Recent reviews by n7aeroniac

This game is a mixed bag in curious ways. If I could've refunded 5 hours in I would have; 55 hours later it probably sneaks into my top 5 SP games.

The game starts out slow in all areas, particularly in its combat/stealth systems and the story. All of those improve significantly as the game goes on.
The first open world being the worst one by a significant margin doesn't help early perceptions either.

Performance wise, the game is well optimized (I started playing at 1.4 and completed most of the game on 1.5). Framerates stayed consistent, 60 on the ground and 90 in space, on pretty much max settings with a 3070 / i5 13th Gen. On the flipside the optimization was a little aggressive in some areas, so you end up with some blurry textures here and there if a lot is loaded at once. I still prefer this outcome over the shader compilation stutter fest that we usally get with AAA these days.

I'm not into the whole "waah female protagonist woke" drama, so I was free to enjoy the dynamic between Kay (main character) and Nix (sidekick). Had more fun with these two than with Cal / BD1 from the SW Jedi games if I'm being honest.

The devs cooked like crazy in some areas of the game, and the first DLC was also really good. Hope this gets a sequel, but I'm not getting my hopes up with the whole media perception.

The joy of Destiny's gear chase but without all the live service slop dragging down the experience? Yes please!

The game crashes somewhat frequently, mouse accel needs to be turned of via regedit and lockon is only available with a controller for whatever reason, but the game appears well optimized and the gameplay is enjoyable enough.

Game is boring as hell. Probably the most repetitive combat system I've ever seen. The Mick Gordon Situation also leaves a very bad taste.

Buying this game was a complete waste of money.

Very solid overall. Exploration is similiar to the base game, with a scale of about 1/3rd of the base game.
It also brings enough new Lore to keep the VaatiVidya/Smoughtown/Tarnished Archeologist etc factory churning for years to come.

Some of the bosses are crap, particularly those that are riding something. The Furnace Golems (Wicker men thingies seen in the trailer) are offensively poor as well. Imagine a base game golem, but with even less substance, and substantially more poise. Does that sound boring? Well, you need to stagger them at least 6 times for a kill. Still boring? Well, there's like 8 of them. 2 of them are also completely immune to getting staggered, and the only way to damage them meaningfully is to throw one of the new hefty cracked pots into them from above. Don't have enough Pots? Enjoy running away 500m and waiting for the thing to loose aggro so you can craft more.

Apart from these few "accidents", most bosses are very fun, and very challenging (usually in a good way).

...

The DLC naturally broke mod support for but the most basic mods, so I went and redownloaded Sekiro while I wait for them to get updated. Maan, Elden Ring Combat is pathetic compared to Sekiro. One day...

Getting this to 100% was quite the operation.

Got mixed feelings on the game overall. The main story missions are, for the most part, the worst crap I've ever played. Many levels consist of a just a few rooms (or even a single one, in some boss fight levels) and are very uninspired in terms of their gameplay. The ship levels are even worse, and a few of those have major sequence breaks and one suffers from what I presume to be an unloading issue that will send your FPS into the single digits and crash your game if you don't complete the level quickly (this happens consistently).

A lot of the episode content also can't be replayed without starting a new save. Only the levels themselves are available for replays, but the scripted events in the open world are gone after your inital playthrough.

The side content, however, is pretty enjoyable. Each planet that appears in the 9 main films (except Kijimi) has a medium-sized open world hub, with 2-3 hours worth of puzzles and fetch/escort quests each. A handful of planets also have multiple zones.

The side content in space is mostly garbage again. All you get is empty scenes with a skybox and some asteroid models floating around if you're lucky. Combat here is basically just clay pigeon shooting. Also, I hope whoever implemented the Scoundrel/smuggling missions is flipping burgers now.

The only fun thing in space are the capital ships, which represent the only somewhat engaging space combat encounters in the game, and after capturing them you can explore them on foot similiar to the ground maps (altough with only ~30 minutes of content per ship).

Overall the game gets a pass because the awful main story is done in less than 10 hours, and the reasonably enjoyable side content demands about 70-80 hours at my pace. A more ambitious game than this trying to pull a ratio like that would be called a Ubisoft Original, but here it works out well enough.

As for the DLC: They add extra characters, but none are voiced even when a simple copy/paste would have been enough (example: Cody is included in the base game and uses generic clone voice lines; Rex is DLC and is mute) and none have any special abilites, even where it would have made sense (example: Echo is unable to interact with Astromech Terminals, and that's obviously his whole gimmick in TBB). All in all, you're not missing anything by skipping the DLCs.

US Foreign Relations Simulator 24

Edit: Gotta leave this on negative for now, the game crashes every 30 minutes. Great game otherwise.

**SPOILER**


Hell, they weren't kidding about "Lies" and "untrustworthy figures". Game has the most charismatic and loveable cast out of pretty much any soulslike, and at the end of it almost all turn out to be traitors and won't be left standing depending on your choices.

Game is nearly 5 years older than me and I still had a blast with it.

Going for 100% in this game has to be one of the most miserable experiences ever. Towards the end of the base game I've been stuck with nothing but 4-5 quests all stuck on "wait for x to call you back" several times. Horrible quest design.