Recent reviews by Veliator

The game is good at its core.

But man, the developers are trying their best to ruin the game and remove any semblance of balance in it. It's nothing but pistols (one-shot kill) and knives (super speed plus stun lock). Every other weapon is completely outclassed by these two. Every zealot, veteran, and sometimes pyskers are running the same combination of these weapons. Before the patches, there were so many viable weapons that could run Auric difficulties without trying hard with your palms sweaty but for some reason having fun and relaxing a bit is not allowed in a video game. So they nerfed almost every weapon to oblivion. You can still use them if you have skills to back it up but why would you do that? The meta weapons dominate the others in every shape and form, they even have better synergy with all the skills and passives.

And then the content. Oh boy, there is zero content. It has been almost 2 years since its release and they added nothing significant to the game, other than Penances (sort of battle pass) and Skins. Not even a single new map. They added a few new missions but like I said it is not a new map, just re-using the same old map but instead of going right, you go left, instead of assassinating a target, you blow up the place, etc.

They added crafting but it is bare bones and you have to grind like a mother-♥♥♥♥♥♥ to get the blessings (perks) that you need to make the weapon to be somewhat usable. The worst part of it is that you have unlocked a certain blessing that is common throughout all weapons but you still have to farm for the same blessing to unlock it for every other weapon which is ridiculous.

The more I play this game the more I hate it. It has so much potential and it could easily be the best/top horde shooter/slasher game out there in the gaming industry. Yet the developers waste everyone's time with their useless cycle of monotony and false promises. After all this time they introduced nothing new to the game, just endless "patches" of more of the same or should have already been in the game at the release date.

Pretty much the game of the year and all of this year's game awards. You know it. Don't deny it.

They took away the "Ballistics"... 9/10

Callisto Protocol even after the patch still doesn't make it worthy as the Dead Space spiritual successor. So forgive me if I make lots of comparisons.

The Combat sucks. It locks you in this 1 vs 1 boxing match, dodge, block, and strike, which makes the camera obnoxious and oblivious to your surroundings, Making you feel uncomfortable and frustrating to play. It gets worse when you are surrounded by multiple enemies, forcing you to stealth or having them follow you into a hallway/chokepoint to make it more bearable. The worst part of it is that you have only ONE melee weapon for the entirety of the game.
Later you get a gun but it feels weak and underwhelming even when it is fully upgraded. Even a shotgun fully upgraded can't kill an enemy in point-blank range. You can't take a horde as you do in Dead Space, forcing you to mix gunplay with melee combat.
Sadly, the guns have no uniqueness like the former and they are all pretty much the same.
You unlock 2 pistols, 2 shotguns, and 1 assault rifle. That's it.
The gravity gauntlet is cool but it's only used for combat and pulling objects. They serve no other purpose, unlike Dead Space which was used to solve puzzles or even to pick distant items that was unreachable.

During the game you get only ONE suit upgrade (dunno if you can even call it an upgrade), you have limited inventory space and there is no 'storage' to store all the excess items which forces you either sell or drop items as you move on.

The story is weak. There is nothing of value here that makes it amazing nor it gives you a sense of foreboding as they did in Dead Space. Neither there is a single plot twist that makes it any of interest. The characters are boring and flat, they have no bond or strong relationship with one another and it feels forced and cringe when they interact with each other.
Overall, they try so hard to make something out of nothing that it hits flat on the wall pretty quickly.

The only thing that is worth noting about this game is the atmosphere and gore but honestly, that was a given. Plus cheap high noise, in your face, jump scares that it is just sad, really.

4/10 Below average game.
I did the dumb thing buying the Deluxe Edition out of hype and it feels like I've been robbed.
Never again.

Edit: Oh, and 8.4hrs was more than enough to complete the game and I wasn't even rushing.

FF7 REMAKE INTERGRADE is only one part of the upcoming series.

They stretched out the beginning/tutorial level of the game to 30+ hours. Also, they added tons of meaningless side quests which are fetching quests and killing quests. (Seriously, that's it) and top of that, there are about 10+ hours of cutscenes that adds absolutely nothing to the story. You open a door? CUTSCENE, you climb a ladder? CUTSCENE, you press a button? CUTSCENE, you walk down a hallway? CUTSCENE, so on and on. The game stops so often with cutscenes that are downright ridiculous and annoying. It disturbs the whole pacing of the game to a crawl.

They added many new side characters in the game. They love to waste your time with utter crap of expositions and information that nobody asked. Some of the characters, like the Avalanche trio and the TURKS, were understandable to have more screentime. But everybody else? Not even close. They are not even part of the main story. Nor do they serve as an important factor to the protagonists. Many of them are sunday cartoon villains just to fill the lists of bad guys you encounter. In all, it feels like they are a bunch of mundane fillers to give an excuse for the playing time and to fill their greedy pockets with more money.

The combat is mediocre. The real-time hack & slash is entertaining and flashy enough to keep me reeled in. But I found some annoyance to flying enemies and enemies on high ground. A lot of your character's abilities are melee attacks. So you have to spam magic to defeat them. You have an auto-jump attack but it's gimmicky at best. Tactics are thrown out of the window all you need to do is spam attacks and chug potions.

I just can't wrap around my head that this was the best Square-Enix could do with the time and money that they have. Not only do they have the audacity to charge 60 dollars for one-third of the full game. But they also make it an EPIC store exclusive.
I know that a lot of people are brainwashed to love this game without any questions. But for me? I'm done. I'm not going to purchase the next parts of the series unless it is all out with a massive discount, which is very unlikely.

4/10 - Below average game

Edit:
Forgot to mention this...
Flying Black Sperms
The ultimate Deus Ex Machina.
Really now, it is impossible to take this game seriously when the game makes fun of itself.

Only commander Shepard can stop the Reapers from 'reaping' human rectal areas.

Okay, now that I've finished playing the whole series, I'll write a more compelling review.

First of all, this is a remastered version, not a complete remake. The textures have been updated but the gameplay is the exact same. No changes at all.

There are some minor lip-sync issues throughout the series and some fps drops but nothing major that breaks the whole game.

If you are looking for a good single-player with deep characters seek no more.
While the overarching story is a bit of a cliche, the characters in this universe are the true gem and meat of the story.

I bought this game mostly out of nostalgia, and it is worth every penny. At least for me, for I played this series on my ps3 (Terrible loading time and 30 fps lock).
Now playing it on my PC with uncapped fps and almost instant loading time, it feels like heaven.

So many hackers, it doesn't matter what rank or mode you are. You will always find a hacker.

I'm stunned by the sheer disappointment this game turned out to be.

I bought the game because of the demo. It allured me with a rich background story, characters, and most importantly with intricate choices. But it turned out that all of it was nothing but a mere illusion.
Here is why:
In the game, you have certain stats or skills that are supposed to help you to reach a better outcome. These skills, however, do not affect the result of your choice but rather "unlocks" more choices with unforeseen outcomes or consequences. As well as, if you do not meet these "requirements", you are forced down to one single direction that ends your journey prematurely.
For example, one will think by rising one's combat skills would help him to overcome certain fights or parts of the story where your character has to use his brawn rather than his brain. Sadly, it does not help at all. No matter how high your skill is i.e.: "Unbeatable", you are still beaten or killed by the "plot" itself. And as I continued to play the game it became more clearer that they are nothing but unlockables to add more choices rather than tools to improve your decisions.

The story itself becomes convoluted at later stages and there is absolutely no way of knowing your future predicament. It becomes way too chaotic, and all the "decisions" you made seem to have no effect at all. And most of the time no matter what you do, the "story" takes over and you will encounter many unavoidable deaths, even an early game over.

This mechanic is utterly useless and annoying that will end up getting you killed in a most foolish way or railroad you into a dead end. Unable to make any progress, you are forced down to select a single "answer" rather than to "choose" a path.

For a "choices matters" game there seems to be no choices at all. So, for the reasons above I can not recommend this game.

Edited, so you can know more about these "stats".

Yes, the game lets you know the "stats" you are getting off from the choice or even the deaths before you pick. But at the later stage of the game, you "must" focus on certain stats. It's like you are building an RPG character and "MIN-MAXING" these stats. Because these requirements get higher as you play throughout the game. And if don't meet these required "stats" level, many of these "choices" are greyed out, forcing you to pick the only available "choice".

For example:
-Noble needs to focus on fighting
-Priest need to focus on theology
-Lotless need to focus on subterfuge

Not only that, but you also need certain "DESTINY" perks that you gain during your playthrough. If you do not have this "perk" it doesn't matter if you have the required stats level, you still won't be able to choose them. Making you to fail on your journey down the line.

Another edit:

Another example to explain this better.

Let's say that you start a journey from point A to point B. But along that journey you make multiple, dividing decisions. And from those decisions, you will forge your own unique story that defines your character. Albeit a little different it still helps you to reach point B.

In this game, however, you start a journey from point A to point B. But instead of having multiple solutions to reach point B like above, you must pick a "correct" path, or else you will never reach point B. Meaning; that you don't actually have a choice. That choice is taken away from you, and you are forced down to take a singular path.

There are no choices here. There are only correct answers.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker is another "Baldur's Gate spiritual successor". Even when some people are claiming to be otherwise, it is abundantly clear that after the success of Pillars of Eternity other companies are trying to get into the 'table-top RPG into PC'.
While some aspects of the game are on point, regretfully it is overshadowed by the 'bad' counterpart.

-Graphics:
There is nothing to nitpick about this one. While it's not breathtakingly gorgeous, it is more than adequate for the game.

-Music & Sound:
I'm no expert on the music department, but I think it is quite good and it fits perfectly with the game.
The SFX too, again, there is nothing to fuss about it.

-Performance:
It is bad.

I have 2 GTX1080, 32GB of RAM and an i7-7820X processor and the game barely runs at 60fps(high settings). Most of the times when you are in a big area, or in a huge battle with many spells firing off in your screen. Your fps will drop below 30. I know that this game uses Unity Engine but that is not an excuse to present a game with such poor optimization.

Oh, I forgot to mention that it has memory leaks as well, and prolonged gameplay will drastically lower the performance even more.

-Story:
It is the worst part of the game.

The story starts quite simple and the plot as a whole seems to be quite interesting at first glance. Sadly as the story continues it becomes more than evident that it is appealing at best and feels entirely rushed.

The main villain and its 'minions' are pitiful at best, it is the classic good guy/girl that fell from grace or got manipulated to become evil. Who wants your sympathy at the end and wants us to feel bad for him/her, even when they committed more genocide than Hitler and Stalin combined.
The so-called secret antagonist is mundane as well. He is evil and mad just because he is. Seriously, that's it.

And most of your companions (even the 'iconic' character) are equally bad. I can not believe how shallow, distant and unrelatable they are. I found my self impossible to feel any sort of bond with them. I would love to talk about them one by one but I cannot do so without spoiling.

Another thing about the narrative is that just like many other RPGs out there, you are able to choose your outcome throughout various dialogues(alignment choices). But here is the thing, the only choice that matters the most are the good alignment choices and it even has an additional choice of dialogues. Most of the other choices will ensure in a failure of a quest, or the loss of certain characters(companions included).
It feels like the whole story and the interaction with its people was meant for a good alignment character, and the devs seem to have planned little if not at all for any other alignment of your choosing.

By the end, I couldn't care less about the story anymore and I ended up skipping all the dialogues and went straight for the slaughter, so I could finally put an end to this game and its god awful plot that tries so hard to be good.

-Gameplay:
It's an isometric party-based real-time combat with a pause mechanic, just like Baldur's Gate, Dragon Age, PoE, etc. While I have nothing against this kind of mechanics or gameplay, many people seem to dislike it and they rather stick to the good old turn-based combat or at least they want it like PoE 2, where they added an option to play the game in turn-based combat. While I like both turn-based and real-time combat, I think people should experience the game as the devs intended(real-time combat), but then again I have nothing against the people who wants a turn-based combat option. I think it would give more depth to the game and it should make everyone content.

Anyway, continuing on. The game, just like its spiritual predecessor Baldur's Gate, it is (almost) faithful to the table-top rules. And those who are new to this kind of game they might find themselves stuck or unable to progress because of the unforgiving nature of its difficulty(you can lower it though).
Sadly there is nothing you can do about it but to min/max every possible character in your party and quick-save and quick-load constantly, because in the early game it's all about lucky rolls since your characters are under-leveled and they lack the items and feats to cover up their weaknesses.
But these annoyances are quickly disappeared as you progress throughout the game, you get stronger and acquire better loots. Hell, on later stages of the game you and your party will be walking murdering machines with no one there to stop you.

There are some annoyances such as rare random encounters against very powerful enemies that are clearly way above your party's level. And quests that won't show any markers, which requires you to go back and forth, one by one, between each area to find it. I recommend you to just google it or look into the forums because it is a complete waste of time with no benefits what-so-ever.

And just like Pillars of Eternity, they added text adventures as well, but they lack any sound and voice which makes them feels disengaged and inferior compared to the latter. And the skill checks for them are absurdly high making them downright impossible to pass without certain items and feats.

There is kingdom management as well, but it is bare-bone minimum and barely worth noticing.

One last thing that I need to mention, and I absolutely despised on this game, is the TIMED QUESTS. Yes, you read it right. Quests with limited time in a singleplayer RPG game.
There is nothing to explain about this one for it speaks for itself.
Seriously, whoever added this thing into the game can go straight to hell.

-Verdict: 6/10 - Above average
The game has good graphics with a suitable soundtrack. But I believe that the most important features/foundation of a good RPG is a reliable story with relatable characters and solid gameplay to match. Sadly Pathfinder: Kingmaker failed to deliver this and It is a damn shame, for it has the potential to be a true spiritual successor of Baldur's Gate series.

Buy it on your own discretion but I highly recommend to buy it on sale.

P.S.
Because of the dreadful story, I couldn't bring my self to play the DLC. I just don't have any sort of expectations and the will to play this anymore. Maybe after a year or so I will come back to it.

I don't know how on earth this game made it to the release without getting into my radar, but I'm damn glad that it did.

ATOM RPG is a post-apocalyptic Role-playing game, set in Soviet Russia. And just like Fallout 1 and 2, it has some dark humor, sex, drugs, pop-culture reference, and violence. The only difference is that many places, as well as characters, are based on Russian cultural figures and places, so sometimes the joke or the reference will go right above your head.

The game plays almost identical to Fallout 1/2, most of the time when you are exploring it is a point and click adventure. But when it comes to combat it changes to turn-based combat, you use action points, which can be used to move around, access inventory, attack, reload, etc.

Another thing that I want to mention about the game is that it heavily focuses on the story, the dialogues, and the characters rather than the combat. What I mean is that you can approach many quests and situations which you encounter in different ways by being smart (using certain skills) or by using certain stats such as strength, dexterity, attention, intelligence, personality or even luck. So your character build does indeed matter, and you should think about it first before creating a new one.
Still, if you don't like talking or reading you can solve them by killing your way out of it as well, but it is not that rewarding, because sometimes you will miss some critical information regarding certain quests or characters, or you might even end that certain quest prematurely, missing a huge part of that quest and the side quest that comes with it.
But even with what I wrote above, you shouldn't try to go for the perfect run from your first playthrough and play the game as you want since the game is replayable.

There is also crafting and base building but I never used nor explored them, since I found 'em unnecessary (I intend to explore the base building in my second playthrough).

Now, with the things mentioned above, this can be a great game for certain people and a horrible game for others. So, unless you are really into a turn-based, post-apocalyptic, fallout CRPG, I do not recommend you to buy the game. But, if you are into it then what are you waiting for? Just buy the game right now, you won't regret it.