Objective interpretation, hardware report, and total game progress

V Rising is an isometric base building action game. The game was ran on an Intel 13900k/Nvidia 4090. No system crashes occurred and zero crashes to desktop noted. One playthrough was completed at 4k resolution, max graphical settings, and steam achievement perfection was attained.


Subjective interpretation

• Introduction
  
  V Rising was a humbling experience for me. I ate the floor around 200+ times on brutal difficulty. It was fun overall, but it did drag on for a substantial amount of time. There's a massive amount of mechanics within this game to learn, and combat is something to be mastered as well. I've never played anything like this before with the game forgoing the RPG component, replacing it with base building. I like the mix mashing of genre though and overall I enjoyed my time with this game, but it was just a decent experience. Some of the aspects of this game were strong, but it has some disappointing parts as well, therefore let me explain the strengths and weaknesses of this title.
  
  
• Software Stability
  
  Perfect software Stability. No bugs or crashes, and FPS was at a stable 144 throughout all my play time.
  
  
• Graphics
  
  I found this game to be rather ugly in regards to visual appeal. Lack of detail in textures, model shape, animations, particle effects, lighting, all of these things and more lacked any luster. This was a missed opportunity, because you have many aesthetic options when build your castles. However, I felt no incentive to really build a castle that fleshed out my creativity. The game for me was lacking in graphical appeal, thus I did not wish to invest any time into creating an awesome looking castle. If the graphics were better this part of the game would be amazing as the base building aspect would be an awesome exploration into a visual art form that can be formed through the players creativity, and one that you can share with other people because this is a multiplayer game. For the action part of this game the graphics do their job, but don't expect to be amazed by anything you come across.
  
  
  
• Audio
  
  The music of this game was by far the weakest part of my experience. I'm a merciless vampiric killing machine, but while I slaughtered and drank the blood of the innocent the music that was playing could be featured in an episode of Care Bears. Seriously, the music did not match the setting and feel of this game at all. You play as an evil antagonist in this game, and the music should reflect that. Where's my grungy industrial music? You know something that gets me into the mood for slaughtering an entire town of human blood sacks. I should feel like a badass when I toss that spell at that towns person begging for his life, but some peaceful violin music is playing, which spoils the moment. Voice acting was limited in the game, and repetitive, but voice lines also served as audio cues for certain moves during boss fights. Certain boss fights have a nice track playing, but its the same type of music you would find in a game that in which you're playing as a evil slaying protagonist. I feel that the audio of this game needs a rework.
  
  
• Gameplay
  
  V Rising was very entertaining to play. The gameplay was awesome to say the least, and on the brutal difficulty the player must put quite a bit of thought into the mechanics of the particular boss fight they are attempting. Things like should you fore go offensive capabilities to maximize defense or a good mix of balance, or just straight up maximum damage. You can even switch out abilities mid fight to change it up if the boss has phases. You can cycle between weapons for any given moment as well. The skill cap for this game was very high, and I'm certain many people feel satisfied mastering this game, as it is quite difficult. Honestly, if one of the supporting elements of this game was good, I could see this being an easy 10/10 game, alas all that was exceptional within this title was the gameplay.
  
  
  
  
• Narrative
  
  I don't even need to add spoiler brackets to the narrative part of my interpretation, as this games story is very limited. Just a vague Dracula knock off with all the fantasy elements. There's very little lore within the game, and the only thing I encountered was a brief written lore explanation for the boss in the tracking feature. It's a very weak part of the game, but I don't think players care much about this underdeveloped feature. It would have been nice if some more attention was shown to the story, but it does not spoil the game like the lackluster graphics or the ill fitting music.
  
  
• Conclusion and Purchase recommendation
  
  The 35 price tag for this game is reasonable, thus don't feel the need to wait for a sale to buy it if you really want to give it a try. I give the game a
  
  7/10.
  
  I really think this game could have been a 10/10, but the supporting parts of the game were very weak. Embrace the night and drink the blood of the innocent! Only mute the in game music, and put on something that fits your actions more appropriately. Enjoy!

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☑ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☑ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☐ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☑ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☑ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☑ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☑ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☑ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☑ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ 7 / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☑ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10

Objective interpretation, hardware report, and total game progress

Senua's Saga: Hellblade II is a linear 3rd person adventure game. The game was ran on an Intel 13900k/Nvidia 4090. No system crashes occurred and zero crashes to desktop noted. One playthrough was completed at 4k resolution, max graphical settings, DLSS enabled, and steam achievement perfection was attained.


Subjective interpretation

• Introduction
  
  I've never had my visual cortex overload until I played Seua's Saga: Hellblade II. I can thank Nvidia for this as the implementation of DLSS in this game is fantastic. On average I got a 200% FPS increase, which is massive, as my frames rate ran without upscaling at 30-50, but with DLSS enabled I ran at 100-150. I was not ready for this increase in visual data, and as a result my brain needed a break after two hours of gameplay. However, this was not the only thing amiss in my body as I played this game. As I reached the half way mark of this title I could feel my heart being torn asunder by the sheer amount of disappointment that was being created by this long awaited squeal. Let me share with the reader as to why this disappointment was generated with an explorative dive into the aspects of this game.
  
  
• Software Stability
  
  This game ran extremely well with only two visual blemish bugs being observed. These bugs were inconsequential in regards to detrimental impact, thus this game had nearly perfect Stability.
  
  
• Graphics
  
  The game was beautiful to say the least, and as I touch upon in the introduction there is a magnificent DLSS 3.5 implementation, ergo this game would be an excellent test for a 40 series Nvidia GPU. I was able to play this game at a stable high FPS with out any detriment to graphical quality. This was a first for me in my gaming experience, as DLSS generally reduces quality, but not for this title. This brought to mind if this is the future for games. Massive FPS increases from software, and the associated hardware. Although, I enjoyed this enhanced visual fidelity I did not like everything I was seeing. The sheer amount of detail on environmental textures of this game was astounding, but the particle effect quality was inconsistent with fire looking amazing in one part of the game while looking atrocious in other parts. There is also no ray tracing in this game. As a result, this game looks inferior in regards to the lighting to Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. Honestly, any lighting in this game feels disingenuous compared to the first game in the series. There was no cool rays of light emanating from your sword or mirror like in the first game. Of course this game is graphically superior in other aspects, but I would sacrifice extreme texture detail/animation quality for ray tracing. I felt that there was more shock in awe graphically in the first game.
  
  
• Audio
  
  When I played the first game I got pumped at multiple moments in the game when certain tracks started playing. My favorite was "David Garcia - Gramr" as this was the song that played when you got your awesome ray traced sword named Gramr. Imagine that a perfect track for a perfect sword in a game called HELLBLADE! I digress though and I just want to say that the music in Hellblade II is decent, but lacks the impact of the first game. It's ambient music that fits the setting that its. Also, I didn't get pumped for the action music, but the voice acting is good, and that's a nice plus. The magic is absent from the OST in this title as is any sort of awesome magical Hellblade :(.
  
  
• Gameplay
  
  The gameplay of this title is more simplistic compared to the first game. There is no charge attack or shield mechanics to overcome. In fact the bosses of the game play just like the regular combat encounters, while in the first game the bosses were distinctive encounters. There's less puzzles as well, and these are extremely easy compared to the first game. This game is also somehow more linear then the first, and if you have claustrophobia I don't recommend this game to you as you will feel very confined to a single path. I was very disappointed in these changes, as gameplay in Hellblade 1 was already super simple.
  
  
• Narrative
  
  Nothing matters in this game from the first game, yet you get a recap of what happens in the first game, but they also don't reveal that all of these supernatural events from the first game were the machinations of a psychotic mind. They present them as real. The story from the first game was amazing, yet they threw it under the bus for some stupid generic supernatural reality integrated adventure. The distinctive element of being trapped in a psychotic state is absolutely discarded in this game. What you get instead is a quest to free the land from supernatural giants. This doesn't make any sense though because the supernatural elements from the first game were a delusion, yet in the second game all this Norse mythology stuff is real. Very inconsistent story telling, and this switch is extremely detrimental to the quality of the narrative in my opinion. This is by far the worst aspect of this game.
  
  
• Conclusion and Purchase recommendation
  
  I'm very salty that Hellblade II didn't have an awesome magical sword in it. You would think it would, but it doesn't. I really hope that visual fidelity is not detracting focus from the other aspects of the game. There's not much point in playing a game running at 120+ FPS if the game is mediocre in quality. I hope this is not what the future entails.
  
  
  6/10 Score
  
  I do not recommend buying this game at its current price of 50$. I would only recommend buying it at full price if you really want to see DLSS 3.5 in action. My take is that the vast majority of people will not enjoy their experience for the price point. Maybe if the game was 95% off I could recommend it, but that won't happen for a couple years.

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☑ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☐ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☑ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☐ Workable
☑ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

---{ Difficulty }---
☑ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☑ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☑ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☑ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☑ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ 6 / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☑ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10