Recent reviews by Magos Tevorius

The story of Nier Automata is one that will go down in video game history as one the greatest of the 2010s. The story revolves around the trials of 9S, 2B, and A2 in a post-human Earth infested with sentient machine lifeforms. Locked in a never-ending struggle, the machines battle against the android-composed YoRHA and its Earth-based allies, The Resistance, to rid Earth of the machines so humanity can return. Going into the story, the player believes the plot will be a typical “protagonist/deuteragonist saves the world”; oh boy, the game proves that wrong.

The main story is roughly 21 hours, however, the side quests add 10+ hours. As you probably have heard there is more than one ending. In reality, there are 5 six “important” endings the player should progress through to experience the story as Yoko Taro wanted to present. Each ending builds upon the other before reaching the climax at Ending D. By writing the plot like this, Taro allows the story’s events to build upon one another which means the story’s arching themes progress before your eyes in a clear and presentable way. More importantly, its progression makes the players bond with the characters in a way found in few other games. You learn their personalities, their tastes, their quirks, and their fears. All of this is done to grip your heart and make you shed man tears when the third act begins after Ending B. Taro makes you not empathize, but sympathize with his characters in a way reminiscent of other directors like Neil Druckmann or Ken Levine.

I am not going to go in-depth into the story because it is something worth experiencing. But what I can say is it places a great emphasis on its core themes and how they connect to the player on a personal level. I am keeping my lips tight about the story because it is the core part of the attraction of Nier aside from the gameplay. To experience the story to the fullest, I’d advise you to do all the side quests as they appear and go to this link: https://theark.wiki/w/I_just_got_Ending_E, once you completed the story to full immersive yourself in all the minute details.

Cons

Speaking of side quests and full immersion, the story does fall short in its presentation. Upon completing my first run of the game, without any outside info resources/doing all the side quests, I was thoroughly confused about the meaning and significance of many game events, characters’ actions, and themes. What I realized is Nier’s story requires the player to do NEARLY all the side quests to fully understand many pivotal dialogue and events sequences in the game. Moreover, a second run-through is a MUST to fully comprehend and appreciate Yoko Taro’s writing style. He is a type of writer who prefers subtly and having the player experience that “eureka moment” where the player has all the previous story details build-up to an important moment. When it finally clicks, you go “that makes complete sense.” This is a type of surprise, the foreshadowed surprise, is heavily used by Taro throughout the entire game. If you ever watched Attack on Titan, you’d know what I mean.

The issue this presents to the story is for the first half of the game, the player is sometimes left confused about why “Event A” happens or why a character does “Action B.” It is not until you progress later into the game and complete the game that your brain puts all the pieces together. To your average player, this poses a challenge because they wouldn’t want to do all the extra lore digging/second run to fully appreciate the intricacies fo the story.


In my opinion, 2B, 9S, A2, and Pascal are the stars of the game. However, the core story and themes revolve around the relationship between 2B and 9S and later the introduction of A2. 2B and 9S on the surface are like a typical dichotomous partnership. One is cold and emotionally withdrawn, while the other is extremely talkative and curious. As the story unfolds, you begin to realize that these surface impressions hide complex, intricate, and scarred androids whose whole lives have been revolved around the struggle in life and death. Their personal growth and evolution in interaction with other characters progress with the story and present them as real people responding in a life-like way to the events around them. By the end of the story, you will have a connection to the main characters and side characters due to their incredible dialogue and believable emotions.


Nier was released in 2017 but its graphics match a title released 3-4 years prior. It does not help environments such as the Desert, Ruined City, Factory, and the Forest Kingdom are mundane and drab in appearance and presentation. The dull color palette and similar scenery gets sick after spending just 5 hours playing through the game.

Regardless, where the game does shine is the design and texturing of the characters and enemies. When in cutscenes or combat, one can see the great effort spent in designing character bodies and outfits so that each was unique in their way. Notwithstanding 2B’s dress or 9S’s schoolboy outfit, bosses like Simone or YoRHA characters like Operator 6O had detailed and memorable outfits. Also, the art design of the world as a whole invokes a sense of peace, with an underlying sense of uneasy. Nature has reclaimed the world and brought an earthly peace, but the stark ruins and machine lifeforms remind the player of the danger lurking below.

For me though, the game ran smoothly for the majority of the time, but there were numerous instances during action-packed cutscenes where the framerate dropped HARD. This made the audio out-of-sync and ruined many cutscenes for me. Likewise, there were times when the fps dropped hard during combat and I either died or took massive amounts of damage.


One of the highlights of Nier has been its soundtrack. Composed by Keiichi Okabe, the soundtrack is composed of 3 hours + of tracks. The tracks are a mix of instrumentals and vocals written in a gibberish language envisioned to be a mix of modern-day languages. The lyrics sound as if you’re listening to a futuristic blend of all modern languages after thousands of years of revolution. There are times where you can almost make out phrases in modern languages. When a track comes on, you can tell which area or character it’s tied to.

Oh boy, where do I start? Platinum Games is known for their mastery of creating hack and slash combat systems. Nier’s combat system is similar to Bayonetta’s and relies on combinations of light/heavy attacks combined with constant evading and repositioning. Nier has a large variety to choose from, each unique in their design and backstory. Each weapon has unlockable levels and backstories - some of which reveal insight to the mindset of the wielder. The combat is fast-paced and forces you to use a wide variety of never attacks for different types of opponents.

My main problem with the combat is the technical performance of the game. There were when my fps dropped randomly in the middle of combat. Sometimes it just cost me some damage, other times it lead to me dying. Given Platinum Game’s pedigree it’s unacceptable the PC port experiences said technical difficulties during combat. Many gameplay abilities require you to look up the combos online. The game does not tell you about what attacks and abilities there are. You are left to figure that out on your own. There were some abilities I did not know of until 20 hours into the game.


91/100 NieR Automata is a captivating game with an immersive, complex story, memorable characters, and visceral, fast-paced combat. It is only dragged down only by technical difficulties, easily-fixable story issues, aged graphics, and obtuse gameplay features.

The main story is roughly ten hours
Centers around Lara Croft trying to save the inca city of Paititi from the evil organization Trinity
The story is similar to Rise of the Tomb Raider and has great actions scenes and intimate dialogue between Lara and Jonah
However, the side characters are forgettable at best and I found myself wanting to skip cutscenes because of how boring they were
Action scenes and main set pieces are thrilling
The jungle environment is very lush and vibrant and looks amazing with the new graphical engine
The story is a archetypal save the world from an apocalypse and is not worth a second playthrough

The gameplay is almost a carbon copy of Rise of the Tomb Raider
Climbing mechanics are probably the most well-designed part
Skill tree is in-depth and accommodates numerous play styles
Crafting system is rather basic
Gunplay feels repetitive and enemy variants are repeated to death
Enemy AI is borderline disabled
Stealth mechanics are easy to learn and simple to use in-game
Control scheme is simple and intuitive, especially the climbing controls
No graphical glitches or performance hiccups due to poor optimization
Graphical menu is well laid out and easy to tweak
Lighting in the jungle can be more vibrant; colors come off as rather dull
Physics mechanics are impressive and cutting edge
Lara has a nice ass
I definitely pick up this game, but would only buy it when it is on sale. Play Rise of the Tomb Raider instead, it’s a better version

The story of the game is centered primarily around the 18 year old Edith Finch exploring her abandoned family ancestral home. Throughout the game, Edith takes the player on a first-person tour of her old family home. The home in itself it maze of sealed off rooms and open rooms that date back old the way to the early 20th Century. The cozy, yet mysterious interior layout and architecture of the house provides a interesting environment and setting for the game. Throughout the story, the backstory of Edith’s family and its curse is slowly revealed via Edith’s tour of the house. Each past family member’s tragic story is revealed not through dialogue or present day events, but the rooms and items they left behind that Edith uncovers. Such rooms and items cause a flashback to the life of said family member which is often creative and surprising at the same time. Edith’s own inner thoughts on the lives of her ancestors are shown to the player via a unique dialogue system which displays her thoughts real time. The best part of the game, is arguably the climatic ending which involves a surprising, yet simple twist that catches me off guard.

The gameplay primarily centers around Edith exploring her family home for the entire game. The maze like layout of the house and its individually personally oriented rooms create a cozy, yet mysterious atmosphere for the player that gives each individual room its own unique identity. Moreover, backstory into Edith’s ancestors is revealed through creative and unique flashbacks that are triggered when Edith explores their rooms and belongings. Each backstory is tailored unique to said family member. Edith’s own thoughts and reflections are revealed to the player via a real-time dialogue display that appears on screen in a simple, yet effective manner. My only gripes with the gameplay is that on some occasions, wandering around the house can be repetitive and get boring sometimes when looking for the next room to advance the story, yet this is countered by the fact that the secret entrances and correct paths are fairly obvious to detect.
The controls are simple, movement is WASD and the interact with items is mouse.
There is no DLC.
The game does not require a powerful PC to run.
The game has an creative, yet simple and short story that manages to convey a powerful message until the player in less than 2 ½ hours of gameplay. The setting and atmosphere created by the Finch House makes the player feel relaxed, yet alert when playing the game due to its cozy payment, yet myriad of secrets to uncover.

Dying Light is a open-world, zombie survival game developed by the studio behind Dead Island, Techland. It was released in January of 2015. Prior to writing the review, I’ve beaten the entire game on 100% completion.

You play as GRE undercover agent Kyle Crane, who is sent into the quarantined city of Harran to recover research that can cure the virus. The main story when played on normal takes between 15-25 hours depending on the skill of the player and the amount of exploration. The first hour was difficult and a pain in the ass because you have to learn all the different fighting and parkour mechanics while at the same time killing zombies with ♥♥♥♥♥♥ weapons. The overall story revolves around Kyle Crane switching sides and helping the survivors instead of the selfish greedy GRE. Most of the side characters are boring and forgettable. Crane himself is pretty generic, but does have a good sense of humor. Rais, the main antagonist, seems to draw from Far Cry 3’s Vaas for inspiration. For most the game, he taunts you, which is really it. The best thing about the story is that it progresses with the gameplay. The more you progress the story, the better weapons and skills you acquire. This promotes players to follow the main story. However, the side quests are a different story. Most are quests that revolve around you protecting X or fetching a item for Y. A downside to the main story is that there are too many cutscenes and quick time events that take away from the buildup and boss battles. In addition, the voice acting for the characters and animations are top notch and make them seem pretty lifelike when in cutscenes or just free roaming.
- The center of Dying Light revolves around its parkour and fighting mechanics.
- Freerunning in this game is most of the time smooth and easy, but at times the controls can interfere smoothness and lead to frustration.
-Fighting is fun and very gorey, though it becomes very repetitive late in the game when you fight the same enemies over and over again and some of them seem like their made of titanium.
-AI intelligence is average and at times makes them seem like mentally disabled people. The AI of allies is simplistic at best and is only designed for supporting you in combat. AI for zombies is generic and have repetitive attacks and movements occur all the time. AI for the human enemies is frustrating because it actually combines attacking, blocking, dodging and kicking to make the fights difficult and in some cases stupidly long.
- The Inventory management system can be overhauled to reduce clutter when sorting and equipping weapons.
- The spawning of some types of enemies such as Rais’s bandits and exploding zombies can lead to insta deaths or at least the player losing 95% of their hp because they are unprepared.
- The open world environment makes Harran seem like a real quarantine city that is facing wide-scale borderline collapse.
- The day and night adds extra tension and difficulty. During the day, zombies are ignorant and weak. When the night arrives, their sense become heightened and they are more aggressive. Also, the mutated virals come out to “hunt” for the player via using sight and sound. When they lock onto you, you can only run for a safe zone because they are extremely hard to kill, even in late-game. The night feature at times, almost made me ♥♥♥♥ myself because of the chases and paranoia of not being detected.
- There are no quick-saves, but only autosaves, which means the player has to direct all their attention when fighting or in tough parkour situations.
- Guns only appear mid-game and ammo is overall expensive and rare. Guns are very powerful, but when used attract running zombies, which is a trade off.
- The crafting system allows for the modification of nearly all melee weapons. This allows you to create some pretty wicked ♥♥♥♥ that makes fighting 10x more fun. Also, the crafting system allows you to create tools like firecrackers, molotov cocktails, ability boosters, throwing knives and etc..
The controls for freerunning are smooth and very responsive. This allows the player to feel like a first-person parkour badass. The only area where controls suffer is in combat and looting. In combat, the movement controls can lead to you getting stuck or cornered because you were unable to climb a climbable structure. When it comes to looting, all looting has a detailed animation that makes the process long and nail biting because nearly all good loot is surrounded by zombie hordes. Furthermore, lock-picking is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ annoying because of zombie hordes.
I did not play the recently released Following dlc.

The game ran perfectly on my desktop at 1440p on high. There were not drastic fps drops and no visual or audio bugs. The game is visually amazing and the graphics still hold up pretty well when compared to games like BF1. The sound design is top-notch and makes you feel like you're actually in a quarantined city. In the end, the game is visually amazing and requires a decent computer to truly experience.
The only bugs that I did see were ones that affected objectives and missions. On numerous times when I reached as objective marker, the quest would advance and that would have require a game restart in order to fix. Also, there was bug where at times mission objectives would not be completed and I would have to restart from the last checkpoint. In the end, there were no gameplay bugs at all.
The gameplay is fun and responsive to player controls due to the parkour and mobility based combat.. The story is average, but is compensated by the protagonist's personality and the main villain Rais. Dying Light is truly a unique take on the zombie survival horror genre and is definitely worth buying. 87/100

When buying this game on sale, I was skeptical about how people praised it as one of the greatest games of all time. After beating the game, I can throughly say, for a game that is 7 years old, the characters, gameplay, and story surpass many games that have came out since then. Also, the ending is greatly affected by your choices/actions that you make over the couse of the story. If you don't pay attention at all or think you can cruise easily through the story, you'll be in for a rude awakening when you play the final mission. The ending itself for me at least, was one of the best I've ever played through and I finally see why it is considered by so many gamers to be one of best videogame endings. Finally, the characters you can recruit for your team are so memorable(Thane, Garrus, and Tali)

So in terms of all of the indie games I've played this one is by far the best. The story and soundtrack are amazing. I can't necessarily write the review about the story because the story is one of those that SHOULDN"T be spoiled until you play the game. The story from the Steam store summary may seem simple, but it is far from simple once you dive into the game. When I bought this game, I thought it was going to be another indie game with a cliche story, but after playing it, I feel that it conveys way more emotions than you would expect first off and leaves the player wondering why developers aren't making stories that focus more on connecting with the player on a personal level, like how the devs at FreeBird managed to pull it off, but with a lot less resources. In the end, when you buy the game, be ready to invest 3 to 4 hours into it, because once the you start playing, the story just draws you in and doesn't let go until the end.

This game is a masterpiece. It is one of the best games I've ever played hands down and I've played all the Bioshock Games. The story itself is amazing and wraps up the series in the most creative of possibilities. In addition, the main characters Booker and Elizabeth are so well designed, that it feels like they are real people and you actually feel emotions for them.

The mechanics, such as vigors, enemies, guns, and the overall design of the levels are a refreshing site in the fps market. By just playing the opening mission, you can easily tell that Irrational Games put a great deal of passion and effort into creating this game.

Overview
This is one of the best open world games that I've ever played. It easily is one of the best rpgs made in recent memory and definately deserves the Game of the Year Award for 2015.

Pros
Massive world that is highly detailed
If you have a powerful pc and can run this game on high or above, the graphics will look beautiful
Character Progression in terms of leveling up and choosing new abilites for combat, signs, and overall character performance in game seem well-planned out and can change the way you play in terms of combat, talking to people, and exploring the world overall.
Loaded with lore and interesting characters
Great combat system that is challenging, but at the same time rewards the player for experimentation, and using different elements, such as signs, potions, reading up in monster's weaknesses and bombs.
One of the most graphically impressive games out there
The implements player chosen decisions very nicely in terms of mutiple endings and how they affect your relationship with other main characters
Fluid and easy to use crafting system for armor, swords, potions and bombs
Highly detailed monsters that vary and give a challenge depending on the player's play style
Interesting side quests that are rather interesting depending on which ones you choose to play throw
Both DLCs, Hearts of Stone and Bloode and Wine, could be their own stand-alone rpgs
In terms of load screens, most the world can be traveled freely and you can enter, cities, towns, and buildings without having to go through a stupid loading screen. There are only loading screens when fast traveling, loading a save or game, or traveling to the island of Skellige or Kaer Morhen.

Cons
Graphics were downgraded from the original E3 Demo, however some mods on the Nexus can fix this issue
Some of the side quests and main quests are a bit boring, depending on the player's interest
Sex Scenes are not good enough
Sometimes there are glitches or bugs involving you and your horse and when fighting monsters. They can be fixed via reloading a previous save.
Endings could have been improved in my opinion in terms of what happens to Geralt and the choices he made during the main questline
Enemy AI could be improved for soldiers, bandits and monsters to make their attacks more varied
Camera angles in combat can be a bit annoying at times
For people with lower-end pcs, the graphics can be a bit of a lacking in some areas,
For people who have not played the previous games, some moments in the main story can be a bit confusing
In my opinion, Gwent gets boring over time
The horse controls and physiscs can be improved
There is no in-game console for those who want to mess around or take the easy path, which in my opnion in good and makes the player have to work for high level items, but there are mods that can enable console commands for those who are lazy and suck at games like this.
combat controls can be a bit clunky at times
Random NPCs are generic and lack depth
Game can crash randomly, although it is rare for me at least.

Conclusion
In the end the Witcher 3 is a great open-world game that I would recommend to any fan of the open-world rpg genre. The game easily rivals and surpasses games like Skyrim or Fallout 4 in some areas. If you plan on buying this game, be sure to remember that once you start playing this game, it will ruin your social life and urge to play other games (This happened to me).

Deserves Game of the Year Award it got.

Great game for any type of gamer really, though the community is full of idiots, autists, speakers, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and noobs. But there are the veteran players that exist out there.