Recent reviews by Sae

So far I'm really enjoying the game! I have some nitpicks, but overall I'm pretty pleased with it so far (and this is coming from someone who does quite like Pricefield and always chooses saving Bae in 1).

First of all, I'm pleased to see these are worthwhile, lengthy chapters given how rushed True Colors felt. If we're paying more for this game especially, there definitely needed to be more content and that helps you live in this world with Max more and settle with the characters and I've enjoyed that so far, so good job there. Hannah Telle is doing a fantastic job as a more mature Max and I'm really, really impressed with her acting chops in this. She's stellar.

The game itself is beautiful and I think the facial mocap and animation this time around is even better than True Colors and that's saying something. It's superb and just looks extremely good, pleasant to look at. Some slight performances issues here and there but nothing too ruinous and hopefully a patch or two will smoothen out even those small hiccups. I did notice a bug or two (such as a duplicate object and a set of invisible students) but there hasn't been anything game breaking or anything that's more than just a little amusing.

I'm very intrigued by the story so far and I'm really interested to see how it continues with the full release. They certainly have me hooked in and I'm actually more impressed with the mystery, or rather, mysteries this time as there's a few sprinkled around here. In LIS 1 and TC you could so easily guess (and it felt so easily telegraphed) just who the antagonist(s) were and get a pretty decent overall idea of the plot and that was fairly unfortunate. This is harder to decipher and I think they've done a good job of writing it there whilst sprinkling in clues and questions and such.

As far as the thing some Pricefield shippers are so furious over (and I think it's important to distinguish between those with valid criticism and irritation at the choices Deck Nine make here versus the very vitriolic ones who are trying to review bomb as well as harassing devs on twitter and even Katy Bentz just for streaming the game--those people should not represent us), I can understand the frustration. I very much ship Pricefield and, as stated above, would always choose Chloe over the Bay and I've always been interested in seeing life after that game, which is why I enjoyed the tidbits in 2 as well as the non-canon comics, and Deck Nine have certainly chosen an..interesting path here if you choose that Chloe is still alive. While I would like to see them together (and still very much hope that, if you do not romance Amanda or Vinh, you can, at the very least reconnect with Chloe) I can also understand them drifting apart and splitting from a pragmatic, objective viewpoint. With how they insinuate how things went down, I can absolutely understand Max being 'stuck in the past' with her trauma, guilt, and ptsd over Arcadia Bay's destruction. All the lives lost--including Chloe's own mother. And I can understand Chloe having survivor's guilt. And all this, over time, driving a wedge between a relationship, even one as strong as ideally you feel is built up.

There are, perhaps, some inconsistencies here, given what we learn in the cameo of David in two and the way he expressed frustration over how it seemed the girls were able to move and look forward while he could not, but how many times in our own lives or relationships have we attempted to do that only to eventually fail or fall back into sadness or depression at various points? Sometimes you can build a dam up only to have it crumble later. Life, and relationships, are messy and its not always as straightforward. All that to say, I can still understand how, with another 8 years, time can start to pry and it seems like that's certainly happened here. I don't agree with those that claim Chloe's character has been assassinated and I think that's a stretch. I believe you can disagree with the choices made here without believing it undoes everything that came before. Whether you believe DeckNine has the right to write new canon that you ultimately don't agree with is certainly up to you. For me--I can understand and see this as being a logical extension of time and a relationship breaking down. I still hope that they will reconnect by the end, however, as I would very much prefer a bright, finalized future for one of our favorite pairings.

Beyond that, small nitpicks--such as a...confusing handling of the male romantic interest, one that I can't quite understand in how they are characterized, why anyone would be interested with that character romantically given the brief conversation and their...attitude, causing what I feel like a stretch of Max's character to be anywhere close to being interested in flirting with. Another nitpick with some questions Safi's mother has in their meeting, because it objectively makes no sense and a disconnect how you think Max would actually answer (such as pointing out obvious truths that directly disprove such theories). Other than that, I don't have too much to say in the vein of these.

All in all, to again summarize; I think this is a really strong start for this new game and it has me interested and invested in the rest of the chapters once they release. I'll update this review if it turns out to be disastrous or, if it continues this quality, I'll return to reaffirm my positive review. October 29th can't come soon enough!

I tried giving this a fair shake but I just could not click into having a fun flow with this. There are a bunch of different gameplay mechanics going on, and that could be fine (Hades 1 and 2 do this very well!) but the controls in this are so clunky that it does not feel good to play. You want these to work together with the type of gameplay dance this is going for like Doom is with the mixture of tools to refund your ammo into specials into health and ultimate, etc, but fumbling over the controls so much because they feel unintuitive and make me feel like I have to do weird hand movements on the controller removes any flow I have in the game, so I just ended up not having much fun with it.

Also, the trailers make you think that the music is going to be sick to play to and really pump you up, but I got several layers in and it all felt relatively generic? Never did I get any of the heart pumping type of music that really pumps you up and pushes you on in a rhythmic gameplay flow like you get in, say, Hades or Doom and that was disappointing to me.

Cool art style and vibe but the rest just didn't vibe too well for me, imo.

A surprising amount of depth for a little comedic horror game. Its real good.

It's really damn good.

The gameplay improvements are top notch. Obviously, the visuals are, too. It feels great to play and I love all of the improvements and most of the story and side additions, especially Luis.

I didn't like the change of the start of the game; the original felt more mysterious in the house as Leon looked out and heard the cop car revving and all that jazz. Also, the boat and jet ski controls/camera suck.

I would have liked more interaction with Hunnigan, as well as more with Saddler in the castle, but those are just nitpicks.

Overall, great time, great remake. Hoping for Separate Ways. 9/10

I'm super frustrated and let down as an LiS Fan. I love this damn franchise but this past year and change has been so disappointing for me, with the shortness of True Colors, clear cut content and how much they sped through that game, and it's price. And now all of this with the Remaster. The falsely advertised screenshots, the cut facial mocap from BtS, and the general quality and job Decknine did on this.

Some characters faces do look better. Obviously, clear care was given to Max and Chloe. Nathan also looks very good, I think. However, others, not so great. Warren's face is weird and pinched. Wells looks derpy and droopy as heck. David...looks like David. Sure, fabric and clothing looks better, but man, some of them make wild looking faces that they didn't in the original, which I'm sure has to do with the lighting and the new eyes and teeth. Sometimes, it's downright scary. It kind of ruins the characters and their personalities a bit when they look like static muppets staring off, with their creepy looking teeth and glassy eyes.

Like, when Max first talks to Kate in class, she looks super crazy. The angle doesn't help. Kate, by the way, looks like a completely different person. Luke also has a really bad face. He looks like a different nationality, even.

I don't understand how they got things so wrong with most of these. There are also scenes where, in the original, characters would emote a certain way and they just don't here. Like, Victoria glares at Max after answering Jefferson's question in the original. In the remaster, she just stares. It's little things like that, and there are a lot of them, that add up.

The environments do look nice, I'll give them that. The sunshafts are nice and pretty. There's a lot of nice foilage and shadows going on in places, too. However, the lighting and contrast, black levels; sometimes that stuff is super messed up. Max's room is super dark and Dana's room is SUPER bright. It makes Max and Dana look like glowsticks when you're in those scenes. It's so...random and just--nothing seems quite right and different areas have wildly different lighting that often don't make sense and are often blown out way too much with light or far too dark. And what's up with some reflections just cutting off/disappearing depending on the camera of the angle? Super wonky.

There are some glitchy issues, too. I have to think the design of the sound of Max's walking/running is broken because it only comes from the bottom left headphone of mine with surround sound. And like, when Samuel is walking to the ladder/walking up the ladder...the sound is coming from the complete opposite direction, like it's coming from off in the right corner of the courtyard. The football that Alyssa dodges; the window already had the broken glass texture BEFORE the football hit when I played. Again, little things that start to add up. And those are only from episode one. I've seen people reporting more from other episodes (like broken subtitles on episode 2, or all the console problems people are having OF COURSE).

Some textures are still super low quality. Like the fire drill button Max smashes....She hits it, there's no glass that smashes. Just a flat, bad quality texture. Sure, the bucket with the butterfly looks great! But other stuff still looks really bad. It's jarring. Jagged textures that they clearly really didn't update that clashes with some of the new stuff, like some graffiti, photos, etc.

It's just upsetting. Why do a remaster if you half-ass the work. There are some hits here, but way more misses. It's a disjointed, jarring experience overall. The pre-rendered cutscene at the end of episode 1 looks REALLY bad and the models are screwed up when they look over the water with the water having a bunch of their blurry silhouette overlayed onto it...just, why?

They delayed this 6 months and we still get an inferior product and nothing CLOSE to what those official screenshots that they're STILL advertising the game with and it's deceitful and just plain disheartening as a fan. I expected more, as should anyone, especially given how they handled the pricing and packaging model of this stuff.

I love Life is Strange and Dontnod and Deck Nine but this is all really a miss here. If it was a problem with time, they should have delayed it further. I just wish it was better, in so many ways. Patches will probably fix some things, but it's clear that it's a lackluster remaster that doesn't have enough love, care, and effort to be what it truly should have been, and that's just a shame when they call it a love letter to fans.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhh.....

Games that force you to fail to 'teach' you are not fun. This game also really likes to spring new mechanics on you and destroy you in the process. I get it's a roguelike card game to an extent, but it isn't fun to reset based on losing total game control just because it was coded so. It would be a much different story if such situations allowed valuable strategy or counterplay but, from what I played, it immediately didn't.

Instant turn off.

This is a fun ass game. Super pretty, too.

Go zoomies and drift past baddies while you blow them up. 10/10.

They should have just charged for this game. As it stands, it's a miserable experience.

Sure, the gameplay is fun, but everything surrounding it is a terrible experience. The progression system is abysmal. It takes way too long. Some challenges are so specific, you can waste hours playing and barely progress experience at all. Even when you do complete a hard challenge, you don't even get a quarter of the exp required for a level.

This system has GOT to go.

On top of that, not being able to select a specific game mode, and no map voting on top of that, makes this even worse.

The system punishes you for playing a match's objective and for playing well. You literally get nothing for it. So that continues to push people to ignore the objective just to run off and try to do their challenge, forcing other teammates to suffer for it.

All this to sell more challenge swaps and exp boosts on the shop. 5 dollars a pop, by the way, for 2 xp boosts and 2 challenge swaps.

This is absurd. There needs to be a healthy balance. There NEEDS to be match completion or victory exp and exp gained for medals. You can spend 15 minutes in a match, carry the team, earn a bunch of medals and game the hell out and earn literally nothing for it. It feels awful.

To those that say "Just play for the fun gameplay!" The majority of Halo games before this has had a progression system built with the gameplay so that you can BOTH enjoy playing whilst getting rewarded alongside of it to customize your spartan/profile and create a unique experience. This doesn't do that in the slightest. This doesn't even have stat tracking in-game.

On top of that, the battle pass is just terrible for free players to begin with. 66 items in the free battle pass. 40 of which are all challenge swaps....That's just awful. FORTY OF THEM ARE CHALLENGE SWAPS. And the fact that in the paid track you can't even earn credits towards purchases or another battle pass in the future. It's just mind bogglingly frustrating.

If you were to spend the hours to max out your weekly challenges, as a free player, you'd earn around 4500 exp a week, taking you about 22 weeks or around 5 months just to reach level 100...all for only 26 customization options (only 18 of which are armor pieces: 4 visors, 5 armor coatings (that aren't customizable like in almost every past halo game), 3 chests, a set of shoulder pads, 2 helmets and helmet attachments, and 1 wrist piece). No one's saying someone should spend all the time to unlock everything, not even in past Halo games, but even for an average player with a job or one with a family/kids to take care of....this game completely disrespects your time and offers so little customization even if you were to max the free pass out.

Not even mentioning that if you do decide to pay for a bundle on the shop like the HCS bundles, they come in kits. You can't use specific pieces with other armor pieces or even the shader. Alter one, and it takes the entire kit off. Not to mention, on the free side, you can't mix and match armor pieces for different armor cores. Something that the Bots in the game do.

This is a bad experience all around. It doesn't matter how good the game feels to play when there's so little choice and only one avenue to successful progression, being forced into playing a specific way, and unable to enjoy customization and a unique experience like in every single past Halo.

I played 8 hours yesterday, focused on challenges as much as I could while also trying to play well and play objectives and win matches. And I got 2 and a half levels.

This is wrong, this is not fun, and this needs changed if the game is to survive with a large audience.

Edit: Oh, and today they put in a band-aid to fix the system....that doesn't really change much at all. A permanent match completion daily sounds great, right? But they nerfed it to 50xp. 10 games with the old system nets you 600xp, 10 games with the new system nets you 500xp. You need to play at least 20 games to gain more than the old system.

They also say they took out difficult to do challenges...yet people are still seeing 20 wraith cannon kills, snipe a vehicle driver challenges, etc.

It's just all garbage. All made to get to want you to spend money on skins in their store or on boosts and challenge swaps. Awful, awful, awful.

Performs terribly on a 3080, for one. I should not have FPS in the 60s and low 70s with dips into the 50s on such a card, even with settings turned down. I've noticed others and there exist threads and discussions about this very same issue. There's a clear problem there.

Otherwise; the game just...isn't all that fun to me? It takes from numerous other games and yet does none of them better than others. Games like The Forest, Fallout 76, Raft, Rust, etc all have better building and combat, and obviously graphics. The only part of this game I would say it does -okay- in is the survival food system.

I don't have much to say about it. It's unremarkable to me and I really don't understand the fascination with this game. With the performance issues and the...basic gameplay it's not one I would recommend. Clearly it's doing well enough, however, so I hope it improves for the people that do like it.

Devs don't care about their customers. They use the PTB simply to get free bug testing from their players but ignore all feedback and don't make changes based on the overwhelming community consensus.

The new HUD and new animations never should have made it out of the gate, but time and time again BHVR just proves that they don't care, whatever their prerogative is, they'll push it no matter what. It's not feedback, it's just a trash bin to file criticism away and ignore.

Game will remain uninstalled until they fix this awful hud and the poor animations, unlikely as it is. Otherwise, sayonora.