Recent reviews by Xerlith

I fought racism as the Power Rangers and won.

It's a good jRPG.

The soundtrack is amazing, I just wish there was more of it - the tracks could use more variety.
The graphical style and the Archetype designs are beatiful.

The gameplay is... Servicable, sometimes annoying, but overall quite fun. The Archetype party combo crafting feels nice, and skill inheritance allows for some creative builds. I just wish the weakness fishing was a bit less irritating, even with battle restarting it feels jarring if you haven't brought the correct archetype (happens less often as your member roster grows later on, thankfully).
The calendar is forgiving enough to do most stuff with some leeway.

Literally all the Bond characters are endearing. The plot is compelling, and while some twists can be seen coming from far away, the plot keeps its tension well. Except, maybe, for some moments past the halfway point of the game, which do feel somewhat rushed and you can almost see the cut content. And then it gets a tiny bit too preachy and repetitive for a moment. Such is the jRPG way, alas.
One might also notice that it kind of gets lost in its own themes towards the very end (and no, inconsequential NPC characters calling it out in a missable dialogue don't quite address that), but it does stick the landing rather nicely.


9/10.

It is now broken on the Deck, which was my main way of playing the game, as well as includes the malware-tier DRM Enigma, which, apparently, does nothing and has been bypassed already.

Just a meaningless update to spite the customers, it seems.

The combat is decent and rather satisfying. Though it feels a lot more floaty than TERA did, somehow.
The traversal mechanics, especially thanks to the wingsuit, are fun.
But even those, arguably the brightest parts, are plagued by clunk and some weird issues.

Graphically, the game's stuck in early 2012. Textures are poor. Lighting is meh. Models suffer from bad UV-mapping, making some texture parts stretch weirdly.

The art design is all over the place. It feels like the game's aesthetic was built around some assets just found laying around, not the other way round.

Reflections are... Clunk. Cubemaps in 2021? Really? No reflection probes? No Screenspace Reflections? This one is really jarring, too, because the game uses reflections a lot.

Sound design is a mess. The uneven voice acting I can forgive, since that's not what the game's about. But the weird loudness/compression issues just feel jarring.

Performance is terrible. The game is heavily CPU-bound and slows to a crawl in cities (with a Ryzen 3600 and an RTX 3080), somewhat worse than TERA (did a direct comparison in a similarly populated spot).

The core gameplay loop quickly devolves into mindless grind with some very weaks attempts at being in any way broken up by other minigames or types of missions. But those missions are ticketed (10 per day), so you'll go for the most profitable ones - which are, indeed, mindless grind.
I got two characters to above level 42 and decided I'm not into it that much.

A mention about life skills: Feel tacked-on. The flight minigame connected to them is fun, but that's it. They don't stand on their own, and also are gated behind two separate timing mechanics.

Overall, sadly, free Korean mmos have a reputation of being plagued by P2W design permeating through every part of the game. This one is no different - and the content gating, along with its FOMO design, managed to tire me out real quick, too.


I heard of this fun thing called FFXIV. That's where I am now. I recommend you try it, too. In the long run, it'll probably cost you less, too.

I clocked around 400 hours in the Beta.

So far, compared to that -
It's way less buggy. But it does have bugs. Not nearly as many as Kingmaker had on release, but there's enough of them to notice and get annoyed.

But if you go past those, there's the actual game, and it's great.
- Engaging plot
- interesting characters
- breadth of RP choices that matter
- A lot of character building options

The core foundation is solid. If you don't mind the bugs, it's a blast as-is.

The enjoyment of this game grows rapidly with relation to your computer literacy.

Unmodded - it's crap.

If you can use Wabbajack (a mod list installer utility, relatively simple to use) to set up a pre-adjusted list of mods?
It's great.

If you can set up a modlist yourself?
It's either better, worse, or on par with what a Wabbajack list will do for you, but it's uniquely yours.

If you can create mods - it can be whatever you want it to.

It's simply fun.

Combat is tight and satisfying - it's the Bastion formula, but way, way more polished. The best gameplay of all the Supergiant titles.

The music is, as always, amazing - although slightly different from Bastion or Transitor would make you expect.

Visually it's a feast, although sometimes the screen becomes way too cluttered with all the colours and explosions of your various skills. That said, it's rarely overbearing.

The bite-sized story given to you between the runs almost makes you look forward to dying, and the roguelite formula makes you keep some sense of progression. The game even lampshades the departure from a roguelike formula in some dialogues, intentionally or not.

A single run lasts anywhere between 40 and 25 minutes, so it's easy to fall into the "one more time" trap. And you will want to fall in that trap.

Go play it. It's awesome.

Invigorating, dynamic, sometimes reminiscent of Infected Mushroom, it both fits the game's frantic pace as a soundtrack and is worth listening to on its own.

Roguelike Sekiro in VR. Really.

I absolutely love it. It's been a blast so far and it took over Beat Saber as my go-to "i'll just play one [song/run]" which I end up playing way longer than expected.

The game is pretty awesome.
After the lengthy sorta-kinda-"tutorial" that lasts around the entire main plot and takes 30-80 hours, you have everything you need to make the monsters into shiny materials.

It had me hooked from the first mission. And it's kept me this way for almost a year. And I'll probably sink at least 300 hours more into it when Iceborne comes to Steam.

Heart-gripping music, engaging combat, and philosophical questions served with a humorous attitude (...sometimes).
I think this is the only game in which I felt pangs of conscience and was truly remorseful while mowing down the enemies before me.
The plot is made with love and despite the visible budget constraints, it's a masterpiece.
I'd say it's my go-to title in a debate whether games are art.

Pros:

• Combat. Tight, enjoyable, varied. Bullet hell, jRPG, beat-em up, side scroller ,twin stick shooter... We have it all. All fitting together and flowing naturally.
  
• Plot and worldbuilding. Every little detail counts. Layers upon layers of plot.
  
• Music. Every single piece is heart-gripping and fits perfectly with the things happening on screen. The music's synchronised perfectly.
  
• The meta-gameplay if one may call it such. The fun with interfaces and mind games with the player are easily at least on par with what Undertale offered.
  
• Character interactions and growth. The banter is amazing and the personalities are surprisingly deep.
  
• The style. It's distinctly Japanese in origin, while being its own thing at the same time. Just take a walk through the Bunker. Or breathe in the weird atmosphere of the amusement park goliath boss. Or look at 2B's... Dress.

Cons:

• Graphics. The landscapes and character designs are amazingly beautiful, but the game suffers from low-res textures and models that might want to have more vertices.
  
• Pop-in. It's atrocious. The objects load just in my face, and that's despite the game being installed on an SSD
  
• Mildly, but the bit-too-clunky 9S gameplay. Grab a spear if, like me, you'd rather not hack too often.
  
• I'm reluctant to put it here, but I guess the Open World design. While there are some things made possible specifically thanks to that (tidbits of Old World lore, small worldbuilding pieces happening in odd places), I think the game would benefit from having been made in a more linear fashion. Many of the sidequests seem to point to it - they're clearly made to support and build up the main plot's reveals and twists.

Overall, it easily overtakes The Witcher 3 as the best RPG of recent years.
Sorry, Geralt. I prefer my plots to be weird, convoluted and heart-gripping. Compared to Automata, TW3's story falls flat.

November 2021 Update: Just wanted to mention I still think about this game's plot, years after having finished it.
Damn.