Oh hey this is in 1.0 so I can complain about it now.

I am a survivalcraft sicko, I've played so many of these games that it's probably a DSM-V diagnostic, so believe me when I say this one isn't too great.
Once the novelty of this being a top-down survivalcraft game wears off you're stuck with what's definitely one of the weaker entries to this genre.

Progression is a very boring and binary upwards climb where you do an endless cycle of kill boss > yoink blueprints > craft upwards > hit wall > kill boss > ad nauseaum. If you want variety well, too bad. It's hold melee and cast spells on cooldown forever. This game is somehow rinsed in the variety front by Terraria, a 13 year old game also centered around crafting and bossing.

Despite offering the option for PvE, V Rising is a PvP game at its core so the combat is incredibly simple and feels very MOBA-esque to facilitate it. Fine for PvP if that's yer thing, but for PvE it makes the game feel miserable and repetitive since bosses don't bring much to the table.
Perhaps more egregiously, the topdown angle brings with it the same issue that lots of Diablo-likes/CRPGs with it also have: There's not much impact to combat, and with the heavy health bars everything feels weightless and tedious.

There are a few mechanics that I hoped would get fixed up for 1.0 but haven't at all.
Sun damage is as boring as it sounds; if you're in the light too long your health PLUMMETS even with mist braziers around, as there's more sun than shadow.
Blood type seems cool at first but only having access to one at a time and needing to constantly scout out refills or better blood leaves the entire mechanic feeling like a sanguine game of cat and mouse.

And crafting timers... Eesh. So, this review has a lot of cuts in it because many potential gripes are somewhat mitigated by how customizable the difficulty is. It's pointless of me to whinge about some resources not being teleportable when there's an option to disable that mechanic, right? Of course!
But crafting timers are an annoying one because they're very deeply tied to the gameplay loop. By default they are far too long, ostensibly as a motivator for you to leave your base and go do some of the myriad tedious busywork the game expects you to do.
The option is there to shorten them, but this presents its own problem: Go too fast and you're basically cheating, try to meet the game halfway and you'll end up doing even more busywork. Lower them, and the game becomes an AFK simulator.

Not helping matters is that a lot of things, mist braziers especially, need fuel. Fuel that will eventually run out unless you keep it topped up. Again, busywork.

I saw a meme in the middle of last month that jokingly separated every single game into one of two categories: Menus (wherein engagement is defined as clicking through a UI) or parkour (wherein engagement is defined by movement or action).

I sort of agree with the underlying theory, but I'd suggest a third category: Tasks - games where the method engagement is irrelevant because what you're chasing is a daisy chain of unlocks and Get X of Y.

V Rising is tasks, and unlike similar games in its category the tasks are very linear. The cycle up above has little room for deviation, and given that bosses are automatically tracked for you there's not even much room for exploration.

There are way better games in this genre, even after VR hit 1.0 it's still a mess. Project Zomboid is in early access and it runs rings upon rings around it while still hitting many of the same notes. Hell, even Palworld is a better choice.

Not gonna properly review this story arc until Penacony has concluded because I don't want to pull the trigger too early, but man... Fucked up how HSR is the most I've enjoyed a game in this style since Dragon Quest XI.

Yeah, gacha game, I know, but I've been playing JRPGs since I was old enough to read and hold a controller and it feels like every big JRPG developer just gave up trying around 2010.

Yet here's HSR with cool boss fights, endlessly engaging iterations on its mechanics, great intersection of gameplay/story, Tingyun and solid writing that isn't rehashing JRPG writing tropes from uh... The 90s.

Penacony rocks, dude. I hope this statement doesn't age like shit.

10/10 I wish Black Swan would call me 'darling'.

I'm so used to remakes/remasters trying to put a full face of makeup on a pig that I'm actually really glad this game still fucking sucks in all the ways it did when I was a little Mira.

For better or worse, this is just lipstick on the pig. Yeah it looks prettier so it can be sold to single-cell entities that refuse games that look older than 2018, but it's ultimately Destroy All Humans 2 at its core.

It still has that same awful sense of humor, using one of three jokes: Haha weed! Haha sex! Haha cold war! Rinse, repeat, try not to cringe at the racial stereotypes in the Japan level, hope you liked Austin Powers and alarming levels of barefaced misogyny.

It still plays like ass, having floaty and impactless combat where your best option for 99% of the game's runtime is the Disintegrator. Missions are, once again, either total cakewalks or annoying gimmicks with a lot of pointless "go from A to B" that makes GTAV look restrained.

And, naturally, the hollow open levels have returned. If you've ever had a craving for empty open spaces with nothing in them but missions and the odd collectable, DAH2R is a lovely portal that lets you experience them but from the PS2 era.

There are some bits that're better; on the whole it handles a lot more smoothly, they cut that one transphobic mission (mercifully) and a lot of the QoL improvements were ported over from the last remake. Plus, despite what I said up above about the missions, some (not all) were made less irritating from their PS2 incarnation.

...But you're still playing Destroy All Humans 2.

This game was dated when it came out, and it came out on a platform where about 3/4 of the releases from North America ended up dated later down the line. If you have no nostalgia for it, stay clear. Go play Saints Row 2 or something.