Recent reviews by Nanopizza

I went into this game with pretty much no idea what it was, I saw a YouTube channel I watch do a quick play of the first few levels and thought "Y'know what that looks like good fun" so I took the plunge and bought it without looking too much into it.

I've seen a lot of people say the following about this game "If you don't like Rick and Morty don't bother with this one". I've never watched Rick and Morty and I found the humou to be enjoyable. It's not drop dead hilarious all the time, but usually amusing with some bits that I had a proper laugh at - it has a funny and entertaining atmosphere at pretty much all times, even if you're not constantly rolling on the floor or anything.

The story itself is kind of just a backdrop to give you something to work towards, the real "story" of this game is the journey along the way with all the quips, gags and chatter between the various characters - aka for the most part your guns. I found myself quite attached to my squad of talking guns, it's quite a cool idea having to juggle which weapon you have equipped for which one will be talking to you or performing dialog lines for you. I will say if you don't like characters CONSTANTLY talking in your ears with barely a moment of silence then this may not be the game for you.

I found the gameplay actually to be very good, the variety you have for your various weapons makes each and every one of them have a role in combat, and you'll find yourself consistently using all of them in battles. Each gun has many different tools that you can use to turn the battle to your advantage, all of which are interesting and fun to use and are complimented by the solid gunplay. I did find combat balancing quite easy on the normal difficulty, I only died once or twice in the whole game, so if you prefer a challenge you might want to go for the harder one, I would definitely turn it up a bit on another playthrough.

A quick note about bugs, It does have a few - I ran into a good number of bugs with various triggers not activating and prompts not appearing when they should (especially in and around boss fights) that forced me to load a previous checkpoints - thankfully the game saves quite frequently so I never actually had to redo a fight due to this, but they could definitely work on the bugs with this game even if in the end they didn't effect me too much.

My advice for this game is that it's a game that you should go through very care-free and not try to take too seriously, to get the best out of it you should do all the stupid stuff that is a complete ♥♥♥♥ move and mess around, don't take your character too seriously - at least that's my opinion anyway.

Is it worth the full asking price of £46, which is not a particularly cheap game? That's a bit more tricky to answer.
I got 13 hours out of this game, I wasn't rushing by any means but I also wasn't going for full completion, I would say this would be a pretty typical playtime for a non-completionist. Given the rather low time to completion for the price, I would probably say wait for a sale on this one, I think at half the price it would be a really good deal for the package you get. At £46, while I don't regret buying it at all, I do feel like you can get far better value for the price. So while I put a yes on this review and I stand by that, I also acknowledge it is quite a steep price for the amount of game you get.

In this day and age where there are a billion options for the same genre with a slightly different skin, I found The Eternal Cylinder to be such a refreshing, unique and beautiful experience. Definitely my top game of 2022, hands down.

Sure, we have our shooters, our RPG’s, our MMO’s and what not, and I love all of these, but I have never played a game like this, and I think that’s one of the biggest compliments I can give an experience. If I had to describe it, I suppose it would be an action adventure game with survival elements but that doesn’t really do it justice.

The Eternal Cylinder is a game oozing with charm at every moment, it’s story is interesting, wacky, scary, and despite playing as these adorable, silly little blob creatures, surprisingly mature in it’s themes and presentation. However, in spite of this, it doesn’t forget that you are playing as silly little adorable blob creatures, and has plenty of levity to balance it all out. The world itself is graphically beautiful. It's funky, unique, charming, and has a good bit of variety as you go through the game. Even the music and sound design is great, the music is fantastic and the sound design fits the wacky world and adds a lot of character to the Trebhum and other creatures that inhabit it.

The gameplay is fantastic too, it has a lot of emphasis on creating your family of Trebhum and building them out as you want, for example, maybe you need some more storage so you forage for the materials to mutate a Trebhum into a big-boi blob. Maybe you’re like “man, crossing water is slow” - well you’re in luck, go and find some mutagens to adapt a Trebhum to be an olympic swimmer! There are also lots of different designs of Trebhum to collect, so I quite enjoyed swapping them in and out to get the prettiest squad of fluff-balls that I could! As for moment-to-moment gameplay, I found for the 29 hours I played, I wasn’t getting bored one bit, and I usually find myself getting bored with games far before that. I found the pacing was pretty well done, I didn’t feel rushed through nor did I feel it dragged on longer that it needed to. If anything I would’ve liked to be able to play after the credits rolled though, if for no other reason than to say goodbye to my squad of Trebhums that I had become VERY attached to. Speaking of the Trebhum, so much love went into making these little creatures believable and lovable. Honestly, you can kill off a main character in a game and I’ll be like “oh that’s sad” but if anything so much as looking at one of my beautiful my Trebhum funny then HOO BOY, YOU ARE DEAD.

I only really have a couple criticisms with this game, firstly, sometimes having a big squad of Trebhums can be a little bit of a liability in the harder segments as they get in the way a bit and end up getting quite spread out. Now you could of course just not have the full amount, but I love my little fluff-balls so there’s no way I’m not having as many as I can. Secondly, there are a few points in the game where you will lose a great deal of your mutations - now the game is paced with this in mind, so don’t let it turn you off too much, but it did frustrate me a little bit. Lastly, and probably my biggest gripe, UNSKIPPABLE CUTSCENES BEFORE FIGHTS. For the love of all that is holy I thought the gaming industry learned this lesson about a decade ago?! Still, given I only have three criticisms, that’s quite amazing really - I feel a game like this could’ve been very frustrating if they didn’t make a number of smart design decisions which cut down on micromanagement, because having 14 (I think) Trebhum by the end of the game would be a nightmare if you had to feed each one individually, because let me tell you these little buggers can eat.

I could sing the praises of The Eternal Cylinder all day, but honestly, I went into this game pretty blind, having watched a YouTube video of the first 30 minutes of gameplay like a year ago. I think this is a game that the less you know, the more you’ll enjoy it. So, stop reading reviews! Go and play this game, it is so absolutely worth it!

Would you look at that, it’s Subnautica in space. Well, okay kinda - but not entirely, there’s a lot more to this game than that, and to just say that doesn’t do Breathedge justice.

Subnautica is one of my all-time favourite games, and space/sci-fi is my favourite setting for games, so you can imagine I was eager to get into something that positions itself to marry those two together. While It’s true that many compare this game to Subnautica, I do think Breathedge distinguishes itself in a number of ways. Personally, on the whole I found it was an amazing experience of combining things that I loved from Subnautica with some twists and turns that differentiated and made it a unique experience in its own right.

I feel that Breathedge takes the formula of Subnautica and modifies it in a very successful way. A number of my friends have come to me and said “Subnautica is too scary”, If you’re one of those people then this game may well be for you, as it takes out the horror elements and replaces it with comedy. While the comedy and writing is not drop-dead hilarious and giving me stitches every second, it’s consistently amusing and endearing, I found myself quite attached to my spacesuit companion by the end of the game. The writing is also solid, it has a decent narrative in there and I was very much engaged throughout the story.

The pacing of Breathedge is a bit slower than Subnautica, it’s quite a way in before you get your “seaglide”, if you will - but I actually feel that the pacing for progression is far more rewarding than in Subnautica, it’s a real achievement getting your “seamoth” and it true luxury to not have to worry about oxygen anymore. Tools and upgrades come at a pretty good pace, too. One criticism with this is not being able to fly around the big shuttle in the main open area, that is restricted to the later more linear areas, which is strange given there is a shuttle docking module for the base but you can’t actually dock a shuttle there as far as I can tell, though somebody correct me if I’m wrong.

Following on into base building, I feel like it is one of Breathedge’s weaker elements.
Though the base modules are fine and look lovely, and I still enjoy the base building, it doesn’t feel as polished or necessary as Subnautica. And having certain functionality restricted to certain types of modules is pretty damn annoying. I cannot for the life of me figure out the logic behind having to have my crafting storage in a seperate room from the actual crafting bench. (Also having to click and hold to open storage lockers is tedious, just make it instant) A huge gripe I have is not getting 100% refund in base materials when deconstructing base parts, this is just dumb, and punishes you for trying to optimise and change your base and you end up having an attitude of “eh that’ll do then I don’t wanna have to go gather more stuff.” It’s unfortunate because if it wasn't for these things, the base building is pretty solid.

As for some other cons of the game, one of the common complaints of breathedge is the limited item durability, your tools break very quickly in this game compared to something like Subnautica, but in all honesty this didn’t bother me, you just have to get into the routine of checking all your tools before heading out. Another complaint some have is the linearity of chapters 4-6. Personally, I’d spent enough time in the open world and on chapters 1-3 that by the time I got to chapter 4-6 I was ready to dive into a more linear experience to finish it all up. I very much enjoyed the final stint of the game, though I do understand some people may be disappointed if they wanted more of the open world gameplay.

Despite these complaints though, I found Breathedge to be an incredibly polished and fun experience, and gives Subnautica a run for its money, which is a true compliment coming from me, as I’ve replayed it half a dozen times by now and still get the itch, I’m sure I will find myself replaying this game many times in future. It’s a game full of fun, intrigue, wit, humour and a lot of charm, with really solid gameplay mechanics and a lovely polished finish. This game is definitely a game I can recommend and is well worth the price, and I hope to see more in the world of Breathedge in future!

It's funny to think that this game is 13 years old by now, and yet it's still one of the best RTS games ever made. This game really has everything you want out of a good RTS. Interesting units in both design and function, solid base building, fun maps, solid gameplay with tons of room for coming up with strategies, and reasonably challenging levels which really make you think.

No RTS that's come out since this masterpiece has managed to eclipse this game (and Kane's Wrath) as my favourite RTS of all time, and I do play quite a lot of the genre.
This game just has such a great fusion of elements, and I absolutely love the unit design and aesthetic of each of the factions. GDI with their Mammoth tanks and APC's, to NOD's Scorpion tank and Venom craft, just to name a few. Each faction is also unique and have their own arsenal, for example with playing GDI I love the Mammoth tank, it's a jack-of-all-trades and master of a few, but man do I hate GDI's useless base defences (Minus the Rig, the Rig is great) wherein NOD missile troops outrange and pick them off. However, I don't really care much for NOD's Avatar, their big boy unit that fills the boots of the Mammoth, due to having no air defence. However, when I'm playing NOD I love their base defences - they are amazing and don't just get out-ranged by a missile troop. So each faction has it's own flavour, with pro's and cons - including a third playable faction which I won't go into detail for her due to spoilers.

Each of the campaigns are fully fledged stories in their own right - and yea sure, they're not some spectacular piece of storytelling that's gonna win loads of awards, It does create interesting stakes and a fun backdrop to the gameplay. A staple part of the C&C series is of course the acting, which is a great and unique touch that the series has. I could listen to Kane preach his mad gospel to me all day, for the Brotherhood! Outside of that, C&C is a long-running series with a lot of lore and backstory which, if you are privvy to it, will undoubtedly enrich the experience, but is not required, the first time I played this It was my first C&C game and I still loved it.

One thing I worry about playing older games like this is how they look, and if they support modern resolutions.
Honestly, the graphics of this game have aged incredibly well. It doesn't look 13 years old in the slightest, it also has a good array of settings including 1920x1080p resolution (Not sure if it has 1440p or 4k, though). This game still looks fantastic, particularly the particle effects still look spectacular. If that wasn't enough, the soundtrack is also pretty poppin', and I am a sucker for a good soundtrack.

So yea, I could honestly sing this games praises all day. If you are looking for a good RTS, this is it. I've yet to find anything that manages to surpass what this game gets right in the past 13 years. Especially with how cheap it is these days, this game is a steal that still has the value of its full price to me. If you want a great RTS - get this, you owe it to yourself.
This game also has a sequel standalone expansion - Kane's Wrath, which adds a few more units and a nice long NOD campaign - which after finishing this game once again, I am off to go and play once more!

This is an absolutely outstanding game. I never picked this up when it first came out because I thought it was lacking content, but honestly having played it and having only done the first scenario I would have been happy to have paid full price for it. And it has even more content now than it did back then!

This is a tough game, it doesn't pull any punches and it really is the struggle that is advertised, my first run ended in disaster due to a snowballing (hah) effect from having no medical facilities, but it could have been many, many other things but my second run was much more successful and I finished with a pretty good turnout, I think, but it was still an absolute struggle.

Not only is this game incredibly fun and really makes you think, but the aesthetic and polish is truly stunning, it's a beautiful game and the sound design, music, UI and just general vibe it gives off really immerses you in this dire, desperate fight for survival against the unrelenting cold. The world-building here is just really good, with lots of cool little stories and little tidbits of lore and backstory throughout. The decisions the game forces you to make also really invests you in the world, it's even harder to be a benevolent ruler when your benevolence will kill just as many people as it might save, the decisions the game throws at you really make you feel like you're living in the world. I really want to experience more of this hellish world and would put my lot in with any new content expanding upon the world of Frostpunk.

On the technical side I did have 2 crashes in my time playing, but the autosave is frequent enough that it didn't cause me to lose anything substantial, other than that everything was buttery smooth and intuitive.

So my verdict:
If you like city builders and you like strategy - and you like 'em HARD. You absolutely owe it to yourself to play this one, it is one of the best strategies I've played in a long time - if you also like games that make you think then this is another thing this game does great, you really have to weigh your decisions carefully as one wrong move or impulsive act of compassion could doom your whole society, not to mention it really makes you ask some questions about what is morally right vs. the need to survive.

This is a must-have for anybody who likes well-made, well-polished difficult strategy games, especially so if you love dark, dire and apocolyptic settings with interesting world-building and great aesthetics.

Honestly, a really fun strategy game with a few balance and unit responsiveness issues holding it back from being amazing.

I've played a lot of games in this Genre, and none of them do it quite like Nexus - this game is more about commanding a small fleet of ships. So I won't be comparing this to O.R.B, or Homeworld 1/2, because this game isn't really trying to be like those two, so if you're thinking "great I loved O.R.B/Homeworld I want more of the same" Nexus isn't that. Nexus focuses heavily on each individual ship, down to its weapons, systems and devices - in battle you can control each and every system of each ship if you want, or more general commands. There is a really cool aspect of ship customization and upgrading as you go through the game - which I'm a sucker for. The game is really fun at the core level, the missions are varied and usually entertaining, though some of them suffer from some really questionable balancing and design where it can just feel like luck if you manage to win or not. I usually found the missions which give you more than your usual amount of ships are often the weakest. I feel that this game is at it's strongest when you're commanding a small taskforce.

For reference I played this game on "Experienced" Difficulty, which is the middle difficulty.
This isn't the kind of RTS where you can one-shot every level, the majority of the time you will have to go back to the equipment screen, re-equip your ships and try again, and usually multiple save-loads within a level. If you're expecting an RTS you can blow-through with no issues you're going to have troubles with this game, even on the easiest difficulty from what I've heard. This is quite a hard game, especially if you really want every ship to survive the whole campaign and get all the secondary objectives.

There are a few big issues with this game which hold it back though. The aforementioned questionable balancing of some levels and unit unresponsiveness. Your units can be VERY SLOW to perform your commands, they'll drift around in space like dead-whales for a good minute before executing your command, which is not particularly useful when you needed them to open fire yesterday and a cruiser is taking the beating you wanted your battleship upfront for. It can be a very frustrating experience at times and often makes it feel like you're at the mercy of your units doing what you tell them to rather than the mission itself. This is why I maintain that the levels with smaller fleets are the stronger ones, the units really require you to micro-manage, and doing so with more than 3-4 ships is a bit of a chore. I also wish the games soundtrack was a bit more extensive, but for most people that's a minor gripe. I did have a few crashes during second to last level but other than that it was pretty stable.

When this game is working as intended though, there is an incredible amount of depth, and the focus on small-scale fleet battles is a refreshing take on the RTS genre, and you really get an attachment to each unit under your command, I still regret that I lost one of my ships in the campaign, but it was a tough fight. There's fighters to be commanded, sub-system targeting, siege tactics, different engine-types for different situations and all sorts of really detailed stuff. This game looks amazing for its time too, I know it had an HD rework, and it doesn't look like a 2019 release of course, but considering the technology this game is based upon it's gorgeous. I also enjoyed the story ... it's nothing crazy or massively unpredictable, it's a pretty campy space-game story, but it has charm and its definitely interesting enough to serve as an engaging backdrop to the (usually) good RTS gameplay and keep things flowing through the game, ultimately I had a lot of fun with it even if it wasn't the most crazy out-there story ever.

I definitely have to give this game a recommend IF you like an RTS that will challenge you mentally, you need to be thinking with this one, switch off for a moment and you could lose a lot. Also, to enjoy this one you need to be okay putting up with a little clunk and lack of polish in some areas, it's an old game after-all, U.I design and game design in general has changed a lot since then, with a bit more focus on quality-of-life type things, which you do feel a bit when playing an older game like this. So if you're okay with those two things, and you like a good Sci-Fi RTS with a campy but fun and engaging story, definitely give Nexus a go, it's well worth the £7.00 my steam says it's currently at!

To start off, I wouldn't say this is a bad game, but I would say it's definitely not a game for everyone. The main reason I made this a negative review is simply because I don't find it fun, and that's the reason we play games is it not?

To start off, this game features and incredible amount of grinding in the form of resource gathering and it takes a very long time to actually get anything, and when you finally do get to some kind of goal you usually just get screwed over and lose everything anyway...I feel this game just doesn't reward the player for their time and effort that they put in - which can be a lot, I might add. Don't get me wrong I'm no stranger to grindy games, I play my fair share of MMOs and the like...but the thing is, in an MMO you don't constantly get screwed over and lose everything over and over again, I can see how some people find this fun (okay...maybe not fun unless you're a masochist, but tolerable), but for me it's enraging. When I log out from a game I want to feel like i've accomplished something...the only time I ever quit out of this game is in rage after I lose everything.

The second thing that really puts me off this game is the fact it's impossible to navigate using the map, it is only a rough sketch of the terrain you have discovered so far and it doesn't show your location at all, now I understand that this is a design choice...but I think it's a, quite frankly, utterly retarded one. The map, which to the games credit is beautiful and immense in scope, is just too vast to not have any kind of navigation system, even if you do get some kind of improved map later on (I got to around lvl 23 or so) you shouldn't have to go that long, and likely a lot longer seeing as I didn't see any kind of map recipe in the coming levels, with no means of navigation or finding your base after a longish expedition other than dying to spawn back at your bed, which is hardly an option as you will lose everything on you...and it kind of defeats the whole purpose, this game would be so much more enjoyable if you had a (decent) map.

Another thing that I don't like is that (at least on multiplayer this is, not sure about single as I didn't play it) you can't just log out from this game, you have to make sure your character has enough food, and your dinos (if they didn't get murdered by insects the second the patch introducing them went live, that is) must also be in a safe enclosure and have enough food to not die of hunger until you next get on, oh...also, if you are on a PVPVE or PVP server, you will also have to hope nobody comes and murders you in your sleep, takes all your stuff, griefs your base or kills your dinos. Granted that last bit is more of a people thing and is true for any survival type game, but it's something that I personally don't like. Also...as far as i'm aware, even on the PVE only (I was on a PVPVE server) servers It is my understanding that you can still get raided and have your stuff stolen, although I don't think thye can kill you or your dinos while you are asleep. Assuming this isn't some tall tale, that doesn't sit quite right with me, PVE should not have to worry about being raided...that's kind of the reason why you play PVE.

Like I said at the start of this review, this isn't a bad game...not at all, I know many people love it and with good reason, I think the map on this game is gorgeous and mindnumbingly massive, I also love the whole basis around training dinos and making a tribe and all that, the combat also seems quite good (well, at least what it's supposed to be, more on that in a bit), there are a few quality of life things that could be done to the combat, such as being able to un-nock an arrow from your bow but that's a minor thing that will probably be added. One thing I did notice though, even playing on one of the lowest ping servers that I could find for an NZ player such as myself, combat is quite jumpy and there is a lot of glitching going on, the dinosaur AI could also use some work, for dinos that are skittish, you kind of just chase them till they run into a rock and get stuck and then proceed to brutally stab them to death, and for the larger ones that will fight back, you can avoid their attacks ridiculously easily, the fast nippy aggressive dinos like raptors and dilos kind of just glitch around, don't really hurt you much and are just annoying to take down due to said glitching.

The final thing that must be mentioned, which can be somewhat forgiven for being early in development, is the seemingly poor optimization. I wouldn't say I own a super beast million dollar dual SLI GTX titan rig or anything, but I own a pretty respectable GTX 770 rig with a good amount of RAM and a perfectly capable CPU (which though it may be, is next on my upgrade list), but this game has far worse performance than it should have, most settings had to be toned down to medium and low just in order to play the game at 30 frames or so, which is good enough but not great, added to this sub-par framerate, there are frequent micro-freezes and bouts of slideshow like framerates. Thankfully I didn't experience any crashes in my time, although there were many times where it felt like one was coming. Another thing that is annoying is that it takes a very long time to actually log into the game, on my first login to a server, it took about 15 minutes and subsequent logins about 8-10. This makes it very hard just to go "oh, I know lets play some arc for half an hour or so", if you decide to go play some arc you are gonna wanna make it a decent sized sesh if it takes that long to login and load.

Anyway, if you have made it this far in my wall of text review then I commend you. I always seem to get carried away writing steam reviews, I start thinking I will make a paragraph or so review and write and entire damn essay on it. But I hope I have given you a good review on my thoughts on the game. Like I have mentioned several times, this is not a bad game, but it's not the game for everyone, It's my hope that this review will help you to establish which of those two catagories you fall into, and then allow you to make the informed decision as to whether or not you wish to buy this game. I am personally asking for a refund due to the fact that I just don't get any fun from it, and I have played it enough for it to be beyond the point of just a first impressions rage quit, though I will likely start it up a few more times and proceed to rage quit once more if it doesn't get refunded, I don't think I am ever going to get properly into this game. If you chose to buy it I wish you the best of luck and hope you find it more enjoyable than I have.

Now, before I truly get started on this review, I think it's only fair to say that I am a newcomer to the Final Fantasy franchise, and although I have always respected it for it's reputation of spectacular stories and amazing soundtracks, I cannot claim to know if it is better than "the classics" I'm sure you can find many reviews from the perspective of Final Fantasy veterans comparing this game to the previous installments (with varying attitudes, to put it lightly lol)

Now. This game, oh my god this game.

To make this review easier, I will split it into some different segments.

-->Gameplay<--
I started up this game expecting it to be one of those games where I would grind it out so that I could experience an amazing storyline but not really enjoy the combat or gameplay all that much, but keep plodding through to experience the story, which I had little doubt would be great (and it was.) Well, I was wrong on one count, right on the other, the story was indeed great (and I will get to the story in more detail later) but I was very pleasantly suprised by the combat, I expected the game to be boring turn based combat that takes forever, but it really isn't, the combat is fast paced and fluid but is not so fast that you can't think about what you are going to do, it allows a great balance between tactics and speed. The combat basically works upon a bar that charges up, and the higher it's charged, the more abilities you can execute out of the ones you have unlocked, you can execute an attack at any time, but if your bar isn't fully charged, you won't attack the enemy as many times. The gameplay is suprisingly hard to explain due to it's complexity, there are many elements to consider in combat, your attacks are merely as small part of the overall picture, you have the paradigm shift system, which is your parties current combat role, with each individual member having access to multiple roles, the stagger gauge which is critical for taking out tricker enemies, but at the same time sometimes you are better off ignoring it and just going for straight up damage, you also have damage types, which is nothing new to RPGs but it's still a factor to consider. In short, this game has really fun gameplay, and the progression is sufficiently paced that you get new abilities often enough to keep it fresh and give you incentive to keep fighting. Which brings me onto the next point.

-->Progression<--
Seing as this does technically belong in this catagory, I will just quickly say that the game does a very good job of tutorials and explaing everything to you, so all these advance mechanics are second nature to you before it gives you a new one, and the game always tells you everything you need to know about anything new it introduces, which is always nice, because it can be really annoying when a game just expects you to know what to do, and if you do get confused, you can refer to it at any time.
But what I really mean by progression is upgrades and all that great stuff that makes RPGs so great.
The main progression in this game comes from the Crystarium, which allows you to learn new active and passive abilities, but also allows you to upgrade you characters attributes (being physical damage, magical damage and hitpoints.) There is a tactical element to the crystarium in that it is a linear pathway with sprouting branches of abilities/attributes, so you have to consider carefully before you commit to a certain path, do you want that nice HP buff? or do you want that handy new ability? One of the downsides of this game however, is the somewhat lack of physical upgrades for the characters (such as weapons and armour and such) This game has somewhat of a token upgrade system which isn't particularly complex and the only visible upgrades are the weapons. However, the costume design for the characters in this game is so good that you wouldn't actually really want to change their gear anyway, I mean, just look at some of the preview images :P

-->Story<--
Now, I'm not going to spoil anything here for you, but the story in this game is absoultely amazing, it covers a lot of mature themes that all feel so real and immersive, the story is very believable and presented in a way that really makes you feel the plight of the characters. The characters in this game are absoultely amazing, they are some of the best and most believable characters in any game I have ever played, and I play a lot of plot-based character driven games. All the characters are amazing and absolutely believable, the way in which they react to stuff and their way of dealing with the plight that they are all thrown into is so real that you forget they are characters at all. The voice acting is also top notch (this is playing in English, I believe you can play with japanese voices if you so wish), apart from one somewhat annoying thing of one of the female cast having a tendancy to make annoying slightly sexual sounding groans, but it is a very minor issue. The Main protagonist is voiced by the same amazing actor that plays Liara T'soni in the Mass Effect series, so I instantly fell in love with her :P Basically, the story is this games true edge, if you love games with good story, you will love Final Fantasy XIII. Also, without spoiling anything much, there is continuity from this story to the stories in Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Lightning returns (the sequals).

-->Sound Design and Soundtrack<--
The sound design in this game is pretty good, it's feels like the moves your characters make have impact and they feel 'satisfying' the sound design is nothing absolutely amazing but its certainatly good.
Soundtrack...soundtrack? SOUNDTRACK!! :D
This. Games. Sound. Track. Is. Spectacular.
This game has one of the best soundtracks I have ever heard in a game, it is truly amazing, it injects every single scene with a perfect peice of accompanying music, whether is be a badass scene where the characters are being epic and heroic, or an emotional scene where they are sad and troubled or a track for a battle ranging from your normal encounter to epic boss fight, the soundtrack in this game is beautiful, amazing, spectacular, breathtaking, extraordinary...you get the idea, the soundtrack will not dissapoint, even those who don't like the game all agree on the fact that the soundtrack is epic.

-->Graphics<--
The Graphics on this game are pretty good, they look nice and clear, but they are nothing spectacular, however the character models and faces are all very well done so don't fear the character having fuzzy and unclear faces, because that is not so. The thing is though, the game has fully rendered CGI cutscenes for important plot events, so the graphics in these scenes are truly epic and really adds that extra dimension of immersion into the games cutscenes, the great thing about CGI cutscenes is that they are not ristricted by the power of the hardware they are running on, so even if you play on a potato you will still get those amazingly beautiful cutscenes. Oh, also, the female characters are very nice to look at, I don't think any guy would be able to disagree with me on that one ;)

-->Game length and difficulty<--
As of the time of one full playthrough, the total time I've clocked is sitting at 67 hours, which is pretty damn impressive for a single player game, but the story doesn't feel long, boring and dragged out like some games get after 67 hours, every second of it has you at the edge of your seat. This 67 hours includes a decent bit of grinding, but I think you would honestly be hard pressed to finish the game in much less than this, you will need to grind for awhile if you don't want to be facerolled by the late game bosses.

Unfortunately, I have run out of space on this review, but I had pretty said everything I wanted to anyway. So, I would rate this game a solid 9/10 (simply because of poor PC optimization). For the price of 16 USD, this game is a steal :)

I find myself having a little bit of trouble on whether I would recommend this game or not, although this is definitely not a bad game by any measure, I just don't quite see how it is as good as the ratings, and other reviews seem to indicate. (See the bottom of this review for a TL;DR)

So, I will attempt to give as unbiased an opinion of this game as I can, by category to make it easier.

First is the gameplay: I have to say that the gameplay is good in the fact that is offers you an array of options to choose from with any given situation, you can either go in all guns blazing, or go sneaking around all stealthy, or find a balance between those 2 styles. I liked the fact it gave you the freedom in this regard. However, to be honest, I just didn't really find the combat particularly fun, I'm not quite sure why, perhaps it was the whole switching out between first and third person shooters that did it. Unlike other games, I never really felt like a badass while taking bad guys down, and I felt the combat is a little unforgiving (I was playing on normal difficulty) but given that stealth is an option that is acceptable because otherwise the stealth approach would be a little less inviting. In terms of how the stealth mechanics play out, I thought they were quite well executed, when you keep your wits about you, you can slowly, but surely make your way past pretty large groups of bad guys, but if you trip up you may find yourself forced into a fire-fight, but that is how a stealth game should be, so that is not a problem. Additionally, I thought the hacking mini-game was extremely well done, unlike many hacking mini-games (such as Mass Effect 1 or 2) it is not tedious and boring and you enter into it thinking "uh...better hack this damn terminal..." The hacking mini-game in Deus Ex requires some planning, strategy and quick thinking, the hacking mechanic was masterfully implemented.

Player Progression: Player progression is pretty good in this game, without going into any spoilers, you get xp points in which you can upgrade both passive, and active abilities at a reasonably regular basis, you can also buy xp for credits at certain stores. the game has a pretty extensive amount of upgrades and I think you would be hard pressed to upgrade all your abilities by the end of the game, this is good because it forces you to make decisions on prioritising upgrades for what your play-style is, for example: do I upgrade my stealth vision or do I give myself more armour? However, the amount of xp you get is not too prohibitive, you don't get so little xp you are forced to do go down one tree and you are stuck there, you can branch out over several ability trees to suit your style, just not all of them. The game seems to have plenty of weapons and items, and introduces them at a rather nice pace, you don't get 1/3rd of the way through the game and find you have already unlocked all the guns like some games, you get new guns right up until the end. In terms of purchasing equipment, it's a pretty standard RPG kind of set up; you do quests, loot various things, sell items off at stores, you get credits for it, you can then buy various upgrades, ammo and weapons at stores. Stores...*shudder* i'll open that bag of worms later in thie review.

Interface and Navigation: This games interface is quite nice, it has a nice high-tech feel to it and is rather well done, apart from one aspect, Navigation. The navigation in this game is horrible, although you have a map, it is never really useful for telling you where to go, the map is made up of un-detailed blocks that don't show you anything of the terrain or buildings in the area, so you don't know where to go to get to where the quest marker is. Remember that can of worms about shops I mentioned earlier? yea, here it is, sure, this game has shops, but they are NEVER marked on your map, you can only find them by remembering where they are, and given how useless the map is, and how the city hubs all look quite similar, it's damn tricky to remember, it also gives you no indicators as to where other points of interest are, such as your apartment.

Sound design and soundtrack: I know not everyone is as concerned with these two things as I am, but for those few who are; the actual sounds in this games sound design seemed pretty good, but they always seemed somewhat delayed by a few miliseconds, like, I would fire my gun, but it didn't quite match up with the muzzle flashes, perhaps it was just my imagination, or perhaps not. The soundtrack for this game served its purpose, it created the desired atmosphere, so I guess thats a plus, but it didn't really do much more than that. The soundtrack isn't bad but don't expect any amazingly epic soundtrack orchestrated moments.

Plot: Now, plot is a big part of this game. It's hard for me to be to critical of this games plot because, I can't really find anything wrong with it...but at the same time, I just didn't really find it all that engaging. It has everything one wants from a plot, a good concept, decent lore and an interesting world in which it is based in, some good plot twists, revelations...but...it just never seemed to get me particularly engaged in it, sure, there were a few moments where I was like :o but only a few. In all truth though, now that I think of it, there isn't anything wrong with the plot, but the characters. The characters all seems so two-dimensional, even the character you play as seems like he has no personality at all, he just seems like a bit of a robot, I guess, perhaps if that's how you wan't your character to be thats great, but I don't. I personally don't like his voice actor, he seems like he's trying to do some kind of forced batman voice most of the time, and he never shows any expression or emotion in his voice, there was only one point in the game where the character actually had any kind of decent voice acting. As for the other characters, the only one I came remotely attached to was the chick who flys you around in a helicopter, at least she had a little bit of personality. As for villains, they seem a little basic and somewhat generic for villains, theres nothing about them that really makes you think "gee...that guy actually has a point?...is he/she really the villain I have been led to believe?" Perhaps I have just been spoiled by the characters from games like Mass Effect and Starcraft II, but I just didn't really connect with any of them.

Graphics: For a 2011 game, they seem about what you would expect, nothing really good or bad about them.

Bugs/Issues: I did have issues with my screen flickering white until I turned the game to direct X 9 rather than using 11, which is somewhat unfortunate because I would have liked to get the benefits of using DX11. I also got low frame-rates in few-second bursts every now and then, and my system can more than handle this game. I have a hunch that you probably are safe from the screen flickering issue on an AMD graphics card, given that this game seems to be optimized for it, but it should still run fine on any Nvidia card.

All in all (A TL;DR/Summary): This is a decent game with a few different gameplay styles to choose from, it has pretty standard and character progression that is neat in the fact that it forces you to chose a play-style. it has pretty standard sound design and soundtrack. It has a nice interface but has terrible navigation. It has a very interesting world in which it is based and an intruiging plot, but is let down by rather two-dimensional characters.

My final verdict: Do I recommend this game? well...it honestly depends on the price, and the full $19.99 listed here, I would have to say no, however If it is on special, say $10.00 or under It might be worth picking up, if nothing more I will keep you occupied for a good 20-30 hours.

Hopefully you find this review useful :)