Recent reviews by Espresso Depresso

Remember Assassin's Creed before it stopped being Assassin's Creed? Yea, this feels like that but extra weeby and immersive. The number of times I just ride around on my horse and enjoy the beautiful scenery, weather, and soundscape is astonishing... Then I find some mongols and slaughter them before going back to enjoying the scenery.

I can't believe I only decided to play this at the tail end of 2022. Like Monster Hunter? Like world roaming type stuff like the souls series or Middle Earth games? If you do, you'll probably like this. There's some quality of life stuff that's pretty annoying but luckily there's a modding community if you wanna look through there for things to get rid of some annoying tedious things. Eagerly awaiting DD2, I'll have plenty of fun playing this one while the sequel progresses development.

It's monster hunter, but you're also Spider-Man. People are whining about how the maps are smaller than World/Iceborne, the visuals aren't as good either, etc. It was made for the freakin Switch, which has worse performance potential than some good phones. Judge it on its fun factor, which is through the damn roof. Some mechanics make the game feel easier than World/Iceborne, sure, but it bothers me a lot less than I thought it would because the game is just so damn fun.

Edit: After 34 hours of play time, I feel I should elaborate more on the game. So, the game is still very fun from a mechanics standpoint. It's very simple and enjoyable and the dragons are sweet as hell. The giant negative though is the matchmaking. Now, it's not entirely the matchmaking's fault, the game has such a low player base that it has no choice but to add really new people to lobbies they have no business being in. HOWEVER, there's still no justifying having 2 literal level 2s in a lobby where everyone else is above 30. Spoiler: they couldn't do anything but die. Both those 2s were on my team and I had the pleasure of watching them flop around the air like toddlers while people shot them down, but this happens on enemy teams just as frequently. Now, they made it so you can't see levels in lobbies anymore but anyone who plays this game can spot fresh meat at a glance. GIveaways are the player icons, the dragon/rider gear, etc. Now, a good player COULD equip all the basic default crap to throw off people, but once you're in the match it'll be easily noticed. Basically, the game is very enjoyable IF (and that's a giant IF) you're in a proper lobby, but once you reach past lvl 20 the odds of having a proper lobby (at least in my case) are maybe like 1 match in every 10. Honestly, I just wish everyone who was still single digits in level could only be put in lobbies with other single digits. Now, there's 20s, 30s, even 40s that are HORRIBLE at the game, but they're not that common, but having anyone under 10 that can put up a fight against 20s and above are extremely rare unless someone wanted to make a new account to smurf for whatever reason. To put the lobby balance into perspective based on my own stats: My K/D ratio (not including assists btw) is 1.51 but my W/L ratio I think is 0.83 or somewhere around there at the time of this posting. I basically have never gone negative in a match after I actually learned how to play the game, but that means nothing if you have 2 or 3 people on your side with a performance score of under 1000 (which is really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ easy to get by the way) in any game mode. Going 0/6 in a match is awful, of course, but there are those who have stats like that but have like 2k or more score in the match because they're supporting allies or doing objectives. It's REALLY hard to not get above 1000 in a match if you're even remotely competent, but at least a couple people in every one of my lobbies manage to stay under.

To sum it up: Game is mechanically great, very simple and easy to learn but has a high skill ceiling; the aesthetic of the game is great for anyone who likes fantasy; the matchmaking is absolute trash (partly in due to the low population) and as of posting this there is NO BACKFILL which still boggles my mind because how do you release an arena combat style game without backfill? Love the gameplay, want to play more, but most matches are a chore because there's toddlers in both teams that don't belong in the match, that's if you're lucky and the toddlers aren't just on one team. Hopefully lobbies get better because the game itself is very fun and I'd love to play more.

Like Pokemon? Like Monster Hunter? If you do, you'll like this. It satisfies my desire to hoard items and creatures while making combat not completely brain dead by implementing a Rock-Paper-Scissors mechanic. The gene splicing mechanic is completely ignorable if you don't care about it, but if you're a nerd like I am then you'll spend hours customizing your monster's genes for efficiency and/or stupidity. Want an Aptonoth because it can search for all plants but hate it because it's got weak moves? I solved that by giving my Aptonoth all of Nergigante's abilities, so now he can eat plants and destroy worlds.

Great combat system, variety of weapons/playstyles, loot hoarding and material farming. Basically if you're into this kind of stuff, it's a great choice. Oh, and lots of vanity stuff, fashion is important.