This is basically a turn based Horizon Zero Dawn meets Fallout. It's almost as awesome as it sounds, sadly marred by a ton of flaws.

The game felt very intensive on the PS5. Quality mode was not an option for me after trying it for a few minutes, with 30fps groaning under the strain of all the particle effects. Performance mode obviously felt much smoother, and yet even then I could see fps dips at times, such was the intensity of the graphics.

It's a very good looking game, with plenty of detail in every asset. I especially liked that equipped weapons are visible on playable characters, and that companions don't walk through each other, and are in fact solid.

The turn based combat was exactly what you'd expect, though the RNG in 'light tactical mode' felt far more forgiving and cathartic than something like X-Com which would make you rage when your character would miss despite having a 95% chance. In Miasma, 50% chance shots truly 'feel' like 50%, as in, there's a good chance you'll make the shot (probability be damned), whereas in X-Com with that percentage you'd not even bother wasting a shot.

Combat is also bolstered by the fact that you can split up your characters and position them into ambushes, sneak around and distract enemies with bottles, and use powerful abilities.

Now then, below is my lengthy list of complaints about the game that prevented it from being great:

> There is a bug where the 'unread' notification for many items never went away, which was massively irritating.

> The game crashed several times...

> The game's tutorial is sometimes good and clear, and sometimes it's bad. At no point during my 50 hours did it ever explain to me what the 'rage' mechanic was, I had to google it. Some stuff is also introduced far too late (like the concept of enemy 'squads', which it notified me about 20 hours into my playthrough, and would have been helpful to know...at the beginning)

> The protagonist's robotic guardian felt like an unfunny caricature with cringey dialogue and acting. Very unfortunate.

> Around 30 hours in the game introduced a fourth playable character, and then another one 45 hours in. Bizarre to say the least. I was too used to the initial trio of characters and didn't bother swapping companions until it forced me to.

> The high ground felt utterly useless, never giving me 100% attack chance on enemies even when I was clearly in an advantageous position. The enemy's overwatch ability also magically fired at me through objects like buses and walls, which is bullshit.

> There are a ton of references to other media, anything from Star Wars to Matrix to Die Hard to, uh Brexit and Eastbound & Down, you name it and its referenced. I found this really distracting, even though some of the references were amusing. But ultimately it felt forced and cheapened the game's own internal universe.

> The game's economy is pretty bad. It's the kind of game where within the first hour it trains you to hoard your cash rather than buy anything. In fact other than a 4k end-game rifle I didn't buy a single weapon in my entire playthrough, opting instead to buy consumables for HP/MP, and bottles for distractions. You are basically broke for almost the entire game, so replenishing yourself takes high priority, it's not fun at all.

There are a few other ways to replenish but they're very specific and not optimal, and considering everything else in stores is expensive and cash is hard to accumulate, it seemed that buying consumables was my only viable option.

> Combat is designed in a way where you have to thin out the herd with stealth before committing to going loud. However the game takes a long while to give your whole party stealth weapons, and ultimately battles are essentially puzzles to figure out in the opening stages. This ends up in a lot of save scumming, especially because...

> ...After you exit ambush mode, your companions teleport right next to you, which is not great if you were testing a firing line right next to the enemy's viewcone.

Speaking of which, you can't see how far your weapons can fire until you go into ambush mode. The game is full of irritating things like this that almost made me rage-quit.

Lastly, this is the kind of game where it doesn't tell you that you're not going to unlock the entire skill tree, so you have to be selective. Mercifully you can respec at any time. It actually took me ages to realise one character had a stealth attack ability, which made the opening stages of combat less tedious.

Miasma Chronicles was an interesting game, and I almost had a decent time, but towards the end I resented it. I think the nice visuals and intriguing world kept me engaged (even though the characters and dialogue were dull, and the story wildly derivative), whereas if the universe and graphics were subpar I may have dropped it after an hour.

One thing I did drop however, was the difficulty to the easiest setting around 45 hours in, towards the end of the story, as I just wanted to get the whole thing over with before it completely wore out its welcome with the tedious flaws listed above.

Hopefully future games by the developers iron out the flaws, as I'm very much a fan of narrative driven turn based games like this and want the genre to continue (especially since Mimimi Games shut down)