Recent reviews by Error3000

5 hours in so maybe it will change but the game is really fun so far, definitely worth a buy, ima be honest the current CONS are nitpicks because nothing major stuck out to me

PROS
-art is lovely
-a lot of locations, so far im yet to see any repeats of general theme
-a lot of skills/abilities to pick from
-a bunch of ways to get better gear (playing greatsword and for relatively my level there are like 2-3 different quests that reward me with a better greatsword), in the gamemode with multiple champions (AI controlled) you can also attack other champions for their unique gear, got a greatsword from that too, you can also craft or buy new gear tho havent used that option much beyond buying a zweihander once
-combat is really fun but parry timings on some enemies are incomprehensible to me, realistically its a skill issue, will see how it goes further in
-the game mode with multiple champions including the player and NPCs is a briliant idea, dont know how the game feels without it but it adds some stakes, when dying you dont just lose time but you may also lose an opportunity because an NPC will use that time to raid another dungeon, i think its cool

CONS
-translation (i assume) on some things has a few minor mistakes (for example, the plural form of 'gear' as in equipment is just 'gear', 'gears' refers to those small rotating mechanical bits, the ones visible on the logo of Gears of War for example, thats the only example that stuck out to me tbh
-maybe i just didnt find it but the game mode with multiple champions could use some kind of event tracker that shows me what the other champions are doing, at least for the past 10 days if not the entire history, it shows up at the top but i cant find a way to just look at a long list and it would be helpful to know their general whereabout and whether or not they are currently dead or not
-certain boss encounters are a bit bizarre in terms of difficulty spikes, for example there is a goblin guy with a wolf, he deals absurd damage considering the fact that technically he is of the same difficulty tier as a necromancer lady who spawns weak, slow enemies and occasionally shoots magic at you, she was much easier, the goblin i had to cheese because the damage he dealt to me was insane considering it was 1 combo that dealt it

pvp is fun, the weird extraction gamemode starting with M is also fun, pvp in it is hectic BUT you can respawn on normal and hard difficulties, the game doesnt teach you that but you can

there are a few pvp gamemodes and they are different from eachother, all the mechs seem to be balanced relatively well so far

challenges are.. special, some are fun and feel like a teaching experience done right, some are RNG fests and some were probably used to torture people in some secret black sites, its a mixed bag

it seems that you can get premium currency just by getting rare stuff in the extraction gamemode and selling it on the market so you can buy cosmetics and such while staying F2P


not sure what more to say, the game is fun, its free, imo its worth a try, just try playing different mechs because the playstyles between them are radically different so gotta find one that works for you

writing a review just because the game is human and gives you achievements for what you do in your full playtime and not on 1 character, missed something on 1 playthrough and you dont want to replay a whole NG+ to get it? make a new character or use another one and get the item

aside from that the game has great soundtrack, areas, enemies, bosses and story, Lies of Peak except its all true, also a rare soulslike where consumables are actually useful and not just "we wanted to put loot here so we put 3 bags of literal feces, enjoy"

+
music is fun
gameplay is great
looks nice
a lot of customisation
many ways to abuse the necrons

+/- depending on taste
game is the most difficult at the start, no matter the difficulty, the last mission on the hardest difficulty was ridiculously easy, to the point where i expected a revival gimmick because I killed the final boss within 1 round, it will take you longer to kill 2 basic enemies at the start of the game,
start is actually difficult, end game is easy no matter the difficulty setting

-
game is really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ slow, the animations take a lot of time, you might think "oh what a foolish complaint", counterpoint, enjoy watching 10 necrons sloooowly walk somewhere, decide to shoot you, shoot you, repeat to next necron, this makes it so even the easiest fights will take away minutes of your life because the animations are slow and there is no proper way to speed them up aside from using cheat engine to force the game into being faster

the individual fight objectives were set up by Baphomet to facilitate sacrifices, case and point, lets say you want to finish the mission as fast as possible, maybe you dont care about possible money to be gained from killing, maybe you just want to get a different ending and thus dont care about the payout, maybe you dont have the health to spend on extended fighting, so you focus on the objective and the objective is "escape" so you put your guys out of position and action points to escape, objective "escape" is completed, new objective "kill everything" BUT sometimes the "escape" objective just flat out ends the mission, so sometimes the objectives change for no reason but sometimes they are actual objectives, this will make your blood boil because there is an objective called "scan or destroy" where you have to do those things to terminals, scanning the terminals rewards you with a lot of money, destroying them helps with a campaign resource called awareness, you can in fact scan to get the money and then destroy to help with said resource BUT sometimes the objective "Scan or destroy" actually means what it says and the moment you scan the last terminal the missions ends so you cant destroy it BUT you have no clue when such a situation will occur because many times when you finish this objective the fight objective switches to "haha jk kill everything now" or into "escape"
this god forsaken switcharoo is just idiotic because frankly you cant strategise due to it, the best strategy UNLESS you already know the objectives beforehand is ALWAYS to kill everything except 1 easily containable necron and then achieve whatever the requires of you, fi the mission ends you got as much money out of the fight as possible, if not you only need to kill 1 necron, it feels like ass because playing for the objective is always a gamble

gameplay itself is quite cool BUT the translation of some parts is missing or incomprehensible, for example, charge or duel stance, what do they do, what is the difference between them? I have no idea lol

some gear has passive perks, those sometimes upgrade when you upgrade the weapon/armor, sometimes the perk text changes and at lvl 1 its understandable and at lvl 2+ its half chinese (i think) and half english

some cards spawn other cards in your hand, in some cases tho the spawned card is just mentioned by name and not shown so you have no idea whether you give yourself something useful or a disability until you take a leap of faith

ima be honest, the gameplay is really fun, the translation on some things is really bad, at least as the first class, the slave sword and shield dude, most things were understandable and it was quite fun, on the woodcutter guy class the stances are not explained as far as i can tell and thus most cards you get for him are just gambling that it does something useful because the text doesnt explain what they do, I recommend the game because it was quite fun and realistically speaking the tranlation cant get worse but it can get better and there is a decent amount of content available as far as i can tell

its FTL bones with a bunch of crew types, abilities and gear stuffed into a boarding pod as the meat, might be too easy in its current state (or i just got really lucky with gear and augments) but its a lot of fun

didnt play the game before the 2.0 thing so cant compare but as for this version imo its worth a buy:

+ areas/setpieces are well done, look nice, great atmoshpere
+ the umbral realm thing opens up a lot in terms of level design and thats great + imo, just makes areas feel a lot more complex
+ throwable items are limited per life BUT are unlimited overall, this is huge, you dont need to farm to buy 999 arrows or 30 bombs, if you picked up an arrow type you have it forever and just gotta replenish it at the vestiges (bonfires), its incredible, you dont need to constantly farm for such things as you would in other soulslikes
+ you can explore areas in whatever order you want, including going to a late game area relatively early if you wish to get certain items fast
+ some levels/areas are ridiculously huge when compared to other soulslikes, its quite impressive tbh, a bit overwhelming too
+ you can change colors of your armor, you do so by using infinite use 3 color sets you get from exploring but mostly from multiplayer activity (this includes avenging other players in your own world, basically you interact with a thing and it spawns or buffs an enemy that killed someone else in their world, you kill it you get a bit of special currency), the fashion souls is real in this one
+ there is a dlc that adds 1 more starting class, you can get it for free by completing a questline, thought it was worth a mention because its nice, you can skip gameplay for money or you can play the game and be rewarded for subsequent playthroughs
+ there is no stat for mana or encumbrance, you get more mana by leveling up stats that increase magic damage (2 stats for that cuz 2 magic types basically) and you get higher weight limit by leveling up health and stamina, its nice and i like it
+ character creator allows you to make decently looking characters, sure usually i just go John Default or Purple Shrek but its nice to have the option of being pretty

+/- the main difficulty in the game, in my opinion, is getting to the bosses, exploring the areas and killing the enemies within them is the difficult part so far at least, the bosses are not really that complex

- the world/level design could use some polish, at times its genuinly hard to tell what the intended path is, this lead me personally and judging from posts from the past others too, to go into a late game area instead of an early game area, kinda broke the intended progression but for what its worth Its on me to go somewhere else when i feel that enemies or bosses are overly difficult and i knew of other ways, just assumed that the more difficult area was a sidepath, its just not very clear what way you are supposed to go sometimes
- performance in umbral in the hub specifically is kinda ass, not sure what exactly causes it but its noticable enough that i switch off umbral mode as soon as I did my business with the umbral stuff merchant

in terms of gameplay this is hands down the best Fromsoft game i played, Sekiro is a close second but some bosses in Sekiro are god awful in terms of fun factor for me and here so far everything has been great or at worst, good

in terms of +/- list

+ build variety is massive
+ you can respec as much as you want, you can change your entire build during a mission if you die so you dont have to replay the whole mission just to test out 1 change against a boss
+ gameplay is great
+ presentation, setpieces etc are great, its fromsoft after all
+ New Game+ actually adds new content and a decent chunk of it
+ endings are wildly different from each other and each one has a different final boss and different set of final missions
+ exploration is rewarded with new unique parts and by collecting logs you can unlock another set of unique parts

- i wish there was more of the game
- its a shame we cant have flares or some anti-rocket system, would have come in handy during 1 ending
- balance of some weapons seems to be heavily impacted by pvp, I mean, an AK-like rifle you get at the start of the game deals more damage than """high powered""" rifles you unlock at endgame, sure damage isnt everything but in its weight and damage class it was at the apex which is a bit goofy

edit: lol they just nerfed 2 of the better crowd control skills in the latest patch, lol lmao
TLDR: the game seems fine in most aspects but the there is a combo of things that completely kills the enjoyment, namely the save system and the distance between things

these things are bad because saving is very restricted and the distances between locations are massive meaning that if you save in town or a camp and walk to your objective if you die you will have to walk again but there is nothing happening during the walk, its just boring and really tedious, it sounds like whatever until you experience it, especially at the start when chosing wrong ability as your first or second skill can mean the difference between steamrolling the enemies and constantly dying which results in a lot of walking which will quickly grind through your nerves, picking the right ability matters because the first quests in the game will put you in 3+ enemies vs you scenarios in locations with no single tile chokepoints


- you can only save via sleeping in specific locations

- the walking distances between said locations and quest locations feel very long

- you can explore and forage on the way to said quest locations

-this is a waste of time because if you die (and you will die, on that later) you get sent back to town, all progress lost, gotta walk a lot, again

- you will die because most enemy encounters are a few enemies vs you in an environment with no chokepoints (at least for now all doorways i've seen are 2 tiles wide so you will always fight at the very least 2 enemies), at least the melee characters seem really bad at shooting so taking out one of the enemies before they get to you is very unlikely (shooting via crossbow i spent 16 turns, 8 shots 8 reloads and hit 0 shots from a range of 2 tiles while bandits were beating a boar)

- when you start you have 1 skill point to work with, to buy an ability with a long cooldown, this aint much when you are fighting 2-3 opponents at once, you are not tanky and you do not deal much damage, your first or at least second ability should be some sort of crowd control, honestly not sure how else you are supposed to progress considering the design encounter of the early missions 3-6 enemies attacking you at a time)

- due to all this when you die in the quest location, after exploring and foraging on your way there, the game punishes you by wasting your time and sending you back to the city, the way to the quest doesnt change, the spawns of everything are literally the same so you just repeat the same stuff or pass it by without interacting with it because it would be a waste of time

- exploring the open world areas is basically walking while holding ALT so you can see the occasional plant you can pick up, the areas themselves are too big considering how empty they are and how long it takes to walk through them

- if you bait bandits in the forest to fight wildlife (like the previously mentioned boar) once they engage the boar will prioritise attacking you despite you being further than the bandits and you not hitting said boar, this can lead to you abusing this fact and hiding behind something making it so the boar is stuck in the "preparing for a charge" animation, i know about this because this is how i did it, if i walked out of cover it would charge towards me, if i didnt it would stay there until the bandits slowly hacked it to death, this is stupid, it should attack whoever attacks it and is closest to it

- there is no in-city map so finding a specific merchant is pure memorisation, not ideal especially considering the nature of who buys what


The prologue sequence is honestly really cool, its basically a tutorial on a bunch of things, has some neat lore and world building, doesnt have encounters with 3+ enemies like the literal first quest in the game does, has a 2 phase boss fight that isnt difficult but isnt easy either, has no pointless walking, rewards exploration (via additional heals for the boss fight for example) etc.

It feels like a completely different game and I honestly feel stupid that I thought that it was a good representation of the game, its a shame because it was very enjoyable but the actual game isnt like that

I highly recommend the game, will easily get 100h out of it, probably more with the upcoming patch

+game looks great
+fantastic music
+variety of weapons, armor, enemies etc
+gameplay is fun (mostly, more later)
+game is being updated regularly and the updates are of decent size, they actually change and add stuff
+some mission+location combos are a goldmine for random stories to emerge, like that time when i needed to kill a scientist in a bunker and all his bodyguards were extremely fast pleasure robots with vibroblades, you might think it funny, it kinda was but at the same time a vibroblade slashed with mechanical strenght can cut off your arm in 1 hit which is rather terrifying
+the quasimorphosis system allows you to ritualistically (or not) cannibalise a bunch of humans, get into a new floor, wait for everyone to turn into demons (because high quasimorphosis) then either take in a high dose of morphine or go back to a previously cleared floor, eat more meat, kill the demonic baron that wants your head (spawns at 1000 quasimorphosis and killing it restarts the meter) then go back to previously entered floor, all the powerful demons despawned because quasimorphosis is too low, its interesting to see the aftermath of remaining defenders and demons fighting, broken turrets ringed by mounds of casings, bodies stacked at doorways etc

-(read this point till the end) the balance is sometimes bizarre, sometimes its instakill galore, you get instakilled, enemies get instakilled, its a instakill or be instakilled world, fire and flamethrowers are the bane of existance, yea if you play in a paranoid way the entire time you are likely to evade them via preemptive bullet to the head BUT when you are on a difficulty 1 level and you received 0 dmg in the past 12 fights against 40 enemies, round a corner, get sprayed with flames and die it feels really bad, at the same time this is so rare that I only remember it because it feels so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bad lol,
TLDR balance kinda sucks but its usually so rare that you remember it not because it happens often but because it hurts your very soul