Recent reviews by RANDYORTONMVP

35h in and I'm hooked - the gameplay loop is really satisfying, there is a lot of systems (equipment, quests, upgrades) to keep you busy. Monsters themselves are really cool to fight against, a lot of them having some mechanics to make the fights interesting. Strongly recommended.

Pros:
-Movement is fluid and fast
-The gunship killstreak in this game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ insane, I love it
-Some maps are really good and fun to play (like Skyline and Payback)

Cons:
-The biggest issue: server desync. Sometimes enemies kill you impossibly fast (like they have 50ms of reaction time), only to watch the killcam and see you being visible on their screen for like a second. Game feels very inconsistent in comparison to something like CS:GO even on 64tick (not CS:2), Valorant or even MW2 (2022). With slower firing weapons, I experienced issues with hit reg as well.
This is not the case all the time (at like 2 AM game feels much better), so it is probably caused by high server load (watch TacticalBrit's video on the topic).

Activision keeps gaslighting the community regarding servers, so I doubt they will do anything about it.

-There is a lot of bad maps right now (Rewind, Red Card, Derelict, Protocol to name a few of them)

Activision also for the next big patch announced that with every purchase of their 30 euro battle pass (blackcell) per season, you will get a +10% cumulative XP Bonus, This is going in a pretty bad direction, slowly removing meaning from prestige and level system.

TL;DR skip it or get it on sale.

I've been playing the game on and off since August 2023 (EA).

You will die a lot at first, but after giving it some time, everything will click.

The combat is unforgiving and takes a lot of effort to master, but once you get a grasp on the basics, it is very satisfying.
OR you just can choose not to fight and hide in dark corners (they are neither brightness nor gamma dependent, always pitch black), make minimal noise with minimal equipment (heavier, thicker boots - more noise), loot less crowded outer parts of the map, slowly building your stash.

You can choose from A LOT of classes, sharing some elements of melee, ranged and magic combat skills, each having multiple playstyles/builds: fighter, cleric, ranger, rogue, wizard, druid, bard, warlock, barbarian.

Monsters are quite difficult to kill, and varying greatly in danger level, from small goblins, to literal raid bosses (google ghost king and skeleton warlord).

There are also 3 different maps, each having their own theme (ice cavern, crypt, goblin cave) and some of them have different variant (layout). Instead of extracting, (escaping with collected loot), you can descend even deeper into even more difficult level on some maps, to get better loot and fight even stronger enemies.

ALSO, for new players:
-there is a very nice, detailed interactive map of every level in the game on wiki,
-find a quest tracker for convenience (also you can check what items to keep BEFORE you get a quest for them to speed things up),
-watch any beginner guide if you are not familiar with first person melee games (mordhau, chivalry), because the ability to control the distance between you and your opponent, knowledge of damage zones on your weapon (you deal different damage with different zones of your weapon, for example, with halberd you deal less damage if you hit an enemy with the wood) and movement of your character's body (looking down, looking up - "matrix", crouching, strafing can make you harder to hit) are the difference between life and death in this game.

The game DOES NOT hold your hand at all, some kind of in-game tutorial would be a very good potential way to welcome new players. Devs are doing a pretty good job IMO, releasing the game for free was definitely nice, but more newly arrived f2p players would stay if such tutorial would have been available at the time.

I would definitely recommend it, give it a try, don't get discouraged after few deaths, you learn something new in the vast majority of your runs, and even the smallest things will snowball in the long run. Good luck!

Important: This game relies a lot on matchups (you vs enemies/bosses) - changing builds, trying some new setups along the way, adapting to the current situation is expected, so it is probably not for everyone.

That being said, if you like fast-paced, punishing combat, a lot of choices in terms of customization of your mech, both functional and aesthetic, packed into a product with no predatory selling tactics, microtransactions and battlepasses in 2023, this is exactly what you wished for, and more. It also has a PvP system, 1v1 and 3v3, PvP combat is insane, even faster than PvE.

AC VI runs at 120fps, with small fps (5-10 fps) drops from time to time for me (that one explosion annihilates fps for 1-2 seconds for me), but it is not something I would be aware of all the time. From my experience with Elden Ring, AC runs with WAY more stable framerate, I didn't also experience crashing (for me it happened several times with Elden Ring around launch).

One thing that would be very nice to include in the game is some degree of FOV change (like +/- 10-15% of current value), but it is not a must imo, I got used to FOV quickly.

IF YOU THINK OF BUYING THIS

Be careful, it is NOT recommended to play online, there is a way for people to crash your lobbies and leak your ip address. So far, no response from Activision has been issued.

I have only few hours here, but few hundred hours on the other platform, I bought the game on steam for convenience.

I will change this review to recommended if the issue is fixed - the game itself is very fun to play IMO, but this level of negligence shown by Activision (alongside famous BO2 and BO3 exploits and YEARS of the game being not entirely safe to play online without patches and tools made by a very dedicated fanbase) should be exposed.

poetry in motion

HOLY FRICKIN SMOKES WHAT IS GOING ON

Great atmosphere and music, very satisfying character movement and weapon animations, nice variety of weapons also, great game overall

aaaand you can flip your weapons - instant 10/10

number go up
me happy

more enemies
me happy

(3.1.2022) Linux version seems to work better for me than ER on Windows, performance and stability seems to be improved, compared to day 1 state.

Totally recommended, getting stuck on a boss and possibility to go mess around somewhere else is refreshing, the amount of content in the game is insane - 40h and I'm not even close to finishing.