Recent reviews by Marshal Amim Kagori

This is not the kind of product I expected to be published by Nexon or produced by any developer under their umbrella. Very, very few games in the "Soulslike" genre are genuinely good products. Hollow Knight, Lies of P and the first Nioh come to mind. Everything else is middling with nothing really special going on, or just downright slop.

I'm happy to say that The First Berserker: Khazan is not only a genuinely great Soulslike, it's good enough to stand alongside Lies of P, which was one of my favorite "WTF, where the hell did this amazing game come from" experiences in 2023.

It's hard, but nothing as hard as the hardest bosses in Sekiro or Lies of P. It's structured very similarly to Nioh but all the fluff has been shaved so you just have this very tight, very focused package with an intuitive gameplay loop of enter map, find secrets, beat boss, come back to hub, level up, improve your build, rinse and repeat. I will say that generally, the level design isn't anything particularly interesting, nor is the story anything more than excuse for you to continue playing "Guts Simulator", so if you're looking for something akin to Lies of P or Fromsoft Quality from the story or characters, go elsewhere. But if you want tight, focused gameplay and incredible boss battles, this is the game for you.

It looks good, runs even better and plays amazingly well. Easily a must buy for souls fans and I hope this game gets some meaty dlc or a potential sequel.


Edit: Finally beat the game and my word, the final boss is a killjoy to fight with great sword. Of all the bosses I've fought in this game, the final one is by far the most frustrating in so far as you have to go in with specific builds designed to maximize stamina drain and stagger mechanics. It's also three phases if you go the true ending route. I'll wait for the dlc and some more patches before doing NG+.

Current Recommendation: Fans should buy, new players and fence sitters should wait for a sale or until Capcom rectifies the current performance situation.

Monster Hunter Wilds is 100% a single player campaign with a multiplayer component attached to it. Everything you love from World is back and then some, but Wilds simply does not do enough to be massively distinguished from either World or Rise, so it ends up being more of a sidegrade than anything else. Performance issues and bugs aside, the game is still very fun, the new monsters are fantastically designed and aside from wanting to throw Nata and his cruddy equivocations off the nearest rooftop, I've enjoyed my time with the game and will continue to play it until Capcom stops supporting it.

Please note that the game release timing was 100% designed to maximize profits prior to their investor review in March, its clear this game probably shouldn't have come out till June at the earliest. Developers and Publishers, please stop trying to appease investors by doing ♥♥♥♥ like this, and investors, please understand that you're damaging your own brands with release nonsense.
__________________

Settings: 1080p, DLSS - Quality, Mixed Low/Medium/High settings, Raytracing Off, VRS Off, FPS Cap @ 70 FPS (REFramework Mod & RTSS set to 35fps to stablize frametimes)

Laptop: Asus Zephyrus G14 (May 2021) w/ Ryzen 9 5900H, 16GB DDR4 3200, 6GB RTX 3060 (85w)

Steam Deck (Oct 22, LCD Model): Unplayable without low spec gamer-esque modifications, which makes the visuals look positively gross for barely any gain, even for a handheld.

Performance Statement: Without a framerate cap, performance can swing wildly from 28fps to 70fps on my laptop. For the overwhelming majority of the time, the game will hover around 38 and 50fps during exploration or hunts in low rank zones. During inclement weather events or when simply too much is going on, performance can go down to the low 30s. Its a different story in high rank zones, especially during seasons of plenty, where the game will often sit around the 35fps mark, with the worst offender being the Forest for Uth Duna hunts where it can go as low as 28fps.

1% High - 70fps
1% Low - 24fps
Avg - 35fps

I'm going to give this game a tentative "Buy, but not until the game has cooked a bit longer" before really digging into it.

Everything about The Forever Winter hits all of the right buttons for me, but based on the game's performance and early stage of development, it's in an unpleasant state of play. This is no slight against the developers as they were obviously pressured by the player base to release early. I would argue that you should ignore any negative reviews about the title from people trying to play this game on a 10 year old GPU and consider this to be something close to a very early Beta with no optimization passes yet. The meat is there, but all the fine details still need to be hashed out and roasted to perfection.

I'm going to refund for now, but I'm 100% going to check this game out again in 3 to 6 months time once a few updates have gone public and I get myself a beefier PC.

"By order of Xi Xi Ping, 2 billion Chinese must play!"


Review after 40 Hours (Chapter 4 of 6)

This is 100%, a Chinese take on God of War using the mythos of Journey to the West. The game expects that you have some knowledge of the original story as you will be retracing the steps of Sun Wukong to reclaim his lost power and challenge the Gods once more. If you are not familiar with Journey to the West, the story won't make a lot of sense and the game does not dole out enough lore through conversations or other methods to make up the difference.

That being said, if you're the type of person to just play something like Elden Ring with zero regard for the story and world building, than you won't have an issue here. Black Myth Wukong is an extremely competent first attempt by Game Science and all though I have some caveats regarding it's game design and overall performance, they're minor enough for me to not really complain about them.

One issue I will point out is that sometimes input reading is delayed or missed entirely, so you could finish a combo and say, press the button to chug from your flask and it will just not register whatsoever. That and some of the skill descriptions are clearly machine translated and not very clear, so you'll have to figure out some things on your own.

By the way, the game isn't hard at all if you breezed through something like Shadows of the Erdtree, but some of the boss fights can be challenging if you don't know what you're doing. Also, experiment, experiment, experiment. The game is super generous with allowing you to do so.


Do get Black Myth Wukong if:

- You enjoy God of War style action games
- You enjoy build crafting (the game is very generous with respecs)
- Enjoy some "souls-like" features with the punishing stuff removed
- Lots of boss fights


Don't get Black Myth Wukong if:

- You haven't upgraded your PC in the last 4 years
- You dislike God of War style action games
- You hate anything "souls-like"
- You are worried about your expenditure going to the CCP

Shadow of the Erdtree shall be known as "The Great Filtering of 2024"

You either die as a gamer or live long enough to become a gaming journalist.

Shadow of the Erdtree has proven that most people are no better than the typical games journalist. What a sorry state of affairs.

The game is Miyazaki out of 10 and I'm absolutely here for it! Buy it, get your butt kicked, rise up to the challenge and grasp victory!

As of 06/04/2024, I have accumulated 90 hours in game between my laptop and Steam Deck. The game performs wonderfully, I've had zero control related issues, zero crashes and outside of the occasional audio bug (which has been addressed with the latest patch) I really haven't had any issues with the game that weren't already present in the console release. I will note, however, that I did not experience the audio bug at all on Steam Deck, yet it cropped up about a half dozen times on my laptop.

I recommend the PS5 version review by SkillUp on Youtube if you want a fair summation of the title. I enjoyed it on PS4 and the PC release has just reminded me how wonderful this game actually is. It truly is Japanese Assassin's Creed and I strongly recommend it over any sort of slop Ubisoft will be releasing. That being said, beat the main story before tackling the DLC as the DLC assumes you've already beaten it. Also be ready to get disappointed over the DLC story as whoever wrote it did so with the subtlety of a jackhammer going off in the middle of a busy city street. It just isn't elegant whatsoever. If you can get over that, the rest of the DLC as well as the Legends mode are a treat.

Played on:

- Steam Deck (October 2022 Model w/ Steam OS Preview 3.6)
- Asus Zephyrus G14 (May 2020 Model w/ Ryzen 9 5900HS w/ RTX 3060 on Windows 11)

Visual Profile:

- Steam Deck: Native Res / High Textures / Low Everything Else / 48 FPS Lock
- Laptop: Native: Native Res / High Textures / Medium Everything Else / 48 FPS Lock

If you are resolute in your stance on having an unwavering 60+ FPS experience in every aspect of this game, I would strongly recommend either waiting until Capcom has released a patch addressing the game's performance woes, or until you can purchase the game on deep discount. I do not recommend using bootleg frame generation mods due to ghosting and latency issues (especially on older hardware) and I do not recommend any NPC reduction mods as it will diminish the intended experience. Most of your time will not be spent in the cities and as such, performance is largely a non-issue at the moment.

Hardware:

CPU: Ryzen 9 5900 HS (35w) @ 4.4GHz
GPU: Nvidia GeForce 3060 (80w) (GPU @ 1282 Mhz/ Mem @ 1530 Mhz)
MEM: 16GB DDR4 3200
SSD: Samsung Evo 980 Pro 2TB M.2

My Settings:

Resolution: 1920x1080 @ 144hz
Vsync: On
FPS Lock: Variable
Nvidia Reflex: On (Do not use On + Boost if you lock your framerate)
Graphics Preset: High (modified)
DLSS: Enabled (Quality)
Raytracing: Enabled
Shadow Quality: Medium
Model Quality: Medium
Motion Blur: Off

Everything else is at the default setting for the High Preset

FPS Max: 72
FPS Min: 22 (due to auto save fps bug, rare but it happens)
Average 5% Low: 31 in Vernworth, 35 in Bakbattahl and in certain areas of North Eastern Vermund
Average 95%: 45

Other:

I've used Rivatuner to lock my FPS to 45 as that is the lowest 95% average FPS I experience while traversing the open world with very few exceptions. Using Rivatuner or MSI Afterburner is pretty much mandatory as it is producing smoother frametimes/pacing than either Nvidia Control Panel or In-Game.


So long as your PC meets the "Recommended" specifications, you should be able to have a good experience at 1080p if you do not mind making certain concessions and can get over not having a locked 4K/60 FPS. The game is absolutely incredible and as a massive fan of the first game, it's nearly everything I could have wanted from a sequel. I fully expected my PC to run the game worse than it actually is currently, so I'm happy that I at least get to enjoy the title. It's not without it's flaws or bugs, I've experienced a fair bit of crashing due to the vocation menu overloading memory, but I would say if you increase your page file to 32GB, that should solve the problem and keep you crash free.

I'm not really going to speak about the game here because honestly, this is something you should just experience on your own. It's incredible and I love it!

Pros: Bug diving is fun.

Cons: Random Bug divers are terrible players, unlike Clanker destroyers. Play solo or with friends.

Score: 7 out of 10

"Excellent presentation, average in every other respect."


Specs:

Laptop: 2021 Asus Zephyrus G14 - Ryzen 9 5900HS, 16GB DDR4 3200 and a 6GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060

Performance (1080p/Ultra): 55 - 90 FPS Variable, typically runs between 55 - 72 FPS


Handheld: 512GB Steam Deck (Oct 2022) - CryoUtils, latest SteamOS updates, Proton Experimental

Performance (720p/Standard): 20 - 60 FPS Variable, typically runs between 30 - 40 FPS

Note: Do not use the game's built in V-Sync as frametime/pacing is very inconsistent. Either use your GPU's V-Sync or if you're on Steam Deck, lock the FPS to 40 via Steam OS. Leave the framerate at 120 FPS in-game. Performance remains smooth and feels responsive with no frame tearing to speak of.


Pros:

- Easy to play, even for someone who has never touched a Granblue Fantasy game before

- Visually stunning and full of great spectacle fights that are well designed, produced and executed

- Performs well enough for the quality of visuals


Cons:

- Easy to master. Every character has a gimmick to make them worth using, but none of the characters require dedicated practice to master. You should be able to understand them within 1-3 minutes of practicing at Sir Barrold.

- Difficulty is almost non-existent. I've been playing on Hard mode and have beaten every fight on the first try with minimal preparation. Mind you, I'm the kind of masochist that does naked low SL runs in Souls games for fun, so you'll probably have no issues with the difficulty if you're just the average player.

- The story, while it's serviceable and does a good enough job to incentivize the player to stay invested until the end, is not anything remotely close to the kinds of stories you would get from a game like Red Dead Redemption 2, Ghost of Tsushima or Witcher 3. It feels like a high production value, serialized anime on Netflix (e.g. Onimusha) as opposed to a grand odyssey with high drama, great dialogue with a satisfying climax. The story's sole purpose is to just give you an excuse to get to the next spectacle battle and well.. to be honest, that's perfectly fine for a game like this. I just put it under con because some people might go into this wanting an actually good anime story.

- Display options are extremely limited. You can adjust fps from 30 to 120, VSync is just On/Off, graphics options are just Standard/Ultra, you can adjust brightness and blur. No DLSS or FSR options. For Steam Deck, you cannot manually force a lower resolution in Steam OS to enable the use of native FSR 1, though you can likely edit an ini to force a lower res. I have not done this, so I cannot speak to whether or not it'll work or if it'll even look decent if it does.

- Do not play this game in a dark room with the brightness even at 50%. Opening the menu screen is akin to having a flashbang go off, it's so damn bright! I would implore the devs to include background options for the menu screen so that we can change it to something darker.


Granblue Fantasy: Relink is a fun game with really cool spectacle battles and a well thought-out, though disappointingly easy action battle system. The controls are fluid and responsive, even in low fps situations on the Steam Deck and I keep having to pick up my jaw from the floor as the visual splendor of the game does not stop for even a minute. Unfortunately, even with online co-op, this truly is a "beat and uninstall" game as there are currently no incentives to replay the game, let alone master it. This is one of the few times I curse myself for being a massive Souls/Monster Hunter fan. Apparently four updates to the game are planned, including a raid boss designed for cooperative play and two new characters, but that honestly isn't enough for me to want to reinstall after I'm done with this. Unless you are a big fan of the series, I'd say wait until this game is on sale for at least $40 USD, it's worth at least that much.