Recent reviews by Hurricane

I received this game as part of a charity bundle, I didn't explicitly purchase it.

I would NOT recommend buying it individually. It really needs a lot of polish. Almost nothing is explained; there's no reference in the game (for recipes or the like). This is a game that badly needs a reference built-in, or at least some kind of community behind it to document everything, but unfortunately it doesn't look like it has either of those.

Gameplay-wise switching tools is clunky, and the controls can't be customised (not fatal but slightly annoying on the deck). Fights are basically just spamming the same tool over and over... oddly enough, the only dedicated weapon I've obtained so far (the spear) is far inferior to the hammer, saw, etc during fights.

The game improves somewhat when you realise that each map area is a kind of little puzzle where you need to figure out how to get to the exit points with the resources you have.

I gave up at the first boss fight. I'm not sure if this game was meant to be "Souls-like" but that's the impression I'm getting. Lots of dodge-plink, dodge-plink, rapidly running out of ammo against an enemy with barely-visible weak points and 0.25s to dodge hits that will two-shot you (and at this stage of the game you have one, maybe two heal shots to use).

It doesn't help that this game has a checkpoint system that isn't a checkpoint system. You have to manually save at a checkpoint, and if you die everything except the doors and unlocks gets reset.

No, I don't like this game.

Edit: Apparently it WAS meant to be Souls-like? I wish I'd known, I would never have bought it. The marketing really does not match the gameplay.

Have a very, very, VERY high threshold of frustration before playing this game. Some of the bosses are bullet-hell type and extremely frustrating. Some of the platforming sections will throw you back 3-4 screens worth after a single mistake, which is frustrating. There is little to no guidance through the storyline, which is frustrating. On a Steam deck, some of the control combinations seem unresponsive which makes combos very difficult to pull off, which is frustrating.

You'll probably enjoy some aspects of the game, but it's very much one of those games that will cost you tooth enamel. Also, if you quit the game before the finish (like I did) it's extremely unlikely you'll come back to it.

This game was fantastic in its heyday, but those days are long gone. The game is effectively abandoned by its developer; the servers are basically only there to service bots, and the owners of those bots can be EXTREMELY malicious.

Remember the TF2 that was, and let it rest.

This game leaves you floundering in many ways. Too often I simply had NO idea WTF I was supposed to do... the controls are lame, the story is hard to follow, the goals of a mission are hard to track, and the game gives you no real indication when a save point has been reached.

I finally gave up and uninstalled after 1-2 hours of confusingly wandering a "dungeon" while investigating the Prophet had me die in a fight against "Swarms" that seemed invulnerable. I gave up intending to come back to the fight later, and even made an explicit save point... but when I loaded up again later I found the game had knocked me back to the beginning of the mission.

No, I have no interest in playing any further.

Also, the game is horrible on the Steam Deck, even though it's "Verified". It's simply too small on the Deck screen and you can't keep track of targets.

I might change my review later, because there's a decent, cute game in this, but it badly needs some tuning and quality of life fixes. Aspects are tedious, some of the broken english can be ignored, many bits are completely unexplained and just need more dialog. The game will throw quests are you that you aren't ready for, and you won't *know* you're not ready for them until you fail them. There's no real effort to keep quests within the capability of the player.

But the fishing minigame... I don't know which dev designed it but I've decided that I hate them. It is unbelievably obnoxious, and again... quests depend on it.

It's going to be weird "Not recommending" a game I have so much playtime in. Clearly, *I* enjoy the game. However, it's important to know that the average gamer is running a risk.

The game is wide but shallow. There's a lot to do, but it's same-y and not very nuanced. It's actually nice to have a game where you can just explore and still level because of it; where you can completely ignore the main storyline and not feel like the gameworld is doomed because of it.

There are bugs and crashes, like any Bethesda game.

However, the important bit to note is that the "Requirements" on this game are entirely delusional. The "Recommended specs" should be the MINIMUM specs. I have a 2060, and I spent long periods at sub-*8* fps. Apparently Bethesda didn't see it worthwhile to release the game with native support for small, niche GPU vendors like nVidia.

The game is VERY badly optimized. Mod makers have made some workarounds, but the average play isn't going to want to deal with that like I'm willing to. The devs are improving it, and in a year I suspect I'll be able to recommend this game without hesitation. But right now? No.

Keep the auto-difficulty scaler turned off!

Seriously, it doesn't distinguish between luck and skill. I was looking for a nice casual game to play on the Deck, and it's inevitable that even a scrub like me will get the occasional lucky chain. When that happens, the auto-difficulty will decide that you're a pro-player and proceed to NUKE YOU FROM FRIGGIN' ORBIT.

Worse, it sticks! You can't just restart the match. The scaler wants you to know that you failed, that you're a loser and nobody loves you. You need to completely fail the match, go past the "you lose" screen, start a new match, and maybe come back to it if you're playing Story Mode.

So yeah... just say no to the Auto-Difficulty.

And yes, I'm still Recommending the game. Don't kink-shame me.

I did generally enjoy the game, but nearing the six hour mark things start to get ridiculous. The game turns into a button-masher... enemies have SO much HP that you're wailing on them for literal minutes, and later in the game their numbers increase so that you're fighting 3-4 enemies EACH of which can take 1-2 minutes of nonstop pounding before they drop. It's possible that my character was weak, however... but I'm not sure why, because:

The translation to English is very poor. Most of the time it doesn't matter, and sometimes it's amusing, but I feel like sometimes there were aspects of gameplay that weren't explained behind the blobs of chinese or the mangled english. For instance: the achievements page talks about upgrading weapons, but never once is how to do that explained (perhaps that was why my character felt so weak?) Also, you level up weapon skills by using them, and unlock techniques... but weapons in the game aren't always immediately obvious WHAT kind of weapon they are according to the game categorization.

I don't regret buying the game, but it's unfortunate that I couldn't keep playing it before getting so annoyed. It works great on the Steamdeck, and I was in the mood for a nice wuxia game.

Your team AI is not just stupid, they're UNBELIEVABLY stupid. And the game makes absolutely no attempt to guide you on measuring contract difficulty vs your capabilities. So you should expect to launch your group of drooling morons into absolutely unwinnable missions on a regular basis.