Recent reviews by Thial

The first game was one of my favorite childhood games. The second one was pretty nice as well. But this has so much left wing political messaging and cringe worthy characters that it honestly just put me off. It's like the game took a complete 180. Later on I realized that the first two games were made by Funcom while this one was made by the studio responsible for Dustborn so now it all makes sense.

Edited after the 1.0.1 patch.

Pros:
- Great graphics.
- Very nice voice acting.
- Amazing large world.
- Interesting story.
- Very nice gunplay and movement.
- Cool evolutions of mutants.

Cons:
- Performance dips pretty significantly around NPCs
- Alife is completely broken. Enemies spawning literally next to me or right behind me 1 second after turning my camera away.
- NPCs still have aimbots and wallhacks but their jankiness was already improved a bit.
- Still some visual issues like disappearing anomalies or frame gen ghosting.
- Due to map changes many iconic locations don't make sense in terms of the trilogy. Some iconic spots are missing. Original lore about some passages being accessible while others are not also makes no sense anymore since almost everything is fully open.
- NPC stalkers are very difficult to identify due to varied outfits and similarities between color schemes and less saturated outfits. Often I can't tell bandits apart from loners as well as some military and some monolith suits. There are too many similarities for easy identification which was not an issue in the trilogy.
- The weight to water movement speed ratio is ridiculous. Just because I have a lot on my back doesn't mean that I should be unable to move in ankle deep water.
- Upgrade UI is not great. Even though some upgrades are connected via lines getting a specific upgrade may cause some other one to be unobtainable. I would prefer if this was properly represented via a tree like in the older games. Having half of the conditions represented via lines and half via text is confusing.
- Why no mutant drops since the original lore clearly said that mutant parts are being exported out of the Zone for research and because some people eat them ?
- Why no night vision and binoculars ?
- Stashes are a bit of a downgrade. We used to have stashes disguised as machines, devices, pipes and other objects. Now it's all just generic backpacks, bags and safes which are usually in plain sight which makes no sense.

Amazing amount of content for a DLC, pretty much a new Elden Ring game just smaller.
Difficulty is quite unforgiving BUT this is clearly because we have to explore and get the blessings as they play a pretty big role in damage/defense.
Bosses require good strategies as blindly flailing around will get you punished very quickly.
Probably not for Sunday couch casuals.

It could easily be 9/10 if it wasn't for the bugs, performance issues and a few weird design choices.

• Lots of exploring. Umbral mechanic adds a lot to the world. Great looking locations.
  
• Umbral mechanic by itself is very nice, hidden items, hidden locations. It adds layers to exploration and treasure hunting.
  
• The lamp is fun to use especially once you will upgrade it and start slotting in the eyes with different effects.
  
• Runes which add an additional layer to weapon upgrading and build variety.
  
• The bosses are ok although I'm not a big fan of the scripted stage based fights.
  
• Combat is fun and satisfying.
  
• Co-op doesn't end even if you will defeat a boss.
  
• The game is actually quite long. Around 40 hours if you will be exploring things properly.

• Occasional heavy performance dips. At times the game runs perfectly with buttery smooth fps but sometimes it dips into something which feels like 15-20fps. Additionally the game really does not like being streamed.
  
• Actions can't be cancelled. This became especially evident when dual wielding. When an attack has a combo of several hits I can't cancel out of it by rolling. I have to always fully execute all actions until I am allowed to dodge again. I think this is a very substantial oversight which makes combat less fun.
  
• Targeting and target switching is rather clunky.
  
• Various UI related bugs such as action icons for the lamp appearing/disappearing. Purchase prompts suggesting wrong prices. Respec menu showing wrong level etc etc.
  
• Enemy variety. As always reused enemies. Throwing the same 3 previous bosses into the same location as regular mobs. Stacking bosses together etc. This is not how difficulty should be done. Not to mention occasional hordes of trash mobs blocking you.
  
• It seems strange to me that equipment slots have type restrictions. For example I can't do a caster archer build without having to manually switch my catalyst and bow since they share the same slot. This should be changed into dark souls style system where you have main hand slots and off hand slots and you can equip anything you want to.
  
• Frequent connectivity issues and lag. I had to go through several disconnects before actually managing to co-op with someone. Not to mention that multiplayer has very frequent rubberbanding which I have not experienced in other souls likes as much.

My overall review is that the game is pretty weak for the possibilities but I would still recommend it.

I'm going to start from the older Harry Potter games:

- You were able to collect various collectibles and simple currency items like Bertie Bott's beans.
- You had secrets all over the castle which would sometimes require multiple spells to fully unlock and often would award you with collectibles.
- You had things in the castle for which you had to either collect things or gather points etc. You kept passing by that stuff all the time making you constantly wonder what's behind the closed door for example.
- You were able to play quidditch and other mini games like gobstones, exploding snap, chess and few less known ones.
- You were able to cast alohomora on doors and chests. Casting it on chests would make the chest jump up and spit out its contents.
- Every single action you were performing in the game was done using magic.
- Exploration was extremely fun due to a crazy amount of secrets, things to complete, collectibles etc.

Now let's go back to Hogwarts Legacy. The only positive things about this game are the world, the graphics and a few quests/characters. Let me start from the negatives:

All of the effort which was put into the open world feels like wasted effort.
Sure some key locations like Hogsmeade are cool but they really don't require a full open world.
The open world is full of reused enemies (you fight the same enemies at the beginning and at the end of the game).
The world is full of copy pasted activities which are not challenging or fun, they simple feel like completionist chores.
You have found a dungeon with a puzzle ? Great. Enjoy your green item.
Oh you have found a Merlin's Trial ? Go ahead and jump on top of 3 rocks. Amazing. Only the wisest of wizards could have done that.

My biggest problem with the open world is that so much effort was put into the open world that as a result both castle and the world outside feel rather empty and lacking. The castle itself had perhaps only 3 actual secrets while in the old games you had something closer too tens or maybe even a hundred.

I wish that the effort which was put into the open world was put into the castle instead to add way way more secrets and more areas in general, collectibles, side quests, mini games, quidditch etc while just doing some key locations outside which you could access via fast travel. I get that it's cool to explore the outside but it's a fleeting feeling, afterwards only the actual gameplay remains.

Speaking of fast travel. Do we really have to use a cheap system like the floo powder ? In the previous games you had portrait shortcuts which would lead to various parts of the castle and you had to do small tasks for the people in the portraits to unlock specific shortcuts. That was way more fun and immersive than a cheap fast travel system.

Another thing which annoyed me to no end was the gear and inventory system. Why on earth do we even need gear ? We are using magic, random clothes bought from a shop or dropped by some scavengers are not going to increase my power or defense. You could very well remove gear completely and just introduce new enemy types later in the game who are more tricky to fight.
Don't get me started on the hilariously small inventory and having to constantly clean it because you are getting so much trash loot from random enemies, dungeons etc.

Another thing which struck my nerve was Alohomora. We are in a magical world, why on earth do I have to do a lockpicking mini game ? We are using magic, it doesn't have to make sense. No previous game ever did anything like that with alohomora.

On the topic of alohomora, why can't we interact with containers by using Alohomora ? In previous games you could either cast Alohomora or Flippendo on containers which would then spit out their contents. In this game we have to physically interact with containers. We are playing a Harry Potter game not Skyrim for God's sake.

The next issue I have is the hotbar. It is very painful to use since the slots are so limited. In the previous games you had to do simple wand gestures to cast spells, I don't see why this couldn't be the case now and instead was replaced with a very clunky hotbar.

So overall my negatives can be summarized as, effort being put into the wrong things. Wasted effort on the open world while we could have had a way more epic castle. A ton of UI related issues and systems which feel extremely off in a Harry Potter game. My guess here is that they really wanted to do a Harry Potter Skyrim game. Additionally the game contains some stupid systems which also don't fit.

Lastly how on earth could you skip quidditch and the mini games from the previous games. It's almost criminal.

Now onto the positives:

The castle and the world look and feel amazing including the sound design of course. Big props in that department.
Most of the characters feel great. The professors especially but my favorite was definitely Mr Moon since he brimmed with the humor of the older games.

The combat itself was really well done except for the hotbar. It felt really satisfying although very cheesy at times especially when it comes to dodge and some combos.

The story was good, nothing mind blowing but it served its purpose. It felt a bit too hollywoodish to me.

The game definitely had a magical feel to it but I really wish that the effort was put into the castle instead.

A really good game. Don't listen to the negative reviews crying about repetitiveness and such as this is a part of every game of this type. Backtracking / killing enemies is normal. The pacing is really nice and the puzzles can be tricky and fun to solve. Definitely one of my favorites when it comes to this genre.

I have only one con which is also a bit of a spoiler:
Pretty much the whole game was smooth sailing except for one part. I got stuck on one item which was the scalpel. I walked everywhere, searched every corner and I could not find anything to continue the playthrough. Then it turned out that you had to turn off the light in the operation room and keep walking around the corpse on the table. This is bad game design which ignores how the rest of the game worked and suddenly introduces a thing which is not hinted at all.

One of few games which are actually legitimately really fun to play. Had a blast. Can't wait for Wasteland 4.

If you are expecting something like BPM then you will be disappointed. A really short story, no items to randomize the runs. Fighting the same enemies over and over. Bosses also feel copy pasted. The only good thing is the music to be honest.

I am conflicted when it comes to choosing either a positive or negative review for this game.
While the game looks nice, the environments are pretty cool and it has a nice cute story it's not without flaws.

The game is very linear and short. If not for me just exploring around and wanting to 100% it I would probably complete it in 2-3 hours so the price is too high for that kind of gameplay time.

The game lacks secrets/collectibles. Of course you have the memories, quest items and badges but in my opinion there should be more stuff to find / collect since the game is about exploring as a cat. I would like to see more secret spots to jump to, cracks in walls to squeeze through and overall more exploration opportunities and collectibles.

This is a spoiler so don't read unless you have beaten the game:
The worst thing about this game is the ending. I put in extra time to find all of the badges and memories hoping to get a "true ending" or something along those lines. For the memories I got rewarded with a shiny outfit for literally 5 minutes. You get it and in the next sequence your companion takes it away and dies. Probably one of the most unsatisfying rewards ever. The badges gave me just an achievement. Collecting all badges and memories has absolutely no impact on the ending, no secret cutscene, no alternative ending, nothing. Cutscene itself was highly disappointing as well. I was expecting the robots to actually go outside and interact with the nature but nothing like that happened. I was at least expecting us to get reunited with the other cats but that also didn't happen. All we get is a short cutscene of the ceiling opening and that's it. While I have enjoyed the pretty little overpriced story, jumping around, finding things and interacting with the robots the ending left a sour taste in my mouth.

Unfortunately many people from different platforms really don't want ChilloutVR to succeed and in order to do that a lot of misinformation about the game is being spread around. If you will hear someone speak badly about ChilloutVR please don't listen to them and try the game out yourself, even if it's your friends.
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Common misinformation consists of but is not limited to:

"ChilloutVR is just a ripoff / a clone of VRChat"

You could very well say that VRChat is a ripoff of Second Life. It's like comparing apples and pears. Yes there are some similarities between the two but ChilloutVR is its own product bringing revolutionary stuff to the market.
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"You have to pay to play / pay to upload"

ChilloutVR is absolutely free to play. When it comes to uploading you have 10 slots for avatars, 10 for worlds and 10 for props. You can remove your assets or overwrite them by reusing the GUIDs. Other than that when it comes to public avatars there are NO FAVORITE LIMITS. If you want to upload for example more than 10 avatars you need to purchase an unlocked account which is a ONE TIME PAYMENT of $8. Unlocked account gives you UNLIMITED UPLOAD SLOTS and helps cover the storage costs.
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"The game supports ripping and crashers"

This one couldn't be further from the truth. The game has completely secure backend with proper authorization, your assets are encrypted, cache bundles are incomplete therefore preventing people from extracting anything of use from them. There are several more layers of security which are not public. Of course same thing applies to crasher avatars. The devs are constantly expanding the anti crasher system which includes component analysis as well as shader analysis. In the future you won't even be able to upload crashers to the game.
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"The devs are incompetent"

To give a bit of insight on this. This mostly comes from people coming from VRChat. VRChat has been first published in 2014 and looked like this:
https://twitter.com/VRChat/status/1350271716518481920?s=20
It has been in development for 7 years now (4 years in early access on Steam) and the game is still riddled with stability issues, no security and an abundance of bugs. Not to mention the fact that VRChat has about 20 developers and 15+ million dollars in investments.
ChilloutVR has been in development for not even 2 years (company founded mid 2019) and the team consists of ONLY 2 DEVELOPERS (who with the help of the community are funding the game) and has just been released into early access on steam yet many features already exceed what VRChat is capable of.
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"The staff is rude and power hungry"

Once again absolutely not true. The staff is incredibly nice and always willing to help everyone. The only people who are claiming the above are those who were behaving in a toxic way, harassing newcomers in public instances, playing ear rape over their microphones, saying profanities out loud and got banned by the moderation team.

The game has the potential to be absolutely the best. Many of the features already completely outclass the competition and many more are under development. Yes the game sure is rough around the edges but the issues are very minor and the goods heavily outweigh the bads.

Here's a list of great features which ChilloutVR has:

• Great performance both in Desktop and VR.
  
• Content Filter system allowing you to hide avatars based on tags (Flashing Colors, NSFW, Gore etc etc).
  
• Dynamic Bones are networked so you can play with each other's dynamic bones without the need to use any clients.
  
• No Trust system or ranks, everyone has the same nameplate.
  
• You can have a picture next to your nameplate for free.
  
• No favorite slot limits and no avatar cloning, instead there is avatar sharing and there are no limits to it.
  
• You can fly.
  
• Proper multithreading thanks to which worlds and avatars are loading in the background.
  
• You can predownload worlds to have them ready for later without the need of actually going into them.
  
• The UI can be fully modified however you want since it's handled via HTML/CSS/JS.
  
• Pointers and Triggers which you can put on your avatar to physically interact with it. The cool thing is that the system is networked and cross avatar compatible so you can touch other people's triggers using your pointers.
  
• Prop System which allows you to upload interactive objects and spawn them in worlds without the need to put them on an avatar. You can spawn your props no matter which avatar you are using and other people can also interact with them.
  
• Advanced Avatar Settings which are allowing you to configure advanced controls like object toggles, material parameter changes and many many more. It comes with 100 parameter slots (no, it's not 128 bits like in VRC, it's legit 100 parameters).
  
• Colliders on avatars are supported so you can physically push people or lift them up.
  
• Particle Colliders also work so you can move people using your particles.
  
• Physics Materials are also supported so you can make a bouncy castle :)
  
• Particle Forcefields are fully networked so you can play with people's particles if they have External Forces enabled.

Coming Soon:

• Modding Support will be coming in the future and will be natively supported by the game (once again no need for special clients).
  
• Future gamemode support (Newton scripting) with persistent data allowing you to save your progress and load it later on.
  
• Newton scripting will also be possible for avatars and props.
  
• Reserved instances which can run 24/7. You will have a whole control panel for them which will allow you to configure and control them in ways you have never seen before.
  
• Future inventory system which will support custom items generated in gamemodes. You will even be able to trade them.
  
• Future multi instance presence. If you are for example a DJ you will be able to appear in multiple instances at once.
  
• Future group system (sort of like guilds) allowing people to even host group based instances.
  
• Future event system which will allow you to host events and automatically invite everyone who signed up.
  
• Cross instance call service allowing you to call your friends or even groups of friends in different instances. While in a call a 3D projection of your friend(s) will appear in front of you. Sort of like Star Wars holograms.
  
• Natively supported secure video player. No more IP grabbing like in VRC, the video player will have trusted domains and a whitelist for unknown domains so nothing sketchy will play without your consent.
  
• Auto tagging of avatars for specific things like screen space shaders and other things which could be used in a malicious way.
  
• The ability to pass audio streams into the game. Good for listening to music with your friends and for DJs. You won't need to play it over your microphone or a twitch stream anymore.
  
• Anti crasher uploading. Yes soon people won't even be able to upload crashers.