Recent reviews by Xeladon

The game seems to be in an extremely rough state currently from what I can tell, for example there's a lack of animations for flashing your headlights and the performance in general is pretty terrible if you try to get the game to not look like it released in 2013. Using downscaling or similar crutches is a must for the Higher settings. Otherwise the game ran natively in 2k on medium settings at ~70 fps with a 2060 for me.
Now I'm not arguing that this is bad, the game looking and performing on all Medium settings as it did for me is something you would expect, given how it looks at that point. It's just amazing to read from all the people that are running the game on a 4070 or higher and can't even get their moneys worth nowadays on High or Ultra settings due to UE5 being a mess and the game is lacking optimization at those settings.

According to feedback I've been reading in the many Steam discussions, the game also lacks a lot of features that the old titles had, but this might be subject to change in the future so there is a possibility that the game will improve a lot within the next months until release.


The reason I can't recommend it is that currently there is a game breaking sound issue where the engine noise only plays in certain camera views, but doesn't work at all in the regular 3rd person view for me.
Other users have reported the same issue already and it only seems to affect a minority of players rn. But that means the game is unplayable for me currently and I'll have to wait for the developers to fix this issue.
Update: According to the latest patch notes they seem to have finally tackled that bug and it should be fixed, however I cannot confirm this currently as I had refunded the game and will probably not get it until the EA is over.

Last thing I wanted to add, in the few attempts at playing this game I managed to get my G923 with the H-Shifter to work, all I had to do was set it up in the options.

So I played for the most part in Early Access and when the devs dropped their first announcement that the 1.0 Version is almost ready and coming soon I was worried that they're rushing things. I've a good grasp on the game by now and I can tell from my experience that the before/after effect when you compare the two builds is just not there.

While the game can deliver a fun experience for many hours on end you will eventually get to the point where you realize just how limited some of the games features are, most importantly its fundamental gameplay loop. In my ~40 hours of playing I've never made it past social credit level 6 in any of my generated cities, the main reason for that is... there is almost no incentive to ever continue past this point. Of course moving to the meadows is only there to be a literal (in universe) carrot on a stick and the fun stems from solving cases, but if you reach that point in the game you'll realize just how shallow this sandbox gets.
Is that reason enough to not recommend getting the game? I'd say yes if you consider that the initial immersive experience will wear off pretty quickly once you realize just how on-rails everything is. I don't even need to get into how you can brute force solve murders because you will slowly find out for yourself how obvious some of the crime scenes become once you understand some of the fundamental parts of the game.
It becomes less of a murder mystery and more of a "Oh I guess I got there too fast and caught the murderer red handed, again. If only my psychic Detective Powers didn't immediately tell me that there was a disturbance in the force and I should visit this exact location quickly if I want to get this case solved before dinners ready." This was my experience playing the full release and I dropped the game completely after solving 3 cases where the murderer was standing over the body with police officers in the room with them, wondering whodunit. The fact that spouses never seem to be too bothered by watching their partner get murdered also becomes less and less funny each time it happens and the fact that they will fade from existence after the murder has been solved doesn't help with this experience. I once ran into the issue of never being able to solve some cases because the partner of a victim got involved in multiple quests, but were now homeless since they can never go back to their apartment after being part of a murder so they just roam the streets and become as unresponsive as every other NPC.

Don't get me wrong though, this is a fun game, you can really have a grand time following every clue there is to a murder even it it all leads to dead ends, it only makes it more rewarding if a case actually takes you 2 days irl to actually solve if you're on the wrong track. But that really only happens during your initial experience because like I mentioned, there just isn't too much to the game that will have you wanting more once you've clocked in a good amount of hours because you start feeling like you're the only sentient being in the matrix (metaphorically speaking obviously). There is a general lack of interaction with citizens or cops and this limitation really bites the game in the ass when you start to get that feeling of all cases play out the same way. Was it a co-worker or a random guy in the victims address book this time? I can't wait for the grand reveal!

"So what was your motivation for writing these phrases in the victims blood on the wall you psycho? Nothing in particular? You're really just the secretary in this office who has never interacted with the victim before and there's no hard evidence that would make you killing them in the way you did make sense at all? Not even your confession? I guess that makes sense in this part of town. Book 'em boys in blue who I never see actually arresting the victim, I'll just drop this call and oh ♥♥♥♥ you're coming after me now because there is literally no option to have the police arrest a murderer?? Guess I gotta jump out of the window to escape you with no real consequences, later suckers! I'm grabbing my meager reward for solving this case at city hall real quick and then I'm off to throw food in someones face without any consequences." Fun times.

What I'm alluding to is this overarching lack of feeling like your actions matter at all to the world. The random generation is just too generic and predictable at points and the fact that you can go on a rampage in a hotel with a huge bounty on your head, that'd make anyone move to the Echelon apartments immediately if the got you, but then you step out that front door and suddenly all is forgiven is just too stupid and I can't believe that this is what the final version "was always meant to be like". I'm just extremely disappointed that this is what the peak this game will ever reach looks like seeing as there are no substantial updates planned and there is zero plans to make the game actually run good in the future. It performs largely the same as it did in EA, the only noticeable difference for me was that NPC could get softlocked right after city generation with their paths broken and stuck in place forever. That didn't happen during EA for me as much as it did in 1.0.

There's no shame in admitting that you bit off more than you could chew with this project devs, or even if there were money troubles forcing your hand into releasing the project as is, but the way you keep up this façade of being satisfied with things as they are just feels shameless and really nobody believes it at this point - even if there are die hard fans who go to great lengths to defend you publicly.

I've enjoyed my short time playing Pilgrim but the game still has a long way to go before it can be considered a fully fledged game. As of writing this the game is still in Early Access so I'm sure the devs are working hard on improving and finishing the game so I can only speak for the experience it currently delivers.

Let me start off with the things I liked first and then I get into a few things that I think need some major improvement:

• The Atmosphere is great! The general aesthetic and sound are major contributing factors why I wanted to check out the game before it released.
  
• If you like lovecraftian-esque horror this is definitely something to check out whether you play it solo or with friends. It can get ridiciously intense if you play it alone for the first time and don't know what you're getting yourself into.
  
• The game has a great mechanic that allows for the quick revival of dead teammates, improving the generally more boring parts of these lethal-like games where if you die early on you have to wait a long time until you get to play again, but that doesn't mean you can just run into danger without a care since you need resourcers to revive someone.
  
• There are Dungeons/Areas in the Overworld that you can explore which keeps things fresh if your wagon is directly next to a dangerous area and you have to be careful not to pull monsters too close.
  
• There is Store Credit so even if you should happen to not find anything of value you can still buy things from the merchant, for example, the resources necessary to revive someone - but you'll need to pay off your debt the next time you visit one.
  
• The looming danger of running out of fuel at a crucial moment and then having to push your cart is a great mechanic (I don't want to spoil the surprise)
  
• The monsters aren't just copycats of other designs but all have a unique spin on them (even though some are obviously inspired by other games of its kind)
  
• Having to manage your light, as it's your most valuable resource, is a fun mechanic and I like the idea of being able to "unlock checkpoints" in a dungeon with your torch which makes it easier to navigate the almost labyrinth like layouts.

Now here are things I think need (major Improvement if the game should fully release soon:

• This is a major spoiler so if you don't know anything about the game yet skip this one if you don't want to spoil the fun : The giant that's chasing you can be blocked off completely right at the start of your run, after you visited the first two locations by closing the gate on it. I managed to pull it off with my friends first try and I wasn't sure if it was intended to be either a lot harder or if there's supposed to be a surprise later on but nothing happened after 50 miles. It takes all of the fun out of it once you realize it and makes the overworld a lot less threatening. I'm sure this isn't how it's intended to be like but this needs to change before release.
  
• The voice chat has major issues with it's volume levels sometimes people are way too quiet and at other times it's so loud the audio clips.
  
• Lobbies can crash for no reason and end your run abruptly or kick out players who can then rejoin but will lose all items they're holding.
  
• Some items are only there to be funny or annoying which is fine but it's not conveyed in any way if they actually do anything.
  
• There's no point in buying a spear that sticks to the monster after you throw it if it only deals 1 damage. I'm not sure how many hits some of the monsters can take but weapons seem kind of useless or overpriced for what they offer.
  
• The merchants should be spread out more so the game doesn't get too easy.
  
• You are completely safe from all enemies if you stand towards the front of the cart, there's no point in buying new doors once they break.
  
• Some sound effects play way too loud and often come from no particular direction at all while most of the audio is supposed to be direction/proximity based.
  
• Enemies spawn infrequently and there's a lack in variety of the spawns, at times you can explore a whole dungeon without seeing a single one.

These are some of the major things I noticed while playing the game with friends, if the game improves before release this can be a great lethal-like game with a really unique atmosphere. Right now you can't expect it to be exciting for very long, we ended our run at 55 miles because by that point we've seen everything and it got rather stale by then. Definitely a game to check out if you can accept it's rough state but don't expect too much from it.

Who would've thought that a game based on a tiktok meme that was funny for a week doesn't have a whole lot going for it?

I wasn't expecting much at all and still was heavily underwhelmed by what it is in the end. The art and soundtrack are the only two good things that this game has going for it, but that doesn't really help the fact that this game is basically a walking simulator that is over after ~40 minutes or less- maybe you'll get a little more playtime out of it if you try selecting a different mode (I chose greed but then never bothered with the rest).

All you do in every level is: Walk towards the two marked locations on the minimap, read dialogue that doesn't make sense in the context of the game (two npcs have dialogue that hints that you were intended to return to them at later stages but the dialogue is just meant to be nonsensical filler) then look in the general direction of where the gnome is (the eyes on the right side of the interface light up if you look at the correct area) then walk there - which btw always seems to be as far away from you as possible, hit random objects until you find the gnome like its prop hunt, chase it with a time wasting stamina/dodge roll mechanic and then do a pretty easy quick time event.
That's literally the entire game in a long ass sentence.

There is no challenge besides being able to mess up the quick time event if you accidentally catch a gnome in the 2nd level while standing in a swamp. You'll slowly die while you're locked in the animation without being able to cancel it or move around during it. There's no enemies or threat whatsoever, you just play the same prop hunt-esque thing 4 times over and then you're done with the game, which honestly doesn't quite justify the price tag if it weren't for the artists who made all the assets and the sounds but that really isn't enough for me.
I honestly expected a bit more from it by it's presentation, it really feels like whoever made this just gave up halfway through the design process because they got bored of the idea and said it's good enough for a silly meme game. 5€ isn't asking very much but I own plenty of games that can still bring hours of joy and cost even less.

I wouldn't have asked for a refund if the last level didn't take such heavy inspiration from the Garten of BanBan games, where the devs always add long ass corridors for no reason (or stamina mechanics) other than to waste your time, with the goal being that you maybe can't refund the game afterwards. There's also a obscure reference to someone at the end of the corridor which wasn't funny since I have no idea who it's supposed to be and don't really care to find out either.

This port keeps crashing for various reasons for example in cut scenes with frame generation enabled (you cannot get past the first sequence with the horse on the beach), loading a save file from the main menu, tabbing out of the game and a lot of the times it's just random but it has crashed in my 3 hours of playing 7 times so far.

The optimization is not terrible - if you have the latest generation of hardware, on my older rig with a 2060 @2k resolution it's impossible to get the game above 60 fps unless you turn everything to their lowest setting/off and enable variable resolution scaling.
I understand that there are zero incentives for developers to give a ♥♥♥♥ about people on less powerful hardware anymore but it still would've been nice to see some improvement in that regard for a PS4 title, but since those standards are at rock bottom aka 30fps what do you expect.

Also Kurosawa Mode still has that awful audio filter that makes everyone peak their mics when they speak a little too loud which is just bad, way to honor a legendary film director by adding an awful sounding (but not terribly looking) filter effect and calling it Kurosawa Mode. Would've been nice if they paid any attention to player feedback after the game has been out for almost 4 years.

Super Earth is still being divided by capitalist machines.
Their propaganda fooled everyone but their words cannot be trusted, countries keep being added to their list that are no longer allowed to purchase or play the game at all.

Also the game still runs like ♥♥♥♥, has tons of bugs that haven't been fixed since launch and it's still missing content like transport vehicles which makes moving around the map very tedious.

But the current focus is on squeezing the Playerbase by adding as many battle passes as they can before their last player has ♥♥♥♥♥♥ off and Sony sees no point in keeping this live service alive.

Let me just start by saying that I had such a blast playing this game that I beat it in two consecutive sessions 100% as I was so hooked by the Story and it's Characters. I love the stylish visuals (which you can even swap out for more variety or visibility), the Music that accompanies the Death Flashbacks and the general atmosphere that is built by the Story and the brief Voice Acting sequences before the Death is revealed. I just love how the Obra Dinn really feels like it was lived in through the immersive way that it is equipped with almost everything a real ship would have of that time and even though when you arrive it is entirely devoid of life, it comes to live again with the way the Story plays out. I was thrilled once I had figured out how more and more of the story is being revealed and how the detective mechanic helps you figure out if you are on the right track.

What I didn't like as much was that there is a repetitiveness when it comes to finding the next place where the death happened, it's a bit sluggish and not really exciting as you already know most of the time were you need to go and just have to wait for the 'mist' to reveal it to you, but other than that, there are very little things that I could mention that I didn't like about the game.
It's running really stable, has very short load times and pretty much gives you all the tools you need in order to figure out where you're at in the story without holding your hand too much. If you're ever stuck I can only give you the tip to really pay close attention to your surroundings, all the hints are there even if it's not obvious to you yet, but as the game will tell you, once the faces are unblurred you've already been shown everything that you need to figure out their fate - also there is some leeway with the cause of death which can even lead to minor changes in the ending which I found really cool. Lastly there are really good spoiler-free guides that can help you figure out things on your own if you ever happen to be completely stuck.

I can wholeheartedly recommend the game to anyone that likes sailing stories with a mythical twist but a realistic atmosphere, detective gameplay and a satisfying mechanic that encourages you to figure out all of the Fates of these Souls who met a terrible fate at sea.

Buggy Maps, Broken Pathfinding, Faction/Game Mechanics that make the Game not Fun (and are poorly implemented or make little sense) and poor optimization confirm to me that CA and SEGA do not care what product they deliver as long as it generates enough revenue for them. Played it during the Free Weekend in MP and I cannot recommend this Game for the asking Price, what you get is an unpolished, buggy game where you're asked to hand over almost 4€ extra to get an uncensored game (or a little less if you think you've outsmarted their stupid scheme of re-releasing the same game 3 times over with the same DLC each time) and even more if you want to have more than the few factions the game offers you for the full price (there's DLC for some of the DLC), making this a pricey product that clearly has the least polish out of the three and is visually lacking.

Of course if you do not care about any of this and just want your next Warhammer/Total War game then go ahead and buy this, I just cannot relate to anyone that would consider spending money on a product that clearly under delivers in every regard and then still think what they bought wasn't made with a lot of spite for their customers.
Having played Shogun 2 as my main TW game with a couple hundred hours on it, it really amazes me just how much more visually appealing a game from 12 years ago can be that was made by the "same" developer (and runs much smoother too with lots of Graphic Options).

I cannot recommend purchasing the game even for it's low price. i decided to give it a shot since even the simplest game can provide a decent amount of fun, however there really isn't much to it that could provide entertainment for more than a couple of minutes at a time.

I'll keep my feedback short and will try to briefly describe the issues that make me unable to recommend the game:
>For some reason when you start the game, Steam VR launches with it, this isn't a big deal but there's no reason why this should happen.
>There is no settings menu, the game starts at max volume, there are no graphic settings.
>Despite the low rez/polycount graphics and barren visuals the games frame rate is pretty low, I haven't measured it but it seems to either be locked to 30 FPS or never really reaches a stable point, making timed actions like attacking awkward to execute. The visuals could be appealing, however there are minor graphic issues such as rooftops being see-through at their edges.
>GAMEPLAY: Whenever you jump on or off a rooftop the camera clips; while enemy attacks are well telegraphed (giving you a good idea when they can hit you) yours are not and you have to figure it out or just spam the button; enemies lack in variety (though I maybe haven't seen everything there is in the game); there are power ups you can buy but they are expensive to get in the beginning and they don't seem very exciting additions gameplay wise and as far as I can tell there isn't a mechanic that could make the game more challenging as it goes on like the screen moving faster.

I've asked for a refund after not enjoying the experience, I'm not that stingy when it comes to Indie games that cost less than 10€ but this hasn't been enjoyable after just 3 minutes. I really think the developer could've improved a lot of things like improving the stability and adding some simple mechanics that prevent the game from becoming stale too fast; also making the visuals just a little more appealing by fixing some of the texture issues would've been nice, though I'd say that this was the main draw why I bought the game as even these simple graphics are kind of pretty to me.

DISCLAIMER: Watch Crowbcats Video on this Game called "overpromise, sell, underdeliver Cyberpunk 2077" which captures the Zeitgeist of being there when it released perfectly. This was the very first game I bought and just had to stop playing and "finish" it after a year by watching other people play it, because it was just so broken, not-fun and un-immersive. The only good part about this game is Night City which for a cyberpunk fan can feel immersive but only if you can distract yourself from the fact you're playing a walking/driving/shooting simulator on repeat. The Gorgeous Cyberpunk Aesthetic and Art that is in this game and gives it it's very unique identity is the only reason I even have this many hours on record, however most of the time I am not actually enjoying the broken gameplay but rather use the Photo Mode, which is the only thing this game got going for it, to make my own fun and immersive scenes within a Cyberpunk world; my deepest gratitude to all the artists and devs involved in making and putting together this game.

tl;dr Before any update to CP2077 should get any praise at all, CDPR needs to show that they honestly want this game to succeed in the future, but they did it real dirty ever since the launch and they confirmed that after the upcoming expansion theymight even pull the plug entirely as it seems to be doing just fine financially in todays market (like Skyrim). I only wrote this because I like to express my feelings towards this game as it has been the most disappointing video game I've had the displeasure of experiencing in my life so far, as I've been one of those fans/fools that had their hopes up for ~10 years after the very first cinematic, until the time when the launch date(s) grew closer and I realized that this will be a dumpster fire of entertainment in the worst way and due to that it will probably be the only High-Budget Cyberpunk Title we might get to experience for another long while.
If you can enjoy the game with all it's flaws and with all that it does not bring to the table, I'm honestly happy for you and I hope you get a good time out of this product. But since I'm a fan of the Cyberpunk genre ever since I was a kid, I expected this to be the biggest and most immersive RPG, as it was advertised for many years. What we got was just another open world that is empty and non-interactive with a story tacked on top and that is literally it.

If the update was worth having any hopes that Cyberpunk might become an actual video game in the future I would be giving my honest thanks and praise to CDPR, but so far all they did was roll out a small number of minor bug fixes and improvements, some of which added content modders already did for them and then maintained their radio silence policy when it came to this product, only breaking it when they had anything to show for their "efforts" to "improve" what the game is lacking and desperately needs. The past two updates have been (by the games very low standards) the biggest updates so far, however they did not fix any of the major problems Cyberpunk 2077 is facing after all this time after it's terrible launch: An immersive, fun experience, that doesn't fall into the traps of modern games that just give you a lot of busy work while you get some cool graphics to look at.

Nothing sucks you out of an experience more than when you play an open world game and when you finally get to explore and enjoy the world, you realize pretty quickly that without the main story (following the laid out path) that there is nothing for you in this pretty cool looking dystopia except for the same repeating patterns of shoot, loot, repetitive dialogue - rinse and repeat until you get off this fun little ride that promised to be so much more, yet failed to deliver pretty much everything that it promised due to being kicked out of the door way too early.
When I first launched this game, drove a little, walked around for some time and realized that you cannot enter pretty much any building that isn't relevant to the story segments I got a deep feeling of disappointment, it was the moment I realized that this is far from a finished product and a pretty boring one too.

If you haven't heard about cyberpunk before the years leading up to it's release, when they really fueled their overhyped marketing campaign with things they knew years in advance they could never finish or deliver on time - but made for good pre-orders, then you will probably have a product you enjoy and can't really understand the saltiness some people seem to have towards this game. If that's you, good, enjoy the product you got, I'm going to assume however that you must not have any point of reference on what a good game actually is or should be as you might be too young (or blissfully ignorant) to have seen the gaming industry deteriorate to what it is today and hopefully with time and experience you will get a sense on why CP2077 was a disastrously bad thing, maybe around the time when CDPR makes their next half-assed attempt at releasing a video game.

The point of this review is to make potential buyers aware of this games misleading advertising as a RPG which it is by all standards of the Genre really not, since your choices do not matter, you are not role playing your own character. As some other Reviewer who was involved in making the OG Pen and Paper Cyberpunk System already said in their review, it makes pretty much all choices meaningless (the story will always be the same except of course for the endings which are all kind of the same, all player choice will be thrown to the wind, except for the V's suicide ending, which is a truly the canon meta-ending in a sense, at least for me). It could've been done so much better if they had just told a good story from V's perspective and not some half-assed attempts at awkward RPG-esque dialogue like Fallout 4 which failed miserably at creating an immersive tale which a silent protagonist will always be better at unless there's some seriously good writing and delivery/pacing. Playing this, I can still only see the boring gameplay which is unsatisfying even in boss fights, the non-interactive world which is way worse in those terms than GTA V but prettier to look at, which only leaves us the story and the dialogues of which some are good, most however show the signs of getting rushed because it just couldn't be done in the amount of time the development team was given by management. Hint: All the junk props/items were supposed to be interact-able.

It is a shallow experience through and through and you should only consider getting this game if you have a RTX 30XX series card since it is still to this day a very unoptimized game and will run poorly without the help of DLSS, unless you are okay with an unstable framerate which won't reach FPS above 40 on max settings and if you turn the graphics down to medium or even low, you get to look at Cyberpunk 2077 PS4 Edition, which nobody wanted and is a major reason why the game is running so poorly across all platforms since they had to make it "work" for the consoles and that turned out to be impossible and the game got pulled from the PS4 Store in the end anyways so hurray.
(btw it's so much cheaper on keysellers, like ~16 bucks, and you should totally buy it from there and not directly support CDPR)