Recent reviews by Mori

If you're not a fan of the roguelike concept of randomness, you're probably not going to like this.

If you dont mind it or enjoy it, you'll enjoy the game for quite a while. I didn't start getting annoyed by the randomness and "luck" until about 20 hours in. This is because as you unlock more things to have at your disposal, the randomness applies across the board for all tiles. So early on you'll be getting reliable tiles because you only have so many unlocked. You'll unlock a few and those will be your staples. You'll unlock a few more and have some good rotation going.

But at a certain point (around the druid tiles unlocking imo, which I did later cus I didn't want them), you're going to hit a point where you have so many tiles and troops and resources that you're at the mercy of randomness until you get a good run. That bad luck randomness isn't the worst i've seen in games, but it can get annoying at times. I'd still recommend it in the face of that frustration.

I'd recommend to the devs to get rid of certain tiles (like furniture for example), and streamline down a few of the unnecessary tiles that don't really provide a lot of mechanics when there are better options at hand (and i'm not talking about any kind of meta here). There's some balance that needs to take place here, otherwise it's just, click until you get lucky before you can even continue.

I've unlocked 5 of the 6 characters, and i'm still on the first map just because of unfortunate randomness.

Putting that aside, it's an addicting fun little puzzle/strategy/resource management game. Interesting combination of concepts.

A studio spent too much money to record people acting and doing lines as characters for the "fmv" aspect that you barely "play." Not bad acting or anything, but combined with the use of UE and spending way too much time on polishing a bunch of empty unused spaces for scale and scope, it's quite hollow (no pun intended, but definitely fitting).

I have an exercise for you to practice for what is essentially a point and click adventure game or a find the hidden item game. Fits under "walking simulator" but has way too much unnecessary polish.

Play a game and write down what interactions you do, to progress the story (find item, use item on x, solve puzzle, find item, use item on x), and list them out. From start to credits rolling. Play a game like this, and you will notice how short that list (and the game) really is.

It uses all the usual tropes for the setting of "horror" or "atmospheric" but it's all paint-by-colors-by-the-numbers stuff. The story has gaps, missing details (presumably these are the hidden achievements). But it's all rather plain.

It has a LOT of polish, but for not much content/gameplay. Despite the polish though it has audio bugs, object bugs, menu bugs, geometry bugs, lighting bugs, some people are claiming soft lock bugs, typos in the subtitling and writing, and on and on.

It has 1 saving grace that I will give it. Which is the overarching message of the game, the "Nobody tells you how long..." speech is accurate and portrays what it's like to try to be a creative person in this world of industry and capitalism.

Solid game. Not a fan of UE5 so far as it is a resource hog, but game runs perfectly fine.

It has a few buggy moments, but nothing crazy or breaking. It could've used a bit more polish in the game play department. Some things are not fully explained to the player that should've been earlier on. Some of the animations when running around freely can have some minor hiccups (like trying to step up a rock path the size of the character's foot, and they constantly trip over it and get stuck instead of just walking up the incline.

My biggest issue with the game, is the lack of behavior and character writing as you explore the world/continent. It needs more voice-over for when the player is running around, for a very specific reason.

What do I mean?

Minor early spoilers for the first hour:

The premise of the game is that expeditions of people leave the island to go to the continent to stop the antagonist. Those expeditions have never come back. There has never been a missive or an envoy that has made it back. Never a letter, documents, or anything describing life off of the island. N-O-T-H-I-N-G! The people on the island, have zero clues as to what is actually going on. This is made very clear at the start - the party even states later on that they had no idea what they would be seeing on the continent.

Until you run into Lune for the first time. Her job, before leaving with the expedition, is to choose a landing site for the expedition to hit on the continent. She specifically states that she's guessing at the trajectory to land where the original expedition landed on the continent. She only knows this because of archives that were written before the expedition had embarked to the continent. She's unsure of it all because of how much the land has changed, and how the archives are 67 years old. Gustav specifically states that the first expedition is the only one that "made it to the monolith" and had any survivors left. It isn't explained how any of this is known. The way the story is presented is that each expedition has left, and never come back, and that the plan was such that each expedition that went out to the continent would pave the way for the ones that followed. It's even in their motto - "For those that follow!"

Then you get to the island.

I'll skip the cut-scene details for spoilery reasons, but afterwards, the characters, when they are on the continent do not behave like explorers discovering things for the first time (themselves). After what happens at their arrival, they should be massively confused and dumbfounded about what is going on, especially when during the cut-scene where they arrive, there are destroyed ships all around them (meaning, the earlier discussed plan has been done multiple times)- no reaction to this detail.

Later on, they come across a massive pile of bodies from previous expeditions. Not just this, but some kind of fleshy amalgamation is absorbing and feeding off of the blood of the bodies - no reaction to this detail.

Later on still, while playing, I notice things like 1 tree stump very clearly being cut down to be used for lumber, when every tree around it has been broken at a higher height along the trunk, suggesting a lot of the previous expeditions which they wouldn't have any knowledge of.

Later on still, while playing, I come across an area where an ocean of water is now far above the sky, leaving the ocean-bed dry and breathable. All of the ocean life is living in the water in the sky. Bubbles of water seep from underground through small openings to float up into the body of water above. Stunning, beautiful, confusing. These are all things that any person would see and react to, it being completely off from normal, especially after crossing an ocean to get to the continent - no reaction to these details at all! N-O-N-E!

They act completely unfazed and uninterested by these things that would completely alter the way of thinking on how the world works, small details, and larger ones alike.

I can't help but notice it over and over. Other than that, solid game. Could use some more options in the options menu (the game has way too much bloom lighting), as well as more thorough accessibility options.

Sort of?

This is gonna be a weird one, strap in.

I have a very uneasy record with this series. I've tried and failed many times to "get into" the games to figure out why so many people love it. So here I am again, trying, and Wilds is very far removed from it's predecessors in very specific ways.

The game is much easier overall, the game would literally hold your hand if it could reach out of your computer, as the game is filled with many walking cut-scenes, where you are almost literally leashed to another NPC. If you wander off too far in any direction during these moments (of which there are too many), your leash is yanked back and you're verbally reprimanded like the bad dog you are! At the same time, the game is filled to the brim with moments where it does not explain details to the player that would benefit them to know how to play the game better.

The player is forced to jump through (usually) 2 monster fights back to back before given any free reign to free-roam, before you're once again herded through another couple of fights. There are too many fights where even after collecting monster parts, you have no use for them, or the upgrades are pointless to bother with stat-wise for a vast majority of the game. Resistance stats don't seem to matter as much as they should, and you don't exactly know which resistance stat you should be boosting towards the end of the game.

You are not required at any point to capture any monsters, and doing so can only be done in single player modes (trying to use the trap items with other players, has them greyed out). You're not given very many ways to capture a monster either, so it gets to a point where you really have to ask why this "feature" is still in the game other than that it has been in the series for a while now.

The multiplayer system is beyond convoluted for such a simple play style of game (PSO 1 did it better). You have to find your friend's player IDs, manually enter them into a search, add them to your friends, or you can invite them to a party (dubbed Party Link for some reason), BUT if you want to free-roam with other people, that also means playing through the story long enough to unlock this feature, which the game doesn't tell you it is unlocked when it happens. You then have to do what you did before then while in a party link invite them to an "Environment Link" Party. Again, Phantasy Star Online 1, handled this better, and that was back in the year 2000 (and I'm certain crossplay is to blame for this).

The inventory and equipment systems are still a mess, there are very few weapon upgrades for any class, let alone ones that are substantial for your character. The item wheels help (but the game doesn't spend much time on them), but if you're used to scrolling through them manually via the shoulder buttons like I was, it can be very annoying to break that habit from the series, while at the same time, trying to find the 1 thing you're looking for, while dodging/moving around from all of the activity going on around you (but you can do it).

And this is before even mentioning all the performance issues, graphics/texture bugs, camera behavior bugs, crashes, and on and on it goes.

I'm also starting to have an issue with games like these "getting good" or "getting hard" after you finish the campaign, when there is no real incentive to continue the game beyond that point, other than any social reasons, or if you're just having fun with the gameplay loop.

And this is where it gets weird for me. This is half of a game, at full price, buggy and broken, with very little improvements to the overall formula, and missing tons of quality of life features that are direly needed. It's a Japanese game made for Japanese customers on consoles, ported to other countries, and ported to other platforms, separately, and each of those distinctions are very noticeable in this game. Japanese games are made very differently and for a different audience, so when they're ported to other countries, there are certain patterns you'll catch on to over and over again (overly complicated menus, overly complicated multiplayer systems/friend systems/social systems). Also made on the Resident Evil engine, which is beautiful, but was not designed for these vast wide-open long-distance LoD environments (and the performance shows it).

I had actual fun playing a Monster Hunter game for once. I have a better appreciation for the series as a whole. The monster infighting is great, the world feels dynamic enough in free-roaming mode, and the behaviors of the monsters you hunt are very interesting and thought out (even though they too have obvious design issues - like a water boss that only spawns when it rains, but there is no weather system in free-roam modes, so the only way to encounter the boss is by selecting their optional mission directly).

The series has always played soooo sloowwwly (I get it, weight in animations), but for the larger weapons, you can push a button, fill out a form in triplicate, submit to HR, wait 3 business days for a response, and finally, you can push a button for your 2nd attack - and this is considered the "faster" combat mechanics of the series (though not as fast as Rise, which is what got me further into that one).

But even after all this, I still don't understand why this series is so beloved by so many (compared to its competition). The only conclusion I can come to is that it is the most direct scratching to the itch of hunting and gathering that our lizard brains have, that it just succeeds on psychology alone.

Is it bad? No! Is it finished? NO! It is an overly-polished gem you can see through, and as such, you can see every crack and fissure inside of it plain as day. Released too early, frustrating, annoying, slogging, confusing, and broken. But when you're able to play, it can actually be fun during the moments where fighting is being done.

Worth maybe half-price, given the game is too easy, too short, too broken, and has no motivation past the end-game credits (roughly 15 hours in), beyond what you, the player decides to entertain themselves with.

This game desperately needs many things, but in addition to that list, I'd add yet another item - give us a new game plus mode, that lets us play through the game without the story and leash-holding. Give the player more freedom to openly hunt in the wilds more often, with friends, without all of these sticky restrictions holding every single player back, from a more fun time.

They streamlined a game so hard it's broken. But has fun moments.

It's not bad...but with caveats.

What it does well is kiss (keep it simple stupid).

It's an Action RPG game. It does everything it needs to do right. However...

It's very linear (minus the dungeons, which have some randomization), with some replay value, but not much. At a certain point you know what races/classes you prefer, and all of them follow a general path.

My largest concern here is there is nothing the devs have shown in terms of what updates/changes will take place down the road. A roadmap (since it's early access) might do well to assuage concerns. They've been updating it, but just with patches/fixes. Not a bad start, we'll see what the future holds.

As it is right now, this is a $5-$7 game.

My entire review for this game is based on cost versus time spent playing.

The game itself is not bad or anything, but $12 for 2.2-ish hours of walking around just isn't going to cut it for me.

There are far too many other games you can get for less that give a lot more to the player.

Get it on sale for about under $7

Another bug-riddled FNAF game released too early, at too high a price. Game breaking soft locks in a few places throughout the game.

Human animations are a bit weird, but the animatronic animations are well done.

I also had unfortunately also read the book a long time ago. I don't really see a need to put that content into a video other than to farm some more money.

Sliding puzzle pieces for "puzzles" in 2024. It plays like Clock Tower from 1996, which isn't a bad thing, but there is very little to this game given the price tag.

The mind games that are played....

Been waiting for this for many many years.

Has several game blocking bugs, that prevent you from playing the game beyond a certain point, OR, to be able to finish the game and get the best ending.

Sony opening up sales for regions it knew it wouldn't support with the requirement of a PSN login.

Valve declined refund request.