Recent reviews by Toone

Game's alright, but overall incredibly mid with no story line/lore at least.

Really well made games with an interesting story and good plot twists. Worth the pay off in the end. I do think the ability to skip dialogue should be better when it's repeated dialogue just from other characters to make doing different lines easier.

A lot of confusing systems that ultimately are really good since it minimizes the p2w effect. Combat is actually really fun and the game runs great even in large scale pvp.

This game has terrible reviews for a reason. No existence of anti-cheat, a ton of bugs and server issues, and after 2 weeks I've given up on attempting to resolve my multiplayer technical issues that causes constant connection errors and unplayable matches. My playtime is much higher than it really is since I've had the game open while looking up and trying solutions and playing games seeing if it's fixed. No driver updates or solutions I've attempted have made this game remotely playable despite my hardware and network situation being completely fine in other games.

As somebody who has played H1Z1, PUBG, and Fortnite this is easily the best battle royale game of the bunch.

- The shooting is a good balance of realistic and arcade, responsive and consistent (haven't tried shotguns though).
- Parkour system works pretty well and when you stand on a wall or etc you'll automatically position yourself against it and can swap shoulders with mouse click, overall feels smooth.
- The 4 seat helicopter mechanic makes the end of the game way better. People play around the ladder and have an incentive to fght and climb to win rather than it being a game of healing in gas.
- Looting is much easier, can fully gear up within 1~3 houses usually. I'd say finding 4x scopes and snipers are the only real challenges to find in my personal experience. Also attachments automatically equip onto your weapons, so much less tedious than PUBG.
- The spawn system is easily superior. You choose where to spawn, everyone gets placed at the same time, and you can't spawn in the same spot another team has picked.
- The equipment (glider, snowboard, and climbing pack) are massive quality of life improvements since you can actually get around the map at a reasonable speed with plenty of vehicles to avoid running simulation gameplay.
- I prefer the winter map over the H1Z1 and PUBG map. With the equipment and ski lifts it just makes for much more enjoyable gameplay and the overall aesthetic of the game is cooler in my opinion.

Now that the multiplayer workshop is in the game, 100% worth it. I'd probably pay up to $20-25 for this game. Nothing crazy or special, but it's fun as a co-op game with potential for a ton of content as more people design levels. Really silly game to mess around in.

*Update November 2017* Wrote my review when game first came out and still agreed with the sentiment, but at this point if you aren't willing to buy VC ($50 for an 85 overall, 80+ needed to be competitive) or grind VC and badges through career, it's not worth getting at this point if you intend to do park/pro-am. If you just want to play now, MyLeague, or don't mind buying or grinding then it's a good purchase.

Better than all the previous 2ks for sure. Movement, A.I., graphics (by a alot), and shooting feel much better compared to previous iterations of 2k. My main issues are unskippable cutscenes, moving around the town instead of just having a normal menu like old 2ks, and the hairstyles available are all awful. The cornrows were great in 2k16, but for some reason 2k did what most other games do and make the rows too far apart along with pushing your hairline too far back. Previous iterations of the game had much better hairstyle options overall.

I'd recommend getting the game regardless simply since it's a big upgrade over every other 2k. I didn't get 2k17 since there wasn't much of an upgrade compared to 2k16 to make it worth it after trying the game out.

I'd rather put my first born child down than play this game again

Great game, has entertaining PvE and PvP. Combat is the main selling point. High difficult with an extremely high expectancy to die often since the game is about learning the areas and adjusting. Enemies respawn when you die/rest to restore your potions (you get restorable HP/mana potions basically). You also lose all your souls (in-game currency) when you die although if you manage to make it back to where you die you can reclaim them all. If you die again before reclaiming your souls they're lost forever. Decent variety in what you can do PvP wise. You can invade other player's games using the red orb in which case you can get ember (increased hp and ability to summon other people into your game) as well as an item to unlock rewards from a covenant (NPC-based guild basically). You can also be summoned to protect people in their world against those invaders to earn a different reward for a different covenant. The remaining options in this type of PvP is to be the host (person who's being invaded) and fight or summon other players to protect you. The other type of PvP is a duel/fight club mode. You can summon/be summoned to duel somebody in your world or their world depending on who summoned who through an item you get that lets you place a summmoning sign on the ground. There are also 'fight clubs' that players make by summoning a bunch of people and letting them duel each other. This is most apparent in a later part in the game on a castle area that's fitting for dueling.

Pros:

PvP is very enjoyable and skill-based, although some balance issues with certain weapons, but overall a balanced game where you can upgrade most weapon and be viable in PvP. Spacing, maximizing i-frames during rolling, playing to your weapon's strength (animation speed, super armor, range, stunlock etc), and stamina management are the key parts of PvP.

PvP has limits on who you can invade/help that takes into account how good your gear is and the game automatically scales down people who exceed the range. This only happens when you and a friend set a password to bypass the restriction as far as I know.

PvE is surprisingly enjoyable as well coming from a person who loathes PvE in the majority of games. The knight type mobs are my personal favorite since they function somewhat like a player. There are also NPCs that can invade your game like normal players that function a lot like an actual player.

Cons:

Some weapons have questionable balance like the Estoc at least in lower tier PvP in the game. You basically spam thrust with it and can melt people.

The way the game calculates damage makes mixed damage weapons pretty bad. Quality builds (STR/DEX) or builds that combine STR or DEX with another stat like INT or Faith are mainly king in PvP. This reduces the variety in build opportunities that hopefully will be patched to let elemental infusions be worth it.

For PvPers, there is mild phantom range when fighting, but that is to be expected in this type of game since it'd be pretty miserable if you had to perfect connect with the enemy's model to do damage. Fights would drag on forever.

PvP invasions can be frustrating for both sides when one side refuses to fight. If you're invading it's often 1v2 or even 1v3 meaning the host just turtles back while spawning an infinite amount of people to help them should somebody protecting them dies if you can't catch them while they're fighting a mob (invaders don't interact with npcs unless the host uses a special item that cancels that). Invaders can at least return home using an item, but if you're the one invaded it can be frustrating if the invader refuses to initiate vs you and turtles at the NPCs you need to advance. Invasions are only enjoyable when it becomes 2v2/3v3 or etc.

*Minor con* Game could use more sets to spice up the customization since personally I only find about 3 sets visually appealing although there at least is a decently large selection to choose from. Comes down to preference and again is a minor con if not a con at all depending on your taste/preferences.

*Minor con* Another minor con is it'd be nice if the game just had a straight up PvP arena you could queue for with matchmaking and such. Would make dueling easier and more consistent since one issue I have with dueling is that you have finite HP/FP (basically mana) and eventually have to rest or rejoin/die if in another world.


Pro or Con:

There's lore and such throughout the game, but it's not much of a hardcore story driven game like many other RPGs. Low amount of cutscenes with the game being more adventurous trying to figure out where to go and finding loot. This wasn't a con for me since I personally don't often play games for their story given I prefer PvP over anything.

Armor doesn't mean much as long as you're at least wearing a piece in each slot. No significant difference in tankiness between armor. If you prefer more variety in builds this could be a con since there's no big enough difference for speed vs tankiness being an option as long as you weigh less than 70. This also however means you can wear whatever you think looks cool giving the game's customization more variety.

Controller is highly recommended for this game. This is can be a con if you prefer kb+m. I prefer kb+m and adapted quickly to the game's controller and enjoy it a lot. You probably still could use kb+m, but I think you'd need to play around with the key binds first.

TL;DR: Great PvP game to play especially with a friend, worth the value/indie price.

Pros - Solid arena style gameplay where you can't buy or level up to win through better stats/gear. Definitely has a niche competitiv/esport feel to it in terms of outplaying and intricate moves.

Cons - Aiming can feel a little off, but it might just be an adjustment issue on my end rather than the game having any issues.

For now, queue times can be a hit or miss depending on the time of the day. This is an indie game that is relatively unknown outside of the humble bundle, but hopefully people get their friends into it and promote the game.