This game is truly depressing. Not to say the setting is sad, but it is another game showing the decline of one of my favorite developers. It is reminiscent of Mass Effect Andromeda, the game that was the first clear step in the decline of another beloved developer.

Cons:
- loading screens every 10 seconds
- empty worlds with the same 5 copy pasted locations
- AI is shit
- Animation is the same lifeless crap
- the lauded gunplay is and improvement but thats a low friggin bar. Its still behind games decades old
- cant fly your ship place to place. In skyrim you could actually go to any mountain. In Starfield if you actually take the hours (in real time) to fly to the next planet you find a floating jpeg
- the feeling you get traveling in skyrim, the possibility of random encounters is lost, the soul of what makes bethesda games great is absent in this title
- lastly its a buggy mess. We fans of bethesda looked the other way for years because the experience we got, one we couldn't get anywhere else. But this bland, empty, lifeless games doesn't have that. This is a game that even the modders won't touch.
Actions have absolutely 0 consequence. The game just loops around in ways regardless of your choices to have the outcome they wanted. One questline i remember specifically you are meeting for a deal. You try to kill and take the money, papa says no and you cant (not even an option to tell him to stick it and do it anyway). you try to negotiate and papa does it for you. this leads really into my next point
you are pointless - most quests could have been solved by the givers with a fucking email. You go here, tell person this, come back. Even when you are doing something, like in the quest alluded to above there is someone better for the job. Just shut up and let papa do it for you.

TLDR: Its hot garbage, move along

Recently I've been trying to raise my overall completion percentage and have been trying to get the rest of the trophies in games I never got far in. For some reason I decided I wanted to play a shitty game, so I chose this one. I wanted to play something bad and be able to say hey look, I did it. And goddamnit did I do it, platinum and all.

This game is like, twilight for forty year old men. Does your dad have a lot of tattoos and wear shirts that say "Don't Tread on Me" or "Facts Don't Care About Your Feelings"? He'd probably like this game.

Originally I couldn't even beat the first level before abandoning it. I gave it a half star, did a quick rant and called it a day but now am I so glad I finished it because everything about this game was unintentionally hilarious. It tries to take itself so seriously, there is not a single hint of irony or self awareness. This game thinks its cool as fuck, as evident by the ridiculous title - and that is the only saving grace.

Make no mistake, this game doesnt get the honor of "so bad its good" Its just bad. But it is the laughable-ness that will keep you sane through the 8-12 hour runtime. So many parts of this game are silly that at one point I told my boyfriend I was worried that there was so much I'd forget some of it for this review, and honestly thats probably true.

Firstly the character models are all pretty ugly. Most of them look like stock assets. All the characters suck too. The main character, Cahal, looks like discount Captain Price and has about as much substance as an empty jar of peanut butter. None of the characters are really all that likeable or memorable, the only one i thought was cool is just because he has an eyepatch, and the only one I kind of liked is just killed randomly offscreen. The story itself is also pretty pisspoor, and I tuned out for nearly the entirety of it. Tries to throw in some weird dialogue choices like the game actually earns to share a similarity to Mass Effect. None of these choices matter until at the end where you can chose between two endings, but both are bad. The game tries to be emotional at a few parts but the acting makes it funny and its not like you care about whats happening to begin with.
The animations, particularly for takedowns are also very goofy. Outside locations have visual variety but nearly every single indoor combat/stealth section looks almost identical. You will see the exact same assets over and over again.

That leads me to the gameplay itself. There are a few hub world areas where your main groups camp is literally within a mornings stroll away from enemy bases and military strongholds. Its not like you're in hiding either, it is explicitly shown the enemies know that you're right next to them. Its just incredibly silly and the game would of worked better if it kept to being linear. Theres not much to do in these areas either, except for a few collectibles and sidequests. These collectibles come in two types: notes and "spirits". The notes Im being honest I didnt read a single one I couldnt be bothered to give a fuck about the game. Maybe they gave more about the lore but the game doesnt even bother to explain itself outside of it so I couldnt be bothered either. The spirits are things you can only see in your enhanced vision™ that every third person game has. Theyre basically like magical plants that Cahal just stands there and sniffs for experience. Yeah, its funny. The sidequests are all just busy work with objectives similar to what you do in the base game already. These are completely pointless, and all they serve to do is give you more experience. If you dont plan to platinum this (which frankly having a sub 1% platinum is the only reason you should play this) then you can skip them and nothing of value is lost. This experience is used to upgrade your skill tree. Mostly to give yourself more combat abilities, with some being tactical. These are all fine, I guess. Maybe about half the abilities are actually useful, and you can get to one of the ultimate ones incredibly quickly anyways.
Now there is the combat itself. Most sections allow you to do stealth. The stealth is bad. The areas are poorly designed, mechanics are only introduced in the first few missions and just continue through the rest of the game. Plus it creates a very big disconnect, if you cause a huge ruckus and get reinforcements called on you in one area, the next area wont have enemies on alert anyways. You have a crossbow that you can upgrade to allow you to shoot cameras and turrets to disable them, but the aiming on that is terrible. Also a lot of levels towards the end have big enemies guarding exits that can neither be taken down or killed in a timely manner with the crossbow, making stealth basically useless. Which is okay, because most of the time you're just gonna opt for the actual combat because its a lot more fun.
In all honesty its the only good thing about the game, but even then its not great. Its basic hack and slash stuff, you'll get some new moves from the skill tree but nothing will make you change up your gameplay. Theres a few different enemy types but you can fight them all basically the same. There is no incentive, not even cool combos, to do anything other than spam your moves until you win. Id say at least visually it looks nice but... not really. Outside of one boss the enemy designs are all pretty meh. There is a lot of blood but absolutely zero gore which is another thing that makes this game so hard to take seriously despite its desperate attempts. It especially makes the executions look terrible. and the enemies dont even get bloodied themselves. The game isnt particularly hard either, but it does get kinda bullshit as you go on, lots of battles just go on way too long with so many enemies and its really more annoying than anything.
The combat is passable for the most part, but by the end you're gonna wanna opt for the terrible stealth instead so you dont have to sit through another shitty battle. Except you cant. Because remember? Big enemy boy is camping the exit.

This has no effect on the quality of the game itself, but I feel like it has to be mentioned. The trophy list despite the low percentages is really easy. Just nobody wants to get far in this game. I however only gave this a second chance because of trophies, and am still a bit shocked at me actually going through with this. The game does have a lot of miscellanious trophies which I do like, but they are so incredibly easy that by the end of the second mission I had every single one of them besides one for an enemy that hadnt been introduced yet. Theres a silver trophy for killing 250 enemies that I got in the first level. Theres also a few times where you will get two story trophies at the exact same time, for just doing one thing. Theres also one for getting every single spirit. There is no way to track them or even chapter select so if you miss one you'll have to play the entire game a second time and I hope nobody puts themself through that. You also get one for each ending choice. You can continue from your completed save but it just puts you after you made the choice anyways, which is a bruh moment, Thankfully you can just restart the mission. Like I said it doesnt really matter, and going for trophies helped me get through it, its just a bit hilarious how poorly they were all thought out and is kind of an example of how the rest of the game is.

So thats Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood. If I did have one positive, its that I like the metal song on the title screen. Other than that I hope Ive demonstrated how much of a mess this game is, and I didnt even cover everything. This game is far from the worst I've played, but its definitely one of the worst I've beat. Thanks for reading <3

God I hope theres a sequel. And I hope its not much better.

Trophy Completion - 100% (Platinum #213)
Time Played: 12 hours 21 minutes
Nancymeter - 36/100
Game Completion #115 of 2022
September Completion #5

Even the title is goddamn brilliant.

I wished I picked this up sooner.

The game offers a well-crafted and cohesive experience, where the story intertwines with gameplay elements seamlessly.

The game's environmental storytelling, audio logs, and intricate level design is almost god tier and I love games that encourages me to explore and get intrigued with it's lore and small details.

My issues is that playing this on SURVIVAL is almost trivial but at the same time it's kind of like the only way if you want to keep the "survival" space horror element, the enemies lack more variety and it could drag on and on.