Recent reviews by Oninomiru

This game is pretty good. Spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead, but with rpg elements and more mechanical complexity. Although, feels a bit more like beta version right now rather than a finished game.

+Combat complexity. Weapons have different hitstrings depending on conditions. You can dodge, block, push, jump, slide, sprint, vault over cover. All 4 classes play a bit differently, while having some overlap.
+Builds and itemisation offer some variety.
+Level design is awesome, easily one of the best maps I've seen in a long time.
+Music is just phenomenal. Sound design is also great, a lot of sound ques to help you with combat and situational awareness.

-Amount of maps is too small.
-No story.
-No tutorials.
-Cosmetics look like ♥♥♥♥ and have no variety.
-Some performance issues. FPS drops, client crashing, connection errors.
-No Solo with bots / offline mode.

To be honest, suffers pretty much from the same issues as Coteries. I'd say writing is actually a bit weaker here compared to the first game.
But has pretty good music. Art is pleasant to look at as always. On technical and narrative side still has ways to go.

+ Background art is nice and I like the art style.

- Writing is very weak.
- Choice is illusory, you get more or less the same result regardless of what you do.
- Stiff character sprites. Extremely low sprite variety.
- No auto play, no chapter select, no gallery.

This game's performance and overall technical side makes it really difficult to recommend. Poor visuals aren't helping either.

+Interesting defensive options. Block, timed block, soul shield, dodge - you have variety of actions you can use to defend.
+Job switching mechanic mid combos allows for some flexibility.
+Hit strings allowing you to cast magic as combo enders.
+Very good soundtrack.

-MP system is terrible, might be the worst resource system I've seen so far.
-Offensive options are underwhelming, move variety is a lacking.
-Boss design is awful. Most bosses have extremely simple patterns or have like 3-5 moves total. For a defensively focused game this is a huge detriment.
-Forgettable story and annoying protagonist.
-Stuttering, fps drops and crashes still happen. Some segments drop game to 23 fps (I9, 3080RTX)
-Graphics look like this game came out in 2004.

This is the second best Fallout game to date. First one is better though. More focused, polished, better tone and narrative.

i9 11900k, 3080 RTX, 32 RAM.


So far 9 crashes. Fps goes from 60 everywhere, combat included to 35 in cities. Not unplayable, but extremely annoying, I'd advise to hold off on purchase till they patch it. Hence "not recommended" review.
Also, microtransactions in single player is a bad move. I will always be opposed to that. Even though in case of DD2 MTX are completely worthless in the literal sense and you should not buy those or even let them influence your opinion on the game.

Overall this game is not bad by any means, it is fairly alright, just very disappointing. A lot of steps have been taken back from the previous game, a lot of lessons completely forgotten and the same mistakes have been made again. Certain things feel very unfinished.




+Fun combat, pretty fluid and has decent variety of interactions. Not only you can chain together certain abilities, you can also climb enemies, attack their weak points to break off certain parts or disable their specific attacks. Oil barrels, explosive barrels, poison barrels, stone blocks, ice blocks, etc etc. There is a lot of ways you can interact with enemies.

+Vocations are pretty distinct. Each one has specific weapon only it can use as well as different vocation specific mechanics. Such as thief having dodge button, fighter being able to block, mystic spear hand having access to teleport, etc.

+Gear variety and design. Visually it all looks great, absolutely superb designs. Artists did great job here.

+Pawn system. They are hilarious, effective, customisable, interactive and pretty much the best part of this entire game. I care about my pawn way more than about my own character.

+Graphics is pretty alright. Very crisp, good lighting, even though might be not the the most modern.

+Character creator is pretty good. Downside is that it is still a hybrid between slider and preset based and preset part brings it down. Facial scans was not the best decision tbh. Skin has innate tones which you may have to counter with different pigments like blue. Face type affects: eye shape, jaw shape, nose shape, mouth shape. If you don't like either of those - too bad, can't change them. Have to pick entirely different face type. It's more of a mixed bag here, hair styles are also abysmal. But still for the most part gets things right.



-Enemy variety is extremely low. Humans, goblins, lizards, chimera, cyclope, ogre, minotaur, medusa, drake. That's pretty much it?

-Story is very bad. Somehow worse than in Dragon's Dogma 1. DD1 at least had interesting themes, here it's just so meh. I finished every single side quest too and most of them have pretty much no story telling value.

-Wyrmforging gear adds super obnoxious ripples effect on armor, making it look terrible. I have no idea how this even got approved. If you have eyes, you straight up can tell it looks bad.

-Dragonsplague is disappointing. Obnoxious, leads to 1 cutscene with no interactivity. Adds nothing of value to the game aside from the fact you gonna dismiss pawns more often just to cleanse them.

-Scars on pawns. Your pawn can get scars during combat and to get rid of those, be ready to visit hot springs often. Again, just more tedium, adds nothing of value to the game. Plus you can add scars in CC already, so doubly pointless and annoying.

-No real endgame/post game. It's kinda sorta somewhat here, but is super limited and again, Dragon's Dogma 1 somehow did it much better.

-Mage/Sorcerer gameplay is extremely underwhelming and reduction of spell variety did hurt those two a lot. Also can't quick cast when levitating. Why?

-Balance is a bit scuffed, skills and sprint cost way too much stamina. Enjoy slow walking.

-DENUVO

This game is great.

+Complex combat system. Easy to get into, takes time to master.
+Fun boss encounters. Designed more like bosses in MMOs, but in a good way.
+Party of up to 4 characters, controlled by CPU.
+Visuals and art style is nice. Especially for an anime game.
+Music is great. Pure bangers all around.
+19 playable characters to pick from with different mechanics and styles.

-UI is awful. Extremely large damage numbers covering character and enemy models making it hard to read enemy movement and respond. Counter based characters are the most affected. Why is there still no option to turn them off?
-Story is short and kinda whatever, generic anime mediocrity.
-No build variety. Damage Cap stat is ruining balance.
-Translation. As somebody who speaks both english and japanese, I can tell you that english translation is horrendous. At times characters are not just saying poorly phrased things, but outright entirely different sentences between languages.

In what world is it not insane to retroactively patch in a DRM in an game that has been out for a year+ that negatively impacts performance and breaks mods?

This game is very charming. Short and sweet (took me close to 6 hours to beat story and all arenas), but is very engaging and has replayability value.

+ Voice acting is great. So are the characters. I really enjoyed that spanish flair a lot.
+ Writing is pretty clever and funny. Got quite a few chuckles out of me.
+Visuals are good. I liked environmental design too, some levels are very atmospheric.
+Gameplay is pretty complex. Not only base moveset is very robust, you also have different interactions with enemies, such as exploding them with barrels, kicking them off the cliffs, dropping crates on them and much more. In a way reminded me of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.
+Music is good.

Don't really have any negatives to list tbh. I wish game was a bit longer, but that's pretty much it. This game is really very enjoyable.

+Great weapon variety. All of them have unique mechanics and movesets. Longsword has parries with i-frames and devastating spirit attacks, sword and shield is very agile, hunting horn is a good support weapon, etc etc. Just try all of them out.

+Absolutely gorgeous monster design. Monsters are very appealing visuals and mechanics wise. Was majority of them are a blast to fight. Zinogre, Nargacuga, Namielle are amazing in both flair and action. There are plently more, those are just my favourites.

+A lot of armour and weapon customisation, as well as build making. You can really customise your play style.

+Exploration and world interaction is also superb. There is incredible variety in terms of tools and possible interactions you can use to change how things play out. Ever dropped a bunch of boulders on a monster or put him into sleep only to wake up with a bunch of explosive barrels? How about inciting one monster against each other and watch them wreck havok trying to tear each other apart?

+UI. You can disable UI elements. Can customise directional input and camera. This should be the baseline standart. I can't believe so many games still miss that. This game gets it though.

+Visuals are pretty. This game may not have the best graphics, but it makes up for it with great artstyle. It will hold up even 10 or 20 years from now on.


-Controls are a bit unwieldy at times.

-Character creation is subpar. A lot of presets, you're fairly limited in terms of what kind of face you want to make. You can't change the shape of cheekbones, or chin, or anything like that. Character creation is closer to what TC's the Division usually offers, rather than the industry's best like Nioh 2 has.

-Clutch claw feels a bit too mandatory. I wish it was way less impactful. Makes game's meta focus around damage a bit too much.

-Handler. GO. ♥♥♥♥. YOUR. SELF.