Recent reviews by Levia the Dragon

MH Rise is a good game but it has some rough edges, like the pointless, tedious time-wasting process of the spiritbird collection every single hunt.

Mods can solve this problem, they can also add whimsical harmless fun like weapon or armor reskinnings.

In order to make the game worse, in order to make the game less interesting, in order to make it more Controlled, Capcom decided to include DRM this update, DRM that also screws with performance even if you do not have mods.

I cannot even start up the game I paid good money for now, because I have mods that I would have to dig around in config files to remove, all because Capcom got a stick up their rectum about sabotaging things that ultimately improve their game, that do not materially make anything unfair because this isn't a bloody PVP game, pointless.

An utter waste of potential at every conceivable level, Gotham Knights desperately wants to evoke the Arkham series, but cannot live up to that standard. My gut feeling says that the increasingly odious cadaver of Warner Bros was responsible for this mess, I can only imagine what manner of Faustian contract the devs themselves laboured under, perhaps something borrowed from one of John Constantine's patrons.

The first and most critical point for a game like this, considering its design and marketing, and where Gotham Knights fails the most spectacularly, is in the co-operative play. There are excuses for this abject failure of course, from claims that it is all peer to peer, (it is not) to rather questionable assertions that it has already been fixed, a point on which the experiences of everyone I know to have played the wretched thing beg to differ, for a co-op-centric game, not only to fail to deliver on the implied promise of up to four player mayhem, but to fail so consistently at the bare minimum, and indeed seem to get actively worse over time, is simply breathtaking incompetence.

This original sin could be forgiven if the core game was sufficiently fun in its own right, this bar too is missed. combat is serviceable and unremarkable at its core, but the unending Number Inflation, means that most street level enemies, in theory supposed to be cathartic quick-incaps, become walking sponges from an Aquaman fever-dream. I enjoy RPGs, but enemies advancing to level 40 and beyond, while I am locked to level 30 due to my gall in taking care of leftover busywork before I attempt one of the worst implemented NG+ systems I have ever encountered... doesn't exactly spark joy, more on that later.

Aesthetically the game is fine, some character designs stand out in a good way, the new look for Harley Quinn comes to mind, others are somewhat questionable, like the dalliance with Mr Freeze power armour that better Batman adaptors have tried and failed to stick the landing on before. Music, sound effects, environmental design are competent, indeed pleasing at times, but in service to such a hollow experience, feel wasted.

Narrative and character however... here the game reveals its greatest weakness. The story itself feels meandering, circling around a secret society that never truly feels as imposing as they should, and an old foe that basically only manifests as another wandering gang faction, just one from out of town, utterly disconnected from their original context and lacking any sort of tangible presence that a home base would have granted. On a more granular level, many members of the core cast are flat in presentation and performance, Uninspired dialogue delivered with what I will charitably consider Minimal-Effort Direction, leaving many normally dynamic characters, heroes and villains alike, coming off like a community theatre group. Of the few villains who deign to show up to the party, Talia Al Ghul has her character damn near assassinated, Victor Friez has none of his pathos, and Harley Quinn... gets a pass, as the actress at least seems to be having some fun. What about Clayface you ask? What ABOUT Clayface?

All of this in service to a primary gameplay loop pulling from, of all things, Skyrim-Style Radiant quests, or perhaps the comparison which evokes the correct level of vivid revulsion: Fallout 4's endless pestering to assist other settlements. A fetishization for colour-coded loot rarity attempting to hotwire the brain's Compulsion centres with the same cynicism as your average microtransaction-laden Live Service. Indeed you can almost see the surgical scars where this creature was cut apart and stitched back together, if this wasn't intended to be a Marvel Avengers style perpetual moneymaking machine before that Ubi project thankfully cratered, I would be very surprised.

Which brings me right back to that incomprehensibly pointless NG+ mode. All it does, is reset a bunch of your busywork, like fast-travel points, which need to be unlocked again, and let you gain an additional ten levels to hit the true level cap, that's it. Yes you hear me right, in a game designed to have endless repeating busywork littering the overworld like so much discarded lego, where the overworld mooks will scale to your level... and indeed, beyond your level, somehow. The creators decided to hold the last few levels hostage to you repeating the game for no discernable reason. Ironically, it was that decision that sealed this game's fate, reminding me of all of its most insipid traits, and cementing the negativity of my impression.

Do not buy this game, please. I made the mistake of wanting to play a character I liked, and while it did not bilk money from my wallet, it sapped precious time and cognitive energy from me, once I have my closure, I will uninstall it forever.

Great game, wonderful feeling hunting massive powerful beasts, learning their tells and patterns, making fancy outfits and snazzy weapons... and then losing a 157 hour save file.

No warning, no means of recovery, only the hindsight of "well you should have backed it up, hyuk hyuk"

Here's the thing, I have played plenty of games, most don't require manually backing up save files in a separate folder to prevent this sort of nonsense. If you as a dev are not competent enough to make a save system that works properly ALL of the time, then either build your own damn backup contingencies, or at least let us save the same file in different slots so we can stagger-save.

From what I've found out about this issue, even steam cloud saves might not have saved it, so that particular brand of hindsight is extra useless.

If you want a game that might spit in your face for daring to love it, that might demand you start fresh if you look at it funny, be my guest and roll them dice, but don't blame me if you experience the same incandescent rage that I do right now.