Reviews

Concise Review:

Amazing:

Great: Unique dynamic combat system that feels smooth. The atmosphere and visual style to the game including the amount of particle effects and physics is very well done.

Good: Story and background lore. The RPG mechanics are solid, simple, but do allow for some tough choices in what to upgrade, multiple builds exist that play pretty differently.

Fine: Enemy variety is a bit limited, borderline bad.

Bad: It is so easy to get lost. Checkpoints could be better organized or spaced out.

Awful: The map is pretty much useless, actually it’s worse than useless because it’s so misleading.

Journal Style Review:

Strong opening. Cool vibes. I’m already digging the mystery and the atmosphere of the game. I like breaking stuff. The particle effects are cool. Combat is visually pleasing because of it. It’s very satisfying.

I’m getting lost a lot. I find the map confusing. I need to stop looking at the map and look at the actual world more. I’m liking the combat though. This game has had a promising start. I just need to figure out how to navigate the world better.

The upgrade system seems relatively straightforward but effective. I like trying out the new guns and abilities and thinking about which perks and mods are best. The game appears to do a good job of letting you test out the guns and abilities and then focus on which suit you best through upgrades.

I’ve had multiple cutscenes where there is no audio so I have no idea what happened. That’s frustrating. Other than that the only other bugs I’ve dealt with are that the map doesn’t always load in, but I hate the map regardless.

Combat continues to improve. It’s the highlight of the game. The atmosphere of the game is still great but the story is a lot simpler than I expected it to be. It isn’t bad, but i thought there would be more. It felt like a story driven game at the start but I don’t think I’d call it story driven anymore. It’s gameplay and mechanics driven. If you want the full story you need to read a lot of the collectables. I’ve read a handful and some are interesting and well done, but reading papers found throughout a game has never been my thing. 

I liked the story bit when she meets the brother. That was a good scene. The fungus areas and black quarry were great locations too. The locations and style and atmosphere to the game is still really good. I just hope we get a bit more details in the story. I hope it goes somewhere.

The fungus people seems suspiciously similar to TLOU. But hey, I like them so I’ll look the other way.

The game is still getting better for me. Im appreciating the different builds that you can do with this game. There are lots of different ways to allocate upgrades. I could see this game justifying a second play through.

The lore reading material is well done and I’m reading more of them than I typically would. I usually find the bonus reading material in games just messes up the game’s rhythm and takes away from my experience but in this one I am coming across tid bits that are interesting relatively often. It’s still not my preference for story telling though.

It’s slowly climbing the A- ranks, but still near the bottom.

The hotel bits aren’t that good. They are repetitive and unrewarding (so far).

The distorted credits scene I enjoyed. It came out of nowhere. There better be more to the campaign though.

The charge explosive pistol is so good once upgraded. I breezed threw the final fight. It wasn’t challenging at all. I don’t really understand the ending. I was liking the vibes of the final few missions I just don’t really understand what happened... I’m going to need to google.

I googled and I’m not that pleased with the ending. It’s too vague and lacks details, not super satisfying. That being said, overall I was still interested in the story the whole campaign. I just don’t think it lives up to its potential.

I do plan to beat a few more of the side quests. I want to play around in this world a bit more, which is always a good sign, but this game is going to finish as a low A-. It has the building blocks for an amazing game due to its gameplay and atmosphere but unfortunately it is also negatively affected by some quality of life issues, and the actual storyline doesn’t live up to the standard that the atmosphere and lore creates. I’m left wanting more.   .

Final Score: A-