Recent reviews by Sangvyn

As this is a game made by the original creators of RuneScape, the comparison to it is inevitable. From what I've seen about it, I expected something similar, but in a new and exciting direction. At this stage, it was a little disappointing.

This game has several episodes, and several skills that are locked to each episode. Each skill has a location where you can train it, and a handful of options on how to gain materials for it. The level cap is 500.

The part that I don't like is that none of the progression matters. When you level up, the world scales up with you. At first, you unlock new things to forage, fish, cook, and potions to brew. But afterwards, you start to unlock essentially new skins for the same activity. It's no longer a "Lesser Eel", now it's a "Gray Eel". But you still fish them in the same exact place.

Similarly, monsters (somewhat) scale with your combat level (Guard profession). Equipment didn't seem to make much of a difference, because every battle was always a close call. Early potions barely work, because you take 1-2 hits during the time you drink them, essentially nullifying their effect.

When I compared this game to OSRS, I noticed that OSRS is not a progression game. It's really a logistics game. Whenever you want to progress in a skill, you come up with a strategy to gather resources in the most efficient way. You then find a place where you can most efficiently use those resources to level up your skills. When you level up in OSRS, you usually unlock unique new content and activities. When you explore, you find new places to do the same activity, perhaps more efficiently than before. Maybe you do a quest and unlock an even better route to skill. Lastly, most everything you do makes you better equipped to do minigames or PvE content. There's always a goal to work towards, and it always ties into several skills and several areas in the world.

Brighter Shores has none of that. You'll be grinding to level 500 cooking in the same kitchen, running to the same NPCs for ingredients, or to the same spots for the same item. But now it's a "Legendary Emperor Imperial Superior Divine Potato" to make "Legendary 7-Star Michelin Ramsay-approved Sausage and Mash" in the kitchen of the local pub. Your reward for grinding is more of the same grinding.

If you find that to be fun, good for you. It's half-decent as something to play on the side while listening to a podcast. But I cannot genuinely recommend this game if you want a fulfilling experience.

It's in early access, so maybe it'll improve. I'll probably be back to check it out when it's finished baking.

I have spent 80 hours and to no end it lead,
So I will, after all, go play Witcher instead.

I somewhat liked it at the start.

Good battles where you feel like a badass are short. But later in the game, the battles start to feel like long action-puzzle sequences where you have to keep dashing and jumping away from 5 enemies with different patterns, all while remembering to shoot, chainsaw for ammo, glory kill for health, burn for armor, and that you have a grenade for no particular reason.

Platforming sections don't really add anything.

The loading screen just shows tips and tricks. I think it would be better to show lore on them instead.

Overall, it just feels clunky. Like I'm playing an MMO with too few skills, where you can't customize and have to follow the meta strat.

In this case, more means "more features", and not "more of this". You might like it if you liked DOOM 2016, or you might not.

Cosmodread doesn't have the best graphics, nor the best sounds, nor design in general. However, the sum of these parts is something greater - immersive.

Stay a while and read on.

So one time I'm going through the ship, gathering ammo and oxygen. Everything, for once, is going just spectacular. Then RNGesus decrees that my run is to be ended - I enter a room, see a gas canister, and when I approach it a bolt of electricity strikes it and the explosion kills me.

From that time I wisened up - gas cans are kind of explosive. So another time, I am going through one of those big long lab rooms and a drone appears. I start to panic and try to shoot it. No ammo. I reach behind my shoulder. No ammo. I see a gas can to my right, I grab it - thinking I'll throw it at him. In the meantime, the drone revved up and shot at me, hitting the canister and exploding me.

Now I'm not sure if there has been a stealthy update or something, but the latest time I've played I've been super aware of every electronic/mechanical noise that sounds like "Small, intricate mechanical thing adjusting or aiming". And usually - there's nothing there. But that paranoia really prepares you to panic later on.

So, speaking of the latest run, I'm clearing the last wing of the ship having completed the other objectives and looking for the bridge. This wing was quite a lot more infested that the others, so I was burning through my reserves of ammo. Finally, I reach the bridge, I open the door - infested - 4 enemies. I shoot each one in the head with an explosive bolt, leaving me with 1 explosive bolt *total*. I run off to a nearby room to find a battery, I come back and head inside the bridge. There's an inactive drone, that reacts to me entering the room, and wakes up. I shoot at it - no cigar - the last of my ammo did not kill it. So I run (read: walk slowly) like hell, closing each door behind me to break line of sight, back to the main room. There's no ammo that I can use left. But I do have an EMP grenade and I try to hatch a plan.

I take it with me. I go to another room to get a battery to clear the infestation, and head back to the bridge, which I expect now has all of the 4 enemies respawned and the drone patrolling nearby. On my way back, I find a toilet - the haven of all resources - with a single clip of shotgun ammo that I can use. My chances are small, but I see a glimmer of hope. A little glimmer of light in a room of infestation, if you will.

So I head back to the bridge and I see a gas can - I take it with me, carefully. I keep going and I see a room that I hadn't explored - I head inside. It's a corridor to another room. Drone. There's a drone in the next room. It's the same one, I think to myself, and head back to towards the bridge. I power up the room just before the bridge - a square room with a square wall of computers - to feel safer, and I open the door. They did respawn. I shoot at them with my shotgun, taking down 2 or 3. I walk backwards.

Sentry turret. I did not notice before, but there was a sentry turret in the room before the bridge, which proceeded to beep, and then shoot at me. Luckily, having been in similar situations before, I anticipated it and got around the corner just in time. I was hit, but still alive. The sentry then began to shoot at the remaining enemies. I head into the bridge, panicked, looking for the battery I dropped, and then the socket in which it goes. Light, finally. I have taken the bridge. I find some bolts on a table - my last ammo. I pull the lever, and head back towards the main room.

On my way, I hear the drone. I pull out the EMP, throw it into the room. It takes the drone down, I pull out the explosive gas can. I throw it near the drone, I back away, and I shoot it. It explodes and seems to have killed the drone. At that moment I have won the run, the remainder of the walk was mostly uneventful.

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Lets get something straight - this game does not scare me. Games in general do not particularly scare me. And I am to a degree jealous of those who find horror games scary. However, it does greatly unease me. Occasionally, it unintentionally jumpscares me. And I've noticed that every time I play it, every time that I get killed, I get more uneasy the next time.

Sometimes, it makes you feel completely hopeless. Other times, it makes you feel like a badass.

I recommend. 10 out of 10, would get jumpscared into mechanical noise paranoia again.

This review is incomplete, because so far I have only spent about 4 hours modding this game, not playing it.

First off, the base game is absolute trash in VR. You can only walk round (VR style), swing a sword, and use magic. Where it breaks down: You pick up items with the A button, not by gripping them. The menus are navigated by the controller, not pointing at options (afaik). So it's basically a controller-based game, but you're in VR.

So, I generally don't recommend it if you're not willing to spend hours and hours modding this.

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That being said, this can be an extremely immersive and beautiful experience. With the CAVEAT that you might need to spend hours modding it and need to have a beast of a PC to have high quality graphics and a decent framerate.

Or just get the Ugly Skyrim mod (assuming it works) and play "The Elder Scrolls: RuneScape" in VR.

A game so good, the uninstall process starts the game.

So I was going to write a review for this after completing it.

But it's just so insufferable. I came back to it after not playing for a few days and the controls just feel wrong.

So here are some of my thoughts on it right now:
- Choices only mean something if it's life/death of a significant story character.
- The huge world shoots itself in the foot. You have to spend a long time just going from place to place.
- Parkour is essentially non-existent. It used to be a puzzle, or a way to look cool while chasing something or running somewhere. Now there's no fall damage and you can climb anything. It's basically a thing that's tacked on.
- Many of the quests have open-world objectives (i.e. go to place, kill generic leader person, kill bandits, steal something, etc.)
- Most cultists (this game's version of Templars) are pretty much generic NPCs with little to no backstory. There are no confession cutscenes either.
- Absolute nightmare for OCD or ADHD people.
- Mandatory level scaling means that you are never strong. Your equipment only gets weaker over time and you have to spend time recycling/selling/equipping/upgrading equipment to catch up. If you don't, enemies are 10 times as durable as you.
- Story missions overall consist of like 2-4 hours of content, if you don't count the levelling in-between.
- Mercenaries literally show up from all across the world during the time span of one battle.
- Peasants, instead of running away, pick up swords and attack you.
- Nobody runs away. Even if you slaughter 20 people, the last guy will never run away.

Basically, an extremely detailed ancient Greek world that is severely crippled by shallow content.

I found the story so uncompelling and the gameplay so tedious that I went to study instead.

(Edit)

Well, I've had a chance to play it a bit longer. And here are my new thoughts about it.

I can recommend it as a standard Ubisoft collect-a-thon with RPG mechanics and a storyline set in ancient Egypt.

Now, standard Ubisoft collect-a-thon means that it's a high-quality setting. The world is very detailed and has a lot of cool places to see and discover.

But it's also filled with somewhat shallow content. Tombs are quite interesting to explore, but are generally quite linear. They have puzzles occasionally, but generally it takes about 10 minutes to find the ancient tablet.

The combat system is now a generic RPG hitpoints system with some action, but no weight to it. The difficulty is rarely just right. The story is gated away behind levels. Climbing is no longer a thing you have to think much about, just hold Alt+W in 99% of cases.

It's okay as an action-RPG game, but it's disappointing as an Assassin's Creed game.

It was interesting for the first few hours, but after that it just became a slog.

Here's my issue with it - you and your bots are really slow at everything. I wanted to build a dedicated space for cutting down trees, so I spent a good part of an hour just terraforming a square. Then the already chopped trees were out of alignment, so I had a bunch of stumps around, so I had to help my bots dig those out. Later, I wisened up and made a bot that digs out a plot of land. Only problem was, I needed to wind him up every so often, so I made my
recharger bot patrol another area. This means the recharger bot would get discharged on the other side of my base, which would take me a good 10 seconds to get to, and then a couple to wind him back up.

Everything is just so excruciatingly slow that I wondered if I'd have more fun digging out a plot of land myself than program a bot to do it. I later did, and it was marginally more engaging to click on each tile of land.

This game promises you an automation experience. Automation is about replacing a clumsy and slow actor with a fast, efficient, and precise machine. This game, at least from the beginning, does not do this. You're just making slow and clumsy machines that are by no means efficient, since they need to be recharged every couple of minutes.

And that applies to every chain the process too.

Here's an example: You have a bot for each of these: chopping trees, planting trees, gathering logs into storage, sawing the logs, putting the planks (sawed logs) into storage, sawing the planks into poles, putting the poles into storage; crafting axes, crafting pickaxes, crafting any other of *hundreds of items*; mining, gathering rocks into storage (perhaps the simplest process chain); whacking berry bushes, gathering berries; recharging bots, recharging the recharging bots; etc, etc.

You "program" (loosely) every single one yourself. In actuality, you show the bot what to do, put in loops and control structures, and then send it on its way.

All of this and I've barely started putting my colonists into the most basic houses.

To sum up, this is a game about replacing an already slow process with an even more slow and tedious process, but without you having to even have the game open anymore. There's no progression, there's no "now that I got this, I can start doing this", there is only "now that I got this, I can wait 10 minutes to get enough material to start doing something new".

Maybe I'm too harsh on a game that most likely was made to teach little kids about programming. Little kids, and I don't mean this in a negative way, would enjoy this much more than I did.

But there's no sideways/mixed thumb to choose on Steam.

I am a fan of the original Thief trilogy, so I have at least two perspectives on this game.

It is a terrible "Thief" game.

- Sound is no longer a reliable source of information.
- Hand-drawn maps that you had to fumble with have been replaced with a soulless minimap.
- The unique factions of the trilogy have been replaced by a resistance and a bunch of homeless people. Hammerites, the people who, essentially, built the city and its technology are no longer there. No more pagans, who opposed the technological advances of the cityfolk. No more keepers, who kept the factions in balance.
- Garrett is no longer relatable. In the trilogy he was just an average dude and did what he was good at - stealing - to pay his rent, getting accidentally tangled in conspiracies along the way. In this rendition - he is a Superhero (antihero?) - he has all sorts of magical powers and equipment and steals because that's what he does. (No longer a man trying to get by in life, but a kleptomaniac.)

It is a bad game in general.

Everything you ever do is a cutscene. This is what really irritates me the most. Game developers, please take note - Cutscenes are not immersive. They take the players control away. Immersion is when you feel like you ARE the character. Immersion is control, the ability to do as you please at any moment in time. Well, in this game, every time you pick something up, every time you check a drawer, every time you interact with any object in the world, you are locked into a cutscene. To go through a f***ing door, you spend 3 seconds opening it up and only then can you step through.

Every objective is clearly pointed to. The player does not have to think about where to go, everything is always pointed out.

This is not a game. It is a cliche-ridden soulless interactive movie, borrowing elements of the original Thief trilogy, Dishonored, and Assassin's Creed. And it is worse than any of the aforementioned game series.

I am disappointed.