Recent reviews by SilentSalem

At first the game seems incredibly cool. A slew of weapons and tools available to you to wreak destruction, cinematic graphics even on low settings, and a large semi-sandbox mission design are a really cool combo. But it's really torn down by the lack of meaningful playtesting.

The loadout options have the same issue that EDF has always had - so many cool ideas just thrown into the game without concern for whether they are equally viable, effectively making *lower* difficulties the only way to have fun with all of the game's offerings and *higher* difficulties forcing you into a thinner and thinner bracket of freedom. The end result is a fun game while you are learning, that soon becomes less fun the better you get - not because it gets too easy, but because it just changes into something else, something smaller. It unintentionally punishes getting better, and you can't just un-better yourself.

The game is also very unintuitive regarding its teamwork incentives. Non-VC communication options are insufficient, text chat is discouraged in a game as overwhelming with enemies as this, and the whole game just isn't designed with clear indications of how players can synergize together at all, especially given the builds being open ended and not bound to class roles. This game has convinced me that extraction shooters without class restrictions simply do not work unless you're playing with friends; when playing without such restrictions on each player's role making their exact purposes and opportunities clear, there simply isn't room for the communication required to work as a team.

This compounds on the first problem; most of the players who know what they're doing are all consolidated on the higher difficulties, making playing the game as a skillful player even MORE restricted to higher difficulties. You have to do so, simply to avoid the frustration of playing a game with newer randoms when said game does not give them clear methods of teamwork at the outset.

This all leads to the very rare occurrence when I find it justifiable to play a game for a hundred hours and *then* rate it negatively. Because it's actually good up to that point when you get good at it, and then the poor playtesting and design choices result in the game effectively killing itself. The only saving grace being playing with friends, and only with friends. But that's not a quality that will save a game for me.

PS: performance issues are present and the framerate is literally *impossible* to get stable, no matter what settings you use. I have a fairly beefy PC by the standards of the time of this writing, and on lowest settings I cannot see any tangible increase in FPS or mediation of the huge rises and falls in FPS between different maps, on ultra and on lowest graphics settings. But these issues do not kill the game, and given the particular graphical style of the game, don't actually make it harder to play or super noticeable in the heat of battle. So this is a problem for some more picky gamers, but not a true inhibition on the game itself.

If you're hoping for just around 50-60 hours of gameplay in a game you will *never* play again with the same experiences, this is a safe investment. If you want the option to enjoy playing it *more* than that and have friends with which to play it, this is as safe an investment as your security in those friendships lasting. If you want anything else, you're better off buying a different game of the same subgenre.

FOOTNOTE: There's a lot of jackasses and trolls in this community. Unlike a game like DRG, where clear in-game communication methods and a general cohesiveness of teamwork make it much less likely for trolls to crop up or find an easy platform for their nonsense, this game's got a good number of them. For instance, I've run into multiple occasions now where a host kicks members as soon as the extraction shuttle lands to try to deny them rewards for mission completion. It doesn't work, of course, but I don't really expect people who find frustrating others to be fun, would employ the intelligence it takes to expect anti-troll implementations in modern multiplayer games. The game is also just rampant with uncontrollably teamkilling arsenal options, which don't put fault for team kills directly on a player, but do incentivize a lot of teammate-on-teammate anger. I don't think it's *necessary* for a coop game to try to avoid things that might incentivize anti-cooperation (although it certainly has proven a good quality in many coop games), but once again, CLEAR COMMUNICATION OPTIONS go a long way, and in this case they would have resolved the issues that arise from such frequent gameplay accidents. Instead, the problems remain.

Let's do some simple math.
TL;DR: Looks slightly worse than its predecessor that came out 7 years ago when both are at max settings, and yet performs at 1/3 of the rate.

I could get a stable 144 FPS in World. I get 44-62 FPS in Wilds, generally around 50 FPS. Mostly high and medium settings, disabling any bells and whistles like Ray Tracing (unless they somehow improved FPS, which DLSS did). For reference, I had everything on max settings in World.

144, my World FPS, divided by 3 = 48 fps. Two frames shy of my approximate Wilds average of 50 FPS.

For all intents and purposes, Wilds LITERALLY runs 1/3 as well as its 7-year-old predecessor, AKA THREE TIMES WORSE, with a very slight graphical downgrade.
It should, in theory, run slightly *better*, or otherwise around the same if there's a few little graphical improvements I just never noticed even on max settings, which are offset by a lower overall texture resolution than World. The massive disconnect between an improvement from the baseline of World and the actual FRACTION of that baseline that Wilds performs at is technologically impressive in the *worst* way possible; it's impressive they failed that hard.

I discourage any from getting invested in this game until later performance patches or unless their PC is overpowered by current market standards. The performance significantly disables the fluidity of the combat experience that is ultimately a huge part of what makes the Monster Hunter combat system enjoyable in the first place.

One of the PS4's best games. Looting and human vs human combat is a bit basic and can get old after the first 20 hours, stealth is fun but totally optional past a certain point when you get strong enough, but the horde combat is exceptional, unique, and never gets old. Campaign feels really really long, but I've done two playthroughs now (once on PS5) and it always keeps my interest up through the end.

Story is good, not great. This game is essentially open world TLOU but somewhat more anger, somewhat less depression. The characters are strong, but could be stronger. The story does run a bit longer than its characters or complexity demands.

6/10
Average hack and slash combat, but well refined. Good optimization, little to no bugs, fairly smooth feel. Nothing particularly new or innovative about it; it's just more of the same old from the genre but a step above other "average" hack and slashes in that it is well refined. Doesn't feel like a college student's Unity asset flip.

Story is an absolute mess. Not because of an overly ambitious plot, but because it succumbs to a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ anime writing trend of inventing new lore when you need a new *plot* point - rather than establishing rules for the world from the getgo, the writers reserve their right to make it up on the fly in order to extend the runtime of the game, throw in a pseudo-plot twist (which isn't a twist because you never knew you were supposed to expect the opposite - again, you didn't know the rules), etc. The end result is, for example, a final boss that extends from one boss, to two, to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ three - one after another - with each one seeming like it's the last. Eventually it just gets tiresome having so many asspulls thrown at you.

That said, story isn't typically the strong suit of a hack and slash, so overall, the game is decent. Outstays its welcome in terms of runtime by a few hours. Definitely worth it on sale. Current price (-85%) is a steal.

One of the best soulslikes currently amongst the genre. Any substantial performance and balancing issues (what caused the original mixed reviews) have been voided by the first 6 months of updates, and for some reason they still release patches after that was accomplished.

This game is innovative enough to set itself apart in the genre but not so innovative that it kills what made its foundation great. A lot of the criticism this game got was a classic example of bullying the new kid on the block. Another iteration of the "you're not fromsoft" nonsense. Listen, guys, if we're ever gonna get a better game than Dark Souls, we gotta quit the Miyazaki d!ckr!ding, aight?

After beating the game on patched settings, I played it again on the pre-patch settings, AND ADDED several more difficulty settings that were later introduced (e.g. original enemy density + less vestiges + etc. etc.) and it was plenty balanced. I'd looked through months of reviews and community posts trying to figure out why people felt like it wasn't, and every time it looked like I'd gotten close to a real reason, the ugly "you're not fromsoft" comparison came up again. Honestly, the original dark souls was way less balanced than this game is. I'm a major slut for Fromsoft and I gotta admit, this game's got way more polish than the vast majority of non-Armored Core games they have made.

Seriously, the main problem I have with this game is that it's not hard ENOUGH. I want MORE difficult bosses. Well, that and the enemy variety - but it's not so limited that it gets old by the time you beat it, so it's not much of a problem unless you intend on beating the game more than two or three times. But on the subject of difficulty, anyone who isn't a souls vet will find it plenty challenging, and those who are will have varying mileage.

It's much more cinematic than a lot of soulslikes are, and I love that, because the genre's difficulty and combat mechanics really do open games up to spectacle and action-storytelling, but this opportunity is often ignored. Not LOTF. I'm a sucker for the cinematic and aesthetic elements of soulslikes, it's one of the strong points of the genre, and LOTF nails every bit of it. Music, landscape designs, character designs, story motifs, all of it is on point and not lacking at all in consistent presence of atmosphere. That's a lot more than most soulslikes can say, to be honest, and it's refreshing not least because of that.

That said, do not expect as much of a boss-fighter as something like Sekiro, which makes a very strong emphasis on the uniquity and durability of its bosses. This game is more about the overall journey than the duels that take place with particular enemies therein. The combat itself - which is not all there is to the game, as they invented mechanics to allow for genuinely fun world traversal, unlike certain founding figures in the genre (looking at you Fromsoft) - is a bit generic to the genre, lacking the nuance and refinement that turns bosses into delicate duels, so instead the focus of the combat is a bit more towards horde-slaying. Especially in Umbral. There's cool bosses, but none are super in-depth.

If you look really, REALLY closely at the title, you'll find a little secret that a lot of early players seemed to have missed: this game is not Dark Souls. It is, in fact, called "Lords of the Fallen." Not "Dark Souls."

PS: the soundtrack is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ INCREDIBLE. As an audiophile, I'd have paid a hundred bucks just to get a part two of this album.

Gold

Gold

Best survival horror game ever made, even today, a decade after release. The psychological horror of games like Outlast may be greater, but the sheer scare factor of a pursuer AI so advanced it's never been topped combined with top tier sound design and excellent gameplay design choices* is truly unmatched and makes it better on a gameplay level than the alternatives. Because of the extremely dynamic and unpredictable nature of the Alien's AI (as well as Survivor mode being a thing), the game also has an unusual amount of replayability for this genre. I'm nearly at 100 hours at the time of this review (one playthrough is 14-20 hours long), and I've heard from people that have gone up to 1000 from base game + playing around with sandbox mods (OpenCAGE).

*limited gadgets which would otherwise trivialize stealth, no lethal options against the primary pursuer, presence of unkillable and killable enemies in same environment forcing you to find an escape if you resort to noisy killing methods, interconnected map that grows with each mission, etc.

The game presently has performance issues, but is playable on my (admittedly above-average) PC. At the lowest I get 30 fps, and I can regularly expect 50-60 fps outside of towns.

It retains all the "silliness" charm of the original, as well as the strangely uncommon inclusion of physics/throwing objects/climbing mechanics that made the original stand out. It has some new bosses which was very welcome, and variety of lesser enemies is not particularly different from the original, though boss variety is noticeably lower. :(

That said, the game badly needs balancing improvements. The lesser enemies can be one-shot in NG+, I don't care - what sucks is that some of the non-story bosses can die in less than a minute by the time I get 2/3 through my first playthrough. I considered the original to be a stepping stone to Dark Souls for early-teenage me, and this game is far from that. It's just too easy. It lacks the desperation and the epicness that came with it which the first game was filled with. Endgame and NG+ are lacking in the surge in difficulty and the abundance of farming/boss-rushing that could be seen in the Everfall and BBI in the first game, which was a big disappointment to me. They went hard on world and quest design, giving the mid-game content a huge boost compared to the original, but it came at the cost of the post-game content that gave subsequent runs of the first game an actual incentive that lasted me hundreds of hours.

The original's difficulty made for a very unique experience of repeatedly being stranded on a long journey against insurmountable foes, and this game has that for a while, but never as strong and eventually it just stops happening. With that as my biggest draw to the series, I consider this game an 8/10 compared to the first being an absolute 11/10.

They did well to make an ending boss battle(s) that reflects the apocalyptic sense of direness of the first game, but failed to build up to it how the first one did, which ends up once again reducing the epic factor of it all. That said, they did actually add to the story of the original, and just like the original, there's lots of people saying this is lacking in interesting story elements, far enough to say it's just a reboot. And once again like the original, the intrigue of the story is hinted at for most of the game, and becomes fascinatingly abundant in post-game.

This IS a direct sequel, there's actually evidence of the world from the first game if you pay attention, and the addition of new lore to the cosmology that made the first game so damn cool and interesting is very much present. The whole game takes emphasis OFF the Dragon this time around, switching it to the Dragon species as a whole and gives a new cosmological importance to the Brine, which was a very interesting turn and led to some cool revelations about the cosmology that fans have been begging to understand more of since the end of the original. Overall, though, the story was less clear on its cosmological implications than the original, and some have speculated (based on fan translations of the Japanese version) that this is largely due to loss in translation to English. So maybe the story holds up better for Japanese players.

To summarize the gameplay, the combat is more refined and overall just a more fun version of the original (which is hard to do and I'm very happy with the result), with a few vocations switched out to keep it fresh for returning players, but it is unfortunately a much easier game than the original and lacks in the post-game content that made the original last so damn long. The performance issues I have faith will be ironed out in the coming months, but the balancing I'm not so sure. I hope they make it as hard as the original, it doesn't seem like they INTENDED for it to be easier, but at its release state it absolutely is.

At the very least, I just hope they add something like Bitterblack Isle in a title update or DLC, because a long-lasting endgame that is far more difficult than the story content could be easily added to this game as-is, and wouldn't really be much of a departure from the formula of the original. And considering that might take a while, they could easily add a NG+-exclusive Hard Mode like the original did. All it takes is numbers tweaking and possibly replacing some spawns with gore-variants. That's it, and if it were truly hard enough, it would add another 80 hours for me.

They could have easily done away with everything that made the original unique, and they didn't, and I'm overjoyed at this. But it seems they accidentally overpowered us, so while it's better than the original for most of your first playthrough, it becomes evidently worse by the end, and is clearly not a very replayable game, far unlike the original. NG+ has just made me want to play the Everfall and BBI from the original for another 200 hours, rather than continue to play this, even though the combat is better here. I really hope Capcom doesn't abandon this game, and adds more content to it like they did the first game.

PS: remember when Itsuno said DD1 was an unfinished game, and DD2 at release "feels" like the finished version of his "vision?"
DD2 has a bigger map and more quests, but no endgame, far fewer bosses AND non-boss enemies, and has effectively deleted the notice board that made the Monster Hunter elements readily accessible in the original even before the Everfall. This "vision" is a bigger game but with less of everything that isn't quests/map size, and vocations (the latter of which are equal in content). The vastly improved capacity for exploration in this game is a huge advantage over the original, and yet... at the end it lacks something that made the original last for hundreds of hours even with a tiny little world that felt more like a playground than a playing field.
I stan DD1, it was just as much a game as this, and it went above and beyond that with post-game.

The game is built around slow and steady progression (for both functional and cosmetic reward), and manages to keep you playing long enough to see the end of it (or temporary end, as there is now a free battlepass to keep the playerbase enticed) through the randomization of maps and the increasing variety of mission types, as well as the vast array of builds for each of the four classes. Two primaries and two secondaries (as of next update, anyway) for each dwarf, each with a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of lootable overclocks that totally change how you use the gun, and on top of that there's the class specific traversal tools and all the skill perks. There's an always expanding myriad of ways to get rewards, from randomly discovered bosses and loot to XP rewards and recycled or event assignments. Suffice it to say, my 585 hours as of writing this review has not gotten me even close to having everything currently in the game.


Aside from the inarguably sufficient amount of reward incentive, the game does not make the modern mistake of incentivizing players exclusively with loot. The game is just plain fun. The guns all feel different from each other and uniquely powerful, and each class has vastly different capabilities that make even solo play last a VERY long time (which is very hard to do in a coop game). On that note, solo play is unusually well balanced; enemy spawns, frequency, and found resource efficiency changes depending on how many dwarves you have in the lobby, and solo players have an optional support npc (BOSCO) at their command. Bosco is a bit weak for Hazard 4 and 5 (the highest difficulties), but with the developers' mod support, that can be easily changed. The lower difficulties are an option for more casual gamers; the higher ones are incredibly nuance-defining and demand a dedication to perfection - which I, as a Dark Souls addict, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ love.


Mod support is a newer addition to this game, but the devs show their dedication to the game's improvement by implementing it. They chose to use mod.io, so you can get mods in-game, and many mods are verified as non-gameplay-changing, so you can tell whether the modded lobby you are joining will be "cheaty" or not. And yes, you can join lobbies with mods you don't have. The devs show their dedication to improvement rather than profit in other ways, too; a steady schedule of updates that has lasted for years, a promise (a kept one, I might add) to keep all DLC purely cosmetic, and a constant contact with the community through multiple forums (they even have a terminal in the hub of the game that lets you join their Discord).


The community has somehow, in a way unbeknownst to me, managed to stay nontoxic for years. Sure, as time goes on, vets get intolerant and new players fail to understand the spirit of a coop game, but it always feels like the proportions of toxic to non toxic players stay the same, so the community as a whole never really degrades. Almost all of the time, it's helpful, noob-friendly players who prefer coop over success.



-Disclaimer: I'll acknowledge that the devs are expanding their empire, so to speak, increasing merchandising for the brand of DRG and growing as a team, and the game has an increasing threat of becoming more profit-focused than a FUN game can be. But years of growth have tested the devs, and their continuously updated roadmap doesn't indicate the next few years will corrupt them. The risk of this game getting worse is there, but it's low, so if you're the kind of gamer who wants a constant game like this one is for me, Deep Rock Galactic is a good, flat surface to cast your dice on.