Recent reviews by conmanjones

Edit: It's a pretty inexcusably poor port. The return to Phoenix Gate brought perf down bad enough to make me put the game down until I upgrade. Dropped all settings to low and sub-1080p DLSS, was still next to unplayable. A powerful, modern CPU is needed to get anywhere close to stable fps

If you've played the demo and are on the fence about performance, it will get worse not far into the story
Running rtx2080, Ryzen 3700x, 32GB ram, nvme drive. Thanks to DLSS it still handles most modern games fine, 4k mid settings. Not this, but I've gotten it running well enough to not ruin my experience. 1080p DLSS low-mid and there are still constant noticeable frame drops. Thankfully that will mostly be during exploration and cutscenes, and I suspect in settlements and cities. The Hideaway is the first settlement you'll come to and my experience went from fine to chunky garbage. Lowering the res from 1440p to 1080p helped, but I imagine it's more the CPU struggling with NPCs; later cities I'm sure will be worse. Fortunately though, combat is responsive enough that I think my failures are my own

Early in the game and wanted to say my piece re: performance. May update this after finishing or giving up. But for now I'm enjoying my time with it

The story is engaging. Heaps of early intrigue. Serviceable writing. Cutscene direction is on point, delivering epic shots that sell a sense of scale or power that always makes me giddy. Common interactions with NPCs in the world, though, are still largely the stiff, expressionless back and forths you're used to

Combat is fun. It's flashy. I can maybe see where folks would call it 'press x to win'. But you're actively trying to not have fun in that case. It can be as active and varied as you want it to be, more so the more eikon powers you wield

Plenty of valid things one could say about this not being the FF folks expected. That's always been their MO and this time they managed to produce something very different but still recognizable as their brand. Go into it on the game's terms, without expectations, and you may dig it

Now playable on modern machines! Or at least the pre-anniversary edition always crashed on launch for me. Anniversary edition has crashed once so far with no other issues

Resolution defaults to 4:3 ratios and you'll need to modify files for widescreen support. Default still plays fine

No gameplay issues at 120fps. Some cutscenes have minor animation glitches that might be from running high fps, I haven't bothered checking

It's just as I remember. Decent fun, lots of bloodshed, assault marines die way too fast, .. a story. It's a good time

A fun time. Well-paced throughout with an enjoyable balance of survival-ish, exploration, new tech, and near the "endgame" an appreciated shift toward automation. Very chill experience that lets you go at your own pace. Death is possible but unlikely, and not punishing in the least. I'll happily start a new save when new updates are released

The general progression is great. There are different phases with their own things to do. The tech and processes to advance your oxygen are different from those for plants, which are different from insects, and so on. At times you'll acquire lots of new tech rapidly to keep you busy and pushing toward ever-newer techs. The tech lulls are a good opportunity to go explore the world and find some fun secrets dotted around

The map has a good, hand-crafted layout that starts by feeling huge and mysterious and slowly turns into an easy romp that you'll navigate handily. It evolves as you advance through the terraforming tiers. Make the sky blue, make rain/lakes, grass/trees, and more. New pathways open up, revealing new resources which streamline everything you've already been doing. It's fun to explore and see these kind of global effects

It's early access. There are bugs - none of them particularly harmful, but kinda annoying, and there are a couple that make the experience easier. Ran into issues with invisible walls and "empty" geometry you can walk through. UI issues like not being able to click into something or a piece of UI staying stuck on the screen. A few other things, I'm sure. But zero crashes, didn't have to reboot to resolve anything, and I never felt blocked from what I wanted to do

Patch 1.0.5.1 update

Perfectly tolerable. No more crashes. You can play it and it's an amazing, well crafted experience. Stellar game. Too many pallet and dumpster sections but whatever. It's no longer "broken" - though I did have to restart a couple checkpoints after putting down the necessary item and not being able to interact with it again

Huge improvement from launch day, which isn't much of a compliment. Now in a playable state for me where it looks and runs roughly as I would expect on recommended settings, and doesn't detract from the experience most of the time. Stop to focus on any details though and it still looks subpar

Still no recommendation because the visuals/performance balance isn't there yet


Ryzen 3700x, RTX 2080

It's still the same old Batman experience, albeit with seemingly slower and less responsive combat. The setting should be familiar to fans of the series. What won't be familiar, however, are the bugs. I ran into a progression-blocking bug and dedcided to wait for it to be patched, until the devs said that they may or may not release bug fixing patches. However, they're still going to release paid DLC. I'm done with this game and I'm sure as hell done with this dev after just one purchase.
Strongly recommend avoiding it. Asylum has such an amazing story and City is great in its own right, and I'm sure this game is pretty decent too, but I can't bring myself to support it in any way.

It's fun for the first hour or so, the next six are repetetive and terrible. Don't buy at any price.

I don't even know. 10/10?

Two hours of mostly mindless but sometimes puzzly extremely satisfying platforming/eat-em-up game.