Recent reviews by AJ Sunshine

I'll start by saying I played the crap out of S1 and S2, but the developer announced a shift in how the ranked mode worked into a version of CSGO or Valorant in an attack/defend style mode. Before it was a chaotic 3v3v3v3 mode with tons of destruction and chaos, and that was awesome.

They tried out a new mode about a month ago and just decided that season 3s ranked mode would be this new weird attack defend setup. There's plenty of games I can play for that experience and I know I will hate every second of the upcoming ranked season, which sucks because I feel like this game was the best FPS I played in a long time. That decision deflated my excitement for the game.

If I don't forget about it, I'll be back for S4 after the summer..

Embrace the spaghetti

Bought it because it looked cool a few days ago. My hands have turned into playing cards and my dog is walking around with a jester hat.

Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing can compare to the joy of distributing raw Democracy via 500KG airstrikes.

There is no obstacle that prosperity can't overcome with orbital lasers.

Editing until they fix it - but the server issues make this not worth buying. Can't play because they don't have enough server capacity. Unacceptable imo.

Edit: They fixed freedom. Time for Liberty.

Not a JRPG guy but really enjoyed this.

Not a backer so I'm not here to shill out my huge recommendation, but Firmament is fun. It's exactly what you would expect from a puzzle exploration game.

4 years in the making though? Yikes. I was able to finish it in under 6 hours but i recognize that I'm the kind of person who is very good with games like this and if you're familiar with game mechanics that force you to use all of your tools, you'll breeze through Firmament.

The hardest part about the puzzles is not figuring out how to do them, it's what the pieces mean and how they connect, but it gives you some sense of confidence when you complete each one, despite being pretty easy to figure out because the game gives you almost zero direction, which is a good thing in my opinion.

The visuals are stunning. It's definitely an entertaining play, but if you're like me, this game is going to be a walking simulator with some lightweight puzzle solving.

I wouldn't say it's worth the full price, but it's definitely worth getting on sale and i had fun while playing it.

The Good:

* makes you feel hopeless
* fishing
* boat upgrades
* you get a cool light you can turn on and off
* mysterious sinister entities lurking in the murky waters below you
* gives you the creeps (in a good way)
* explosives
* scary, but in a "i'm gunna getcha" way
* fantastic on steam deck
* mutated fish
* regular fish
* creepy guy in a doorway

The bad:

* it's short

I played Destiny 2 since day 1 on Battle.net and I had my gripes with it back then. The game felt shallow and had a ton of activities, but nothing about it felt meaningful or fun to play after you beat the endgame content one time. I could write a manifesto on this game's' issues prior to 2019, but i'll keep it short. It had a plethora of activities and now substance behind completing them. It was fun, but after you beat it, that was pretty much all it had to offer.

Fast forward to now. I re-installed the game to check out new stuff and see if it was worth paying for the new content. Apparently I can't check out new stuff since i didn't pay for it, which is totally fine, except all of the other activities i was able to do beforehand are gone so the only thing I can do is play multiplayer, but not even the competitive multiplayer, only the regular multiplayer. No thanks, uninstalling until they make a reasonably priced bundle for the content I missed. Absolutely ridiculous that I spent upwards of $120 on this title and can't even play the original story missions.

Super disappointed, and likely won't even come close to touching this again. Maybe if they enable the original content again I'll consider reinstalling, considering I missed a very large portion of the story that literally is just gone now.

First off, I need to say that Apprentice play is great and the ONLY way you should play this game, it's fun, feels rewarding, and lets you enjoy the pace of the game.

Any other higher difficulty is way overtuned and stacked so hard against the player characters that it's not worth playing:

- Buy an expensive new piece of armor? Too bad, a crab will destroy it.
- Heal up after a series of long fights? Don't worry! The enemies will deal 89 damage in one turn to a player with the best armor and stats in the game, rendering your heal useless.
- Pass through some tiles with one character just fine? Hold on. Let me just spawn in a few enemies to ambush you real quick even though you literally just walked over a tile

Overall, the combat feels terribly unbalanced at higher difficulties since enemies have immunity to everything in the game, double your speed and 3x your health plus stacked resistance and allies that make them harder to hit, harder hitting, or take less damage. When you start a game, the game already pre-determines whether or not you're going to win (or at least that's how it feels). You could be strategizing and planning your every step and attack, but it won't matter much when you get ambushed by an acid jelly and 2 chaos protectors forcing you to waste a life and burns off all of your newfound gear in the process.

Far too much emphasis is put on killing the enemies as fast as possible, because they deal way too much damage and impose effects on you that make the game frustrating. There are TONS of cool effects and attacks you can perform with a lot of weapons, however they're almost always wasted on the fact that if you don't bring the enemies' HP down quickly enough, they get a bunch of turns in a row and melt your entire party in one fight (sometimes even before you get to make a move because they emphasize speed WAY too much). And we're talking some run-of-the-mill side quest from a city, not even a boss fight.

All of this said, I'll continue to play it, but never on anything higher than apprentice as the higher difficulties left a really sour taste in my mouth and showed how unbalanced the game is in terms of items, effects, and combat.

Items feel underpowered for the enemies they throw at you. I can deal with this as it gives you a challenge to overcome.

Effects and immunities are stacked too far on a lot of enemies. How can MULTIPLE trash-level mobs have 3+ immunities, let alone ANY mob have all of them? How does that provide you with a chance to strategize? Acid should be an effect a Player Character can impose on an enemy, and there should be far more items that provide immunity to it later in the game.

Why can a thunderhawk with 'Evasive' ambush you and attack you with shock every turn so you can never hit them if you don't have focus? Why do enemies WITHOUT evasive dodge 1-miss attacks on a stack of 4/5 or 3/4 so consistently? They have a buff in the game that allows enemies to do that, why can Joe Blows without that buff do it just because they want to?

These types of "wow I just got ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up for no reason" events make the game feel like it isn't worth playing when you want more of a challenge. Overhealing enemies and making them smack you for 80% HP in one hit on the first combat turn when you have high armor, resistance, and evasion feels lame.

TL;DR - Play it on apprentice and you'll have a great time. Anything else is horrible and a waste of time since no amount of prep, planning, or skill can make you actually give yourself a better chance, and that is the underlying problem with the game.

ACTION SACK!