Recent reviews by Broken_Algorithm

I love it, finally we have purposeful slower skill based gameplay in a modern ARPG.

The bosses are well telegraphed, well thought out. The dodge roll mechanics it all comes together and makes for a very rewarding process of learning boss mechanics its very like a souls game in this aspect.. you then kill a tough one and it's peak adrenaline for an ARPG. No longer is it purely about stats.. yes stats are still a major aspect for killing the bosses faster or surviving easier. But its not quite as much of a pure stat check as before.

The quality of life changes are excellent. The skill gems no longer requiring gear slotting them in gear and colour gambling and link gambling.. it just makes gearing and building way more fun. You get a piece of gear with better stats.. you can actually equip it there and then.. we have the same skill complexity without the trivial annoying mechanics surrounding it it's just simply better...

The passive tree is excellent same complexity as before overall.. all the main stuff you'd want for your class is near your starter position. Moving to other classes parts is even easier.. and you can respec for gold if you find something isn't working, which is way more conducive to a fun gameplay loop..it brings easy experimentation without having to replay through again..

The gameplay is smooth, responsive.. you can cast and move.. use roll to move cancel.. the graphics are great. With HDR.. likely without aswell, the spells and effects just pop with colour. Its an absolute spectacle and addictive to look at.

The campaign, I have only reached the start of ACT 3 so far, has been way more enjoyable than the first game for me. Honestly just prefer the levels themselves, the style.. and as before the bosses just really make this great. I also prefer the concept of the new ascendancy trials.. over the terrible labyrinth in the previous game. The trials of the sekhema could for a much more fun and varied bit of gameplay and challenge with a more structured overall tactical mini game with it. However, the honour system ruins it.

You don't lose XP on death. Given the harder, slower and more skill based gameplay this is nice.

I'm really really looking forward to the endgame after playing what I've played so far and I don't see myself playing any of the other existing ARPG's again at this point.

EDIT 1: Trial of chaos needs to be tweaked. The RNG can make it entirely unwinnable. The only solution aside from getting lucky with RNG seems to be over leveling it a good bit.

EDIT 2: Trial of the sekhema needs to have the honour mechanic removed, especially when gating ascendancy with it. Remove honour and make the trials themselves slightly harder and it's problem solved. You do lose XP on death in the endgame and mapping. I don't mind this it feels like a fair challenge and grind however, they need to tweak the damage numbers on certain things, you'll be having no problem most of the way and often out of nowhere get one shot by something which with losing the stuff on your maps and the XP loss this can be a bit irritating.. I would say perfection in the endgame would be to remove the losing the cool map content on death and just tweaking some of the damage numbers.

EDIT 3: I've done a good bit of endgame now. I am having fun especially since the latest patch nerfing some of the one shots in the endgame. I love the mapping system, I love have to work around the map selecting the content I want to play. I like juicing the waystones up and also buffing the maps around the tower with precursers. I'm getting gear upgrades quite a bit (nice ones at that), However, there are some pain points currently. I would like a boss in every map it would just be more fun. Maybe special bosses on the current boss indicated maps. Finally whilst the endgame is way better balanced in terms of one shots since the last patch, I think certain other things still need to be fine tuned, like the yellow laser beam guys. They eat through 4k energy shield and 1k life within seconds. I think like with breach which is now great, in terms of ritual they might want to tone down the enemy numbers, its too easy to get stun locked against a wall with no room to even cast. There are cases where you can spawn on a map in the middle of a group of enemies resulting in you again getting stunlocked with no ability to cast or move. Sometimes in delerium, a load of enemies spawn on all sides of you. You just get instantly trapped, stunlocked and killed. I like the endgame it is really fun however, there is just some minor balancing things that are just holding it back from being perfect also.. why do we have to lose maps on death.. we should have a few portals like in POE1 where you have 6 doesn't have to be quite that much maybe 3 its a no brainer change.

Trial of the sekhema is easier since the latest patch. But it still isn't fun I still believe the honour system just needs to go.

Simply absolutely brilliant. The best DLC to be released ever and for an already top tier game bringing elden ring from a ~80 hour game to a 120+ hour game. I love it and if you are an elden ring fan you will 100% get the full value from this DLC. However, it isn't completely flawless either.

Good:
Firstly the level design is absolutely fantastic, the progression through the DLC just feels awesome from an exploration standpoint every nook and cranny you find something new just like the main game. You find a cave then you find it leads to a split and that split leads to a new area and that new area has a dungeon or a big boss. The exact same epic discovery you get from the base game that is here as well in droves along with character quests. And don't let Miyazaki fool you either, it's way way bigger than Limgrave and the verticality is insane.

The bosses for the most part are excellent. Aside from two standouts. Messmer and Relanna are two of the best bosses I have fought in a souls game and any souls fan will derive great enjoyment from them. There's also many other fun to fight bosses throughout. Really mostly excellent

Finally for the good, there are a lot of new weapons, armour and talismans added to the game with really cool unique move sets and ashes really fun to use. Another ace in the hole in that regard allowing for even more awesome builds to play through the entire game using.

Bad subjective:
There are two bosses in this DLC that need to be changed in my opinion. Firstly Gaius his hitboxes are janky as hell especially on the charge attack coupled with insane damage he leads to an unfun fight. The second is the final boss of the game, which unfortunately feels heavily over done stats wise. The boss is highly difficult requiring pinpoint accuracy during the fight, which is fine as a souls vet I have no objection to difficulty the issue comes with health or the holy beams. The boss has way too much health meaning when you spend so much time perfectly getting through the first phase only to get nuked in the second many times this leads to dull waterboarding style gameplay and with the amount of health it leaves no room for mistake at all. The hair on the model of the character blocks the vision of what they are doing a good proportion of the time. It doesn't feel rewarding to conquer like most other souls bosses it's very demotivating and gets boring with repeated phase ones. The problem can be solved by 1. triggering phase two around 60% which would be a lot fairer and either A. Slashing some of the bosses health or B. Remove the poise damage on the holy beams and finally remove the hair or make it see through. If this is done the boss would be perfect and probably a gale level fun contender, because the boss is very well designed just poorly balanced.

As for enemies, the dragons... there are way too many.. and they really aren't that fun to fight. They have always been the worst part of elden ring and they are back in this DLC in numbers. (Albeit one is quite different and interesting)

Scadutree fragments being in standard shade enemies with the pots is not good. Now after the fragment buffs this isn't as big of a deal as it was per say although with the final boss the way it is, you really want all twenty even with the buffs. I find this a weird choice where most of the fragments are along the natural path of gameplay/exploration which is great but then you have some fragments dropped by pot shade humanoid enemies in random spots which are easily missed (Not many but some) and then the odd fragments here and there off the beating track (Again not many) but enough that if you missed you'd be 2-3 levels under for the final boss, meaning you'd have to wiki or do an extensive retrack of the DLC which is not fun. I suggest either moving these onto the natural path more or instead of there only being exactly enough fragments for max level add an extra 3-5 around the place on top of the existing to higher the chances of discovery.

Bad objective:
Random frame stutters in the open world. Sometimes you'll chug down to 20 fps for some reason (I have 4090 and 7950x so this shouldn't occur). I have friends with lower end PC's but that are in the recommended system requirements dropping significant frames in boss fights during flashy phases this is unacceptable.

There is another issue with invasions if cooping where an invader will join and for some reason this will cause significant frame dips for all players.

There is a dancing lion boss in rauh, where you can be invaded in the middle of the fight against it in coop. This is terrible design.. it shouldn't be a thing.

Conclusion:
All in all, the DLC is amazing some of the best DLC made for a game ever, I can't recommend it more especially for existing fans. There is no doubt at all that you get your money's worth with this one I think it will go down in history making Elden Ring possibly one of the greatest games ever made going forward.

I would describe this game as mediocre and there are many reasons for that. There are some things it does amazing and I love and then there are other things with the game that are the worst of the worst and really ruin it leaving me at the balance of it being mediocre.

Firstly. The moment to moment combat is amazing it's really great and is by far the best part of the game and its very engaging and fluid. It's also a complete spectacle. The first time exploration is also extremely good, uncovering the world, dungeons new enemies and things like that for the first time is a lovely experience that I have to give them credit for. It could be very much compared to the game elden ring. Having pawns and naming them and all is cool and you'll have fun with it but you'll come to realize its not as great as it first seems but I'll leave that till to the negatives.

Graphically, the game looks great I have no issue it's very good for the type of game it is.

Now that's where the good ends and the bad starts. I'll start with the subjective bad, the things I didn't personally like but some could. I hate the class system with a passion there's no experimentation, there's absolutely no player expression.. everyone plays a class.. they have the exact same experience and use the exact same skills this makes the game get boring very quickly coupled with the loot system.

Now the loot system. Its crap. The best gear you get from shops at major towns you don't find it. And there is not that much gear at all.. and there is clearly objectively the best gear that you wouldn't bother swapping out or experimenting with because its just a numbers game. Comparing it to a game like Elden Ring for example, it's literally night and day in comparison. Truly terrible... and coupled with the boring class system.. it really is missed potential because it could have easily have been done much better.

The pawn system is the same it looks like it has depth but it doesn't it's shallow as hell. You think it would make massive strategic differences depending on the classes of the pawns in your squad.. but it doesn't literally any combination of anything.. will work as long as you have one mage for healing that's the only strategic choice that makes a difference.

The story is probably one of the worst stories I have ever sat through. It's completely boring and uninteresting. It starts off just alright.. then you get the venworth the main town.. and its just is an absolute slog.. they tried to do a sort of political intrigue thing in the middle... with awful half baked stealth systems and 'poor reasoning' for doing any of it. When the only good part of the game is the combat... and you are taking away from that combat for hours for the terrible story.. it's poor to say the least.

The next is fast travel. The fast travel basically doesn't exist you need limited items to do so and the points you can travel to are highly limited aswell and you think that'd be great with the great exploration but it isn't for the stuff I talk about after this.

Enemy diversity. Its trash.. there are like four types of main enemies you encounter ALL THE TIME. Skeletons, Lizards, Goblins, Bandits... and I mean.. they are just boring after the first 1000 times. And the problem is right all the enemies have set spawn locations across the map. And its always the same enemies on those spawn locations... and with no real fast travel you guessed it.. when you have to back track over already explored areas... and you may have to do this even multiple times... it's such a boring slog... its mind numbing... it's unbelievably bad... and the way the game works.. you can't just run by them like you would in say a dark souls or elden ring... and they have great fast travel its terrible.. I quit the game around 70% through because of this. The bosses aren't much better. They are cool the first time. But then you start seeing your 100th ogre, cyclops dragon... and its just boring.. I think you can count the amount of boss enemies on both of your hands too provided you have all your fingers.

So with the terrible story.. and that enemy diversity and lack of the player expression you really are just left with the combat and the great character creator.. and it isn't enough to keep an adult stimulated mentally at all.

Optimization, it's also shockingly bad. The game looks good but not anything phenominal. I have a 4090 and 7950x and the max frame rate I get hovers around 90 fps on 1440p and it dips down to 30-40 fps in towns. Given the game isn't that graphically impressive compared to say a title like cyberpunk for example where I can easily push 100+ frames everywhere on max settings with extreme ray tracing and all. Its really unforgivable. There isn't that much going on in the game and it doesn't look great and the excuse of the AI requiring that... is just that an excuse. More complex AI from 15 years ago performed better there is not excuse.

So there you go top tier combat, exploration and world. With crap everything else making it completely mundane and mediocre. I can't recommend it at all for 65-70 euro. It's worth 20-30 euro maximum. You can fix some of the things with mods. But the price tag is for a vanilla game and what the developer has made and this just isn't it.

Had some weird bug that screwed with memory on my PC at the start of the game and caused windows to throw a tantrum it started during a haiku mini game I think something with the UI caused it, which was unfortunate however, after a PC restart it resolved itself and hasn't occurred again I don't think its a major issue.

The story so far is very enjoyable and the quests are very entertaining. The characters are quite like-able overall. The game however, definitely shines in terms of the game play itself it's extremely fluid and fun it reminds me of the combat of the classic assassins creed games with the parry attack chain with the excellent execution animations its satisfying as hell and the stealth is the same. However, the combat has been greatly refined over the classics with things like stances for particular types of enemies and different moves etc. It's truly great.

Another thing I like are the duels in certain missions, intense one versus one's against boss enemies that put your skill somewhat to the test these are tense and very fun definitely a highlight of the game so far.

Graphically, it's alright there are some things that look amazing in the game and some environments and then other things look well behind its time. Sony I think did a disservice releasing this four years late on PC graphically. The character models and lip syncing are specifically poor I have seen games 10+ years old with better. But then fields and certain environments look stunning its hit and miss. Combat animations and execution animations are epic and top tier.. and yet there's no dismemberment it's things like that which take away graphically and could make the game even better.

In terms of optimization aside from that issue I had at the beginning the game appears to be very well optimized as far as I can tell. However, my system is an outlier I have a 4090 and 7950x I get solid 150-180fps on 1440p on max settings. I can't see any mid to high end PC having any issue especially on a lower resolution like 1080p its definitely very well optimized aside from that bug I experienced.

There is one more bug I ran into with changing graphics settings each change would freeze the game for about 30 seconds which was very inconvenient. However, this occurred around the same time as the other bug so I think they may be one in the same.

As for PSN it's dumb they restrict purchase of it in all the countries you can't make a PSN, you can play the single player without a PSN account and I don't plan on making one either. If you want to play online you will need a PSN.. but that doesn't mean it should be restricted for those countries that can't make a PSN I'm sure many want to only play the single player and I don't see the issue with allowing them. Sony are letting the PC community down on that big time.

Definitely a game worth playing here and has to be recommended. Seven hours in and looking at the map I don't think I'm even remotely near finished. Definitely will get my euro to hour value of fun out of this one.

EDIT(After finishing the games story and most of the content):

I'll start with the positive/neutral and move to negative.

The main story overall is good. Some of the quests are very entertaining and a lot of the characters are likable and well executed. It isn't perfect and it's not something I would say is amazing there are many plot holes and convieniences that pull it back and in terms of Feudal Japan at war the whole honor morality stuff doesn't make sense or work it somewhat over stays its welcome for the sake of character tension over logic. But it can be overlooked, I won't spoil anything the story is just good its hit an miss in many points.

In terms of side quests this is where I have to say it is the most hit and miss in terms of quality. Some side quests are great ending in epic duels that are really fun and the plot is interesting and made sense. Others are boring run of the mill go hear kill mongol quests with plot convieniences.. cough.. e.g. Ishikawa story missions these are by far the worst and most boring and frustrating you'll understand after you have done five of them. Culminating in a scene where a person stands on a boat that is sailing away from shore.. sideways... historically these quests don't even make sense either. So yeah it's just fine in that regard.

The moment to moment combat is great fun. Its visceral, engaging and very fluid. It's not as complex as some people would say it's simply use the right stance for the right enemy and spam buttons while intermittently dodging or parrying. But by far it's the stand out point in the game and what will keep you engaged because everything else is either just good or mediocre like the story or bad. The stealth is also really good. The best way to describe the moment to moment game-play is like you are playing an early classic assassins creed like brotherhood for example that is set in feudal japan. I said to a friend while I was playing the game feels like the AC I wanted since AC III. Top tier in this aspect.

The fact that the DLC is also included in the game for the buy in price is also a positive.The DLC plot is mediocre but free addition is free.

The graphics. This is hit and miss as I described above my thoughts on this aspect haven't changed at all.

Now for the negatives. Firstly the subjective negative, this is very much in the vein of a far cry game even going far as to have lighthouses to climb and light, you liberate bases and towns from Mongols etc and that's the whole thing aside from the story and the duels. It's boring and uninspired and we have seen it a million times before.. The saving grace for this was the amazing moment to moment game-play if it wasn't for that.. you would not want to take part in the non story parts and I was even reaching the end of my will to continue by the end.. there is just enough without being too much before it get's stale.. but a second play through of the game would be mind numbing this for sure makes it a one off game.

Enemy diversity is seriously lacking it's serviceable but definitely not enough unique enemies. It's just a few varying mongols with different weapons, Ronin, dogs. That is basically it. The boss duels are the worst part of this, where you get hyped up by a mission or somebody talking about a named mongol general or you clear a camp to fight a named mongol general and for the 20th time its just another mongol boss with shield its very lazy and doesn't help with the far cry open world game-play in terms of keeping you engaged.

There is some weird jank in the game too. Like certain rises in terrain where an enemy stands etc making it physically impossible to hit them while they can hit you etc.. even though you are practically level. Some archers can fire their bows to the side yet somehow the arrow comes directly to you. Things like that nothing game breaking just janky and odd.

Finally. The frame stutter and windows killing bug I got was not a memory leak after all. Apparently malwarebytes (MWB) has some weird issue with the game causing stutters. I believe it has something to do with the games save system and autosaves. The save menu would not work at all during it and it would stutter hard. The game runs great if you just turn off MWB so if you use MWB just do that and you'll be fine I can't attribute the fault on MWB itself or the games programming so I won't make a judgement.

So all in all. The game is good I certainly feel like I got my monies worth even though I actually in the end didn't get the euro to hour value. The game is definitely worth playing, although I would wait for a discount I think 30-40 euro would be the sweet spot price for this one.

I don't love the game. I find it somewhat repetitive and boring. But I abstained from making a review because I know it's a good game and that's just my subjective enjoyment. However, forcing players on steam to log into the game with a PSN account months after the game has launched. When purchasing the game these terms where not agreed to.

And to say its for security and safety is an absolute hypocritical joke the play station network has been data breached over ten times.. in the same period steam has not had a single breach just disable cross play with PSN then for those that don't login it can be done this isn't 1985.

We all know why this is done, the developer was likely strong handed into it by Sony so they could get bigger numbers on their dying platform. The game had so much good will from the gaming community, talking about a fall from grace.

EDIT: I would change my review from negative to positive but Arrowhead CEO: "I am not blameless in all of this - it was my decision to disable account linking at launch so that players could play the game. I did not ensure players were aware of the requirement and we didn't talk about it enough. We knew for about 6 months before launch that it would be mandatory for online PS titles" and that say's it all really, I don't enjoy the game subjectively and I'm unwilling to allow that pass. Scummy is the only word for it.

But it is good they walked it back so 'props' for that I guess its unfortunate it had to take this much for that to happen. But lucky for those that enjoy it.

I have played Diablo 2, 3, 4 and POE. I can safely say already that last epoch is the ARPG I have had the most fun playing and it's not even close for me. The build diversity is great I want to play everything and make every build I can. There is an oomph to the combat that just isn't true for any other aside D4 but we all know what D4 is like. Its just pure unadulterated fun it's as simple as that.

The only issue I have currently is the server issues. However, the game server wise at this point is very playable the only issue is extreme lag in towns/player hubs. Nothing to the level of game ruining.

It's great..

It's rare I review a game. But this absolutely needs to be recommended its an absolute gem of an rogue lite, ARPG. For how cheap it is. It's a complete no brainer.

It's alright. It gets old very quickly with the same events happening repeatedly the game-play loop doesn't change at all. You can beat the game very quickly once you know what to do and you know exactly how to beat the game after the first run. There are three corpses each shift and the models are the same for all three each night. It would be a good game for like €10 but the €20 is way overpriced for the lack of content. Aside from that there are a few minor UI bugs and Crashes but that's a given since it just released. Hopefully they add more content/ modes to merit the price tag but I cannot recommend it.

What's there is great.. but €20 for not even 4 hours I dunno.. I don't think it's worth the steam price.