Recent reviews by SCREAMIN' STEVEN

Serious review now that i've 100% the game

An incredibly fun side-story in the Like a Dragon series. Length wise, this may fall between the short and sweet Gaiden VS the incredibly ambitious Infinite Wealth. But the content is consistently fun. I cannot wait to see how the series evolves these mechanics in the future, especially since there is a lot of potential with the ship building mechanics.

The story is just as deep as it needs to be, a shamelessly cheesy and fun pirate romp that follows in the shoes of Uncharted and Indiana Jones with the characters uncovering bits of history behind the treasure as the adventure unfolds. But nowhere near as complex as either. But the strength lies in the ever-charming characters. Even for a side story that could be pitched as a joke, RGG's writing doesn't hold back when it comes to their entertaining characters with addicting personalities.

The combat is probably my favorite in the series?? Which shouldn't be shocking but between Ship VS Ship combat, and the two fighting styles that allow you to really pull off insane combos throughout a session.

The game is also feasibly 100%-able in one playthrough, unlike Infinite Wealth. Going for 100% achievements netted me a near 50 hour play time, and I was thoroughly entertained through every minute. RGG is in their golden age right now and I can't see what else they cook.

While combat isn't this game's total strong suit, the worldbuilding and writing is absolutely incredible. The art direction is superb, and it is shockingly ambitious for the size of the team that was working on it. I adored it thoroughly.

A great game with some really rough optimization issues right now. I'm running the game on a machine that runs a near-flawless BG3 ultra settings experience, and most other games easily run at high and ultra. The game unfortunately, after a series of patches, has become unplayable. Constant stuttering, freezing, and lagging even while being installed on an SSD. I really want to give this game a thumbs up but it doesn't even seem to want me to play it, and I hope Season 1's updates comes with a LOT of optimization instead of tanking the performance further like I fear it will.

Everyone who has ever voted negative just needs to try one more time. Keep gambling.

Updated review, now that I've completed this game.

I really enjoyed it! While not my favorite game in the BioWare catalog, it gives the impression that the studio is getting back on its feet after the financial woes resulting from Anthem's shutdown and Andromeda's lacking financial performance.

I have very few complaints. Some lines are cheesy, but that's just Dragon Age. The series that started with quips like "swooping is bad" and Whedon-esque dialogue out the gate. It's just modernized cheesiness coming from people who have definitely drawn a lot of inspiration from JRPGs and that genre's writing. While I wish there was just a bit more banter where characters clashed more often, the moments that they do are often narrative driven and make those moments feel more important.

My few complains about the game are two things. One is Taash's quest. I think everything else surrounding it is fine, between their relationship to their mother and their struggle with their cultural identity. But unfortunately, like Jack from Mass Effect 2, it feels like a major chunk of potential development is locked away in their romance. Describing it in a spoiler free way, I feel like the decision on what they should do regarding their background should have had the romance lock-in option also be there for those who didn't want to actually romance them.

The other complaint is mostly that this is the end of a long running story arc involving Solas, the Inquisition, and the characters surrounding that. I just wished that more decisions could have had an impact on this narrative, and I hope something like the Keep makes a return so that our fleshed out choices can live on in future games.

Everything else though? I really enjoyed, personally. The lore reveals are exciting, the characters are among BioWare's most solid, the gameplay is the first in the series that didn't feel like it was a breath away from crumbling like a stack of Popsicle sticks, and I really did like how it wrapped up Solas as a character (at least in the ending I got).

Overall, this game is a pretty good RPG. Some may argue that it's a "bad Dragon Age game though", which is... Hard to argue? The series has evolved so much that there is a clear throughline from Origins, to 2, to Inquisition, to Veilguard. And fans of each individual game may get something different out of this game. Origins fans will probably not like it on account of it not being Origins again. 2 fans might love this based off the companion-centric narrative. Inquisition fans will probably enjoy the follow ups to that story while all the other aspects of the game can go either way.

Origins was, and remains to be my favorite in the series. But Veilguard is just under it as someone who got something different out of each individual release. Overall, a really solid game. And I'm glad to see that this polished release seems to be a success and I hope BioWare continues with this trend.

While not my favorite storyline in the Like a Dragon series, it definitely is my favorite content wise with the best characters. A lot of fun new minigames, Hawaii is a great place to explore, and the character dynamics bringing their A-Game.

My only real complaints are that, again, the story is not the best in the series. Especially after following up on my favorites in the series (Yakuza: LaD and Gaiden). It is definitely ambitious, but the main villains don't get enough time to cook. And a few plot threads seemingly don't actually lead anywhere. Kiryu gets his identity exposed by a popular online channel TWICE and both times it leads to nothing happening. Overall, it's fine, I'd say on the same tier as Yakuza 4. It just left me wishing they did more with the concepts they served up, but didn't have enough time to pay off. And I think another complaint are the dungeons. I think by the end of the game, they become far too repetitive. With the same levels, aesthetics, and music looping again and again. Big Swell is the only dungeon to deviate from that and, unfortunately, that one is paid DLC.

But overall it's a very worthwhile package and probably the most dense LaD game in the series. 8/10, can't wait for Majima to become a pirate

I gave this game almost 10 hours to hook me and it failed.

Unfortunately, as many aspects of Bethesda games move forward in this title, too much of it is a wild step back to recommend. Exploration just isn't a thing at all. You don't explore in this game, you just fast travel. Constant loading screens cut you off from any fun, the main cities are rather linear experiences with clear indicators on where to go and what to do, while the "thousands of planets" consists of nothing but rocky terrain, the occasional ore to mine, and randomly generated yet highly uninteresting POIs.

The level design barely exists. You will spend most of your time running through flat, featureless terrain while occasionally stopping dead in your tracks for 5-10 seconds to hold left click at an ore node. Combat is about on par with Fallout 4, without VATS to spice things up. The lockpicking minigame is just... It's too much. I hate hacking and lockpicking minigames to begin with, but at least TES and Fallout made them brief. But in order to open up every tiny container that may be locked, you have to play a strange and annoying minigame that takes too long for such meager rewards.

The quest design is frustrating. Most side quests involve traveling to another planet to simply tell somebody something. And then returning to the first NPC to turn it in. All done with loading screens and fast travel, once again making exploration meaningless. The main story, while occasionally trying to spice it up, has no real hook. A vague group of adventurers and researchers find a strange artifact that will help them "discover the secrets of the universe" and it's up to you, for some reason, to figure it all out. 10 hours in, and there has so far been no driving force. No antagonistic character, entity, or anything to push back against the character. It's dull, repetitive, and filled with flat characters that don't give the player anything to work with other than occasionally shooting at the next few nameless NPCs with you until they deem you worthy enough to vomit their backstory at.

It's like if someone went out of their way to rewrite the Mass Effect trilogy in the most uninteresting way possible. Both stories begin with the discovery of an alien artifact that sends the protagonist on a cross-galaxy odyssey, gathering a crew that slowly go from coworkers, acquaintances, and soldiers to your trusted friends and lovers. But Mass Effect had a real plot. It had a character pushing back against you, it had solid factions and history, it had the Reapers as the answer to that alien artifact's warnings. The characters were charming, often funny and heartwarming. Starfield has none of that despite being built from the same basic idea as a foundation.

While Fallout 76 still stands as Bethesda's most cynical project, the Fallout franchise condemned to live on as a theme park ride version of itself to be forever sustained and keep players in a constant loop instead of telling a story from start to finish, this is a close runner up. "Skyrim in space" would have been a better, more investing pitch. Instead this is an unfocused, aimless mess of a game that I'm shocked actually released for $70. It's white noise given form, and I hope that this doesn't signal the future of Bethesda products. Especially not the upcoming TES6.

Glad to hear the original policy behind account linking is rolled back. Get back out there, Helldivers

Just because I "do not recommend" doesn't mean it's terrible. But rather, if you own Fallout New Vegas already, this isn't exactly worth going out of your way to purchase. If you get it with the ultimate edition bundle, then you may as well play it.

If I had to do Pros and Cons, i'd say the Pros are the world building and voice acting, and Ulysses. If I had to say the cons, i'd also say Ulysses. He often wavers back and forth on the line of menacing and overly edgy. I didn't like the DLCs combat focus, and Ulysses' motivation as a villain is, oddly, interesting yet nonsensical. It's fun hearing just what exactly made him the man he is, but sometimes it's wild how far he had to stretch to come to his conclusions. And... I'll just say that his boss fight sucked. His ridiculous self-heal spam felt cheap rather than challenging. But the end decision on what to do with the nuke was a fun dilemma that felt in spirit with the rest of Fallout.

I also don't really know how to feel about the DLC inserting mandatory backstory. For mostly spoiler free context, this DLC sets up the idea that a past job you've done as a courier, completely offscreen and unmentioned prior to this, had massive ramifications for what happens later. Like yeah, it's probable that as a courier, you've done many jobs and didn't think twice about them. But it does feel like the narrative itself is leveraging responsibility on the one thing you had no input on. Especially when the main game is usually great at introducing you to a situation and letting you build and RP your character's motivations from there. Rather than just saying "yeah you did this stuff a few years ago now deal with it lol"

ED-E is a cute companion to have for this, and is the more consistently endearing part of the DLC even if simple. The DLC, and hell, all of New Vegas works best when the writing takes center stage rather than relying on combat and gameplay. And unfortunately, this DLC is trying to challenge you via gameplay 90% of the time. Which translates into annoying enemy spam.

Overall, 5/10

A cool combination of classic survival horror, great atmosphere, and immersive sim elements. This is a great direction for any future games Frictional makes, and opens up a lot of possibilities for a bright future for the Amnesia series which for some time fell into a bit of a rut since the first game. It's tense, engaging, and doesn't overstay its welcome with unnecessary padding. My only wish is for a more solid ending, easily forgiven for how great the journey to it was.

8/10 overall