Recent reviews by Majestaat

It's clunky here and there (I'm looking at you melee combat), and I would often feel like most aspects of the game could have used a little extra spice (ex: weapon attachments, enemy variety, RPG systems, the world being more responsive to your actions, the final segment could use a little extra), but after finishing my first playthrough, I can say it's well worth it, even at full price.
And hey, the game is still getting updates, so it might improve on all those points eventually.

Absolutely nails the STALKER vibes.

After finally unlocking all endings, I feel like I can do a semi-decent review of the game, so here goes:

The game rewards adaptability and offers you many different possibilities with a plethora of different parts. You CAN go from start to finish with the same build and just some minor adjustments, but more likely than not, some missions will force you to do drastic changes to your build in order to overcome them.

Combat is overall very fast, responsive and satisfying. The new stagger system seems to be pretty divisive for both old and new players alike, but I personally think it's fine and adds a new layer of complexity to some fights. IT'S NOT PERFECT, and I'm still not 100% sold on it, but I sometimes feel like people forget that older AC games bosses were either damage sponges or had insane mobility that made it really hard to keep a lock on them. All things considered, the stagger system works and is more interactive than what most past games offered, as far as I can recall.
One thing that does bother me is that the game was designed with short and mid range combat in mind, which is fine for single player, but I miss proper sniping weapons and radars for multiplayer. I doubt we'd get anything of the sort via DLC, but maybe in a sequel?

Missions are decently diverse, with some being really short and others much longer, with a decent mix of grunts to make you feel overpowered, AC bosses putting you in even ground, and some more menacing mechas that are likely to humble you the first few times you face them.

Regarding the story, I really enjoyed it, although I'll admit it was overwhelming at first with all the different factions and names. The Corps have subsidiaries that make it all the more confusing, and the main character is given 3+ different names, which doesn't really help. Presentation is good, but it suffers from the usual From nonsense, lacking clear answers at some critical points and leaving much to the player's interpretation.

Characters were GREAT. Probably the best out of any AC game I've played. Both english and japanese voices were very good and convey the feelings/personality of the characters. You can grow pretty attached to some of them, even though you never really see any of them at all.
I do think there were a few characters that were wasted given their status in the lore, but the main players of the story all deliver one way or another.

The soundtrack might be hard to pay attention to most of the time with all the frantic action going on, but it fits perfectly. There are a couple tracks that are amazing and elevate the story tones to a whole new level.

Story mode alone can take 40-60 hours if you want to get everything. But then there's PVP, and if you like it, you can spend dozens or hundreds of extra hours there.

9/10