Recent reviews by Stakalka

I really wanted to like this game, I really did...

...But sadly the game aged about as good as a carton of milk left on the dashboard of a car in the summer.
Settings-wise: the best that you get out of the box is 1080p at 30Hz. 1080p is fine, but 30Hz is real painful on the eyes. You can go into the game files and set any resolution you want as well as any refresh rate you want, however if you go outside the recommented refresh rate, the game starts crashing regularly and if you go outside the max resolution - the UI becomes too small to be comfortable, at least the subtitles.
Gameplay-wise: there's not much to write home about. The whole "dodge at the right timing to execute a fast chain of attacks" thing is pretty enjoyable, but that's about it. The levels are all over the place with them being random lengths, a lot of the time with way too little enemies. The controls feel clunky, with Mondo at times moving like a tank.
Story-wise: I'm not even sure there is a story to be honest. Just a lot of edgy catchphrases being thrown about with the central theme being something to do with the moon. It's very hard to follow because the dialog is written like your typical ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ anime. The English voice acting definitely didn't help there - it was so cringy that I had to switch to Japanese VO to at least make it bareable, but alas - didn't make the story any better.
Overall: The game has too little going well for it to be worth picking up. If at least one of these three key points were actually good or if at the very least I could play at 60Hz, I'd at least try to finish it, but it is what it is. Maybe on the steam deck it'd be more enjoyable.

Note: I am describing the solo PvE experience of this game.
The word that best describes V Rising is dull, closely followed by tedious, slow, boring and a chore.
You might see some screenshots or videos of this game and liken it to games like Diablo or Path of Exile, but V Rising couldn't be any further from any of those type of games.
This is a game more closely resembling something like DayZ or Rust with a sprinkling of bosses and a very basic skill tree. The gameplay loop is basically you head out, kill some enemies, get some materials, start building your castle with some refining stations allowing you to create better gear to kill stronger enemies and bosses allowing you to build better refining stations and so on. The idea is fine, but the problem is the grind. Getting resources takes forever because you move at the speed of tectonic plates. Resource drops get more scarce as you progress, even crafting better materials takes longer and longer (crafting something isn't instant like say in Minecraft, you have to wait. And for better material it can take a minute or longer per item). And all of this is made worse by the very simple and boring fighting mechanics, with very basic spells that shoot a bolt of some element or make an explosion at some spot.
The slowness of the character also cannot be overstated just due to the fact how big the map is and bosses being thrown about all over the place. It can take almost half of the ingame night to run to the other side of the map to kill a boss and by the time you reach the boss it can already turn to day in the middle of the fight, which in this game means you take damage while in direct sunlight. There are waypoints thrown about all over the map, but here's a fun fact - you can't teleport while holding materials. So, you can set out from your castle with a teleport to get to a boss faster, but then you'll have to walk aaaaalll of the way back on foot if you picked up any materials or will have to drop them.
Honestly, it feels like it's made like some sort of free 2 pay garbage MMO game with everything purposely made to take so long that you start paying to cut corners, except that in this game there isn't any such way to do that. Maybe when playing with a couple of friends and splitting up the chores of gathering materials between each of you it can be somewhat faster, but solo experience is just too tedious to recommend.

One of the greatest stories told in gaming. Don't watch any gameplay videos, just play it.

A fun game to play whether you're a fan of the LOTR series or not. Lots of stuff to do, the combat is satisfying, progression and upgrade system is engaging and it doesn't take too long to advance in the tree for it to become too tedious.
The only downsides are the controls: sometimes they're a bit clunky, especially when climbing stuff because the character has his own ideas where to go. Aside from that the main story itself isn't very long, you can knock it all out in maybe 4 hours, if you are doing just them. However when there's tons of other fun stuff to do around the world, it will definitely take you some time to do everything.

Well I played this for a few hours and realised that apart from the X-ray mechanics this game has really not that much to offer. The story is boring, gameplay is bland. There's nothing much to do but hope that an enemy will be far enough for the killcam animation to kick in. in conclusion: it's a good thing I got it for free, because I definitely would not pay for it.