Recent reviews by Toroic

There was a time where this game was fun if janky and unpolished and feeling very much like early access.

I think that there are periods where it could be described as fun though flawed.

Ultimately though, I have lost any hope for this game's future. The latest new map, stamina changes, and migration mechanic weren't tested or polished nearly enough and their release to the live branch made the game far, far worse.

There's a day/night cycle, but most of the dinos can't see well enough at night to do anything but sit in a bush... complete waste of time.

They just changed the stamina system so that it takes 4x as long to regenerate your stamina, leading to more periods of just sitting.

Combine that with hunger and thirst that drain quickly, and you have a lot of "hurry up and wait" gameplay where you're put under pressure to manage hunger and then forced to wait for 5 minutes at a time for your stamina to come back and rush to the next food source (and hope that you don't get killed by a map bug)

Keep in mind that this game was in development for years in the legacy version, and then had to be rewritten over several more years just to end up with the current version which is less fun and more tedious than it was months ago.

Also, Dondi the lead developer has a terrible attitude especially when given negative feedback which is probably why he's managed to drive two versions of the game into the ground.

This game does many things incredibly well.

-Open world exploration is engaging,

-Environments are beautiful

-Ton of variety with combat styles

-Secrets everywhere

However, if I was going to point to one umbrella issue, it would be balance.

Some fights are complete pushovers for some builds, others are exercises in frustration.

Some areas have a respawn point right outside the boss area, others have a long walk with enemies to get past.

The game is still incredibly fun overall, but the rough edges even after a few patches show through clearly and detract from the experience, and you'll still need frequent visits to the wiki to understand how the quests work and which weapons scale well.

For example, a magic infused longsword scales better than the carian knight's sword with intelligence, and you can swap out the ash of war making it both more flexible and powerful as an option for an intelligence weapon. This doesn't make sense and it means the visually stunning Carian Knight Sword is a pretty terrible option in comparison.

These sort of small but annoying issues are spread throughout the game but overall Elden Ring has been an incredibly fun game to play and explore.

I played Outward when it first came out, and have been playing it a lot again with the new content in the beta branch.

The first thing I want to say immediately is this game isn't for everyone. It's not a run and gun adventure, mmo style. Careful preparation can trivialize difficult encounters while getting caught off guard can lead to nearly instantaneous death if swarmed by multiple enemies.

The survival mechanics aren't intrusive the way many survival games make them, where you're having to eat full meals every couple minutes, but you'll need to balance your resources vs your time vs your need to rest to recover health/stamina.

There are 3 factions of which you need to choose one, but you can spend many hours exploring the world and accumulating skills with no time pressure. Once you join a faction, there's often going to be timed quests that you can fail with permanent consequences.

Characters look ugly but armor sets are often decent to gorgeous looking and there's a lot of customization available for your skills and how you play the game. Magic, ranged, melee are all viable and play different, and hybrid strategies work.

I love outward because preparing for a journey where you know you'll run into certain obstacles (cold, poison, heat, etc) can be incredibly rewarding as food spoils but provides very potent buffs and since you can reach elemental immunity by stacking resists some very dangerous fights can become completely trivial if you did the work to prepare ahead of time.

Similarly to dark souls though, people have done no armor runs simply by learning enemy patterns and dodging well. Your skill (or lack thereof) can absolutely carry you or you can put time and effort into preparing and make it much easier.

There's tons of secrets hidden throughout the world, and you'll probably find one of the 4 large regions that you prefer and learn the ins and outs of. I personally like the Hallowed Marsh which is a poisonous swamp with tons of resources (if you manage to be immune to poison).

It's definitely best played with a friend, and the new patch is a substantial step up in quality as the rebalances give a much more reasonable and professional feel to the gameplay as well as new endgame boss battles and endgame weapons to craft.

Also, I love the music in this game.

I'm revising this review after many years because the game has continued to develop, and with the addition of magic I feel it finally has the depth and complexity that makes it worth the price.

However, this is not a game for everyone, and the combat is clunky to get used to and often awkward even after I have played for close to 30 hours spread over several years.

Combat is physics based which means you use the mouse to aim your swings, and the momentum of your weapon matters immensely when it comes to the damage you deal. It definitely gets better, and with the addition of mind Thaumaturgy there's ways to play the story mode beyond simply fighting in melee through it. Now, I enjoy the melee combat but being able to magically sense enemies and their mental state/force them to ally with you/raise them from the dead is a welcome addition.

This is not a newbie friendly game and I recommend you spend time in practice mode fighting for a while because the first level where you have awful equipment and can take substantial wounds from weak enemies is the most dangerous part of the game in my opinion.

There's two kinds of damage in exanima. Yellow damage is non-lethal and can knock you out which is a minor inconvenience. Red damage can be fatal and accumulates when you are wounded (early on from sharp weapons hitting flesh or weak armor) and you have to spend healing potions or other limited resources to heal it. Also, red damage effectively lowers your max health bar, so while wounded it's also easier to be knocked out or killed.

Healing potions are few and far between until the end of the current content, but getting better armor helps immensely. I found that combat was much more stressful on the first level than it was later on because every unblocked attack caused substantial amounts of red damage which you can't easily fix.

The first level is a maze like sprawling map of grey stone and debris and in my opinion the worst of the current levels. Easy to get lost, the loot is not good (many experienced players skip large parts of the first floor) and you can easily take unwanted red damage or ganged up on. Later levels are both more visually interesting and rewarding to explore.

Xp is gained largely from exploration and reading lore (books and scrolls) with a lesser but still meaningful amount coming from combat.

This game has always had a lot of unrealized potential and now some of that potential has been realized. There's still a long way to go with many other kinds of magic and an entire game planned that uses all Exanima's mechanics in an open world environment, and if it is ever finished could be a really fun and unique game.

I had given this game a thumbs down originally, and I stand by my rating of how it was then. Given improvements, it's only fair if I recognize those improvements which for me are enough to recommend the game.

I was holding off on making a review until the battle update landed, so here goes.

The short version: This game is rough around the edges, but after the publishers bought it from the original developers they've had two major updates both of which I enjoyed, and the battle update probably has the most quality of life improvements. I recommend it and enjoy it in the current state, but the story isn't fully added yet. What is implemented is both interesting and relatively scary.

The long version: This game is a fusion of survival and horror elements and the best moments remind me of fallout 1 and 2. Though there are RPG elements, skill plays a massive factor in survival and careful preparation is the best way to survive. Most of the character perks are fairly minor and dwarfed by advancement in the various skill trees, so character choice is largely cosmetic. The world is fairly harsh and dangerous between settlements and abandoned buildings which often either provide rare resources, dangerous enemies, or both. Hunting and combat is reasonably challenging and bosses are quite difficult to survive if you stumble onto them unprepared. Points of interest dot the semi-randomized map and heavily reward exploration.

The new devs seem competent and very responsive to player concerns and from what I've seen their decisions improve the game in immediate and meaningful ways. Game mechanics tend to be fairly simple but satisfying and rare items are precious and useful. I've been playing on the game's "easy" mode which unlike the "normal" mode doesn't cause you to lose all your skills and tech progression on death. Skills advance fairly quickly through use but upgrading your workshop and shelter requires grinding a lot of materials (mostly ore and leather) and given how quick and brutal combat tends to be I can't recommend it for anyone's first playthrough.

Overall I like where the game is, I like where it's headed, and I'm enjoying the creepy atmosphere and desolate locations.

Despite the simplistic graphics and gameplay, this game has high requirements for acceptable performance.

If you're looking for a stylized cooperative shooter with good optimization, stick with TF2.

This game is so much fun, especially with friends.

There's a bit of a learning curve with crafting and survival (as is common in survival games) but the sheer freedom is addicting.

Grab a friend, set up a zomboid server, and experience my favorite type of zombie apocalypse.

Far, far too long without an update or news from the devs.

The game you see in trailers is nowhere close to the current build, and things are not being added or improved at an acceptable pace.