Análises recentes de Mae

I loved Owlcat's take on Wrath of the Righteous, but several hours in, I am having a really hard time getting through this one. Sticking with it for now because I like the Pathfinder RPG and I like some of the characters (Jaethal my beloved), but encounter design is too lethal and the game has a lot of problems it throws at you that are seemingly unsolvable.

To give an example of these unsolvable problems, I currently have a dead party member who is literally impossible resurrect because the game has simply provided zero way to resurrect him. I have one Raise Dead scroll, and nobody can actually use it. Nobody in the settlements is willing to provide a way to resurrect my dead guy, it's just not a dialogue option. I'm down a party member until I eventually, hopefully, get another party member who can cast this scroll.

When I say combat design is way too lethal, I mean that enemies are throwing DC 27 saves and level 8 enemies at me at level 2. One encounter is a guy with a fear aura that none of my party members are able to pass, so they can't approach him, and he just destroys my entire party while having 32 AC so nobody can hit him. Again -- I am level 2. My minmaxed main character can't hit him on anything other than a natural 20.

Hoping it gets better as I gain levels.

gay dinosaurs

Square Enix execs completely unable to comprehend how a game with realistic graphics and turn-based combat succeeds this hard, all while featuring Clive Rosfield's VA for extra spice.

Clair Obscur will go down as one of the best JRPGs ever made, I think. Phenomenal combat, an incredible story that does not pull punches, a beautiful soundtrack that will absolutely be in my head for weeks to come. I do have some complaints (traversal is often confusing, no minimap is a bizarre design choice, side content is often so far out of the way that you forget how to get back to the main objective), but these are very minor in comparison to what the studio has achieved here. Even if it's not flawless, I think it deserves every accolade; would not be surprised to see this win Game of the Year.

Suffers from very classic Unreal Engine 5 stutter, except way worse than in any games I've played before. I hate leaving negative reviews like this for games that I otherwise like but I cannot excuse developers continuing to release broken games with terrible performance. I am running a 7800X3D and a 4090; I should not be seeing stuttering anywhere.

Starts really strong and then falls off a cliff in terms of pacing. This game has some of the worst design choices I have ever seen in a video game, all of which only really start becoming an issue in the game's second half, and they detract from the game so much that I can't recommend anyone sit through this game's full run time.

The main issue is just how XP is handled. Once you're in the game's second "act", the game often has horribly-placed difficulty spikes that you're expected to grind to overcome. I don't especially hate grinding in video games, I've played and enjoyed a ton of MMOs, but the way it's done here means that you'll hit a pivotal story point just for the game to tell you to screw off and grind for three hours right before the climax. It obliterates the story's pacing, and this is *especially* obnoxious in the game's third act. I reached level 58 with about 2-3 hours of total grinding over the course of my playtime, and now that I've reached the final boss of the entire game, the game is telling me to go do monotonous grinding *again* instead of just letting me be done with it.

I don't hate every aspect of this game though! I really liked the music, loved the visual design, loved the characters (Sylvando is the true protagonist). Some story beats were really good and the game's twists did surprise me a few times. But this game has absolutely zero respect for my time as a player, and that aspect of it has overshadowed everything else to the point where I can't recommend this.

Alright boys, as an RPG no-lifer I'll give it to you how it is. I am someone with several thousand hours spent in RPGs, and I've completed both Pillars of Eternity games. I am an Elder Scrolls fan starved of content for the past 14 years and have desperately needed something to fill that void. Starfield was the last game like this that I played, so I went into this not expecting a ton, and I've been pleasantly surprised (mostly). My takes after 5-6 hours or so are as follows:

- The writing is good. I finished the first zone and they aren't quite knocking it out of the park yet, but this is fine and it still gives me a reason to keep playing and go to the next area to find out what happens next. Biggest complaint is that I frankly wish it were a bit edgier; it feels a little too safe.
- This isn't totally like Skyrim or Bethesda's other open-worlds in terms of how it plays; it feels somewhat like Oblivion meets Mass Effect. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and seems to have resulted in a very tight world with content densely packed.
- Some areas have less side quests than I would expect for an RPG and I'm a little let down by it. Large city districts will only have one quest and it feels like there should be more there.
- Fantastic combat that has one major flaw: dodging being on the same key as jump is terrible, and the inability to dodge forwards is also terrible. They either need to patch this, or I hope someone manages this in a mod soon.
- Gear system very much feels like an MMO and I don't think that I like it that much. Content is often hard-gated by what level your gun is rather than what level your character is. I definitely didn't speed through any content, but still had to grind at the start of the game for a little bit to upgrade my gear because I was barely leaving a dent in enemies. Not the end of the world but an annoyance for sure. Modders will be able to fix this easily if Obsidian doesn't.
- Conversely, once I was geared a bit above enemy levels because I accidentally wound up grinding for too long, Path of the Damned difficulty became a bit too easy for my liking.
- Very rewarding exploration for the most part. Every time I do a cave or explore some dungeon, I end up feeling like I got something worth my time out of it. The exception is that I feel like they bait you with how many destructible objects there are in the environment (crates and such), because these objects have a bunch of loot in the tutorial area, and then next to none in the actual game.
- I like the companions so far. These are not Dragon Age: Origins-quality companions, but they get the job done and I like talking to them. I do wish I could be a little more mean or at least stern to them because Kai is dumb sometimes and I need the option to tell him that.
- I didn't notice how much I love the physics-based objects in Skyrim until I played this game. Their absence is very noticeable here and I do feel like the world feels less lived-in as a result.
- Fantastic work by the devs to respect players who already know the lore from Pillars of Eternity. Goodbye to Dragon Age: Veilguard's method of storytelling, where the characters remind you about the lore, story, and stakes every 5 minutes; in this game, players new to the setting are informed of the lore necessities, are given a lore glossary that they can reference, and then dialogue moves on. You're given the ability to ask questions to characters about lore topics if you want, but otherwise they do not prattle. Very thankful that I don't have to listen to people reminding me what the Wheel is, explaining the gods, explaining the Engwithans...

All in all, I thank Obsidian for cooking. There are some things above that I wish made it into the final product, but what we've got here is still pretty decent.

Bought six years ago to support an indie dev who was making something cool. Checking back on the game six years later, development seems to have stalled, and this new monthly update thing seems to be an extremely small amount of content with Chapter 3 still "in development" with no apparent timeline as to when this game will be finished. I'll change my review to positive in a heartbeat if they actually get some content of substance out the door, but after waiting 6 years, patch notes with things like "a Quit button has been added to the menu" as main selling points aren't enough for me, sorry. My lesson in never buying Early Access.

This game has an automated ban system that enables people to mass-report accounts for "trolling" on any chat message, regardless of the content of said message, and get them banned without human review. Support then rejects any appeals with the exact same canned message; this has happened to me four times, and after just getting banned for a fourth time for no reason (I asked to join someone's guild), I'm calling it and uninstalling the game. Unbelievably terrible.

I don't know what the hell happened here, but this is not Dragon Age.

If you've been away from the game and you're thinking about getting back into Destiny for this expansion, it's worth it. If you're already playing, it's pretty much a mandatory purchase, both for story and character power reasons - more on that later.

Writing is good and is properly back to Witch Queen levels where it belonged. As it should be, Nimbus has 5 seconds of screen time in a single mission and is otherwise never seen again. Actually likeable characters - Cayde, Mara, Zavala, Ikora, Crow, Micah-10 - are the ones taking the spotlight here. The dialogue between them in particular is SUCH a huge step up from Lightfall and I'm happy that they've moved away from MCU-tier quips.

The new raid is the hardest in the game with some of the coolest mechanics I've ever seen. Fourth encounter in particular is insanely cool, and does a ton of stuff that I didn't even think would be possible in-engine.

Prismatic is broken, simple as. The only issue with Prismatic is that it's simply better and more fun than everything else, such that you don't really need to play anything else. Light/Dark subclasses definitely feel like they get left behind here, and while that's not the end of the world, it does put an objective power gap between people who own this DLC and those who don't. I expect to see pretty much only Prismatic in PVP soon unless you're playing a Light/Dark subclass for a specific Super.

The Pale Heart as a destination is really nice, but it's a solo patrol for whatever reason so you never end up seeing other Guardians. It's not necessarily good or bad, just weird. You'll see a bunch of callbacks to old Destiny locations and story beats within, and as a vet player, I liked it.

My biggest complaint here is that this expansion's story plays it really safe. It does pretty much exactly what you'd expect for the finale, and not a ton else. Don't expect earth-shattering story revelations or last-minute plot twists. I especially would've really liked to see Zavala's fall into the darkness be a little more impactful, but him losing his Light and then getting Stasis to do the exact same things he was already doing makes Targe's death feel meaningless. I think it would've been cool for him to explore his renewed mortality again, but instead he just goes "I'm not scared of death" and then goes charging head-first into a bunch of Dread anyway.

Overall I don't think this is the 10/10 people are hailing it as, but it's a damn good 8.5/10 that gets the job done, and it's the best expansion they've done for Destiny 2.