Recent reviews by Kenneth

The buggiest and worst optimized piece of crap of a game to which even Bethesda-made games pale in comparison, frustrating amounts of crashing and a constant influx of bugs, despite all that Kenshi's probably the most fun I've had with a sandbox RPG in a long time.

I say that, but the game is engaging and really lets you see the fruits of your labor if you put the time in to improve your character, it can go from struggling against mere starving bandits to rivaling or even exceeding the stats of end-game bosses, fights are also extremely fun to spectate, as every NPC human or animal have varying stats which factors in to how well they fare in a fight, the map is huge with a good variety of biomes with their respective advantages and disadvantage for those looking to settle there so you can never really get a "perfect" piece of land for your base to be settled on. The game has a good modding community, it has tons of mods for you to customize your game with, ranging from fixes/quality-of-life changes, to bigger scale faction-overhauling mods and even a few graphical changes (mostly reshade presets.)

Though again as I stated in the first few lines the game is poorly optimized, I don't think I have the best of setups to handle kenshi, even at the lowest of settings you will get constant loading screens which may or may not force pause your game though oddly enough raising the view distances to 3/4 of the max seems to have decreased the frequency of loading by quite a bit. Another issue that I also mentioned are the bugs, my game frequently crashes and there's tons of weird pathing issues which Kenshi has always had, though it feels as if with every new update the pathing has slowly gotten worse, suddenly my character now loops at small crossroads outside of a few particular towns (The Hub in the Border Zone and Bad Teeth in Okran's Pride to name the most notorious spots in my experience.). Another huge bug that I have found to be oddly consistent is your bases disappearing when left for too long, I have no idea what causes this but it has been in the game for quite a while and it has been the reason why I stopped playing for a few updates, version 1.0.32 I think was the point at which I stopped playing and we're now at 1.0.40, I only played around the time of version 1.0.30 (btw thanks to CODEX for putting out those 'free' versions until I got the money to buy Kenshi.) but until now it is sadly not fixed yet.

Good singleplayer; absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ multiplayer. The community and the game systems are complete trash and only serve to force the players to sink inordinate amounts of time into a game that doesn't give any satisfaction in the long-term.

Like paying in-game millions for a car with incremental differences in their speed/handling/braking? Come on down to GTA:O where every car handles virtually the same. Mod prices scale depending on the cars, and even then the prices are inconsistent AF, some tiny visual modifications can set you back 40-50k in in-game currency. Others might say "YeAh wElL tHaT tAkEs TwO tO tHrEe MiSsIoNs To geT tHaT aMoUnT" or "YoU jUsT dOn'T kNoW hOw tO EffEctIveLy EaRn MoNey" but to them I say: Go. ♥♥♥♥. Yourself.

Absolute trash money-making systems in place for GTA:O. If you don't want to grind for multiple real-life hours micromanaging player-owned businesses for what feels like pretty cash, don't get this game. The only true quality-of-life change we got for the money-making aspect of GTA:O is the Cayo Perico heist, and that took us over half a decade to get and it still blows because you still have to buy and own a kosatka, along with all the pre-requisites.

Don't like getting griefed by losers in fast, flying, homing-missile-firing bikes with tiny hitboxes? Save yourself the trouble and don't buy this game. If you DO want to deal with that, get the cars; Nightshark, Insurgent, or Duke O' Death, they can take the missiles. The community is trash, and you just have to deal with that undeniable fact.

Also, ever wonder why you'll see a player spam a chat message filled with boxes and random numbers and codes? Those are bots. GTA:O sucks so much ass that the community has developed a market for illegal mods. These mods give you a range of benefits but the most important features are that you can generate money for yourself, give yourself invincibility, and teleport to any part of the map. They're relatively cheap, and you will often find at least 1 to 2 modders every lobby. Now that also works as a double-edged blade, because some of these modders are cuckolds who want nothing more than to make everybody on the lobby suffer.

I'll end this review on a high note: ♥♥♥♥ rockstar for creating the trash multiplayer, I'm still going to play it though because of sunk-cost fallacy. That concludes my TED Talk

The Shadowkeep campaign feels as short as the Curse of Osiris campaign, with the lackluster storytelling and ending of the expansion being my main issue. It had a strong start with the premise and the re-introduction of past bosses in the franchise but fails to maintain the tempo of the story as it devolves into no more than completing menial tasks meant to pad out the story (if there even was any.). It felt as if I was completing more bounties/mini quests rather than actually participating or experiencing in a story.

Shadowkeep fails to deliver any sizable changes outside of Armor 2.0 and it sadly does not introduce alot of replayability, and that is a glaring issue for long-standing players, as the experience pre-SK was already a chore rather than being a fun and wholesome experience outside of raids (which may not appeal to everybody in the playerbase.). And now that bungie has made it so that the previous activities i.e. forges, menagerie, dreaming city do not drop powerful gear, of which you obtain in order to increase your power level beyond the 900 soft cap which you can reach very quickly by the way, making the process of leveling up past said soft cap even more of a chore now that we must play modes that we might dislike (such as Crucible or Gambit), and complete bounties for those respective modes to progress or else you risk taking much, much longer to reach the hard power cap.

What I cannot understand is why Bungie decided to make everything 750 by default, it takes away the feeling of progressing through the game and feeling as if your character is actually improving. I understand that it will be a difficult grind as the power cap is now nearing the 1000 mark, but they could have just amplified power level gains before 750 and optimizing story mission difficulties around that.

Another Issue that I have with Shadowkeep is the Season Pass. I am not against implementation of season passes to give you bonuses to playing the game, but when it's the only actual reason for having replayability? there lies an issue. Shadowkeep's season pass is the only long-term goal you have at the moment, as past raids such as Last Wish up to Crown of Sorrows aren't as rewarding since they don't give you powerful gear anymore, Dreaming City is pretty much in the same boat, it's now just an empty area with un-rewarding bounties and weekly challenges for you to do, though Black Armory Forges and Menagerie not so much as people typically used it to farm god-roll weaponry. Now you are just stuck in a boring and tedious loop of buying every available bounty and completing them to progress your season pass level. It pales in comparison to playing modes throughout the in-game system where you are actually rewarded handsomely for having even accessed them for the week, there is just no incentive to doing anything but leveling the season pass now.

This is by far the most disappointing year pass in comparison to previous years.

Good timesink of a game with generous amounts of character, furniture, and finish customization. Very replayable and you're pretty much free to play however you want. The downsides however are glaring, as DLC's are very expensive, rarely being worth the bang for their buck, another problem is that the game mini-freezes much more often the more DLC's you have installed, resulting in ~5 second delays to even panning your camera, it gets even worse on older systems, but it still has the same issues with more powerful rigs.

It's a very good game to get into, you have 50 or so operators with their own use and niche to fill within the team. The game has a steep learning curve, and even you grasp the basic gameplay mechanics, you'll still find new things to do in the game, what sets it apart is that the environment is semi-destructible which means that some walls/floors/structural elements can be destroyed given enough bullet or explosive damage, this can often completely re-do how a site is played.

One issue that I have within the game is the legibility of all the unit models in regards to the environments, there's a huge variety of cosmetics in siege and good portion of them look fantastic but sometimes the developers release a seasonal set of headgears and uniforms which might be able to help you blend into the environments, I know that's kind of the point of police/military uniforms, but the game is well past the point of "realism" when it has a pizza-themed skin and an operator which projects a fully-controllable hologram and I'm all for the idea of cosmetics, but when it compromises how well you can spot a character in a room filled with colourful and destructible furniture and props, It's just frustrating when you're doubting what your own eyes perceive. Sadly they have not yet implemented an option that disables showing non-default cosmetics nor do I think they have plans to implement one in the near future.

Good example of what a proper DLC should be, expounds on the game with more juicy tidbits of lore, as well as gives you even more challenging content, most of which in the DLC is more difficult than the base game itself.

Highly Recommend, it's just a perfect send-off to such a great series.

♥♥♥♥. This. Game. Seriously.

Bad Fallout game, good looter shooter.

This game falls flat on its face when it comes to the narrative as well as in charm however it excels in minute-to-minute moments especially in the gunplay. I would say the story isn't worth bothering with. It feels like a more boring rendition of Fallout 3 but the map is just not as varied, ironic when FO3 is known for its consistent, sick green palette. The factions aren't that interesting either. They're shallow and it shows in how each faction interacts with one another as the story progresses. The BOS sound and feel like children with guns, the Railroad are just incompetent, the Minutemen are a complete joke, and the Institution boils down to the black-and-white bad faction with no rational justification to their actions, ironic when you consider that their faction consists of scientists, no?

The settlement system is atrocious. Whoever made this system and kept it as clunky and unfinished as it is needs to be fired. The system is more vanity than anything since they really don't do much outside of giving you more menial tasks to keep track of. Not only that, but the more settlements you own, the more enemy raids you have to deal with on an in-game daily basis, it doesn't help either that the defense statistic means absolutely nothing, and even a settlement with 1000+ defense will have a good chance to lose to an enemy raid, forcing you to be there EVERYTIME if you want to keep those settlements with its buildings and resources intact.

The fact that the minutemen take on such a prominent role throughout the story only serves to make the settlement system even worse. Why is it that the general (you) is their only reliable source of scrap and materials with which they build structures, beds, defenses, and other necessities? Why does it feel like you're baby sitting an entire faction instead of watching it grow alongside you? It makes the minutemen feel painfully pathetic.

The only reason why I would ever give this game a thumbs up is that it IS a good looter shooter. It is enjoyable if, and only if, you treat it like it is just a looter shooter and nothing more. You have a decent enough variety of weapons that you can mod and make marginally more effective. While FO4 does have a decent gameplay loop, it does trade in what makes a fallout game a fallout game. Oh, and the bugs are still there but why would you waste manpower to fix those bugs yourself when the community would just do it for you free of charge, might I add?

Speaking of which, the community deserves so much more for its ingenuity and resilience than the crap Bethesda is shoveling into their mouths. You have so many mods that improve the quality of life, as well as introducing completely new gameplay elements to spice up your playthroughs. The gun mods in particular are such an audio-visual treat if you don't mind breaking the suspension of belief. Those mods, mostly found on NexusMods, are free of charge and are of a higher quality overall than the ones you find in FO4's in-game shop.

As a Fallout game? it's an easy 4/10
As a looter shooter game? a solid 7/10

The game's packed with content, hidden or not. Has a good adventure aspect and rewards the player for doing such and the tycoon aspect is very simple and intuitive. However, the fun instantly turns into tedious chores in keeping your ever-expanding ranch in check.

These are just my opinions of the game, and you might very well have an opinion being different from mine.

• Easy to get into, mechanics are rather simple, you catch slimes and put them in corals or let them roam free within the confines of your ranch, feed them and in return obtain their plorts to sell.
  
• Adorable design to the slimes as well as the architecture, and landscaping and terrain.
  
• Lots of variety with the slimes, each with unique preferences in food types, as well as the ability to combine slime types via feeding them plorts of other slime species.
  
• An upgrade system:
  
  • This applies to both your character and the structures as you progress.
    
  • The character upgrade system is simple, upgrades your basic stats as well as giving your character additional tools for easier traversal.
    
  • The structure upgrading system comes in response to the variety of slimes, with some having different behaviours and some having certain reactions to the environment.
• Presence of Customization, you can expand your ranch by purchasing lots which have different terrains, with each terrain complementing select slimes. There is also the presence of changing between color schemes for your house, other structures as well as your vac device.
  
• A crafting system, although it is accessible in the later stages of playthroughs, it provides a variety of nifty tools for material collecting, transportation via portals as well as lures for gordos slimes

• Traversing instantly becomes tedious over the course of the playthrough, with each unlockable area being considerably farther from your homestead, without the early upgrades to mobility, it will become a time-consuming chore, and can take up a relatively big chunk of your time spent in the game.
  
• Other than the traversing aspect becoming tedious, so does the tycoon management aspect suffer from the same thing. The tedium of traversing over terrain also related to the management, with each lot being pretty far from each other, I found myself wasting my 250 energy just crossing from 1 plot to another, downsizing is the solution to this, but I don't think the developers would indulge on it.
  
• After a few hours, you can lose your sense of direction in the game, as the other aspects of the game aren't very or intriguing i.e. the gadgetry system, seems like a promising idea but is very discouraging by the amount of materials and the vagueness of how to obtain them, as well as the need to set aside a considerable chunk of their plort inventory to even start on it.
  
• Lack of multiplayer, this game looks like it has been tuned for a multiplayer co-op experience, yet it lacks it, although it is still in early access, and MP may come in the future, it is still a disappointment that it wasn't a thing within the game in the first place.

Although I have put much more effort in detailing the downsides, the game is still very much a fun game, offering tens of hours of gameplay in the state which it is in right now, I hope to change my review in the upcoming updates being rolled out.