Recent reviews by RiseFM

THE SCANNER JUST LIT UP LIKE A CHRISTMAS TREE

Avenge me, Brother! AVENGE ME!

Really torn on this one. One one hand it's more of all the good parts of Elden Ring and the DLC is HUGE. Absolutely brimming. But there's some parts of it that just aren't up to the same quality of the vanilla game - the map can be very confusing at times on how to get to places and mostly because it feels like every area has 3-4 tiers or floors if you will. How do I get to this part of the map? Well you'd think to head in that direction. Instead you must go the complete opposite directly, go through this cave, press this lever, now go back and ring this bell, go through and underground passage and now you're there! It's just not as intuitive as the previous game when it comes to exploration. But if you're into exploring every single nook and corner and seeing where it takes you? This might be a positive.

The bosses are a full on 50/50 - ranging from mild to wild. Some bosses are overly tune and some are clearly under tuned. Some bosses you'll be fighting the camera as much as the boss. Some bosses are just spammy. Not really challenging as much as they are frustrating when you're trying to block or dodge an onslaught of extremely fast attacks for a non-Seikiro FS game all while trying to actually see what you are doing. It just leads to frustratingly cheap deaths that you don't really feel like you learned anything from the encounter.

The new weapons and armors are really cool! There's some game faves for me in this DLC. And don't let people sway you about the power system in the game. It's just fine and works to allow you power progression in the DLC area while not over-tuning you for the vanilla world.

It's just a mixed bag for me - some I loved, some I hated and what really leaves a sour taste is that upon completion it did not leave me feeling as I had in the vanilla game - ready to start again and keep playing. Instead I was ready to put it down and step away. Maybe that's what FS was going for here? Something tells me it's not however.

If I could give it something in between Yes and No? I would. Mid.

Holy...

This is REALLY good! Feverish gameplay, amazing aesthetic and art direction that really nails that 90's anime vibe, fantastic music.

The Checkouts are full.

HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOG

Nothing says quality launch like a video you game you cannot play. The real challenge here is trying to login just so you can play the game. Massive oversight in lack of a queue to let you understand when you might get to login (waited 20 minutes earlier to not login followed by a solid hour with no login) and lack of booting AFK players - which takes a jam packed but slow login process to an absolute standstill. On the chance you do get in, you'll find an amazing co-op shooter - but don't expect things to work right like armor or rewards. You're lucky if you get all the rewards from a mission/operation in a day or two if you get them at all. But it's not like you can find out since you can't login.

Will update review if they ever decide to allow players to login to the game. Chalk this one up as yet another MASSIVELY failed launch.


UPDATE 03/02/2024 - Servers are no longer an issue, but rewards are still all over the place.

UPDATE 05/05/2024 - Mandatory linking of a PSN account?? Yikes!

Really enjoyed this one. Only complaint was it left me wanting more by the end. Wanted a larger arcade, more games (of course!), and some may be turned off with the first part of the ramp up. Hoping that there is a part 2 eventually that's even larger. The mixture of games makes it so you're bound to find several that you like to play and it lets you live that fantasy of owning your own arcade! Hits some major nostalgia feels as well. Again, hoping there's a second that's even larger than this one in all aspects.

Admittedly, I've not really played it since the latest big update which I believe I read they truncated the amount of enemies in some areas or how aggressive they are, how accurate they are, etc. Even if that's the case - this game wore thin really fast. It's not that hard, it's just a matter of getting used to the jank and boy let me tell you, there's plenty of jank in it. If they smoothed out the combat it would be much better. Targeting system is whacked out, attack animations drag on too long and move your character miles during some attack animations. random enemies that will take half your HP or all of it that look like every other item node in the world...so that's always a TON of fun (maybe I'm missing some visual or audio queue???) and the whole lantern mechanic gets old pretty fast. No desire to finish this one. Zero. Looks pretty at least I guess?

Pizza Time!