Recent reviews by tithin

I adored Dying Light 1.

Dying light 2 is not as good as Dying light 1.

It is more refined, but lost something in that refinement.
That's not to say it's bad, game play wise, it's fun and enjoyable. Night time is legitimately dangerous, dark zones will ♥♥♥♥ you up, the atmosphere is tense. Eventually you'll get to the point where you can stand your ground at night and that's also fine.

But the story.
For ♥♥♥♥♥ sakes, the story.
Absolutely god awful,

Now, I want to elaborate a little bit without spoiling, because as you're playing through the story, it's not bad - not great - but not bad. Believable characterisation, relatively smart survivors, a semi-believable society.

But the ending. the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ending. One of the worst twists in history, and without spoilers, it then makes you question the characterisation of the story's antagonist because the one you see all through the game, is absolutely not the one you're fighting at the end of the story. Don't misunderstand me, they're the same person, but the motivation and the things that the character says throughout the story whenever you encounter them make NO SENSE in light of the ending.

So on that note, my recommendation is a cautious "yes, but", yes, it's a game you'll likely find enjoyment in, especially if you played the previous game in the series, but you must up front divest yourself of any interest in the story because it bluntly makes no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sense in retrospect.

Further note: I didn't buy the DLC, and at this stage I am unlikely to, especially in light of Techland's recent pivot to try and present the game as a semi-GAAS type game, with an ingame store and a bunch of other cosmetic stuff to try and milk as much money from the game as they can.
The up front DLC doesn't appeal, but I will likely give the second story DLC a skim to see if it appeals.

Yes, with Caveats.

I'm completely new to the Yakuza series, agreed to play it as part of a Discord Game Club.

It is a highly enjoyable game with some significant flaws that detract.

The main story? really good! Engaging!

The Main characters, not so much.

Kiryu - A giant dumb himbo with a heart of gold. Not as good a protagonist as
Majima - A literal chaos goblin with a ponytail and an eyepatch. Big fan of both his character, and his story developments. I fell in love with him when you unlock his Legend fighting style with the knife and unlock his "♥♥♥♥ three guys up" heat move.

Both characters are following the same story, but pulling from different sides of the same rope, that somehow, has four parties pulling through on it.

Ultimately, it is a highly engaging game with one big caveat: Bring Cheat Engine.

Many of the substories are tied to minigames.
These minigames range from "Enjoyable" to "you are a masochist".
The dancing minigame in particular can ♥♥♥♥ right off.

While the minigames are not mandatory, and the substories are not mandatory, the game follows the conventions of the time by locking superbosses behind 100%ing all of the substories.

If you enjoy the minigames, more power to you. I enjoyed some of them (RC cars, bowling, etc), but still found others too irritating to play, so by all means, play it, enjoy it, but have cheat engine there to ease you through the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Looking forward to other games in the series.

ed balls

I'M FREE

Leaving a positive review to counteract the sobbing coming from the third reich quarter whining about "muh censorship"

I rate this a "yes, recommend" with caveats. You'll see from the ~120 hours I've got in the game, and my achievements list I finished up through to the end of the first DLC, and this is where I'll rest.

Before I begin, I'll say that it is likely that the Developer is going to come in, and apologize profusely for any issues I've raised, so I'll pre-emptively say, that I've recommended the game, it's a good product, one that the team at Dandylion should be proud of, and based on how much I've enjoyed it, it's likely that I'll purchase any relevant sequel that comes out and I look forward to that day. It's valid to be critical of something that is enjoyed, in the hopes that the following offering is all the sweeter.

That out of the way, there are three major issues with the game that I found grating.

The first issue is the story

I'll be up front and say that to an extent I enjoyed the story, but the story feels, at best, scattered. Unfocused.

What it does well, is character arcs, humanizing your team, demonstrating the inter-personal relationships that grow between them, even inter-personal relationships between opposing factions is elaborated upon very well

What the story does not do - is provide any form of closure. Character relationships are developed through, we'll call it canon events (pre, post, mid battle sequences) and through an in game mechanic that lets you build camraderie between teammates and unlocks specialized talents.

However, in spite of that, there are so many protagonists that the game desperately tries to bend multiple ways to give them all air time, the first DLC introduces two more, and the most recent DLC I'm told introduces yet another character - this is not a bad thing, but it leads to the story feeling a mile wide but an inch deep, which is unfortunate because the actual story is relatively engaging, with good world building and an interesting narrative.

This lack of closure is something that is being remedied overtime by way of DLC, and so I'll say it's something that may end up being fixed in the future, however I personally found the ending of the first DLC disappointing, without it being clear what happened to both the Drifter Clowns Hanson, or even giving any closure to the titular characters of the DLC's primary goal.

The second point is something others will have raised but I feel compelled to say it nonetheless, the english translation is less than stellar - it is, I'm told, vastly improved upon where it was many moons ago, but there's still lots of little things that read like nails on a chalkboard at times. This isn't a dealbreaker, but I hope that this game's success is such that any hypothetical sequel will allow the team at Dandylion to pair with a competent translation team.

The last part is balance, and this may be controversial because there are steps to remedy this, the balance in this game feels... finnicky. The game loves to throw wave after wave of mooks at you, and you hew through them like a scythe through wheat, but it can feel overwhelming and many of these enemies seem like they only exist to overwhelm you. I say this may be controversial because ultimately this is actually a solveable issue via in-game mechanics such as challenge mode, or various options that increase the difficulty of the game, so I simply raise it as a potential issue that if you're like me, and playing through on normal for the story, you may find the lions share of the game relatively easy until you hit the end game levels.

To end on the positives, the character build possibilities are staggering, the gameplay is engaging, I heartily recommend this game - with the above caveats in mind.

It's the most innovative shooter I've played in years.

I struggled to get through this game, not because I found the combat difficult, but because the story was nauseatingly anime.

The secret to victory was the power of friendship.
Characters have long monologues punctuated only by party members saying their name solemnly.
Everyone gasps and makes random noises during conversations.
The game's economy is absolutely busted - you're expected to use consumables and those consumables are expensive, you don't get money from random battles, so you best hope you get lucky from harvesting random nodes on the map you get nuggets that give you gold, or do the sidequests.
The actual combat balance is weird AF - the boss battles aren't as tough as the denizens that make up the dungeon

If you're like me, and struggle when games are overwhelmingly anime, give this a pass - Berseria was better, even if I DID struggle with the combat system more than this one, the actual story was good there.

To speak to the positives of the game, I found the characters (no spoilers) of The Knight, The Mage, and The Geomancer to be endearing, the rest of them not so much. even the endearing characters were starting to wear out their welcome by the end of the game.

I literally only pushed my way through to the ending in order to satisfy my own curiousity as to how the story would end: Spoilers, it went exactly how i thought it would.

In conclusion 4/10, not unredeemable, but also not worth the time investment involved in seeing the story to its conclusion.

edit: I've had a lot of comments from people saying I clearly haven't put any time into the game because of my playtime - I've put 60 odd hours into the game that's untracked because I was playing on my steamdeck while not connected to a network, so the game didn't track my playtime.

The game is dated and the Multiplayer is non-existant, the biggest knock against the game is ultimately that it feels a bit torture porn-y, especially at the start where it really goes out of its way to ♥♥♥♥ all over Lara and physically kick the hell out of her at every available opportunity.

Laying that aside, that only lasts a brief period, it doesn't take Lara long to turn into the terminator and go full on murder machine.

The story's decent, good action popcorn entertainment.

Extremely tight gameplay loop that hooks straight into your veins - which is exceptional considering it just came out in early access and it is very visibly not done yet.

Looking forward to seeing where this one goes.

Originally written in like, 0.1? 0.2? now at 1.0 it's a GOAT - buy it