Recent reviews by Nayenezgani

Dragon's Dogma 2 is not a perfect game and that's okay, but we still need to talk about the flaws.

Dragon's Dogma 2 is, first and foremost, an open world action game. It might have the trappings of an RPG like stats and levels and equipment, and it does allow you to make a meaningful choice here and there, but it's not an RPG in the sense that a game like Baldur's Gate is an RPG. You get almost complete freedom of movement in the world, but the freedom you have to affect the narrative is confined to a small handful of key moments. DD2 is a big game in a literal sense, with an expansive game world that covers a number of different biomes and sub-biomes, but it's not a big game in terms of what you actually do in that world. 99% of the time you're either fighting monsters and bad guys or exploring the world (often both at the same time), and the other 1% you're talking to people where you sometimes get to make a decision that isn't just "take the quest" or "don't take the quest" and sometimes that decision actually matters.

I feel I had to get that out of the way first, because a lot of the hype that surrounds this game (well, used to surround it) seems to be based on false assumptions. It's not Baldur's Gate, it's not Skyrim, and it's not Elden Ring. It's Dragon's Dogma 2, the sequel to Dragon's Dogma. And what a sequel it is. DD2 takes almost everything that's good about DD1 and makes it bigger and better. It hits all the same notes of an expertly crafted world that manages to feel grounded and realistic despite being a playground of massively powerful magical entities, the thrill of running into giant monsters and learning how to fight them with a well-paced and varied combat system, and a complex story that mixes political intrigue with philosophical musings about the strength and value of the human will. But as much as I love this game, I'm not here to sing its praises. A game can be good and still heavily flawed and DD2 is exactly that, and I think in a case like this it's extra important to highlight those flaws.

Let's first address the obvious: Yes, the game has micro-transactions. If that's an automatic dealbreaker for you, fair enough. But in truth there's no reason to ever buy them, because every item you can buy with real money is easily obtainable within the game itself without spending a dime. The only exception to this would be the Music Collection, which seems to be mostly a gesture for the people who love the music of the original game (which includes me). Then why even include micro-transactions if the game itself makes them useless? Don't ask me. Dumb corporate greed would be the easy answer. The other elephant in the room is the game's performance. I'm lucky enough to own a top-end PC and the game ran mostly fine for me with all the options maxed out, but I would agree with you if you said that it's not a good thing for a game to only run "mostly fine" on a top-end system. As such, I can't recommend the game to anyone with a below-average computer. I sincerely hope that Capcom manages to patch the game to improve performance, especially for midrange systems who should by all means be able to run a game like this, even if it means turning down some graphics options.

Another issue that has been much complained about is the game's story, and I have to say I've got mixed feelings about it. As I mentioned before DD2 isn't really a story-based game, but what annoys me is that it actually has the makings of a really good story, it just drops the ball big time in the middle portion of the game. I'll try to explain what I mean without spoiling anything. The story starts off good enough, with some political intrigue and some juicy secrets to chase after while the game builds up its main plot, but then you get to the second half of the game and the plot just... Well, I wouldn't say it turns bad, it's more like simply disappears and gets replaced. You get introduced to a character who seems to be very important (she's on the cover of the game!) but who gets completely sidelined after just one mission. Then, that plot and the political stuff from earlier just get completely ignored in order to kick off what feels like a completely new story for the end of the game. It really feels like there's at least 10 hours of story quests missing in the middle there. Luckily the new plot does pick up fairly quickly, and if you manage to unlock the "true" ending it leads to an absolutely amazing endgame and finale. As good as the end is though, it doesn't entirely manage to wash out the bad taste from the middle portion. All in all I did like the story, but it feels incomplete.

Another issue is enemy variety. While I find most claims that DD2 has worse enemy variety than DD1 to be rather dubious because they inevitably count DD1's expansion as part of the base game, it can't be denied that DD2's enemy variety is only slightly improved from DD1, while it's spread over a world that's way bigger than DD1. Having a handful of new enemies on a map that's 4 times the size doesn't exactly make a noticeable impact, and it doesn't help that the game hides some of its most impressive new monsters behind the optional post-game map. It also doesn't help that the game has four different subspecies of goblins and while they all look and act different, it's not something that makes a significant gameplay difference. As a result, they tend to blend together rather quickly and after a while it feels like half the enemies you fight are some variety of goblins (though, according to my endgame stats, it was only about one-quarter of them). This makes it feel like you're constantly fighting the same battles because in many ways, you are. While I could hardly expect Capcom to add four times as many enemies to fill out the map, the game does really need more variety in order to mix up the constant combat encounters.

My final sticking point is the game's itemization. While I have no complaints at all about the look of the items, very few of them actually feel unique. In my opinion this comes down to two things: First, almost all items can be bought from shops and there's almost nothing that can be uniquely found through exploration. This not only makes the items feel less special, it also devalues the exploration. Now I'm of the opinion that in an amazing world like DD2's exploration is its own reward, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't like to see some other rewards as well. When 90% of all caves and dungeons only yield generic items, this does diminish my desire to explore them all. Second, there are very few items that have any interesting effects. This means that almost all of the time, you just end up using whatever armor and weapon has the best stats. Sure, there's always the option to forego stats for fashion (and the game is easy enough that you can do this without feeling gimped), but the strict linear progression of "reach new town, buy better gear" doesn't suit the open and nonlinear structure of the game's world at all. And again, it feels like the developers hid the best part of the game behind the optional postgame because that map actually does have unique items that can only be found through exploration. It's very odd that they would do this for an optional part of the game that many people might not even see (either because they don't get the true ending or because they simply never get to the end at all), but not for the main map of the game where you'll spend the first 90% of the game.

Now, despite everything I'm still giving this game a big fat thumbs-up. Make no mistake: I absolutely love this game and the experiences it has given me since release. But it's because I love this game that I feel I need to point out that although it's a priceless gem, it's still a very obviously flawed one. I can only hope that Capcom continues to give it the support it needs and deserves to create something truly special.

For anyone who's a fan of games like XCOM or Shadowrun I consider this a must-play. However, it's early access for a good reason, and anyone interested in the game should keep that in mind for now. It's not one of those games that's already mostly finished and only uses early access as a glorified demo version, it's a game that's genuinely being developed with the help of player feedback and that's constantly being expanded, improved and tweaked.

If you're looking for a complete game to play, I really can't recommend Cyber Knights: Flashpoint. You'd be much better off just putting it on your wishlist until it comes out of early access. Buying the game at this point would mean that you're interested in playing the game in its current unfinished shape and seeing how it develops over time, and that you're not worried about the fact that it's obviously missing a lot of content. Personally, my past experience with Trese Brothers games has given me great confidence that they're dedicated to making this game the best it can be. Seeing what's already available, there's obviously a sense of quality and a great potential for future content and I'm excited to see how this potential is going to be realized over time.

Unforetold: Witchstone was an ambitious game with a ton of promise. Unfortunately, the developers have suffered financial issues that forced them to abandon the game and it will most likely never be finished. While I liked what the game has shown so far, in this state it's more like a demo for a game that will never exist, and I can't in good faith recommend that anyone spends their money on it.

I keep coming back to this game at least once a year, because somehow I always remember the good parts and start thinking that the bad parts aren't that bad after all. And every time, I'm proven wrong. I've played this game for 200+ hours and I've never finished even a single campaign, because every time I just end up uninstalling it in disgust after a short while. Having just aborted my most recent attempt to enjoy this game, I felt compelled to write a review to hopefully help save others from my tragic fate.

The problem is that the core of the game is good. While it may be a bit overly complex and confusing to some people, for those who can push beyond that the main gameplay loop is very enjoyable. Customizing your warband, fighting tactical battles to earn loot and experience, and using those to improve your characters and grow your warband's power is a very addictive (if highly repetitive) concept. But why would this be a problem? Because everything else about the game is so bad that you start to hate the game for being so addictive.

First there are the random missions, which you will have to do a lot of because for every story mission you'll have to do multiple random missions first. The issue with these is that they're insanely repetitive. While there are a few different optional objectives the game chooses from, those hardly matter since the main objective of every random mission is always to simply rout the enemy warband. And since the AI isn't very clever and there's a serious lack of map variety, these missions all tend to blend together into one endless grind. But surely, if the random missions are boring at least there are story missions to liven things up? Unfortunately, there are only a small handful of story missions that are shared across all factions, and these missions take place on some of the worst designed, most frustrating maps ever imaged by human minds. If you can play through the Library map and not feel a seething hatred for the loathsome subhuman creature that designed it, you're probably a better person than I am. While not all story missions are quite that bad, there's not one of them that I'd actually call good. In short, there's no fun to be found in the story missions either.

And it's not just the missions that are bad. The combat system suffers from an extreme reliance on RNG. If you're the kind of player who loses their cool at unexpected disaster in games like XCOM or Fire Emblem, I can guarantee this game will drive you completely insane. While RNG-based combat isn't exactly a novelty in this genre, Mordheim takes it to an extreme not just in the combat itself, but also in the outcomes of a mission. A unit who gets downed during combat might be perfectly fine after the mission, or he might just drop dead instantly. Or, more likely, he'll get some variety of permanent injury which in most cases is basically the same as being dead, since you'll want to replace him anyway. And Sigmar protect you if you ever decide to play as a Chaos Cult, which gets "rewarded" with random mutations that can and will ruin your builds. Your finest archer will grow a knife on his arm so he can't hold a bow anymore, your heavy tank will grow a face on his chest so he can't wear armor anymore, etc. And to add insult to injury, enemy warbands will never ever suffer from this because every mission just generates a perfectly fresh warband that automatically scales to your level, so the injuries and deaths you inflict on the enemy never matter while evey death and injury inflicted on you is permanent. No matter how well you're doing, you will never feel that you're actually making progress because of this.

I guess I could talk a bit about multiplayer here, but that's irrelevant since it's long dead. Though I will say, the game is less awful when you know that the enemy warband is another human being who's most likely getting screwed over just as hard as you are. Misery shared is misery halved, and all that.

I'm usually more tolerant to games where the odds are stacked against you, but I've never played any other game where potentially good gameplay gets ruined this much, by what I can only describe as the developer's intent to prevent the player from ever having any fun.

At this point it shouldn't be a surprise that one of the most popular game releases of the year is getting another positive review. Baldur's Gate 3 is in many way an example of what CRPGs can be. Much has been said about how unfair it is to compare other CRPGs to BG3 due to Larian's unique combination of experience, manpower, funding and independence. While it's certainly true that not many developers can realistically make games that match BG3 in terms of sheer production value, that doesn't mean BG3 isn't full of great lessons to be learned that don't require a bottomless wallet. While big expensive features like the great graphics and top-quality voice acting certainly contribute to BG3's success, it would be short-sighted to focus on those things. At least to me, things like the great attention to detail, the quality of the writing, and the thought-out layout of the world that make the game stand out, things that even much smaller games can make use of.

And while none of this is on its own a reason to buy the game, the fact that this game invites such discussion is in itself a glowing recommendation of how uniquely good it is. I won't pretend that Baldur's Gate 3 is a perfect game or that everyone will enjoy it without reservations, but all things considered I do believe that it's one of the highest-quality games from recent years.

Ironically, it's often the game's strengths also create some of its more frustrating moments. In a game that gives me a wealth of options at almost every turn, it only becomes more annoying whenever a seemingly obvious option is missing. In a game that wows me with its attention to detail, the parts where this falters even slightly become eyesores. In such a polished, high-value game, every bug stands out. In a game with such well-written characters, it's disappointment when I'm presented with an oversimplified black-or-white dialogue option. Baldur's Gate 3 is certainly not a perfect game and anyone who goes into it to look for flaws will certainly find them. However, none of this detracts from the overall experience enough that I won't give it a glowing, unreserved recommendation.

I'm a fan of the Total War: Warhammer franchise, but until CA spends more time fixing actual bugs and addressing gameplay and balance concerns than they spend on making grossly overpriced DLC, I really can't recommend this game. Unless you really can't live without playing one of the Warhammer 3 exclusive factions, just stick with Warhammer 2. It's a great game and it has significantly fewer issues than this one.

It's good now.

It'll be great with more mods.