SPICEBAG
2016
At its core Titanfall 2 is a great game, however it has been let down by the publisher, the developer and the community. On launch I loved it, the MP is fun but doesn't provide much reason to play for more than 50/60 hours.
Respawn abandoned this game to hackers, it's a wild story but a tiny group of people were taking the servers out and hacking this game, for nearly two years it was basically unplayable and Respawn didn't care, Apex Legends became all they cared about. It was eventually fixed but it felt like too little too late.
EA had it out for this series since the start, Titanfall 1 and 2 both released right between bigger franchises and suffered in sales as a result, affecting EA's own willingness to continue support.
Finally, I believe the community really plays a role in why this game isn't as popular. Titanfall 1 got absolutely lambasted at launch for having no single player campaign, it was ridiculed and dismissed, only years later after support was already gone did people go back and appreciate it. Titanfall 2 meanwhile has a good campaign included, which is nice, however you'd swear it was the second coming of Christ with how much people love it. If I have to read another "a real hidden gem", "underrated campaign" comment I will go insane. It's fun, it's fine, it's nothing special.
Nowadays this game is occupied mostly by a small group of players dedicated to it which means you run into the same 50 or so people, many of whom are incredibly skilled no doubt, but if you're a casual or new player you'll be turned off by the level sweat. Custom server clients exist, but the problem is exacerbated 10x there, and many servers have ridiculous rule sets like banning entire weapon categories, titans, grenades, etc. basically no fun allowed.
Respawn abandoned this game to hackers, it's a wild story but a tiny group of people were taking the servers out and hacking this game, for nearly two years it was basically unplayable and Respawn didn't care, Apex Legends became all they cared about. It was eventually fixed but it felt like too little too late.
EA had it out for this series since the start, Titanfall 1 and 2 both released right between bigger franchises and suffered in sales as a result, affecting EA's own willingness to continue support.
Finally, I believe the community really plays a role in why this game isn't as popular. Titanfall 1 got absolutely lambasted at launch for having no single player campaign, it was ridiculed and dismissed, only years later after support was already gone did people go back and appreciate it. Titanfall 2 meanwhile has a good campaign included, which is nice, however you'd swear it was the second coming of Christ with how much people love it. If I have to read another "a real hidden gem", "underrated campaign" comment I will go insane. It's fun, it's fine, it's nothing special.
Nowadays this game is occupied mostly by a small group of players dedicated to it which means you run into the same 50 or so people, many of whom are incredibly skilled no doubt, but if you're a casual or new player you'll be turned off by the level sweat. Custom server clients exist, but the problem is exacerbated 10x there, and many servers have ridiculous rule sets like banning entire weapon categories, titans, grenades, etc. basically no fun allowed.
2018
Sea of Thieves is a really strange game I've been struggling to understand.
The game is incredibly simple in almost every single way. Combat involves one of three guns and a sword that has a swing and block function. There's extras such as throwables but at its core it is shoot first or swing first to win. There's no stats to level up, there are no better guns or swords to get; what this means is that someone with 10 minutes of playtime can go up against someone with 1,000 hours of playtime and stand a fair chance of winning, everything is completely balanced across the board. Larger crews have a distinct advantage of being able to man more cannons at once, repair faster, split up tasks, etc. but a skilled two man crew can hold their own in the more agile sloops assuming they have the coordination and supplies to outlast larger crews.
The lack of stats/levelling system for your player also means there are no significant rewards. Everything you work for in this game is cosmetic, new paint jobs for your ship, different looking swords and guns, tattoos, decorated cannons, clothing, etc. If this doesn't sound rewarding enough for you then you may not enjoy the game. That being said most of the fun I have had has come from my experience in the game and not from the rewards earned.
The gameplay loop involves completing missions for factions and levelling them up, some factions ask you to fight AI enemies, one wants you to find hidden treasure, another asks you to engage in PvP, etc. There's a nice variety of ways to grind out the game. If you're cautious you can essentially ignore all other players and do your own thing, however by the nature of the game you will inevitably run into other players. A majority of players seem to avoid confrontation, however those that don't wont be shy about engaging you from the second they spot you, regardless if you have any loot or not. You may have spent two hours completing a quest with your ship now stocked up with chests but you can lose it all to a crew that just logged on. This can be very frustrating if you do missions that require a large amount of effort such as the events, however this is exactly what makes the game unique and keeps you on alert.
The game in general is quite easy but there are strange difficulty spikes here and there. In particular the red-tornado event asks you to take down a skeleton captain who has multiple phases, the first two phases are fine but the third phase gives the enemy 8,000hp and the ability to rain down fireballs from the sky. You'll need to use cannons on your ship to inflict a steady amount of damage but if the fireballs hit your ship you'll be stuck in a loop of putting out fires, repairing and by the time that is done it will get hit by them again. Larger crews won't encounter this problem but as a two man crew it feels unfair.
The community is a mixed bag, as mentioned plenty of players will avoid conflict but like most multiplayer games you'll run into players who have the single aim of trying to ruin your experience. The worst example of this was when a 4 man crew sunk our newly spawned sloop and kept spawnkilling us over and over by camping the tavern. There was no point to this as we had just logged in and had no loot for them to take. We had to scuttle the ship and respawn in a new area of the map. No big deal but a waste of 15 minutes. So far we have had a few very positive encounters, including max level pirates who gave us late game missions to earn easy loot and players who just want to sing sea shanties alongside us.
I have to say that I sincerely dislike PvP in this game though. Any crew that is of a larger size than yours is at a distinct advantage. Ship combat is rarely about who goes down first, it's about who boards first and spawncamps or who runs out of resources first. It feels like a complete and utter waste of time getting into PvP in this. I have had sessions ended because I've been pursued for 20 minutes, got bored and just didn't want to play anymore, the flow of the game just grinds to a halt and I wish there were PvE servers. I get why people think this opinion is wrong but it's not fun encountering other players in a PvP scenario.
There definitely feels like there is a lot of untapped potential in SoT, it's got a fantastic foundation and I hope Rare continues updating it, we've recently gotten the first seasonal update with the most generous season-pass I've ever seen along with the addition of pirate trials that added more content to the game and fleshes out the lore. Around the world there are journals, messages in bottles, named characters, etc. however you're never encouraged to look deeper into this. The game has a real problem with explaining things to player; emissaries play a huge role but I had to learn the ins and out from asking other pirates, I had to look up how to find ashen keys or how to break red mermaid statues.
It wasn't until we started doing higher reward missions that involved carrying 10+ chests, several bounty skulls, crates of tea and silk and an armoury worth of gunpowder from one side of the map to the other that it clicked with me how fun this game can be. The stress of having to coordinate with your crew to avoid conflict or win ship battles is extremely fun and taking 10 minutes to unload every piece of loot is a nice visual indicator of how hard you worked during that mission.
On a final note, it's quite a charming game. My early hours with it included just playing shanties on different instruments, getting drunk until vomiting while playing shanties, launching myself out of cannons, fishing, etc. Little things like that really draw you in and create some memorable moments.
I'd highly recommend SoT, it is at the very least worth trying even if you think it might not be for you, I was very pleasantly surprised. I can't imagine it would be very fun solo however, bring atleast one other person.
Edit 05/09/2021:
It has been interesting to watch this game develop, I can safely this is a game where the devs really care about it. There is a serious level of passion in the updates and their efforts with the community and that alone is worth suggesting the game for.
The Pirates Life update has shown however that the game itself is pretty average in every way possible, having played for a while now I can safely say the following:
- Combat is boring
- Sailing is okay at best
- Factions are bland
- Items aren't varied
- There isn't a whole lot to do in the world
And in a vacuum these are all bad things, however when coupled together in an open world where player interaction is entirely random it leads to some of the most fun you can have. The whole thing starts to unravel with structured, linear missions however, while I appreciate the efforts to try something new this game is made to be a player driven experience and I am excited to see where to go with it.
The game is incredibly simple in almost every single way. Combat involves one of three guns and a sword that has a swing and block function. There's extras such as throwables but at its core it is shoot first or swing first to win. There's no stats to level up, there are no better guns or swords to get; what this means is that someone with 10 minutes of playtime can go up against someone with 1,000 hours of playtime and stand a fair chance of winning, everything is completely balanced across the board. Larger crews have a distinct advantage of being able to man more cannons at once, repair faster, split up tasks, etc. but a skilled two man crew can hold their own in the more agile sloops assuming they have the coordination and supplies to outlast larger crews.
The lack of stats/levelling system for your player also means there are no significant rewards. Everything you work for in this game is cosmetic, new paint jobs for your ship, different looking swords and guns, tattoos, decorated cannons, clothing, etc. If this doesn't sound rewarding enough for you then you may not enjoy the game. That being said most of the fun I have had has come from my experience in the game and not from the rewards earned.
The gameplay loop involves completing missions for factions and levelling them up, some factions ask you to fight AI enemies, one wants you to find hidden treasure, another asks you to engage in PvP, etc. There's a nice variety of ways to grind out the game. If you're cautious you can essentially ignore all other players and do your own thing, however by the nature of the game you will inevitably run into other players. A majority of players seem to avoid confrontation, however those that don't wont be shy about engaging you from the second they spot you, regardless if you have any loot or not. You may have spent two hours completing a quest with your ship now stocked up with chests but you can lose it all to a crew that just logged on. This can be very frustrating if you do missions that require a large amount of effort such as the events, however this is exactly what makes the game unique and keeps you on alert.
The game in general is quite easy but there are strange difficulty spikes here and there. In particular the red-tornado event asks you to take down a skeleton captain who has multiple phases, the first two phases are fine but the third phase gives the enemy 8,000hp and the ability to rain down fireballs from the sky. You'll need to use cannons on your ship to inflict a steady amount of damage but if the fireballs hit your ship you'll be stuck in a loop of putting out fires, repairing and by the time that is done it will get hit by them again. Larger crews won't encounter this problem but as a two man crew it feels unfair.
The community is a mixed bag, as mentioned plenty of players will avoid conflict but like most multiplayer games you'll run into players who have the single aim of trying to ruin your experience. The worst example of this was when a 4 man crew sunk our newly spawned sloop and kept spawnkilling us over and over by camping the tavern. There was no point to this as we had just logged in and had no loot for them to take. We had to scuttle the ship and respawn in a new area of the map. No big deal but a waste of 15 minutes. So far we have had a few very positive encounters, including max level pirates who gave us late game missions to earn easy loot and players who just want to sing sea shanties alongside us.
I have to say that I sincerely dislike PvP in this game though. Any crew that is of a larger size than yours is at a distinct advantage. Ship combat is rarely about who goes down first, it's about who boards first and spawncamps or who runs out of resources first. It feels like a complete and utter waste of time getting into PvP in this. I have had sessions ended because I've been pursued for 20 minutes, got bored and just didn't want to play anymore, the flow of the game just grinds to a halt and I wish there were PvE servers. I get why people think this opinion is wrong but it's not fun encountering other players in a PvP scenario.
There definitely feels like there is a lot of untapped potential in SoT, it's got a fantastic foundation and I hope Rare continues updating it, we've recently gotten the first seasonal update with the most generous season-pass I've ever seen along with the addition of pirate trials that added more content to the game and fleshes out the lore. Around the world there are journals, messages in bottles, named characters, etc. however you're never encouraged to look deeper into this. The game has a real problem with explaining things to player; emissaries play a huge role but I had to learn the ins and out from asking other pirates, I had to look up how to find ashen keys or how to break red mermaid statues.
It wasn't until we started doing higher reward missions that involved carrying 10+ chests, several bounty skulls, crates of tea and silk and an armoury worth of gunpowder from one side of the map to the other that it clicked with me how fun this game can be. The stress of having to coordinate with your crew to avoid conflict or win ship battles is extremely fun and taking 10 minutes to unload every piece of loot is a nice visual indicator of how hard you worked during that mission.
On a final note, it's quite a charming game. My early hours with it included just playing shanties on different instruments, getting drunk until vomiting while playing shanties, launching myself out of cannons, fishing, etc. Little things like that really draw you in and create some memorable moments.
I'd highly recommend SoT, it is at the very least worth trying even if you think it might not be for you, I was very pleasantly surprised. I can't imagine it would be very fun solo however, bring atleast one other person.
Edit 05/09/2021:
It has been interesting to watch this game develop, I can safely this is a game where the devs really care about it. There is a serious level of passion in the updates and their efforts with the community and that alone is worth suggesting the game for.
The Pirates Life update has shown however that the game itself is pretty average in every way possible, having played for a while now I can safely say the following:
- Combat is boring
- Sailing is okay at best
- Factions are bland
- Items aren't varied
- There isn't a whole lot to do in the world
And in a vacuum these are all bad things, however when coupled together in an open world where player interaction is entirely random it leads to some of the most fun you can have. The whole thing starts to unravel with structured, linear missions however, while I appreciate the efforts to try something new this game is made to be a player driven experience and I am excited to see where to go with it.
2020
Playing RE3 for the first time I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed this game. I am not a big RE fan and only started with 7, also playing Village and RE2 Remake before this but I feel like this is a fantastic experience.
I understand the reputation it has and the inherent shortcomings of remastering a game that was never officially meant to be a numbered-sequel, while also stripping content from it, but something about this experience feels very tight.
RE2 has an incredible amount of depth, which is lacking here, this feels far more on rails and straight-forward. I rarely had moments where I found myself stuck for items or wondering where to go. The game is just set-piece after set-piece but oddly it works for me. I find the areas of central RC, the substation, the hospital, NEST 2, all to be visually more interesting than the sewers and police station of RE2. Nemesis isn't all that scary but he works to keep things moving and I enjoyed always being under pressure from him, moreso than Mr. X in RE2.
My first playthrough took about 4.5 hours on standard difficulty and there aren't any alternative scenarios here so I can see why people who purchased this at launch weren't happy but for €10 I feel like I got my money's worth.
I understand the reputation it has and the inherent shortcomings of remastering a game that was never officially meant to be a numbered-sequel, while also stripping content from it, but something about this experience feels very tight.
RE2 has an incredible amount of depth, which is lacking here, this feels far more on rails and straight-forward. I rarely had moments where I found myself stuck for items or wondering where to go. The game is just set-piece after set-piece but oddly it works for me. I find the areas of central RC, the substation, the hospital, NEST 2, all to be visually more interesting than the sewers and police station of RE2. Nemesis isn't all that scary but he works to keep things moving and I enjoyed always being under pressure from him, moreso than Mr. X in RE2.
My first playthrough took about 4.5 hours on standard difficulty and there aren't any alternative scenarios here so I can see why people who purchased this at launch weren't happy but for €10 I feel like I got my money's worth.
It's F2P MTG and it's a pretty good version of it. It lacks key features that older clients had years ago and isn't the most stable but the mechanics are well implemented and it's not at all Pay-to-win, atleast no more pay-to-win than real MTG, you earn coins to buy packs at a pretty quick rate and there's plenty of promo codes online to get free unlocks, I've not spent a single cent on this game but have several decks I enjoy running.
I'd really recommend this for new players to MTG as the tutorial is decent but regular play gets you used to the rules of each card since you don't have to doubt whether something is a legal move or not, if the card is highlighted then you can use it and the game will explain how, it's probably the fastest way to learn MTG.
There are two issues that annoy me about this though:
1. Time-outs; I play decks that the community as a whole tend to hate, mostly mill (because I don't care what you think it's fun) and this can frustrate people, so instead of accepting a loss and forfeiting or playing on, people will run down their timer until the end of the game. The timers are way too generous and there's nothing stopping a player from letting it run to a sliver left then proceeding with no punishment. They need to allow for a single time-out and they need to force it to start sooner in my opinion.
2. The meta. White lifegain decks are the most annoying decks to play against because they rely on synergies and stacks, more often than not upwards of 20+ synergies can be initiated in a turn that turn into one big feedback loop. This wouldn't be an issue if it weren't for the fact players need to press the proceed button for each step. I've had games last 60+ minutes because I'm fighting lifegain where the opponent needs to confirm up to 100+ abilities in their step with no way to speed it up. What's especially annoying is that the default white deck encourages this kind of playstyle that grinds the game to a stop and sucks all the fun out. Lifegain is fine albeit predictable and boring, wasting everyone's time isn't. The same thing applies to any deck that swarms you with ability confirms but white lifegain by far is the most common.
I also wish that WOTC would include more deck codes with their products so you could transfer your physical cards into Arena, I've had one MTG product in the past with this and it was fantastic but knowing WOTC they wouldn't bother making this standard across their products.
I'd really recommend this for new players to MTG as the tutorial is decent but regular play gets you used to the rules of each card since you don't have to doubt whether something is a legal move or not, if the card is highlighted then you can use it and the game will explain how, it's probably the fastest way to learn MTG.
There are two issues that annoy me about this though:
1. Time-outs; I play decks that the community as a whole tend to hate, mostly mill (because I don't care what you think it's fun) and this can frustrate people, so instead of accepting a loss and forfeiting or playing on, people will run down their timer until the end of the game. The timers are way too generous and there's nothing stopping a player from letting it run to a sliver left then proceeding with no punishment. They need to allow for a single time-out and they need to force it to start sooner in my opinion.
2. The meta. White lifegain decks are the most annoying decks to play against because they rely on synergies and stacks, more often than not upwards of 20+ synergies can be initiated in a turn that turn into one big feedback loop. This wouldn't be an issue if it weren't for the fact players need to press the proceed button for each step. I've had games last 60+ minutes because I'm fighting lifegain where the opponent needs to confirm up to 100+ abilities in their step with no way to speed it up. What's especially annoying is that the default white deck encourages this kind of playstyle that grinds the game to a stop and sucks all the fun out. Lifegain is fine albeit predictable and boring, wasting everyone's time isn't. The same thing applies to any deck that swarms you with ability confirms but white lifegain by far is the most common.
I also wish that WOTC would include more deck codes with their products so you could transfer your physical cards into Arena, I've had one MTG product in the past with this and it was fantastic but knowing WOTC they wouldn't bother making this standard across their products.
2019
This game killed Titanfall so I'll never forgive it.
More than that, I never got the hype, it feels very boring to play, the TTK is probably the longest of any FPS out there so fights just become mag-dumps followed by spamming shields and the winner is usually determined by team size/ammo capacity rather than actual skill. The abilities make it worse too.
More than that, I never got the hype, it feels very boring to play, the TTK is probably the longest of any FPS out there so fights just become mag-dumps followed by spamming shields and the winner is usually determined by team size/ammo capacity rather than actual skill. The abilities make it worse too.
It's amazing to see a non-emulated Ratchet and Clank game on PC, I can only hope they bring the older games over too.
The main thing to know is that this is a decent port, it's optimized well and looks fantastic, DLSS is a key component of this but even if you can't use DLSS the AMD and Insomniac options are both worthwhile alternatives as far as I can tell. I encounter one reoccurring issue however which would lead to softlocks - sometimes if you move too quickly (like in the rail/speedle sections) you can go faster than the game can load (maybe depending on your SSD set up) and end up in areas where geometry hasn't loaded and you can't progress, this happened twice and required a manual restart of the game and each time.
This is my first time playing Rift Apart and it's a fun R&C game, it hits all the usual notes you expect though it seems to be less tongue-in-cheek than the originals that I recall from the PS2, the humour is a little safer and the supporting cast are far less present in this entry, but it might be a side effect of having 4 protagonists. The story to me isn't as interesting as the early games and the boss fights feel particularly weak, but they aren't bad at all, just not a series highlight.
Rift Apart leans into the ridiculous weapons the series is known for, there are some stand out weapons here like Mr. Fungi, Buzzblades, etc. but the upgrade-system is very bad, if you dump all of your raritanium shards into the blaster (like most players will do early on as it's your first gun) then pretty quickly your blaster is by far and away the best gun in your arsenal, meaning it's a choice made out of a need for variety to use most other weapons. I would forget I even have upgrade options for a while and come back to 50+ raritanium then just dump them into whatever guns I used most without reading the upgrade details.
To be straight forward, most of my enjoyment here comes from my nostalgia associated with R&C, and Rift Apart is a solid shooter/platformer, it feels familiar and never leans too hard into pandering to the nostalgia, but at the same time it doesn't feel like it does anything particularly new either. The rift transitions are cool the first few times but the gameplay doesn't change much from the first hour to the last hour, just more of the same, even the planets don't feel as varied as the older games.
With all that said, I have enjoyed this game, I'll probably do a second playthrough to get all of the achievements and I'd recommend anyone who enjoyed R&C in the past to give it a try.
The main thing to know is that this is a decent port, it's optimized well and looks fantastic, DLSS is a key component of this but even if you can't use DLSS the AMD and Insomniac options are both worthwhile alternatives as far as I can tell. I encounter one reoccurring issue however which would lead to softlocks - sometimes if you move too quickly (like in the rail/speedle sections) you can go faster than the game can load (maybe depending on your SSD set up) and end up in areas where geometry hasn't loaded and you can't progress, this happened twice and required a manual restart of the game and each time.
This is my first time playing Rift Apart and it's a fun R&C game, it hits all the usual notes you expect though it seems to be less tongue-in-cheek than the originals that I recall from the PS2, the humour is a little safer and the supporting cast are far less present in this entry, but it might be a side effect of having 4 protagonists. The story to me isn't as interesting as the early games and the boss fights feel particularly weak, but they aren't bad at all, just not a series highlight.
Rift Apart leans into the ridiculous weapons the series is known for, there are some stand out weapons here like Mr. Fungi, Buzzblades, etc. but the upgrade-system is very bad, if you dump all of your raritanium shards into the blaster (like most players will do early on as it's your first gun) then pretty quickly your blaster is by far and away the best gun in your arsenal, meaning it's a choice made out of a need for variety to use most other weapons. I would forget I even have upgrade options for a while and come back to 50+ raritanium then just dump them into whatever guns I used most without reading the upgrade details.
To be straight forward, most of my enjoyment here comes from my nostalgia associated with R&C, and Rift Apart is a solid shooter/platformer, it feels familiar and never leans too hard into pandering to the nostalgia, but at the same time it doesn't feel like it does anything particularly new either. The rift transitions are cool the first few times but the gameplay doesn't change much from the first hour to the last hour, just more of the same, even the planets don't feel as varied as the older games.
With all that said, I have enjoyed this game, I'll probably do a second playthrough to get all of the achievements and I'd recommend anyone who enjoyed R&C in the past to give it a try.
2015
This is my Steam review from 2016 after 100 hours. I still firmly believe all of it.
Fresh install gets stuck on the main menu loading screen indefinitely.
This is more of an FPS than an RPG, which is something I wanted from Fallout 4, but even though I don't care much for the RPG elements, the fact there are only 2 vital skillchecks, hardly ever an option of de-escalating a situation through diplomancy, and every door can be opened regardless of lockpick or science level because there's always a keycard in the exact same room, is just stupid.
The game looks awful, everything looks like polished plastic and the textures are muddy as hell, all the menus are just Fallout 3 reskins. Hair is one solid piece and facial expressions are incredibly robotic with lips often not syncing up to what's being said. The only positive graphical element is the particles, fire doesn't look great but the effect off lazers and plasma looks cool. Enemies are also balanced in a weird way, your most powerful weapon can usually take down a raider in a shot or two but then you come up against a raider that duct-taped a bit of piping to his chest and suddenly it takes 10 grenades and 4 magazines to take him down. The animations aren't exactly stellar either, everything from reloading to the cutscenes just don't look right.
The world is pretty boring, no interesting vaults to explore or unique areas. The best it gets is when you're in the middle of Boston, a few floors up looking out over the world and fighting enemies on the impromptu balconies of half destroyed buildings but even that's locked behind a few loading screens to get there. There isn't much point in exploring to begin with either considering you can just build stupidly powerful guns and that ammo never runs out if you follow the main plot.
The story isn't great, it's better than 3's which isn't exactly hard to do. You do reach a point where you're on the best of terms with each faction and they're all willing to help you out but it's made abundantly clear that after a specific point you have to side with one, it doesn't really make much sense to go beyond that point if you don't care about the story since you can jump between the factions and take as much help from them as you need.
The crafting system is okay, however the grind to find the smallest materials starts to outweight the enjoyment of building up a settlement rather quickly. I found the best way to enjoy it was to just cheat and give myself a stupid amount of building materials, although once you make your comfy settlement there isn't a whole lot to do with it, atleast nothing worth more than a curious glance over.
The game isn't very well optimised either, which is strange considering this game feels like what Fallout 3 should have been over 8 years ago, even stranger when you consider it's running on basically the same god awful engine. It runs well inside buildings but as soon as you step outside you can expect a ridiculous FPS drop. That's unless you fiddle with the settings to the point where the graphics suffer just so you can play the game at a bareable framerate in specific areas, despite it being fine in others.
Also shoutout to Todd's greed for raising the price of the season pass just to cash in on the idiots who'd buy it knowing it was going up in price purely because it was "cheaper".
Don't buy this game. Even mods can't save it.
Fresh install gets stuck on the main menu loading screen indefinitely.
This is more of an FPS than an RPG, which is something I wanted from Fallout 4, but even though I don't care much for the RPG elements, the fact there are only 2 vital skillchecks, hardly ever an option of de-escalating a situation through diplomancy, and every door can be opened regardless of lockpick or science level because there's always a keycard in the exact same room, is just stupid.
The game looks awful, everything looks like polished plastic and the textures are muddy as hell, all the menus are just Fallout 3 reskins. Hair is one solid piece and facial expressions are incredibly robotic with lips often not syncing up to what's being said. The only positive graphical element is the particles, fire doesn't look great but the effect off lazers and plasma looks cool. Enemies are also balanced in a weird way, your most powerful weapon can usually take down a raider in a shot or two but then you come up against a raider that duct-taped a bit of piping to his chest and suddenly it takes 10 grenades and 4 magazines to take him down. The animations aren't exactly stellar either, everything from reloading to the cutscenes just don't look right.
The world is pretty boring, no interesting vaults to explore or unique areas. The best it gets is when you're in the middle of Boston, a few floors up looking out over the world and fighting enemies on the impromptu balconies of half destroyed buildings but even that's locked behind a few loading screens to get there. There isn't much point in exploring to begin with either considering you can just build stupidly powerful guns and that ammo never runs out if you follow the main plot.
The story isn't great, it's better than 3's which isn't exactly hard to do. You do reach a point where you're on the best of terms with each faction and they're all willing to help you out but it's made abundantly clear that after a specific point you have to side with one, it doesn't really make much sense to go beyond that point if you don't care about the story since you can jump between the factions and take as much help from them as you need.
The crafting system is okay, however the grind to find the smallest materials starts to outweight the enjoyment of building up a settlement rather quickly. I found the best way to enjoy it was to just cheat and give myself a stupid amount of building materials, although once you make your comfy settlement there isn't a whole lot to do with it, atleast nothing worth more than a curious glance over.
The game isn't very well optimised either, which is strange considering this game feels like what Fallout 3 should have been over 8 years ago, even stranger when you consider it's running on basically the same god awful engine. It runs well inside buildings but as soon as you step outside you can expect a ridiculous FPS drop. That's unless you fiddle with the settings to the point where the graphics suffer just so you can play the game at a bareable framerate in specific areas, despite it being fine in others.
Also shoutout to Todd's greed for raising the price of the season pass just to cash in on the idiots who'd buy it knowing it was going up in price purely because it was "cheaper".
Don't buy this game. Even mods can't save it.
This is my long-standing Steam review that goes back to 2016. At one stage I would have said R6:Siege was my favourite game of all time, maybe even the best MP shooter of all time, not any more however.
20/08/23: Everytime I return to this game I get more and more disappointed. It's just a shadow of its former self and it's sad.
23/01/22: I can't believe every time I return to this game it gets worse and worse. The new ops are hilariously out of place even for a game that launched with mini-EMP grenades. The maps have been simplified to the point that you can hardly build strategies anymore. Even if you could the entire playerbase has moved away from gathering intel and pairing equipment, instead it's now entirely a twitch shooter comprised of fast peeks and holding angles. The creativity once found in this game is well and truly dead and it's genuinely sad to see how far it has fallen.
24/12/20: Currently in the worst state it's ever been in. I've tried for months to enjoy this game but I've really fallen out of love with it, the community is absolutely horrible now, I play with mic/chat turned off to avoid all the toxic teammates. Teamkilling and abusing the team-damage system is rampant. I've run into cheaters for the first time in god knows how long. The game isn't fun anymore and it's primarily down to the fact the community is so bad now, unless you're a 5 stack this game is unbareable at any rank.
17/10/20: The community is more toxic than ever and Ubisoft have been streamlining the game with simpler maps more suited to pro-league. The map pool for both casual and ranked is lame now and new ops are hit or miss. Sometimes this game makes me want to jump off a bridge but it's my most played game ever so take that for however you will.
27/11/19: Yeah its still good
9/03/18: The implementation of the toxic ban has been great. The people banned permanently from the beginning have been considered to be in the top 1000 most toxic players according to Epi, so I'm happy to see them go. Toxic players tend to be the worst and most obnoxious to be on a team with and to play against, so I'm glad the community is getting cleaned up a bit. The new operators are pretty cool, and it's nice to see outbreak trying something new, even if it really isn't that well done. Supplies are way too easy to come across in Outbreak, you never really need them, and some of the already limited operators are useless to play as, such as Ying or Ash. The game overall is still more twitch shooter than tactical shooter, especially now that you can interrupt reloads at any point and just keep firing. The buffs and nerfs done have improved the game and I think it's better now than it was before White Noise.
28/12/17 - This game has become quite different to what it used to be, all the mechanics are still there but the most recent update added operators who feel really out of place, Zofia especially has far too many abilities and her guns are just too good. Similarly the matchmaking seems to have gotten worse, solo queuing punishes you because it basically means you're always going to be matched into an ongoing game in casual. Since the newest update I don't think I've joined any new casual lobbies when soloing and it's a pain. Similarly the ranked games are so skewed, with silvers and platinum players often sharing the same game. Most players now, even at the lower levels, have played long enough to learn stuff like run-outs and peeks, which are valid strats but make for very boring and infuriating matches, not the fault of the developers, just one of those things. Furthermore smurfs are more prevalent than ever, and good luck joining a game that doesn't have a premade in it.There's still a game here to enjoy but it's not as good as it used to be. I whole heartedly believe this game was one of the best multiplayer games made but in its current state it's definitely not that. The community has also devolved from being one of the best around to almost being on par with total♥♥♥♥♥♥fests like TF2 and CSGO, definitely not as bad since there isn't a market where money can be made but it's not far off it.
25/08/17 - I still stand by this update, genuinely one of the best multiplayer games ever made. Although the recent announcement that they are putting a greater focus on ESL and actually removing maps for being "unbalanced" is ridiculous. That's fine for ranked but trying to make casual even less casual is an all around bad decision. I really hope they reverse it.
400+ hours later and it's my favourite game. It still has a few problems though, namely connection issues related to uplay but it's been getting better in general.
Edit: This is now my most played game and for good reason. Operation Health is coming too so hopefully most of the real issues with this game will be resolved.
Original review:
This is probably the best multiplayer FPS available right now. It's surprising to say that the devs behind a Ubisoft published game actually seem to care about what they make and what the community thinks because they've been fairly ontop of balancing, issue-fixing and releasing patches and content.
The game is 5v5 in one of three similar game modes where one team defends and one attacks. Each side gets access to a number of 'operators' which are basically the game's versions of classes. Each has a unique ability and particular weapons depending on their CTU. The balancing is great, with each class having direct and indirect counters. Each class has its role and while there are a few that can be ignored they can still prove worthwhile on some maps. All the guns fill a niche and none are there purely for padding, the same can be said for attachments.
Destructability is the primary difference between this and other FPSs. The maps are all CQB and most of the combat happens through a wooden/plaster medium. There are distinctive destructable materials in the walls, floors and ceilings and the key to this game is map knowledge, because you'll know exactly where to punch a hole to get a good sight line or where to blow up for easy entrance into a reinforced room. You can have awful aim, poor crosshair placement and generally just be bad, but if you have map knowledge then you're halfway there to winning. It's a testament to really good level design more than anything.
There are problems though, the netcode being the biggest. I still run into issues of severe peeker's advantage where an enemy can poke out, kill me, and pop back into hiding without me ever seeing them because I've died before the server sends me the information that they're there to begin with. Rubberbanding happens frequently and sometimes searching for a game can take up to five minutes in ranked.
The lack of a singleplayer isn't a bad thing, there are situations to ease you into the game which don't have overdramatic cutscenes, pointless backstory and aren't an extended tutorial. They give you a set loadout and tell you to beat a mission. This lets you get used to the operators, the abilties, the guns and the maps without any unnessecary fluff.
You can play this game solo, although most people don't use microphones or communicate much at all, but it's playable and still fun even in ranked. It's better with friends though since information is the key to winning. I bought the game for €15 as a Starter Edition but considering that it took me only 5 months to acquire nearly half the playtime I have in CSGO which took 4 years, I'd say the game is worth paying €60 for. It also ruined CS for me, by showing me what it's like to play a tactical 5v5 shooter that's actually good. I would say avoid the starter edition and just get the full game when it goes on sale once every three months for only fiver more than the starter edition though.
20/08/23: Everytime I return to this game I get more and more disappointed. It's just a shadow of its former self and it's sad.
23/01/22: I can't believe every time I return to this game it gets worse and worse. The new ops are hilariously out of place even for a game that launched with mini-EMP grenades. The maps have been simplified to the point that you can hardly build strategies anymore. Even if you could the entire playerbase has moved away from gathering intel and pairing equipment, instead it's now entirely a twitch shooter comprised of fast peeks and holding angles. The creativity once found in this game is well and truly dead and it's genuinely sad to see how far it has fallen.
24/12/20: Currently in the worst state it's ever been in. I've tried for months to enjoy this game but I've really fallen out of love with it, the community is absolutely horrible now, I play with mic/chat turned off to avoid all the toxic teammates. Teamkilling and abusing the team-damage system is rampant. I've run into cheaters for the first time in god knows how long. The game isn't fun anymore and it's primarily down to the fact the community is so bad now, unless you're a 5 stack this game is unbareable at any rank.
17/10/20: The community is more toxic than ever and Ubisoft have been streamlining the game with simpler maps more suited to pro-league. The map pool for both casual and ranked is lame now and new ops are hit or miss. Sometimes this game makes me want to jump off a bridge but it's my most played game ever so take that for however you will.
27/11/19: Yeah its still good
9/03/18: The implementation of the toxic ban has been great. The people banned permanently from the beginning have been considered to be in the top 1000 most toxic players according to Epi, so I'm happy to see them go. Toxic players tend to be the worst and most obnoxious to be on a team with and to play against, so I'm glad the community is getting cleaned up a bit. The new operators are pretty cool, and it's nice to see outbreak trying something new, even if it really isn't that well done. Supplies are way too easy to come across in Outbreak, you never really need them, and some of the already limited operators are useless to play as, such as Ying or Ash. The game overall is still more twitch shooter than tactical shooter, especially now that you can interrupt reloads at any point and just keep firing. The buffs and nerfs done have improved the game and I think it's better now than it was before White Noise.
28/12/17 - This game has become quite different to what it used to be, all the mechanics are still there but the most recent update added operators who feel really out of place, Zofia especially has far too many abilities and her guns are just too good. Similarly the matchmaking seems to have gotten worse, solo queuing punishes you because it basically means you're always going to be matched into an ongoing game in casual. Since the newest update I don't think I've joined any new casual lobbies when soloing and it's a pain. Similarly the ranked games are so skewed, with silvers and platinum players often sharing the same game. Most players now, even at the lower levels, have played long enough to learn stuff like run-outs and peeks, which are valid strats but make for very boring and infuriating matches, not the fault of the developers, just one of those things. Furthermore smurfs are more prevalent than ever, and good luck joining a game that doesn't have a premade in it.There's still a game here to enjoy but it's not as good as it used to be. I whole heartedly believe this game was one of the best multiplayer games made but in its current state it's definitely not that. The community has also devolved from being one of the best around to almost being on par with total♥♥♥♥♥♥fests like TF2 and CSGO, definitely not as bad since there isn't a market where money can be made but it's not far off it.
25/08/17 - I still stand by this update, genuinely one of the best multiplayer games ever made. Although the recent announcement that they are putting a greater focus on ESL and actually removing maps for being "unbalanced" is ridiculous. That's fine for ranked but trying to make casual even less casual is an all around bad decision. I really hope they reverse it.
400+ hours later and it's my favourite game. It still has a few problems though, namely connection issues related to uplay but it's been getting better in general.
Edit: This is now my most played game and for good reason. Operation Health is coming too so hopefully most of the real issues with this game will be resolved.
Original review:
This is probably the best multiplayer FPS available right now. It's surprising to say that the devs behind a Ubisoft published game actually seem to care about what they make and what the community thinks because they've been fairly ontop of balancing, issue-fixing and releasing patches and content.
The game is 5v5 in one of three similar game modes where one team defends and one attacks. Each side gets access to a number of 'operators' which are basically the game's versions of classes. Each has a unique ability and particular weapons depending on their CTU. The balancing is great, with each class having direct and indirect counters. Each class has its role and while there are a few that can be ignored they can still prove worthwhile on some maps. All the guns fill a niche and none are there purely for padding, the same can be said for attachments.
Destructability is the primary difference between this and other FPSs. The maps are all CQB and most of the combat happens through a wooden/plaster medium. There are distinctive destructable materials in the walls, floors and ceilings and the key to this game is map knowledge, because you'll know exactly where to punch a hole to get a good sight line or where to blow up for easy entrance into a reinforced room. You can have awful aim, poor crosshair placement and generally just be bad, but if you have map knowledge then you're halfway there to winning. It's a testament to really good level design more than anything.
There are problems though, the netcode being the biggest. I still run into issues of severe peeker's advantage where an enemy can poke out, kill me, and pop back into hiding without me ever seeing them because I've died before the server sends me the information that they're there to begin with. Rubberbanding happens frequently and sometimes searching for a game can take up to five minutes in ranked.
The lack of a singleplayer isn't a bad thing, there are situations to ease you into the game which don't have overdramatic cutscenes, pointless backstory and aren't an extended tutorial. They give you a set loadout and tell you to beat a mission. This lets you get used to the operators, the abilties, the guns and the maps without any unnessecary fluff.
You can play this game solo, although most people don't use microphones or communicate much at all, but it's playable and still fun even in ranked. It's better with friends though since information is the key to winning. I bought the game for €15 as a Starter Edition but considering that it took me only 5 months to acquire nearly half the playtime I have in CSGO which took 4 years, I'd say the game is worth paying €60 for. It also ruined CS for me, by showing me what it's like to play a tactical 5v5 shooter that's actually good. I would say avoid the starter edition and just get the full game when it goes on sale once every three months for only fiver more than the starter edition though.
Initially when I reviewed this game I did not recommend it but having put more hours in I feel I have a better understanding of it now and while I would recommend it there are some glaring issues.
Positives
Sekiro is not Dark Souls and you should not expect it to be, the game is not about dodging attacks, tanking damage and watching for openings in an enemy's attack pattern. Instead Sekiro is all about preventing openings from ever occurring, that's the key to the gameplay, get in your enemies face, attack as much as you can, deflect as much as you can and break their posture without ever letting up. It's fun when it works and it's impressive to watch. Pair this with the ability to grapple and you have a very mobile and exciting game with a wonderful setting. It's not as magical as Dark Souls but somehow giant serpents, phantom monkeys in kimonos and lightning wielding samurais don't feel out of place. The world isn't as sprawling or intricate as Lordran but it is much more detailed and feels more lived in.
Negatives
I will start off with the biggest flaw in this game. It is linear as hell, not just in world design or story but in how it expects you to play the game, From Software want you to approach each boss in a pre-defined way. For example, Lady Butterfly caused me a lot of trouble in my first playthrough I spent hours trying to learn her attack patterns, trying to counter her, doing everything I could but still struggling. I eventually caved in and checked a guide which taught me that in order to beat her I just need to spam the dodge-counter-attack over and over, locking her into a loop of posture damage. This wasn't even a cheese, this was the way the game wants you to beat her as it mentions the use of the counter-attack before the fight but I didn't think it wanted me to essentially stun-lock her to win. I beat her in less than 2 minutes once I realised this. Juzuo is an annoying fight because in order to have a chance you have to stealth kill the 7 or 8 enemies surrounding him and this takes time which makes dying feel even more punishing as you have to spend another 10/15 minutes setting the fight up before it even happens and it's such a slog trying to fight him without doing this that it's not worth even trying. There's no room to experiment in these boss fights at all, it's From's way or nothing.
The next problem is how imprecise counters are. This whole game is about precision and accuracy, timing dodges and deflections is an important skill and so you would think timing counters would be the same except it's not. I found the Mikiri counter very difficult to get right in the beginning until I realised you don't need to get it right, as soon as you think you need to use it you just spam the button over and over and it will work, same with the lightning-counter, accuracy is not required at all. This feels very at odds with the rest of the game and it also leads to animations getting janky and weird which looks odd in a game where combat flows so well.
The story of Sekiro is also not that interesting in my opinion. During my first playthrough I restarted the game because I honestly lost track of why I was doing anything or where I was going. Even in my new playthrough I really couldn't care less for anyone's motivations, it just feels like text boxes to skim through before moving onto a new area or unlocking a new upgrade, it's utterly forgettable; especially when compared to Dark Souls where it does its best to obscure any actual story and requires lots of investment in the lore which is far more interesting.
Also having to kill bosses twice feels like padding in a lot of the fights, especially the mini-boss fights. Items don't really have uses either, I never used the ceramic tiles, the various balloons or anything like that, you could play the game without ever picking them up.
Also Sunken Valley is so poorly designed, platforming while being shot by 4 enemies who are dead accurate that you can't counter because you're struggling to use the half-broken ledge grab is not fun or fair. Gun enemies in general are a bad experience.
Verdict
Sekiro is a unique game worth trying whether you like Souls games or not. I would nearly suggest it to people who don't like Souls games more than those that do. I would never ever recommend using a guide for Dark Souls but for Sekiro it almost feels like a necessity, if a boss is giving you too much trouble it is probably because you're not playing the game in a way From intended for you to, so maybe keep that in mind.
Positives
Sekiro is not Dark Souls and you should not expect it to be, the game is not about dodging attacks, tanking damage and watching for openings in an enemy's attack pattern. Instead Sekiro is all about preventing openings from ever occurring, that's the key to the gameplay, get in your enemies face, attack as much as you can, deflect as much as you can and break their posture without ever letting up. It's fun when it works and it's impressive to watch. Pair this with the ability to grapple and you have a very mobile and exciting game with a wonderful setting. It's not as magical as Dark Souls but somehow giant serpents, phantom monkeys in kimonos and lightning wielding samurais don't feel out of place. The world isn't as sprawling or intricate as Lordran but it is much more detailed and feels more lived in.
Negatives
I will start off with the biggest flaw in this game. It is linear as hell, not just in world design or story but in how it expects you to play the game, From Software want you to approach each boss in a pre-defined way. For example, Lady Butterfly caused me a lot of trouble in my first playthrough I spent hours trying to learn her attack patterns, trying to counter her, doing everything I could but still struggling. I eventually caved in and checked a guide which taught me that in order to beat her I just need to spam the dodge-counter-attack over and over, locking her into a loop of posture damage. This wasn't even a cheese, this was the way the game wants you to beat her as it mentions the use of the counter-attack before the fight but I didn't think it wanted me to essentially stun-lock her to win. I beat her in less than 2 minutes once I realised this. Juzuo is an annoying fight because in order to have a chance you have to stealth kill the 7 or 8 enemies surrounding him and this takes time which makes dying feel even more punishing as you have to spend another 10/15 minutes setting the fight up before it even happens and it's such a slog trying to fight him without doing this that it's not worth even trying. There's no room to experiment in these boss fights at all, it's From's way or nothing.
The next problem is how imprecise counters are. This whole game is about precision and accuracy, timing dodges and deflections is an important skill and so you would think timing counters would be the same except it's not. I found the Mikiri counter very difficult to get right in the beginning until I realised you don't need to get it right, as soon as you think you need to use it you just spam the button over and over and it will work, same with the lightning-counter, accuracy is not required at all. This feels very at odds with the rest of the game and it also leads to animations getting janky and weird which looks odd in a game where combat flows so well.
The story of Sekiro is also not that interesting in my opinion. During my first playthrough I restarted the game because I honestly lost track of why I was doing anything or where I was going. Even in my new playthrough I really couldn't care less for anyone's motivations, it just feels like text boxes to skim through before moving onto a new area or unlocking a new upgrade, it's utterly forgettable; especially when compared to Dark Souls where it does its best to obscure any actual story and requires lots of investment in the lore which is far more interesting.
Also having to kill bosses twice feels like padding in a lot of the fights, especially the mini-boss fights. Items don't really have uses either, I never used the ceramic tiles, the various balloons or anything like that, you could play the game without ever picking them up.
Also Sunken Valley is so poorly designed, platforming while being shot by 4 enemies who are dead accurate that you can't counter because you're struggling to use the half-broken ledge grab is not fun or fair. Gun enemies in general are a bad experience.
Verdict
Sekiro is a unique game worth trying whether you like Souls games or not. I would nearly suggest it to people who don't like Souls games more than those that do. I would never ever recommend using a guide for Dark Souls but for Sekiro it almost feels like a necessity, if a boss is giving you too much trouble it is probably because you're not playing the game in a way From intended for you to, so maybe keep that in mind.
I've got about 60 hours logged in Red Dead with probably 50ish dedicated to the story and I am still not finished. It's a game of impressive scope and detail and one I would absolutely recommend but it's got a lot of issues, there's a million reviews that will you tell everything good about it but I want to highlight the bad elements people seem to ignore.
First, and most obviously, the beginning chapters are a bore, they create a poor first impression, they drag on, the gameplay is dull and it's not fun interacting with the characters when you know absolutely nothing about them, it serves as a good tutorial but one that makes you want to avoid playing the story when the world finally opens up. It isn't until chapter 3 that I actually started to become invested in the story, before that point I only did missions in the hopes of getting into fun shootouts and robberies.
Secondly, the controls aren't the best. Unlike most other Rockstar games I actually found this played on keyboard better than controller. Your horse controls terribly at times, often circling back on itself, falling over nothing, veering off to the right when you press left, etc. I can only assume it's a quirk of the game trying to adjust your horse on uneven surfaces but it feels like you fight with the animal most of the time. On foot controls are better but I've had situations occur where my guns that were equipped before I got off my horse become unequipped and likewise when I go to interact with an NPC I accidentally shoot them when I meant to say hello. A lot of issues comes from the way Rockstar has tried to make animations blend together, glitches occur when you go from sprinting to a slow so that your character can believably turn a door knob slowly to get inside, or when looting a body Arthur just locks up and freezes for a few seconds because the body is laying over an object. If you try to aim down sights while friendlies are nearby often times you'll lock onto them and you will need to reposition yourself in order to actually fire at enemies.
The next issue is that the game is too easy. Rockstar games are designed to be story-heavy and accessible, which is fine, but I found some missions to be laughably easy. You'll start to notice that your horse will often steer itself with no regard for your input in missions because it is scripted to do so, you'll notice enemies standing 3ft away from you can't hit you or that they will keep running right at you and dropping dead in the same spot as their allies. Half of the missions in this game could be completed without even seeing the game, if you could only see the mini-map you'd be able to beat them as the mini-map just makes everything trivial. An NPC might ask you to look for something but then game will immediately highlight the exact spot it is at, removing any hint of a brief challenge, it's as if the game doesn't want you to ever fail. There's no mission that I ever struggled with and I probably died less than 10 times in missions. I'm not saying the game needs to be punishing but it feels like Rockstar would have been better off making a movie rather than a game when the gameplay is so light.
Additionally the game is held back by its setting. It's detailed and authentic but it can make for a boring game. There's no variety in weapons, pistols and rifles feel almost indistinguishable at times, there's no variety in the law you fight it's the same gunfight over and over and spending half of every mission on horseback listening to exposition gets tiresome very quick. I'm grateful they included the option of the cinematic camera where you can just let your horse ride without any input but that doesn't make for an engaging game, it's a means of getting around an annoying piece of gameplay. There are better ways to deliver exposition, I became grateful for missions that would skip time and have me start at the location of the mission rather than needing to ride from camp. I also found myself ignoring NPC encounters along routes to missions because often they needed me to travel in the opposite direction I was coming from, something that I didn't want to be slowed down by.
Red Dead Online is a huge let down, not that you should expect much when you compare it to GTA:O. It's typical Rockstar fare: Lock anything fun behind a paywall/grind, do nothing about hackers, add updates to Online and nothing to singleplayer. Anything worth doing requires goldbars which cost money or weeks of grinding, the missions aren't rewarding, the graphics are downgraded for the online portion, the story isn't engaging and the world feels far more empty. It's fun to mess around in it with friends for a while but there's better games to waste your time and money in.
Finally, the PC optimisation is poor, I can only imagine how bad it was on launch. Everytime my game starts my resolution is messed up and I need to adjust it twice for it to work. I also have to alt-tab twice on launch to use the menus. The game has a 50% chance of crashing when loading singleplayer for the first time or a 75% chance of crashing when loading the online portion. Worth nothing if Rockstar servers are down you can't play this game, I really wish you didn't need a connection for offline games.
If you can put up with the first 3-6 hours there is a rewarding experience to be found here, the story gets very interesting, the characters more intriguing and the world is a beautiful backdrop for it all. I would highly recommend it but just be aware of what you're in for.
First, and most obviously, the beginning chapters are a bore, they create a poor first impression, they drag on, the gameplay is dull and it's not fun interacting with the characters when you know absolutely nothing about them, it serves as a good tutorial but one that makes you want to avoid playing the story when the world finally opens up. It isn't until chapter 3 that I actually started to become invested in the story, before that point I only did missions in the hopes of getting into fun shootouts and robberies.
Secondly, the controls aren't the best. Unlike most other Rockstar games I actually found this played on keyboard better than controller. Your horse controls terribly at times, often circling back on itself, falling over nothing, veering off to the right when you press left, etc. I can only assume it's a quirk of the game trying to adjust your horse on uneven surfaces but it feels like you fight with the animal most of the time. On foot controls are better but I've had situations occur where my guns that were equipped before I got off my horse become unequipped and likewise when I go to interact with an NPC I accidentally shoot them when I meant to say hello. A lot of issues comes from the way Rockstar has tried to make animations blend together, glitches occur when you go from sprinting to a slow so that your character can believably turn a door knob slowly to get inside, or when looting a body Arthur just locks up and freezes for a few seconds because the body is laying over an object. If you try to aim down sights while friendlies are nearby often times you'll lock onto them and you will need to reposition yourself in order to actually fire at enemies.
The next issue is that the game is too easy. Rockstar games are designed to be story-heavy and accessible, which is fine, but I found some missions to be laughably easy. You'll start to notice that your horse will often steer itself with no regard for your input in missions because it is scripted to do so, you'll notice enemies standing 3ft away from you can't hit you or that they will keep running right at you and dropping dead in the same spot as their allies. Half of the missions in this game could be completed without even seeing the game, if you could only see the mini-map you'd be able to beat them as the mini-map just makes everything trivial. An NPC might ask you to look for something but then game will immediately highlight the exact spot it is at, removing any hint of a brief challenge, it's as if the game doesn't want you to ever fail. There's no mission that I ever struggled with and I probably died less than 10 times in missions. I'm not saying the game needs to be punishing but it feels like Rockstar would have been better off making a movie rather than a game when the gameplay is so light.
Additionally the game is held back by its setting. It's detailed and authentic but it can make for a boring game. There's no variety in weapons, pistols and rifles feel almost indistinguishable at times, there's no variety in the law you fight it's the same gunfight over and over and spending half of every mission on horseback listening to exposition gets tiresome very quick. I'm grateful they included the option of the cinematic camera where you can just let your horse ride without any input but that doesn't make for an engaging game, it's a means of getting around an annoying piece of gameplay. There are better ways to deliver exposition, I became grateful for missions that would skip time and have me start at the location of the mission rather than needing to ride from camp. I also found myself ignoring NPC encounters along routes to missions because often they needed me to travel in the opposite direction I was coming from, something that I didn't want to be slowed down by.
Red Dead Online is a huge let down, not that you should expect much when you compare it to GTA:O. It's typical Rockstar fare: Lock anything fun behind a paywall/grind, do nothing about hackers, add updates to Online and nothing to singleplayer. Anything worth doing requires goldbars which cost money or weeks of grinding, the missions aren't rewarding, the graphics are downgraded for the online portion, the story isn't engaging and the world feels far more empty. It's fun to mess around in it with friends for a while but there's better games to waste your time and money in.
Finally, the PC optimisation is poor, I can only imagine how bad it was on launch. Everytime my game starts my resolution is messed up and I need to adjust it twice for it to work. I also have to alt-tab twice on launch to use the menus. The game has a 50% chance of crashing when loading singleplayer for the first time or a 75% chance of crashing when loading the online portion. Worth nothing if Rockstar servers are down you can't play this game, I really wish you didn't need a connection for offline games.
If you can put up with the first 3-6 hours there is a rewarding experience to be found here, the story gets very interesting, the characters more intriguing and the world is a beautiful backdrop for it all. I would highly recommend it but just be aware of what you're in for.
2020
This is the game I bought VR for.
It was definitely worth it and it sets a good standard for what fully fledged VR experiences should be. As a huge Half Life fan it also scratches the lore itch in many ways, however it's got a bunch of problems. I highly recommend it but I'm gonna highlight my issues since most reviews don't mention them.
1. The story is thin. The game has long periods of nothing where exposition is just given to you over comms for a few minutes, then never mentioned for a while and then a big event happens out of the blue and it's just another act completed. Everything feels incidental and forgettable, the pacing just isn't great. The final act of the story just has everything neatly converge. The ending is amazing and probably the best way they could have wrapped things up, it's an absolute highlight but everything before it could have been handled better.
2. Valve always have the same problem with HL games, and this one has problem that HL1 and HL2 have. There's levels that are just way too long. In HL1 it was zen, in HL2 it was Route Kanal and in this one it's the early sewer levels. They are just boring and I stopped playing a few times because I was sick of looking at similar interiors. The Northern Star levels also dragged on a bit. I wish there more areas set outside and more areas like the Zoo.
3. Controls aren't the best. I played on a Quest 2, it was fine for the most part however reloading is inconsistent and grenades don't work. I notice reloading issues with the shotgun more than anything, especially with the speedloader, sometimes the shells just don't go in even in the right orientation, it defeats the purpose. As for grenades, I died more times from grenades just dropping at my feet rather going where I want them to than I died from enemies. I don't know what causes this to happen, I practised throwing objects, tried different arcs, tried moving my headset with the throw, tried keeping it still, etc. grenades just dropped to the floor 50% of the time.
4. Weapon upgrades are bad. My biggest regret was getting the sight for the pistol, I hated using it and wish I could have taken it off at some stage, the plain iron sights were far easier to use, it got to a stage where I just learned to hip fire when possible. The shotgun's laser also makes it hard to aim the gun when you don't want to hip fire, granted its rare but it did throw me off at times.
5. Performance isn't the best. I'm running a 1660 Super, 24GB of RAM and a Ryzen 5 1600x. Not the best CPU but definitely suitable for the game and can easily hold its own despite its age. My game suffered stuttering when teleporting or changing weapons. In some areas the frame dips were noticeable. I dropped settings right down and even dropped resolution through Steam VR. It didn't really help. I think the issue is SteamVR itself and a lot of players have noted it doesn't do well with the Quest, with performance gains seen by using third party programs to get around SteamVR. The game was playable for me but going from this to any other VR game where it is smooth is jarring.
6. Puzzles. Yeah opening the storage boxes, or fixing the wiring is cool the first 5 times but by the end of the game I wanted to ignore them all just so I didn't have to do them. I understand setting the pacing and slowing things down but there has to be a better way.
7. No melee combat. Running out of ammo isn't rare, I ran past a few encounters because I had no other options. Gordon Freeman's iconic weapon is a crowbar and yet there's no equivalent here, it feels like a missed opportunity and can lead to frustrating moments.
It was definitely worth it and it sets a good standard for what fully fledged VR experiences should be. As a huge Half Life fan it also scratches the lore itch in many ways, however it's got a bunch of problems. I highly recommend it but I'm gonna highlight my issues since most reviews don't mention them.
1. The story is thin. The game has long periods of nothing where exposition is just given to you over comms for a few minutes, then never mentioned for a while and then a big event happens out of the blue and it's just another act completed. Everything feels incidental and forgettable, the pacing just isn't great. The final act of the story just has everything neatly converge. The ending is amazing and probably the best way they could have wrapped things up, it's an absolute highlight but everything before it could have been handled better.
2. Valve always have the same problem with HL games, and this one has problem that HL1 and HL2 have. There's levels that are just way too long. In HL1 it was zen, in HL2 it was Route Kanal and in this one it's the early sewer levels. They are just boring and I stopped playing a few times because I was sick of looking at similar interiors. The Northern Star levels also dragged on a bit. I wish there more areas set outside and more areas like the Zoo.
3. Controls aren't the best. I played on a Quest 2, it was fine for the most part however reloading is inconsistent and grenades don't work. I notice reloading issues with the shotgun more than anything, especially with the speedloader, sometimes the shells just don't go in even in the right orientation, it defeats the purpose. As for grenades, I died more times from grenades just dropping at my feet rather going where I want them to than I died from enemies. I don't know what causes this to happen, I practised throwing objects, tried different arcs, tried moving my headset with the throw, tried keeping it still, etc. grenades just dropped to the floor 50% of the time.
4. Weapon upgrades are bad. My biggest regret was getting the sight for the pistol, I hated using it and wish I could have taken it off at some stage, the plain iron sights were far easier to use, it got to a stage where I just learned to hip fire when possible. The shotgun's laser also makes it hard to aim the gun when you don't want to hip fire, granted its rare but it did throw me off at times.
5. Performance isn't the best. I'm running a 1660 Super, 24GB of RAM and a Ryzen 5 1600x. Not the best CPU but definitely suitable for the game and can easily hold its own despite its age. My game suffered stuttering when teleporting or changing weapons. In some areas the frame dips were noticeable. I dropped settings right down and even dropped resolution through Steam VR. It didn't really help. I think the issue is SteamVR itself and a lot of players have noted it doesn't do well with the Quest, with performance gains seen by using third party programs to get around SteamVR. The game was playable for me but going from this to any other VR game where it is smooth is jarring.
6. Puzzles. Yeah opening the storage boxes, or fixing the wiring is cool the first 5 times but by the end of the game I wanted to ignore them all just so I didn't have to do them. I understand setting the pacing and slowing things down but there has to be a better way.
7. No melee combat. Running out of ammo isn't rare, I ran past a few encounters because I had no other options. Gordon Freeman's iconic weapon is a crowbar and yet there's no equivalent here, it feels like a missed opportunity and can lead to frustrating moments.
2020
This is my long-standing Steam review with edits.
Update 2023:
New infantry update is incredibly bad, makes me not even want to play this game anymore.
Update: 2022
The devs still haven't fixed USB microphone issues. They still haven't fixed the server browser showing 2 EU servers and 100+ Chinese servers. They haven't fixed disconnection problems. Not worth it anymore
In its current state it's one of the best game experiences I've ever had.
It's a game that entirely hinges on the community, the difference between a good match and an awful match is whether or not you have a squad lead who knows what they are doing, whether or not your squad mates fulfil their roles and whether or not the team as a whole is coordinated. It's best to jump in with someone who already has a good handle on how the game works and can teach you. Even after 100 hours I still feel like I barely understand the mechanics and tactics but that's part of the fun. The combat is slow, heavy and difficult which makes actually getting kills feel amazing and like you've managed a substantial feat. Even playing as a support role makes you feel like you're contributing greatly, 0 kills doesn't mean a bad match if you spent it being the backbone of a push to take an enemy site.
The game is buggy, the server browser doesn't work 70% of the time, some maps are really badly optimised but I can overlook all of these. Just be prepared for the absolute comedians who think screaming "cyka blyat" and "allahu ackbar" is the peak of comedy.
Update 2023:
New infantry update is incredibly bad, makes me not even want to play this game anymore.
Update: 2022
The devs still haven't fixed USB microphone issues. They still haven't fixed the server browser showing 2 EU servers and 100+ Chinese servers. They haven't fixed disconnection problems. Not worth it anymore
In its current state it's one of the best game experiences I've ever had.
It's a game that entirely hinges on the community, the difference between a good match and an awful match is whether or not you have a squad lead who knows what they are doing, whether or not your squad mates fulfil their roles and whether or not the team as a whole is coordinated. It's best to jump in with someone who already has a good handle on how the game works and can teach you. Even after 100 hours I still feel like I barely understand the mechanics and tactics but that's part of the fun. The combat is slow, heavy and difficult which makes actually getting kills feel amazing and like you've managed a substantial feat. Even playing as a support role makes you feel like you're contributing greatly, 0 kills doesn't mean a bad match if you spent it being the backbone of a push to take an enemy site.
The game is buggy, the server browser doesn't work 70% of the time, some maps are really badly optimised but I can overlook all of these. Just be prepared for the absolute comedians who think screaming "cyka blyat" and "allahu ackbar" is the peak of comedy.
It's a good game for a while but is let down by two key areas.
I would recommend it on sale but not for any more than €30+.
It's basically RE:7 but bigger, larger map, more antagonists, more weapons, etc. It has most of the same characters though a different setting. The first thing I noticed was how amazing it looks, especially for a game under 50gb when it appears most devs either don't know how to or don't care to try and compress their games.
The opening hours are fun, unnerving and very interesting, it does draw you in, it's the typical formula of "you are trapped in this area, find puzzle pieces, kill enemies, avoid the main antagonist until a scripted boss fight". It's fun though the horror feels toned down compared to RE:7.
There are two reasons I don't recommend this game, first is the story and second are the boss fights.
RE:7's story was silly, it was this very realistically-rendered world contrasted with laughably bad, Goosebump's level writing where bosses would taunt you endlessly throughout a five minute fight while your character never responds, or where your character would watch part of their body get sliced off, quietly mutter "ow" then pay it no attention again. Village is exactly the same but I feel like they must have hired the junior writers from the last game because the dialogue is painfully bad, it honestly is hard to listen to. Ethan isn't relatable or likeable, Mia is annoying at best, all of the antagonists come across like theater kids rather than grounded villains. I'm not one to let story ruin a game but Village is unfortunately a game where you cannot avoid the story, similarly you can't avoid the boss fights.
Boss fights in RE:7 were bad but usually short. Boss fights in RE:8 are bad but incredibly long at normal+ difficulty. I hated every single boss fight, they all either had super obvious gimmicks that may as well have been quick time event style button prompts to win or the bosses were bullet sponges design to run down your suppliers and leave you re-loading your save so you can go buy more and re-try. The final boss fight was by far the worst, without spoiling it some attacks felt like they were impossible to dodge, the room felt too small to maneuver in and the lack of feedback from the boss to show whether or not your damage was effective made it feel like a grind. I died three times because despite stocking up on supplies as much as I could and re-trying I kept running out. Landing every single shot made no difference, the fight just goes on and on all while the boss espouses dialogue that rivals a James Bond villain, telling me she is going to kill me while not actually doing it despite have ample opportunity. At some stage I got sick of it, dropped the difficulty I had stuck to all play through and was happy to finish up in less than 5 minutes on my next attempt.
Another issue it copies from RE:7 is that it turns into an action-horror game by the end - why did they decide on this? Animations are slow, your character controls like a boat, you're hindered by this to increase tension in one on one combat sections and all of a sudden you have an assault rifle, unlimited ammo, a horde of enemies and the same awful controls, it doesn't work.
The most stand-out section of the game is when you're in the basement with the mannequin, I won't spoil it but the body horror and tension are unrivaled in the rest of the game however it ended too soon.
If it's on sale grab it for an interesting 10+ hour run but I would recommend 7 over this any day, even with all of its flaws. It starts strong but leaves you wishing for its end.
I would recommend it on sale but not for any more than €30+.
It's basically RE:7 but bigger, larger map, more antagonists, more weapons, etc. It has most of the same characters though a different setting. The first thing I noticed was how amazing it looks, especially for a game under 50gb when it appears most devs either don't know how to or don't care to try and compress their games.
The opening hours are fun, unnerving and very interesting, it does draw you in, it's the typical formula of "you are trapped in this area, find puzzle pieces, kill enemies, avoid the main antagonist until a scripted boss fight". It's fun though the horror feels toned down compared to RE:7.
There are two reasons I don't recommend this game, first is the story and second are the boss fights.
RE:7's story was silly, it was this very realistically-rendered world contrasted with laughably bad, Goosebump's level writing where bosses would taunt you endlessly throughout a five minute fight while your character never responds, or where your character would watch part of their body get sliced off, quietly mutter "ow" then pay it no attention again. Village is exactly the same but I feel like they must have hired the junior writers from the last game because the dialogue is painfully bad, it honestly is hard to listen to. Ethan isn't relatable or likeable, Mia is annoying at best, all of the antagonists come across like theater kids rather than grounded villains. I'm not one to let story ruin a game but Village is unfortunately a game where you cannot avoid the story, similarly you can't avoid the boss fights.
Boss fights in RE:7 were bad but usually short. Boss fights in RE:8 are bad but incredibly long at normal+ difficulty. I hated every single boss fight, they all either had super obvious gimmicks that may as well have been quick time event style button prompts to win or the bosses were bullet sponges design to run down your suppliers and leave you re-loading your save so you can go buy more and re-try. The final boss fight was by far the worst, without spoiling it some attacks felt like they were impossible to dodge, the room felt too small to maneuver in and the lack of feedback from the boss to show whether or not your damage was effective made it feel like a grind. I died three times because despite stocking up on supplies as much as I could and re-trying I kept running out. Landing every single shot made no difference, the fight just goes on and on all while the boss espouses dialogue that rivals a James Bond villain, telling me she is going to kill me while not actually doing it despite have ample opportunity. At some stage I got sick of it, dropped the difficulty I had stuck to all play through and was happy to finish up in less than 5 minutes on my next attempt.
Another issue it copies from RE:7 is that it turns into an action-horror game by the end - why did they decide on this? Animations are slow, your character controls like a boat, you're hindered by this to increase tension in one on one combat sections and all of a sudden you have an assault rifle, unlimited ammo, a horde of enemies and the same awful controls, it doesn't work.
The most stand-out section of the game is when you're in the basement with the mannequin, I won't spoil it but the body horror and tension are unrivaled in the rest of the game however it ended too soon.
If it's on sale grab it for an interesting 10+ hour run but I would recommend 7 over this any day, even with all of its flaws. It starts strong but leaves you wishing for its end.
2023
Edit: Updating 27/05/24 to say that I've been having a blast playing through this game solo again - the AI updates are phenomenal and make the game feel more balanced than ever. My wishlist is now mostly improvements for SWAT AI, more varied enemies (can we get some enemies hiding behind cover, or crouced/prone instead of always being fully upright out in the open?) and the ability to change loadout without returning to the station.
The team has done an amazing job with updating some of the levels too - Port Hokan is incredible, really great atmosphere and a well paced level that stands out from the others.
Edit 14/12/23: Wow this 1.0 update is fantastic - the SWAT AI is significantly improved, enemy AI still feels too easy but overall it's in a much better place. The additional guns is great and I'm a big fan of the commander mode, it makes me want to play every mission and gives me a reason to play carefully with the risk of losing teammates. I think VOID seriously did a fantastic job here and while it's not perfect it's a worthy 1.0.
This game will be amazing in another year or two (hopefully). The TL:DR is that the game is worth trying out if it appeals to you at all, but in its current state it's not a complete package. I would recommend it but I'll mostly focus on the things I didn't like in the review as feedback for the devs. I play solo most of the time so that's my perspective here.
RoN has a really good foundation, but some strange design decisions and fundamental issues hold it back for the moment. The aesthetic here mirrors a mash-up of Insurgency: Sandstorm with SWAT4 and it works so well - it's helped by the fact the game is visually beautiful and runs really well despite this; the dev team have gone above and beyond to create immersive levels packed with details. The Nightclub mission is an absolute standout and I am impressed that they had the courage to make levels like it, despite knowing it would rub some people the wrong way, I can honestly say that of the official levels in game right now none of them are bad, however it's a shame that the majority of them only offer 1 or 2 scenarios. Another thing that holds these levels back is their complexity, I am glad they chose to create realistic environments over "game-ified" levels designed to hand-hold you from point to point, however it's difficult to tell which areas are in the bounds of a level or where you should go during your first few runs in a mission. Some levels have multiple buildings separate from one another, which leads me to wasting time exploring the edges of the map (unknowingly) thinking there was more to it, or trying doors that weren't obviously off limits. The solution here might be some more in-world context (bloodstains, signs of an attack, etc), I think the Postal Center and the Car Dealership levels are the worst for this.
The lack of direction in these levels is especially frustrating after you kill all of the enemies in a mission - 9 times out of 10 I opt to just fail the mission once all of the enemies are dead because having to round up all of the civilians/find hidden items/gather evidence is incredibly tedious and you can easily spend more time doubling back over, checking every room for these things than you spent actually engaging enemies. VOID are going to be updating the game to add highlights to these items but I don't think it's going to be enough on its own. I find it strange that the devotion to realism extends to having to collect evidence yet we are instantly told when all of the enemies are dead removing any tension from this portion of the game, it's an odd choice.
Another odd choice is the difficulty. The game feels far too easy - I'm not big into slow-paced tactical shooters, I don't go as slow as I should and clear rooms like a roleplayer and even then I didn't feel like I had to. I would make my AI teammates move to a spot at the start of the level and go in solo just to increase the difficulty for myself. The combat is fun, guns aren't easy to use as the recoil is very strong and the suppression effect from enemies is well-implemented but the lack of enemies makes this game too easy, I never felt overwhelmed, some levels like the 4U Gas Station have such a tiny amount of enemies it feels pointless playing it over the larger missions. The gun balance doesn't seem to matter either, I think the guns and customization is to mostly appeal to roleplayers but in almost every situation a shotgun will do everything you want and more. It's great that the devs included the non-lethal weapon categories but it doesn't feel like they are any different to the regular weapons, if I shoot an enemy with an M1014 they drop dead to the ground, if I shoot them with the beanbag round shotgun they drop to the ground, just not dead - there's no increased risk and therefore no real reason to use them.
Going back to the AI, it's bad - by all accounts it's better than it used to be but work is needed. Enemy AI is very unreactive, they don't dive for cover, or reposition, or utilize equipment, etc. They mostly stand in one spot and maybe they will walk to a nearby wall or walk towards you, that's it. The SWAT AI is far more annoying however. I appreciate having the ability to give them commands but they take so long to execute that I would rather just do it myself. It's frustrating to tell my teammates to stack on a door to breach it, only for an enemy to walk through and shoot me in the head because it took them 20+ seconds to do it. The biggest annoyance with the AI is the blocking, it would remove from the immersion but can we have the option to disable collision with teammates please? I've gotten trapped inside small rooms because 4 SWAT members will pile in behind me and block the doorway, then I have to bumper-car my way out.
It would also be an improvement if we could adjust our loadouts at the start of a level - again I appreciate the immersion of having to walk into the gear-room and select your guns there but if you play a mission and find you don't enjoy the guns you have it's frustrating to have to pause, quit back to the headquarters, walk into the gear-room, open the loadout menu, then walk back to the mission table and load back in.
If at all possible VOID, please consider Workshop integration. The mod scene here is still small but has so much potential and I think if you could extend it to the Workshop instead of another platform it would go a long way in encouraging the community and extending the longevity of the game.
My final complaint is the lack of a story or any real stakes. There are brief mission outlines that provide context but the missions lack any motivation for me beyond just killing the enemies, if there was a proper storyline here to link the missions it would help a lot as right now the game just feels like a collection of levels with nothing behind them. Perhaps if teammates died in a previous mission they could be unavailable for future levels? Or you could pick up data from one mission which could perhaps lead to a HVT being present in another mission encouraging you to use non-lethal tactics to apprehend them, etc. It feels like there is so much potential here yet to be explored.
The team has done an amazing job with updating some of the levels too - Port Hokan is incredible, really great atmosphere and a well paced level that stands out from the others.
Edit 14/12/23: Wow this 1.0 update is fantastic - the SWAT AI is significantly improved, enemy AI still feels too easy but overall it's in a much better place. The additional guns is great and I'm a big fan of the commander mode, it makes me want to play every mission and gives me a reason to play carefully with the risk of losing teammates. I think VOID seriously did a fantastic job here and while it's not perfect it's a worthy 1.0.
This game will be amazing in another year or two (hopefully). The TL:DR is that the game is worth trying out if it appeals to you at all, but in its current state it's not a complete package. I would recommend it but I'll mostly focus on the things I didn't like in the review as feedback for the devs. I play solo most of the time so that's my perspective here.
RoN has a really good foundation, but some strange design decisions and fundamental issues hold it back for the moment. The aesthetic here mirrors a mash-up of Insurgency: Sandstorm with SWAT4 and it works so well - it's helped by the fact the game is visually beautiful and runs really well despite this; the dev team have gone above and beyond to create immersive levels packed with details. The Nightclub mission is an absolute standout and I am impressed that they had the courage to make levels like it, despite knowing it would rub some people the wrong way, I can honestly say that of the official levels in game right now none of them are bad, however it's a shame that the majority of them only offer 1 or 2 scenarios. Another thing that holds these levels back is their complexity, I am glad they chose to create realistic environments over "game-ified" levels designed to hand-hold you from point to point, however it's difficult to tell which areas are in the bounds of a level or where you should go during your first few runs in a mission. Some levels have multiple buildings separate from one another, which leads me to wasting time exploring the edges of the map (unknowingly) thinking there was more to it, or trying doors that weren't obviously off limits. The solution here might be some more in-world context (bloodstains, signs of an attack, etc), I think the Postal Center and the Car Dealership levels are the worst for this.
The lack of direction in these levels is especially frustrating after you kill all of the enemies in a mission - 9 times out of 10 I opt to just fail the mission once all of the enemies are dead because having to round up all of the civilians/find hidden items/gather evidence is incredibly tedious and you can easily spend more time doubling back over, checking every room for these things than you spent actually engaging enemies. VOID are going to be updating the game to add highlights to these items but I don't think it's going to be enough on its own. I find it strange that the devotion to realism extends to having to collect evidence yet we are instantly told when all of the enemies are dead removing any tension from this portion of the game, it's an odd choice.
Another odd choice is the difficulty. The game feels far too easy - I'm not big into slow-paced tactical shooters, I don't go as slow as I should and clear rooms like a roleplayer and even then I didn't feel like I had to. I would make my AI teammates move to a spot at the start of the level and go in solo just to increase the difficulty for myself. The combat is fun, guns aren't easy to use as the recoil is very strong and the suppression effect from enemies is well-implemented but the lack of enemies makes this game too easy, I never felt overwhelmed, some levels like the 4U Gas Station have such a tiny amount of enemies it feels pointless playing it over the larger missions. The gun balance doesn't seem to matter either, I think the guns and customization is to mostly appeal to roleplayers but in almost every situation a shotgun will do everything you want and more. It's great that the devs included the non-lethal weapon categories but it doesn't feel like they are any different to the regular weapons, if I shoot an enemy with an M1014 they drop dead to the ground, if I shoot them with the beanbag round shotgun they drop to the ground, just not dead - there's no increased risk and therefore no real reason to use them.
Going back to the AI, it's bad - by all accounts it's better than it used to be but work is needed. Enemy AI is very unreactive, they don't dive for cover, or reposition, or utilize equipment, etc. They mostly stand in one spot and maybe they will walk to a nearby wall or walk towards you, that's it. The SWAT AI is far more annoying however. I appreciate having the ability to give them commands but they take so long to execute that I would rather just do it myself. It's frustrating to tell my teammates to stack on a door to breach it, only for an enemy to walk through and shoot me in the head because it took them 20+ seconds to do it. The biggest annoyance with the AI is the blocking, it would remove from the immersion but can we have the option to disable collision with teammates please? I've gotten trapped inside small rooms because 4 SWAT members will pile in behind me and block the doorway, then I have to bumper-car my way out.
It would also be an improvement if we could adjust our loadouts at the start of a level - again I appreciate the immersion of having to walk into the gear-room and select your guns there but if you play a mission and find you don't enjoy the guns you have it's frustrating to have to pause, quit back to the headquarters, walk into the gear-room, open the loadout menu, then walk back to the mission table and load back in.
If at all possible VOID, please consider Workshop integration. The mod scene here is still small but has so much potential and I think if you could extend it to the Workshop instead of another platform it would go a long way in encouraging the community and extending the longevity of the game.
My final complaint is the lack of a story or any real stakes. There are brief mission outlines that provide context but the missions lack any motivation for me beyond just killing the enemies, if there was a proper storyline here to link the missions it would help a lot as right now the game just feels like a collection of levels with nothing behind them. Perhaps if teammates died in a previous mission they could be unavailable for future levels? Or you could pick up data from one mission which could perhaps lead to a HVT being present in another mission encouraging you to use non-lethal tactics to apprehend them, etc. It feels like there is so much potential here yet to be explored.
2023
There's no doubt that BG3 is a good, well-made game, however I personally wouldn't recommend it to anyone who didn't already enjoy D&D/Western RPGs. If you do enjoy them however there is a lot this game can offer you but as someone who isn't into them I really struggled to love this game, and I did try. I feel like at some point in the future I will come back to BG3, blast through it in a week or two and end up loving it without trying but for me right now I find it very frustrating. For context I played about 2/3s solo and 1/3 in a multiplayer party. My review is going to sound pretty harsh I think but I don't hate the game or anything, I just can't say I understand the immense level of praise it's gotten.
The worst element of BG3 in my eyes is the combat, I find nothing fun about it at all, there are classes and subclasses, weapons, enchantments, scrolls, etc. yet despite all that it feels like the combat encounters are all the exact same, the only thing that ever feels noticeably different from encounter to encounter is the number of enemies or enemy health. The spells used, weapons available, even the combat arenas should all be a factor but it never felt like they were. After 20+ hours of gameplay I'm not ashamed to admit I changed to the easier difficulty just so I could stop feeling like the combat was such a slog. I didn't find it particularly difficult, just boring and repetitive. Some fights can last 20+ minutes just because each enemy has to take a turn and you need to wait for each to play out. I don't think there are many people who would agree with me on this point, but I can honestly say I never enjoyed combat in this game.
I think what underpins why I dislike combat so much is the fact that the RPG elements in this game are so good. Combat felt like it got in the way, it would grind the pacing to absolute crawl when I was excited to meet the next quest-relevant NPC and engage in dialogue to try and complete the quest. I found it far more rewarding to utilize character abilities to outsmart people in conversations, or non-combat interactions.
The issues I have with BG3 though go beyond the combat. In almost every session, I would come across something that would frustrate me immensely. I would make my party leader jump from a ledge, take -10hp, expect my party members to follow only for them to stand there doing nothing, so I swap to that character and make them jump and take -10hp, only to watch my party leader jump back up at the exact same time, meaning they have to do it again now and take another -10hp. Yes, my fault for not unlocking the party, but why do party members just not follow in some cases and in other cases they are basically the party leader's shadow?
In my first playthrough I killed a vital character in my camp only for them to still be there and for it to break another character's quest as a result. Sometimes enemies would just pass through walls to attack me. The pathfinding/routing of character movement constantly bugged out. Equipping items/clothing wouldn't work half the time and would result in my opening and closing the inventory several times to try and get it to work. When I first tried the game it ran great but in recent playthroughs my performance has tanked for no obvious reason. This is just a sample of what's annoyed me about BG3 and when something goes wrong every time I try to play it really does spoil the enjoyment.
There's no doubt that Larian put a lot of work into the world and quests, they do account for how players may react in most situations but there are interactions that feel half-baked. For example, you can come across a woman who is secretly a hag, if you know she is a hag in disguise or if you just try to kill her then two other NPCs will just die randomly because I guess they hope most players will watch things playout long enough for the hag to kill them? That was the most egregious and even then it's not that bad, but in a game that tries to cover all the bases it really stands out when it fails.
TL:DR The game is made with a lot of passion, but has plenty of flaws. Combat isn't fun unless you're already into D&D mechanics on some level.
The worst element of BG3 in my eyes is the combat, I find nothing fun about it at all, there are classes and subclasses, weapons, enchantments, scrolls, etc. yet despite all that it feels like the combat encounters are all the exact same, the only thing that ever feels noticeably different from encounter to encounter is the number of enemies or enemy health. The spells used, weapons available, even the combat arenas should all be a factor but it never felt like they were. After 20+ hours of gameplay I'm not ashamed to admit I changed to the easier difficulty just so I could stop feeling like the combat was such a slog. I didn't find it particularly difficult, just boring and repetitive. Some fights can last 20+ minutes just because each enemy has to take a turn and you need to wait for each to play out. I don't think there are many people who would agree with me on this point, but I can honestly say I never enjoyed combat in this game.
I think what underpins why I dislike combat so much is the fact that the RPG elements in this game are so good. Combat felt like it got in the way, it would grind the pacing to absolute crawl when I was excited to meet the next quest-relevant NPC and engage in dialogue to try and complete the quest. I found it far more rewarding to utilize character abilities to outsmart people in conversations, or non-combat interactions.
The issues I have with BG3 though go beyond the combat. In almost every session, I would come across something that would frustrate me immensely. I would make my party leader jump from a ledge, take -10hp, expect my party members to follow only for them to stand there doing nothing, so I swap to that character and make them jump and take -10hp, only to watch my party leader jump back up at the exact same time, meaning they have to do it again now and take another -10hp. Yes, my fault for not unlocking the party, but why do party members just not follow in some cases and in other cases they are basically the party leader's shadow?
In my first playthrough I killed a vital character in my camp only for them to still be there and for it to break another character's quest as a result. Sometimes enemies would just pass through walls to attack me. The pathfinding/routing of character movement constantly bugged out. Equipping items/clothing wouldn't work half the time and would result in my opening and closing the inventory several times to try and get it to work. When I first tried the game it ran great but in recent playthroughs my performance has tanked for no obvious reason. This is just a sample of what's annoyed me about BG3 and when something goes wrong every time I try to play it really does spoil the enjoyment.
There's no doubt that Larian put a lot of work into the world and quests, they do account for how players may react in most situations but there are interactions that feel half-baked. For example, you can come across a woman who is secretly a hag, if you know she is a hag in disguise or if you just try to kill her then two other NPCs will just die randomly because I guess they hope most players will watch things playout long enough for the hag to kill them? That was the most egregious and even then it's not that bad, but in a game that tries to cover all the bases it really stands out when it fails.
TL:DR The game is made with a lot of passion, but has plenty of flaws. Combat isn't fun unless you're already into D&D mechanics on some level.