Recent reviews by Keksus

It is what everybody expected it to be. The usual Souls-formula which forces you to play defensive, roll around enemies every time they attack to then strike back. Rinse and repeat. This time it's merely combined with an open world which merely exists for the sake of having an open world while serving no actual purpose and not enhancing the gameplay at all. Quite the contrary. It hurts it immensily.

In general it's the usual "Just run around and fulfill every icon on the map" with the only difference from your usual run of the mill open worlds being that the icons are merely invisible. Doesn't change the used formula though and basically just adds a ton of wasted time. Because the last thing I wanna do in a souls game is run around and pick flowers for some generic crafting system. The actual content of the game is still put away in linear dungeons which begs the question: Why add an open world to begin with?

Does it look nice? Yes. You will find the usual Souls-Artstyle here which is indeed interesting and atmospheric. But it doesn't make a good game.

It's a bit of a shame From decided to go down this path instead of doubling down on the success of Bloodborne. Because the entire Souls-Formula simply works better without an open world and a more metroidvania-like approach. And the fighting system of Bloodborne is also simply more interesting than the whole rolling-around thing. The pinnacle regarding this is, my opinion, still Sekiro though.

Ghost of Tsushima suffers from the typical Open-World-Problem: It has a gigantic world for the sake of having a gigantic world. There isn't much happening in it and it completely clashes with its story.

An example: Jin Sakai carries a sword which embodies the legacy of his father and is well known among the citizens of Tsujima. An NPC even comments on this. Yet the game just needs to have a crafting system and you will recraft your swords including cosmetic enhancements to keep up with enemies which are getting stronger and stronger. And it is a problem the game wouldn't have, would it just get rid off the tacked on RPG system.

Jin also grew up following a codex: Never be a coward and strike from the shadows. Yet it takes him a total of maybe 30 seconds to completely throw away his codex and clear an entire enemy camp by sneaking around. Even though an NPC commented before on that he should bend the codex if he doesn't want to break it, which could've been easily accomplished animation wise. Maybe by him turning an enemy around and looking him in the eye before killing him.

Next mission: You rescue a blacksmith. He and his sister ride away to another town. You instantly follow them. Takes full 10 minutes of riding through an empty world. You arrive at the town suddenly occupied by mongols and they tell you that the mongols arrived a few days ago ... Guys ... I was directly behind you! Was probably travelling around the event horizon of a black hole. No other explanation here.

In general when people call it a screenshot simulator, you need to be aware that it's exactly that. Because the open world falls apart the moment you actually look at it. Nothing in the world changes unless you are doing something. And I mean nothing. An NPC is standing at a cliff, looking at the landscape? They won't move a single inch. They are standing there 24 hours a day. Wounded people in a camp? They are lying there. They will never be visited by a doctor. It's a completely static backdrop.

The game obviously tries to tell a linear story, which completely contradicts it being an open world game. Which also becomes evident due to all missions taking place in an enclosed area. If you travel too far away you get the usual "Turn back!" message.

The skill system is seriously basically just Assassin's Creed. You even get the usual double and triple assassination stuff. And some of it is very gamey. There are stand offs for example, where you can kill an enemy with one sword strike ... and you can get a skill which forces one or two additional enemies running to you during that time so you can get three easy kills during a stand off ... what is Jin learning here, which forces two more enemies to come running at him during this time?

The fights themselves are ... enjoyable enough at the beginning but not very deep. The difficulty ramps up the moment you fight against mongols with armor. But it isn't ramping up, because it gets actually hard. Most of the times you die it's not because you made a mistake, but because the game shoved you into some bullcrap situation. Like enemies not having clear attack patterns. Enemies could for example strike once and you can dodge ... but sometimes - not always - they instantly follow up that one strike with an unblockable attack. And if you just dodged the initial strike you instantly get punished even though you did nothing wrong. Which, on the highest difficulty, can lead to instant death. The game basically just tells you "♥♥♥♥ you for dodging!" The workaround? Oh. Just farm a while and unlock all the necessary skills to instantly kill on a perfect dodge.

This also shows clear problems with the save system. It is so extremely inconsistent. Because accomplished tasks and Jins position seem to be saved seperately. Which leads to weird situations where for example you have to rescue some prisoners from a camp. You open the first cage of prisoners and they follow you. Now you die. Jin himself is set back to the starting point of the mission, but is now accompanied by the prisoners he rescued ... but their cage is locked up again. Enemies you killed? Some stay dead, some not. It seems to be rather random.

Now this is probably not a big problem on lower difficulties, because you won't die so often there. But it makes it seem like the devs never gave higher difficulties a thought. They balanced around normal, expected the player to be able to take a few hits and then merely ramped up damage done by enemies for higher difficulties. And due to this you can notice all the flaws of the combat system. They should've balanced around the highest and then adjusted for lower difficulties to make an actually enjoyable system.

In general all of this makes the game very frustrating to play.

Sure. You have a japanese setting for once which was researched well enough with the devs taking some liberties they are very aware of though, which might be worth something. It's enough for me. So I still intend to finish it for some lowkey samurai story with all it's flaws. But in it's core you need to be aware that gameplay wise ... it's simply not a good game. It's done well enough so that you can still play through it, but it's completely missing the stuff a handcrafted masterpiece is made out of. It's more like a game from the endless open world factory.

I grew tired of Hades 1 very quickly, as it simply felt too monotonous and most weapons were akward to use. It wasn't a bad game, and the core gameplay loop was good, there was just not much variety.

Hades 2 is better in every regard. I prefer the dark edge lord witch setting over the family feud in Hades 1. Sure, it's still a family feud. It's greek mythology, but I feel like the stakes are higher here and really feel like I am part of some underground rebel group.

Weapons are way more interesting. Especially thanks to the Omega casts and charging mechanics, which allow for way more variety during gameplay. Having mana instead of the casts of Hades 1 which always felt a bit limiting to me really makes me make use of more of the games mechanics.

Balancing is ... still off a bit I think. At least I noticed rather quickly what works well for me and what's basically useless. But I never did any math and don't know if there might be some synergies I am merely missing. My build always mostly focuses on daggers for small time chip damage and dealing with small enemies and apollos damage upgrade for my cast to just nuke stuff.

To be able to go two paths this time (down to Chronos or up to olympus) really spices things up too.

An improvement in every regard, especially since I always thought that while Hades 1 was a good game, it was also an overrated one.

Great game. Might get a bit monotonous after a while, but its fun every now and then jumping into missions, looting stuff and upgrading your Mecha.

It seems though that a lot of people don't understand its monetization. The only stuff you can drop cash on are the skins and so on from the Steam Store and the Deluxe Edition.

It has a battlepass but thats entirely free and with the Deluxe Edition you get the Premium Path too, which merely means you get more the items. The Ingame Shop is centered entirely around stuff you can find ingame. It is not possible to spend actual money there.

Its utterly confusing why they did it like that, but its not predatory because -despite the Deluxe Edition which merely increases your battle pass items - no real money is involved at all and you cant continously pay for anything.

€: It seems like the newest update improved performance significantly. There is still room for improvement, but I am now getting my stable capped 60 fps (without the new DLSS 3.5 I might add) where before I struggled to reach 30 fps. Frametimes also improved significantly. Needs more testing though to figure out if it's really playable now.

----

Runs really bad. Extreme frame drops and very bad frametimes. I deem that basically unplayable. On top of that thanks to Denuvo you are locked out of the game for 24 hours if you try to fiddle around with it for a bit in an attempt to find ways to increase the performance somehow.

Just a small simple story about a group of adventurers on their quest to save the country by defeating an evil King. Nothing to see here. Move along.

If you are looking for an Experience like SWAT, then Ready or Not is not the game for you. Not only the often mentioned AI problems prevent it from becoming that, but also mission design. Everything is aimed at cheap movie twists and more firefights and action. You are called to a building complex with one suspect? Oh. The intel unit was on vacation and we somehow missed that illegal crypto mining farm who for some reason hired a highly professional PMC for security! There's a shooter in a school? Oh. We somehow forgot to mention they planted bombs in the entire building! You have 1 minute to disarm them!

Unlike in SWAT, in this game you don't feel defeat because a hostage was shot or you weren't able to apprehend a suspect. Defeat comes from cheap and unrealistic twists as well as AI having superhuman reflexes and senses, shooting you the moment they see your little toe. And they are doing that through two walls if they have to. This also makes them very predictable. Because you KNOW: If you see them, they DEFINITELY shoot. There is no negotiation window. You don't even need to try to shout at them. It's useless.

The only way for non-lethal runs is using non-lethal weaponry. But even then crack addicts can take three beanbags to the head while still being able to strafe and fire at you with perfect accuracy. And if you somehow manage to get them to surrender, you have exactly 45 seconds before they definitely pull out a gun again. Seriously: You can count. The AI behavior they demonstrated in all their pre-release and Early-Access videos? You will almost never even see that.

On top of that is the mission design which just throws extreme amounts of John Wicks at you. Compare that to SWAT where you actually had missions with just a single suspect or sometimes two due to randomization. That was way more suspenseful and immersive. And speaking of immersion: It's not really immersive having suspects running out in the open and cars driving directly by your mission area. Where is the perimeter? Where are the snipers? Even the whole Police HQ feels rather useless. You get an optional briefing on a tablet. Why not in a briefing room with your team mates sitting around with you? Or at the scene itself or maybe in the car on the way, because police had to act fast?

Another thing is commanding your team. Unlike in SWAT you can't command them via the helmet camera, making it next to impossible to attack a building from two sides. The only way to do that is by physically walking back and forth between both teams.

They also cut a lot of content from the last Early-Access-Release. Mainly the ability to play different modes on the same map. It also seems like some missions were toned down a bit in terms gore. Nightclub for example.

So even if they fix the AI, the game has a ton of problems to address. And at the moment it feels like a solid foundation which was rushed out way too fast at best. It certainly is not a finished 1.0 release. And at worst the game will always be held back by the mission design.

My recommendation: Play SWAT 4 instead and use the Elite Force Mod.

The whole game is based around you deciding the future of your coven. And due to this fact it's unfortunate, that most decisions don't really have any impact beyond one or two lines of dialog. A lot of characters you meet only one or two times and it seems to be irrelevant what you tell them. Even a very important seeming decision near the end just blows over by a character saying one thing and that was it.

Due to this the game might seem interesting and fun in one playthrough, but that's only because it manages to trick you into thinking that your choices are important.

But what you mainly decide on is the future of humanity which is referenced more often and the ending by chosing the fire seal. Everything else is just minor flavor.

Sehr hübsch designtes Samurai-Spiel basierend auf der japanischen Mythologie, das an Titel wie Two Strikes und First Cut erinnert. Sclash ist bisher jedoch das einsteigerfreundlichste von allesn. Dafür sorgt vor allem der Story-Modus, der langsam immer schwerer wird.

Das Konzept, wenige Schläge taktisch klug zu setzen, statt endlos lange Combos zu lernen, ist sehr spaßig und sorgt f@r einige filmreife Momente.

Good game. Takes a while to get used to how it wants you to play, but is amazing afterwards. Player created bases are often too easy though, as most people just spam traps without thinking too much about the placement.

A validation system for the bases would be nice though, as it would be a nice incentive to create hidden paths and the likes, leading to more base variety. Currently it is very focused around creating a killbox as the base builder and figuring out how to beat the killbox as the raider. So far every single one was solvable though.

The variety comes from different trap layouts players use. There are slow killboxes which require thinking to get through, as you need to use your limited resources wisely. On the other hand there are trap parkours which require movement, aiming and also the correct usage of your items. Sometimes both are combined, leading to the hardest bases as you need to figure out when to slow down.

Unfortunately the game seems to suffer from a lot of people not understanding the gameplay and complain about "unsolvable bases", just because they are not good enough. No base is unsolvable. Some are harder, some are easier. But theres a reason the game provides you with 3 "Oh ♥♥♥♥!"-Buttons. A reusable shield, a shield to drop down and a literal revive.

This is no game where you have to trick people into traps once. You need to kill them with your layout despite them knowing where the traps are. And as a raider you need to be able to switch tactics. Sometimes you need to think about a trap layout, other times its best to rush through and use shields as well as the ability to deflect traps. And not every level 1 player is supposed to be able to beat every base first try. The amount of level 1 players which attempt to raid my brutal base is astonishing.