Recent reviews by Greyed

Monster Hunter Wilds takes the formula of World, gives it a large helping of QoL polish, and delivers excellent moment to moment action.

Unlike previous entries into the franchise Wilds does not pull heavily from the prior games in terms of monsters to hunt. While some fan favorites are present, near 3/4ths of all the monsters in Wilds are introduced in Wilds.

The same goes for all the systems we've come to know and love, er, be frustrated by. However, almost every system in Wilds has had some improvements added to them to make them less frustrating than in the past. For example, Wishlisting now allows you to forge/upgrade straight from the wishlist! On top of that any quest or investigation which contains an item needed for your wishlist, a pin is shown on the quest's icon. This even extends to your inventory. Items in your inventory needed for your wishlist get the pin. This is great when selling to the vendor as you can tell at a glance if you need that item!

Finally, a word addressing the common complaint about performance mentioned elsewhere. My 5 year old rig is bang on for the minimum requirements. Ryzen 5 3600 and a Radeon RX 6600. The minimums promise 30FPS on low settings. I am getting a solid 40 with most, but not all, settings on low and without using FSR or frame generation. This is while running with the overhead of Proton as I am gaming on Linux. This is not unplayable, and certainly people with newer, beefier, setups should easily get to 60, if not higher. Given how bad most AAA titles are upon release (CP2077, anyone?) this release has been stellar. I've had 2 crashes in the 27 hours I've put in so far. And again, I have to stress, this is running on Linux, which is not the intended platform. If you're worried about performance issues because of the nay-sayers, pay them no heed.

I'm sure die hard pathfinder players who are well versed in the game will find it quite enjoyable. And the systems in and of themselves are great. The overworld map and traversal is great. The moment to moment encounter movement and combat is great (though it could stand for an undue for silly misclicks). But the encounter balancing is entirely out of whack.

I've just been following the early missions given by the base NPCs at the trading post. So far I've had to reload because:

* An encounter with a Manticore in the wild
* Going to retrieve some items in a spider nest where the giant spiders were push-overs while the small spiders were end-runners as they were immune to weapons and the items given to use on them only do 1/3rd health. They give you 6, and there's more than 2 small group of spiders.
* While chasing my rival, failing a check I didn't think was going to even be a check, falling 2 levels in a dungeon, then running into 8 skeletons 2 levels above my group of 4 adventurers.
* Following the main questline running into a mob 2+ levels over my group which could literally one shot any of them in a single round.

All of that in <8 hours on normal and barely out of the tutorial area. All with very little introduction to the underlying system or really any way to inspect ahead of time how things might go. I thought maybe it was just me, but checking online for the encounters I had returned pages upon pages of people hitting the same brick wall with the only real consolation being Pathfinder TTRPG vets saying that the encounters are doable if you have read and understand the TTRPG ruleset.

It seems like the devs forgot that, as a CRPG, this might have a broader appeal than just fans of the TTRPG and would be an entry point to the system - with the requisite need to provide a little more guidance and inspection of the underlying systems.

I know there is far more game here than just the small party. I would have loved to gotten to the kingdom management aspect of the game. But having a reload every ~hour because of terrible balancing and pacing means I simply have to put this game down as I have far too many other games vying for my attention. Games with far fewer frustrations.

Game did not progress at the end of Chapter 2. Quit, reload, it progressed. Same for the end of Chapter 3. Quit, reload, no progress. Check the discussions here on Steam. Known issue for well over a YEAR with multiple people posting about it. 0 developer interaction.

I know, the game it its first iteration wasn't great. I know there was business drama last year. If any of that has put you off this game, don't let it. This game in its current form is fantastic.

It is an ARPG melded with the spirit of Monster Hunter with a dash of Warframe mixed in (probably in part to the aforementioned business drama). Wayfinder is very good solo, but really shines in co-op. It is a little slow to introduce its mechanics, but for anyone used to any of the above games, it is no different than them.

Great visuals. Lots of QoL touches. Performance in 1.0 is much improved over even the EA a few weeks ago.

I hope Airship continues on this path and I hope more people find out about this gem to give them the success they deserve.

It's pretty.

Beyond that it looks like Amazon Game Studios looked at mobile games, slapped a very pretty coat of paint over it, and called it a day.
* Constant interruptions to highlight new UI elements. Yup!
* Locations overly populated with generic and uninteresting mobs, Of course!
* Battlepass front and center? Absolutely!
* Multiple "progression" methods? You know it!
* Luck based levelling system? Got that, too!

On top of all that it looks like they looked at several other popular MMOs and tried to implement them all at once. Dual weapon system from GW2, but the basic hot bar from WoW and its like all wrapped up in a quasi-action based combat system that requires you to click on an enemy to target it even though you have highlighted it? I doubt anyone on the team mandating this mess actually tried playing the game.

I literally uninstalled it in less time it took me to download it.

Developers committed the cardinal EA sin. Talked about DLC while still early on EA. This is the reddest of red flags!

"Community" managers started blocking people for no valid reason from the GIT repository. Which is their method of source distribution, thus violating the open source ethos.

When it was forked, other members of the "community" are lamenting that it was forked and proposed nuking all their code, another violation of the open source ethos.

Until those "community" managers are removed for their gross violation of the open source ethos, everyone should steer clear of this project as they may be removed from its resources at any time.

The TL;DR of The First Descendant is that it is a cargo cult game. It takes the systems from several other games, mashes them together with no true understanding of why those systems are the way they are, and as a result makes errors which show it to be nothing but a pale comparison to the originals it mimics.

Here's but one example to show what I mean. The weapons.

The weapons in TFD have mod slots that can have polarities, and an unlock to add more mod points. Mods have a cost, with more powerful mods costing more. Weapons have a maximum limit on how many mod points they can have. This is exactly like Warframe.

But, weapons also have levels. A level 1 weapon is patently inferior to the same weapon at level 20, which is patently inferior to the same weapon at level 60, which is patently inferior to the same weapon at 100. Yes, weapons can go up to level 100. And I am underselling the power creep. A weapon that is a mere 3-4 levels behind the curve feels underpowered, even with a full set of mods. While getting the same weapon at a higher level, makes it feel powerful again.

How is this cargo cultish? Because in Warframe's build system the mods were what determined a weapon's power and feel. Sure, there was a short levelling curve (20 minutes in one well known XP farm) which serves more as a testing ground for the weapon. But once that was passed building out a weapon with the appropriate mods, and tweaking that build, is how one brought out the full potential of the weapon.

Comparatively the weapon level system, which is seen in other looter shooter series like The Division or Borderlands, provided its own method of weapon improvement. You got the weapon, its level determined its power. The only way to improve the weapon was to find a higher level variant.

Nexon thought that by simply mimicing those systems they would replicate the success of either, but y mashing the two systems together it ruins both approaches. Mods are cheapened until you hit max level, and levels are weakened by not having a solid set of mods to back it up. They have no understanding why both approaches work.

The same goes for Descendants, for the maps, the missions, the bosses, and even the battlepass! They all are carbon copies of other games, often mashed together, without any understanding as to why the other games' design decisions drove their individual successes.

I have no doubt that the thirst trap of the titular character, a Bargin Bin Volt in a D.Va skin (right down to the same color scheme), will easily allow them to recoup their costs of development and may keep a modest player base playing for many months to come. But, much like their other titles, the burdensome monitization will eventually drive away but the most deep pocketed whales who succumb to their sunk cost fallacy.

STALKER meets Subnautica in the Pacific Northwest. Spooky, fair, and fun. Great story, too.

The most basic of incrementals with no build diversity but, boy howdy, can they spam you for $20 "DLC".