Recent reviews by IndieFalco64

It's basically like OG STALKER but... newer. Neato story. Fun ride. A fairly immersive world.

Cons;
NPCs literally aimbot and from 300y away
Not sure if Stealth is even working - highly inconsistent if so
Minimal optimization on release... thankfully steam version runs decent compared to microsoft store version but its often rough
Will sometimes crash... esp during a fight with 4 hit and run mutants... super fun
Game's general design is pretty dated
Enemy spawns are awful... like just as bad or worse than Cyberpunk on it's release (cops spawning out of thin air behind you kind of stuff)


It needs a lot more work but it sure is a STALKER game.

There are not enough words and space on any review that can summarize the GREATNESS that Larian Studios has accomplished yet again with another incredible CRPG. Don't forget to check out their Divinity games!
Baldurs Gate 3 isn't just "D&D". It isn't just 'another static camera voiceless cprg' with one particular gimmick poured into it; no no no, BG3 is A GIFT FROM THE GODS THEMSELVES through the incredible minds and hands of the folks at Larian Studios. It's a perfectly ripe adventure, in a crpg format, loosely based on 5th Edition D&D(wizards of the coast), with an incredible story and storytelling format through a large variety of camera angles, voice overs, cutscenes, etc. You've got multiple modes depending on how difficult or easy you want it too. It's just seriously a game made with A LOT OF LOVE and patience. Larian deserves every bit of fame and $$$ they get and thensome. I hope all of the AAA and "AAAA" games continue to quiver and panic over BG3 and it's earned success and incredible production with a miniscule fraction of what greedy half ass "AAAA" need.

I'd recommend exploring every inch of each area and taking as few Long Rests as possible to benefit from the most interactions in one go. Start as The Dark Urge character and enjoy honestly IMO the way it should be played first time around. You can also get a better perspective of each origin character's story with more cutscenes/dialoge/interactions etc if you play as an origin character(ie Astarion/Shadowheart/LaeZel etc). There are a ton of good play throughs and honestly you should do it BLIND on any of them. There is so much discovery and adventure that lay before you with each play.

I'm at 800 hours so far.... and working on another play. This game is TIMELESS, like Ocarina of Time. It's absolutely one of those games that will be hailed for decades.

Hell yeah. For a Prelude lasting 5 hours it was great. Used magic boi on the far right and got hell lucky. Magic Shield so good. 500k damage also so good XD GIMME FULL GAME NOW PLZ. NEED ADDICTION STAT

For Melee... the character farthest to the left - Get a rogue hood, black market adding rogue as extra role, arcanum boots, GOLD everything else, gold dagger(because double attacks and great damage scaling with other gold). SHRED. I had 4300 armor, 780 health, 11,500 attack, a lot of crit bonus, 4 attacks, and always finished each combat in two turns.
For Magic... definitely the character farthest to the right.. arcanum boots/chest, once zephyr piece, a swift black market extra role, MOON everything else. Just stupid strong on it's own.

This game is SO goofy, weird. spooky, and fun. It really does give some good half-life feels and beyond.
Highly recommend playing this with a buddy as you can do some silly stuff and mess with eachother, bu tit also speeds up production a bit!

Game Tips;
* Make at least one of everything. They all have very good uses, besides the Spears - not really a fan of them. Everything else has it's purpose and generally speaking it'll end up being an upgrade even if it does not look like one. They really did make sure nearly every single item you can craft has a specific or generally useful purpose. Stock up on Staplers... someone really loves Staplers from the dev team!
* Water/Food isn't terrible or tough to keep up with. It's nowhere near as drab and necessary as other survival games, but it'll still keep you in check on occasion.
* The perk for drinking tainted water is highly convenient and otherwise just go with whatever class feels good.
* 2H heavy weapons and Shields don't particularly feel great, but there are times where a Shield is the right choice. It feels easier to avoid Shields/2H weapons just to avoid the carry/equipment weight so you can still sprint decently.
* Energy Weapons are so so so so so good. Keep that portable charger as inconvenient as it might seem.
* If you find a Hazmat Suit, just keep it on until you need something different. It pretty much carries you through nearly every harmful environmental status
* Goof around and play the game mostly blind. Absolutely worth it.
* Acquire absolutely everything you possibly can, and know that some items you can find you only need to breakdown at a repair bench to get proper components! Specifically Fire Extinguishers.... gets you Cylinders and Hoses... super important.
* Beat up those Robots... the initial Crossbow you can make goes a looooong way.
* Have fun, be weird with friends :)

So far the game is essentially heavily inspired by Elden Ring and Fable. There are a LOT of similarities from the two, and it's all condensed in it's own unique little way into an ARPG format. The world is beautiful yet depressing(in a good way). The characters are pretty memorable within the story arch and side quests. The cutscenes are absolutely perfect for introductions of bosses, important NPCs, events, etc. The combat is certainly punishing if you are trying to spam things... although there are MANY broken things you can do in the game at this time and once you get past Chapter 2 everything is easier to combat. I haven't done the "gauntlet" portions yet but I've heard GOOD things in terms of challenge. There are performance issues but they're pushing out hotfixes like crazy and doing an amazing job at generally improving those per hotfix/patch. I CANNOT WAIT FOR MORE. Right now in the EA there seems to be a couple of chapters of content, followed by a looping of general combative gameplay for Endgame content. I will safely assume they're going to be adding more eventually but for now that's all we get... Similar to how Baldur's Gate 3 only had the first Chapter available until Release. In the meantime the dev team is pumping out fixes and QoL FAST. Good on them. It's a pleasure to see an EA title care so much and respond so quickly. It's giving me good Larian Studio's kind of vibes for now and that's an amazing thing to see. If you don't want to risk EA, follow the page and wishlist it. It's WORTH waiting.



****Unorganized helpful Tips for New or Current Players****

This game is essentially Elden Ring + Fable in an ARPG format

----You get quite a few Weapon and Armor shards. Find a good weapon or two you enjoy and upgrade them a good 3 times no matter what the tier. Upgrading them beyond that takes a lot of additional materials that may not be common or easy to get. Upgraded to level 3 will feel pretty good regardless. As far as Armor, do whatever feels good and is within your Equipment Load limit (light/normal/heavy) and upgrade those less often as you have 4 armor pieces vs 1 weapon at the start. You'll go through shards too fast otherwise.
----Getting hit will hurt a LOT - so practice those Parrys, Dodges, Blocks, and just plain running around or away from an opponent.
----As you progress through Story quests, you will unlock more and tougher new and older enemies in the world. Be careful out there and enjoy the danger!
----You can chest farm a bit in the beginning of the game, before completing any main story missions. While nothing significant will likely come out of it, usually you'll find different weapons to at least play with and get familiar with! Chests seem to respawn within an hour or so and in the same location as before. Bear in mind that once you complete main story quests, their placement tends to swap around but they still respawn over time.
----Health Regeneration is actually quite helpful, moreso if you can get it on at least 4 pieces of equipment. It saves you using some consumables(hp), and allows you time to recover if you're good at dodging/running and playing defensive for a bit. It's also great at fighting off a lot of DoTs in the game so they don't sneakily slowly kill you without noticing.
----Frost on Weapons seems really solid so far! Enough hits and you get a "pop" of bonus damage. Plus it looks cool!
----Magic seems to be the easier route, much like Elden Ring. If you're struggling with melee or just frustrated, try out Magic! It's a ton of fun, power, and utility! The tricky part can be getting Focus back... unless you stock up on Focus potions!
----Don't hesitate to spread out your stats at first, so you can use multiple melee or magic weapon types!
----Don't always just trash or sell unwanted weapons; The Enchantress can remove a unique rune specific to them that you can put on something else; maybe even a new favorite weapon! (1h to 1h, 2h to 2h, unsure what Dual Daggers can share with but I assume other Dual X weapons). Great examples are damage boosting runes, special attacks that could potentially have iframes, health regen runes, healing runes, repair runes, etc! There are a LOT of runes to play with. Bear in mind that -----Runes DONT stack currently and each rune takes up 1 inventory slot. It's painful to hold on to a bunch until you can make or buy a bunch of dedicated chests in your home.
----Enchanting Armor is generally a good approach if you have the coin for it (1silver). Enchanting Weapons does not feel so good atm as it limits Runes and Gem slotting. I find them to be stronger and more versatile without Enchanting them.
----Most weapons can Backstab for enormous damage in and out of stealth. Out of stealth if you catch an enemies back (almost centered on it) while they're amidst an attack animation, you can usually get a backstab off on them! Same goes for if you do enough Poise damage and they are temporarily stunned.
----Try to keep only 1 stack of 20 per each item type you find other than Wood, Ore, and Clay. You'll need hundreds of those to upgrade the town. I say this because Inventory management can be painful for a while, and once you hit higher Tiers of resources it gets more frustrating.
----Upgrade the town's Smith/Enchantress/Merchant asap. They're probably the most helpful for advancing faster because they will sell the tools you need for higher tier resources, and those tools have higher durability/speed on lower tier resources. They also sell resources equivalent between their Tier and the Resource Tier. The Smithy sells some pretty good armor too, that if you have the coin you can buy a bunch of pieces over and over and enchant them over and over until you can find some decent perk combo. There's still room for a single Gem after too, so you can get bonus health, healing efficiency, or even reduce the armor weight!
----Plague Ichor's you find with important quests or bounties will be what you need to upgrade your character's Inventory or Equipment slots. Personally it feels best to unlock Rings first, then an spare Weapon(you'll have enough stats to spread out by then to be able to make good use of 1-3 different weapons for different occasions, buffs, whatever) slot to start. Your Resources inventory tab is another good one if you don't feel the need for a second weapon... since it probably fills up the fastest.
----Fast way to get Plague Ichor's; Create a new realm, rush the first boss, then walk up to the rookery. Get your first ichor, then go to the bounty guy. Do the weekly quests and get 2 more ichors. Repeat this untill you have unlocked the full inventory.
----There are a lot of really neato Runes.... so keep a few Test Weapons (common so they have up to 4 slots free) around so that you can experiment with them all!
----Be very cautious when dealing with the Enchantress/Merchants or even discarding/selling stuff from your inventory. Items tend to "move" with each transaction and you could sell/discard something you didn't want to as it may appear in the last spot you had selected.
----Plague(purple) items tend to have some really impressive perks and often 4 of them. However they also tend to carry a huge downside. Personally I toss it unless it's "experience loss on death"(this one doesn't feel too bad), reduced experience gain, focus loss on hit, one other I cannot remember, and health reduction(I only allow for ONE of these otherwise HP pool is way too small).
----If you are having performance issues; Make sure to keep your game updated. Trying moving the game to an SSD instead of an HDD or NVME. For now, those seem to help until there are further optimizations done.
----Remember; This is an EARLY ACCESS game. There will be bugs and performance issues for quite some time, and you should keep that in mind while playing. In the mean time, enjoy what it has to offer(for now), and try to provide constructive criticism and ideas to better the experience for us all <3

Pro Tips; If you're on a 1080ti or probably any 10 series, it's not bad at all. If you're on a 30 series or 3080 which seems to be VERY common; you're gonna have a bad time. Try the stuff below and/or cry deeply and wait for updates.

I'm on a 1080ti btw.

Turn off motion blur and vsync (use gsync or freesync instead, seems ok)

COPY PASTA from LEKSER;
UPD: Do this to fix micro-freezing -> Open config file:
%localappdata%\Local\CallistoProtocol\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor\Engine.ini

Add this at the end of the file:
[/script/engine.renderersettings]
r.CreateShadersOnLoad=1

Also try switching to DX11

Game is good, just wait for a patch that will fix DX12 shader-caching issue. Right now shaders cache in real time which causes microfreezing.

Will update with an actual review later. So far it gives me GOOD Dead Space nostalgia/feel. Hopeful

This is probably yet another game from the publisher Devolver and dev Massive Monster where they have absolutely CRUSHED it. I'm only 12 hours in, not even halfway through the game, and enjoying the f**k out of it.

------The art style is gorgeous, and seems to have taken inspiration from Nobody Saves the World and Don't Starve
------The combat is whacky, stressful, and fun and seems to take inspiration from Legend of Zelda (2d versions) and Binding of Isaac
------The follower system is FANTASTIC although they're a little dumb when it comes to farming in general, but they do everything else well. It seems to take some inspiration from Stardew Valley and IDK what else but whew WELL DONE
------The music has a hot beat and fits every single scenario so far in the game. I could listen to each song on repeat for days.
------The difficulty and amount of projectiles/enemies on the screen slowly grows and grows and if you want a legit challenge put it on the hardest setting
------It has a small overworld which I did not expect
------Fishing, gambling game,
------Tons of social options, marriage, requests, surprises AND WEIRD DARK DESIRES TO EAT BOWLS OF POOP WTF from your lovely followers
------Fairly stressful management between taking care of followers, side-activities, decently and having to go out into the world seeking out the other old gods
------TWITCH INTEGRATION TOO?! Seriously brilliant twitch integration design between HAVING YOU CHAT IN YOU CULT WITH THEIR NAMES SHOWING and their own WEIRDLY ACCURATE perks. Are you spying on us? Chat can also pay tribute via channel points and help or hinder you. It's wild (despite their servers getting hammered yesterday)
------Weirdly immersive gameplay, with the overall combination of everything above
------Seriously HOW IS A $25 GAME THIS GOOD POST 2010. HOOOOWWWWWW. I love you. I will now sacrifice myself to the old gods in your name. IT IS TIME TO BECOME ENLIGHT------ **wet squelching** **giant tentacle lunges from a dark portal int he ground** AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH **silence**

Overall Score;
------69/10. Would eat another bowl of poop.

This roguelike is off to a GREAT start. I look forward to updates on it! It has quickly become one of my favorites. Essentially think of Hyperlight Drifter and Dead Cells having a wee baby.

Pros;
*PixelArt is a top tier quality and very smooth so far
*Fun and Challenging at all times
*Some nice Mystery to start
*Punishing and Rewarding at the same time
*Can easily spend hours playing
*Theres a nice balance of skill and pure luck

Cons;
*A lot of missing SFX
*Fist Weapons don't seem to have any good use besides coolness and lack skills upgrades
*There are some weapon effects that aren't written correctly or simply don't function at all

Everything about this game is fantastic and really hits home for pixel art, roguelikes, and procedurally generated dungeon crawling; minus one of the updates where they removed dual wielding the same item. Garbage choice and it takes some fun/options away. Everything else is stellar.

Pretty slick dungeon crawling FPS roguelike. It stays fairly challenging the entire time but gets a little easier once more talents are unlocked. Definitely recommend this one. Only 3 Maps, each with 3 to 4 stages(ignoring empty starting area). Best played with 4 total people on Elite.
Despite being yet another Early Access... which I despise... it has amazing potential. It feels like the child of Risk of Rain 2 and Immortal Redneck. I cant wait to see more content and challenges hopefully along the lines of Dead Cells.