Recent reviews by 0oRichard

One of those games/stories you will think about at 3 AM when you're supposed to sleep. Pretty relatable to anyone that uses creating things as an outlet.

So, this is a walking simulator. But I enjoyed 100%-ing it.

It's from the creators of Gone Home, so I don't think I need to mention story is good. You follow around these holo-recordings. Invading the privacy of these characters to piece together a plot. At first you think nothing of them but the game makes you curious and eventually attached to these characters.

The story is hidden in the details. What books are on peoples shelves, their hobbies, their past, mail, mementos, clutter. It feels really off-putting and creepy snooping around, but I think that is partly the point. Just a tiny spoiler that I think most will miss: one of the characters sisters died in the past due to poor judgement from the very same company she herself is currently working at. The pin to her office is her sisters date of death. You can easily find the sticky note as an unrelated bookmark with the pin but if you had snooped around more you would get a deeper understanding of the character.

There's a lot of orwellian themes and ideas from sci-fi literature in this game. So probably not for everyone but I enjoyed this unique way of storytelling.

As you arrive in town you are attacked by random people. Game literally starts with you bleeding out. People on the street think you're a killer and there's a rumor you killed your own father. Plain civilians will attack you and self-defense only further lowers your reputation. If you even survive the encounter.

As you'll try to reconnect with your friends, you also will have to deal with hunger and thirst. You'll find yourself rummaging through trash, trading peanuts for fingernails with kids and raiding people's houses.
You're supposed to be a respected local doctor that has come back from study abroad to visit his father.

That's day 1.

It will go only further downhill from there. You will embark on quests where people set you on a wild goose chase. You will think you did the right thing providing water for people only to find the entire district dying the next day because of your choice. You'll get desperate for food and maybe try to sneak up on a person and kill them. You'll abandon friends and children that grew dependent on you. No one can be trusted and everyone is incompetent. People will die because you planned your route too poorly for the day and you walk at a snails pace because there is no water left. You will consider selling the cure over saving your friend, because there's 6 more days to go and they are sick already - that money can be put towards food, so you could buy more time to pick herbs and make medicine. Weird people will come up to you offering you organs and even weirder people will buy it off you for high price. And you will harvest and sell.

The game is very different from normal RPG's but I enjoyed it because it has an original take on survival and RPG. The story and dialogue can be a bit too philosophical, but the game is very self-aware about it.

It's not a scary game or a hard game once you get a hang of it. But it challenges everything you are used to in RPGs.

Great game. Beating Hades on Extreme Measures 4 Pact of Punishment with 16+ heat was fun. No death defiance left. 3 HP. I thought after ~50 runs the game couldn't spike my heart rate but they proved me wrong.

I looked forward to new dialogue. Art style is great. The Unseen Ones soundtrack is great. Interesting setting (doesn't sugarcoat the original mythos). I've followed Supergiant Games ever since Bastion and enjoyed every single game from them.

Pros:
- New faction. Some of the reviews here seem to indicate that these guys are bland, have no flavor nor work put into them. That's just not true. They are quite unique, not reskins. PC's react to them and call out bestigors, archers, etc. They change combat quite a bit. Some attacks might seem bugged but they aren't. The spear guys for example can hit you from quite far away and I know for me that felt broken when in reality I was just used to mobs having to be really close to hit. Same for archers, you can get barraged by archers if you don't take care. Bestigors can distrupt the typical hack/slash formation. Banners are hard to reach high priority targets.
- New difficulty level (cataclysm).
- New game mode that is kinda unique and spins off of base maps.
- New weapons that make some classes viable.
- It is a good leveling method if you start to level new characters. Since weave amulet (boosts your power level) is account-bound, you can jump into quite high difficulty Weave quickplay with a fresh new character.
- Dark Omens map is pretty hard on legend.

Cons:
- Weapons and cataclysm mode feel like extensions for base game that should not have been put behind this DLC.
- The base price of ~16 eur is kinda steep. At the same time I have found ~16 eur worth of enjoyment from this DLC. If it was more fleshed out I wouldn't mention the price.
- Can't play ranked with bots and randoms only join quickplay. If you don't have friends, finish a quickplay and suggest doing ranked next. Works like 80% of the time.
- Doesn't really tie into the base game.
- Isn't popular, in the lobby you find ~4 active quickplays tops.
- I can think of one stitched weave map in particular that had visual artifacts in one part of the map. The same map also has an objective marker that is just plain wrong and consistently gets a group of randoms killed since they don't know where to go.
- The ability to generate weave points from base game mission completion is not communicated well. It is an obscure level up talent-thingie on the weave amulet. So people jumping straight into veteran weave with their maxed lvl 35's for the first time get absolutely obliterated since they haven't ranked up their weave equipment.
- While I like the mobs the initial reaction was that they feel kinda stiff and non-vocal. But there are some very specific voice cues still. Banners, bestigors, minotaurs come to mind.
- It felt real annoying running up to the cauldron to do weaves. Until I learned about the crack in the wall at the keep entrance that is a welcome shortcut to the cauldron.

Regarding negative reviews about map and factions. Maps have crashed but so have base game maps and for me it's been like 1/50 maps and some of them are probably due to poor connection to host. The mobs are not buggy. Not any more than the base game ones (flying mobs, spawn out of nowhere, etc.). The faction is great. People that say they are not 'fun' to fight against, should try to get good first. They are in many ways harder and expect you to pay more attention. Can't just ballet dance around everything.

I also do need to mention that I'm not exactly hardcore and don't play on cataclysm except for maybe in-game cheevos. I never played Vermintide 1 and with my 100 - 300 hours of play I don't consider myself a veteran.

Maybe for people that have come to expect a certain level of polish from Fatshark can justly give this DLC a 'Mostly Negative' rating. I can't. This DLC works. Is enjoyable. Brings a fresh game mode. Brings fleshed out faction. It delivers on what was promised. I do recommend this game, but if it is on sale.

Fun grind.

People that played GunZ: The Duel will find only dissappointment in this one, they stripped the features that i personally liked in the first one, so few players that you will be matched against players 10 levels higher all the time. If in the first game cash wall and levels could be countered with skill, in this one that's made frustratingly difficult no matter what your skill level is. It's really slowed down and dumbed down, i was constantly mowed down by grenade launchers and SMG's which would of never been the case in the first game. Gimmicky skill tree (and class system). If you are considering this game, give it a shot and if you find it at all enjoyable and can see yourself playing it, play GunZ: The Duel instead, especially if you like swordplay. Also i didn't see any shotguns, maybe they are in it but i didn't see any.