Recent reviews by Sturm Brightblade

How I wish Steam had a "neutral" review score. I just... can't recommend this game. Not at full price. Not even if you are a die-hard EDF fan.

Look, without too many spoilers there is an in-lore/universe reason why we end up replaying a *ton* of EDF 5. Far too much of it. But that's not a good excuse for recycling old content in a full-priced release. I could almost forgive it, if *so much* of this game didn't feel like padding. The denizens of the EDF 6 world have about two brain cells to share. The dialogue is atrocious. The songs are insanely bad. If the developers are going to recycle so much from the previous entry, why mess with the songs? Who thought any of that was a good idea?

That doesn't even get into how bad, at least in my opinion, many of the new enemies feel barebones or like reskins of others. So few are actually enjoyable to fight. Even fewer have interesting mechanics that don't get horrendously unfun the further into the story you get. I just finished mission 123 and holy hell was that horrendous game design. There are so many instances throughout the game where you just wish you could force the game developers into a small room and prevent them from leaving until they can prove they actually playtested their game without cheats. I'm not saying the MK II/III drone missions and the underground hive missions are impossible, just that they're not balanced to any real degree, or even fun to play through. That doesn't even cover how terrible the ally NPC AI or health are. Literal corpses would serve as more effective and helpful meat shields.

Is the gameplay fun? Absolutely, at least when you're not dealing with the above-mentioned missions. Is the co-op fun? Yes, at least when people aren't crashing or desyncs occur. Are the weapons cool? Yes, at least the ones that didn't get removed from certain classes. It's like every positive I have has to come with a caveat. EDF 6 needed more time in the oven. And a better game design team to give it a second pass.

Please try and get this game on a sale. Even if you're a long-time fan. It's not a bad game. I just don't think it's worth $60.

TLDR: I enjoy the game and actively recommend it to the folks I know with the most accurate descriptions I can give. It’s not a game for everyone. Starfield is a brand-new universe with its own unique lore/gameplay methodologies. My best advice is to ignore click-bait/rage-bait YouTubers, avoid the primary subreddit like the plague, and watch some good Let’s Plays (Many A True Nerd and Oxhorn come to mind with their honest thoughts). Xbox Game Pass also has it for free if I recall correctly. Happy gaming, folks!

Full Review:

I’d like to preface this review by stating that I really do not do enough reviews of games that I enjoy. Judging by my review history, I seem to have fallen into a lazy trap of primarily submitting negative reviews regarding games that I either did not enjoy, or ones where I disagreed with certain gameplay mechanics/balance/etc. That is a failing on my part, and I hope to rectify that with this review going forward.

To put it plain and simple for those that are thinking about purchasing Starfield or are unsure what the current discourse might be: I love Starfield. It is hands-down one of my favorite games of this generation. Now, while I do love this game, I am not blind to faults I may have found or what a vocal section of the community might be up in arms about. I will address those near the end of this review but will leave the TLDR above for those that do not wish to waste their time with a length post. Your time is valuable, so feel free to choose whichever option you prefer.

I have found this to be one of the least buggy games of late, and that statement is not exclusive to it being a Bethesda game. It has been one of the most polished games, in my experience (and general luck), that I have played in quite a few years. I can even count the number of bugs encountered on one hand (going by unique counts and not by reoccurrences) and have had the game crash two times in total (both being on an older laptop). The world sucks me in. The starship crafting is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fantastic and wastes my time more than Fallout 4 settlement building could ever hope to do. The lore grips me and has me excited to see more of this universe. The companions have been an absolute treat to work with. Gameplay is exactly what I wanted from this type of genre (I do miss Fallout 4’s junk system, though). Combat feels weighty, and the AI of both humans and creatures has been a ton of fun to engage with. That does not even include the amount of enjoyment I’ve experienced with ship combat. The universe just feels fun, and the game looks beautiful.

The faction storylines have been the exact improvement from Fallout 4 that I wanted. The morally grey story of SysDef and the UC Vanguard stories were right up my ally. There is a small stumble with the Freestar Rangers, however. Mostly due to a rather odd lack of multiple paths towards the end, but I still enjoyed it overall (as well as the lore expansions). The Ryujin storyline was also enjoyable, especially with the final reward that affects NG+. And that does not even go into the other minor faction storylines you can come across.

I’ve heard the gripes several folks have with the main storyline. That there is no sense of urgency. That there is no “Big Bad”. If I wanted that, I’d go play any of the Elder Scrolls or Fallout games. Starfield’s main storyline, as odd as it might be to read, is not in a hurry. Yes, there are high stakes towards the end (and even an unexpected loss), but the universe of Starfield seems to be what the developers wanted us to engage with. The people, the factions, the random hand-crafted stories on far-off planets. The main story will always be there for you. I’ll avoid going into spoilers, but even the main story has a thematic reason as to why the opposing force is not in a rush. And NG+ is not only built into the lore and universe, but has some fun effects on gameplay and dialogue

To those that were shocked that there were so many empty planets (or planets with repeated outposts), why are you surprised? Bethesda was extremely transparent regarding the universe of Starfield and how pockets of civilization would exist. Will that change with the upcoming Shattered Space DLC? Perhaps. But as it stands, I find Starfield to be as realistic to what was presented to us. I won’t defend randomly generated content (outposts), as that is purely a subjective opinion for everyone, but I have received far more in value than what I spent. And I’ve continued to replay the game via NG+ since launch, so take my opinion with the appropriate level of salt.

Regarding my gripes, the easiest one I can get into is that there simply is not an efficient way of exploring for most people. I’m one of the those that enjoy jetpacking around the various worlds. However, I can see why others would desire a vehicle or some other way to travel without having to resort to fast travel or their ship. The second would be that there simply is not enough happening in space at present. Excluding the Crimson Raiders, Spacers, or House Varun (or bounty hunters if you chose a relevant perk), I’d love to see actual combat between UC and Freestar extremists. Even if it was a proxy war via Privateers. Again, the upcoming DLC may address this, but it is a slight issue in my eyes at present. The settlement building system is not as good as Fallout 4 now, mostly due to the difference in game design (Fallout 4 relied heavily on junk). That core loop just doesn’t hook me as much as Starship designing does.

Now I hesitantly approach the subject of the Creation Club. Prepare your best Jester (or similar) awards, but I don’t mind the Creation Club. I do find it odd that Bethesda made the second Tracker’s Alliance quest the paid one rather than the first, due to the sheer difference in content, but that was most likely a misstep during the design phase. Hook people in with a meaty free DLC, then have a paid one following. In my eyes, there’s just too much of a gap in content there. I look forward to how they plan to add to the Tracker’s Alliance in the future (with hopes of more balanced pricing structure). There are also some other fun ones that Bethesda put out, both free and paid, that I enjoy.

With that, let us approach the most controversial take that I have in this whole review: I not only don’t mind, but actively support, mod authors releasing paid mods. Look, I’m just exhausted with the “Free Mods Only” community that exists on Nexus Mods (a great site, honestly) and elsewhere. I’ve seen the arguments that donations and Patreon should be enough, and that mod authors should be happy with the “exposure” they receive. But really? I’m not going to defend or support some of the low tier/effort trash that got spammed out (or mods that were flat out stolen) during the original Steam Workshop paid mods debacle, but really? I 100%, for better or worse, support mod authors working with Bethesda to release their mods for a monetary value if they feel it is worth the effort and the profit cut that Bethesda will take. Not everyone is lucky enough to be noticed by a large studio or make a fantastic full game based on their initial mod (looking at you Forgotten City). If you as a consumer do not want to support a mod author making money off their hard work, then more power to you. It’s your right to disagree with the practice. Just please keep the discourse as civil as you are able.

Welcome to the end of the review. Thank you for reading, whether you agree with my takes or not. Happy gaming!

Edited on March 10th, 2024:

I have officially removed this game from my library for several reasons. First, because of how the community and some of the more vocal developers have behaved in response to a recent patch. I have zero desire to participate in what can only be summarized as a "dumpster fire" (not the game as a whole, to clarify). The heavy-handed nerf that seems to have missed the point entirely of why the railgun was the current meta, and the lack of viable alternatives (read: buffing or at least re-balancing the lackluster stratagems and weapons) on the harder difficulties. Said harder difficulties are necessary to play to receive the higher-rated samples. And also, what exactly is the logic for telling your players to play lower difficulties? Do you not want players experiencing your game? And that is not even going into the nearly required stealth playstyle (that the game in no way has mechanics for outside smoke for automatons on higher difficulties).

For context, the mature and reasonable complaints from community members were pushed to the side by said vocal developers/company discord representatives in favor of berating the completely unacceptable responses from those that spammed aggression and damn-near death threats (thus, starting an unnecessary flame war). Why do I view that as a negative response despite the context? Because it's the job of a community/PR manager, not a developer whose sole reasoning was to troll. IT was unnecessary and unprofessional, and Arrowhead should have had training in place to prevent that behavior. That's business 101 when making a client-facing product. To any future aspiring developers: don't engage with toxic players, especially in such a amateur and childish way.

Secondly, there has now grown a sense of elitism by those who have zero experience or understanding as to why the railgun was the previous meta. Both the official discord (which is the primary way to get your game news, by the way) and the related forums are filled to the brim with an arrogance that I never thought I'd see from people who claim to enjoy such a fun game. Why the developers have chosen not to course-correct such an obvious problem in its infancy is beyond me. The Helldivers 2 community has morphed into the darker aspects of a Fromsoftware game community. And that is *not* a good thing for a game that should be enjoying a renascence of community engagement (e.g., the first couple of weeks post-launch).

Thirdly, there are similar server issues and related glitches despite it being just over a month after the game launched. Again, this game is backed by Sony, and there were zero stress tests or betas. Perhaps the launch was a beta of sorts.


Original review below from February 18th, 2024:


Please do not purchase this game until the developers rectify the current and consistent server issues (max capacity, dropped at the end of a match, no rewards, CTD, black screen on launch, extremely long login queues, etc.). The game is simply unplayable if you are unable to log in. It's online-only, so even solo play unfeasible at present.

Looks, it's a great game. The combat has been fantastic, the enemies are fun to fight (when they aren't *actually* bugged), but none of that is possible if you are unable to log in. I'd highly recommend waiting a month or even a few until the developers solve the issue of the game being popular. I'd also note that there was no beta, no server stress test, and they are backed by Sony. So, there's not a lot of sympathy I can afford for their suffering from success.

I want this game to succeed and not have a community dwindle because people can't play such a fun game. So please, take this negative review as a humble warning, rather than a downright denial of it being fun. Purchase when the servers are stable.

I would heavily advise against picking this up for solo play or light co-op. Even with server edits, there are a host of player-unfriendly design decisions. Servants are useless without mods to speed up their gathering missions. Power levels are absolutely bonkers and can slow the game to a crawl. Building and crafting is fun at first, but you quickly realize that there is a *set* way to progress in this game. And it doesn't improve as you progress. Rather, the slog just gets worse.

The bosses are not fun, they're tedious. They spam abilities out their ass, and higher-level bosses are just combination AoE/stun locks. It's not fun and it never was. I don't know who tuned the bosses, but I'd advise against a career in this if you honestly think it's your best work. Lastly, you will quite quickly learn to hate rifles and lightbringers.

This game is clearly designed and "balanced" (I use that term incredibly loosely due to range builds) around PVP. So, consider yourself fairly warned if you pick this up with PVE in mind. I can't stop you, but I would heavily recommend following some guides on QoL server settings and some mods. At least then it won't sting as much when you inevitably hit the PVE ceiling of this game. Where tedium meets frustrating design.

I honestly can't believe I've come to a point in my life where a Baldur's Gate game gets a thumbs down from me. And yet, here we are. To put it bluntly, this does not feel like a Baldur's Gate or even a Forgotten Realms/WOTC game. It feels and plays like Divinity Original Sin. Not the second one, maybe a (1.5) model at best. I had more fun playing D:OS2 than I did with this game. I wanted to love it. I tried to like it. But Larian's poor choices and lazy design (in my eyes, at least) finally broke me.

Is it a great game? No. A terrible one? Nope. It's just mid for me, and I can't recommend full price for a mid experience.

Larian clearly wanted to make this game their own. I can understand the concept. But reducing the party limit, spell slot/functionality, and even the character design and RPG elements in an RPG game clearly indicated how bad this would go from the get-go. Alignments? Larian has yet to hear of them. Actual race bonuses/detriments? Nope, I can't find much that affects anything. Hell, I re-classed a Dragonborn Barbarian to a Sorcerer for kicks and encountered zero issues with that. The RPG in this game is more about dialogue choices, than character ones.

I'll talk about some positives for levity because there are quite a few. The voice acting is top-notch, even with characters that I 100% loathe (Astarion). The visuals of spells and the like are nice, if sometimes difficult to actually see in a battle. Hits have a pretty nice feel to them, when they actually land. Many of the areas have unique visual themes. Having both race and class-specific dialogue is nice. And the narrator pretty much carries at least (2) points on the overall score of the game for me.

With the good out of the way, I'll now go through a few core issues that affected the overall score in my eyes. The origins for some of the characters are so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ dumb and scream, "First-time DnD Mary/Gary Sue." The kind of character that would cause any DM with a sliver of self-respect to tear that player's character sheet up in sheer disgust. Spoilers for the following: So you're telling me that Gale not only has a magic-eating bomb in his chest, but he got it through his backstory of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ goddess of magic? Who the hell passed this in quality review? And our resident Tiefling not only fought demons on the front lines, but she has an infernal engine for a heart? Does she need wings too, to show how ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ special she is? She's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Barbarian Tiefling. That's badass enough, and she doesn't need piss-poor writing to strengthen her character. Shadowheart's story is a travesty of two writers that clearly had two very different visions for her character, and decided to co-author he story and personality, to add to how jarring her inability is to maintain amnesia or a personality fitting for the goddess she's been tricked into serving.

Regarding my note about Astarion, I just can't stand how ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sexually-charged every line and action he has is. He's basically a walking YA-novel's idea of what a vampire would be, after a night of watching Twilight mixed with a bit of reading 50 Shades of Grey. Hell, I had an incident at a party where Lae'zel complained about how I wouldn't know the touch of her lips or whatnot, despite my having zero relationship with her, let alone zero flirting. It came out of nowhere and really goes to show just how hard this game has to lean on sexually-charged energy to keep people's attention.

In full transparency, I'll let you know that I did not make it to Act III before my patience wore thin. So, anyone who feels that you can't judge a game without finishing it (I won't go into how stupid that mentality is), feel free to skip my review. And honestly? I'm glad I didn't make it that far. From what I've read, Act III is an unoptimized mess, and It feels like Larian spent all their time with Act I and II before rushing Act III and hoping reviewers wouldn't make it that far (the Larian staple of game design). It's honestly amazing how many people have called this game GOTY, or a new standard for game design, despite the shortcomings. This is more of the same. An unfinished game with a particular shine to it (ex., graphics, horniness, and the baldur's gate name in this case) is rushed out the door at full price. It relies purely on nostalgia to sell a mediocre story and some frustratingly-awful design. The only thing I truly hope the rest of the gaming market takes from this game is how well voice actors can perform with great direction.

I've also seen reviewers talk about how DnD is the problem with this game's mechanics. I find that rather funny, when I see the party and spell slot limits that Larian added, as well as their inability to even transpose from the monster manual very well. For that particular note, I'll simply reference the Spectator boss fight. That says *everything* about how Larian chose to approach DnD, from AC to health pools, to not understanding the abilities of these enemies.

There's much more that I could say, but then it would begin to feel like a simple BG3-bash. I wanted to like or even love this game, but it's just not Baldur's Gate or DnD for me. It has some redeeming qualities, but definitely not GOTY.

5/10 is where this falls for me.

Posting this review for when the game fully launches. I believe it's a bit too early in production for early access, though that is a personal opinion. If you are looking for great combat, I'd recommend Starsector. Right now, the concept feels like FTL meets Freelancer (launch edition), which is a great mix. But the combat holds the game back significantly in my opinion. Hopefully, the developers will optimize the combat and ship controls once they are closer to a full launch.

tl;dr - The concept is great, the execution feels too early for early access.

Personally I recommend waiting for a sale. However, if you are a major Dark Souls fan, you may like this. Full disclaimer, I did not complete this game, got way too frustrated with early fighting and just didn't feel like it was worth $60 so I requested a refund at (78) minutes. At $30 or so I'll definitely return and update my review.

I do want to mention something that seems to be a common theme with game storytellers. SHOW DON'T TELL. Spoiler warning for the very first few minutes of the game:

Your "friend" is a glorified running/climbing/jumping tutorial who is killed off within the first 30 minutes or less. He talks about all of the experiences you've shared together, outside of the game mind you, and exists only to be murdered off and have the protagonist idiotically reveal himself to be a jedi traitor. So yeah, I don't have the highest of hopes for the story but we shall see. I've played games with the same sort of boring beginning that turned out to be great games before.

I do wish to note that it would be absolutely wonderful if level designers would stop designing areas to just be set pieces. Let me explain. There's a portion of the beginning level where you are running from cover to cover while being shot at in a repeating pattern. Why? To what purpose does this serve? Your game doesn't have dedicated cover mechanics so my character just stood like a melon behind random boxes while waiting for the most brain-dead pilot to finish their strafe. Also, your first 'boss', the one you are supposed to lose to? This may just be me, but stop doing that. It doesn't make your villain look cool, it's just frustrating because I know it's a waste of time. I can just stand there and be beat to death just so your cinematic starts.

/rant - will update when i re-purchase the game on a good sale.

This is an early access review as of 8/20/17.

I do not recommend this game in it's current state. The tutorial is pretty good and I've got very few complaints about the medieval feel of the game. The units all seem to have their own uses on the battlefield however, they are beyond incompetent. I mean, wow, braindead just doesn't do them enough justice. Your archery units will pepper the field with arrows, even the areas your melee units occupy, simple because a lone peasant made them feel threatened. They must be ancestors of policeman who claim the same. There doesn't seem to be a way for your units to target an enemy battalion as a whole, rather you have to right-click an individual enemy so gods help you if you miss and order your troops to march forward instead.

Pathing is absolutely horrendous in cities. Countless times I've watched units walk brazenly through a burning section of road because they couldn't figure out how to follow a simple movement order two blocks over with clear line of sight. You'll wonder why a melee unit is getting hammered by arrows, only to find that half of the unit is slowly going around the corner of a building versus using the entire road available. On a side note, the sound design is not well balanced or controlled so prepare to have your ears blasted by a unit's dialogue despite the sound being at "1".

All in all, these are simple early-access issues and can easily be fixed in future patches. I like the idea as a whole and intend to keep an eye on it and will change my review should these issues be ironed out.

I cannot speak for the second lord Skarsnik, as I rarely play Orcs however, if he is enjoyable I will update my review as "mixed". That said, no, I do not recommend this dlc, at least not at full price. Mind you $8 really is not all that much so some will buy it as it's better priced than the Beast Men were, that said, I still advise caution.

Having conquered Eight Peaks as Belegar Ironhammer I found myself incredibly underwhelmed by it. After recruiting a full regiment you basically need to drop everything and go halfway across the map from your starting position and either sack as you go or just leg it to Eight Peaks. Okay, definitely a different strategy from normal, but the main down side is that it's really not a singleplayer type of faction. It really feels like it was meant for coop, so hope your buddy chooses Dwarves (great naming there) so they can assist you as best they can.

Honestly the "new" (read: fresh) faction is more of a delaying tactic as you're absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥ until you capture Karak Eight Peaks. Sure there are some interesting ideas once you have, but know that it will probably be 10+ turns even with an ally.

tl;dr - Wait for the Winter Sale, it's not all that expensive but it really doesn't live up to other faction dlcs in previous installements.

Tl;Dr - If you're looking for a quick fix for your Total War itch, don't bother here. If you really dig the fantasy setting or already own the previous Total War installments, get Warhammer at a 50% discount minimum. This should have been an expansion back for Attila (price point-wise).

I know I'll get a lot of flack for not liking this iteration of Warhammer come to life in an RTS game, but frankly, it's not the idea of Warhammer I don't like, it's the implementation. Essentially I was pleasantly surprised to see CA go after the Warhammer franchise. A franchise that combines fantasy and the joy of medieval combat sounds like a dream come true, right? Unfortunately, the result is far from the truth.

Quite frankly, this game is a dissapointment on so many levels for me. While you can still get enjoyment out of it, especially if you are a hardcore Warhammer fan, that does not make up for the sheer lack of overall effort that shows everytime you boot a game up. But enough of that, let's get started with the usual list!

Pros:

1. The graphics - The game looks good...I mean...REALLY good. It has plenty of visual flair and charm despite my growing distate for the game as a whole.

2. Leaders - For the most part each leader adds a new and interesting mechanic to your battles, a nice change of pace from the political setups from Rome 2 and Attila.

3. Siege and Regular Battles - Regular battles have different visual styles that vary based on location, whilst sieges can certainly look gorgeous they also have MAJOR cons that we'll get to shortly.

4. No Politics/children - This one just speaks for itself.

And now, the Cons:

1. Complete lack of quanitity - So, remember when I made the jab at Atilla with "Attila Lite" in my last review? Yeah, Warhammer is even worse, which you would almost think to be impossible. Now I get that there are only so many races, but dear gods, one faction per race? Seriously? And people try to justify that? Basically if you want to play coop with someone you cannot be the same race despite there being multiple factions per race. You also cannot play a different faction after you've grown tired of playing the exact same starting position with the exact same enemies around you. And no, different lords do not add enough variety to change that.

2. Great Power Debuff - This one just speaks for itself.

3. Agents - It was a pretty cool idea to have "heroes" that you can use to bolster your army, such as using a Dwarven Engineer to increase the stats and reload speed of your artillery. Each hero has unique abilities for each race and you could really benefit from them in battle....oh...you say that the AI will only use them like agents from the previous Total War games and eventually you'll be dealing with the six or so agents from all your enemies that are completely unstoppable just like Attila? Well that was a waste of time.

4. Enemy Units Routing...Psych! - Yeah, this is probably the worst and most unrealistic part of Warhammer, a univese with gryphons (griffons?) and dragons. Picture this, you're in a close battle with the enemy lord, your troops have flanked his best warriors and you've decimated the enemy archers and horseman. Now all that's left is to bring this battle to a clo-....wait....why are my Hammerers dropping like flies? *glance around map for hidden units* Why the hell is that archer unit of only 10-20 men back in battle? ♥♥♥♥♥! How did that horseman unit of 15 come back and flank my warriors?! Yeah, get ready for this constantly happening. It's annoying and drags out battles for far too long. You'll constantly find weak units coming back. My advice? Don't even bother playing the dwarves if that annoys you. The Slayers are the only thing you'll have that can run down those units to make sure they don't come back.

5. Settlements/Cities - Wow do these look half-assed, just from the in-game ui alone. Do you remember Yu-Gi-Oh? How about Pegusus' Toon world? Yeah. That's pretty much what every city looks like from the grand campaign...toon towns.

6. Siege Battles - And now for the largest let down of all. I'm sure you've already heard of this, but siege battles suck. About 1/4 of the city is available to you, limiting your encirclment options to a head-on charge, Units pull ladders out of their hidden bags of holding, lodged somewhere securely in their rears, and when you get on the enemy walls? Yeah, your units get down by clipping through the battlements...Such a showcase of effort and time right there. But the worst part? The cities actually look really good, especially the background art. All of which just makes you wish for an actual siege battle like the previous games.

7. Siege Battles Continued - Settlements don't have siege battles unless you've builts walls. What does that mean? It means no more using choke points to your advantage on low level settlements, instead you get to fight on a generic battle map. I guess those budget cuts even hit your engineers.

At the end of the day, the best I can say about Warhammer is that it looks pretty. That it has potential. But sadly there's very little effort and quality here, especially when compared to previous Total War entries (Attila included). The lack of faction choices within each race is a sour taste every time you start a new game, especially so if you plan to play coop. Creatively, Warhammer is a step in the right direction for CA, but from a mechanic and quality standpoint it's miles behind Shogun 2.

9/25 Edit - Spell check