Recent reviews by Docstaph

This game is too much fun to explore, truly an evolution of what open worlds should be in videogames, this one treats you like an adult, expects you to find the solutions to make the game easier, and allows any playstyle to viable, some bosses are downright poorly desgined, but when you have such an overall solid product looking past those is easy...

Radahn sucks though

Do not buy this game

>Techland acquired by China
> Immediately adds micro transactions in the form of dying light tokens
>Torpedoes all good will from the community nearly instantly
> MFW Modern Gaming

This is the precise reason why constant updating and changes are actually a bad thing
It takes one update to completely kill a game that was by all accounts fine before

I liked this game, the PC port is breathtaking, jetpack interactive put out the best possible PC port a guy could ask for, all the settings are there, and the game runs at 4K 80 FPS on ultra for me.
This is by far the best looking game i think i've ever seen, its crazy that this 4 year old PS4 title is the best looking game on PC right now.
Sony; don't stop putting your first party IP's on steam, we'll eat them up because you have a track record of making amazing single player experiences that are well worth the money spent.
Uncharted collection is next and i'm definitely sold

If these ports keep being as amazing as this one and days gone for that matter, with uncharted and (rumored)ghost of Tsushima coming to PC we will gladly buy them all
Give us an infamous collection please and thank you

Onto the game, Visuals and presentation are an easy 10
The gameplay is where god of war falls short
very limited enemy variety (which flavor of dragur troll or ogre would you like)
The enemy variety is so very frustrating. Are there really only trolls, dragur, insect men and ogres in the realms?
even a hyped up midpoint "bridge keeper bossfight is just a green ogre with green fart gas surrounding him, i mean seriously 5 bossfights in this game are the same ogre and they are the only ones that bleed, draugur just release fruit gusher fluid when they are hit or ripped in half, where are all the mythical creatures, where are the spectacle bossfights?
They take Kratos to a new realm and the overwhelming majority of the enemies found are literal variants of the same type fruit gusher zombies?

Not to mention that this sameness in enemy shape design and color makes it hard to judge what different dragur are capable of especially in the heat of battle, half of these enemies will be hitting you from behind where you have absolutely no idea what they are and how they might hit you, even the ones on screen are just too similar to distinguish at a quick glance; therefore the optimal strategy was to spam dodge and try to keep everybody staggered so you couldn't be hit from behind.

Combos are limited to short strings
Dark Souls- Style camera was IMO a bad move, i get the idea of trying to make it more immersive by closing the camera on you, but it really does get you killed more often than not, the little red flash ring by kratos' feet is not enough, you cannot judge how fast and attack is coming out or at you without being able to see it, dark souls gets away with the third person camera by not spawning 20 enemies behind you who all shoot projectiles, the nightmares in this game are by far the WORST enemy when considering the limitations of the camera they dodge duck and spam with projectiles. the larger combat encounters with 30 + enemies are extremely frustrating and for this reason i believe the bandaid fix was to include copious amounts of AOE runic abilities and attacks and the circle indicator system.
Some enemies can only be hurt by the dual blades or the axe independently ( fire or ice) these different kool aid flavored draugurs force you to use one moveset and bounce you, if you hit with the wrong one. In encounters with mixed enemy pool this is extremely annoying and i thought that these lessons were learned when DMC devil may cry was released.

There is a whole system of ranged combat with the blades + the axe that i never found all that useful outside of anything but exploration because stopping to aim a ranged attack will often get you hit or killed when the screen is full of enemies, not to mention that the late game enemies almost unilaterally are not affected by the ranged attacks of your weapons they'll deflect or just have the dual blades chain grab bounce off, SO while the game does have a lot of options for combat, more than half of them feel useless.

the switch stance combos that oftentimes require you to stand still for a second after attacking are also useless because the volume of enemies will punish you for standing still.

The combat upgrades are also lame, in previous god of war games you start with a large moveset with useful distinct combos, but half of the upgrades for the weapons in this game give you one attack which is either hold a button or press this button after dodging, there are in total about 4 basic combos in this game 6 if you include the Right trigger ending variant
AXE
RB,RB,RB,RB,RB
RT, RT
RB,RB,RB,RB,RT

Its the same for dual blades with variation of holding a button here, dashing then pressing one button etc

You can also punch people which was helpful for about 10 minutes of the game where you had to fight frost enemies without the dual blades

Bosses and tougher enemies have what seems like a hard limit on how many times they can be struck seemingly gaining I frames when the game decides to let them go instead of letting them go when you drop your combo.

Basically this game is a beautiful yet flawed new take on my favorite PS2/3 series, The visuals and story are stellar and exciting.
The combat does feel good, weighty, but its so repetitive and spammy, fists are useless by the halfway point of the game, the most rewarded option for combat is to spam roll and then hit RB 5 times. Combos are limited to extremely short strings without much variety. This game is a step up in story and presentation but in my opinion a major step back from combat wise from previous entries in the series.

This game is ambitious mess with too many good ideas that are dragged through the mud by bugs and glitches.

Good stuff
Character customization
Fun Combat
Some interesting characters

Bad- The story is kind of a generic chosen one quest, with one "intended" mythic path
Bugs and glitches - Characters getting stuck ,not being able to attack on your turn, Not being able to interact with quest elements until game restart, characters straight up dying from seemingly nothing.

Then there is the story which changes based on the players mythic path.
I chose Lich and have had absolutely nothing but problems with the mechanics. The skeletal vanguard you are awarded is a permanent fixture to your party , but does not follow the rules of other companions as he will follow you into personal buildings like the ziggaraut and the citadel, on rare occasion this guy will break the game because he will be technically in the same area as you, but will be off in the void. Because your skeletal vanguard is off in the void you can't leave the building because all party members must be at the exit. This leads me to have to restart the game until it decides to let me out.

The story here is weak, At least for a lich, after choosing the mythic path and deciding to embrace the powers of an ultimate undead, companions like sosiel are asking me to find there missing brother or play rescue party for every companion, when i ask myself, would my evil lich character do this? No; he wouldn't but, if you would like to level up at all you are forced to engage in quests that betray the idea of being a "lich" like saving innocents and protecting people from monsters. Lich gets to raise special undead companions that even the lawful good Paladin has no problem sharing a camp in the wilderness with what is a essentially a zombie.

Then there is the crusade mode which reminds me of milk sodden bread, the crusade battles are essentially a watered down might and magic rip off; that arbitrarily gates a good portion of the game off if you disable it. The crusade flat out sucks, but disabling it also sucks. I was glad to not have to micro 5 armies like a total war game on the map , but missing out on content is never fun and frankly the crusade mode it at odds with the fun party adventuring this game excels at, its annoying, repetitive ,and a huge time sink.

If you going into his thinking that you can just turn off the crusade and get the same experience, you are wrong and that's a shame because instead of focusing time on the crusade the devs could've worked on making the dialogue and story more fitting to the mythic path chosen , the fact that my character is basically and undead now almost never comes up in conversation and the live companions i have never acknowledged just how weird it is to be sleeping in a tent with a great hero who died 1000 years ago and has now be reanimated to do my dark bidding. Its like I know that i'm doing lich stuff,
but if the game never acknowledges it; then what is the point? I can't be cartoonishly evil if no one in universe cares enough to be disgusted by the desecration of a great hero's grave and her subsequent undead servitude.

ludonarrative dissonance creeps around the corners of this title. the actions (often forced) in this game are clashing with the character that i want to build

Turning off crusade mode is not a fix, there is fun content to be had its just too bothersome if you are looking for a baldurs gate type experience like i was.

This game is a chore to play, but very pretty.
I do not like running across the whole map repeatedly, the train system is too spread out for fast travel to be good.
Enemies somewhat lack variety; as do weapons
Shooting just isn't that fun
various bugs and glitches
I had to ask very nicely for my money back because the stuttering issues made this game nearly unplayable

This game is the weakest of modern Arkane releases, for one the narrative is never nearly as interesting as it should be, the universe of the deathloop feels like recycled dishonored/prey aesthetics. Maybe this is why the co-founder left?

Melee combat is all but removed now, as the only option is to slash rapidly until a canned kill animation happens

My definite biggest gripe is how EASY this game is, Havoc is far and away the best power in the game, it makes already easy fights trivial. The addition of guns to this game made everything an absolute cakewalk. I think i died to julianna once in the entire campaign and that's because she ran up on me inside a small house with havoc and a shotgun.

The basic enemy AI is laughably bad, and all bodies enemies disappear when they are killed so they almost have no chance of finding you.

The developers of this game diluted 20% of each of their last product to 40% water.
(That you can't swim anymore either) All in the name of adding ePiC gUnZ

The Small Levels repeated on different days detract from the feeling of immersive sim, there is not enough variety between these locations as it is, changing time of day doesn't do enough to make exploring worth it.

No Melee combat system, No swimming, Recycled ideas, No moving or disposing of bodies, extremely limited non lethal play-style, Dumb as bricks AI, Guns trivialize most of the gameplay, AI julianna is a non-threat. One enemy type(Human with gun)

At the end of the day even if there is some good voice acting and certain sections this game is marred by low difficulty easily exploited by lackluster AI. Due to the removal of certain systems from dishonored mixed with inclusion of others and no adjustable difficulty this watered down time loop rpglite looter shooter fails to capture the appeal of an immersive sim for me.

Vulkan is beyond broken right now

Halfway through act I stuff just started breaking

i have had 20+ crashes in 6 hours

Really annoying pathfinding

Play DX11

2.0 IS THE GAME WE DESERVED, GREAT STUFF

This game is like if quantum break was actually videogame

one of ~ten good VR games on steam