Recent reviews by Finjodon

The goofy factor/feel/look is befitting of $10 at the moment. Paying $30 for its current state is just unacceptable. Resource gathering isn't fun. Building isn't fun. Combat isn't fun. Interacting with NPCs isn't fun. Exploring isn't fun.

Tried the other support weapons after the patch to get a sense for what the "gud" community members have been talking about, suggesting the "meta" wasn't needed to pull off the same degree/efficiency of heavy-handling as pre-patch, which was fun & engaging. Doesn't really seem possible anymore, and I don't really care for it if this is more in line with the intended "vision" moving forward. It's just not as fun as it was before.

As I see it, it just seems like an absurd oversight to have not pretested & discovered something THIS thoroughly "out of line" before releasing the game in the first place & making the first impression that's been made.

I believe the community was sooner expecting the other weapons to be boosted to be more in line with the "meta" & the enemies to be buffed at the highest difficulties to make things more challenging for the sweats before seeing any major debuffs.

At that rate, the studio's own developers reportedly referring to players that "exposed" this oversight as "brainless," rather than just taking responsibility for this oversight, doesn't inspire confidence to say the least.

Should the patch be reversed, or at least its adjustments be restricted to just the highest difficulty, I'd easily come around to a positive recommendation. From there, I'd imagine the game would just become more fun with additional content and more tuning for higher difficulties.

First, I'll start by saying that if you're as committed as I am/was, remembering all the fun from the first Chiv, I would ignore this review & still get the game. I've definitely had a ton of fun & still enjoy the game!

So, if you're more of an objective gamer & really wanna make sure your purchase is worth it, do not buy Chivalry II in its current state. Even gesturing at its current state, I'm skeptical if there's really any hope for improvement though, considering the game released in June of 2021 (Two whole years ago as of writing) & yet it has the issues it has.

It's inexcusable that in a competitive game like this, this far out from release, your playerbase is still frequently & randomly experiencing a glitch where one will not respawn after dying in the middle of a match. Typically, one will see a 5-15 second countdown to respawning after dying. Unfortunately, one will frequently encounter an inability to respawn, having died & being left to only spectate for the remainder of the match.

Research online suggests that many others experience this issue, some reporting that they'll respawn after waiting 8+ minutes, suiciding (F10, sometimes multiple times), or by switching teams after getting stuck. Waiting 8+ minutes, even just 1-2 minutes is absurd in itself but also when considering how thoroughly one is impacting a match while effectively being benched for that long. Suiciding negatively affects your score and doesn't seem to work most of the times I've tried, sometimes suiciding 5+ times to no avail. Switching teams, you either can't in a full lobby, or will feasibly give up & lose a slot on a winning team.

The only truly reliable way to get around it is to leave the match, wipe the scoreboard, and hope that slot is still waiting for you on the way back in. Got 34 kills & only 3 deaths? Sorry buddy, if you want to respawn, you're gonna have to set that back to 0 & 0 for me real quick.

In addition to that issue, which can really ruin the high of doing well in a match, there's a stuttering problem that the playerbase has been experiencing. In a game where the visuals you can perceive within a fraction of a second tells you whether to block or swing to win a fight, sudden freeze frames & frame skips (stuttering) can frequently land you headless when you were certain you made the correct input 0.8 seconds ago.

Thankfully, there is a fix for this issue, conveniently explained in a video by Ziggylata on YT:
- Chivalry 2 Update Stutter fix (On PC)

This fix basically involves going into your games files & deleting a file. While it's an available solution, and does work (from experience) it's another absurd issue to have this far out from release & when considering just how important visuals are here compared to something like XCOM 2 or Civ VI.

That concludes my review, fingers crossed they fix these issues some day.
Thanks for reading!

Developers did a great job updating the presentation of the original game (save the journal entries, which have a considerable number of typos here & there I noticed). Funny though how the games you played as a teenager tend to be remembered as a longer experience than they turn out to be, running through again, years down the road. Despite how quick it was, it was a fantastic trip down memory lane.

On that note, I do feel like some combat might've been removed? Obviously a Google search would provide clarity. But I swear, I feel like I remember a shoot out at the D6 site, after removing the rods with the crane, pushing through a firefight against the "Invisible Watchers" (which the radio chatter for even queued on the way back up from the bottom level of D6, yet no combat or appearance).

It was them or at least some other human faction that obviously would've wanted the military base for its munitions & weapons (like the Reds or the Nazis that you encountered previously by that point). I feel like I distinctly remember shooting while on one of the circular-track lifts that climbs the missile silo of the base, trying to get back to and secure the control room of the missiles, and that it was pretty much the only straight-forward (unavoidably no-stealth) combat against humans in the game, which made it really memorable and cool compared to the other shootouts throughout the game.

But who knows, maybe I'm just misremembering the missions (though I'm confident!). Regardless, if you're one to enjoy story driven, post-apocalyptic, survival shooters that get you nervous here & there, kick off the series with 2033 & then enjoy its two sequels!