Zwerchau
(This is a followup to my previous review of the Artcthrones demo, as there has been a major balance patch since I wrote that review.)
I started a fresh playthrough today to see if the new balance patch would solve my issues with enemy scaling. In short, it absolutely has.
I hadn't actually gotten very far through the mod on my original playthrough, only beating the Angelic Siege Golem boss and running around the beginning of each Archthrone, so I was able to catch up very quickly. The decreased enemy scaling is very noticable and feels far more appropriate for starting characters even outside of the first Archthrone.
A lot of my complaints in the previous review centered on the overturned bosses, and I'm happy to report that they now feel much closer to vanilla DS3 bosses in damage and health. Their movesets are still a bit more complex than I would prefer this early in the game, but at least the punishment for getting hit isn't instant death. I was able to beat the Angelic Siege Golem on my first try at level 15 with a +1 Claymore, and the Pus-ridden Beast on my first try a couple levels higher with a +2 Claymore and some fire consumables. I do not believe they have overcorrected; the bosses were still challenging and if I hadn't had practice with their much harder previous forms, I would not have beaten them in a single try.
Given how much better this mod feels to play after the balance patch I do intend to finish the demo this time around. Previously I had said I didn't recommend the mod, but this patch has changed my mind. Definitely give it a shot if you're a fan of Dark Souls III, Elden Ring, or Bloodborne. I think there's a good chance you'll enjoy it.
Update: I've been playing all day and found a few more bosses, one of which I really liked (unfortunately my obs hotkey failed me so I need to do the fight on another character), and a few others that were decent. Overall really enjoying this demo.
Update 2: The further in I get, the more over-designed the bosses are. Does a mid-game boss really need to have moves from Soul of Cinder, Champion Gundyr, Great Shinobi Owl, Maliketh, Margit, and fucking ISSHIN?!?! There's also a janky version of Great Shinobi Owl as a separate boss in the same mod (the parry timings on that boss are completely fucked, you need to parry WAY earlier than normal for DS3). There's also a Sekiro-ass ninja boss who I really hope is just unfinished because the jank was unbearable but the presentation was really good. These bosses look really cool but borrowing moves from such a wide variety of other bosses (from different games, even) means they have no cohesive feel or flow.
Update 3: I found the secret boss in Phoenix Tower today and laughed out loud at how absurdly janky it is. The lock on couldn't stay on the boss for more than 15 seconds and every move felt completely off-tempo. I'm not even going to say I hope this one is unfinished because if it made it into the full release like this it would be fucking hysterical (this thing makes Maneaters look extremely polished).
I started a fresh playthrough today to see if the new balance patch would solve my issues with enemy scaling. In short, it absolutely has.
I hadn't actually gotten very far through the mod on my original playthrough, only beating the Angelic Siege Golem boss and running around the beginning of each Archthrone, so I was able to catch up very quickly. The decreased enemy scaling is very noticable and feels far more appropriate for starting characters even outside of the first Archthrone.
A lot of my complaints in the previous review centered on the overturned bosses, and I'm happy to report that they now feel much closer to vanilla DS3 bosses in damage and health. Their movesets are still a bit more complex than I would prefer this early in the game, but at least the punishment for getting hit isn't instant death. I was able to beat the Angelic Siege Golem on my first try at level 15 with a +1 Claymore, and the Pus-ridden Beast on my first try a couple levels higher with a +2 Claymore and some fire consumables. I do not believe they have overcorrected; the bosses were still challenging and if I hadn't had practice with their much harder previous forms, I would not have beaten them in a single try.
Given how much better this mod feels to play after the balance patch I do intend to finish the demo this time around. Previously I had said I didn't recommend the mod, but this patch has changed my mind. Definitely give it a shot if you're a fan of Dark Souls III, Elden Ring, or Bloodborne. I think there's a good chance you'll enjoy it.
Update: I've been playing all day and found a few more bosses, one of which I really liked (unfortunately my obs hotkey failed me so I need to do the fight on another character), and a few others that were decent. Overall really enjoying this demo.
Update 2: The further in I get, the more over-designed the bosses are. Does a mid-game boss really need to have moves from Soul of Cinder, Champion Gundyr, Great Shinobi Owl, Maliketh, Margit, and fucking ISSHIN?!?! There's also a janky version of Great Shinobi Owl as a separate boss in the same mod (the parry timings on that boss are completely fucked, you need to parry WAY earlier than normal for DS3). There's also a Sekiro-ass ninja boss who I really hope is just unfinished because the jank was unbearable but the presentation was really good. These bosses look really cool but borrowing moves from such a wide variety of other bosses (from different games, even) means they have no cohesive feel or flow.
Update 3: I found the secret boss in Phoenix Tower today and laughed out loud at how absurdly janky it is. The lock on couldn't stay on the boss for more than 15 seconds and every move felt completely off-tempo. I'm not even going to say I hope this one is unfinished because if it made it into the full release like this it would be fucking hysterical (this thing makes Maneaters look extremely polished).
There's a lot of promise here, but in its current state the enemy scaling absolutely ruins the entire experience. No area is scaled for starting level characters, and even the earliest bosses have complex and difficult movesets.
The Angelic Siege Golem (pictured on the cover here on Backloggd) is a great example, and the first boss I found in the game. The basic moveset of the boss is that of the Iron Golem boss from Dark Souls, but with the knockdown gimmick of the Tower Knight from Demon's Souls. That sounds fine for a first boss, right? Well, once you've worked your way about 30% into its gargantuan health bar, he gains magic spam that follows some of his basic attacks, and around 50% health, he starts teleporting across the arena and doing the Valiant Gargoyle's vacuum slice attack from Elden Ring, which oneshot me the only time I got hit by it. The bosses are maddeningly overtuned. I was level 15 and had a +3 fire longsword when I managed to beat the Golem, and it was gruelingly hard.
The second boss is far worse. An obvious reskin of the Cleric Beast from Bloodborne, but it's styled as a Pus of Man type monster now. This boss is in the same area as the Golem, but has even more health and does even more damage. I was still using the +3 fire longsword, which I expected to be a very strong choice against this boss; both Bloodborne beast bosses and Pus of Man monsters in Dark Souls III are extremely weak to fire. My sword did 102 damage on an r1 attack, barely scratching the massive healthbar of this extremely aggressive, very lethal, difficult to dodge boss. Oh, and I had gone out of my way to acquire the Soul Fog spell, which seems to poison the target and does good damage, but this boss seemed nearly immune to it (took 12 damage over the course of about 2 seconds, then nothing). I gave up on this boss after a couple attempts and haven't touched the mod since.
I ran around the starting areas of every Archthrone, but all of them were scaled so aggressively that I couldn't hope to fight through them. I barely found any new weapons or spells, and upgrade materials were incredibly sparse.
If the developers scale the enemies down to a reasonable level or let the player gain levels much quicker in the early game, this mod definitely has the potential to be something special. As is, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't a challenge runner of some kind. It just isn't fun.
I will update this review or make a follow-up if I end up playing more of the demo.
Edit: apparently there was a balance patch, so I will be revisiting the demo.
The Angelic Siege Golem (pictured on the cover here on Backloggd) is a great example, and the first boss I found in the game. The basic moveset of the boss is that of the Iron Golem boss from Dark Souls, but with the knockdown gimmick of the Tower Knight from Demon's Souls. That sounds fine for a first boss, right? Well, once you've worked your way about 30% into its gargantuan health bar, he gains magic spam that follows some of his basic attacks, and around 50% health, he starts teleporting across the arena and doing the Valiant Gargoyle's vacuum slice attack from Elden Ring, which oneshot me the only time I got hit by it. The bosses are maddeningly overtuned. I was level 15 and had a +3 fire longsword when I managed to beat the Golem, and it was gruelingly hard.
The second boss is far worse. An obvious reskin of the Cleric Beast from Bloodborne, but it's styled as a Pus of Man type monster now. This boss is in the same area as the Golem, but has even more health and does even more damage. I was still using the +3 fire longsword, which I expected to be a very strong choice against this boss; both Bloodborne beast bosses and Pus of Man monsters in Dark Souls III are extremely weak to fire. My sword did 102 damage on an r1 attack, barely scratching the massive healthbar of this extremely aggressive, very lethal, difficult to dodge boss. Oh, and I had gone out of my way to acquire the Soul Fog spell, which seems to poison the target and does good damage, but this boss seemed nearly immune to it (took 12 damage over the course of about 2 seconds, then nothing). I gave up on this boss after a couple attempts and haven't touched the mod since.
I ran around the starting areas of every Archthrone, but all of them were scaled so aggressively that I couldn't hope to fight through them. I barely found any new weapons or spells, and upgrade materials were incredibly sparse.
If the developers scale the enemies down to a reasonable level or let the player gain levels much quicker in the early game, this mod definitely has the potential to be something special. As is, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't a challenge runner of some kind. It just isn't fun.
I will update this review or make a follow-up if I end up playing more of the demo.
Edit: apparently there was a balance patch, so I will be revisiting the demo.
2020
This review contains spoilers
Lae'zel is the best thing about this game by a huge margin, her companion/romance story was amazing and she's one of my favorite video game characters because of it.
The rest of the companions were mostly just okay, and a lot of their stories were kind of underwhelming or disappointing (or basically nonexistent in Wyll's case). Shadowheart's story was probably my least favorite, especially with the ending focusing on her boring-ass parents who are given no characterization before this point. Karlach's story mostly just felt one-note, though I did love her little fangirl crush on Jaheira (me too Karlach, me too). I started a Durge run to romance Minthara and see her story for myself, but put it on hold as there seemed to be a lot of bugs surrounding her quest triggers.
The main story/plot was honestly godawful. The only good parts were those involving Raphael, Ketheric Thorm, and the late game reveal about the Emperor's true identity. By far the worst part of the plot is the most important aspect, the initial hook of the mind flayer parasites. At first it seems like a compelling reason for the party to get together, but it quickly falls apart when you're encouraged to infect yourself with more parasites in exchange for more powers. The reason this aspect falls so flat is that there is mechanically no reason to avoid doing this. There is no consequence, even just narratively, whatsoever for filling your brain with parasites, despite the entire first act's plot being dedicated to trying to find a way to remove the one parasite you started with. That's fucking stupid. The story in the second act is much better, but mostly because it's so separate from the story of the first and third acts. Act three picks back up with the mind flayer plot and it's immediately shit again. The House of Hope, the wizard tower, and the secret dragon fight are the best parts of the third act by a huge margin. The rest of the final act was mostly forgettable or disappointing.
I almost forgot to mention performance! It's shit! I have a decent PC, nothing fancy but it runs Elden Ring smoothly (shader compiling stutter notwithstanding, thanks Windows). In this game, cutscenes as early as the opening would fail to fully load textures and were consistently choppy. The Nightsong cutscene in act 2 completely failed to load almost all of the structures and details, which was a common theme for the rest of the game. By act 3, even outside of cutscenes entire buildings would refuse to load walls, floors, enemies, etc. The mansion where the painter's quest finishes was the worst offender.
Overall, this is one of the hardest games for me to rate. The voice acting is incredible, some of the writing is amazing, some of the set pieces and encounters are iconic; on the other hand, a lot of the writing sucks ass, some characters' stories are disappointing, and the main plot is mostly dogshit. Performance is bad, and in act 3 is unforgivably horrible. I love this game and I hate it at the same time.
The rest of the companions were mostly just okay, and a lot of their stories were kind of underwhelming or disappointing (or basically nonexistent in Wyll's case). Shadowheart's story was probably my least favorite, especially with the ending focusing on her boring-ass parents who are given no characterization before this point. Karlach's story mostly just felt one-note, though I did love her little fangirl crush on Jaheira (me too Karlach, me too). I started a Durge run to romance Minthara and see her story for myself, but put it on hold as there seemed to be a lot of bugs surrounding her quest triggers.
The main story/plot was honestly godawful. The only good parts were those involving Raphael, Ketheric Thorm, and the late game reveal about the Emperor's true identity. By far the worst part of the plot is the most important aspect, the initial hook of the mind flayer parasites. At first it seems like a compelling reason for the party to get together, but it quickly falls apart when you're encouraged to infect yourself with more parasites in exchange for more powers. The reason this aspect falls so flat is that there is mechanically no reason to avoid doing this. There is no consequence, even just narratively, whatsoever for filling your brain with parasites, despite the entire first act's plot being dedicated to trying to find a way to remove the one parasite you started with. That's fucking stupid. The story in the second act is much better, but mostly because it's so separate from the story of the first and third acts. Act three picks back up with the mind flayer plot and it's immediately shit again. The House of Hope, the wizard tower, and the secret dragon fight are the best parts of the third act by a huge margin. The rest of the final act was mostly forgettable or disappointing.
I almost forgot to mention performance! It's shit! I have a decent PC, nothing fancy but it runs Elden Ring smoothly (shader compiling stutter notwithstanding, thanks Windows). In this game, cutscenes as early as the opening would fail to fully load textures and were consistently choppy. The Nightsong cutscene in act 2 completely failed to load almost all of the structures and details, which was a common theme for the rest of the game. By act 3, even outside of cutscenes entire buildings would refuse to load walls, floors, enemies, etc. The mansion where the painter's quest finishes was the worst offender.
Overall, this is one of the hardest games for me to rate. The voice acting is incredible, some of the writing is amazing, some of the set pieces and encounters are iconic; on the other hand, a lot of the writing sucks ass, some characters' stories are disappointing, and the main plot is mostly dogshit. Performance is bad, and in act 3 is unforgivably horrible. I love this game and I hate it at the same time.
Rampart my beloved <3
2016
Overwatch was the first game I ever played for over a thousand hours. I started out as a silver D.Va main, then when I got more into ranked I usually filled in as Reinhardt (there were only a few dedicated main tank players in the whole playerbase). When role queue was introduced I finally got to play DPS more than once in a blue moon, and I think I got all roles to plat in the first season of role queue. The first time I hit plat was actually in the role queue PTR (playing exclusively Zarya). I eventually plateaued in low diamond on tank (Rein, D.Va, Zarya) and support (Lucio, Ana, Zenyatta) and mid plat on DPS (Cassidy, Ashe, Pharah). The beginning of the end for me was Sigma's release, double shield completely killed the pace of the game and I had less and less fun every season after that until I dropped the game in 2021. I miss the game Overwatch used to be, but I have to roll my eyes when people blame Overwatch 2 as the sole reason the game declined. The final years of the original Overwatch were a continuous string of terrible balancing and design decisions, and not all of that can be blamed on OW2 development.
Blizzard is a horrible company and the Overwatch team is incompetent when it comes to balancing, but when I look back at the time I spent with this game I'll always remember more of the good than the bad.
Blizzard is a horrible company and the Overwatch team is incompetent when it comes to balancing, but when I look back at the time I spent with this game I'll always remember more of the good than the bad.
Hinotori Kiriko has to be one of the best skins in Overwatch. I didn't really play that much but it was a pretty fun season compared to the state of the original Overwatch when I quit in 2021.
I looked up some gameplay footage to refresh my memory since it was at least 15 years ago that I played this and I probably only played it a couple times (I wasn't a big gamer when I was like, nine; I preferred Legos and Going Outside). Not much to say about the gameplay or graphics, looks about how I remembered it, but I didn't remember the music at all and it kinda slaps.
I used to get up at 6am to play this
there's a mod that makes her look like Malenia so basically Baiken is my favorite fighting game character now <3
I learned my first real fighting game combo on A.K.I. and I still remember how good I felt the first time I landed it in a match. She's a really fun character to play and absolutely oozing with style (and poison). Maybe a little underpowered; fingers crossed she'll get a tiny buff in the upcoming patch.
2015
A potential masterpiece riddled with flawed systems. Trick weapons are genius, and FromSoftware should definitely revisit the concept in future games, but all of the ones I tried had a form I preferred to use almost exclusively in any given fight. The rally mechanic is a really good idea, but I still often felt it was optimal to back off and heal instead, given how much less health I regained from rallying than blood vials. Blood vials are a great healing system mechanically, ruined only by being a finite consumable for some reason (of all the things to bring back from Demon's Souls, why this). Lamps are easily the coolest looking variation of the Bonfire, but are also easily the worst implemented. A limb-break system sounds cool on paper, but basing it on damage dealt rather than implementing a posture system meant I wasn't able to play around stance-breaking enemies like I would in Elden Ring despite using the heaviest weapon available (first the Kirkhammer and later Ludwig's Holy Blade) and focusing on charged heavy attacks.
For me, one of the most important parts of a FromSoftware game is the boss roster. Having started with Dark Souls 3, which I personally feel has some of the worst regular enemy encounters and many of the best bosses, I expected Bloodborne to be similar. In some ways, it was. Many of the standard encounters in Bloodborne are frustrating to me in the same ways they are in DS3. Too many fast, aggressive enemies all bunched together in small rooms or wide open spaces with no good way to split them up. Call it a skill issue, but I just don't like playing through most of the levels in these two games. In DS3, the bosses counterbalance the frustrating levels by being pretty consistently excellent. I even like the Curse-Rotted Greatwood somehow, DS3 just understands what makes bosses fun. Bloodborne simply doesn't have a comparable boss lineup. The best of them are pretty good, but still not amazing. Father Gascoigne and Martyr Logarius were the only bosses I actually liked before playing the Old Hunters DLC. A lot of Bloodborne's bosses were just forgettable or annoying, but none came close to being as bad as Micolash, who sits solidly at the bottom of my FromSoft boss tierlist with only Bed of Chaos for company. I waited until after finishing the Old Hunters to fight the final three bosses, and that might be part of why I found them so lacking. Mergo's Wet Nurse looked very cool, but wasn't mechanically engaging. Gehrman I expect to enjoy more in future playthroughs, but his fight didn't click with me this time. The Moon Presence was a disappointing final boss, mechanically just another beast boss with a few spell attacks that I barely had to try to dodge and one arena-wide "you have 1 health now" spell that didn't really add anything to the fight.
Some of my problems with the game might have been less grating if its performance wasn't a hunter's nightmare. On PS4, where I played most of the base game, this was one of the worst performing games I've ever experienced. Load times were agonizingly long, so needing to sit through two loading screens to fast travel was very annoying. The framerate and smoothness of my PS4 experience can't all be blamed on the game, as I had it hooked up to a cheap TV that definitely hurt performance, but even on my PS5 and 165hz monitor, it's still noticeably choppy. Load times do seem much better on PS5 at least.
Despite how much I complain about this game, I do still think it's good. I don't think it's the masterpiece a lot of people say it is, but the bones that make the Old Hunters DLC so incredible are built here in the base game.
TLDR: I can't get gay married to Eileen the Crow, 0/10 fuck this game.
For me, one of the most important parts of a FromSoftware game is the boss roster. Having started with Dark Souls 3, which I personally feel has some of the worst regular enemy encounters and many of the best bosses, I expected Bloodborne to be similar. In some ways, it was. Many of the standard encounters in Bloodborne are frustrating to me in the same ways they are in DS3. Too many fast, aggressive enemies all bunched together in small rooms or wide open spaces with no good way to split them up. Call it a skill issue, but I just don't like playing through most of the levels in these two games. In DS3, the bosses counterbalance the frustrating levels by being pretty consistently excellent. I even like the Curse-Rotted Greatwood somehow, DS3 just understands what makes bosses fun. Bloodborne simply doesn't have a comparable boss lineup. The best of them are pretty good, but still not amazing. Father Gascoigne and Martyr Logarius were the only bosses I actually liked before playing the Old Hunters DLC. A lot of Bloodborne's bosses were just forgettable or annoying, but none came close to being as bad as Micolash, who sits solidly at the bottom of my FromSoft boss tierlist with only Bed of Chaos for company. I waited until after finishing the Old Hunters to fight the final three bosses, and that might be part of why I found them so lacking. Mergo's Wet Nurse looked very cool, but wasn't mechanically engaging. Gehrman I expect to enjoy more in future playthroughs, but his fight didn't click with me this time. The Moon Presence was a disappointing final boss, mechanically just another beast boss with a few spell attacks that I barely had to try to dodge and one arena-wide "you have 1 health now" spell that didn't really add anything to the fight.
Some of my problems with the game might have been less grating if its performance wasn't a hunter's nightmare. On PS4, where I played most of the base game, this was one of the worst performing games I've ever experienced. Load times were agonizingly long, so needing to sit through two loading screens to fast travel was very annoying. The framerate and smoothness of my PS4 experience can't all be blamed on the game, as I had it hooked up to a cheap TV that definitely hurt performance, but even on my PS5 and 165hz monitor, it's still noticeably choppy. Load times do seem much better on PS5 at least.
Despite how much I complain about this game, I do still think it's good. I don't think it's the masterpiece a lot of people say it is, but the bones that make the Old Hunters DLC so incredible are built here in the base game.
TLDR: I can't get gay married to Eileen the Crow, 0/10 fuck this game.
2023
If I had played this game when I was 12 it would've been my favorite game of all time. At 24 it's still pretty cool, but I doubt I'll end up finishing it.
The community-designed vehicles absolutely carry this game (my favorite was a modified off-road USPS mail truck) and the process of browsing and downloading them is intuitive and fun.
Ultimately I'm not giving it a higher rating because of the monetization. I would not have played this game if it wasn't free with PlayStation Plus. Putting microtransactions in a $60 kids' game is unforgivable.
The community-designed vehicles absolutely carry this game (my favorite was a modified off-road USPS mail truck) and the process of browsing and downloading them is intuitive and fun.
Ultimately I'm not giving it a higher rating because of the monetization. I would not have played this game if it wasn't free with PlayStation Plus. Putting microtransactions in a $60 kids' game is unforgivable.
2023
I got Kimberly to platinum using underhanded ninja tactics (extremely reckless neutral skips and spamming standing medium kick for hit confirm combos) which felt lore accurate. Now I'm learning Ken to polish my fundamentals and actually play neutral. This is my first fighting game (discounting my couple hours of Strive which I couldn't grasp at all before playing SF6) and it's definitely the most beginner friendly of the genre, even without using modern controls. Highly recommend trying out the World Tour to get a low-stakes introduction to the concepts and controls (you can also unlock the characters' second outfits for free here).
I remember playing some of this with my little cousins and younger brother at my grandparents house when I was like 12. I'd played the original Lego Indiana Jones on Xbox 360 at my friend's house and on my PSP and I remember thinking this game was significantly less fun.
2014
I haven't gone back to finish this version of Dark Souls II yet after I tried out SotFS and liked it better, but I did really like what I played of this one. Somehow my first death was to Flexile Sentry. Not sure how I managed that, but seeing the "This is Dark Souls" achievement pop up and realizing how far I'd gotten before dying is one of my favorite gaming memories.