Recent reviews by First son of the Sea

I posted this on Gen's recent video on Payday 3, and I've decided it's a good review so I'm reposting it here:

I think this is an Anthem situation. (There's a great article about the development, tl;dr there was less than a year of active development on Anthem when it launched.) I don't think there's a lot of development time on this. The copy pasted UIs and so much outsourcing and AI generated content seems to point to this too. I think this was slapped together at the last minute to meet a release deadline.

Everyone be honest. The core playerbase is on Steam. Gamepass players tried it once and uninstalled, since that's what gamepass is there for. Console numbers are definitely low, there's no way people trust Starbreeze are gonna keep this updated and not pull a repeat of Payday 2. The sheer number of empty lobbies points to this.

"But Payday 2 had 10 years" yeah and Starbreeze should have learned things in those ten years. They should have improved. Why are people judging a 2023 release on 2013's standards? It wasn't a good release in 2013 either. It's an absolutely brainless take imo. And yeah I know it's an entirely different crew, almost nobody from PD2 is working on PD3.

Additionally I think they're straight up lying. They're not considering offline mode, and I don't think they're working on much of a change to progression either. I think they're going to try to polish the ♥♥♥♥ out of this turd whenever the patch eventually lands and it's gonna be mostly bug fixes and crap like "fixed collision on a locker on x level" 35 times and not adding in core features that are desperately needed.

Skills are really out of whack too. They're so badly balanced it's like they just came up with ideas over the course of a weekend and went with it. It's such a haphazard system. Playing around the three buffs feels like I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off and not like a calculated killing machine with reliable skills from the tree or decks.

All of the character models are super bad. The contractor portraits are AI tier bad. The cutscenes are terrible and all the voice lines are robotic as hell. My man Gustavo killed it with the soundtrack in my opinion but that's gonna be subjective of course. Civilian models look bad. Car models are fine but they just stop like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ mobile ad when they come into contact. There's a prevailing sense throughout the entire game that it's just very cheaply made. The game is a knockoff of CoD and Battlefield with usually boring objectives like stand in a bunch of wi-fi circles. They're fundamentally the same as drills, but worse in practice.

Customization is just as bad as you've read. Guns look like fake Nerf toys. Masks are poorly made and fit on the character models poorly. Customization for the masks might as well be nonexistant.

For real I don't think there's much hope here. I think it could be done, but probably not by Starbreeze, and probably not with Starbreeze's budget. There's too much missing, and their communication is way too poor. They haven't said a word since apologizing for their awful communication.

Very solid action roguelite. For fans of Risk of Rain 2 for sure. Nice weapon and power up variety, solid visuals, sound, and performance. Definitely pick it up if you're into roguelites and third person action in general!

Overall very solid, and worth the purchase. I hope for a few things to be fixed in a sequel though, such as:

1. The combat is straight dog. I'd rather they remove it altogether to focus more on what they do well instead.
2. The different movement types are largely just reskins. You can slide under certain grates or high jump on foot, or use the skateboard on the red posts, among others, but it's largely all the same.
3. Every character does the same tricks on the same movement types. It'd be nice if they all had unique trick sets, and this is a minor gripe, but it's something that'd be good to have in a sequel.
4. Navigating the phone menu can be kind of a pain in the ass. Just let me close it with a single button please.
5. Mark the port a potties and the dance pads on the map after you unlock them as well.

These gripes aside I love the game. It's a very worthy successor to the JSR franchise and I hope to see another.

Excellent bullet hell RPG. Completed and 100%'d in about 10 hours. I went with a magic build first playthrough. Might go again for a ranged or melee build. The dashing puzzles were pretty fun and the dodge trials were all great except for one. Only issue with the trials is they kept giving me badges I wasn't going to use lol. Overall though a pretty solid 8/10. No performance issues but half of the crafting recipes just straight don't need to exist since no one will use intentionally crappier weapons than the unique ones you get.

It's a cuter, not as frustrating Nuclear Throne. Recommended for any twinstick shooter/roguelike fan.

A tough but fair roguelike that fans of Hades will enjoy immensely. Like any roguelike, sometimes runs are just plain bad, but with the parry and dodge system in the game, it's possible to keep that bad seed running long enough to turn the tide eventually, assuming you're better at parrying and dodging than I am.

Great art style
Great sound design
Weighty, rewarding combat
Good variety of upgrades and weapons to suit different playstyles
Very good performance, I have no framerate or any other issues
Real neat lore if you're into that stuff, great writing going on in the journal entries
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ electric witch boss does too much damage I hate her I hate her I hate her
Jaguar boy throws sword then dies

There's a lot going on in this game, highly recommended!

I used this for the write in award. I named it "Missed Potential." The game isn't as unplayable and unspeakably terrible as a lot of people would say, but it's several big steps back from NV in many ways. It has both Bethesda's best and worst ideas, best and worst writing, and best and worst characters. There are glaring faults but look past them (or mod past them) and you'll find a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Yeah Creation Club is pretty scummy but this last update should reduce the amount of times F4SE gets broken significantly, and just keep not spending money on the CC and eventually they'll have to cut their losses and nuke it since it's costing them more than it's bringing in.

I mean if Trump is allowed to run for President then I guess this is allowed to exist too.

DO YOU LIKE GETTING HYPE AS ♥♥♥♥?
IF YOU DON'T THEN GET OUT.
THIS ♥♥♥♥ IS HYPE. AS. ♥♥♥♥.

L O D S OF E M O N E
WUZZAT SPELL?
LOADSAMONEY
Probly