this is a masterclass in metroidvanias. however, metroidvanias are still marred by exploration being a tedious endeavor when things start heading into backtracking territory. the reality is that, though exploring a new environment is really enjoyable (especially in a game so artistically compelling in visuals, presentation, and story), backtracking still sucks when you've gone through the same obstacles multiple times. the most notable example is the goam section in the crossroads, you end up having to go through this area many times and it's just kind of annoying. the game does give you tools to circumvent this, but the stag stations are pretty damn spaced out (for the most part) and the dream nail teleport isnt unlocked till around the 3/4 point of the game for most, id imagine.

aside from that, this game is excellent. i find it really cool how you really can play this game in many different ways depending on the charms that you choose and still be pretty effective. theres also just so much content here and so many little things to appreciate that build the world.

theres a real sense of progression as you go through the early stages of the game, and this mechanical progression is then followed by narrative progression. it works really well, and every area in the game feels like it has legitimate purpose to be there, both for the game and for the story.

great game. probably the best metroidvania game ever made.

fun little game with solid gimmicks. everything is pretty simplistic but it works fine, just wish there was something more here. perhaps more levels, better visuals, or just more mechanics in general. ultimately its a good bit of fun but nothing particularly special necessarily, just a good time.

though, the netcode is not ideal and if you want to play this on controller, be warned that the input is kinda screwed up. it's either input lag or the fact that theres no movement speed scaling based on where your stick is and so theres an arbitrary point at which it starts moving your character. might be better with dpad but my thumbs are trash.

very spooky wind noises.

this game is just monotonous and not very polished in all honesty. the textures look good, sure, but that's only because they have like 20 different preset objects that they placed into vaguely different layouts. the character models are fucking awful as well.

the map progressions are always just all over the place because items are placed randomly. you can start cornered in a very small hallway and spend like 10 minutes trying to find a small ass key thats in a random spot, while the lunch lady walks around in the same spot for the whole duration because youre stuck there.

speaking of the lunch lady, what a joke. this game is contending for worse jumpscares than fnaf, it's literal trash in terms of horror. the atmosphere of the game is purely made off of wind sounds no matter where you are in the building, little to no light effects, and the lunch lady grumbling with red light being emitted from in front of her. its just not scary, its annoying.

also, its just really jank gameplay wise. the lunch lady cant see me when im crouching behind a teachers desk with my head poking out, fully able to see her, but for my friends that strategy doesnt even work. if you hide under a pipe in one of the misc rooms, she can see you and she'll try to throw a cleaver at you, but the cleaver just doesnt do anything then she walks away. its laughable, and adds to how inconsistent and annoying the game is to actually play.

whatever, its obviously just a quickly and cheaply made game because few co-op horror games really exist nowadays, least ones that are "pure" horror and not fps games or whatever. i havent played devour, but that game is definitely worth your money more than this game from the seems of it.

this game is surprisingly really good and only getting better as updates roll out.

that being said, this game seems to be purely based on rng and positioning. it pulls it off well, but it really sucks when your run is just awful cuz you never get the item you wanted for an evolution early on, and your entire run is based on how good your first 10 minutes are.

surprisingly, most of the items in this game are usable in a build. santa water can be a lategame keepout powerhouse in conjunction with other keepout items. again though, santa water will not help you out nearly as much if its your first evolved item at 10 minutes.

this game takes the fundamentals of roguelites, strips them down, and makes it work excellently where other roguelites fail to captivate because of how painful other roguelites are when you lose. this game is fast, simple, easy to get into, addictive, and runs aren't nearly as long and tedious as other roguelites.

great addition to the overall story, interesting gameplay change from the base game, but very few levels. the levels that are here, though, are pretty well designed and use hel's unique abilities (and limitations) really well. there are some cool segments here that force you to work with her limitations with smartly designed obstacles. while the bosses in the base game were also sort of lame (aside from the elevator, that was dope), this dlc's bosses are more lacking to the point where i have to take away a point. regardless, solid expansion, amazing visuals once again, very cool, when ghostrunner 2?

once again, ubisoft proves that they have great ideas marred by application of those ideas.

the open world is crafted well, the story is cheesy but works ok, the mechanics are pretty fun and unique, but there's wayyyyyyyy too much shit to do in this game that is ridiculously repetitive. the fact that you have to do 10 drinking games each at 3 different bars for completion is ridiculous, and the same goes for every other chore that you have to do.

i was really disappointed specifically with the investigations. instead of having a mission that ties up the investigation and is an interesting, unique mission akin to the story missions, theyre just the same shit as fixer contracts, criminal convoys, or gang hideouts, except slightly more difficult sometimes.

i really just think this is due to ubisoft's insistence on these ridiculous open worlds filled with bullshit to retain playtime, but it ultimately just makes everyone hate ubisoft instead of making everyone excited to mess around with all the "fun" missions.

the city is legitimately well designed through and through, cars feel better than they do in gta5, hacking in the open world is fun, and the story missions are pretty fun. it just sucks that theres so much repetitive shit in the open world that will ultimately make people bored if they pursue it. its especially egregious because the story is pretty damn short if you go all in for it, leaving you with a mountain of side content that just isnt compelling.

all that being said, its an interesting experience nonetheless and worth playing, just dont bother with the side content unless you really want to see the completion percentage go up.

a very rough diamond.

i don't think ive played a game that had more visual bugs than this game had, and yet it's so solid in every other regard that i can't give it that much flak over it. exploration, combat, style, environments, story, characters, everything is so solid, but not exceedingly special.

the major thing aside from visual bugs is a lack of variety with enemies. the cool boss fights are cool, and there are great moments, but theres a lot of repetition in enemies, and the difficulty doesn't change with different enemies, but instead by increasing the amount of enemies. it gets boring fighting the same animals, same stun stick troopers, and run into the same bounty hunters over and over again, but everything else makes it flow fine.

i really just think the hunting grounds update made this game ridiculously boring, grindy and repetitive. the gameplay isn't bad at all but damn does it suck that it's made boring by the leveling done by running place to place on an island over and over.

equipment elements were completely trivialized as a result as well, meaning that you really only care about what cells a piece of equipment has instead of the protection / damage it does against a specific enemy. the only cases where it semi-matters is the legacy modes, the arena one and escalation, but even then perks are probably more powerful than bothering with elements most of the time. perhaps im not at late game though, but who would trudge through to late game when it's so lame?

and obviously theres not really much point to play this when you can afford monster hunter games. just kinda sucks cuz the potential was there back when i played in early access.

honestly, the problem i had with this game was just that it wasn't punishing enough for the most part. i mostly focused on leveling health over energy (energy kind of isnt that useful most of the time), combine that with trying to collect everything and overall i didn't have many issues beating this game, and the bosses, while being fairly cool, sort of just fell over. never took more than 2 tries for any boss in the game, which kind of sucks because the bosses are fairly short (aside from the final boss). most of the time, i would just be sort of annoyed when getting hit by something, and considering when you max out you have a ridiculous amount of total life, and access to tents fairly frequently, it really was not difficult after getting used to how it works.

that all being said, this is a really nice game with enough parts to it that it kept me captivated throughout. the world design and enemy design is pretty great honestly, and the bosses are really, really well put together. the story, while not really being too interesting in my opinion, is presented well enough. theres a good variety in terms of enemies, locations and mechanics that i never got bored playing.

definitely worth playing, but it's not above and beyond.

the honest truth is that this wouldn't really be bad by any means if it was released on a system that had better capabilities. unfortunately though, the controls really hamper the game, in addition to the very sluggish performance.

aside from that, the game is a nice little linear assassin's creed game that fills the gap between ac1 and the codex pages in ac2. i was impressed by the segments of altair writing his thoughts down until i learned that they were just some selected codex pages in verbatum, but the voice acting for altair is honestly still more "accurate" to how i would imagine him sounding than ac1.

regardless, i found myself enjoying the linear approach this game had over the ridiculous amount of lame side content brotherhood had, for example.

still, i can't really justify rating this any higher based on the limitations of the hardware, unfortunately.

this game just felt like AC2 with less variety in locations and more side content gimmicks that artificially increases playtime for completionists.

while i like that there was much more emphasis on the overarching plot here, we end off once again with a cliffhanger and still a really weak understanding of the lore.

some things that bothered me specifically:
- the reuse of locations over and over again (because of the lack of locations)
- how the crossbow makes this game ridiculously easy
- how the game bugs out at certain points regarding full synchronization, and has multiple points in time where having over 60 fps will softlock your gam
- the guilds system as a whole (leveling up guilds is just lame as hell, including the assassins guild)
- some missions are just straight up boring

ultimately it's still assassin's creed and it's still fine. just not special at all.