Recent reviews by Sychar

XCOM but anime girls of every flavour, whats not to like?

What a rollercoaster

Got to max level, hunted some BIS gear, 100%'d every zone and side story.

Simply speaking, if you're someone who likes to sit down and grind out character/gear progression, this game isn't for you. It has daily lockouts on loot chances to push people towards buying premium currency to buy gear with on the Auction House.

Once you complete the main story and start to do end game world bosses, dungeons, and world dungeons; you'll soon start to see certain issues arise. Character and gear progression is time gated by resources that refresh daily (ala genshin impact), instead of time played. You get 900 of a currency a day, and 300 of said currency is used to open the chest at the end of an endgame dungeon for a chance at loot. Then, your other chances are farming openworld dungeons loaded with full parties of players all fighting over the same mobs, or world bosses that spawn every few hours and drop one piece of gear that you have to roll against hundreds of other players to obtain.

There is a pity system with loot, to obtain a purple main-hand and off-hand and unlock all traits for them both you need to complete every dungeon 30 times. Depending on if you have a dedicated group to play with or using party finder, this can take anywhere from 45-90+ hours. Not too bad, but it'll probably take much longer to max out your weapons once you get them.

Why are dungeons designed on a daily lockout basis? To drive people to the auction house. Why are they trying to drive people to the auction house? Because the only way to purchase things on the auction house is with premium currency, which costs real money. You know, the thing that almost killed Diablo 3 in the first week but with an extra step :)

What could have been a cool game to grind out and max in, is just another cashgrab that tries to annoy the player with lockouts into spending real money.

Dishonest pile of garbage. F2P MMOs have been dead since the early 2000s and this doesn't do them any justice for anyone who grew up during the golden age.

Brainlets

It's like lethal company, but you create your own fun; Jackass style!

I've only played for an hour, but I haven't laughed that hard in a *long* time. I hope they keep supporting this game and it's not a one off april fools joke!

Must buy game if you like:

Diablo, Hades, Vampire Survivors, persistent and meaningful progression roguelites, cool characters

And the most important thing

A dark elf who wears a garter belt and stockings

I came into this not expecting much, and with a very surface level Harry Potter knowledge (Seen some movies, out of order).

After seeing some of the reviews come in from people who had early access, I decided to buy into the hype and buy the game. After the Callisto protocol turned out to be the AAA flop of the century, after waiting for years, followed by the very impressive Dead Space remake as an excellent palate cleanser, I've been able to go into this game cautiously optimistic and an open mind.

Is it one of the best RPGs I've ever played? It may pale in comparison to the likes of Elden Ring at a glance, but with its charm It's 100% in the conversation. The level of detail in Hogwarts castle, the secrets you can uncover, the amount of collectables for you to find, the impressively in depth and all encompassing transmog system, the combat, the loot and goodies, character progression, etc...It's all so good.

There's also a very surprising amount of sub mechanics and sub systems to keep your interest as you go, like breeding mounts.

The music is also very well composed, and the voice acting is top notch all around (playing as the female protag).

Combat flows very well, and is ultra responsive in it's perfect balance of over aggression, and impeccable defence (Think shadow of wars parry fluidity, or quen dancing in the witcher 3 on deathmarch). Early game has some *overwhelming* combat moments if you explore a lot before you do too many main story quests, when your spell book is still small. But you're still able to reign triumphantly over the opposition regardless. I rebound a few of my keys on KB+M due to the games control scheme not being the most friendly to 60% keyboards, but it's a non-issue that was remedied by 30 seconds in the key binding menu.

Going from a game everyone thought would be a flop, to being a very early GOTY contender just goes to show that even in a day and age of MTX garbage and predatory FOMO seasonal garbage; gaming is still very much alive and well.

9/10.

Incredible game, incredible quality. Easily one of the best games I've ever played. Definitely recommend "Give me a challenge" on your first play through. The first 1-2 hours will be rough but as soon as you level up a bit the game becomes pretty easy. You *can* do GMGOW, but I'd save that for a second play through.

UPDATED:

As of this update, it's safe to say that even if this game was fully optimized, it's not worth more than a deep sale. I'm a long time Dead space fan so this is a massive disappointment in all areas. This review will have spoilers.

-The gameplay is stale, combat is a muddled mess of having all of your evasion and defensive skills being tied to movement keys instead of separate commands. So if you ever find yourself in a room with environment hazards, there's definitely the chance you'll end up blocking an attack instead of back tracking, or dodging into a hazard and dying. Everything feels adequately weak despite being updated. The optimization just makes this worse, frame drops leads to dropping inputs, leads to inevitably getting 2-3 shot on any difficulty mode because the game didn't register your dodge; despite only needing to hold the button to activate.

-The difficulty settings may as well not exist, normal enemies 3 shot you on easy/medium, 2 shot you on hard. I couldn't notice a massive difference between easy/medium/hard and spent about an hour in each mode. Just overall weird feeling.

-Combat encounters are less than one dimensional. Wanna know how to kill everyone enemy in the game? Dodge and swing, shoot after a combo. No variation to any enemy. All the same, just different flavours of how long it takes to kill them. No need to strategize either, enemies avoid fighting to more than one at a time so you can just back pedal to a wall in a horde of enemies and fightclub everything mostly 1:1, even on hard. Atleast dead space had enemies with armour on some limbs so you had to shoot other areas to efficiently kill them. Weapon upgrades just expedite the process as you'd imagine, and while fun when you first unlock them it soon becomes apparent just how tedious and boring the combat really is. For a game that advertised a deep strategic combat system to master, it's hilarious that the opposite is the truth.

-Blocking. Why block for reduced damage when you can just dodge for no damage? Literally useless and pointless.

-Currency acquisition and inventory management are a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ joke. I've spent half the game with 6 inventory slots and the standard prison uniform. Upgrading weapons is so expensive its unfit. Most enemies give 5-20 credits, big enemies give 80-100. Maxing one of THREE upgrade paths on your baton OR GRP costs 300 + 900 + 2700 total. 11,700 credits to max each in it's entirety.

This leads into one major problem with economy, and one major problem with game design.

Economy: Most of your raw credits will come from item pick ups that you sell, but you're also limited to 6 inventory slots for a near majority of the game. Which makes resource management a pain in the ass more than anything else. "But Sychar, resource management is part of the game, it's survival horror!". Yes and no. Even on hard the game gives you enough pick ups to paint the inside of the space station with bullets and leave you enough to finish the game, health kits are found like candy. All this makes you do it backtrack to markets 2-3 times before you can progress to sell everything but also keep your inventory full with health and ammo.

Game Design: The credits from enemy drops are in short supply, but to combat this; enemies are not. After the first 2-3 hours this game turns into Dead Space 3. It's an action game with zero tension. It's combat encounter after combat encounter, jump scares that are not earned, and the most predictable encounters you could ever fathom. The scariest parts in the game were in the 3 launch trailers. This just gets even worse late game, when it literally just turns into an action movie with no breaks. Followed by back to back to back boss fights.

The supporting cast: About halfway through the game and Karen Fukuhara has had less screen time in game than she has in the trailers. Elias while endearing, does ♥♥♥♥ all. He's Kendra and Hammonds little brother who's even less useful than I make him sound.

No soul: Using B list actors to try and carry the weakest story telling ever conceived really just sucks the very *very* little soul out the this game that remained. Jacob is the most boring protagonist I've ever played as, and I've played bad rats. His entire delivery of the role falls flat on its ass at every turn.

Mysteries?: I pose this as a question, because are they really a mystery? When Glen Schofield says he took inspiration from his other works, he means it. You can tell where this story is going within the first 10 minutes, and you'll guess it almost completely. They threw dead space 1, 2, 3 in a furnace, melted it into a ♥♥♥♥ ingot, took it out, beat it to death with a ♥♥♥♥ hammer. Boom, callisto protocols story. Ooooo a main villain who's a weird fanatic and wants to welcome the new transformation as some religious enlightenment. Where have we seen this before.

The environments: About halfway through the game and everything has been mostly the same. Some interesting environments, like the cell block in the very beginning, and the habitat dome. But then you get to the habitat dome. A big suspending platformed area surrounded with low poly, low texture trees that look like they're straight out of a ps2 game. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ shameful.

UI/UX: ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nightmare from start to finish, if you're using anything but the highest AA settings the menus and HUD are unreadable. You can't access graphic options in game, only at the main menu. Makes it so you need a decent checkpoint just to troubleshoot settings to make the game bearable. You can't listen to audio logs outside of the menu. How the ♥♥♥♥ is it 2022 and we're walking back on QOL features the original dead space had? This entire game is a testament to the buffoonery in the gaming industry right now.

No breadcrumbs: Whilst not a problem in itself, you also have no way to even know what your objective is after the first flash of the quest update. It's up to the player to wander in the right direction if you happen to be in a combat situation during dialogue and miss exposition. Not that that's hard, the game is linear to a fault, with some sparse seemingly long side areas with minor loot. But most paths that would be deemed as "correct" to progress the story, have hard limits with no back tracking. Want to explore a side area but gamble on the wrong turn and now you've progressed the main story? Too ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bad, you ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up the 50/50 and there's no turning back. This is why a lack of breadcrumbs hurts the game. With no penultimate sense of "where" the player is bound to miss out on side areas due to both a combination of forced progression, and no clear way to find out your current goal if you missed the prompt. Players being punished due to no fault of their own is bad design.


I'm halfway through the game and feel like I've made ZERO progress towards anything significant, whether that's to the story, the plot, the unanswered questions, or my character and gear progression.

During the entirety of the time I played, there was one repeating thought the entire time, it was this: "I can't wait for this to be over so I don't have to play it anymore". At this moment, I knew the game wasn't worth my time. It's a 10 hour long game with no replay-ability. If I'm paying some $13CAD per hour of gameplay, this ♥♥♥♥ better be incredible. Because I've paid much less for MUCH MUCH more, in the case of games like Elden ring, god of war, even the first ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ dead space game.

This is a sad excuse for a game, let alone a game that's $115CAD after taxes. Everyone associated with the design choices and story telling in this game needs a hard reset, and should never work in the industry again. And vice versa, anyone who's content with this quality of product, even ignoring optimization; may very well be the living definition of mediocrity.

The scariest thing about this game is the waste potential.

First and foremost, the game uses Easy Anticheat. Ignore the cringe maidenless crusader larping goofs botting negative reviews and accolades trashing the stream ratings.

Now to the game. Runs very *very* smoothly, movement feels crisp and precise, gunplay is very fluid and responsive. The classes are pretty interesting and fun to play, some feel a bit weak (siren) but they’re all fully viable. The combat is really fun, and everyone weapon seems fairly viable and fun to use. Having to feed on people to get perks and upgrades and heal to full is pretty sweet too.

Customization is leagues above your average BR, which isn’t saying much, but it’s better than nothing. The game has a hub where you can pick up quests and see other players which is a nice touch that’s completely lacking in comparable titles.

I’m not a huge Br fan but I’ve played just about all of them, and outside of seasons 1-3 of fortnite this is probably the only one that actually been “fun”.

Definitely worth a try.