Recent reviews by GTOfire

I thought Nioh 1 was amazing, and after playing Nioh 2 I can't go back because the second game is so much better still that the once amazing first game feels like it's missing something you never even realized you needed.

The gameplay is stellar, with a great multitude of options. 11 melee weapons to choose from, each with a large moveset that makes it completely different from the other 10, and varying from heavy chonkers to super fast ones. Ninjutsu and Omnyo magic make their return and have very satisfying FX to them. And Yokai Abilities are use-frequently powerhouse abilities to mix in with the rest all the time.

The only grip I can come up with for this game is that it doesn't do a fantastic job of explaining to a newer player all that is has to offer. But that's barely even relevant because there's so much depth to this game that you can miss out on a bunch and still have a great time.

There's much more to say, but it has been said by many others. All that's left for me to do at this point is to just add to the % with my measely +1. I wish I had more to give, because for me this has been simply the best game I've ever played. I've played other games more for other reasons, and have had fantastic experiences with many, but looking purely at the quality of the game mechanics.. no game I've played can match Nioh 2.

A classic mobster story that still manages to hold interest, some decent cover shooting and sporadically some surprisingly OK stealth sections.

It's not a very long game, and some of the elements that are the best about this game I could stand to have a little more of. There could be some extra depth on a few very interesting plot elements, another race perhaps.

But by limiting the story to ~10 hours, it manages to keep a good overall pace and stops definitively short of overstaying its own welcome.

Don't expect it to be exactly like dark souls, just because it uses similar gameplay ideas. It admirably tries to make a game that isn't a straight up clone, but turns the souls games into a genre that this also sits in.

It provides interesting new twists of familiar mechanics. For instance attacks can be timed with perfect intervals for lower stamina usage and performing combos that otherwise don't get triggered. As you kill enemies, you build up a multiplier for xp and loot and using a bonfire-equivalent resets it. That makes for an interesting choice where even for a new area, you might not want to refresh yourself but keep your multiplier instead.

The fighting style of this game is slower than souls games and it's not as widely varied in how many different types of playstyles are fully supported. You'll find some options that are offered to be inconvenient and not totally viable, but plenty are, and all the common options like big-sword-guy or shield-guy or daggers-guy are all perfectly doable, with the game being easier or harder by player choice by wearing heavy armor or light gear.

For full price I can see how it could have disappointed some people in the obvious comparison against dark souls. But especially at it's current price point, it's worth the time and money investment for sure.

Not terribly long, but worth every last penny multiple times over. Great action gameplay, surprisingly challenging and absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hilariously over the top.

A big thumbs up. The driving to me feels worthy to be called an RBR successor, and it's definitely that type of sim-realism that they've gone for with this game. The roads are narrow, the cliffs are steep, the cars are fast and when the co-driver says "don't cut", you'd better do as he says.

Downsides include:
* No content modding support at the time of writing (just after launch), nor do we know yet if they plan to make new content themselves
* Cars are in ample supply, though some classics are omitted for licensing reasons I assume. No Toyota Corolla for example.
* Locations are varied, but don't amount to a great deal of drivable road. Each event (6 now) contains 2 long stages, and these stages are in various configurations for a full rally, by cutting them in 2 and doing them again and then the reverse of all of those. I certainly enjoy the reverse stages as much as the forward, but driving the exact same stage twice in the same direction can get tedious if an event gives you A reverse, then A, then AB, then B, and then B reverse all in a row.
* No rally school or playground to mess around in, though you can always just load up any stage on any event in any car in custom event mode.
* The co-driver is very important, and you learn to trust him over time. But at the same time there are 1 or 2 turns per location where he calls a turn much wider than it is and you wish you could punch him in the face for it. It's not often so you eventually learn that a particular turn is coming and what it really is, but there's no pacenote editor right now to fix it properly.

All in all, yes I've mentioned a bunch of negatives, but overall the postives vastly outweigh them. Even as a newcomer you'll learn the tricks quickly enough to progress through the cars and after 57 hours of driving the stages in various configurations I can't say I'm tired of driving them yet. Even if they deliver no additional content down the line through free or paid DLC, and even if they don't support modders doing it for them, the game is fully worth the price of admission for what it currently offers. And if you end up being 'done' with this game after 100 hours and want to go back to RBR mods, that was 100 hours very well spent.

This game doesn't try or pretend to be anything it isn't, while very strongly delivering on what it does want to be. It gives you a very large and highly customizable toolset that allows you to be an incredibly powerful battlemage in lots of very intense combat situations that really keep you on your toes. If you don't make use of your entire arsenal, or if you let your concentration lapse, you will fail quickly. But if you do it right, you are every bit as badass as advertized.

The latest "Use your tools" video is I think a pretty accurate description of the reviews you see here and elsewhere. Most negative reviewers find themselves fleeing around the battlefield charging up their fireball spell and spamming it at the enemy, Whenever I find myself casting a fireball more than 3 times in a row, I wake up to the fact that I'm a badass battlemage and then I go ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and destroy everything and anything in my path.

The combat is great and versatile. You'll need strong situational awareness to make sure you're targeting the enemies that need to die asap and that you're crowd controlling whatever you're not killing so you don't get overwhelmed. You've got both targeted and AoE spells to freeze, stun, DoT, burn, explode, you name it, and you can always decide to let the enemy attack so you can go for a timed shield block and nova the entire area.

Customization is strong, with lots of options to tune your loadout to your liking depending on whether you prefer to go for a freeze + destroy build, a slow + bleed build or any other style you can think of that synergizes well together. You'll need to figure out a well balanced set of spells to use, not just stack up destruction-only spells and hope you won't get your face smashed in.

The story so far isn't very special. It's very black and white but I've never needed an excuse to be a badass before.

The crafting is in-depth, but my one gripe is that the menus don't really support the huge number of items and variety that the game has. It's a little hard to know whether this item you're looking at could be best recycled or used in a spell somewhere, simply because the list of options is so large that only a tiny set is on-screen at a time.

Level design is fairly predictable (oh look, a combat arena type of space, I wonder if there will be enemy spawns) but the combat arenas are well balanced and the visuals aren't terrible. They're not too special but they don't detract from the experience at all.
Spell visuals are great and you feel really powerful vaporizing groups of enemies at a time.

As an inexperienced newcomer to sim-racing, there is not much that can compare to a pulling off an unassisted balls to the wall lap of Imola in a Ferrari F40 without going off-track. In games like GRID or Forza, excitement comes from winning races and the drive to keep playing derives from the carrot on a stick that is the credits you need to earn to buy more cars.
AC doesn't even have a carrot on a stick for winning races yet (career mode is not yet done), and I still regularly start it up just to do hotlapping sessions of various car/track combinations. The driving is just that much fun in and of itself, and incredibly challening at that.

Online racing is also remarkably fun to do, and once you escape inevitable turn 1 malarky, most racers will happily battle you for position turn after turn with courtesy and giving you your space while you give them theirs. It seems most people enjoy a having great and tense battle more than winning it, and that allows for them to take place cleanly. Most people rather see their opponent win it and have another chance to be a hero in the next few turns, than risk hitting them and ending up in the gravel together.

There are a few glaring omissions such as pit stops and better ways of getting in a public race (the booking system makes sense, but it could use some more options to allow e.g. joining in practice mode), but even if they stop development entirely I feel as though I've gotten more than my money's worth already. And so far, they've done the contrary and maintained a fairly strong update/patch schedule every other Friday.