Recent reviews by Varski The Chief

Okay now that I have beaten the DLC I think I can give solid 9.5/10 for it so it is not a perfect hit like it could have been but let me elaborate a bit more

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1. The world design of the DLC is just breathtaking and all of the areas are just gorgeous. The map is just pure fun to try to figure out how to get to the next area and interconnectivity for an open world is just chef's kiss
2. Most of the bosses in this DLC are so FUN. They are not too hard but require a lot of patience and good knowledge of all what you have learned this far (sadly this cannot be said about all of them a bit on that later)
3. New NPC quests are varied and can have a real effect on the gameplay depending on how you approach them. This ties to the interesting story that is happening at the time of the DLC.

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1. The fights are so crazy sometimes and involve your full attention that the arch nemesis of these is back stronger than ever CAMERA. In some of the bosses you are fighting more with the camera than the actual boss. Its really frustrating that after Sekiro almost mastered the back zoom on the camera we have taken steps back while knowing the engine supports it and even that some of the actions in the already have that (like jumping on Torrent !!!!)
2. Final boss is a huge letdown in my eyes. I went totally blind into the DLC and completed the adventure solo but the last boss did not give me any kind of satisfaction from beating it. The fight itself is way overtuned and has some really broken moves that cannot be dodged (at the time of this review)(EDIT Ongbal has proven me once again wrong!) and in the second face the light pillars just straight up block your vision combined with the first con that I wrote here. This makes the fight just boring in a way and feels like a lazy design compared to fights like Bayle and Messer having a good flow in the fights and not having any completely broken moves. Also re using Radahn as the final boss is just lazy in my eyes even thou he has new moves (and I know its not technically him anymore but you get the point
3. And while praised some of the NPC quest some of them are going to need a guide or ypu have to spend a lot time figuring out stuff that is not very logical by any means or there is not even hint on what to do St.Trina just to give you one example

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While I was saying in the middle of playing the DLC that this is best DLC that I have ever played I don't think so anymore even thou its really close one. The latter half of the DLC just did not hit as hard as the first part and the ultimate finale did not meet the overall quality of the DLC for me. Still there is easily 40 to 60 hours of gameplay here per character so this is still a good deal and an easy recommendation to those who have met the requirements to enter the Land of Shadows.

This is the easiest review I have ever done. What a wonderful software this is. Easy to use, cheap and works great. New implementation of frame generation is really good with almost no negative effects. I can highly recommend this.

Start of the year has been crazy with good games like Palworld and now this. It has been so long when I have had this much fun playing co-op games. They have absolutely nailed the fun factor here and the lore and the stories that you make defending democracy and the community and content around the game is just 10/10. Go buy this one its really a no brainer with the price it is. Come join the most elite of the elite and spread that sweet liber-tea along the galaxy. Join the Helldivers !
EDIT READ THIS NOW ! SONY IS NOW BEING SONY AND IS FORCING US TO LINK PSN ACCOUNTS SO WE CAN PLAY. IF THIS IS NOT OKAY FOR YOU OR YOU CANNOT MAKE SUCH ACCOUNT DONT BUY THE GAME !
SONY STILL HAS NOT MADE THE GAME AVAILABLE TO ALL COUNTRIES IT ORIGINALLY WAS SO THE REVIEW UNFORTUNATELY STAYS RED edit and should be red but Arrowhead is just making awesome job at this point so I cannot for the life of me keep this red just for Sony. Arrowhead deserves this approve.

This game has taken the industry by storm and I can safely say I know why after putting 30 hours into it on the first week I got it. The game combines a lot from other games but it has been integrated so smoothly they all just blend together. You have the basic idea from the Pokemon games where you throw ball to the monster and try to capture it. But then comes the Digimon part where you can upgrade them to get more guns ! You have base building and technology trees (reminds me of Ark) and then you have the option to assign captured pals to the base to do work for you. Absolutely brilliant idea to make them do trivial tasks and later down the line you realize they are way better doing the work than you. And the most important thing for me and what I have dreamed of for a long time is the fact that you can fight alongside your Pals when you enter combat. You can shoot from the back of your awesome fire breathing bird and get benefits like add fire damage to your shots while you are up there. Some pals can even have equipment to hop on to your your shoulder and start rain bullets shooting guns from there ! How cool is that to add to the list of positive and amazing things you can do in this game.
While exploring I felt some familiarity to Genshin Impact and Zelda how you can climb walls and later you get gliders (even some Pals can be used to glide !) and you can mount Pals to ease traveling ( you need a proper saddle for all of them). Map is interesting to look at and there is interesting stuff around every corner. You have collectibles that help you more easily capture pals there is chests and even world bosses to challenge. Game is a real joy to explore and the map is huge ! There is easily hundreds of hours to explore here and to experience.
This game gets so many things right it hurts to think some of the triple A titles that come out today. While there are good games out there in that market too this is half of the price of those games and still being developed to add more content. Performance is really solid and it holds the candle in this area too. There are some minor bugs but nothing major that cannot be fixed later on the line. You can easily enjoy this game right now and it performs just as good on my both machines that I have tested it at.

Get the game. This is an easy recommendation from me. One way I can summarize this game is that its just fun and overwhelmingly so. Just remember to keep an eye out for the time. You can easily "lose" couple hours of your time...

Okay my hours in this game are not true as I tried this game on a game pass and had to get it for myself just to support the devs as this is probably the best none From software souls like there is right now and I absolutely love this game. Atmosphere is really good and I really like the setting they have put this game into. Combat has a lot of depth and mixes almost all good elements from the souls games and adds some neat little tricks of its own (you can take off the hilt from weapons for an example and you can mix and match you favorite blade with different hilt and vice versa). Music of the game is great and completing npc quests you get LP records as a reward that you can play in the main hub of the game (super cool idea and the songs in there are top notch). Characters are interesting and they tell you pieces of story in newspaper and articles you find in the world to give you some hints what has happened in the world. Boss and enemy designs are really good and all of the boss fights have been real treats and the enemy variety has been quite impressive so far (I played about 30 hours with game pass). And the best part is that the game runs extreme well considering this is a modern game and I don't have the most powerful PC anymore which is super rare these times (I don't have to name any examples here but yeah this game does not need modders to fix it :P). Small summary this is my GOTY for this year easily and I see myself 100% this one for sure and playing multiple playthroughs. Easy recommendation from me to souls fans and if the setting interest you give it a try just keep it in mind that the game is quite challenging at times.

Edit after completing the game:
This game really was as good as it can get as a souls like. I have now played it three times and enjoyed every second of it. Now eagerly waiting for the DLC and the announced sequel. This was worth every penny I spend on it and I hope that this game gets more recognition as it deserves every bit of it.

This game is close to being good but there is just too much things that grind the living soul out of me. NFS Heat was nowhere near a perfect game but its was enjoyable at the very least and captured the fun in driving with cool customized cars and messing around with cops at night. Only good new additions in this game are the interesting visual changes and the prologue that actually feels good (which also tricks you to play just enough so you cannot refund this game anymore xD). Games difficulty is very strange as it does very little to change the actual difficulty of the game. Having raced with all of the difficulties out of curiosity there is only couple seconds of difference between the different stages and it seems like ai is somehow always tied to your cars level no matter what you choose. Game is very grindy and while that is nothing new to this series (UG2, MW you name it) it feels really unrewarding here as you can get yourself into real trouble if you get busted too many times when you are being creedy. You have specific days you can race and limited amount of changes to earn money so experimenting with different cars is very limited and not adviced at all. Visual customization is mainly a bad thing to do as that money should be put under the hood. Its just crazy how messed up this can get in a game where you should enjoy driving and customizing cars. You just get frustrated no matter what you do in this game. Some of the car sounds are muted and you can barely hear them (but only some cars which is very strange). I could go on about this even more and it pains me to say that if you want to have a fun experience playing these types of games go buy Heat or Hot Pursuit heck even Rivals was more fun than this. I like tough games but succeeding in them should feel rewarding and this game just does not have that.
EDIT: Unite Team has made it again and made the base game miles better with some tweaks. If you read this one just go get the mod you are not going regret it.

As a veteran to the franchise this game is like mix of all things I fell in love with digimon in the first place. This game is heavy story driven so if you are looking for instant action and you cannot stand reading long dialogues this is probably not the game for you. Also to note this is not a game made for children. There is consequences on your actions and some of the things shown here are disturbing and can affect people as things can go really south real fast. Characters are well written and the story so far has been an absolute blast. Music is very fitting for the scenes and the fighting and evolving is really fun and the battles have been really well thought out when they are part of the story. Absolute treat for a digimon fan and so far this might be the best game in the series after the original World game. Really interesting to see how this game evolves when I get deeper into the story and based on what I have talked with other players I need to play this game couple times to really see the differences in story and how those decision of mine have affected. Totally worth the price tag.

What and absolute banger of a game this still is. Awesome music, challenging gameplay and funny (and good looking ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)) characters. High recommendation from me. Now to make pancakes !

Okay now that I have completed the game, seen all of the currently known endings and possible killed all of the bosses I think I can give my opinion about the game. If you are here for the short answer I truly recommend it but the game is not perfect by any means. These are just my opinions and I hope that you can understand that. Now to dive little deeper into some areas of the game.

I want to start by talking about the absolute star of the show of this game and its the game world itself. The places you visit in this game are just incredible and filled with content and all kinds of secrets so you start to understand why this game was in development for such a long time. There are dungeons, puzzles, NPCs, bosses and a ton of cool items to be discovered here and even thou they have used some base elements for all of the different types of places that are of the same type you still get enough variation so it does not get boring at all and all of them have an important purpose in your journey you start to notice when exploring these places. And while the world is great the best part of that has to be the legacy dungeons. If you miss that basic souls games linear path and level design these are the places you want to look forward to as they are best areas in the game and really catch that older vibe of the souls games. Not to say that the open world is bad but it just cannot compete with these and I think this is the best of both worlds situation here. Also adding jump added whole new layer to the exploration and I often forgot to use it and probably missed a lot of content because of this xD. And in true Miyazaki style if you see something cool looking in the distance you can probably get there in some point of the game. And while the world is hostile and cruel you just sometimes have to stop to look how beautiful it is and just take a moment to sit there and be just amazed how cool the world looks.

Combat has evolved slightly from the Dark souls but if you have played third installment you can feel right at home here. Most of the movesets have been re used from older games with added twists. Ashes of war have replaced weapon arts and they can now be slotted into any weapon that does not have a unique one already. Jumping is easier as there is now a button for it and while it added new layers to exploring it does so in combat too. Guard counters are a neat new trick to be used and made me play with a shield almost the whole length of the game which is not so common for me. Also fighting with Torrent is really fun and implemented quite good even thou some fights become really easy using him. Overall nothing was broken in the mechanics so I am glad they just went and polished it a little. All builds seem to have gotten some love and most of them have unique weapons and/or cool spells to choose from. Easy to get into and hard to master as it has always been in these games but now you the most amount of tools and ways to experience so I think this game might be the most new user friendly from the games fromsoftware has made Sekiro being the hardest in this regard.

Now as this is a souls game bosses are important right ? I would have told you this too after playing Sekiro as they are the stars of that game but here most of them are just there and really forgettable. You start to encounter the same enemies as mini bosses and almost all of them are normal enemies later in the game. Enemy variety is there but could have been more diverse to justify the places you visit are so cool but then the initial excitement just takes a hit as you see the same enemies you have fought before or some type of reskin. Even some of the main bosses are copied in the game but for the most part they are well designed and fun to fight. Seems like this game really emphasized the fact that these games are not supposed to be easy even thou you have more tools in your arsenal as some of the later game bosses are some of the most tough fights I have done in these games. Couple of them might be even on the little overwhelming side but that is quite natural progression as these developers have kicked us in the nuts for so long they have to invent new ways to keep these challenging for us series veterans too. To summarize the bosses. While I enjoyed fighting most of them I was more interested to investigate the world this time around than fighting the new bosses which feels quite strange. Still atleast one fight made it to my top ten list of bosses and almost all of the main bosses interested me as characters and parts of the world and how they fit in the lore of these games I just have to wait someone like Vaati to tell me more about these bosses as there is most likely something I have missed myself.

NPC quest are better than ever and there are many interesting stories to see and experience. They have that familiar souls vibe so be ready to shed some tears and don't get too attached to anyone as this is dangerous world and you are not the hero you are in almost all other games you play. Heck some NPC might even see you as a threat. It also feels like that you might miss most of these encounters and thats part of the charm of these games. These characters have their own journeys and they are not here because of you. Everything is not centered around your character as you start to rise from the trash trying to reach the stars and try to find out what is happening in this world and why you are here. We all have our own motives to complete and if you happen to encounter them and help them thats all because fate had its way for you to meet them in their journeys as much it was their fate to meet you on yours.

Overall the game is great step up from previous games in almost all aspects. While bosses might not have been the best of the best they still are great and in this modern time of games this is so unique to play AAA games of this value. Hopefully the small performance issues can be solved in the future. For me personally they were not too bad. In my 200 hour first playthrough I noticed major stutters on places the game loaded new shaders and areas as well as some minor ones in the middle of the combat. Nothing to get me killed but annoying nonetheless as I should have capable computers to play this game without these issues. But despite these I can recommend you getting this game. I bought this at launch and I am very happy that I did as I got well worth my investment in enjoyment even for my first pass of the game. Now to make another character and start to check what I have missed xD

This one is a solid recommendation. Nicely crafted story with beautiful scenery. Some nice gameplay elements and smooth progression through the story makes you want more. Got this one from sale and highly recommend this one to all that want a easy game to relax and enjoy their good story.