Recent reviews by Nightserg

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It's impossible to dislike the Yakuza series, they're the essential Japanese games anyone must play at least once in their lifetime and the newest in the series Like A Dragon Infinite Wealth would've been at the top of the food chain if not for some story beats that I really did not like.


👍 The good parts:
+Amazing cast of characters
+Phenomenal soundtrack
+Fantastic gameplay mechanics

👎The bad parts:
-The last few chapters and the villains of the story were pretty meh
-A bit bloated in minigames

Infinite Wealth continues where things left off from Ichiban's previous adventure, and now he's searching for his mom in Hawaii. This time around we get two protagonists, Ichi and the main man from the previous Yakuza series, Kiryu. You'll get to meet up with all your favorite companions from the previous game as well as new ones.

Having two protagonists isn't something new to the franchise, however, I think this time around, they kinda of messed up a bit by sidelining Ichiban in favor of fanservice which was a bad decision. Don't get me wrong, Ichi is still great in the game and you'll play more as him than Kiryu, however, this is in regards to the main story and the last bits of it. I cannot go into details because it would be a massive spoiler, but I will just say that the way things ended, left me with a bit of a sour mood. It's not a tragic ending or the end of things, but it's because things just ended like "whatever wait for another sequel" which is the opposite of how all Yakuza games ended.

To add more sourness to the main story, the villains were extremely uninspired especially the Hawaii one. The entire Hawaii main quest felt like a massive side quest only to be sidelined by Kiryu's main story which mostly takes place in Japan. Even the way they handled Kiryu's "issues" was pretty lame.

If it weren't for the great cast of companions you meet and some funny/moral side quests this would probably be at the lowest of all Yakuza main stories.

Story rating: 7/10

Just like the previous Like a Dragon game with Ichi, the game is turn-based in combat and features a lot of fun and not-so-fun minigames that I'll talking in a moment, looting, crafting, and everything you'd expect from a JRPG. There are a few improvements done to the combat compared to the previous game, such as more control over your actions and where you aim your skills and more companion combos. Furthermore, Kiryu's style also brings new mechanics to the turn-based combat which I'll let you discover for yourself. The only issue with this is that if you want the best of him you can't change his default class.

Speaking of classes, or jobs as the previous game called them, this time around you acquire a different class through a traveling agency. It's pretty much the same thing, a different naming convention. You'll find some of the old classes you're familiar with such as Breaker or Chef, but some new ones as well that fit well with the whole Hawaii atmosphere, such as the surfer. The new classes and their ultimate skills are just as cool and funny as the previous game, no complaints here. You'll also get access to the summons feature, which felt a bit underwhelming this time around, cinematic-wise anyway.

Crafting, exploration, and equipment also has improved a bit, but not by much. Now let's talk about the minigames. The Yakuza series are famous and infamous for their minigames, some are fun, some are average, and some are bad. Infinite Wealth has all your classical minigames from the previous game and a few new ones. The two most important minigames are the Sujimon League and the Dondoko Island.

The Sujimon League is as you probably guessed it, similar to pokemon, but instead of pokemon, you use the enemies you encountered in the game, the sujimons as Ichiban sees them. It has some depth to it, each sujimon has its own type as well as rarity, you fight against other trainers, you evolve them, and it's all pretty good. The problem with this minigame is that it won't give you many benefits in the actual game other than towards a specific class you can switch to which wasn't that great.

The other main minigame, Dondoko Island, will be your main cash cow. The problem with this one is that is ♥♥♥♥♥ boring. You arrive, forcefully, at an island, it's filled with garbage and your task is to clean it up and build it up as a resort. It's basically like Rust but a much worse version of it. You smash rocks, garbage, and trees with your bat, you collect the stuff, you craft buildings and other things and you place them on the island. However this process takes a lot of time and to fully complete it and reap the monetary benefits, it would take around 15 hours or more. Not only that, if you instantly hate it, you can't go back to the main game and you're forced to do it for the first hours or so. While you gain a lot of money from it, it was a massive tedium. I hated it. I fell asleep during it.

Gameplay rating: 8/10

As always, if you play Japanese games with English dub, I'm going to call you a mo-ron, learn to read. The Japanese cast is amazing, everyone does an incredible job voicing their characters, especially Ichi and Kiryu.

Yakuza games are also famous for their insane combat songs and oh boy does this game have some amazing bangers. The music is awesome, one of the best in the franchise, and I'll just leave it at that.

Audio rating: 9.5/10

The Dragon engine they're using is showing its age in a lot of lighting conditions, especially in the daylight. It worked well in Japan due to lots of neon lights and whatnot, but Hawaii is quite different and at times the lighting looks quite weird. It's not bad, but it needs some improvements. The character models and most effects are great though.

That being said, this engine is one of the few that runs absolutely perfect without any performance-related issues so a huge plus for optimizing such a massive game. The level design is impressive, Hawaii is massive and has a lot of back-alleys and paths you can explore. Verticality is still an issue in Yakuza games, but c'est la vie. They have at least improved the quality of the Dungeons a bit, but they're still boring to explore.

Graphics, performance and tech analysis score: 8/10

The game is big, has a lot of content, a great cast of characters, an amazing soundtrack, and fun combat and while the story is not so good this time around, do not let that dissuade you from buying Infinite Wealth regardless of its price.

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I'm not usually a fan of short gimmicky horror games, but someone recommended and insisted I play this game, and after finishing it and getting 4 endings, I kinda liked it. It remains a gimmicky short horror experience, but for a cheap buck, Mortuary Assistant can give you a bunch of amazing cheap scares.


👍 The good parts:
+A lot of unique scares with each new shift
+Decent atmosphere

👎The bad parts:
-The story is weak
-Gameplay mechanics remain the same with each shift

There's little to talk here about the story and without spoiling much, you're basically, as the name of the game implies, a new mortuary assistant, who just got hired and is tasked with embalming the dead bodies.

The twist is that you're kinda stuck in this job because the bodies are possessed by demons and you cannot leave or quit your job until all the demons are exorcised. There's a bit more depth to it, as each new shift, depending on how you handle yourself, gives you new story bits on what exactly happened that started this whole business. You eventually find out a bit more about your past as well, but overall I didn't find it that much interesting, nor the actual truth behind it all.

The story is average at best, meh at worst, and I didn't push through trying to get each ending for the sake of it, but rather to get scared.

Story rating: 6/10

Your job is to follow some simple tasks to embalm a body and exorcise a demon. These tasks are easily shown in an easily accessible task menu and all you need to do is find the items, use them on the body, and then pick the right corpse to burn. If you succeed or fail, the shift and the game ends and you have to restart from the main menu again. That is it, that's the whole game.

Finding the right demon or the right corpse to burn isn't rocket science or as hard as I imagined it would be which was a bit disappointing as most of the game is easily on rails. What was cool about starting a new shift, was the scares and that is probably the only great thing about the game, which is why I called it gimmicky. With each new shift, the scares change and there are a lot of them, some will repeat of course, but most of the time, you'll be surprised and scared to see new stuff happening to you. Some of these cheap scares were quite creative and poop-your-pants-inducing.

Sadly other than getting scared, I did not find anything else that was worth doing in the game. It feels more like a demo for the developers to test and hopefully their new game will be far more in-depth.

Gameplay rating: 7/10

Sound design is decent towards okay which is essential to any horror game, so I do have to applaud them for prioritizing that. Voice acting is average, but I did not expect much to begin with so I wasn't really disappointed. As for the soundtrack, other than the main menu one and maybe one it's pretty much non-existent.

Audio rating: 7/10

The atmosphere is great, I mean, it's hard not to get scared at night in a mortuary with random things happening to you so props for the great idea.

The game is a bit janky at times, but it does run quite well, had no issues at all with it.

Graphics, performance and tech analysis score: 7.5/10

It's definitely worth it on a sale if you know what to expect playing it. Remember, this isn't a high-production horror game like Amnesia or Alien Isolation. It's just a short, get-scared, experience that has some story stapled to it that's not very good. I generally don't thumbs up anything below 7 since games on Steam are already overly positive, but this is one of the few exceptions.

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I initially played the original Persona 5 on PS4 and the Royal version shortly after it was released on the console again and while initially I thought it was just an ok game, after playing twice and now for the third time on Steam, I can safely say it's one of the best, if not the best jrpg of all time.


👍 The good parts:
+Amazing characters
+Awesome soundtrack
+Gameplay loop is incredibly addicting, so much that at times you'd wish it never ended

👎The bad parts:
-Certain dungeons can get a bit tedious
-Visually not that impressive

The story follows you, Joker, the main character, who awakens to unknown powers that can change the hearts of bad individuals in the real world. The short version is, that you team up with incredible companions, you explore a parallel world or the twisted reality of your bad individual, you deal with them and you "cure" them by changing their hearts.

The long version is far too much to go into without spoiling, but expect one hell of an adventure filled with awesome and emotional moments. You'll meet all sorts of typical anime-like characters each with their own unique or goofy side and there's hardly anyone you'll ever dislike.

Persona 5 Royal has a huge emphasis on story, it's a 100+ hour game after all, so expect a lot of dialogue between exploring Mementos or the main Palaces(dungeons).

Fair warning to new users, Persona 5 Royal adds a new ending/story besides the original, and if you wanna see that, you'll have to reach maximum companionship with Maruki else you'll get only the basic original ending.

Story rating: 9/10

The gameplay has quite a lot of depth and may get overwhelming at first. The game is split into days and each day you can do a limited number of things such as advancing your confidant level or companionship if you wanna call it that with one of the huge amount of characters you meet and not just your teammates, increase your social skills, or explore Mementos/dungeons. You cannot do everything in one day so you'll have to plan accordingly, who you're going to prioritize increasing their levels, or what social skills you want to increase. Each teammate and confidant has unique skills that you get when you increase their levels. It's impossible to reach max with all of the characters you meet, so be careful who you prioritize. All of this is done in real-time and through dialogue choices and some choices may give out poorer results than the others.

The other aspect is the gameplay which is turn-based combat. Each teammate has their own Persona with predefined abilities, but you're unique and you can have all available Personas you fight and encounter in the game. You can fuse them to make other unique ones, you can boost them, etc. There is a huge emphasis on your ability to adapt to each enemy, especially if you play on harder difficulties.

The bosses in the game are the real challenge and each one is incredibly unique and tough to deal with and will require a lot of preparation in advance. The game will always offer you a certain amount of days before a deadline in dealing with a certain boss so you will always have time to get prepared and become stronger. The game has a huge emphasis on hitting enemies in their weaknesses which you'll slowly learn as you play the game, but the bosses are where that truly takes it to the next level.

Other than one specific boss which has to be cheesed or played on lower difficulty because it was designed poorly and never updated, all of them are a fair challenge. Overall the gameplay loop, never having enough time to do everything, will always keep you addicted to it.

Gameplay rating: 8.5/10

Voice acting is great, the Japanese side at least, but then again you'd be a fool to play it with English dub, so learn to read. I'd say around 70% of the lines are voiced and each character does a great job at it. The annoying part of the voice acting is in combat, as two specific characters will non-stop taunt and scream in your face which becomes extremely annoying.

The soundtrack is the soul of the game, and it's as important as anything else in the game. It is incredibly crafted to fit perfectly well with the game and its special moments. I don't think Persona 5 Royal would be the same without it.

As for all the other sound effects, they're all pretty standard, some annoying loud sound effects as Japanese devs are used to shoving in our ears, but it's fine.

Audio rating: 8.5/10

Performance-wise and bug-wise the game is practically perfect. It's not a demanding game, and visually it will not blow your mind, after all, it's a PS4 early-era type of game.

It looks decent, nothing to complain though they could've done a better job with the Royal version, they could've updated a lot of ugly visuals and dungeons.

The level design of the main dungeons is decent, some of them may get overwhelming, others tedious, but not that big of a deal.

Graphics, performance and tech analysis score: 8/10

You'd be doing yourself a huge disservice by not playing this even if you're waiting for a sale, this game is highly recommended at any price considering the amount of content there is and how incredibly charming and emotional it can get. Buy it!

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Remnant 2 is a huge hit or miss depending on what you expect from it, on one hand, it's an improvement over the first in most areas, but suffers a lot in others, on the other hand at its core it's still not even close to the best coop games on the market or souls-like ones.


👍 The good parts:
+Level design is decent
+Some locations are cool to look at
+Gunplay is satisfying

👎The bad parts:
-Ring collecting simulator
-Outside of one or two bosses, none of them were memorable
-Garbage story

Honestly, I don't even know why they even bother at this point. Their writers are absolute buffoons who can't come up with anything original and instead copy-paste from other media and mash up a huge nonsense of a lore/story that some people on Steam seem to eat up like a bunch of mindless monkeys. Just like From Software's stories/lores, it's all a bunch of pretentious nonsense, except that From at least has an impressive environmental and item story-telling which feels well thought out at times, but since Remnant 2's environments are just copy pasted RNG's, they need to rely on what the characters in the game say and their cutscenes.

The first one was a load of nonsense and most of its story was written on some random diaries which had like 15 pages at times, it was very weak. Remnant 2 continues the story of the first, brings back the same uninteresting characters, makes you some chosen dude, fight against the root, AGAIN, and thats it. The ending is absolutely pathetic. The DLC is even worse.

Story rating: 5/10

Do you know what the beauty of an RPG or souls-like game is? Finding awesome and unique weapons to deal with the enemies and bosses or armors to look cool that boosts your stats. What does Remnant 2 have? None of those and a huge massive ring collection. Whoever thought this was a good idea needs to find a different job. I have never seen a more useless gear in any of said genres. The game has like over 150 rings or so and more than half of them are absolutely useless no matter what build you use. The weapons are so few and weak that you'll just end up upgrading the base ones, same goes for armor.

So gear is sht, but what about the combat? If you've played the first, this is pretty much the same game with a few extras such as the skills. The previous game had some decent weapon skills, but it felt very lackluster in variety. Remnant 2 tried and succeded might I add in improving the skills. Essentially the game now has multiple classes that you can play with, some you start with, others you have to find and craft. Once you craft the said class, you can equip it on your character to a max of two. Each class has quite its unique set of skills that may drastically impact the difficulty of the game, because some are far superior than others, for example, the medic would be the best class in the game especially if you play on the highest difficulties.

Another disappointing fact that a souls-like game should excel at, are the bosses. Most of them are just bullet-sponge enemies that lack any sort of tactical difficulty and instead just rely on you having the patience to spend 30 minutes draining their HP. There are some really impressive ones such as the final one, but too few to matter. Considering the game is a massive ring-collecting simulator, exploration takes a huge nose-dive in quality.

I will admit that the shooting loop, using skills, leveling up, and all that did never get bored and despite its gameplay suffering in a ton of areas, I still kinda liked playing it.

Gameplay rating: 7/10

Voice acting is very average, the soundtrack is lackluster in a lot of boss fights and areas and overall the sound effects are just not worth talking about. Imagine making a game where you fight several boss fights and you don't even bother making epic music to go alongside them. It all felt very generic trash.

Audio rating: 6/10

A massive bug-infested game and despite waiting months to play it was still a mess in coop. Sound effects would get stuck on a loop and I'd have to restart the game else my ears would bleed, game crashes, etc.

Visually the game has improved over the first and the animations are slightly better, but it's not that big of a deal to be even worth talking about. Level design is sadly still loading-based however the levels themselves have improved considerably over the first game. It's a massive shame the exploration isn't really worth it.

As for performance on my high-end system I'd say it ran fine, but it relied on DLSS to run decent which means wihtout it, it's pretty bad and as with any game that relies on upscaling technology to run good, massive thumbs down to Remnant devs for not optimizing the base game.

Graphics, performance and tech analysis score: 6.5/10

If you have nothing else to play, got some friends, then I'd say get it on a sale, but other than that, you won't miss anything special by not playing this.

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Turbo Overkill is a fantastic old-school fps, a game that clearly takes inspiration from old and modern games like Quake or Doom Eternal, however, its length and certain levels/enemies drag it a bit down.


👍 The good parts:
+Satisfying gun combat
+Fantastic soundtrack
+Good level design

👎The bad parts:
-Overstays its welcome and becomes a bit repetitive later on
-Annoying enemies and difficulty spikes

You play as Johnny Turbo, a cool silent protagonist dude, tasked with stopping a rogue AI. It's a boomer shooter, if you're expecting a Baldurs Gate 3 story, look elsewhere. That being said, the devs did put a bit of an effort into making a genuinely decent story from start to finish so I'll give them credit for that, it's not a genre you play for the story after all.

As you progress through the game, you'll learn more about your background while the main story just keeps getting crazier by the minute. Will it blow your mind? No. Will you be satisfied for what it is and may want more in the future? Probably yes.

Story rating: 7.5/10

The bread and butter of Turbo Overkill is of course the gameplay. As I've mentioned it takes inspiration from other big FPS hitters while still feeling rather unique. If you've played all boomer, classic, and modern shooters you'll be right at home with this one, but at the same time it won't feel super fresh, a double-edged sword I suppose.

You find weapons, you upgrade them, you find skills, you upgrade them and you shoot everything in your path for almost 20 hours which was a bit longer than I expected, and while the game does try to keep things fresh, the samey arena spawn enemy type one after another got a bit too stale for me. Speaking of keeping things fresh, you can ride your bike and your flying vehicle at certain points in the game as well as a mech, however, I found those to be the worst parts of the game.

Enemy variety also kinda of got a bit on my nerves as well as their insane random damage output. I'll admit I started playing on the hardest difficulty which ruined most of my game enjoyment due to how poorly some late-game enemies were designed and the fact that they disable the most important aspect of any ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ shooter, the health/armor pickups. That being said the difficulty under the final one was much better at which point I started enjoying the game more.

The guns are well-designed and fun to use with the exception of the sniper one, which is a gimmicky pos and you'll only ever use it to teleport to enemies in one or two scenarios. The most important mechanic though which is mandatory to use in the hardest difficulties is your leg saw. Basically, you can slide into enemies with it and shred them to pieces, and with the right upgrades you can get health and armor doing so.

Gameplay rating: 8.5/10

The soundtrack is amazing, that's all there is to it. The essence of any FPS besides the gun combat is some badass songs in the background to amp you up even more and Turbo Overkill's music does that very well. Surprisingly the game having a decent story, also comes with some pretty good voice acting.

The sound effects for all the guns and whatnot are all pretty good as well, nothing much to say about that.

Audio rating: 8.5/10

I understand budget, time, and skill are required for modern graphics as it's hard to optimize them for so many systems, but this game would've been insane on a modern engine like say id tech. As it is, it looks ok most of the time when you're in neon-lit levels, but other times it looks ugly.

The level design is pretty good, the maps are huge, and mostly linear, but they do open up sometimes giving you more freedom. You can even get lost sometimes. Backtracking is pretty much the main core of progressing in Turbo Overkill.

Graphics, performance and tech analysis score: 8/10

Turbo Overkill, despite some of my issues with it, is one of the best boomer shooters on the market so you should 100% buy it at any price if you love the genre.

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Like a Dragon Gaiden, as the name implies, is more of a side quest rather than the main dish of the franchise, and while I love the new protagonist Joryu, besides the last 2 or 3 emotional hours, the game is pretty much pointless in terms of story and content.


👍 The good parts:
+Sotenbori is a visual masterpiece.
+Nice music as is always typical of the Yakuza franchise
+Joryu

👎The bad parts:
-There are no real or good side quests, just Ubisoft type of delivering or finding stuff
-Very short and most of the story besides the last hours is pointless/filler

You play as Kir...errm Joryu, following the events of Yakuza 6, you now work for some secret government spy type of individuals, protecting people and whatnot. The story takes place right as the events of Yakuza 7/Like a Dragon happen and while you will meet some unique characters you can pretty much know what will happen to them which is rather disappointing as Yakuza series are known for their heavy twists and heavy story events. This was supposed to be a DLC after all, but they turned it into a main game and you can easily tell.

Most of the game's story is pretty bland, except once it actually picks up right as you intersect with the new protagonist Ichi. Following those events, things get emotional, some cool boss fight and that's about it. a 3-hour course for 50 euros is not my cup of tea, even as a huge Yakuza fan.

Story rating: 7/10

Gaiden goes back to its roots and the combat is real-time now, improved thanks to the updated dragon engine they're using, similar to Lost Judgment. You have a new style that uses gadgets and while it was fun for the first few hours to throw and grapple enemies, most of the other gadgets are annoying to use and most of the time you'll just switch back to Joryu's main style as it deals a lot more damage and you can also pick stuff up to just destroy enemies.

The side quests, if you can call them that, are just Ubisoft type of grindy sht, where you have to deliver stuff, find stuff, etc., and unlike all Yakuza games, they do not come with funny/hilarious or moral characters. There are a few, like the arena one, but it's not that good. Besides Sotenbori you'll visit a new area, a ship, where you can mostly gamble, pick your clothes, and fight in arenas.

I wasn't really impressed and if the game was priced at 30 or lower, I might've said yeah, that's more appropriate, but for almost full price, the gameplay just massively disappoints considering we've already played the same game 7 times already. I also didn't like the fact that the game just loved to spam huge amounts of enemies on you over and over just to pad it.

Gameplay rating: 6.5/10

Whoever plays Japanese games with English dub is a moron, and with that being said, the Japanese voice acting, as is the case with every Yakuza game, was fantastic. Kiryu is an amazing protagonist and I'm glad he'll be by Ichiban's side in Infinite Wealth.

The music is as you'd expect great to listen especially combat ones. As for all the other audio parts, they're all standard, nothing worth discussing.

Audio rating: 8.5/10

The game runs phenomenally and I'm glad they're not using Unreal Engine 5. Sotenbori looks insane, especially at night and yes, even though we've seen it several times already in previous games, it always makes me wish I'd be there. There were a few janky animations caused by the new gadgets, but other than that, the game runs perfectly with no hitches.

The new area also looks pretty good, but it's too small to even bother talking about it.

Graphics, performance and tech analysis score: 8.5/10

Look, if you're a Yakuza fan, do whatever you want, buy it at full price I don't care, but even if RGG are a studio I love, stretching what was supposed to be a DLC and selling it as an almost full priced game is a big NO NO. Ubisoft did it and got flak for it and so should RGG. Get it on sale.

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For once I wish developers would do something unique based on the Dark Souls franchise rather than trying to copy-paste it and change a few things here and there just so they don't get copyrighted. Just like Lies of P, Lords of the Fallen is an attempt at making it in the so-called souls-like genre, but does it succeed? Yes and no. I would personally put Lords of the Fallen below Nioh 2 and The Surge and maybe at the same level with Lies of P. Why? Well, read below.


👍 The good parts:
+The umbral/lamp mechanic is pretty nice
+The level design is the best in the souls-like genre
+Nice gloomy atmosphere

👎The bad parts:
-Enemy variety is dogsht
-Bosses are way too easy
-Weak story/lore

Honestly, all the story the game has is right at the start, when the cinematic shows. If you've seen that, you've seen the whole story, and no, this is not an exaggeration. It's a story you've already seen a million times in Dark Souls games or similar media, a Holy land defeats an evil god, puts up a few towers/beacons to ward off his resurrection, things go bad, everything gets corrupted, you have to save the day, while also being shunned by everyone for what you are.

You are basically a Death Knight to put things in simpler terms, a bunch of lamp-wearing shady characters who can come back to life thanks to their devotion to god knows what and thanks to the mysterious lamp they carry around which allows them to traverse the world of the dead and the living.

The game has or at least tried to have an adequate amount of lore such as Dark Souls has, but what the devs failed to grasp is that the Souls games don't have a really great lore/story either, instead, they have a cult-following which will "kill" anyone would dare say anything bad about the franchises average story. Most sane people love the gameplay, but the story is pretty much the same in all their games, you're a small time being, kill all the lords, become the fire/ring/whatever Lords, and some random/messed up things happen to characters you won't care, the end. That is the whole gist of the whole Souls franchise. Lords of the Fallen tried really hard to copy that, and it does so successfully, but Lords of the Fallen does not have a cult following, nor are they Japanese developers which means their story/lore is not dumb-proof.

At least Lies of P developers understood this and made the story and the lore a lot more exposed and direct rather than being the same garbage of becoming a lord and being obtuse. Lords of the Fallen has items lore, and checkpoints lore just like Dark Souls has, but it's all pointless as fans of the Souls games only suck up to From Software and nothing else. If the devs are reading this, if you're ever making a sequel, do your own thing, and make the story more implicated with the player.

Story rating: 6.5/10

If you've played any Dark Souls game, then you'll know what to expect here. The only difference Lords of the Fallen has, is the Umbral mechanic. What it does is you can travel in a parallel world whenever you want or when you automatically die. This world is the same version as the real one, but with the obvious twisted visuals, unique monsters, and what I really loved, it's own level design. It's hard to explain in words, but the gist is, that you'll come across many times in the game, paths you cannot access, in the real world which means you'll have to transport yourself to the other side, the Umbral realm, to cross over the broken bridge or find new locations, or discover secrets.

This umbral mechanic also offers combat advantages and sorta of makes the game quite easier because when you die, you get transported to the Umbral realm, where you can "resurrect" at certain points, which in simpler terms means you have two lives. For example, if you fight a strong enemy or a boss and you die, you continue the fight but in the Umbral realm, and if you die again, then it's back to the checkpoint.

Other than that it's explore the world, find weapons that sadly seem to have the exact same move-set..., upgrade your character, defeat bosses, and finish the game. Just like the story, the game just didn't bother doing its own thing and when it tries to copy Dark Souls it does it in an exaggerated way. For example, you'll encounter a lot of locations where you can die from falling down, and what Dark Souls did maybe once or twice per game, the devs in Lords of the Fallen did it at least 50 times. There will always be someone trying to push you over the edge in this game and it's incredibly obvious and chances are you'll only fall for it once.

Bosses should be the highlight of any souls-like game and sadly Lords of the Fallen has some average ones from every point of view. There was not a single boss that proved challenging, there were very few that were frustrating due to bad animations, but nothing genuinely hard or a boss that would make you go "wow". The game has no, "phew, I finally did it" moments at all nor will you ever feel skilled and satisfied for defeating someone. Lies of P had these moments, but on the opposite spectrum, they were frustratingly hard due to poor animations/gameplay mechanics. Neither Lords nor Lies seem to know how to make boss fights adequate like From Software does.

Gameplay rating: 7.5/10

Major oooof here seems someone forgot to boost the music levels in boss fights or the devs are unaware of the fact that what makes boss fights in Souls games epic is not just the bosses themselves, but the epic music as well. In Lords of the Fallen, you'll rarely hear a song in the fights and they're not really that amazing to listen to even when you can hear something.

Voice acting is pretty bad as well and the sound effects are pretty decent, not much else to say here.

Audio rating: 6.5/10

I started playing the game after extensive patches so if there were any performance issues, I wouldn't know as the game ran absolutely smooth for me, though I do have a decent system with a 4070TI. Bug-wise, I also haven't encountered anything major, except some annoying janky animations.

Visually the game has some amazing vistas and some really good-looking and varied locations, however, this being an Unreal Engine 5 game, which is a pretty bad engine atm, a lot of the interior lighting if it does not have a light source, it looks incredibly bad but these few places are extremely rare.

That being said, I have to applaud and praise whoever worked on designing the game's world. Amazing work and quite literally the only souls-like to ever reach the same level that From Software is famous for. The whole world is masterfully interconnected, with multiple paths, loads of secrets to find, etc. And just when you thought that was great, you have the Umbral mechanic which I talked about, where you transport yourself to this parallel world which has its own level design as well. Congratulations to the team for this. It's what kept me playing the game.

Graphics, performance and tech analysis score: 8.5/10

Lords of the Fallen is certainly a mixed bag for many, and I genuinely think people play souls games for the wrong reasons, but it's still a decent game, and the level design will carry most of everyones enjoyment. If they can figure out how to make better, fair and challenging bosses, have a better story presentation, better/obvious soundtrack and have the same impressive level design, then that game could potentially become the best souls-like.

It's insane to me how overrated The Bunker is when it's core design is incredibly tedious and uninspired as hell. This is one of the worst horror games I've ever played and yes I even finished Rebirth which was also pretty bad. This will be my last Frictional Games purchase because whoever designed Soma and Amnesia the first one are clearly gone from the company or they're just out of their minds. Clearly STEAM users are dying for good horror genres and are just blindly upvoting anything, I've seen literally walking sims that are an hour long that have high ratings which is insane.

That being said, this is one of those few case where I just dont feel like finishing the game, hence why I'm not actually doing a proper review. Heres why I hate Amnesia the Bunker:

-Level design is absolute dog sh.t. Why? Because the entire game revolves around saving from one point, avoiding the bad AI in a linear area get an item and come back to save. Now repeat that 5 times.
-The AI is incredibly bad, heavily scripted and just buggish as hell. Traps ACTUALLY do not trigger 75% of the time the monster walks in on them UNLESS you actually look at them. If you want to get past the AI behind him for example YOU CANNOT, because the devs designed his body to down you automatically if you so much get an inch near him EVEN IF he did not actually spot you. This has happened to me multiple times.
-The gameplay revolves around you just waiting for the AI to spawn, hide in one place for for 15 minutes, wait for him to despawn grab the item and head back to the save point. That is IT. How the fk is this game so highly praised? All the difficulty it does is just make the AI stay longer on your ass and that is it. The fact that people enjoy being AFK while they waiting for the monster to despawn and then rush to the objective for the entire game is INSANE TO ME. Oh you wasted an hour collecting all the lore and pictures and items and then died because the enemy AI did you dirty? Well thats too bad, do it again!
-The horror factor is gone after the first hour once you realize how lack of creative the game is in EVERYTHING it does.

Sorry but it's a nah from me.

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I was extremely surprised when The Talos Principle 2 was announced, because I thought it did not sell too well to warrant a sequel, being a niche game, but here we are almost 40 hours after doing 100% in the game and it's safe to say I am super glad they decided to make a new one. The Talos Principle 2 is a fantastic sequel to an already fantastic puzzle game and while it's not perfect, which I'll detail below, I still want more.


👍 The good parts:
+Excellent puzzle designs that range from easy to hard difficulty.
+Amazing soundtrack.
+Stunning vistas and architectural design

👎The bad parts:
-The maps are too large and tedious to go from one puzzle to another.
-Dialogue system

The Talos Principle is a direct sequel to the second game so I would highly recommend you play the first as well, but it's not that mandatory as there are short recaps in the game. You wake up as the number 1000 android created by what the first android, the character you played in the first game, set out to do following the paths of Alexandra. Shortly after you wake up things start to go weird and you're off to explore a new and mysterious island filled with tons of puzzles created for an unknown reason.

I obviously can't talk much without spoiling, but the gist is, that the story holds the same moral choices the first game gave you, about what it means to be human and their decisions.

It's a pretty decent story, it will certainly make you rethink certain aspects of your own life, very philosophical stuff. What's different from the first is that now you seem to have certain dialogue choices that can impact the multiple endings the game has, though not by much. This at first may seem like an improvement, but it's also not, because the flow of the game is to solve puzzles, not spend huge amounts of time discussing a lot of pointless and varied topics and that flow is being disrupted quite constantly in Talos 2. Instead of a Bethesda-like dialogue cutscene, I would've just opted for dialogue to be entirely done inside your head just like most of the banter in the game. It's a nitpick I suppose, but this is after all a very long puzzle game, maybe too long, and at one point the dialogue just seemed to drag on without adding anything much to the overall moral story.

Story rating: 8/10

The main aspect of Talos 2 is obviously the gameplay, a massive world filled with maybe a bit too many puzzles than I would've hoped. If you played the first, you know exactly what to expect, but also not quite. The first game had a few puzzle mechanics and tools regarding lasers, however, the difficulty ranged from medium to sometimes incredibly hard.

In Talos 2 they decided to go a different route, perhaps in hopes of attracting more players to its fanbase. Now there are a lot more puzzles, but they introduce a lot of new tools and mechanics with each area you explore, keeping the gameplay fresh for almost all of its entirety. The downside of introducing new mechanics in every new area means they had to lower the difficulty of solving these puzzles. A lot of these puzzle rooms are absolutely banal and to make matters worse they've added ways to skip said puzzle rooms by collecting flames scattered around the huge empty maps, and let me tell you there are quite a lot of them.

The only challenge I had was with the Golden Door puzzles however even there most of the cool tools you are introduced in the main game are not as creatively used as I would've hoped, instead the challenge in the Golden Door is some absurd thing such as blocking the lasers with your body which was a very hated unknown mechanic from the first game.

The stars are not mandatory to get any kind of endings and collecting them, with one or two exceptions is incredibly easy. Collecting all the stars will only give you a cool cinematic and that's about it. Quite dissapointing.

The main problem I and seemingly most of the people I've seen playing the game had, are the maps themselves. Going from one puzzle room to another or collecting stars is extremely tedious as all the maps are way too large for their own good. Backtracking is a pain due to that.

Overall Talos 2 goes in a different direction with its main puzzles compared to the first while retaining the core which we all love.

Gameplay rating: 8.5/10

Audio design has been improved vastly compared to the first, mostly budget-wise. There are a ton of dialogues in the game, maybe a bit too much, however, everyone does a good job at voicing their characters.

The soundtrack is just as amazing as the first, maybe even better, as there are more areas and therefore more songs being played in your ear. It's very relaxing overall and fits quite well with the whole aspect of the game. As for the sound effects, they're all pretty standard stuff, nothing out of the ordinary.

Audio rating: 8.5/10

Sadly or luckily depending on your point of view they ditched the Sam engine and decided to go with Unreal Engine 5. Sadly, UE5 as it stands is still very much "fresh" and has a ton of issues which you'll notice in a lot of games using the same engine, mostly optimization issues. To counter that The Talos 2 devs cut some corners with the visuals, such as reducing lighting quality, no dynamic clouds, etc. The game runs fairly decent, but then again, I do have a high-end GPU and I still had to use frame-gen and DLSS to have a decent framerate so I imagine most users will have to use medium settings to run the game ok as certain settings such as GI above high automatically enable ray-tracing effects.

That being said, the game does look pretty most of the time, it has some incredible vistas and some insane architectural designs around and inside the maps. Level design as I talked about it a bit in the gameplay aspect is not quite as good, the levels are far too large, and that in turn may also impact the performance negatively. As for bugs and whatnot, there were quite a few of them, but the devs were quick to smash them, so all is good on that front.

Graphics, performance and tech analysis score: 7.5/10

While most sequels are better or worse than their predecessors, The Talos Principle 2 is different, not worse nor better. It does certain things better and certain things worse, but the overall quality of the product does not suffer, and the game is well worth getting. Also, the price of the game is INSANELY good, so do yourself a favor and buy it.

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I am now convinced Supermassive Games were a one-hit wonder devs and have no idea what they're doing and are just milking and riding on the success of Until Dawn. Unlike that game, The Quarry has one of the dumbest characters and plot I've ever seen, along with the fact that the gameplay is an absolute waste of time. To make matters worse it seems horror fans are so deprived of good horror games and movies that they just feel forced to enjoy any trash that is released. I won't be as forgiving.


👍 The good parts:
-Nothing

👎The bad parts:
-Acting is abysmally cringe and nonsensical
-The main story wastes your time
-Gameplay is practically nonexistent

It's not difficult to make a decent horror movie around fantastical beasts such as werewolves or similar creatures, yet somehow the writers managed to make the dumbest plot on the planet that somehow without any logic involves a ghost? maybe? and not actual werewolves but the skinny hairless version of them.

So the gist is, that you play as various dumb teenagers that have absolutely no logic in them whatsoever, which is the norm with horror media, but in this particular case, they are the dumbest I've seen. Anyway, you are at Hackett's Quarry, which is a summer camp for kids that is run by the Hacketts.

Yes, you may be thinking now, wait, why is there a summer camp for kids in a horror environment? Well, dear reader, it gets worse, they run the camp for kids knowingly that there are werewolves being hunted in the area, but it's cool because there's no full moon until the plot of the game starts so the kids are safe lmao and luckily the camp ends A DAY before the full moon starts. Anyway, one of the douchebag characters you play as sabotages the car that you and the other main characters were supposed to return home, and now you're stuck there, BUT get this, the summer camp leader also has a car and he just leaves the characters there when he could've literally saved them all.

The game is marketed as all choices matter and let me tell you right away, they do not. Almost all choices while they initially seem different will ultimately lead to the same exact path. The characters only die if you're absolutely bad at the game or under absolute BS circumstances which I'll talk in the gameplay part.

Every decision the game wants you to make story-wise is absolutely baffling and no way any human being capable of having normal thoughts would do any of those actions. "oh no you got jumped by a humanoid hairless creature, I think it was a bear!!! let's walk alone in the forest!!"

Every single character seems to have double personalities, like this skinny-ass dude tells the guy to do something, the guy does it and then HE STILL GETS ANNOYED. Who wrote this? Find a better job.

Story rating: 4/10

There is no gameplay. You just walk forward, wait for a cutscene, then walk forward again for 1 minute and then another cutscene and sometimes you have to select dialogue choices that most of the time do not matter or impact the story at all although the game tries really hard to make you believe they do.

Oh right, you also maybe shoot the shotgun 2 or 3 times without making much of an impact anyway. There was also a specific puzzle that will impact whether a character dies or not and it was the dumbest puzzle of all time. There are 3 choices for that puzzle, one in which you can retry twice, and if it fails, the guy you play as just says, "eh I won't bother saving you" and leaves the other guy to sit there, another choice in which the same thing happens but it's automatic the first time you do it and the I'm assuming good solution which I could not get because the puzzle had no logical solution other than just randomly picking. Even if it was my fault for failing the puzzle, the fact that any human being just sorta shrugs and leaves his friend in there without doing his best, is absolutely moronic.

I didn't talk about this in the story, but every single character in the game has the exact same mentality, the shrugger, horrific events happen around them and they are just kinda "eh, whatever"

Gameplay rating: 3/10

Voice acting is not very good, they're all bad actors, they seem bored and passive, there is 0 charm in any of them, randomly yelling when they shouldn't, not acting scared when they should, etc.

The music is almost non-existent and the sound effects are just pale.

Audio rating: 3/10

The game runs nice, for me at least, on my high end system, but that ain't saying much as there's not much to look at. Environments are dry and devoid of detail, just a cabin here, a forest there and that's about it. Character models look weird, especially their mouth movements and the monsters looked badly designed.

As for bugs, I have not encountered anything so I guess thats a plus.

Graphics, performance and tech analysis score: 6/10

Avoid this trash at all costs. Yes, I get it, you're bored and you need your dose of horror and there's barely anything good, but stop giving these people your money. They haven't learned and improved a single thing since Until Dawn.