up.


CHARACTER CREATION

The actual visual creator isn't anything to write home about, which I'm not gonna scold it for. Making a build in Remnant, however, is much much lamer. At the start you have the choice of three classes, I decided I wanted to do the short-range tanky guy and run with that since having a big melee weapon and a shotgun sounded like fun. I'll get to that. My friend went for the mid-range healer guy. We were given an array of basic stats (like health increase, stamina increase, etc.) plus one unique to the class, which leveling into gives you pretty minor percentage changes in that stat. This is fine though, since these are valuable resources so regularly putting points into them is going to be necessity anyways. Making the ramp towards having a lot of health or stamina slower is one way the game can make it more difficult, at least early on where you might have to deliberate between dealing more damage or being able to eat more damage for example. But you start to realize that there isn't really any deliberation, and you're actually going to spend your points towards two, maybe three stats ever. The reason for this is because every other thing you can put a point into seems useless to put points into at all, and you'd only see a return after you reach 20 or so with that stat. You can gain new traits through actions you do in the game, which is pretty cool in practice, but they make it incredibly dull by making every unique trait you could get just another minor percentage boost. Who the fuck ever needs +1% extra climbing speed? Who cares about -2% from ranged damage? Getting points to spend into stats isn't really that slow, I guess, but it's also not the easiest to discern when you get one - most the time it happens without you even realizing you were close to getting one. It uses EXP for leveling, but it's never shown what gives you EXP or how much, since the progress bar is stashed away in the menu.

It's not just the stats though. Throughout the 8 hours I played I did not find a single other melee weapon that isn't the one you start with. Instead you get like 30 underwhelming rings, one interesting armor set, two big guns (one of which is a boss weapon), one sidearm, and like 5 weapon mods (most of which just summon a guy [most of them are also indiscernible from the enemies visually]).

Dark Souls had a pretty simple thing going for it; An array of stats that was universal you pump your souls into, with the amount of souls needed increasing every time. Each stat was useful in it's own regard, the only two I could think of that aren't really that useful are Vitality and Faith in DS3 (though in the case of Faith this is a result of miracles being a joke in that installment.) Each time you increased a stat it genuinely felt like a worthy investment. If you felt like you may have put too much into something you realized you shouldn't have, you also have the option of respecting your build as well. Weapons and rings were also easy to come by, and in the early stages of the game you probably had something that matched the build you wanted to, or at least something to substitute it until you got something better.

Borderlands took to the route of skill trees with three routes you could take. I don't remember too much from it, admittedly, but I do remember there being enough variety from the three, and that being able to put points into them was pretty infrequent. This goes back into making your investment feel worth it, and deliberation into how you should build your character. Borderlands also likes to tout that it had a million guns or whatever, and yeah most of them were the same but with the stipulation "Oh! This one has one more bullet in the chamber compared to this one", but Remnant is on the complete opposite of this scale.

Now, when someone made a comparison to Fallout, this is probably what they meant because the system Remnant has is fairly similar to how perks work. Perks are passive bonuses or new abilities that are crucial as they can streamline whatever build you make into the most efficient it can be. Like Remnant, some you even get from progressing in the game. The key difference is that Fallout kept the points you put into stats and the points you put into perks as separate resources. You can dump your points into whatever stat you wanted for your general build, but the perks are really what made things interesting. The more you put into one perk, the better it was, and this change usually was very noticeable in-game. If increasing your stats was getting a handjob, then getting a perk is like having your prostate jostled around while someone's bouncing up and down your pole. I wouldn't know either of these feelings, but I can only imagine. Remnant feels like it combines the two together, and it ends up feeling like a blowie with teeth at your 50th birthday. And then afterwards you realize that it didn't have to come to this, and if you invested in Apple you wouldn't be such a sad pathetic slob in her 50s that has to resort to blowies with teeth because it's the most cooperation you've felt in months, maybe years. That is to say, Remnant made perks but if perks were really fucking boring. I don't have much to say on items on this front.

COMBAT

Combat is definitely Souls Like with guns. It's got a gun, it's got rolls, it's got stamina management, the whole deal. It's too bad that most of the time it feels like Gears of War instead. The first enemies you fight are in standard souls fare, they have their telegraphed melee and ranged attacks - you either roll in response and counterattack, or don't and eat shit. The melee weapon feels like a proper tool until around your first boss, where you realize that it is too much risk for such low reward compared to your guns. Using your melee as a counter attack is far too slow and/or doesn't do enough damage to warrant the damage you will probably take afterwards. Plus ammo for your guns drops like teeth out of a crackhead's skull, so there's no incentive to savor your ammo for something that would need it. Also shooting things is the only way for you to charge up your abilities, or weapon mods as they're called. Melee is outclassed in every aspect. Not to mention, on one boss we fought, The Ent, the only place where you could feasibly hit the fuckin thing with melee normally has a constantly active hitbox around it, even though all it's doing is walking around, not even stomping or anything, just meandering.

That's another thing: the bosses. If people are thinking about Dark Souls PVE they're thinking about the bosses. That's because, typically, they have unique designs and attack patterns. I won't pretend that Dark Souls doesn't have a fair share of "early game boss demoted to mid-game enemy" type shit, or even reusing the same boss three or four times (Asylum demon mention!!!!) but this game doesn't even wait until the enemy is a boss in the first place. Early game enemy promoted to early game boss and then demoted back to enemy. Best description I can give to the VERY FIRST BOSS OF THE GAME. AND THE SECOND. The third boss, The Ent as I mentioned before, is a unique enemy and its fight is just as non-impressive as the ones before it. The bosses are difficult, to a degree, but it's never because of the boss themselves; It's because of the adds. Every fight we did, up until the one that was a flying triangle (awesome design, i made one just like it in geometry [sorry im getting more cynical the more time I spend thinking about this game]) had adds that would spawn every ~20 seconds or so that were the same exploding mushrooms. These were usually the main cause of death because they would also cause a status effect that had a chance to make you cough instead of doing something else. The triangle even had its own variation of these guys, but they weren't as deadly. The reason for this becomes clear: the bosses themselves are total fucking pushovers. It's not hard to quickly down them if you keep a healthy distance away and pepper them with buckshot. The adds are a bandaid solution to this, if you ask me.

ART DIRECTION

I'm not really someone who harps on graphics usually. I usually enjoy stylistic choices over graphics quality. For example, original Silent Hill 2 has a lot of graphical limitations, and is very primitive compared to what games can manage now; Still then, the atmosphere does an incredibly good job at portraying something that's hostile and unfamiliar. Remnant isn't the most graphically impressive, neither is it stylistically, but it's not all bad either. Like I said, the beginning area does look nice when you're not going through the same repeat areas, and weapon mods affecting how your gun appears is a cool touch. Some of the clothing is also very nice; Just too bad you don't get a lot of it. The enemy designs are.... eh. They don't really do anything for me. The music is in the same bill, it just doesn't really catch me at all.

Souls and Borderlands both have a good visual style, and there's a lot of designs from both games that can be lauded, and a lot of the areas fit a specific vibe. Borderlands has some good tracks that I can recall, and Dark Souls boss music - fuck even the ambiance fits the feel so well. Level design in these games are usually, also, distinct enough to make areas not seem like just reused assets.

CONCLUSION

I don't have much else to say, honestly. I guess I just felt a bit japed by the amount of good reviews, and with those reviews, claims that they inherited the traits of previous, better games before it, into a way that's good. I couldn't find any bad reviews that were saying the same things that I was thinking either. But, for the sake of not seeming like a complete and total nag, I'll leave something good for Remnant. The coop itself was very smooth, I don't think I ever ran into a connection issue and playing with another person felt natural. It was, also, a decent enough game to put on while hanging out with this friend, which spending that time was very nice, so I'll give Remnant that too sure why not. I know there's a new one that came out recently, but if I get it at all, it will definitely be when it's cheap as fuck. Also, if it's anything like the first one, then I won't hesitate to stop sooner.

if you want a tl;dr, here's the crunch:

This game is certainly a soulslike - and a disappointingly mediocre one at that. If you see people in the reviews claiming it's like another game, take it with a grain of salt because I can guarantee you the mechanics of whatever game they're comparing it to are done with far more efficiency.

edit: I forgot resistance and luck also existed in Dark Soul whoopsie!! Four useless stats across three games (still better than what I found in Remnant though)