Recent reviews by Mengsk

This is genuinely the golden age of Warframe. The team can't stop cooking.

This might be the most intricate puzzle game I have ever played. The secrets have secrets.

Major order complete: SNOY defeated

Game just gets worse with each update. Pretty impressive really.

An amazing game that has solid updates every couple weeks. If you love city builders, do yourself a favor and get this.

I've never been so frustrated playing a souls-like game. There are so many tedious things working against the player that it makes the game so annoying to play. For every positive thing about this game, it is heavily outweighed by an annoying choice by the developers.

-Level Design-
The level design for this game is visually impressive and fundamentally annoying. The Umbral transformation has some amazing set pieces, but the game feels like it doesn't want you to take time to enjoy them. Every single area in this game is flooded with enemies. Time to rest and time to just enjoy the scenery just doesn't exist in this game. The real world is already flooded with enemies, but if you need to go into the Umbral for any reason, you easily double the amount of enemies you are going to be facing. New enemies exclusive to the Umbral and also the enemies you were already fighting will show up and fight. Meaning you can easily be chased by 10+ enemies. After a while of being in the same area, fighting seemingly endless (or literally endless if you are in the Umbral), I decided the best course of action was just to run through every area, fighting as little as possible as it just got so annoying and monotonous to deal with all of the enemies. This game just does not want you to take in it's beauty, it wants you through the game and its areas as fast as possible.

-Combat-
Combat is... fine? I guess? There isn't anything spectacular about it, and there are certainly some questionable parts about it as well. I really don't understand the implementation of the double tap roll. After you roll, you have to wait to do another dodge of any kind. This means that any boss that combos has a 90% chance of hitting you. The normal standing dodge feels infinitely more effective despite it being less committal. Casting a spell means you are fully committed to casting that spell. You can't cancel it, you can't roll out of it, you just have to sit there and be punished for casting something you may have not meant to cast. Blocking in this game feels mandatory, so if you don't like blocking you are just going to be punished as you don't get to interact with the temporary health mechanic (bloodborne) that it has in place. It feels like this game is just shoehorning the player into a certain playstyle. If you don't play the way the game wants you to play, it is going to be harder and more punishing. Spears feel awful because there are so many enemies, meaning any weapon with cleave immediately becomes S+ tier.

-Bosses-
Oh boy where to start. This game suffers from Dark Souls 2 syndrome. Where some bosses are incredible, and some bosses are so annoying/nonsensical that it is jarring. I recently ran into a "boss" who later became a normal enemy... and by later I mean literally 5 minutes later. On the complete opposite side of that spectrum, some bosses are just sword sponges that will also literally one shot you. The tracking on some bosses is also ludicrous. I've witnessed a boss that is 10x the size of the player do a 360 that makes CoD trick shotters look like a joke. Some bosses are genuinely enjoyable, but not enough of them that I would consider the game to have good bosses.

-Cutscenes-
LotF has some of the most jarring cutscenes I have ever watched. The first major boss in the game (not the scripted one) has a cutscene that just abruptly ends after you watch some absolutely disgusting 3D liquid simulation. There are so many cutscenes in this game that just make me say "what?" at the end of them. Not to mention you have to skip the boss cutscene EVERY TIME you want to fight a boss. It is SO annoying. They just use this cutscene to teleport the player to the place that they want them to start at.

-Coop-
I personally haven't played coop, but it sounds like it was falsely marketed. I would look at other reviews that include coop if you want to read more about it.

-Performance-
I personally haven't had any performance or crashing issues as other users have, but it is certainly something to consider. The game has run at a solid 60+FPS with the autoset graphics the whole time with no frame drops.


TL:DR
With all of this being said, I truly can't recommend this game. It so annoying and monotonous to play with mechanics constantly working against the player. If you are hungering for a souls-like, get Lies of P or play another Elden Ring run. This game isn't terrible, but it's not great. Every great thing has an equally awful thing to play with. A solid 5/10 experience so far. Probably wait until this is on sale if you are considering playing.