Recent reviews by dr pepper official

First off, for anyone who hasn't played a soul or souls-like game (Bloodborne, Elden Ring) but wants to get into them, this game is a perfect introduction without the insane difficulty or frustration. For people who liked Souls games, Elden Ring or Bloodborne and want a new experience in the genre, definitely give this one a try.

I started playing Elden Ring but was a little overwhelmed with the complete lack of guidance. difficulty right off the bat, and varying amount of class options — so I came back to LoP, and I feel more than prepared to go back and enjoy a genuine FromSoftware experience.

LoP may be a lot simpler, but don't let it fool you; everything from the legion mechanics to the weapon assembly is simple yet effective and fun, and makes grinding worth the effort.

This game can be super fun with friends and very interactive for everyone, but on the flipside games are EXTREMELY slow and un-interactive sometimes, compared to even my longest DBD matches. The Dollmaster specifically is a frustrating killer who can straight up just hide all game and then get rage/ez down people. It's honestly so boring to play against and going in as a solo teen isn't really that fun either when you get matches like that.

Hellbent should definitely consider different ways to tweak matches into being shorter before the game goes into full release.. otherwise my fear is that queue times and extremely long, dull matches will push players away.

EDIT: Queue times have definitely gotten better early in the day and sporadically later on which is great! Now it would be great to see them focus on balancing Wart and Dollmaster to better fit into the game like Werewolf. Maybe uhhh where Wart doesn't have a shield constantly that makes it impossible to play the game in a fun and interactive way.

For an early access game, I'm so impressed with how polished and well-thought out V Rising is.

To be transparent, I don't typically enjoy games in this general genre, I mostly play regular RPGs. I decided to just throw down the $20 for this game and I don't regret it one bit. The game is a heavier and heavier grind as you progress of course, however the devs gave us a great balance of guidance vs. figuring out the next steps on our own. I love that I always have an objective to work towards but I can easily do things my own way too!

Below are some of the pros and cons I've experienced after spending 25 hours with V Rising:

PROS:

- Perfect amount of grind (just enough to be satisfying but not make me give up)
- Easy to get into, hard to master
- Beautiful and unique environment/game mechanics
- Combat is interesting and often rewarding
- Character design is a nice touch
- PvE servers are a blast if you like teamwork
- The game overall does NOT feel like early access. It's very polished
- Level is not based on experience but equipment you carry, which gives incentive to immediately better your gear and not be forced to grind out the game in a fully linear way to get to [insert level]
- The map tells you where you can farm certain materials if you've discovered that area

CONS:

- By far the biggest one is that you can't teleport with materials. Like.. why?! If you're far from your base and die, you lose all your loot and now you're stuck wasting time going all the way back there, retrieving it, and going all the way back to your base. Going to farm certain materials is such a drag without being able to head back to your base via waypoints.
- Not enough waypoints to even make the above make sense. IMO there should be more waypoints that activate/ as you increase your gear level and can only be accessed by [x] level or above.
- PvP lock is disabled far too early for new players to enjoy PvP. I had to switch and start over because it was a pretty toxic server.
- Crafting actions using stations like the Sawmill, Forge, etc take a bit too long. I would love to see these times cut down by at least 30-40%
- This may be a hot take, but the durability mechanic has either gotta go, or be reworked. I would much rather have a simple linear method to refresh the durability of my gear than have to gather materials to do it all over again. Devs, please consider something like a workbench specific to resetting durability that doesn't force you to go farm just for the sake of your temporary gear

Strengths:

— Great map design, immersive atmosphere
— Great/interesting killer design
— Fun to play with friends casually
— Good value for the low $5 price tag
— Great balance of humor and horror
— Random item locations keeps things fresh

Areas of opportunity:

— AI is very predictable and can basically be looped around any object ie lockers, tables, etc. You can easily just run the Lunch Lady in the same spot, have your friends collect the keys and answers, then dip out
— Games tend to run way too long, almost 40 minutes when you're first learning
— Survivor design could use some customization
— Seeing the location of downed teammates would cut time in game
— Game would strongly benefit from a simple perk system, or something similar that spiced up gameplay