Recent reviews by Valyus

Music is god-tier. Unfortunately the game doesn't live up to quality that was put into the music. The rest of the game feels, rushed, is the best way to put it. Not a lot of detail was put into it and it just feels mechanically hollow compared to others in the genre. I'd give it a solid 6/10. You'd like this game if you like the Adeptus Mechanicus or Warhammer with the side of a little bit of XCOM. This is such a niche audience that it would've been better if they made it mechanically interesting. It just isn't.

Devs abandon an otherwise decent stand-in for an asymmetric experience. It just need some balance changes and for the grind to disappear (because it really did give good players even more of an advantage) but the devs decided to abandon the game instead of fixing it.

This game isn't worth it, even if you got it free. They delayed this game a whole year to only have:

- 2 Maps
- 6 Characters (extremely unbalanced)
- A perk that literally decrease MMR
- Certain perks can only be unlocked by the battle pass
- 5 "Infected" to turn into (level 1 Infected being absolutely pathetic and boring af and level 3 being borderline OP)

This game doesn't even deserve a full review because they obviously didn't create a full game. Don't play it and tell Capcom to actually make a decent multiplayer experience instead of shovelware. How about an Outbreak sequel or remake instead of trying to appease brainless action gamers for a broader audience

After playing this game for about 500 hours I can say that this game is unique. There is no other like it but that doesn't excuse it's egregious grind and balancing issues (especially when it comes to BR compression). Don't get me wrong, it's a pretty good game but the more you play it, the more you'll end up hating it due to balance and grind. The first couple of tiers is easy to grind but later it becomes a huge slog, not only that, it becomes more of a slog because of tank repair cost making it twice as grindy. The only way to truly enjoy this game is with premium and even that's up for debate.

I'd give this game a solid 7/10, it's definitely not an average/mediocre game but due to it's grind and forcing you to purchase a premium account is a big no-no in my book. Premium should help enhance the game, not be a requirement.

Edit: 2/10 Greedy devs, they've been known to be greedy but they really are pushing the limits of greed to the point of ruining their game. I really hope Gaijin fails and some other dev makes something similar so they can bury them.

Dune is a 4X game that revolves more around the diplomacy, infiltration, and development of villages with a fairly large map of Arrakis. The combat does, unfortunately take a back seat to the game being rather simplistic in it's approach. The issues mainly being to much unit aggro rotation and cheese to win fights.

I've greatly enjoyed this game but noticed some issues the more I kept playing and figured I'd voice it since many reviews don't really get into the details.

- AI. The AI in this game is bad, not incredibly terrible but up there with pretty braindead stuff. You can camp their reinforcement area with tanks and essentially just say "GG" at that point. They rarely if ever attack when they are initially deployed and the only downside is that they are invunerable for roughly 10 seconds after coming in from off-map. At the same time, the AI has to receive some absolutely broken accuracy comparatively to your troops. My stationary AT team that has a reasonable amount of experience nearly always lose to an enemy brand new coming in from off map. Sometimes my troops won't fire at something within sight and the AI will.

- Conquest (Dynamic) is a bad game type. I'm not saying it isn't fun, just really sucks and forces you to do down one tech path 99% of the time (tanks, literally always tanks, even the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ Finland tanks). The game really never provides why the opposing AI gets unlimited reinforcements (forcing you to never take your time and rushing the points...with tanks obviously). I'd always advise going for the 3 star difficulty because of the benefits of receiving more research and manpower at the end of those missions. These missions feel less strategic and more blitzkrieg all the time. You immediately win the mission after you captured all the capture points so no reason taking your time. Worst yet, they eliminated the ability to forfeit or surrender a fight, when you quit the match, you have to play it over. If you lose, you have to naturally lose because of the tickets which can take 30+ minutes because the game works off a capture point ticket mechanic. Defense missions absolutely blow and I hate them. Enjoy getting swarmed for 30 mins while you get your small group of troops and that's it.

- Balance. The balance in this game is probably ♥♥♥♥♥♥ just because of the realism. Of course a tank is going to mow troops down easily. The issue arises when the tanks are only 3 times more expensive than a squad of infantry. Are you telling me that a tank is only worth 3x more than infantry? The efficiency you'll get out of the tank is ABSOLUTELY bonkers compared to what you'd get out of a infantry group. So much so, that it's nearly pointless to ever use troops. The game three killer things, stationary AT guns, mortars, and tanks. These three things negate literally everything else to the point where you'll be at a disadvantage for choosing anything else.

- Direct Fire. This isn't a bad thing, it's just how it's implemented. At no point should you really be using this because if you are, your stuff is being either killed or destroyed because now your concentrating on one thing instead of your army as a whole. Now that really depends on if all your troops are currently fighting or not, it's best to Direct Control while not in combat and leave all your other troops behind. Things happen SO fast in this game that direct firing for just a moment could lead to all your other troops dying. The time to kill in this game is INSANELY fast, and you pair that up with the AI nearly pinpoint accuracy and it's not fun. The AI can do everything at once and react on the fly to everything (looking at you grenades as the AI can easily scatter but your troops are too dumb to do the same). NEVER turn on fog of war. The AI will constantly be at an advantage due to instantly reacting to any position being shown. This especially hurts with stationary AT guns and mortars. You'll just see your squads getting deleted from the fog of war while the AI rush you with it's unlimited infantry providing vision for those things.

- Tanks. This is all you need and all you'll ever need, full stop. Makes everything else pointless (aside from stationary AT guns)

- Pathfinding and Cover System. It's a weirdly sometimes good with the cover system and other times it's absolutely ♥♥♥♥ and your troops NEVER take cover. You'll tell them to but it's more of a suggestion than a direct command. I'm fine with move fire but as long as they move to the area in which I told them to go, which they usually don't unless I tell them to double time it to that location (ignore combat, and use sprint). The cover system is inconsistent and would've really benefited with a command just like "Attack Move" but more of a "Move and Enter Cover". You're troops will never actively seek cover and the issue with this is the game is VERY micro intensive (it's fairly macro intensive as well but not as much as micro). Sometimes the pathfinding will take you down the dumbest ways and it's very reliable. It's better to do short distance movements than long distance.

- Tech Tree. It's bad. Like really bad. I'd say that all infantry should never be over 3 tech points. EVER. I'm fine with the progression but some of it doesn't make sense. When you unlock Engineers, you have to unlock the Flamethrower, AT mines, and AP mines separately but they are FREE? Developer. Just unlock everything for the player at once when it's available or just GROUP it all into one pack. If the next one is free, automatically unlock it. Once again, the only tree you should essentially ever go down is tanks. Everything else in my eyes isn't worth it when it comes to time to kill and survivability.

Alright, so there are the cons and really that's what I like focusing on because this is exactly what you're going to be battling with this whole game. There are quite a few pros to this game and I overall really do think the game is worth it if you really enjoy a somewhat sim-like RTS. A couple of the pros are:

- Graphics. The game is really pretty (although grass and bushes usually get in my way when Direct Controlling) and it's really nice to take all in. I'm not going to say it's revolutionary but it definitely doesn't have points against it.

- Completely and utter control over everything. Want to swap crew members out of tanks for others? You can. Want to drop a weapon for another? You can. Want to loot other dead troops on the field. You can. Want to direct control all your troops to find the best defensive spots and cheese your way to victory. JUSTDOIT! It's really amazing the amount of control this game gives you. Need an officer to pared up with your machine gunner for accurate longer burst? You can do that.

- Realism. The TTK (time to kill) is really short in this game and for some it's really a pull. I do have issues with certain things in the game (like .50 cal hitting troops for 1/4 damage is really dumb but I can understand balance wise otherwise infantry would literally be 100% useless). Flamethrowers and Molotovs disable tanks if sprayed on the engine forcing the enemy to abandon the tank. Tanks are very oppressive and have to be dealt with, with cunning and precision. I find the game extremely entertaining just because of the fact that I need to think things out before committing.

- MoW niche genre. If you like Men of War or Company of Heroes, this game is nearly a no-brainer in terms of picking it up. You really should.

Even with all the cons I listed, it's definitely worth playing if you can get over the AI getting unlimited reinforcements and you get your small "Bad Company". If they were to fix and actually make the AI smart, it'd be way more pleasurable as they wouldn't have to make up the AI's deficiency with swarms of troops and vehicles. I don't like when limits are placed on me but not the AI, it takes me out of the world and makes me realize that the AI need a handicap in order to "win". It defeats the whole purpose of me conquering the map but still feel like I'm behind because the AI can call in as many tanks as they want along with a linear progression with their tech, meaning they are never behind

Solid

I've really enjoyed this game but the more I play of it the more I realize that it was a half baked idea. Since I'm starting this somewhat negatively, I'm just going to jump immediately into the cons:

Cons:

- City building system in this game is very rudimentary. The growth, production, and essence (mana) are all established with one tile, meaning the first tile you settle on is all you get. You get buildings that enhance or multiply the amount in which you settled on but it's pretty garbage because of the...

- City leveling system. The city leveling system is based on growth and once your city "levels up" you get to choose which type of city you want it to be. You get three, Conclave (tech/mana/spells), Town (growth, which is somewhat of a lie, and Gildar, which is the currency of the game) and Encampment (Production and enhancing trained units with lots of defense upgrades). This system with how it was put together is bad. You can only dedicate your city to being any specific type and can't mix and match. Meaning this game forces you to min-max your towns which kills the variety in which the game should offer for being a somewhat Civ-lite game. You can build on specific resources around your settlements once you've unlocked specific tech which brings me onto how you'll get a majority of your resources...

- Outposts. I'm not sure who made this feature or what they were thinking with outpost but they should literally always be manned. When I say that, I mean it should passively have a defensive forces like your settlements which it doesn't. You're going to be placing so many of these and all it takes is someone to walk on top of it. All the upgrades (I think 9 which usually take a total of 30+ turns to get all) will be immediately be destroyed if it's a monster creep and if it's a player, it'll be immediately taken over. Sure you could station some troops but here is another issue...

- Currency. This is only obtainable and easily kept in check with a LOT of towns for Gildar or having gold mines around. But if you don't spread your civ like a cancer onto this world, you'll start hemorrhaging Gildar bad. Unit upkeep is a little excessive and there is no way to fix this other than having very specific settlements or hope you have gold mines nearby. Worst yet, the shop in this game is unapologetically bad. Want to purchase that Monk Robe for your champion that would normally sell for 38g (if you were selling it to the merchant) and provide just 10 dodge and 2 defense? It's 180g to purchase in the shop. Want to get some really ♥♥♥♥ items to help make your champions better at all? Good luck, you'll never have enough unless you specifically min-max your civ to produce gold, otherwise it's not worth it and you'll just be spending money for essentially no reason. The shop has to be one of the worst things implemented into the game.

Now I'm going to expand into money a little more because the other thing that wraps into it is resources. They are nearly pointless and you get so many of them. I have an absolute ♥♥♥♥ ton of metal but so does everyone else. I can't do anything with it. I can't sell it because there is no 3rd party marketplace, only other Civs you can barter with (which all don't want metal because they have so much). There isn't enough to do with these resources at all, you got a ton of wargs but really don't need a warg army? Too bad, you got tons of wargs now. But keep on breeding the little ♥♥♥♥♥ for no reason other than to use it as an unit mount. Tons of metal? Too bad, you can't forge ♥♥♥♥. You can't trade it. You just horde it like the dirty maniac you are. The whole currency system sucks. Period.

- AI (diplomacy and combat). I'm going to keep this short but I never had an issue with the AI in terms of difficulty. They are dumb and send preset armies after you. It feels they never mix it up. Auto-resolve is way more forgiving in this game than Warhammer series but it's usually better to go into battle and have it auto-battle for you, unless you know that unit you are fighting has huge auto-resolve advantages. Also sometimes your unit literally does nothing when set to auto-battle. They'll just continually pass for no reason. Diplomacy doesn't exist. Everyone will declare war on you no matter what. You could be 100% great with someone, only for them to declare war on you. Treaties are boring, just like everything else with diplomacy.

I think that wraps up my major gripes with the game, now I don't really focus too much on pros because it's boring, cons are more telling of whether or not you'll like the game, but here are a few pros that really do make the game worth playing.

- It's Civ with Might and Magic. I mean, comon, you're wanting to play this game for a reason, it's a rare reason because this is a very niche genre. This alone makes it worth playing.

- Lore and Quest. Every quest you get builds on the worldbuilding of this universe and it provides you with choices on how to tackle them but somewhat uncommon. Events will pop up letting you know another abomination has awoken or is terrorizing the lands and you'll randomly encounter them on the world map. Facing them offers excellent challenge for late to end game when you have some of the best weapons and squads in the game. Beating them offers usually an item that is very much worth the trouble (but sometimes not due to the item sucking which is rare). It's not a masterclass of worldbuilding but it does a good enough job to keep you going.

- Customization. You get to customize a lot when it comes to your champion or units. While I would've liked more traits and honestly, disadvantages or handicap perks, it's nice with what we go. There isn't a TON of customizing but has enough to keep you invested and not think "man, this game is super basic". It's a good middle ground with customizing.

- Huge Variety of Factions. If having a large amount of factions and having slightly different playstyles, you'll enjoy this. Some are spellcasters, some are buffed for having smaller squads, others have huge initiative advantages in battle. It's fun to play with all the different styles.

- Combat. While combat isn't the best and I think they should've made it either more complex or deeper, it does get the job done and feels very satisfactory. Protip: Make an assassin and find something with "maul" on it, have fun destroying literally everything in the game due to you literally berserking foes down with 10+ hits per turn

The game is good and while I don't really concentrate on the pros, it's overall a good to decent game and worth it being around $15-20. It's really a must buy if anyone enjoys Might and Magic and Civ type games. If I had to give it a score, it'd be a


I think anyone can enjoy the game and it has tons of charm, it's just really marred by half-baked ideas and bad AI (also don't play on a HUGE map, the game has issues in late game due to so many things happening)

To sum up this game it's essentially.
"Ah ♥♥♥♥, Artyom, here we go again"

Metro Exodus is a departure from the previous two titles which were way more linear but less sim immersion due to the limited ways you could tackle the obstacles set before you. Most chapters give you free range to do the mission however you please in whatever manner you want (side missions, not story, which funnily enough does become linear). This game feels like it's pushing the limits between a focused narrative versus open world play because if they pushed it anymore open, it wouldn't be Metro anymore so they definitely hit the mark but it feels a little wonky in terms of gameplay and movement (specifically movement). Movement in this game is, in my opinion, jank as f*ck.

Listen, if you really want my thoughts but way more concise and well put together check out Raycevik's video (fairly big YouTuber that analyzes games years after they've been out) as it really nails everything I have to say but in video format and longer. Check out his postmortem review on this Metro: Exodus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyyWjTh5yR8


Pros:

- Immersive and graphically beautiful | Areas were created with purpose and attention to detail
- Gunplay and sound design is top notch
- Tight narrative with a decent story
- Likable crew

Cons:

- Artyom not talking destroys immersion as he is an established character with wants and needs but only talks during loading screens (confirmed they are doing this because of "tradition")
- Movement and physics/gravity is absolute JANK | Running over bumpy terrain sends you flying for stupid reasons
- Animation and stance transitions are near Cyberpunk 2077 levels of bad making combat feel clunky at times
- Game gets worst as it goes on | Volga is the most well thought out zone in the game with many other locations feeling like content was scrapped (this has been confirmed to be true)
- AI is pretty bad | Always hide behind things that offer essentially no cover
- Humanimals are some of the most boring copy paste mobs in the game
- Context popup for stealth knockouts is absolutely trash at times


Even with all the cons, if I had to give it a score it'd easily be a 7/10 with it dropping down to a 6/10 at times.


A very neutral yes, under the condition that you already like post-apocalypse setting or you already played the previous games. Even for an average FPS gamer, the story is decent enough and the game has enough content to play for easily around 20+ hours. Now if you come in expecting it to be a fantastic game. It is not. It's just above average with stunning locales and enjoyable gunplay, and an ok story. I got bored multiple times throughout playthrough and took breaks in order to enjoy this game more often when I did boot it up.

To me at this current time, it feels like a gimmicky Battle Royale. The gunplay feels floaty and the animations are not smooth either due to networking or game engine. There feels like a balancing issue where certain vampires are infinitely better to play over the others. I disagree with so multiple classes for the same clan and would rather pick and choose perks from that specific clan so it can add customizing to the game being more of the players choice. It also helps with certain classes being far superior to others so you can choose exactly what abilites you want to bring in.

The melee feels jank when they can jump 15 feet in the air and when running up walls or jumping and shooting (causes a Matrix like effect where you levitate down to the ground while aiming with a gun in mid air, feels like slo-mo) can be heavily abused. Getting shot interrupting everything you do is quite annoying as you don't gain anything until you finish the full animation. Things like drinking blood, this should not happen. It doesn't make sense as you are currently drinking blood. Crouching has a fast animation so I notice people absolutely abusing it either for tbagging or avoiding headshots. With the animations already being jank due to network or engine limitations, it looks stuttery when looking from another observers perspective.

Not sure if I played against any sus players but a couple come into mind when talking about how much situational awareness and how well they could aim where it was almost unbelievable. I won't say cheating but super sus. So I'm not entirely sure it's just sweats vs. n00bs at the moment or some people using soft aimbot/wallhacks.

If the devs wouldn't just make it a battle royale and made it more special in a way, it could be a way better game. Like a three way clan fight and something with 5 players per team. Make it more tactical and less arcadey (do something with stealth!) But first they need to fix the choppy animations/movement and gunplay as it feels really bland. Not adding shoulder swapping is a 3rd person shooter sin and a pretty unforgivable one. I can only say that huge fans of vampires or TtM are going to continue playing this, those or the people that are looking for an alright battle royale.

I would only recommend for those that are interested in something new to give a shot or fans of World of Darkness. Otherwise I give this a

6/10

If you love space games, then buy this. It's an immediate 5/5.

To summarize, this game you start with nothing and have to build up from there. You can customize your ships essentially however you want. You want Borg Cube? Make Borg Cube. Do you want the Enterprise? Make the Enterprise. Do you want the Millennium Falcon? You get the point. From there you can start either tackling bigger challenges (destroy pirates, sell there stuff, acquire resources at resource depots). What if you feel like your not making enough? Then make small mining ships put some commanders on there and have them do automation (mining, salvaging). Oh so you want a space station? Make one! There is an fairly intuitive trading system and you can make all kinds of factories to refine or create all kinds of things. It's a true sandbox empire creation game, where soon you'll have so many ships you won't know what to do but take over the galaxy.

Oh man, the game is getting kinda boring? Mods. There are tons of them (I had around 30 running at once). You now have essentially a brand new experience. I feel like I don't need to really explain any more. The servers work well and haven't noticed to much desync except when mods get involved which can sometimes cause problems but hey, that's not the games fault, it's the mods and yours.

To wrap this up, it's probably one of the best space sandbox games out there and it only really lacks dynamic missions or story but I understand as it's a procedurally generated galaxy. I really hope this game keeps growing as I love it and I know any one that enjoys space will too!