Recent reviews by shaun3h

I've only played DS3 and Sekiro (got maybe 2/3s through DS3 killing a lot of option bosses. Got to last boss on Sekiro). What this game does is take some of the best of both of these and improves upon it. The level design has some aspects of Sekiro to it in terms of being a bit more mobile with multiple options more of the time. It has the expansive selection of weaponry I enjoyed in DS3. The open world side works nicely with plenty of opportunity to explore to change the place and seek out grace spots, caves & minibosses. Like Sekiro, there are always multiple paths so if you're stuck on one boss you can just do a load of other stuff and come back. I left margit a bit late in this sense.. I tried once or twice and nope'd out. Returned today 40 levels later and savaged it in 1min flat.

The game is challenging. Certain scenarios are frustrating because they are tough. I've particularly struggled with multiple minibosses, especially before finding out what spirits were. There are some scenarios you just have to accept you are dead in. Maybe you got dismounted so these 2-5 skeles you could 1 hit will now stab you to death. Maybe you misjudge the lunge so you took damage when you thought you backed off far enough. Maybe that boss has another part of the combo now he/she/they are below half health. You just have to accept it. You will die. It's not really a big deal in this game so don't stress over it.

On the bright side you will find through dumb luck that you'll sometimes be the right height to miss certain swings and attacks so luck can work both ways.

There are various levels of cheese to make elements easier depending on what your conscience will allow. Some enemies are too big for doorways. Some obstacles including aforementioned doorways will stop an enemy behind it letting you attack without reply (walls. stairs, some fencing you can see/hit through, etc). You can present yourself to most ranged enemies, move behind cover and this will entice them towards you (much easier that trying to dodge 9000 arrow/bolt/magic projectiles). There are a couple of spots where fighting happens between 2 enemy factions. If you were so inclined you could either basically afk above the fights if you were distracted by a talkshow/podcast/stream/tvshow/etc and get xp or dance through the fight randomly hitting stuff to achieve the same end result but with less guilt.

Spirits make some fights so easy they may feel like a cheese - these are infinitely reusable allies you can bring in. They can act as cannon fodder, distract an enemy if you' otherwise fight two. They contribute minimal damage from my experience but I have found if you have an enemy with such bad posture you rock it every hit, these can help you basically stunlock such enemies and evaporate them.

I've found you can get to some areas with the horse double-jump that I'm not wholly convinced they intended you to be able to. You can also fight some minibosses out in the world entirely on horse back if you like. That's kind of preference. You take more damage so for some it'll make half the attacks one-hit so if you are using it, you'll need a similar process as you'd use on normal bosses to work out hit animations to try and minimise any hits taken. On more horse thing.. I feel like it's a bug.. I have had many occasions so far where I get hit and staggered but took no damage. Unclear if this was something hitting the horse and not me but it feels like due to bugs you sometimes simply do not take dmg on horseback. I expect this will be fixed in a patch.

If you liked DS3 or Sekiro I'd say this is a must play. I'd also recommend it if you like the sound of a tough boss game but haven't tried any of these. Just know you'll have to try bosses multiple times and grind them out to work out move sets and such so it's not a game for everyone. For those who do enjoy it though, I feel like it offers superb payoffs throughout that are pretty much unparalleled elsewhere in gaming.

If you pick the wretch you will have a tough start to the game (no shield for a while, slow weak weapon). If I can make it you can but just to say you'll miss not having a shield in some places (although you can buy one fairly early on so it's not too big a deal if you've played this kind of game before)

Personally I wasn't that hyped coming into this. It's everything I thought it would be. It's a mobile game ported over to PC like so many "new" MMOs of late. It's obviously setup to push you to invest so much time you eventually spend money. It's mediocre compared to other games in the MMO genre. It doesn't wow. It's very linear (I'm assuming the levels had to be playable on £50 smart phones) in design & largely uninspiring. It's fine to waste time such as while absorbing podcasts or similar but if this had a £10 pricetag I'd be refunding it because like New World, everyone hyped about it will get bored within a month or two. Everyone is desperate for the great new thing. This ain't it.

(should probably add I've not spent a penny and not had to queue at all on any of my times logging in so while I understand other reviews may be tainted with the launch experience, there have been no bugs or issues of that nature for my time playing it.)

Classic release.. no-one can log in, those who can get DC'd anyway. Don't pay for this.

Dont be fooled by these idiots recycling titles, this isnt the nfs most wanted you remember fondly from console, this is some worthless waste of time. Avoid even if free.

I have only had 1 disconnect in almost 30hours of playtime (and that could've been my internet tripping for a split second!)

A lot of the hate appears to be towards the chinese version or based on stream sniping.

The game is fun. I'm not chinese so not spammed with ads. When I watch a streamer, I'm not trying to get in his game. Funnily enough I haven't been banned for stream sniping. Go figure.

2mill peak players. You'll never queue long for a game. You decide if you want to slug it out or play a long game. The matchmaking is surprisingly pleasent (going squad solo is completely reasonable - about 50% of my hours have been doing just this with a couple of top10 finishes!)

I prefer FPP but worry people wont be able to change from 3rd person which will split the community (people from the start in 3rd and newcomers drawn to 1stperson). Aside from that plenty of encouraging things.

It runs on my trash pc smoothly even though my gfx is 1gb and about 5 years old. Performance surprisingly good.

gives an error message that you need windows7 (which i have, legit) then closes. 10/10 would get trolled for free again

Crash on start up wiped the saved game completely.

In this day and age i cant imagine how a game could be so badly coded that a crash (first in over 20hrs nice job on the patch) could wipe your progress. Surely that 20kb save file could be doubled to prevent this kind of loss ? I'll pirate in future. I advise anyone that reads this to pirate it instead.

For 5.99 this is a bargain.

Different to your average shooter. Nothing quite like spamming off a 6 shooter.

Good difficulty even on normal. Simple controls, very nice intuitive action sequences (hit the right buttons as they flash up to combo kill the enemies, fail and you have to take them out manually) and the duels are about as much fun as i've had in a shooter.

Skill trees are an interesting addition. While they are useful spec'ing into one out of Rifles, Shotgun or Pistol doesn't stop you using the other two. The skills combined with NewGame+ carrying over and allowing you to unlock all skills is a pretty neat feature for replayability.

Story is fairly well fleshed out, told in a nice style with some good humour. Pretty good if slightly predictable twist at the end.

Duel mode is vicious, trying to control your hand over the gun (left to right), your focus on the opponent (up,down,left,right), in some cases which target you want to go for first, having to react to their draw, landing the shot as quickly as possible without firing before the gun is level, etc is awesome.

TL;DR - More in depth then The Punisher game but just as fun. for a game in this price range 9.9/10, in general compared to others still 8/10