Recent reviews by imbrock

The thumb is up, I like the game. I like it a lot in fact. This is my second time purchasing it, the first time on PS4 was so good I was eagerly waiting on a PC release. Buying it again at launch was done immediately without hesitation because this game is not just beautiful every single moment but it is also the definitive wandering samurai / ninja assassin game.

Detractors can call it an ubiclone all they want but I've given up on many tedious and boring ubisoft games. If you squint and say they're in the same broad genre then this game is at the peak of a mountain that ubisoft games are the foothills of. The gameplay has a simple foundation and layers complexity on throughout the playthrough at just the right pace to keep things interesting and easy to understand. The exploration is exciting both from a visual standpoint but also thematically. As you clear areas and discover new (beautiful) locations freeing the land of invaders peasants move back into their farms and villages. It adds a bit to backtracking I often do rather than fast travelling just because I want to see more of the scenery.

Performance wise I have been playing GoT on two different systems so far;
One has a 3090 and a 5800x3d with a 4k120hz hdr vrr screen. My settings are a mix of high and very high, I tuned a couple of things down to stay above 60 all the time. Using UP/DLSS I get usually 75fps but it can dip as low as 60, the version of DLSS they're using looks fantastic and doesn't seem to have any upscaling issues at UP. I'm not using FSR3 frame gen, I was for a while but it kept crashing. I believe its an incompatability issue with nvidia reflex low latency mode but I'd rather have reduced latency than generated frames so I turned it off.
My other system is a 7600xt GPU and 3600x CPU, this one is running bazzite deck mode as the os because its a HTPC connected to a 4k60hz screen also with vrr. My settings are mostly high though a couple of things are at medium and a couple are at very high. I'm playing the game at 1080p with automatic fsr3 upscaling (noFG) targeting 60fps, it stays locked at 60 with a butter smooth frame time graph. The OS uses fsr1 to upscale it the rest of the way to 4k as is standard for steamos style systems (gamescope feature). Visually it looks almost indistinguishable from my main windows computer with the much higher end specs, the photomode shots I've been taking are hard to tell apart anyway.

The upscaling is doing an incredible job whatever the case, both DLSS and FSR3 are looking very good on both systems. I'm usually quite sensitive to ghosting, visual trails, schmearing, and odd dithering effects. Neither of these seem to have any of those issues that I've noticed at all. Maybe the game is too visually busy with the waving grass for me to tell while I'm playing or even standing around looking for it but its really doing quite and excellent job. I'm quite impressed with both upscalers in this game.

So yeah whether you want to role play as the ultimate honorable samurai or the silentest brutalist assassin or something in between this game is basically peak ninja/samurai genre. If you're just looking for another game to mindlessly process the checklist chore program while ignoring the story and setting then this game may be better picked up on sale or skipped. The chores are there on the map but the games a much better experience if you spend less time on the map screen setting objectives and more time just wandering the lands dueling mongols and bandits.

I built a dam around the entire level so no water could get out so that it created a series of lakes at different elevations that all fed into each other. Then I used windmill powered pumps to bring water to the top of a mountain where it ran through a series of terraced ponds until it fed back into the biggest lake. I turned this whole area into a park of different types of trees and plants.

I think theres a bunch of tech stuff at the end of this game but I'm having a good time just beavering away with dams and greening up the levels. I'd say this ones a solid 10/10 for a survival building game, there really are no downsides since the major patch earlier this year.

I enjoyed a game a lot, like more than I have enjoyed in quite a while. There are a few things this game does particularly well that I don't think too many other games have done lately. First and foremost it respects my time, outside of building your mech there is zero downtime. Once you start a mission the game just blasts dopamine the entire time. Additionally as soon as you finish the tutorial you can completely customize the colours of your mech. Every part, every colour, go wild you can save hundreds of mechs and load them up whenever you want. Like when you die to a boss for the tenth time and are kind of annoyed. Why not switch to a different kit for a bit to change things up. Swap your guns or your legs or everything a few times and blow off some steam. Its a really forgiving and versatile system thats kind of like respec on steroids. Sure I have my main build (Light, fast, lasers) but I've also got lots of other ones that I've had a lot of fun replaying missions with.

Now this is of course some time after the game has launched and a great number of people have bounced off the tutorial sub-boss and the first chapters end boss. The game has received a bit of patching but I am also going to give a bit of advice. Read the tutorial messages carefully and play through the training missions when they come up. There are quite a few systems at play in the combat, and building the mechs has more going on than you would expect at first. Once you dig into the detailed stats on the mech parts and learn what kinds of status effects there are it can help to deal with certain problems you will encounter in the game. That isn't to say you can't just play through the game however you want but it does help if you equip yourself properly. Which means both occasionally being equipped for certain situations but more specifically being equipped for your specific playstyle.

This is a very fast paced game and I did my best to play without using the hardlock aim assist feature it has built in. I was able to get up to the second last boss using a controller and to the last boss with m+k, but for the last boss I did have to enable the lock on. The mouse and keyboard support for this game is also very good. Controlling the mech with my mouse feels smooth and natural and I'm able to be fast and precise with my movements.

Performance wise AC6 runs just super well. My computer is quite specced (3090/58000x3d) out but compared to other games that have come out the last while I am able to push 4k120 frames most of the time and thats awesome. There were no stutters or hitches it just ran almost flawlessly. It did occasionally drop down to 90 when there were hundreds of explosions on the screen but it popped back up almost instantly.

Graphics wise I quite enjoyed the art style and presentation. The mechs were very detailed and moved naturally over the environments. The different levels have a pretty low key colour palate though I find it helps keep the game focused on combat. Which for what it is can be shockingly colourful depending on which weapons are in play.

Overall its one of the best games I've played ever. Its lean its fast its intense and it blasts dopamine non stop on every level. It uses dialogue to amp up the player as the incredible bad ass they become throughout the campaign. The bossfights are challenging but manageable if you consider your opponents weakness and methods of attack when approaching them. Though you can also just be really fast and learn their patterns as well. Its absolutely worth playing and its probably the best game I've played all year. Bug free, well performing, zero MTX or live service shenanigans and the gameplay is just tonnes of fun. I'm going to give it a 10/10 because I literally have zero complaints with this game.

This is an excellent sequel. It expands and enhances on every part of the original game. Unfortunately though that extends to the sloppy polishing and optimizing work on the original. In this game those qualities have been elevated to an unfortunately prominent position.

So because the performance and lack of polish bugged me pretty consistently through the whole game experience I am going to talk about them first. To clear up any possibility that my hardware is the problem I am running a personally built 5800x3d, a 3090, 32gb of fast ram and a fast m.2 ssd (3500mb/s), this is not my first computer build.

The big problem is that the game will drop down to 35 fps when it is loading assets. I think its actually just hard stopping for a portion of a second but its quick and appears as a big fps drop. It will drop down to 35 if I'm running at 60 fps or if I'm running at 70 fps or if I'm running at 90 fps. Which again makes me think it is just hard stopping for a moment, its very noticeable and very annoying. It happens all over the place too, main story specific interior levels, outside roaming the openish world areas, entering any building, when a bunch of enemies are entering an arena, just a lot of the time. No amount of FSR or DLSS mod actually fixes this issue.

There were also a number of sloppy visual effects scattered throughout the game. Areas where lighting was bugged out and had an obvious square missing or water that has a big square of reflection missing. Or places with particle effects where you can see big straight lines where they tiled the effect. Or the hair and fabric physics bugging out and going all crazy (rapid movement and or stretching) for a few seconds or until that asset unloads. Areas where context sensitive force powers wouldn't trigger in story areas until you leave and come back. Just sloppy execution, there were similar issues with the first game.

Ok well thats all rough but this is still an awesome game that I really enjoyed playing through. The levels are creative and well designed, the side content is interesting and varied, the bonus levels are challenging and satisfying, and all the collectible and hidden content is placed well to encourage exploration. On a mechanical level they've expanded the gameplay potential for the player significantly with additional lightsaber stances and force powers that can all really change the flow of combat and exploration. Of course the already tight combat from the first game has received the most and best amount of polish, it does a lot to elevate the game from moment to moment.

The story is also more well written and more varied than the first game. You get a lot more character building with the villains to make them seem more human. The dramatic elements are well executed and provide interesting if minor changes to the game after the credits roll. The emotional moments weren't especially moving to me personally but I also didn't find them cringe worthy which is itself a win. The side content is diegetically introduced to the story as rumours that point you towards various collectibles and mini bosses. They worked these elements into the map well so I never felt like I needed to go look for a list of side quests.

The game does a very good job of avoiding the gameplay of completing a list which is very refreshing, so many games these days are just lists and lists of poorly executed chores. Jedi survivor really manages to avoid that, everything is placed or written into the world with context and care. Which is why the sloppy visual effects and poor performance stand out so heavily against the backdrop of careful planning and excellent execution. They were making an 11/10 game and they stumbled at the end so now its only an 8/10. There are just too many things that make me go hmm and wonder why they left it like that when everything else was so well done.

I bounced off this game on three separate occasions over the years since it launched but finally I like it. Its basically war the game, there's explosions and shots all around you all the time when you're in a battle. You can drop in and play by yourself pretty easily or dig a little deeper and do some teamwork. Honestly its rare for an fps game to get remotely tactical and team worky lately and thats why I've kept trying this game. They've even minimized and largely patched out the old pay to win systems pretty well.

As someone who kind of bopped in recently and has played other shooters I would say the game is fairly balanced but also that the game has no training wheels for new players so the skill imbalance can feel very unfair.
Each class is geared for a certain range (sorta) and the game isn't super clear about that. IE: Medic is the mid range specialist class since nobody else has an assault rifle.
There is no match making, so you'll be going up against new players and 1000 hour players just completely at random.
You can die from any direction I know this sounds obvious but more than most fps games enemies can be anywhere. If you're in the open a sniper will shoot you, they're invisible and watching (stay under cover, run erratically).
You will be killed by people with upgraded or customized equipment that looks scary on the kill card. This stuff isn't as big of a deal as it looks like honestly, the best sounding ones have heavy restrictions on how you can use them. There isn't really much you can do to increase the amount of damage you can take besides choosing a heavier class or getting pocketed by a healer.
LAG. Its not particularly bad but you will die and it will look like the person that shot you doesn't have a line of sight. There is a perceptible amount of lag that changes from person to person. If you (Gaming lord on an elite PC connected via ethernet) are killed by a random lovely person playing from their laptop at the edge of their wifi network on a game server across the world their position and your position at time of death won't seem right. What you see and what they see are different though, the time it takes them to talk to the server and you to talk to the server and each of these three parties to inform each other of the kill is enough to let you run a few steps behind a wall or for them to shoot your head off and book it a few steps.

Really the biggest thing that made it difficult for me to land kills was figuring out bullets speeds (they're not hitscan) and ranges on a gut feeling level. The weapons in this game are from what I can tell fairly strictly ranged. That and learning the shapes (knowing who exactly to shoot in the face since battles are such chaos) of the various factions a bit has allowed me to feel the balance batter. I've got some upgrades to my favourite classes but the ones that increase survivability were available from the start. They mostly upgrade secondary abilities, healing / repairing speed or the time it takes your jetpack or cloak to recharge. They are useful for staying alive but they won't really help you much in a 1v1. For that its mostly just moving and clicking faster than the other person.

BUUUUUUT...

I've got some major issues with how the game presents itself to new players.

After the most basic tutorial points it drops you into battle using the join battle function. Its probably the most pushed button for new players since its one of the most visible and juicy looking things on the map screen. This thing barely works. I've been dropped on trees and then just fall to my death. I've been dropped on top of huge buildings. I've been dropped seemingly alone behind enemy lines (there were probably 1-12 people or something). I've been dropped into huge groups of my team doing basically nothing. Occasionally I'll get dropped into a real battle but its rarely in a good spot, usually you just die and then respawn at a sunderer or regular spawn point. This should be replaced with a feature to automatically spawn at a regular spawn point of some kind based on there being a roughly even number of attackers v. defenders. Dropping out of the sky looks cool but rarely works well.

This leads me directly to my second complaint. The map. The game doesn't do a good job of showing new players how to use it. It also could be better about showing battlefield info at a glance. The little explosion indicators are fuzzy at best. Get rid of them and just replace them with an always visible version of the hover menu turned into a pie chart. Make it blink if there is fighting there so people know where to look. Also provide a warning when auto-spawn is going to switch you to another region. Enough with the map though.

I just want to complain about the whole menu screen

There are way too many icons at the bottom of the screen. Its really confusing. Some of these could be placed elsewhere or merged. The whole thing really needs an overhaul. Why are the Cert skills so buried? Why are the player stats the first thing you see? Why do the implants have a whole tab when the certs are buried away in separate menus through tiny buttons?

One of the first thing new players see when they launch this game is this confusing menu screen that trips over itself. This quite balanced game presents itself as an mmo grindfest with pay2win mechanics. For real it is an MMO and there is a grind and the trappings of a pay2win system but this is mostly legacy UI (maybe a bit of financial desperation) and the game pretty quickly gives you enough points to set up a single class. If you just want to try it out and play a specific class you can be up and running with a good build in a few hours.

There are also guns that you can buy with the moneys (daybreak coin) but they're all just reskins of guns you can buy with certs. If you look at the numbers for any of the unlockable weapons you will see that none of them have plain better numbers than the starting ones. Not if you factor in range or refire time, or recoil, etc. I've looked pretty thoroughly and the trade offs are real. All thats really locked away is weapons that significantly change the range potential of a given class like using a scout rifle to turn the close - mid range engineer into a mid + range attacker. Or you could also just use one of the classes that supports that range out of the box.

All of that said once you figure out the UI for yourself the game can kind of get out of its own way a bit and its pretty enjoyable. I dig the chaos of battle, its not really an experience you get in other games.

I bought this game twice.

Every dlc these guys putt out absolutely slaps.

Its kind of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bad ass! It really makes me want to get better at its combat system and the story is pretty engaging. I'm at four hours now even though I've got RSI related hand and wrist problems, and I will overcome that to master sifu, its just that good.

The mechanics are promising with tight movement and gun combat but it doesn't perform super well. Definitely needs some more polish, the hands and user interfaces feel a bit clunky. Its been a really long time since the last update so it might stay how it is. If they manage to finish it one day though it could be pretty cool. Definitely need to get the performance improved though, running on a 3070 and a 5800x3d it regularly drops down to 60 fps. Even dropping the settings quite low doesnt seem to get it to stay stable for any significant length of time.

Will probably refund but I'll keep it on my wishlist in case they finish it one day.

I suck at souls games usually but this is pretty playable actually. It does take a bit of experimentation to figure out what kind of kit works best for you but after that its all good..