Recent reviews by Aσ

Animations are cool, feels like reliving the manga, but the combat is complete dog feces, and that's what's in your face most of the time;

Enemies have endless super armor, it's manageable when it's in a 1v1 but more often than not you'll be facing 2 to 3 enemies with some of them chaining super armor moves and/or spamming you from range with Ki blasts. Genuinely the worst fight experience I've had in a DB game

I played a lot during beta, as most people did high likely.
The game used to be fast paced, had nice movement techs (batman my beloved) and felt smooth. Now it's incredibly sluggish, zoomed in, the arenas are smaller and the characters are bigger.

I encourage you to look up videos of the beta ver., to check out the differences.
Took me 2 matches on this public release to understand that I'm not going to enjoy what they did with the game.

Honestly a shame.

It's a bit of what you'd expect of a soulsgame that isn't FromSoftware's. It has some pros, a lot of cons, but it's still an okay game if you get it cheap and don't torture yourself through it and keep telling yourself in your head "this isn't a FromSoft game".

It's a really easy game, in my opinion, which is not a good thing.
All the things listed below are naturally my own takes and experiences.

Cons :
- Wobbly movement. Running feels like ice skating, walking feels like running.

- Attack movement. Can be appreciated by some, not by me. Even the heaviest weapons make you move forward A LOT on a single input, and make you miss attacks.

- Weapon swapping. You are pretty much bound to only one weapon in right hand, and only magic or physical range. There is no multi-slot swap.

- Camera lock. Even after messing with options, the camera lock still never targets what I want it to target.

- OST. It's very lackluster, there are a few times (can be counted on a hand with 3 fingers) where a good track played and I realized "there's music in this game, right".

- Horrible framerate. I run this game with lower graphics than Elden Ring at its max, and it still exhausts my GPU more and has massive drops.

- Questionable fight outcomes. Defeating a certain boss too early will lock you out of certain quests and endings. Players are being punished for performing.

- Umbral mechanic. Nice on paper, not exploited as it should and could, trivializes the game with a "second chance" more than anything else, there's no depth to this "other dimension" other than finding a bridge.

- The lantern. It's the main selling point of the game, just like Umbral, but it can be entirely ignored except for mandatory puzzles ; that alone means you didn't execute it well.

- Game difficulty. I've simply first timed every single boss encounter with no knowledge of their patterns or mechanics. There was no anticipation of my next encounter.

- Map design. A lot of places are redundant, I sometimes feel lost thinking "I went everywhere, I'm lost" but I didn't because a doorway/pathway looked the exact same in appearance and position to the one I came from.

- Stat reset. The game gives you too few Rebirth Chrysalis to reset your build, if you want more, you have to grind an extremely tedious and poorly thought-out online system.

- Online system (eyeballs). Players death drop a red lantern you have to Soulflay to lead to the enemy that killed them, to avenge them, which rewards you with 3 eyeballs. This mechanic has a 3 minutes cooldown. 75 eyeballs for 1 respec item, 350 for ONE armor piece, 100 for armor dyes. Players came up with a way to bypass this by using a VPN to connect to Australia (gave 150 eyeballs instead of 3 there). Their response to it? Unlock the Australia store fully, and drop the eyes from 150 to 3. God forbid the thought that you could fix the problem your players tried to avoid.

- Stats disparity and scalings. Everything feels like it wants you to build into Radiance (Faith) stat, the best looking weapons, if not simply the best weapons and sorceries, are gated behind it. Meanwhile, the other 2 schools of magic, Inferno and Umbral, feel extremely lackluster, with the former meeting a LOT of fire-resistant enemies no matter on which playthrough, and the latter requiring an investment in BOTH Radiance and Inferno. Forget the idea of a hybrid melee build.

- Unfair fights. The game seems to pride itself on the "we're just like DS2" approach, but it isn't. DS2 is already a controversial game in the community, and you've picked, intentionally it feels like, the worst parts of it. Senseless enemy density? Check. Multiple bosses in a boss fight? Check. Unfair scenarios that force you to use unfair strategies? Check.
Kinrangr Guardian Folard, The Hollow Crow are the perfect representations of the failed boss designs of this game and its approach regarding "difficulty"

- Reused assets. Too many assets are reused, even on extremely important bosses. For example: Harrower Dervla, which would make any Berserk fan rejoice at this genderbend, has a solid 70% of assets reused from a basic enemy (in her first phase) called the Crimson Rectors.

- Boss encouters. Most of them feel dull, a huge majority of boss fights is just a large health bar strapped on a future regular field enemy you'll encounter.

- The endings directions. The Radiant ending has the most boring fight. The Inferno ending has nothing but a run-back, the Umbral ending is okay. And the Radiant ending unlocks Inferno spells...? The path does not vary at all on its main aspect, no matter which ending you are chosing, everyone remains your enemy. You'd think the Infernal enemies would stop attacking you or be replaced by other entities as you side with their god, nope.

- Paladin Isaac's Sword. The "signature" sword of the game, the one the character uses in the trailer, and uses against you in his fight. Clearly a large, broad, massively sized Zweihander. Why does it turn into a small, thin longsword in the player's hands??? ♥♥♥♥ that in particular.

- NPC placement and movement. The game feels like it simply expects you to look on wikis. The location of key NPCs is vague, if not completely unhinted at, and the way they move or even lock you out of their quest is hard to make sense of.

Pros :
- Identity. The game may borrow ideas from different source, and be set in a clearly inspired type of fantasy, it still feels different. Not once have I been to a place or experienced a mechanic and told myself "well this is just like X or Y".

- Ranged and ammo mechanic. This one is truly brilliant. No matter your build, you will have options for throwables without breaking thematic. For example: I for one love the average knight with nothing but strength, which offers no options for range in most soulgames standards. In here, I will be able to use crossbows and different bolts, or simply throw things like hatchets, poison bombs, flag spears that buff me, bleed knives, all while it scales on my strength and uses a resource ammo bar that scales on VIT/END.

- Armors and helmets. Not on DS1/DS3 levels, but it has more "medieval" type of armors than Elden Ring offers.

- Armor dye feature. It's a great feature, each armor piece and slot can be separately died and drastically change. A rusted brown armor can become a silver metal plate.

- Impact of attacks. I use nothing but swords and ultra swords, so this may vary for others, but I love the impact of heavy charged attacks. They feel strong, as they should.

- Game updates. The devs are extremely hard at work with the updates they're pumping, and they're no small updates. They add armors, weapons, spells, and of course optimizations. Although this should've all been part of the base game, the effort is appreciated.

- The Sundered Monarch. This shows you can do things right if you want to. It oozes emotion, heavy hearted storytelling, regret. It has a choreography, a structure, its fight is pleasant to learn and to read into and rewards your patience, it has personality, be it before the fight starts, or before he is about to die, gets out of his blind rage, disengages the fight and crawls back to the statue of his queen, all this while still in the fight.

______

In the end, I had to think more for the pros than for the cons.

By the end of the game, I kept playing to finish it and be done with it.
My feeling with the game isn't disappointment, anger or dislike, I just feel... awkward?
Like I was just served a medium-rare cooked chicken breast. I ate it, it wasn't unpleasant, it wasn't good either, but I feel weird about it.

I'm still glad I had the experience, as this makes me understand why I love the Dark Souls series so much, "don't take good games for granted" feeling is what remains, after this gameplay.

3D hollow knight thanks!

Not even close to what I played a while ago, seems like an S4League wannabe

Mandatory masterpiece for any game collection; music, artstyle, story, characters, platforming, you've got it all

Good game, pretty much a bootleg Pokémon but with effort put in it.

Some features are questionable, like breeding which can be a bit too RNG sometimes which is counterbalanced by the fact that natures don't exist in this game, but other than that the game is enjoyable, has surprisingly good OST, some charming mons and funny/much more interactive dialogues.

It really plays like a newer gen Pokémon, if anything, it's a really advanced romhack and the difficulty proves to be finely tuned for all levels even for someone such as me who played each and every Pokémon games competitively.

Absolutely stunning.
Very first few minutes gave me the magical vibe this game would carry for hours, it has an impressively long play time, a serious amount of challenge, beautiful artstyle, mesmerizing story and details and of course, amazing tracks.

This game can be played by anyone, but you have to be ready to be faced with challenging enemies, and that you'll have to learn not to overcommit.
Some bosses, one in particular, can take you up to 10 hours straight to complete, but imagine the joy when finally succeeding, tilting so many times and calling quits forever, that's what this game is about; your struggle makes your reward.

This is my very first MH game, and as a Xenoblade series fan (except 2) I have always been tempted and hearing about these games.
With World coming out, it was the perfect opportunity to play the most fresh and good looking MH games of all, and oh boi what a ride.

It's been hours of entertainement, it gave me that very same feeling I had with Xenoblade games where I could just play 7 hours a day without seeing the time.
Weapons are awesome and there is everything to statisfy everyone, except mages fans, but I'd very hardly see them fit in this universe.

Monsters are very detailed, you'll often get attached to them just by their roar and I already have my personal favorite, the final boss/monster being absolutely magnificent, the only personal problem is that everything is "too reptile", feels like they take a bunch of different animals and just put wings on them, but what else could they be anyway.

It's been a big enjoyement to play this game and still is, so if you're tempted just don't hesitate but most of all don't forget that if you play Greatsword : Put your grasses on, or some things will be very wong.

- Edited my previous ENTIRELY positive evaluation -

I'm playing since april 2016.
If you're bored of classic MMOs, having only 3 class changes, and if it's what's keeping you playing, you'll definetely enjoy this game.

It has its flaws, lots of them :
A bad management,
IMC treating iTOS like we milk cows for money,
updating us 3 to 6 months after kTOS/jTOS gets new content,
weekly updates but they are empty of bug fixes while bringing new/older ones back,
9 out of 10 last updates were about new cash shop items,
they aren't here at all,
they can ban you from the game if you cancel a TP purchase (happened to me, they charged me for 115€ I bought by mistake and I couldn't just stop the game like this),
we don't know what they are doing,
we report bugs to them but they say those are "intended effects"
they allow cheaters,
bots and macro users as long as they buy TP,
GMs in game (at least some) don't give a damn about if you are in need or not, they prefer talking about life in shouts with their friends while ignoring other shouts asking for help, because you can't even whisper them,
their support is useless,
they are useless. (no salt, they really are, if you play, I wish you to never need to go to their support)

You can still play even with that, but you have to understand that most of the servers other than NA are pretty dead or dying. Also, do not expect anything from IMC, but instead expect that the worst could happen.

The game is great, the music is awesome, characters are adorable, all the classes and build possibilities outcomes RO, since rebalance patch, every build is playable compared to before.

This game wasn't really P2W before, it's still okay but has 3 or 4 OP items you can get only with your money and they last for 7 days, and the TP shop was great before all that. You could purchase directly what you wanted for a fair price. Since a few months, they gave us a hugely stupid gacha system, where you have to gamble for the thing you wanted before. Typical korean MMO, right?
And about this, they tripled the prices of items that didn't make it to gacha boxes, they never explained why.

Lastly, I feel like they are making efforts, they take still a stupid amount of time to update the game, but it slowly gets somewhere.

I still enjoy playing it as long as there is characters to level and discover, and friends to play with.
I would suggest this game if you have people to play with, alone, you'll give up fast.