Recent reviews by Rockatansky

Game's fun but the servers are horrible. Can't even start the game half of the time and can't join other players at all. They didn't bother to take care of the servers but they did make sure that microtransactions work from day 1! :|

This is my second review for this game as the first one I wrote was probably a bit too early and not very serious (it's now deleted as it was a positive review). The first impression with the game was really good but now I've put around 30hrs into the game and there's some stuff I have to rant about.

Let's start with the good stuff. There's not too much of it and it's nothing revolutionary so I'll just keep it short:

• Racing is mostly fun (with some exceptions that I will mention later)
  
• Tons of cars
  
• Quite a lot of customization options (you can share your design with others)
  
• The new 'drawn' style graphics is a cool idea
  
• You can customize your character

Now the BAD stuff. In more detail as there's much more to talk about.

• The thing that strikes you first like a wet rag in the face is the atrocious soundtrack. Just do yourself a favor and turn the music volume to 0% and turn on your favorite Spotify playlist instead before you even start playing the game.
  
• Second thing you start to notice after a short while is the terrible voice acting and dialogues that make you cringe every single time. Listening to Justicia shout "I hope you're gonna be a CHAAAALLEEENGE" every single race makes me want to smash my head on the desk. The annoying fake accent doesn't help either (which is the same for other characters too).
  Same goes to the chase helicopter operator who sounds like a bratty highschool girl. Overall it looks like the game was designed about 'cool' 20-year olds by 40-year olds who are completely out of touch with reality to sell it to 13 year olds.
  
• Some of the big brands are missing in the game. A lot of them are listed in other reviews but as an Audi fan I was especially disappointed that there's not a single Audi car in the game.
  
• Not all race types are not fun and some feel more like a chore. 'Overtake' is a mix between drifting and some kind of demolition race where you win if you get the highest score. Sounds original but it's rather more annoying than fun.
  I find drift races especially bad as I can't get a hang of it (had no problems in any previous NFS) and lose too much speed while entering a drift. I simply avoid those events in the game for now. From what I've seen many other people have been complaining about this too.
  
• Now the cherry on the top of this cake. The ♥♥♥ police chases. Almost every race ends up in a police chase and it's not fun or even challenging. It's just boring, repetitive and incredibly annoying. You spend more time on running from the police or avoiding them than actually on racing and all you get as a reward is $2500 per chase on lvl 5 which is nothing. And don't even get me started on the lvl5 police pick-up trucks that are faster than a Lambo and hit harder than a tank.

Almost all of the negative points above are annoying but you could live with them and still enjoy the game but the police chase mechanic just breaks the game for me. I even resorted to using a trainer so I can turn off police spotting and reinforcements inbetween the races. Despite that, I still can't force myself to play the game longer than 1, maybe 2 hours at a time. I will probably finish it but just because I paid the full price and can't return it anymore.

TL;DR: The game pretends to be cool but in reality it's a cringe fest packed with unnecessary police chases.

This game would be a masterpiece without the DnD stuff which is incredibly annoying and makes literally no sense for someone who has never played a DnD game. The system needs much more explanation in-game, otherwise it feels like the game keeps punishing you for no reason.

CONS:

1. Combat:
- I really hate the idea of splitting it into attack/action, bonus action and movement instead of just having action points. If you're playing a melee character, you can attack only once even if you were right next to the enemy at the round start and that's all unless you have the extra skill which allows you an extra action but then again, this still can be used only once until your next rest.
- Most of the fights feel mundane as you always are at a huge disadvantage and outnumbered. It seems that the only way to win is to always get the high ground and keep pushing the enemies off if the try to get on your level, not much room left for creativity.
- Your hit chance very often is below 50% for no apparent reason, even if the enemy is not higher than you and you're not standing in difficult terrain. Another strange thing is that in many combats you will keep missing even though you have 70% chance to hit.
- The skills/spells are no fun and don't give you much of additional dmg/advantage given that you can use 2-3 skills in a battle and then you have to go rest to your camp. It also feels like they are not so useful and don't allow for fun combos unlike divinity 2. Yes, I know it's a different game but you can't help the comparisons since both games are made by the same people and they even look exactly the same.
- More difficult battles are completely unrewarding as most of the time after defeating your enemies you will find crappy gear and very little gold. I saved a gnome from a bunch of bad guys and I was rewarded with literally 6 gold from his secret stash. Other time I fought a huge bunch of some flying demons for 30min and as a reward got literally NOTHING.
In general, the combat is a huge downgrade compared to divinity 2.

2. Game progression:
- So far I've put almost 40hrs into this game and I have reached lvl 4 (currently max lvl) and the best gear after around 10hrs into the game. After those 10hrs everything I do feels pointles as I can't progress my characters or get any better gear. Winning difficult battles or doing side quests is extremely unrewarding and disappointing at this point as I'm not only not getting any new skills but the gear/gold rewards are also a huge disappointment.
- Spells system is very confusing as it seems that you can only select a few spells per level and then you are stuck with those spells until next lvl up...
- Camp system is quite annoying and doesn't seem to add anything to the game. It feels like it's forced upon the player in order to progress some of the main story. Otherwise it just means that you have to keep visiting the camp pretty much after every battle if you want to keep using your spells in next fights and heal up without wasting all your health potions or eating a ♥♥♥♥ ton of fruits and potatoes which heal for 1-2hp each.

PROS:
Pretty much everything else is great about this game.
- Character creation provides a LOT of different options so you can finally create your dream elf waifu (I know I did)
- The world is HUGE, even thought only 1st act out of 3 is available at this point
- Great soundtrack, sometimes sounds like recycled divinity 2 tracks but that's ok
- Interesting story and a lot of additional side quests

It obviously is full of occasional bugs and glitches but that's normal for early access game and I'm pretty sure all will be fixed until final release.

At this point I do not recommend this game unless you're a fun of DnD stuff. Otherwise the unpleasant combat system which is a huge step back compared to D2 and amount of bugs will put you off.

10/10

It does struggle with occasional crashes, bugs and fps drops but hopefully this will get fixed in future patches.
Managed to finish the game despite the problems above and I have to say it's one of the best RPG games in recent years.
Huge + for great soundtrack.

Good stuff - fun gameplay, great soundtrack.

Bugged just as the reguler game, lots of missions don't even register.

Only around 2hrs of gameplay but seems like a pretty cool game.

Graphics are nice (although that's not important in this kind of game, right?), pretty thorough tutorial at the beginning, which is very helpful for a simulator newbie like myself.

At the current stage this game is a bugged, lagging pile of trash.

90% of the time I don't know if I died to some cheater shooting through the walls or because of the ♥♥♥ terrible de-sync.

Instead of fixing the servers and all the bugs, the devs focus on adding ♥♥♥♥♥♥ stuff like weather effects that nobody likes nor cares about.

€30 is a price for a finished product, not this "early access" piece of sh*t.

EDIT:
So after almost 11 months from my first review, this game is still garbage. Two examples just from today (yes, this is an angry review):

1. I spot a guy standing still, I line up for an easy headshot with Kar98, press LMB...BOOM A FREAKING LAG. I miss, he responds with 3 shots and I'm dead :|
2. I get a drop nearby, no one else in sight , I run to it, smash that tab button to get my shiny lvl 3 helmet with AWM annddd...THE GAME CRASHES.

I really like this game for the BR mode and its "realistic" gameplay but after being officially released like half a year ago, it's still a steaming pile of crap.
Now I'm just counting days until a similar game which is actually finished product comes out so I can leave this failure of a game behind.

Don't buy it, they do not deserve even half of the money that they made on this game.

13hrs into the game, haven't finished even 50% and I think I'm done with it.

Negatives:

- extremely repetetive gameplay*
- poor graphics
- texture glitches
- 30 fps
- bugged quests**
- non cinematic dialogues between characters are just painful to watch

*Each mission is basically telling you to go kill some guys so you can kill another guy and then you can go kill the next guy and take the area from him. Then you can give the area to one of your mafia bosses friends. Same crap over and over again.

**One of the side quests is telling me to go steal a boat loaded with weed but there's actually no boat at the place. Seen some other people having similar issues.


Positives:

+ great soundtrack
+ storyline is not bad (at least at the beginning)


I know there are some patches on the way that will fix the fps lock and maybe some of the other issues but I don't recommend this game at all, mainly due to the boring gameplay.
I pre-ordered the Digital Deluxe edition for 70€ and that's the worst money I ever spent.
It seems that the developers put so little effort into the PC version of this game that I wouldn't even pay 20€, better wait until it's on a huge sale if you really want to play this game.

Some might say we had too high expectations for this game but well...it's 2016 and we've played MUCH better games that weren't hyped nearly as much as this game by its developers/publishers.