Recent reviews by Awooobis

After playing PoE2 for a few hours on a couple of different classes, I think I can say that this game probably isn't for me.

I enjoy ARPGs which allow you to play the way you want to play, Last Epoch being a great example of this. In that game, I was able to play though multiple classes and specialise in skills I found fun and cool. I could upgrade those skills and make them incredibly powerful in different ways, whichever direction took my fancy. In PoE2, I slot in skills I find cool and fun and I'm punished for it. It feels like I MUST play a specific way or I'm doing it wrong - I hate that. On top of this, I feel like skill customisation is awful in this game. These are handled via Support Gems but it feels like over half of them impose some kind of detrimental drawback that makes me just ignore them.

Overall, I feel like PoE2 isn't a game for people that enjoy playing how they want to play. Bit upsetting that Last Epoch's update was delayed because of this

Dragon's Dogma 2 has been a blast to play through - I've really enjoyed every step on my adventure!

The new vocations are really enjoyable, barring Trickster which felt like it needed a bit more time in the oven. Enemy variety and repetitiveness is a little disappointing but it was never a deal breaker at any point in my travels.

Character customisation is incredible and I loved that I could finally create a furry Arisen and Main Pawn, though this is slightly let down by a lack of gear customisation. It seemed that for each level milestone, a new set of gear unlocked per vocation but there's not a lot of actual choice in what you can wear if you're looking for the best stats, which really can result in you or your main Pawn looking pretty much like everyone else in the Rift.

Overall, DD2 has been incredible despite the criticism mentioned above - it's been a long time since a game's ending had me teary-eyed. I'm eagerly awaiting future expansions :)

For a game that's just released into Early Access, Palworld offers a lot of content already up to a reasonable level of polish. What this game sets as the starting line, many others would call a finished product - the future of this game is definitely a bright one but that being said, at the moment there are a few issues which really hamper long-term enjoyment of playing and you can definitely spot areas which sorely need improvement that might not be obvious in the first few hours of playtime.

Two major issues that I encountered often whilst playing were that your Pals would clip and disappear into the environment, leaving them unable to defend your bases and even worse, starve if left unnoticed. This more so occurred with larger Pals or those of the flying variety but having to constantly respawn them back is a massive pain. Alongside this, if playing on dedicated servers, your pals will starve and develop major negative debuffs when you log off as the game still counts those Pals as 'existing' but does not let them actually function. I found the workaround to this issue was to put my Pals back into storage whilst not playing but experiencing this early on without warning was devastating as the items needed to cure these debuffs are costly.

Aside from major issues, there were areas of this game that I really believe need improvement to make it a lot more enjoyable.

I often found myself frustrated with the pathing that Pals take throughout the bases I created as this sometimes caused them to get stuck on objects or the environment. On top of this, I find that they really struggle to navigate multi-story buildings and interact with workstations that might be too close to other objects. It was not an enjoyable sight to see my Pals' sanity continue to drop whilst a spa was readily available but ignored on the upper tier of my home.

Another area of improvement is regarding the automation of Pals and workstations. Currently, you can deploy Pals to your bases and they will work on things that they are skilled in, such as watering, planting, crafting, moving items to storage and so on. However, you can't set a multi-skilled Pal to solely work one type of job. This meant that I often saw workstations ignored in favour of something else that I deemed a lesser priority and the only way to fix this is to have a Pal specifically for that type of job or dedicating the existing Pal to work on that station for the rest of its life. I'm extremely hopeful that automation overall will be expanded upon as there's a lot of minor issues that would be solved as a result. One example is that currently there is no point in farming anything other than red berries as the entire process to produce and store these in the Food Basket is automated whereas with other food items, there are manual steps required to cook these up and then manually have to store these to become available to your base Pals. The effort required to do this much outweighs any benefit gained from preparing higher quality food items and I found myself quite the fool of my friend group for trying to make this work by constantly running out mid-production whilst they were feeding their Pals berries-a-plenty without effort. I should also mention that any foothold gained during this endeavour was lost when I logged out as all the food I had prepared just decayed whilst I was away because, due to the workaround in putting my Pals in storage whilst logged off, there was nobody available to refrigerate the food.

Combat overall is generally okay though I did find myself wishing that this was much improved. One of the pain points endured during combat is that I occasionally found my Pal and an enemy Pal circle or freeze close to each other for more than a few moments, especially in the case of the freezing of movement. Pals also try to position themselves well in order to get abilities off but on more than one occasion, this just meant that my Pal was constantly moving or dashing to a spot only to decide it wasn't optimal enough if the enemy was just a little too close. Another point on this topic is raids, specifically the time it takes for Pals to retaliate and the inability to intercept a group before they reach your home. When raids occur, I generally try to cut the group off with my own party of Pals but in every instance of trying to do this, my Pals ignore the raiders until they reach my base's circle of influence where they can readily raise havoc and incapacitate my lower-levelled base Pals. There are sandbags and defensive walls available but these are not unlocked from the get-go. On top of this, because your base's circle of influence is relatively small with no way to increase it, building defensive walls takes away from your already limited space so it is not ideal if you're trying to maximise production and output. Perhaps this could be alleviated by building multi-story buildings but I've already mentioned the issues with this. It's also a struggle to maintain structures outside of your base's circle of influence because they actively decay without any actual warning so building checkpoints near your bases, however cool it would be, is not actually possible at this time.

Regarding the Tech Tree, this is a really simple implementation of tying buildings, workstations, equipment and Pal Gear to levels. Each level, you'll unlock a swathe of new items that are available to craft in their respective menus. However, what I believe needs to be improved from here is the related tech offerings provided per level as some of the groupings just don't make sense. I don't understand why after unlocking the ability to build a base from stone, I'm not actually allowed to construct a stone gate or defensive stone wall at that point. Instead, I need to grind an incredible amount of levels to unlock these two extra things that really should've just been available with everything else from the stone-tier.

Despite all of these issues and areas of improvement, I gave this game a positive review. Truth is, I struggle not to recommend this game as in spite of all of this, I found myself having a lot of fun. It's so enjoyable to see a lot of care taken and minor details implemented in such an early release of a game. I love seeing each Pal animated uniquely as they walk, work and sleep differently from one another. I love seeing them smile at me as I walk on by as they just finish up with something - all of this makes them feel more alive and less like typical generic mobs. I'm hopeful that next I revisit and review this game, all of these aforementioned points will hopefully be fixed or expanded upon. We're already aware that building improvements and Pal AI are actively being worked on amongst other things. If the developer continues their work on this game, I'm sure it will result in it being quite the polished gem.

106 hours later and I've finally finished my play through of Baldur's Gate 3.

This really is one of the best games I've had the pleasure of playing in years. Initially, I didn't think I'd enjoy this as much since it uses a D&D Ruleset but after a couple of hours, it really started to grow on me. I really enjoy the freedom to change your class at any point by heading back to camp. This opened the door to a lot of experimentation that would otherwise be locked behind a complete restart and thanks to this, I finally settled on a class that I really enjoyed: Oathbreaker Paladin.

Before fully releasing, Larian had spoken often about the amount of permutations involved in BG3 - essentially advertising that the choices you make have a real impact. After being let down so many times by other games promising this, with those choices and impacts being underwhelming or an illusion of choice, it's so refreshing and incredible to see a game finally pull this off to great effect on scales both big and small. For example, choices that I thought would've been inconsequential or swept under the rug in earlier Acts came back, for better or for worse, in later parts of the story and gameplay. These choices also influence your Companions in ways which make them seem alive and reactive. If you're romancing a character, how you treat them is essential for your relationship to blossom. Don't be surprised if your love interest breaks off your relationship if you don't show them respect or if push them to do things they really don't want to do (sorry Astarion D:).

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Baldur's Gate 3. I don't think anything will top the experience I had playing an evil Dark Urge Dragonborn. I'm looking forward to the upcoming patches which further flesh out Act 3, though I really wouldn't let this deter you from giving this gem of a game a try.

No one is around to help.

Life is hard, life is stressful.

I need peace and tranquillity.

I don't have to prove myself to anyone.

woe upon them for I am become death, destroyer of bunnies

A fun game well worth the asking price. Be warned, the controls take some adjustment to get used to

everyone always talks about slaying the spire - have we tried seducing the spire instead?

A fun mix between card game and rogue-like. Highly recommended and gets even better once combined with mods.

Volks has captured my heart

great game, cute guys, 18+ DLC - what more do you really need in life?

If you're looking for a solid RPG to play, look no further.

Tyranny is a masterclass in telling an engaging and dynamic story - the choices you make truly matter here and you will need to keep in mind the burdens that come with that.

I enjoyed how the magic was handled here and the combat was fun though other reviewers have mentioned the combat actually being a weak-suit so beware.

fun game, really enjoyed abusing innocent creatures so I can make better looking armour