Recent reviews by Kaktuszfüge

The game starts out strong: Leon returns, needs to find a girl, there's weird cult and a small village with creepy undeadish people. The game is scary and oozes atmosphere. Looks great and runs amazingly 95% of the time.

However as it goes on it becomes stupider and stupider. The dialogues become 90's B action movie slop, especially Leon's. The story is empty, jumps back and forth between "Find the girl"/"Escort the girl" while literally nothing else happens. The big bad is only seen in the last 1 hour who has the most generic motivations and plans ever. The horror quickly disappears and transitions into a Micheal Bay movie, except it's dull. The upgrade system feels out of place and dumb: farm some zombies to pay 100000 pesos to the teleporting magic man to put 4 more bullets into the magazine/chamber. Don't mind the weapon model never changes. RE2 weapon upgrades were better and organic. Astoundingly all boss fights are terribly boring and a chore to fight. And nothing screams "immersive survival horror" more than yellow paint on interactable stuff and constant shoot outs with waves of enemies spawning at the edge of map. Oh, and somehow the controls are clunkier than in RE2Remake and RE3Remake.

The game is already on the "Chris punching a boulder to move it" level of dumb. RE2 is superior to this in every way.

AutoAim cannot be turned off even with MK/B. As you progress you face more enemies which you cannot target precisely leading to frustration where spells go not to your cursor but to a random enemy the game decided. Game is virtually unplayable if your build relies on precise targeting (especially during leveling since you don't clear packs in 0,5 s).

Nah.

PvE is entirely designed around PvP, making it practically trash. I could never finish this game in my 3 playthroughs that I attempted in EA and at release, because how incredibly flawed the PvE is and how grindy and dull it becomes as you progress towards the end.

Because of PvP:
PvE progression is linear and incredibly boring.
You gain power in the most uninteresting way, like getting new gear increases your physical damage by 3!! But don't worry, most of your abilities scale below with 1.0 multiplier, so the damage in the skill you are getting is more like 1-1.2. For hours of progression. Amazing!
Your most important stat is *gear level*. Not HP, not generic damage%, no. Gear level dictates how much damage you do and enemies to you. That's all. It's terrible. It was fun in WoW, surely it's fun here. /s
Some QoL are missing, like crafting from nearby chests. Why? Because of PvP. Devs themselves said it. Yay.
Even if you play PvE only solo, these design decisions linger and eat up the experience.

Also, there is nothing RPG-y about this game. It has stats that are practically meaningless, different gear that do ever so slightly different things that do not actually matter in combat. Mechanically everything is sound, yet when basic enemies can stun you for 4-5 seconds and your longest stun is <1 second then you know you are not getting any of the "Vampire Lord RPG" power fantasy the game promises.

The one and only pro:
Base building is amazing, hence my hours. It's very easy, convenient and forgiving to build stuff. You can make some amazing looking multilevel castles with themed rooms and such.

I'm rewriting this after a couple dozen hours. Not recommended at all. The combat, the skill trees, the classes, the early maps are great! It has fully offline mode as well. However the game is still pretty much 0.9. The issues are:

• Despite being called 1.0, the campaign is literally unfinished. It ends abruptly and randomly, then you are thrown into the end game. Some 2D cutscenes were added since EA, but the story is unfinished. We were told that with 1.0 the story would be complete. Where is it?
  
• As I said, early maps are great. They look pretty, fun to explore. Later maps are dull and it's clear the first few chapters received the most attention.
  
• The game has absolutely awful visual gear progression. Many legendaries have NO unique 3D models! (I equipped a badass helmet on my rogue only for it turn into a generic leather helmet... yay...) At lvl ~75 my character looks like a lvl1 ♥♥♥♥ shoveling peasant. No transmog system aside from the paid cosmetics that you CANNOT use in offline mode. It seems they deliberately made gear look bad so you buy cosmetics. It's understandable in PoE, which is F2P, it's not ok here.
  
• End game is dull and have not been improved since EA even though feedback was given that it is lacking.
  
• Some interfaces have not been improved (like respeccing), despite them saying 2 years ago (!) that they will redo them. They are clunky and cumbersome to use.
  
• Performance issues for some people. For almost everyone in the end game.
  
• Launched with severe server issues

It seems that they are launching this as a Live Service game (that is still the same game as it was in 0.9 with 2 more specs added) despite this being never communicated. A shame, because the core gameplay would be fun.

The game constantly stuttered on my computer. It was genuinely unplayable. For comparison I've played the Last of Us Part 1 on launch on 4k, 50-60 FPS, no issues.

Fun at first, but as you get into the harder difficulties it just becomes annoying and tedious as the game loves spamming AoE-s that you need to dodge out of. Around mid difficulties not only your *whole* screen is red due to hundreds of attacks that you need to avoid, but about half of your map as well since bosses have insane range on their attacks.

Shame because it can be a really fun Horde Survival at its core.

One of the best Monster Collecting game I've ever played, with great monster designs, art, soundtrack (albeit kinda repetitive), combat and a unique gimmick (fusing ANY two monsters into one temporarily). Character building is insanely flexible. Combined with ~30 hours of story then additional (kinda grindy) post story content the game is easily worth its cost. There's then a bunch of achievement to hunt for additional 'content' if you are into that.

Negatives:
Performance is weird, there are a lot of (short) loading screens, and I have a lot of stutters everytime I launch the game and do something specific (open a menu, capture a monster, etc). This is on a computer that handled the Last of Us remake in 1440p, on High-Ultra with barely any issues. However due to the nature of the game, it does not affect the gameplay, it's just annoying.

Very much recommended!

I like everything about this game: platforming, turn based combat, build variety, monster collecting, pixel graphics. At least I should like everything. In reality I've found everything in this game to be uninspired and uninteresting. I've played almost 7 hours and there was nothing that kept me engaged in the game.

Don't get me wrong, the game is not bad. It's just incredibly nondescript.

Short summary: I'm actually very torn on this one as the game is of many extremes. The weak parts are very annoying, while the good parts are quite amazing. Overall, I really enjoyed my time with the game yet can't recommend it at full price. My reasons are below:

• The gameplay, which is basically a mix of Slay the Spire with XCOM style combat (with most of XCOM's RNG removed) in a 3D arena. You control a squad of 3 heroes who each have their own decks. Cards/abilities are fun, combat gets deeper as you progress.
  
• A customizable main hero with a light/dark morale system (not entirely relevant as it does not affect the story, mostly just some different dialogue options and deck builds).
  
• Lots of playable characters, well paced unlocking of them, well defined gameplay theme of each.
  
• Multiple difficulties that allow you to pick one that is most suitable to you, increasing rewards with each one.
  
• Sometimes a bit clunky, but overall a well readable UI, which is a huge step up over XCOMs (if you played one, you know you *had* to use a few mods just to read HPs and stuff).

• Graphics - mixed bag. Characters out of combat in their casual clothing look genuinely horrible. XCOM2's randomly generated characters look better than the heroes of Marvel[imgur.com]. Yet during fights, the game can look absolutely gorgeous. Visual effects are nice, debri remain on the battlefield during the whole fight making it look very battletorn by the end of each encounter. In their combat suits most heroes look great.
  
• Dialogue heavy - Expect Mass Effect amounts of dialogue, without the level of writing of ME. See cons.
  
• Voice acting - characters are voiced by some of the best VAs in the industry: Yuri Lowenthal, Briam Bloom and Steve Blum who has been voicing Spider-Man, Captain America and Wolverine respectively for decades. Laura Bailey, Nolan North and Jennifer Hale industry veterans are present as well among many others. Yet due to how the dialogue is written even their great performance cannot save it from falling short and sounding weird.
  
• Lot of unlockable cosmetics - 95% of the game cosmetics are unlockable through gameplay without unnecessary grinding, which is great. But 50-80% of these cosmetics are low effort (Captain America with a green/gray/whatever filter over him). There are some however that are fun as they are based on the comics.
  
• Lots of unnecessary bloat - There is explorable area around your hub where you can run around with your main character who moves like a geriatric. The area also features some very light Metroidvania-style exploration. There's also gathering ingredients for crafting. Occasionally useful in combat, ignorable mostly, totally boring to do.
  
• All heroes have a Midnight Sun combat suit, which are obtainable after a doing a hero's unique challenge. While they are mostly fun to do, it feels like there were some side story supposed to be around them, but got cut.
  
• There's a NewGame+, however it is very barebones as card unlocks and explorations have to be done again (and these are the most chore-like part of the game).
  

• Performance - generally awful. Frequent crashes. 3070Ti struggling in 1440p with DLSS. RTX is barely noticable but multiplies the frequency of crashes, kills performance. The 2k launcher murder performance for no reason.
  
• Writing - this is a big one. Some of the dialogues are written incredibly amateurish. The character writing is also just very... off. Off in the sense that most of them feel like they were written by someone who barely knows these characters. The main story is also generic, however it's presented well enough to care for it. There are some very weird story beats especially at the end of the game (characters mentioning events that never got talked about or referring to things that I did not do according them, yet I did).
  
• Overall pacing - After a fight you can spend about an hour talking with the randos, exploring as they unlock after each fight. The conversations and exploring are skippable, however they are very recommended to do as they do affect the gameplay. Also become necessary to do if you plan to do play on any other difficulty than the base one.
  
• Yet another full priced AAA game that launched with MTX skins. No lootboxes, you can buy skins for 3 Euros each. Some skins are available for free via promo codes. Some skins are part of the story, yet they are unobtainable via normal gameplay, only through purchase (also included in the season pass, but WTF). But this is on top of the below point.
  
• A FIFTY (50!) Euro season pass. This includes 4 characters, 2 to be released as of writing this. One characer, Venom, is featured heavily in the story as an antagonist, with many abilities of his own. Yet to play him you have to purchase him (even though he was developed with the initial game thus should be part of the main game).
  The season pass aside from the characters, add some character specific gameplay unlocks, all currently available skins and some barely different mission type. It also adds 3 story missions per season pass hero. It DOES NOT add more cards/abilities to base game's characters. It DOES NOT add meaningfully different mission type (which the game sorely needs by the way). In short: it does nothing to expand the base game, just bloat it.
  
• With new heroes relased there are some things that get patched, however there are ZERO information about it as there are no patch notes.

So why do I have more than 100 hours of playtime? Because the gameplay is engaging and fun. That was enough to tolerate the weaknesses. While the writing is weak, there are some great character moments and dialogues. And as you spend time with the heroes you grow to like them and care for them.

I'd love to see more of this via an expansion (NOT a season pass) or a sequel, but it needs less bloat, better writing, better mission variety and production value among other things.

I'd recommend this game if it were 30 or 40 Euros/Dollars, but 60+50 €/$ is honestly ridiculous, so I'm setting this review at "Not Recommended" in hopes that Firaxis will do better next time.

Copying my review from MH: Rise and adding additional bits at the bottom.

Monster Hunter RIse/Sunbreak is a good game, however I can't recommend it due to CAPCOM's business tactics:

• Delayed release on PC so players doubledip on Switch and PC.
  
  
• Launched with bunch of MTX
  
  
• Major graphical downgrade compared to MH: World/Iceborne due to Switch. Some PC enchancements were broken (like resolution scaling) for months.
  
  
• PC version is low effort. UI elements are low res, no UI scaling, no FOV slider. Multiplayer is region locked. Monster have their tracking based on framerate (Search for "Does MHR (Ver.3.8.0) have better tracking at high FPS?")
  
  
• Game was unfinished at release: the END of the story wasn't in the game, low amount of monsters compared to previous games. Later released Title Updates brought the actual ending, missing monster then as a bonus, Valstrax
  
  
• No significant Title Updates other than the cut content and Valstrax. One of the main strengths of the MH games are the good post launch support with monsters, fun event quests
  
  
• Lackluster event quests with forgetable rewards (chat stickers, poses for characters). Previous games offered unique weapons, layered armor (transmog) and unique quests
  
  
• Launched full price (60 euros), despite it being unfinished, having MTX, significantly downgraded graphically, lack of post launch support except the missing content and having a delayed release as well.

• Launched with bunch of MTX
  
  
• Actual end game was missing on launch. #1 problem with the base game that it had no end game. An already released Title Update fixed that.
  
  
• A coming TU (Sept 29th) is bringing weapons transmog to the game (which was already in Iceborne, so should have been in this game since base Rise by default), which will also bring MTX weapons skin pack that are priced around ~15Euro/USD. These skins are significantly higher effort than anything in the game. The game that cost 100 Euros/USD so far.

• Title Update 2 (my previous bullet point) introduced a cosmetic weapon pack along with Title Update 3 that brought an additional set. These cost 35 euros (for all weapons/set)! Rise OR Sunbreak costs 40 euros. 70 euros of weapon transmog so far that has been free updates in previous games. Counting additional cosmetic DLC (while not counting the deluxe editions) the game has around 400 Euro/USD of cosmetic DLC. Edit: Buying them in a bundle costs 14 Euro/Set, buying them indiviually costs 35 Euro/set.
  
  CAPCOM is trying to bleed the Monster Hunter players dry with more and more anticonsumer tactics even though all of their games sold well and continue to sell better and better as they Rise (pun!) in popularity with each game. I'm not recommending this to anyone purely due to CAPCOM's greed.
  
  If you are looking to experience Monster Hunter then buy World & Iceborne; they are cheaper, finished, arguably better and have atleast 100-200 hours of content.