Recent reviews by Worthy Towel

Premise

I believe it’s important to give some background on experience and expectation.

We all have different needs in terms of ARPG, so I will give some background on my expectations:

Diablo 2 is my favorite ARPG. By far. I’m not saying all the other ones, like Sacred, Titan Quest etc aren’t good, but they are DIFFERENT.

Also, I’d like to say I’m still early in the game and can’t speak about endgame content

The PROS

And PoE2 is by far the one closest to Diablo2. But closest in terms of what?

- first of all this game is hard. Point. Even if you have good loot, if you don’t pay attention, you die.
- D2 progression was tightly linked to build and loot. PoE2 does the same but cranks it up to eleven. Is this good? Is this bad? Up to you to judge.
- monsters: like in D2, this is a very important one. All monsters are visually different, and their kits is extremely different. There isn’t such thing as wave of trash mobs you mindlessly kill. No. You need to know which are the dangerous mobs, which ones aren’t. And how to react to them.
- Elite monsters RNG: this is also a point I loved so much in D2. Elite skills are purely RNG, and yes, you can get a combination of absolutely OP skills that will make you alt-f4 if caught off guard.
- no loot showers. I hated it Torchlight. D2 had perfect drop rates. PoE2 is closer to it, but I still believe, despite recent patch, that they are still a bit too low.
- campaign is part of the experience. I hated the fact that in D3 and D4 (and Last Epoch) the campaign is just a filler before the endgame activities. No, as of level 1, the game is challenging and interesting. Campaign is integral part of the progression and enjoyment of the game.

Now about the BAD or MEH

- as just mentioned drop rates still too low imho
- crafting isn’t fun… That’s it… It just isn’t. Last Epoch crafting is 10000 better, but wouldn’t work in this game economy. But then again Diablo 2 Median XL was also top notch and I wished PoE2 was closer to it than the pure RNGing of the crafting system.
- hardcore is too hard. You can call me normie, casual, retarded. But HC is just impossible unless you have perfect understanding of the game, know the moveset of every single boss and mob… But hey “this is good!”. Yes it is. But remember when I said this game is even more than D2 a gear and build check? Well. Unless you farm and grind like a bot, HC is impossible even before the end of the Normal difficulty. A LOT before… You can’t Progress naturally and organically in HC. D2 was top notch in this regard: “normal difficulty? Perfect understanding of the game and knowledge of mobs was enough to finish first difficulty, all 5 acts. You needed to start grinding only as of Nightmare. THAT is good. PoE2, as from Normal difficulty, Act 2, you’re required to have top equipment. If not. You can either farm, either go to the Market. This is a bit of a miss in my opinion.
- to solve this. I think higher drop rates in HC SSF would make sense. Without it, you’ll farm, and farm, and farm. Ok later in the game. But as of the first difficulty.
- Market system… If you basically force people who don’t want to farm like bots to go via the Auction house, at least implement a decent one… I don’t understand why the Market is so half-assed and bad. Why not making the D3 AH that was at least perfectly implemented?
- and final point. There isn’t enough diversity at the moment in terms of build. If you want to have a chance, your build needs to be meta, which limits quite a lot the fun into trying different styles. And before you come and say “oh but look at those streamers ripping with non meta builds”, here’s my take: yes you can fiddle with non meta builds only if you have literally thousands and thousands of hours in the game, and have farmed for eternity in order to have the perfect loot that makes the non meta builds actually work.

Conclusion

And in all honesty, that’s a bit about it.

Most solid ARPG since Diablo 2 Median XL. The gameplay is absolutely stellar.

It really just needs better loot, specially in Hardcore, in order to offset not only the insane grind, but to have the possibility to make non meta builds while remaining up to the task. At the moment I still feel the game isn’t providing with enough tools to the players to actually have fun without grinding to death. And all design decisions (RNG crafting, low loot, extreme difficulty) are gearing the game too much toward the need to grind and rely on RNG gods.

Very good game. Strategy and thinking deeper than what it looks like.

Lot of different troops, with a lot of ways to upgrade them to adapt to the course of the battle and outsmart your opponent. No match is the same.

There isn’t much to not recommend. Cheap price. Stable servers. No PTW mechanics. No RNG. You win when you outsmart, you lose when you’ve been outsmarted.

Granted, I just started. So at my rank there is no real meta unlocked. I can’t say if there is a definitive meta. But I think it’s safe to assume that if there is one, it only affects top players.

Pretty good game -- mix between Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing

- Stardew Valley:
-- make your farm
-- sense of making grow the community you're part of
-- Several NPC with their schedules, preferences, and story
-- Marriage with NPC
-- Calendar, fatigue, crops, animals farming, dungeon crawling mines, crafting etc... are very similar
-- the content isn't as huge as Stardew Valley obviously, but there's more than enough to do

- Animal crossing
-- fishing and bug catching
-- museum for the catches
-- house customization

I only played 10h so I'm not that far in the game. But the concept is very good, and it's impressively complete for an EA. Hope they will keep adding content

Sony changes the rule of the games after the game is released screwing customers that already purchased the game and have no way to get a reimbursement.

Screw this. Sony Bad

Game’s good. Not only they brought Paragon, but on top of this it’s even better, with items (greater ability to react to enemy team and the match) and muuuuuch better balance.

As any MoBa it’s difficult, and it lacks tutorial, but it’s definitely worth the time investment.

No reason to not install!

good

very satisfying! Looking forward to git gud, and for the announced additional content

Challenging and addictive. Love it

Certainly the best WW2 simulation MP game done up to now.

The core differentiator with other WW2 games (DoD, Red Orchestraà is that HLL is a squad based game, with a commander that issues orders to the squad leaders, that then communicate with their own squad on what they need to do.

Teamplay and communication are core to the game, so please get a mike. If you don't, your don't communicate clearly enough with your team.

Every single squad member is extremely important on providing information to their team. Where did they see the enemies, in which building, bush or plain, how many enemies there are, where are they running to, from where did (s)he get shot. etc.

Not only communication is important within a squad, but also with the entire army. You can voice chat with localised voice chat. As such you can speak with your other army members, and provide for example information to tanks that have less visibility.

The commander also spends supply points to spawn tanks, occupied by a tank leader and 2 other teammates, issue bombing runs or recon planes.

Within a squad, you can pick up the officer, the fusilier, the assault with smoke grenades, automatic rifleman, machine gun, support (to provide supplies and ammos to the team), anti tank with panzerfaust and bazookas, the engineer to put mines and satchels, medic to revive fallen teammates. Every single squad member is extremely important as it fills a dedicated crucial role.


Now, about additional mechanics: spawn points are set by the officers. And also, objectives in a map change from a playthrough to another. And the maps are BIG. This allows for any single game to be a completely different experience. Add to that different modes.

Squad members can also build fences, anti tank guns.

With now UK on the roadmap, deser map on the roadmap, night missions on the roadmap, this game is gonna be huge. It already is.

Definitely absolutely wonderful.

Oh, and time to kill is generally 1 bullet (I said it's a simulation).

Unless you're a whale, or can spend 5h per day grinding over and over, don't buy this game for MyClub (online play). Matchmaking is absolutely horrible.

You're a Rookie (less than 10 ranked matches), you get put in front of whales (which I suppose they are because despite my horrible team of paraplegic monkeys missing most of what they do, they had difficulty beating me) with a team made of Ronaldos, Nedveds, Messi, Mbappé, Puyol, Ronaldinho, not missing anything. Long pass forward, control, shoot, goal. Nice

What's the point? Grinding over and over and over against the COM (who sucks by the way) before having a SOMEWHAT decent team with more than 1 formation? or...

Oh yeah... Purchase Myclub coins....

Anyway... FIFA is the same crap, so you can chose between plague and cholera. Gameplay wise, it's really above FIFA in my opinion (which is way too arcadey), so I guess it's a recommend...

But make no mistake, EA and Konami --> same piece of work