Recent reviews by J. Carmine

good campaign & PVE missions. PvP needs skilled based matchmaking.

get good.
base game has fps issues too, not an excuse, but not surprising,

never could someone have told me that a poker roguelike would be a good idea.
but some one gone and done it. this game is so addicting. so much build variety with jokers.
if you like any deck builders like slay the spire or monster train, give this a try.

why cant EA and steam get their ♥♥♥♥ together?

wait for a sale, i wouldn't say this was a massive addition to the game. it was fun to have a new area to explore, but for $8 i expect more then a couple hours and just some new species to catch. the conclusion to the DLC felt underwhelming, not sure if that was because i had already completed the rest of the game, and just came back for this. maybe I would've felt different if I came to the game later and was playing the main game and DLC at the same time.

Overall experience was great.
This game is fun, challenging, and interesting.
It looks great graphically and has a unique world and art design.
It ran 120FPS constant with a 3700X and 3080
The bosses were challenging but fair, some seem very overwhelming at first, but once you've got their move sets down, they become a fun dance of attacks and perfect guards, which is something that made sekiro so good.

That being said this game is not perfect, the levels are fairly linear, with minimal exploration. Every new area you go to you're already in the rhythm of checkpoint hunting. For a game that Emphasises checkpoint gathering, you'd think they'd be close to boss doors, nope, bringing back the boss run backs, some not so bad, others annoying.
The story also did not seem cohesive from start to finish, though the last 1/3rd of the story was good, and the NPC quest lines were interesting.

All in all, I still do recommend this game, I think its the best souls-like outside of fromsoft games, and I'm excited to see what this studio does in the future with the experience gained from making Lies of P

What a game. I picked it up not thinking I'd really get into it, but I loved it, from start to finish.

Gameplay, characters, voice acting, customisation and true choices matter were all amazing.

Act 3 needs some love but I have no doubt larian will work on it.

Truly a special game.

The game is far from perfect, it's rough around the edges, the open world repair bots make the open world too chaotic to explore for me.
But that aside, the main story line was good, the weapons were fun to use, and i want to f*$% the twins.

fun laid back game. cant wait to see what the developer does in the future

Pros;
- Combat is fun.
- Broom flying is fun.
- Main story is ok.
- The long side quest storylines with other students are good.
- The room of requirements can be fun once you've unlocked more decorations.
- tons of references to the books and movies.

Cons;
- The open world is full of filler and is unrewarding, you only complete them if you want cosmetics or are a completionist.
- second to that, there are way to many merlin trials. There are 8 different trials, then they are copy a pasted. Once you've done enough to unlock max gear slots, they are a waste of time and are map filler.
- The world is full meaningless loot, especially once you can change a gears affix.
- There is tons of that meaningless loot and decorations hidden behind a boring lock-picking mini game. Forcing you to back track to hamlets, hogwarts, and hogesmede if you're a completionist. you'll have to do that back tracking multiple times for the demiguise statues just so you can unlock all 3 levels of that lock picking.
- Your character seems emotionless at times, as well as the constant need to repeat the same voice lines leads to your character feeling robotic.
- The choosing of your own path was a lie. learning the dark arts has no consequences other then the side quest line you learn them from. leading to a very linear experience.
- PC performance is really bad, even with a 3080, this game is a memory hog, I had to seek optimisation solutions outside of the game, even then I could only play on high quality, capping at 60 fps,and still getting frequent frame drops.

All that being said, im glad I finished the game to experience the final quest. But with all of the cons I cannot recommend the game at full price. I think if you're a harry potter fan, you can look over all this and still have fun. But if you've never read the books or watched the movies and are experiencing this as a stand alone title, it'll probably keep you from enjoying the game.