Watchtower 最近的评测

Picked the game up when it was first released to EA, played about 10 hours then just decided to put it down and wait for more content. Sad to see not much was really added/refined, and actually development actually came to an abrupt end with an incomplete story. On one hand it's nice that it wasn't milked in EA for years to come and misleading people, on the other hand the game had a fairly unique concept and it would've been nice to see it more fleshed out.

The gameplay loop itself is pretty fun for the first few hours, but the entire shtick of finding the clues gets incredibly boring and monotonous extremely quick and just serves to frustrate and waste your time. Gunplay is fairly meh, it was close to actually being good but the shoddy camera angles and wonky hitboxes turn it into an annoyance more often then a rewarding experience. Throwables/traps fall into the same category of being badly implemented with not being able to react on the fly and it all comes down to setting up beforehand which isn't really something you can do outside the bosses.

All in all there was a lot of potential with the game and while it has interesting systems they all share the same flaw in the fact the game wasn't developed let alone polished. This is one of the games where an in-between recommendation would be ideal, because i'm not going to recommend this but there are some caveats to it which isn't really fair to the dev.

So, 1k hours in and i'm not going to do a long review, just a few very important takeaways i've gathered.

The game is fun, and the constant power climb is great, but at 1460(really after you get a taste of the relic sets) you realize there aren't going to be any other big gameplay changes once you have your full relic set, so you're essentially not gaining anything new until..? It's still the same sets in KR, just with bigger numbers, gameplay is 1:1 otherwise, there aren't new sets/abilities or anything to change your gameplay.

Alts are great, but once you're at a certain point on them they become stupidly expensive to level, gear, and get to a fun state. 1370 isn't that bad, but 1415 and beyond especially with relic prices is simply absurd unless you're swiping or knew how to play the market early. SG holding honing buffs is a terrible move and using the logic the rich get richer is stupid, because people ahead are going to be ahead no matter what, it's not like they're not just stockpiling their resources and waiting. Sure, people might hit 1370 where the other alts are, but as soon as that buff drops it'll be F1 cars racing horses, makes no difference when it hits.

This is hardly an mmo, it has the most anti-social features i've ever seen and I can't believe how ass-backwards some of its systems are. For a game that relies on you having and being active on alts, it's astounding how bad the social design is, guild system is horrendous. As a fairly anti-social player, even i'm shocked and at times annoyed how hard it is to be able to quickly check in on someone else, and it generally comes down to just using discord.

The game is incredibly predatory, sure it might be better then most eastern mmos, but that's not really an excuse. You can and many do play without spending a dime, but you're encouraged to constantly and there are some milking practices SG uses that most people seem to be willfully ignorant of.

Speaking of Smilegate, while everything I heard about the company pre-launch was positive, or at least they're the guys punching up and doing stuff differently, my experience with them has been awful and i'm amazed so much good-will was ever fostered by their players. The content cadence(classes/argos/legion commanders) was never set in stone despite having 3 launches prior so a clear roadmap should have been set with all the prior experience they've had, yet our "roadmaps" have been roadmaps to the roadmap it's so bad. We still 6/13, still have no date for Vykas. Classes every 2 months? Good luck ever switching your main. New players? Good luck getting past the wall of bots, and if you somehow do that, good luck trying to do anything with a ruined economy due to the ignorance and failure of SG to control at any level. RMT? Go ahead, you're not going to get punished. Simply crucifying players would have been a better alternative to doing nothing, at least there would be some fear into enjoying g2g.

The game is going to die, this is the main reason i'm not going to recommend this, simply can't. There has been to much damage done to the game via bots and smilegate's horrendous planning. The game shouldn't of launched with so many(any) classes missing. They shouldn't of lied and said we'd catch up to KR servers - no other region has come close, nor does their release cadence point to any difference for our version. You're going to be going to every single piece of content with a meta already established and no discovery you can do yourself. "Just make a blind group." Yeah, have you ever played any online game ever? That's not possible to do, it'll always be a tarnished experience. Also, no discovery with classes. It's all going to be a guide by the time we get it. Some people are fine with that, others like myself find that a cardinal sin and if I knew we were always going to get recycled content, i'd of never played, SG straight lying about that is scummy.

So, bots ruining the new players experience and economy so new players don't want to play the game, and if they stick it out can't get their feet under them when they get to t3 because everything costs so much. Game already has major population issues where you can't find groups for(unscaled btw) world events such as islands/events, current players literally waiting 9 months(jun'22, mar'23 artist btw) for a class(with 2 more already confirmed and coming before then) they wouldn't even be able to main swap to.

There is so much wrong with the game. There are still SO many "launch issues" that shouldn't be a thing 4 months into the official(fourth) release. We did Valtan last night and lost our Crystaline aura, so we couldn't repair or access our storage(yeah, those key things are linked to those predatory practices, sure for current players exchanging gold for crystals isn't bad, but imagine a new player with no gold having no access to such basic qol.), so if people didn't have all of their consumables on them they were SoL. Then they did an unannounced maintenance where tons of people lost a lot of their time because they were kicked from the game mid-activity with a 60 second warning. This isn't the first time that's happened, actually either of those things. But if their in-game shop goes down? People are working overtime to get that one sorted asap.

The bots ruining the economy/new player experience topped with SG having the worst release cadence to milk everything they can is/has done irreparable damage to the game and it isn't worth investing your time into, which is a shame because they do so much cool ♥♥♥♥ in the fights, but all the shady ♥♥♥♥ they do ultimately overshadows that and the game has no longevity so there's no real reason to invest.

There's so much I could add to this, so if you have a legit question or counterpoint, please let me dissuade you from wasting your time on this.

Not much to say really, started by one man, his initial debut was so well received he was able to get a few more people in the project and pretty much make an actual(short) game instead of a small tech demo. If this wasn't given for free, i'd probably not be leaving a positive review, because even if there is more of the game I personally don't like how much the combat system changed since the old version.

Old version had a DMC combo counter going which rewarded variety in how you fight and entire system felt better for it. Now it just feels kind of generic where you're going to be better off shooting for the most part without doing anything flashy, just way more bland. New version has a really nice counter mechanic added too, so it's just strange that gunplay ended up being the best thing.

Not sure i'd say it's worth 20$ as is, I played about an hour and was just bored, felt like a worse Doom Eternal with the removal of the old systems. And that stealth part, who in their right mind thought that was a fun segment to create let alone play? Game was essentially made and released as a tech demo with insane graphics which it certainly does look amazing. Didn't play it fully maxed with RTX enabled simply due to expecting a frantic experience in which I'd of rather had more frames, but it still looked amazing. Just leaving a positive review so hopefully creator and his new team can put some new stuff out there with hopefully a bit more substance behind it in the future, get it on sale or if you backed it early on, may as well boot it up and try it since it's free.

So, finished the base game and unlocked the essentially Heat system from Hades, haven't messed with it yet though. Game has its problems, but it's got a solid foundation and is worth the chance if you're into zombies and/or roguelikes.

E - The patch actually fixed quite a few of the issues I had, ended up finishing maxed out heat run and unlocking everything.

Pros -
There's quite a bit to unlock via character progression with knowledge, or item spawns/things to start runs with with Supply points, always feels like you're making some sort of progression.

Combat is mostly well done, happy to see a zombie game that isn't afraid to actually have you use guns instead of worse case scenario/end game. Melee felt super underwhelming early on, but once you start unlocking the nodes for them, namely damage and speed, it opens up a lot and found myself slashing through groups more often then not.

Most of the enemies are done well and very telegraphed in what they're going to do and can make you change tactics depending on whats around you, feels rewarding properly outplaying a scary group.

Maps and their events are kind of double edged, some are really designed well and can be packed and curated for an action-packed event chain, other times the location is super ugly/bland and horridly laid out so you're constantly getting stuck/back tracking on a map with nothing noteable on it.

Cons
There are certainly some bugs that really were frustrating to deal with, one of the biggest for me in general gameplay was explosions not being consistent. I'd throw nades and they'd do zero damage despite landing on somethings feet, that's even if they make it past the horrible sky boxes and arc the throwing system uses. Super outdated feeling and the fact explosions in general just didn't work half the time made what could've been a cool system just arduous and more likely to gimp you then anything else.
^E This was fixed in the patch. The system for throwing still feels outdated, but explosives do what they're supposed to now and they're great after you stop killing yourself with them.

The games, even Roguelike genre in generals design is you're going to be repeating stuff a lot, switching zones/entering exiting areas etc. This game isn't any different in that aspect, but this game has an egregious amount of things that take longer then they should - the entire car segment should've never made it into the final product with as unwieldy as it is. After having to hold E to enter the car, refill the car, repair the car, start the car, every single area. It adds in so much extra wasted time that upgrades CAN lessen, but even fully maxed out use speeds and it still takes 10s to do the whole shabang. Then you get the LOADING screen after you finally do all of that, then another unneeded animation of the car driving into the new area - it's just to much. Car shouldn't have durability, gas capacity should've been increased either baseline or via upgrades, but it's so much micromanagement that doesn't add anything else into the game but waste your time. Easily one of the worst features of the game.

Sort of tacking onto the car thing loading into areas - when you enter a new area via car/basement/cave/bunker, you can have enemies aggroed onto you and attacking before you can even move. It's a terrible system, either make enemies unable to detect you/be invincible until you're fully loaded in and move, PoE does a good job at this with its zoning. Didn't happen often, but in 25 hours of play had 2 instances of entering a cave with a big boy and instantly getting slapped and dead. Few times where a stalker would jump on me or a bloater would be rubbing their hands, just not something I can imagine them not encountering during play testing.

Level design is double edged, the entire 3rd act/area(fire zone) is just super ugly and it's visually straining to look at. The skeletons are nearly impossible to see 90% of the time as well, other areas are MUCH sharper looking. All of the areas suffer horrendous design when it comes to backtracking due to horrible placement geometries, it just doesn't flow, there are many areas where you're forced to just go back the exact same way you came despite the area where you were going not being some out of the way room or corner, all because of a badly placed bush or crashed car that you can't walk through/vault over. Don't even get me started on the fact they added collision onto chairs that you can't break or don't have room to move and are just dumped into random hallways.
^E - This was partially fixed, at least for my issues. They said they addressed some dead ends but I couldn't honestly say if that was fixed, didn't encounter any but I don't full clear maps anymore either. They DID fix the collision issues with chairs being cemented in cement and now you can actually move them around/not get stuck, wonderful job there. I had no idea it was a bug(?) and thought it was a feature, but you can attack over barricades now which is amazing for holdouts.

Adding onto the level design - camera angles and TRAPS. Now, I love me some traps, but when it comes to them being in this game, that was a real bad call. Topping off you can't see them 99% of the time because you can't rotate the camera and it's behind that solid wall the camera won't let you see past - grrr. Who thought this was okay? Not to mention how dangerous the explosive barrels/mines are once you level up your explosives skill, their radius is doubled. I could get the barrels being affected by your skills since you're causing the explosion, but why are the static mines also larger? The end of the the past 3-4 characters I had in the final zone ALL died to horrendously placed barrels(or getting melee'd through a wall). That ♥♥♥♥ where you've gotta scout the signal and you get locked into an arena with like 12 barrels? Yeah, that'd be fine if they blew up together but they just pinballed eachother around and each explosion was 1/6th of the size of the actual arena, infuriating. Final bunker same issue, though managed to not die in there but would've been very easy.
^E - Traps are now telegraphed and easily seen, don't have any issues with this implementation.


There is a lot of useless stuff in the game, all of the plants are essentially just vendor fodder because you never really need to look for ways to restore stamina because the game is very generous in supplying you with all of your resource needs bar batteries normally. There's a lot of weapons that just aren't designed well, the shotguns in general all feel really bad except the semi you unlock later on, I really do appreciate the decent variety you get but it'd of been nice if certain weapons had better uses then one another over "this number is higher on this caliber so use that". The amount of armored zombies/specials in the later acts and the lack of options to bypass that armor(no real options before unlocking AP guns/flamethrower) just feels like a missed opportunity for some X beats Y scenario, as is you're just going to whale away at them with a melee weapon that always takes 4 hits to break armor regardless of what you're using or its damage.

Overall
The game does have a lot of problems, there's a lot of room for improvement that i'd of expected more from an early access game instead of a full release. However, it's also quite fun especially in the first 10 hours when you're still constantly unlocking and seeing new stuff, and the roguelike zombie formula goes hand in hand together. Reminds me a lot of State of Decay, obviously they have their differences but they're both indie zombie games that incorporate some roguelike elements in both. Considering how many improvements State of Decay made with their sequel, i'd love to see the next iteration of The Last Stand, because the groundwork is there and for their first full fledged game they've made a compelling argument to keep supporting them and see how far they can go.

Donno. It's free with no(yet) locked content anywhere outside of cosmetics, but as a competitive player it just feels so.. dated. Every comp match starting people with the BR just feels super bland(due to ads shenanigans), the fact you spawn with 2 nades on essentially an 8 second death timer makes it feel like MW2 with noobtubes going everywhere. Perhaps i'm just used to CS for my competitive shooter, but it more often then not felt like overwatch without the heroes.

I don't know if this was a recent thing in the past few Halo's, but getting knocked out of your scope(also the glare, why? its not bf) is easily one of the worst features in the game. I could get it for power weapons or perhaps to break the lock on for the Hydra(why is this not a power weapon?) but using any method of ADS then getting looked at wrong just knocks you out of it, it's so incredibly disorienting and janky, just give aimpunch or literally anything else.

Ended up placing Plat 5, played about 20(2ish hours with the constant menu bugging out) games past that and was nearly Plat 7(Diamond 1?) so it goes fast, ranking system feels a bit weird, obviously most people are still getting placed so there were a lot of unranked players even a few hours after getting placed.

The big battles were kind of cool, but honestly all of the maps are so open that there'd never be a real flank to pull cool ♥♥♥♥ off. As a casual game i'm sure this'd be great, but granted it's been over a decade since I really played any halo games and I wasn't a comp gaymer back then, it just doesn't feel great with as dated as some mechanics are and the lack of loadout customization.

Can't wait to see a netcode analysis video for this game, cause no way this ♥♥♥♥ belongs in this decade, I'd get it for the bigger maps/lobbies, but dying behind walls in a 4v4 ranked mode with hardly any map interactables messing with packets, big yikes.

I don't think most people play Halo to sweat though, and if you can just enjoy the mayhem most of it is done really well so you'll end up having a blast for the low cost of being free. Would've been great to see my fps(oof if there was an option in game settings) but Rtss and Shadowplay both didn't work for it, definitely felt choppy in a few spots and i'm on a 2080S and 9900k, so performance might be a bit wonky. Looks like they're pushing the battlepass/cosmetics pretty hard, reminds me a lot of Apexs' shop, again though, free so may as well give it a shot if you're curious.

Either way, hoping the campaign is actually decent or by the time it rolls around people are making good custom games, cause I'd of been sad paying 60 for this as is.

E: Didn't mark it as being free. Might be important if they're not separating the store pages for Multi and Campaign when that rolls around.

While there have been issues since the beta, none fully stopped me from playing the game. Latest patch managed to do that, with the only fix being to completely uninstall my AV(not allow through firewall or give it permissions, just straight uninstall), as much as I did enjoy the game with the multitude of problems it has, i'm not going to risk my PC for a singular game, and the fact this has been something that's known with EaC/Webroot and other games have found solutions(biggest example would be Apex), while they've had an entire post launch month to fix the problem and still have chosen not to do so, hard to recommend it with TRS' already cloudy history.

Since they're apparently ignoring feedback they get from support(Going back to the open beta, so 4+ months), hopefully the review rating can have a bigger impact.

E: They released a server side patch which seems to have fixed the issue of actually playing the game, and it was under 36 hours(which is still no excuse for shipping it broken) so fairly quickly all things considered. They also broke quite a few mechanics(trauma/stagger) with the update on top of messing with the AV compatibility so the one step forward and two back approach. But still, being able to play is pretty critical to the game, even more so then its balance so thumbs up getting it taken care of even if it wasn't acknowledged.

Actual quick thoughts on the game as someone that's 8/8 nightmare, obviously like the game but there is a lot of mile wide and an inch deep going on with the games systems. My first two clears of nightmare were with premades, both teams were randoms I found from solo queing and then sticking together, but each clear was with different people. Was a fair bit of trial and error on the first go around, probably 30ish hours and a week or so to actually clear it the first time, second time probably 15h and just a few days since I learned from the first go around.

The spawn system the AI director uses is fine 90% of the time, but it's the 10% that you remember because that's when you get that exodia combo you can't outplay. Trick to beating or at least abating it was to always have at least one person behind us blocking(line of sight on spawn areas) spawns right on our ass. Obviously that's not something you can do in certain areas and you'll get specials spawn in that small closet you can't see but generally manageable. Having played nightmare in the beta, the ways spawns worked there was miles better, you clear and area and outside of hordes you don't deal with ♥♥♥♥ spawning behind you - methodical and careful gameplay was rewarded and it felt good. You don't get that luxury with full release though, you get constant spawns to harry you forward no matter what.

The other 6 cleaners I just did solo and speedran it, which I wish people would play it normally first because it's not impossible at all, but it is a time investment and a skill check(you can only ♥♥♥♥ up and hit so many avoidable horde triggers) that many players simply can't put up with. I've got a long history with mmos and am a bit of a masochist so I for the most part enjoyed the grind, but I understand it's to much for a lot of players and even though speedrunning is a vastly different way to play the game, it still requires some mechanics and knowledge of the maps to complete. That being said, i'd of rather seen speed decks up first on the chopping block compared to anything else, nightmare should be a team accomplishment, not how well you can essentially exploit the game.

It's on the fault of the devs for not making nightmare more approachable to methodical play or, of all the suggestions and variations of one simple thing, making corruption cards being able to get mulligan'd to some extent, either redrawn when you lose a continue or rerolled with copper, better risk/reward side objectives players could opt into, really anything other then the horrendous system they have currently. Getting the card that has hag/mist in one, on top of another boss card, on top of acid zombies and explosion resistant/attack speed tallboys is just.. not right. Then when you do lose to such a combo and use a continue, you're still facing it again, it's just a bad system. To much randomness involved to not get confronted with hattrick situations on a regular basis in nightmare.

Nightmare aside, I didn't touch recruit since I had experience from the beta and it was way to easy, but veteran is at a great spot. If you have decent players that actually pay attention it's not difficult, you still get the random AI that'll throw silly stuff at you, but outside of having 2-3 disablers' spawn during a horde its rarely to the point of being ridiculous. I could imagine it'd be way harder for consoles/controller users in general due to not being able to snap to certain targets the way you can with a mouse, but this review is off steam assuming you're mk/b.

One thing that I occasionally see touched upon but not often, a lot of players don't realize it's not their own internet/systems fault, the game has TERRIBLE servers and netcode. There's generally at least one point in a match where you're going to get teleporting zombies/things coming out of walls, they really need the option to use p2p or let us have access to community hosted servers, because their netcode can make Tarkov look like a well oiled machine.

tldr ; Game is great for what it is, which is a more modernized take on the L4D formula that's more then get into the saferoom(barring speedrunners). If you don't like the extra complexity and dynamics that the deck building brings, or having specials being the main enemy and not commons you probably won't enjoy the game. If you do enjoy the added mechanics, the game is still unbalanced and at times down right infuriating, but things will most likely get better and built upon. Until that happens and the developers actually communicate openly, i'd say wait for a sale or get it off gamepass because after Evolve TRS doesn't necessarily have a great track record when things start going downhill.

4/16/22 Update with Tunnels of Terror - Lot of the games same problems exist in the form of bugs, awful netcode, and still missing MAJOR QoL features(vote to kick mia for 6 months while being largely requested since cbt, still horrendous search/matchmaking parameters or lack thereof), community(what remains) is largely still run-through and hit every alarm they can with zero communication. The nerfs to nightmare make it more accessible to these kind of players, and while I finished NM with all 8 before the December nerfs, it's laughable to see how hard it was nerfed. The "new" nightmare lacks matchmaking, but admittedly seems cool with giving you your entire deck from the get go, sadly my group shelved this game awhile ago and I don't feel like trying to lfg a competent group via discord(6/7/22, ended up clearing it solo, was pretty enjoyable but super rng heavy on hives). The ridden hives themselves are pretty cool, nice risk-vs-reward early in the run, but they can completely negate the challenge depending on the rng of the new weapons and attachments(getting these in the first hive of the first map is silly). Feels like the update was 3 steps forward and 2 back, so progress is progress but the community that remains in the game is my biggest dissuasion for wanting to play more. This should have been part of the next actual map expansions - while the hives are cool you're still playing the same maps you've been the past 6 months and it's dull.

It's fun.

Good -
All of the character designs are really cool, really unique art. Would've been cool to see a shapeshifter in the roster.

Wasn't sold on the system initially, but the essence system adds some unique interactions, people complaining about the game being overly difficult don't understand how to balance their resources out.

Some of the item/character interactions are really insane if you can get the correct build, which has both pros and cons to it, but when it works well it's super satisfying.

Skipped through literally every interaction, but for those of you who enjoy it, all of the main encounter/lore points are voiced and the narrator is pretty good.

Cons -

Biggest con is the lack of build diversity. You're either going HP or SP depending on your trinkets/event bonuses, status' in the game are super underwhelming and they're mainly there for damage reduction. Depression would be the main outlier here because of the amount of interactions it has with different skills/trinkets, but it's still just better to go for pure damage and ramping generally. Felt myself gravitating towards the same system of buff the hell out of Mary/Dracula and 1 shot everything. After beating the last boss, even though a NG+ is introduced, i've got no desire to play more.

Some encounters didn't feel great, the only one that was potentially run ending in my case was the Fanatic, if you can't split your damage quickly enough he's just a menace, with that said out of the 10ish runs it took me to beat the game, he was the run ender only twice, it's not overly difficult, there's just no counterplay without the correct set-up and that feels bad.

Game really just doesn't have much replayability because the power climb is exactly the same every run - get terror up, focus on events and buff damage, then get skills, in that order every time. Should be more/random combat rewards, being able to chose what reward you get just feels badly designed and takes a lot of randomness out of the game, which isn't a great thing for a roguelike.

There are some very rough explanations on certain skills/interactions I'd imagine due to the game being developed in French and ported to english, but it wasn't a great job. None of the lore(that I actually read) was bad, but there is a huge lack of proper tooltips on quite a few things which I hope will get fixed for newer players, but it's strange to see something so simple pass QA on the 1.0 release. Playing Hecate was a literal roll of the dice on trying to figure out how her moon phases worked and what shifted what.

This is likely just a personal opinion here and YMMV, but by far the most efficient comp was Drac/Mary/Lilith. Baron and the Lady were both really good for SP comps(which would suffer against fanatics, so rip that), and Frankenstein/creature I used for one run and didn't find either enjoyable at all. Horseman was just a worse Lilith from what I wanted out of my 3rd. Hecate was just so badly explained trial and error was the only way to see what her kit did, which isn't fun with as specific as some counters need to be.

Overall
It was fun, kind of got old towards the end and the lack of replayability(for me) is never a thing I want in Roguelikes, but the game was fairly well made without many issues, and had some unique features on top of gorgeous aesthetics and still gave a solid 20 hours of content for 20$. It doesn't have the balance or replayability of StS, but for a smaller scope the game is great. For all the people saying the game is to hard and you can't pass the first book... what? If you've got any experience in turn based games you'll be fine, like any other roguelike bad RNG can kill a run, but it's more user-error then anything else.

Two massive issues, one is the micro-stuttering making even 90fps feel like ♥♥♥♥, other is the completely horrendous netcode for multiplayer. When you're assassinating people 5 feet away in mid air, or taking damage literally 2-3 seconds after peeking, really no way this was play-tested outside of a lan environment and given the greenlight for being acceptable. Guess that goes with the performance issues as well, absolutely zero QA went into this.

Enjoyed the 2 hours of campaign but don't want to play it until the actual performance issues are addressed so spent the following 4 hours in its multiplayer invading people, there were a few hosts were the netcode wasn't complete trash and actual gunplay was involved and outside of gas/explosive guns, it felt decent. That was maybe 1 in 10 for invades though, the rest was just a de-sync nightmare where the best solution is just to teleport behind someone, then teleport one more time to compensate the netcode, and simply 1 shot them with the magical front-facing takedown.

Colt(defender) gets 3 lives, while the invader gets 1. Rewards for not winning are so minuscule that it's honestly insulting considering you get some players that play this like they're trench crawling WW2 and don't make a sound for 5 minutes, so you're just stuck with no way to locate the player on the map. Haven't seen what the actual AI for Juli does in SP, but i'd wager you get hunted regardless of where you are on the map, the fact they couldn't add in some sort of system where you'd get hints on Colt's location in multiplayer to avoid stalemates is just another reminder of the lack of actual testing that went into this game. Tacked on modes that are there to say "Hey we did this thing, it's in the game so no excuse not to buy it!" are insulting though obviously effective, which is a shame.

The amount of non-testing that was done on this mode(or game via performance issues), just blows my mind and if I could refund at this point, I would. I have no idea how the netcode and matches work on PS5, I know their performance stability is better then PC, but maybe it's just a trash PC port. Didn't care for the Dishonored games(though i've heard Dishonored 2 was riddled with bugs on launch as well) due to their killing = bad system, but loved Prey and Mooncrash. Was expecting a similar level of polish and super disappointed to see all the rust showing in terms of performance and the abysmal AI. Watching how the AI reacts(or doesn't) playing as Juli where you get the full birds eye view is actually insanely disappointing. If they weren't from 2005, it'd perhaps make the 3 lives vs 1 argument a bit more fair, as is you're lucky if they tag Colt before walking into him backwards.


Haven't played much of the actual story, what I did play I enjoyed aside from the lengthy stage-set tutorial, as many others have already stated the VA is exceptional, the areas are mostly unique and interesting but as far as conclusion goes, trying to wait for any potential patches so I can actually enjoy the game opposed to the choppy experience it currently is. Expected better quality from Arkane, hoping it gets the bandaids it requires because it's a good game underneath the problems, but right now those problems are so glaring it's blinding the good parts and the continuing trend of games getting shipped broken isn't worth the current price. As much as i'd like it to be DRM free, think the problem lies in Void engine if it's the same as Dishonored 2 was which still was/is choppy after Denuvo's removal.

PS - Add in a ADS toggle, why is this not common practice?

E : After hitting 50 on Juliana, the simplest bandaid to fixing PvP ignoring network issues is simply to disable takedowns and remove/add drain or some shimmer effect to Aether. Literally those 2 fixes would improve the modes longevity, as is if you have 2 people that know what they're doing Colt will ALWAYS win. Also, stop ruining win streaks when someone rage-quits after 2 deaths, or letting them "flee" when they haven't even hacked the antenna.

E2 : Finished storyline, not horrible not great. Game is rather short and doesn't really have all the much open endedness for actually doing the main objective, it's straight linear. Game has a bad case of being way to easy on top of lacking much replayability, the PvP would give you replayability if it actually functioned correctly and had balancing done on it. As is, once you learn the maps and more importantly the spawn points, it's extremely easy to rush where Juliana is going to spawn and just insta-kill her before she can even load in. PvP is just such a massive disappointment, I wish they'd of either focused on improving the multiplayer aspect or dropped it all together and made a semi-difficult/intelligent AI, instead of best of one world it's worth of both as is.

10 of 22 hours played spent doing invasions, probably 2 of those 10 were spent searching for games. Didn't do all the side quests/arsenal, just was kind of bored towards the end and rushed through it to simply finish it. Game isn't worth the price point imo(40$ would've been a nice compromise if the game was actually polished), don't see them changing the multiplayer aspect of it at all either which would be the only thing I'd say it has going for it past the 15 hour mark for most players.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lobby/loading system makes what should be a quick 1-2m process into 3-4 between games, game is fairly average overall and would otherwise be a recommend just off the fact it's free without any paywalls, but man that re-que system is atrocious. Learn from every other BR, make people load before the game starts.

Release update : No hackers in 2 dozen or so matches, game is just ♥♥♥♥ still though. It is free and *currently* hacker free though, so at least they put a bandaid on that. Otherwise it's just a ftp tp br with terrible balance. sound design, and mechanics. But it's free. They did somewhat fix the que system, it was still a min or two between rounds, but nowhere near what it was. Better brs out there, once the fresh feeling wears off the game will be empty in a few weeks.

Reached 2 hours, tutorials/UI tweaking etc and then 5 games of straight bots where you're just slaughtering the entire lobby. Even ranked mode matches you with bots. I understand the first match being filled with bots to familiarize yourself with the controls, but over an hour of grinding mind numbing bots that teach you nothing, please devs, know your audience. People aren't picking up BR's for the intense PvE.

Would have loved to of seen if the combat is actually decent vs other players, as is just felt super clunky against the bots with the counter system seeming very wonky, though that could be attributed to the bots spending most of their screentime jumping into the wall. Poorly optimized, running at 1440p with 110ish fps absolutely cranked my GPU up to insane temps, dropping the settings literally did nothing but make the game look worse, didn't take any load off. Really sad to not even be able to test the combat properly, but from what the game felt like it just doesn't feel worth the risk of passing refund window, which is a shame because a decent melee BR would've been great.