Recent reviews by Fluffy Boi

I really wanna like this game, but in its current state it is a horribly balanced mess. There is zero time to take a breath on most missions, especially with the bugs who will constantly keep calling in more and more bugs, or just HAPPEN to have a patrol wandering into the area youre fighting for zero reason. Its not even a question of skill but pure RNG whether the game with play nice and not try to ♥♥♥♥ you over every few seconds, or just send a nonstop stream of enemies that just turns what could be fun into tedium. I expect to be swarmed constantly on higher difficulties, but when I'm playing on medium to just enjoy the game, and suddenly find myself surrounded by 50 bugs, most of which are hunters that just use a homing jump to wipe a quarter of my health in one hit, its stupid. The hype behind this game is a meme at this point and like every other co-op title to come out in the last couple years it will be dead in a few months as everyone moves onto the next game.

EDIT: Dont forget the Anti-cheat is basically malware too. Have fun letting a program have access to your whole system for a meme.

Submit entries for the Get CV'd by Dragon ANY% Speedrun.

Slowly slogging through the newest in a long line of un-optimized AAA games. The fact that the FIRST TWO achievements that you earn for just making it through the first level at at less than 1% completion can tell you how many people are ACTUALLY playing this game. Its a shame that a company as big as EA could let something this broken and crash prone pass. But that seems to be the norm these days for publishers.

A few months post release and this game still is an unstable mess. FatShark get your ♥♥♥♥ together. Vermintide 2 looks just as good as this game on older hardware and can hold a stable 60fps on ultra settings, but even at 1080p with everything set to the absolute minimum I still get between 10-25 frames during ANY bit of action. Its hilarious to see the activity for this game on my friends list amount to "[InsertName] has played 10min recently" as we keep jumping in every patch hoping you finally fixed it, just to see NOPE still ♥♥♥♥.

I wanna love this game, but come on, this is just bad. You're killing a great game with your tom♥♥♥♥ery.

Imagine releasing two bad games back too back, one that just unanimously god awful, and the other so unfinished it should be considered an alpha. Cant even claim something stupid like it was to make a Christmas deadline, just a studio thats given up on making quality over quantity. Fill it with nice shiny graphics that most gamers wont ever see without a $5000 rig. Fill it with fluff and bad map deisgn, and pad it with impending microtransactions for ever anime skin imaginable.

We another crash like 1983, get these big studios done and dusted and let some actual talent take the mantel again.

Fix the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pause bug, I hate having to redo an hour of gameplay because you ♥♥♥♥♥ cant program.

Lets be real.

The honeymoon phase is over, its time to face facts and say, Elden Ring isnt a good game.

Thats not to say its a bad game, its just one of those over ambitious wash outs that AAA has been pumping out for the past couple years. Fromsoft fans are finally suffering the same fate as COD and Battlefield fans, where everyone else can look at their franchise and go "wow, thats just bad, why are you playing this?" and get shouted at and ignored because the fans dont want to admit their content creators have lost their touch.

So lets call a spade a spade here. Elden Ring MIGHT have been the beautiful Fromsoft game we all wanted and deserved had they maybe spent another few months actually finishing it. But its clear that when the launch date at the end of last year was drawing near, the devs were only as far as the Capital; as THAT is where the balancing and quality take a drastic downturn. Everything one shots you, layouts of enemies and dungeon designs become absolute rubbish, balancing for stats past the soft caps mean even with 40 Vigor you have HP bar of 10 Vigor in any other Souls game. Thats not to say the first half of the game is perfect, not by a long shot, Revenants are proof enough of just how little play testing and balancing certain parts of the game was given.

And of course, what has Fromsoft's response been? When nearly the entire community calls for Malenia to be nerfed, or has to rely on cheesing several late game bosses to even complete the game, to avoiding whole catacombs and dungeons because of just how god awful the designs and layouts are? They remove the exploits and work arounds, rather than admit THEY ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up and made a bad boss/enemy/dungeon, they punish the player base for finding a way around their mistake. Take the Fire Giant for example, which you could easily one-shot with a fun little exploit with fall damage and avoid its lengthy slough-fest of a battle, but after a patch has become yet another brick wall for new and old fans alike to the series. A stop-gap for the home stretch of the game that has made thousands of players put down their controllers and play something else, or worse return their games if theyre a console player, or tell everyone they know not to buy it on pc.

Now, the argument may be that Fromsoft intended this game to have a lot more cooperative multiplayer than previously, what with spirits taking the place of most summons, and the ease of inviting friends to help you fight. But this only brings up the glaring issues WITH said multiplayer. From glitches preventing friends from seeing each others signs, to insane invasion times where folks are being invaded the second they summon a cooperator, to the multitude of broken areas and weapons that put a heavy advantage on either the host or the invader to positively unfair levels. I was SUPER excited to be able to explore the open world of Elden Ring with my friends, fight enemies and monsters, and tackle bosses. But aside from the last of those plans, the other two are out the window as we're having to stop and fight invader after invader after invader. Winning, losing, reseting, wasting healing, and just growing more and more frustrated as it begins to start a cycle of just tedium and aggravation.

I LOVE Dark Souls, I enjoyed bloodborne and was fairly meh about Sekiro. I had hoped this was going to be a return to form for Fromsoft and and easy win for their studio to make something fun and challenge as they have time and time before. Instead I've spent nearly 170 hours playing my way through, helping friends and randoms the best I can as a souls veteran to TRY and make it through. But once I've exploited my save file to get the last three achievements to 100% the game, I dont think I'll ever play again. This is the first souls game I wont have several characters on the mess around and do challenge runs and just have fun. Because at the end of the day it just... isnt fun. So much so that I'm not even mad any more about it.

I'm just... disappointed.

Like so many wannabe Dark Souls game before it, this game falls flat where it matters most... bosses.

Dark Souls thrives as a series not simple because it "is hard" and requires skill to play, it works wonders through its carefully thought out and well tested combat. It has had its flops sure, and whether or not you agree with some of their decisions over the years for how they design their games, you know that when it comes down to it, a boss in Dark Souls is fair.

Remnant's bosses however, are far from it.

Now I am impressed and have had plenty of fun with their mix of 3rd person gun combat in a Dark Souls-esque style, but once you get used to the highly ranged centric gameplay, and have upgraded your weapons a decent amount, the cannon fodder even in new supposedly harder areas just doesnt pose a threat. the only time it does is when, for the sake of challenging a full crew of three I assume, the devs thought it right to spawn dozens of weak rushing mobs about you in an effort to overwhelm. Of which they succeed more often than not, especially if playing solo. But this tactic does not impose skill based difficulty, or which Dark Souls like games are supposed to be steeped in. As in the series they have tried to emulate, when you get surrounded it is in the rare case because the game wanted you to, and has more than likely supplied a lovely little corridor to kite and bottle neck your adversaries into. Or... its because you rushed in and got yourself into this mess. Now of course, should these events only happen when you are playing with a full crew, I would let it slide, its in the nature of a team to try and have at least one person watching your back to spy the seven charging mobs that just crawled out of the walls behind you. But when you're ADS focusing on a tougher enemy by yourself only to suddenly find yourself surrounded by the bastards as they spawned in a room you JUST cleared. That begets a level of difficulty I call ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ over skill. Its not skill when you survive such a trap because you were already claimed by it, its tedium. Especially when its not a type of trap you can avoid, simply now know to expect and still face the annoyance of dealing with.

At least you dont have to worry about that in the boss room, right?

You poor poor innocent child. Cannon fodder in a boss fight works when it provides something more than tedium. In the case of the Borderlands series, you like the normal mobs being present, as they can get you back up out of Fight for your Life should you need it. And in many other cases a boss will mark its change in phase by pulling back and letting its minions get slaughtered, dropping ammo and giving you a chance to heal up before the next stretch. In the case of remnant, you face again the annoyance of enemies spawning out of your line of sight, and usually without any sort of provocation or fanfare, for the sole purpose of trying to ♥♥♥♥ you over as you focus on dodging incoming attacks from the boss. There's a reason Dark Souls keeps a majority of their boss fights one on one, or two on one. Because the boss itself is the threat. It doesnt need hoards of minions to make it dangerous. The challenge is learning and predicting its attacks and moves till you can finally take it down. A task that is severally hindered by Remnant's basic mobs, as you're forced to shift focus for a second and deal with them, only to miss the tell of the boss's next move and find its weapon turning you in filets or paste.

It reminds me of Japan's seeming obsession with hyper armor and longer health bars in their fighting games to make things more "difficult." Why spend hours testing and designing unique and harder boss fights when I can just make him invulnerable for no good reason, or give him six more health bars. This is hard, yes, but not in any way that tests our skill, its test of patience and frustration.

The bottom line is this, by far this is still one of the most promising and best Souls-like games I've played to date. Its just unfortunate that it trips at the finish line in the same place it seems every other souls clone does.

TL;DR
Expect to be shooting your way through the main streets like you aren't even trying, only to be jumped by a wannabe hollow and his twenty brothers during the boss fight to make your life miserable, and not in the fun Dark Souls way...

As a long time fan of From Soft's older titles, I am disappointed beyond belief, at this janky unintuitive mess of a melee combat trainwreck they call a game. And here I thought they couldn't make anything worse than Dark Souls 2.

As a fan of the original Wii U verison, seeing this ported to PC was super exciting. I was so glad to see all the mechanics and gameplay elements carried over with little changes or revisions. A bit different playing without the game pad though. And really weird getting used to the different controls. But still an exceptionally fantastic game. Best part, though: The low power needs. I don't have nearly the best laptop nor desktop to play this on, and yet, I can still play it on full settings without much framerate loss--which only really happens when moving from section to section or right when a horde spawns.

In any case, brilliant game! 10/10 would recommend for any zombie fan! Or even survival rpg fan!