Recent reviews by AquilliusRanger

I will say this game grabbed me right from the start from one of the fine strangers of the internet that told me about it, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this game until I actually played it.

And…wow, even for the vanilla version, this game has merrily, merits of potential. And while a lot of people would redirect me to the Frackin Universe mod, I wasn’t sure if it would chug the game (it already chugs a lot) or lose some of my more valuable mods to the compatibility beast (I’m using one where I could have all of my crewmates follow me with maximum members and Npc+Spawner that has massive customization potential to make my teams more personal, any players that know of mods that would add tons of more depth to this can and will be appreciated!)

But anyway, back to the actual game, to start: I don’t know where, that’s the point of Starbound, once you get past some of these more benign game mechanics, the world is still seamlessly vast for vanilla, but also seemingly void of depth at the same time, this game is not the same as Space Station 13 or Barotrauma, I would add (those two games are more my style), nope, this takes after games like Terraria and Stardew Valley and it shows considering it’s sprite difficulty. And of course, it’s chill nature.

As you play Starbound and gather up resources to fuel your ship and take to the stars, the actual exploration is pretty good (story doesn’t exist as far as I know, soundtrack’s okay, but it can get pretty repetitively old fast compared to a certain massive effect), even moreso if you get past all of the copy paste Mech fights of course, especially if you find a base where they have an arcade game and…yeah, that DID indeed had depth, for a mini-game out in Mech space no less!

Asides from me for finding that one out, there’s loads of bio types of planets to go to:

There’s your regular run of the mill green garden worlds, some desert 🏜 worlds and some jungle planet 🌳 ones, but there’s ALSO some really strange and really dangerous ones, like eyeball 👁 planets, nuclear ☢️ bombed planets that rains acid/radiation on you, Island 🏝 planets with some really strange, Asian inspired architecture and culture of fish people with their underground cities that looks just as cool as heck (I wish there was a giant sea monster coming to jump-scare me in front of my screen when I delved in the ocean, like I said, this is sadly not like Barotrauma). Planets where everything can be literally covered in shadow, including it’s shadow people, where silence is their answer to YOU. Ice planets where you’ll find apes experimenting on some god forsaken Lovecraftian horror (that one’s an exaggeration, them apes 🦧 are usually just creep-heads, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they do have that). Some lava planets where you can place your boat on lava…and of course, robots with their villages and castle donning peasant and knight armor in just another day, another weird civilization, oh and of course, tiny gnome people in their underground cities, those are just the ones off the top of my head, I’m sure there’s gotta be more, but the best one has to be the moons.

You know why? Just wait around for a bit on them rocks, and you’ll see why you need fuel on them seemingly empty…

…but haunting moons.

After playing over 1,000 hours, I can safely say this game reminds me more of Transformer: Devastation than it does Monster Hunter, mostly because God Eater 3 and Transformer: Devastation are fast-paced and loose while providing clever strategies during the fight, whereas Monster Hunter feels more like a slog where every monster fights feels like chopping down a tree, with the occasional unfair punishment of it timberlining on your head without the satisfaction (Reminds me of Dark Souls, and Monster Hunter is The Godfather of that), the difference is THAT huge.

People can debunk me however they want, but there’s no denying God Eater 3 took some inspiration from Transformer: Devastation (with a hidden bonus of Dragon Dogma, which is the best part that I’ll get to), so to start with Transformer: Devastation and God Eater 3:

-Both two has the same inventory management problems (too much space to store weapons in Devastation, too much space to store Abandoned God Arcs), regardless of the fact that you would simply not care about this and just wanna play the damn game.

-Both two offers a game mechanics that can save your life in a fight (Perfect Guard for God Eater 3, Perfect Dodge for Transformer: Devastation)

-Both two has you using the same combo moves (Devastation’s Melee Fight Moves and God Eater 3’s Burst Art) over and over to make it effective. (I can understand if people get tired of that, but there’s clever strategy to doing so, like in Crimson Ashland missions that requires Consecutive Attacks or vehicle attack in Transformer)

And both two has characters (Autobots and Decepticons in Devastation and the Chrysanthemum crew in GE3) you can get invested in and be satisfied, in comparison to the literal nameless characters in MHW.

As a whole though, one thing God Eater 3 does do better is it’s HIDDEN SQUAD MECHANICS, that behaves the EXACT WAY as the Pawn System in Dragon Dogma. It’s hard to achieve on the PC since you need to save scum a lot in dummy accounts as the player, but it’s there, and it’s practically better than Dragon Dogma in every way (Your squadmates are more reactive, they’re far more helpful in healing, and they don’t stand around like idiots and can even PUNISH the monster without my presence, they’re THAT good)

So yeah, I love God Eater 3 and it’s taken so much that I love about Transformer: Devastator, being made better with a hidden, but solid Dragon Dogma squad mechanics.

Comparing it to Monster Hunter is stupid, compare MHW to Dragon Dogma and Transformer: Devastation first and tell me if there’s similarities in the end.

I would still love the freedom of God Eater 3 to the better end.

The most satisfying short-game experience NOT created by an AAA company, I love the fact that it incorporates sudden co-op experience in later levels by bumping into people that talks back via strange hooded people's language (and whom looks like people with cat ears), which reflects on the fact that the world is in a desert shamble of a civilization that once lived in these desert dunes for god knows why, perhaps...greed took them to these marvels graves and marble stones, perhaps...something else...?

In any case, pick the game up when it's on a discount, it's way more worth it that way at a lower price because of the destination and the adventures of meeting others alongside you, it's easily the most satisfying graphics-adventure, parkour, puzzle and co-op experience with a dash of sneaking in one of the later levels.

It's truly both an adventure and a destination.

Even I know better not to join TOO much into the hype train, and so I just buy the fact that this was another Mount and Blade game made by the same company, and it worked! For awhile, until it's full release and changes...now let's get the first pros and cons outta the way for the first ever Early Access from a long time fan:

Pros:
- WAY Better graphics and details: I'm too shocked and astonished how much details goes into the making of each of the cities, it felt so alive compared to the copycat paste corridors and ones back in Warband, it's almost damn refreshing just exploring everything that I honestly felt it shoulda had more (it's still boring walking around at night and not seeing people having shady deals or getting mugged behind every corner, but maybe I'll see it at some point, I've only explored one city), especially in the battlefields too, I wanna just explore rather than fight everything! I wish THAT has a reward.

- There's more tactics to combat: while although it's a little clunky, I'd appreciate alot of Action RPG games having alot of tactics to make the fight felt more real, so I'm hoping to master this new system in the meantime while I relish the idea of more action RPG games adopting alot of tactics to their combat, especially against an opponent you CANNOT WIN if you don't think even for a moment, compared to alot of Turn-Based Games that I DO dislike.

- Way better inventory management and reward system: The things I HATE about most action RPG games is that they tend to blend these nuance, and ridiculously tedious inventory management (Ahem...talking about you Mass Effect 1, Transformer Devastation and God Eater) and that makes my blood boil whenever I have to deal with them FOR A VERY LONG TIME, compared to just fighting or even exploring, so it's a relief to have a system that isn't actually that complex at all once you got the hang of it. Also, no longer can you JUST have to shift through boring conversation and mechanics in order to get better rewards, but it also rewards you better than when it was all about getting money in the previous game, because now you can just go to Arena to get ACTUAL rewards (Horse, Armor, Weapons, etc.) or if you're a merchant, find what people say about produces and their listing price, and you don't even need to bother because they notify you what value they would be in OTHER CITIES, without even having you note it down! I'm really liking this alot, it's actually encouraging me to do something other than fighting.

-Decent combat and mechanics wise: It's alot more polished now, but I think overall, it still works, it's not as rigid and predictable anymore anytime you swing a hit or block an attack, so that's sort of comforting (even though I'm still playing on very easy difficulty, but who wouldn't when it comes to the bloodbath that was in Warband's difficulty options, other than those hardcore, masochist players) and I've been playing Warband for over many years by now and I am even an avid Perisno player (THAT game was hard), so I sort of know how this combat works...well...for awhile. But what surprised me was the fact that it had LIMB damage, this only was a thing when it comes to the Fallout franchise when you use the VATS mechanic in order to SHOOT each limbs, so the fact that limb damage count in this game by JUST SMASHING PEOPLE'S HEAD REPEATEDLY is very much realistic AND satisfying...albeit, well...we'll see the negatives eventually...

-And I'm saving the best for last: CAPES. And real physics. That is all.

Now to the bad part, don't go look at this part if you're excited for the game as much as I still am and are a developer looking for critical feedbacks that they NEED to know.

Cons:
Combat wise: It's...a bit weird, now that I think about it, everytime you do any action, you move like as if though you're a drunken fighter (save for some animation, which I still think looks awesome), this does make it alot more harder for the enemies to hit you ideally, but it's not very sanctioned compared to the older fighting animations and can be very awkward and even exploitable to the point of strafing some of the enemies to keep repeatedly attacking them instead of forcing them into defensive mode and fight back, this isn't a big deal or a blow to the combat, but it's getting to the point that I can tell that this might end up becoming an issue at some point in the future, where I have to fight a big battle and start having weak and meek attacks for no other than reason than because it's unpredictable for my own character to swing and block, there's a big line between good combat and awkward combat, and this is it.

- Some item prices are a little too high: Especially the crossbow, how the hell is the crossbow 20,000 gold? Isn't that a bit much for something that was supposed to be common and a literal beginner starter weapon in Warband? And it's a little suspicious knowing that Velvet and plenty of other items are actually very low in terms of value, those were supposed to be the top notch line of goods (About 1,000 golds, almost, now it's just a measly hundreds), so I'm a bit daunted knowing these item prices are a bit steep even compared to the ones in Warband, and I think it's better to just go to arena to get more RNG items (Which I still appreciate, after all, TOURNAMENTS were the REASONS why EVERY players gets to start off big right at the start like Warband, not tedious quests that gives you a measly hundreds, you know this, I know this, it's a common theme for Mount and Blade) rather than get gold at this point from quests with that "much" money.

- Some bugs: But they're not very big, overall, they're pretty funny to look at, like when I'm playing a female, I noticed anytime I entered back into a Tournament fights, my eyes literally goes into the helmet and I can see my female's lips and it ends up disturbing and hilarious (Can't say it's a con at this point). And then there are pop ups here and there, but hopefully not as severe to the point of breaking the game.

- Quest timers are still a thing: I really don't like this, even back in Warband, because the amount of times you have to do something, you already forgot because it's only 1 day left and you're still thousands of miles away! Good luck getting back to there, dumb@ss, so I don't like this one bit and would prefer some sort of notifier so I could actually focus on that particular quest instead of marching over after this weak 5 man Looters because they probably have food or something other than worthless outfits that sells 20 golds, and by the time you're done, uh oh, you've failed the mission!~ Thanks alot, dummy, shoulda learn how to prevent that huh? Or it might not even matter, because of how stupid these timers for quests even works, and it's so bad to the point that I HAVE to do Tournaments, those don't require timers, just get there when you can and there's plenty amore from tournament masters. ;)

- A bit much on my hardware and could require some optimization: I'm running on a GTX 2080, and it looks solid enough albeit a little dated on the graphics already (But then again, that's the same vein of Mount and Blade for ya), but when I look at my GPU's Celsius temperature through Afterburner, I notice the weird spiking in temp everytime I run this game, it usually jumps from a certain 50-60 cel to about 70 in succession. And I'm paranoid when it comes to GPU overheating, and I've lost a good GTX 980ti before, so this is not a concern that I'm willing to let slide, if the developers could atleast make the high setting still workable (but not sacrifice on the awesome details), but lowers the temperature (60 would be great, I've run MHW before with it) and requirements for some of the graphics, I'd appreciate it, it gets hot in here since I'm living in a very blistering environmen.

Anyway, that's all there is to this review, I'm getting short on text too, so this is my review to you, devs! Hope you learn some!

When I first played WildStar, I didn't expect much when I started a dungeon quest...which got my whole team and my ass kicked by some dungeon bosses without realizing the procedure was blind folding us into believing there was even one (that normal MMOs would usually be easy to tell us about...ahem...the Holy Trinity), instead of showing us straight from the start, we had to learn the hard way...well...not anymore, I decided to finish what my original team started and beat the whole dungeon as a 50 lvl under my own solo creed, it was easy and a bit of a downplay, but it was done for my old team's sake.

Besides that, the game itself was amazing in it's environment (like the Strain environment!), and while I don't get the whole hype around the action, I appreciate the fact that it's more on the skill than on some hogged up way to slow you down...that's the thing I yearn for in action games, besides the horrendous excuse in most action games to have competitive nature, and this game definitely leans more on PvE side than the PvP, which on the latter I despise which has the more competitive nature.

This game could've been great overtime even without the developers/publishers...but as it stands, it didn't matter if they ruin the game's content...it matters when they KILL it all, that's what this all is...a killswitch , and it's only a matter of time for all online only games to die.

One of the best thing that ever happened to my life when it comes to video game is their escapism, literally everybody play video games to escape the reality of their situations no matter what they are...but when you take that escapism, and close it shut forever, then you have a true awakening of reality at your hand, and that's what this feels like...a truth that needs to be awakened, so everyone, hear me out...if you hate online-only games, you do everything you can to not to boycott these games...but to truly become the voice out of it, that's all I wanted to hear...otherwise...

We all become echos in our indifferences to the very things we love and endear gone forever.

I too, agreed with the other reviewers that we can't believe our eyes to see this game go free...the amount of excitement that I had when I was fighting the Combines were amazing...alot of games nowadays just don't seem to have alot of punch in it's heart anymore, so this was a huge relief to finally have some actual fun in a devastatingly short game...overall, I just want MORE!

9.5/10

0.5 deduced for being too short~ :P

If you don't think you're getting this game...

YOU'RE WRONG!

Future reviews: And I'm still not convinced you shouldn't get this game.

Though awkwardly dysfunctional for Window 7/8 to have for such. It is still stand as the best game for all Omega out there who believes on Adventuring, Courage, Knowledge, Fighting and Choices.

Also, old-time music is out on here, a hunch of weirdness comes awaiting, just so you can toy and deep-connecting with, and the Freedom you see fit as either Good Or Evil by your very self.

Sometime it is not the wrongings you need to treat, but the cause you need to preserve and uphold. And this is more pure to factions than any others I've ever known

101/10

Pull out a Stormcloak Soldier
Out of 'Le pocket'
In the middle of the road of Riverwood
Guards started to scramble up on the Stormcloak
Gerdur and Hod started to fight along the Stormcloak
Alvor and Sigrid started to fight along the Guards
Me self plot for 'ideal tie' as me self pick on the wounds of both sides until
Dead.
Me: Finally! I can now kill the chicken!
11/10

Many of the problem i've sighted on is that this game product is having too many servers that's deserted and maximum player in only one server, servers that changes from 80- to 400+, servers that blocks Eventful Map, foolish newbie on a local Hard, Suicidal and HOE. But the only possible likeness I found is that without Comrades (Players) close to me, and closer to the hordes , I could've regret the fate of bringing this game, sure they may fool around, coward away, and even daredevil themselves while having the worst opportunities against powerful Zeds, they've could be the source of my determination, talent, skill.
(And for sure one day when KF2 release, please put a perks higher ups for the original KF players, thank you,Tripwire.)