Recent reviews by Alzarath

V Rising is an interesting game. My first experiece was playing on Brutal on a private server with a friend that had inflated resource drops based on a recommendation they got and nothing else.

Grind: Due to being on a resource-inflated server, it felt like the game was not a grind. Which is great to me. But the mechanics made it feel like it was meant to be. So I can't give a good impression.

Story: I noticed there were 3 cinematics in the menu for them, but I only experienced one of them in my playthrough. So where did the other two go? No, this is not a story game. This is all about the grind and boss rush.

PVP-Focus: A lot of people argue whether the game is PVE or PVP. There's a lot of mechanical and balance decisions that seem exclusively based on the existence of other players. In my mind this solidifies it as a PVP game. I didn't really want to play a PVP game, though. I didn't feel like the game was advertised as one. That said, I just didn't play PVP. In the end, this meant there were a bunch of QOL features the game excluded because they might be problematic for PVP, which certainly hindered my experience overall.

Combat: Unfortunately due to being on a server and there being that PVP focus, combat was server-deterministic, meaning my several dozen near-misses were actually full-hits. This lead to a bit of frustration, especially when those hits had a big impact on fights. Excluding that, the general gameplay felt good.

Balance: Remember that I played on Brutal for my first playthrough. The balance was all over the place. I'd come across bosses that took very little time and effort to defeat, but then there'd be bosses that have absurd difficulty spikes. Not all, but some bosses feel like they just have unfair attack patterns. The game felt overall quite difficult leading up through the second act. Then suddenly I got some new gear and my hit points doubled. From that point on the game felt... almost trivial. There were no big difficulty spikes. Some bosses felt pitifully easy. Until the final boss, at least. We had a good bit of challenge fighting the final boss. That said, they didn't feel necessarily more difficult than some of the big spikes through the first act of the game. It did come across as a little anti-climactic needing to defeat the final boss just to unlock the last piece of equipment that we felt we could have used to fight the boss. Once again hinging on the PVP focus I'm sure. We stopped playing immediately after going back and stomping some of the bosses that gave us trouble in the past, so we didn't really get to utilize the full kits much.

Between the missing QOL features and the highly inconsistent balance, the game can feel pretty unpolished. This certainly comes across as pretty negative review, but overall, I had a relatively fun time playing with my friend. I got a good 50 hours of gameplay according to Steam by the time I finished and I'll probably continue playing to try out the PVP side of the game. I'm glad I started with Brutal because I've heard Normal is extremely easy. I hope they'll update the game with a greater focus on PVE and fix the boss's balance inconsistencies. Being at full release, I wouldn't expect the game to get a real story though. Without a real story, I imagine the game won't be remembered for much in particular.

It's a shoddy copy of Fall Guys with unending predatory practices akin to that of typical mobile games (because it's a mobile game).

The latest update has disincentivized tackling both players and objectives. The primary focus is now on dealing with arbitrary chores challenges to earn a pittance. It's certainly hindered my interest in playing.

The game is far from free and yet the model feels like that of a free-to-play game with its DLC, premium currency, and battle passes. If it's really all about money, I hope they'll do players the service of allowing them to operate outside of their servers before they decide to call it quits and steal the game they paid for from them.

Too many score attack influences that limit gameplay opportunities and make it feel like it's trying to be a mobile game. Menu UI gives extremely little guidance for storytelling purposes, assuming it even has a linear story to be told. Hopefully later games improve on the formula in a major way, but I don't see myself giving them the opportunity.Doesn't help that it's abandoned and its shelf life is in question.

Could be worse.

Pros:
- 10 built-in courses.
- Workshop support.
- Inexpensive. Got it when it was on sale for $2. Probably worth it at that price.

Mehs:
- Physics are passable at best. They aren't particularly satisfying, but they mostly do the job.
- Repeat holes. Running through all 10 courses I definitely noticed some very similar holes. Some of them were even direct reskinned copies of others.

Cons:
- Imperfect collision. Rarely you'll just bounce off of flat geometry. That's never fun.
- Mediocre visuals. The buttons are flat and aren't as responsive as they could be. In-game looks okay at best.
- Modifiers are uninteresting. Random Shapes feel almost inconsequential. Jumping is pretty unreliable, especially when you're not traveling on a flat plane.
- Dull audio design. The hits aren't particularly snappy and there's a lack of fanfare when you get in the hole, which has become sort of a staple for the genre.

While the game has workshop support, which is great for longevity, the physics kind of spoil it. It feels pretty flat and an infinite number of courses won't fix that.

It's not a terrible minigolf game, but there are better out there. If you're really on a budget and you absolutely need to play some minigolf but can't afford something a little better, sure, go right ahead. Otherwise I'd say take a pass and go elsewhere.

They did the classics justice, you can get it on PC, and it's not locked to some mediocre storefront.

It's almost okay, but...

* We encountered a lot of instances where there was insufficient information for the person that needed to do something. Ended up needing to use third-party tools to express that.
* The difficulty curve was more like a difficulty sin-wave.
* Desyncs were pretty common. For a co-operative puzzle game that's a pretty bad thing.
* Game logic felt pretty inconsistent (some walls you could wall-jump off, some you couldn't, it wasn't obvious which)

In the end it's a very small free game. Might be worth playing if it's the kind of thing you're looking for.

Pretty entertaining. A quick game. Only nitpick is the infinite train game mode that feels very tacked on with little content or variety to keep interest.

Tips were not well implemented. Many required the player to interact with some arbitrarily positioned objects that could get the player in trouble just by trying to reach it.

Item descriptions were hard to find and inconvenient, requiring you to right-click the item in specific contexts and click the Information button rather than just having hover tooltips.

Stance toggle buttons did not update their tooltips when clicked and it was unclear which state the toggle was in.

It's technically possible to retreat back into stealth, but you're just running across the map to do so. Hiding is not an effective way, considering they appear to have absolute knowledge of your position once you're in combat even after breaking line of sight.

Took a lot of trial and error to figure out stealth mechanics, such as what triggers an instant reveal, and I still didn't feel like I had a solid understanding. I threw a knife at someone standing in front of another person once and the other person sat there in shock, when another time they instantly turned to face my character.

First time I picked up bottles and got the tip about bottles, I tried to place a bottle in front of the very first enemies that are patrolling in front of the area with bottles and they started spazzing out, repeatedly stalling and making dialog about the bottle, then returning to their patrol route until they lost vision of the bottles.

Ultimately it just started frustrating me to the extent I didn't want to play anymore.

I purchased the game very, very early on. I played it once and felt like I had my fill of it. It was a very different game back then. The game feels a lot better to play now. I won't say it feels abandoned or incomplete, because according to the developers it's just finished. Arguably worse, I would say it feels lacking. A lack of a story campaign means there's just the scenarios. The single player scenarios feel very same-y between maps. The only variety I would expect to get would be from PvP, but that's not something I'm interested in.