Recent reviews by Applesmack

The best survival game I have played.

What I like:

You are a vampire. The game replaces boring "survival game" food and water meters with blood. Instead of avoiding the cold you must avoid the sunlight. Similar concepts, but much more badass. The game has you make survival choices such as drinking low quality blood to sustain yourself, but become weaker as a result or take the risk on finding a target with high quality blood to maintain your power.

The game has configuration sliders that impact everything from number of castles you can make, how much of a grind crafting is, to how long day and night last. Every server is configured differently so look at their settings and choose an experience right for you!

It feels very rewarding to get stronger. Gives you the same dopamine that Diablo does when you get better gear.

The combat is excellent. If you enjoy ARPGs such as Diablo you will feel at home here. There are 57 bosses. The bosses are all unique, challenging and fun to fight.

The game makes it clear on the map what resources can be gathered from different areas in the game world. The game doesn't waste your time like most survival games where you spend way too long looking for resources.

The game guides you with what to do next and rewards you for completing the quest objectives. As a result you are never bored. You always have something to work towards in addition to your own personal goals.

The game world is large, detailed and the game has has a great visual style.

The building mechanics are simple, but effective. You get resources for the building you need and then place it in your base. The simplicity makes it easy to build really majestic looking castles without investing crazy hours. Its as simple to build in V Rising as it is in an RTS. This compares favorably to other survival games, which make it very challenging to build any beautiful base.

What I dislike:

I don't dislike anything, but I do wish the game had more PVE content. For example I wish there were more sidequests with unique storylines to develop the game world. I hope developers need to continue to support the game with more PVE content in DLCs.

Boring. The game gives you no direction and you just walk around a house picking up junk which is 99% meaningless. I closed it after 15 minutes. If you want an actually good game of this type go play "What Remains of Eidth and Finch".

The campaign is a corridor shooter where you follow a straight line the entire game. Space Marine 2 tries to present an illusion of scale with a background showing a wider battle, but it is completely non-interactive. At no point can you drive any vehicles, which is very disappointing. From a gameplay perspective it is fun, but barebones and unremarkable. It plays like Gears of War but replaces a cover system with a parry/QTE system. Plenty of guns in the game but there are only 3 guns worth using: Melta rifle, bolt rifle and flamethrower for certain sections. Even though there are only 2 enemy factions in the game (Tyrranid and Chaos) the game's short length prevents it from feeling repetitive. In conclusion, the only reason I recommend this game is the Warhammer 40k setting, which is exceptionally well presented. If this was a "modern military 3rd person shooter" it would have ended up straight in the bargain bin.

Boring walking simulator that controls badly so it didn't even get the simulation correct. Has no gameplay outside of walking around, pressing buttons and opening doors. Not scary. What else do you really need to know?

I just hate it.

Hate the characters.
Hate the AI.
Hate the guns.
Hate the looping repetitive environments.
Hate dying and losing time.
Hate the graphics.

I tried to force myself to like it but I just can't.

Pros:

- Beautiful art style.
- Tons of viable ways to play the game. Can play a caster, mage or mix it up depending on the boss.
- Challenging gameplay that feels rewarding to play. Sure you may die a lot but death isn't a big deal in this game and there are generous spawn points everywhere so you can try again.
- From Software really nailed the idea of exploration being about making your character more powerful in order to overcome bosses. For example you do dungeons in order to get spells or items that make you more powerful or make a boss encounter easier. The game is challenging enough that you feel your time doing this side content isn't wasted and practically necessary to continue in the main story.
- Tons of enemy variety keep the experience fresh.
- Lots of bosses to fight means always another challenge to overcome!

Cons

- You can't just do the "main" quest and fight the main bosses. Game would be unreasonably hard if you try. Even the first boss of the game can't be reasonably beat without a level 20-30 character, which requires significant time investment on side content. This is in contrast with other Souls games like Bloodborne that won't have you "grinding" early on. The bosses are the toughest in the Souls franchise. Even the first boss in this game is a beast compared to other Souls games unless you have the right items (Margit shackle!!) and leveled enough.
- Armor progression really lame. As you progress in the game the armor doesn't exactly get better. It is practically for cosmetic purposes, which I hate. Also too much ugly armor.
- Weapon progression is lame and I'm often disappointed how trash the new awesome looking weapon I picked up is. There is a "good" weapon for each build in the game and that is what you end up using the entire time. The sad thing is that some starting weapons (like the samurai starting weapon) are actually the "good" weapons already so if you are playing a "bleed" character you will be using that weapon until late game. LAME
- Annoying artificial restrictions such as inability to enchant all weapons. I guess From Software doesn't have the talent to balance enchants on weapons.
- Performance on PC still has random stutter spikes.
- Voice acting on characters is dreadful. Worst I've seen in a major game. It would be better without voice acting at all.
- A bit too much empty space in the world. Could definitely be shrunk down.

What I don't care about:

I'm not reviewing the online part of the game as I played this game entirely offline. I have no interest in the COOP or PVP of this game and prefer the ability to use mods that (in my opinion) improve my experience.

Conclusion:

I'm having great fun with the game. I got over the lack of armor and weapon progression by playing a caster class, where I definitely feel I'm getting more powerful by unlocking new spells and talismans. The best staff in the game is also a goal I'm working towards. I recommend playing a caster in this game as it is great fun compared to previous Souls games.

If you are happy just doing missions you will enjoy the game as it is great in that department. Don't expect some open world masterpiece. The game has bugs, but I didnt find them too bad... Mostly occasional visual glitches. I'm enjoying the game personally.

The good:

- Main missions
- Side jobs
- Writing
- cyberpunk vibe
- world building (city looks awesome and lore is interesting)
- graphics
- characters

The bad:

- Want a good police system? Not here. Cops will spawn infinitely around you if you commit a crime. This is probably the worst issue in the game and it should have never launched with the police system this bad.
- AI of everyone is brain dead in this game.
- Combat is average at best. The guns are not impactful while the hand to hand combat is straight up dreadful.

It is a good game. The puzzles were very annoying and felt repetitive, but I'd say it is one of the most gripping action/horror games I have played. Great story, great writing, great characters and great art. Combat is solid with some well done boss fights. I'll give the game an 8/10 with most of the points lost due to frustrating puzzle sections.

Bad story made worse by bad characters. Way too much combat, which is the worst part of this game and the set-pieces that provoke the combat are completely absurd and unbelievable. Deus Ex Machina is abused everywhere in this game. The tombs were good but there aren't enough of them to keep me going through the awful story and combat.

You only have 22 minutes to explore before the game kills you. Anytime I was somewhere interesting the sun blew up and I was back at the beginning...During the game you go from place to place reading squiggly lines on the walls rambling about ♥♥♥♥ I don't understand. There is absolutely zero guidance whatsoever on what you should do. I had no idea what was going on the entire time and the game never gave me a reason to care. Not my idea of fun but I can see why some people like this game.