Recent reviews by Soupra

Like everyone else, I downloaded the game for the 700 discord orbs, however I decided to give this game a try.

This game is basically a third person rogue-like action shooter. Below is my first impression

Pros:
- The combat feels very crisp and satisfying
- variety of character customization
- solid progression system
- handful of content on launch

Now the negatives:
- The game requires online connections, you cannot play this game offline.
- it heavily incentivises you to co-op, because the enemy will get more and more spongy as difficulty increases
- long drawn out boss fight. Multi-phase + multi-health bar and invincibility frame boss fights are not fun
- most levels are not melee friendly, especially bosses does a lot of melee attacks that can be easily bypassed by a ranged character.
- power ups are not tailored towards a specific character, all the power ups are so random, no synergy between them just pure RNG.
- you have to grind the same map on multiple difficulties to unlock more permanent power ups, gets tedious very fast.
- predatory monetization, this game got it all: battle pass, gacha and package deals. New characters are locked behind a paywall.

Overall the game is not very good at the moment, and to be honest, this game might intended to be a pvp hero shooter at the start of the development, because without the pve rogue-like element, it is basically a copy paste version of Marvel Rivals.

Better than Genshin Impact

As a chinese I am very proud of the developers that made this game. They have proven to the world that single player games are still alive, and we chinese dont just make cash grabbing mobile games.

However the game is not a masterpiece like some people claimed.
- alot of invisible walls
- gear and itemization are non existent because you always wear the newest gear set asap since they give better stats. Stats on gear are also very boring, often just gives you 2 stats: armor and some other stat.
- explorations are very limited, some levels offer very few options to explore
- combat is something i did not really like. You constantly trying to build up heavy attack with light attacks, and you can get interrupted while casting that heavy attack which is frustrating since you dont get any of the charges back.
- lack of resource free parry or block options. In order to block or parry, you have to use an ability that turns you into stone, and they cost a lot of mana to do so. Once you ran out of mana, you can't block anymore except dodging.

These are obviously nickpicking but i hope their next game will address these issues. Overall this is a great game, I really enjoyed it.

As a long time Tarkov player and a huge fan of the Stalker series, also a sucker for pixel games, I loved this game. I been playing the game since Kickstarter. However I cannot recommend this game at all in its current state.

First of all, content. The game has been released for almost 2 years now, but all the devs been doing is tweaking and fixing bugs. Yes fixing bugs and balancing the game are very important, however there is almost no new content being added to the base game since its Kickstarter days. 5 maps in total and almost no new weapons or new quests except some holiday events. "The Bunker" or the game's main hub still has tons of unused space and placeholder assets.

The devs fixing problems that never existed in the first place.
The UI before the recent update worked perfectly, now they felt like a mobile game with very buggy inventory UI. Sometimes item can overlap each other in your stash, or sometimes you cant stack a stackable item.
The AI for some reason feels dumber and dumber each patch. I played on the Survivor difficulty but human enemy AI are not any smarter from Rookie difficulty since recently patch. On the other hand, monster AI is just unfair. Ever since Alpha the monster AI have a problem where they will sprint around the player in circles and snapping on to the player when they attack since most of the monsters are melee. This caused the player to just mag dump on them only to find out none of the shots connected and dies due to the need to reload. The devs never fixed this issue and seem to be fine with it even alot of people have requested to rework the monster AI in their discord.
The devs seems to constantly tweaking core gameplay mechanics that should not be touched, because I literally feel like i am playing Enter the Gungeon, except with non of Gungeon's fluid movement.

I really want to give this game a positive but i can't. if you plan on buying this thinking it is going to be a 2D tarkov, dont. It is not ready until 1.0 or at least til full release.

This negative review is for Sony not Arrowhead. Keep up with the refund and review bomb, we cant let Sony get away with this.


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F YOU SONY

what an absolute joke

game studio shuts down just 4 days after launch, claiming to be "financial failure" while they still took people's money.

One of the biggest scams in the gaming history. Now people going to look at this genre with skepticism. Thanks Mytona and Fntastic!

I do not recommend this game at all at the current state or at least modders come up with mods that make this game playable. If you are buying the game or considering buying, just remember don't expect this will be a Baldur's Gate 3 type of adventure, the story has very little choice for you to make and only a handful of your dialogue options will have consequences.


Technical issues

- optimizations are terrible, constant frame drops, and drops even more on slightly crowded areas, even on high end machines. i have to download optimization mods to stabilize the game
- audio and frame stutter occurs constantly because it requires the game to be installed on SSD which is very odd for games to require that
- no DLSS. really what day and age are you living in Bethesda?

The game itself

- they revert the dialogue camera back to Fallout 3 or TES:Oblivion era for some reason, unlike Fallout 4 where you can see your character during a conversation. (also your character is now muted)
- characters staring into your soul while in dialogue.
- for some strange reason they are still using the "favorite" weapon switch system from older Fallout games, even though a lot of games already switched to a weapon wheel which you can toggle on and off.
- hit registration is horrible, shots will miss even if you are literally on that person's face.
- unlike Fallout 4, where you can store the weapon or armor mods you crafted, if you craft a new attachment, that previous attachment is destroyed.
- no land vehicles. Some quests require you to travel on foot, so you have to walk a long way to get there, it also makes exploring filler planets more annoying. Come on, even Skyrim got horses.
- the jog animation is the same animation for sprint, which makes jogging look very weird in 3rd person
- The AI are still very braindead and I have a feeling that they just copy-pasted the same AI algorithm from the Fallout series because the way they act is literally the same.

Overall, Bethesda didn't oversell this game, probably because they don't want to hype people up like Fallout 76 did. Still I think they made a lot of improvements to their engine and refined a lot of stuff from Fallout, but they also downgraded a lot of great systems and mechanics from previous titles. Of course Bethesda being Bethesda, i don't expect everything to work perfectly.

Let me start with some context, I have spent thousands of hours on this game before it was release on steam(including Overwatch 2) , I have reached high diamond/master on competitive play on all three roles(DPS, Support and Tank). It was fun and I have met many friends during my time in Overwatch 1. However there is one of the things I really liked was their PvE content, especially the Archive event, it brings new stories and non recycled PvE content to the game, and also I am a huge fan of CO-OP shooters, but I will only play the PvE mode once or twice due to its lack a replayability. So When Overwatch 2 was announced in BlizzCon 2019 I was very excited because there is finally a replayable, CO-OP shooters that me and few friends can play, so excited in fact I foolishly pre ordered the game's founder pack(or whatever the pre order pack is).

Fastforward to release of Overwatch 2
The PvE mode that they promised was delayed, which is fine for me, I still waited patiently for that. In the meantime I will keep playing PvP, and boy this too was a huge let down. First, a lot of features has been removed, for example: On Fire, Voting system after match, medals, level boarder, level boarder displayed on every players etc. Then there it is, the Battle Pass and the store, this two things completely replaced the Loot box system, that means you cannot get any of the skins using loot box (loot box can be earned by playing the game, and their drop rate of legendary/epic skins are quite high) you have to buy it through the store or earn it in the battle pass. The skins in the store cost range from $10-$25, often packaged with some trash you dont really need like sprays and icons. BUT you know what, I dont care, I wont spend any money on the game unless I see something cool then. Well I could not be more wrong, ANY future released heroes will be tied to the battle pass, so unless you want to grind the battle pass to level 30 you wont be getting that hero on release. That brings to the PvP. They reduced from 6vs6 to 5vs5 which is massive and controversial. Me however, appreciate this change, for so long overwatch team fight has been very chaotic, making it 5v5 seems like a good change to make team fight shorter and requires more team work. So they locked heroes behind the battle pass, which means in a game where you often switch heroes, you cannot switch to the new hero, which is often overpowered on release. so If the other team has it, there is a great chance that you will lose to it and there is nothing you can do except grind that hero or put out your wallet. Also the hero balancing was so bad, that they have to disable Bastion and Mei for a period of time in order to fix them, even the ones that are playable was broken like Orisa who literally cannot die because her CD on fortify is like 5 seconds. Cassidy with his heat seeking grenade that can track you across the map or Sombra who can one clip a tank with her hack, like why arent these hero balanced before release or why is it even changed in the first place?

The Killing Blow
The new broke out around June that the replayable PvE was cancelled, the reason was they could not meet their original vision for the game, but I kept my expectations really low but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ I didnt expect this coming. But then Blizzard just couldnt keep their mouth shut and had come up and say: "Its not cancelled, the PvE is still coming, the campaign mode is sitll coming." and honestly ♥♥♥♥ YOU. Turns out the PvE mode was cancelled and stopped its development as early as 2021, still months away from launching the game. Why didnt announced it back then? because they can take all your pre orders and give it to Bobby ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and his horny higher ups at Blizzard so they can abuse more women at the office. and after all that this company have the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ BALLS to charge 20 dollars for the campaign? seriously? I can live with most of the crappy changes made to the game but this officially made me quit the game once and for all, because it is not worth my time and my money.

It should not existed in the first place
Overwatch 2 should never existed in the first place, all those changes and adjustments are just enough to call it a Overwatch 1.5. The main selling point of OW2 was the replayable PvE, now that is gone and its only a shadow of its former self, this should have been just Overwatch Update 2.0 or something, it is not worthy to be called a "Sequal". However I hold no grudge against the devs and all the people who worked on the game even Aaron Keller who is the lead dev. As a game developer myself I understand sometimes it is hard to meet all the goals in production and failed to meet the vision you had for the game, but as a customer, I dont care, I dont care how hard you worked on the game, I want my game to be the the game you promised me, I want the game that I paid $60 of my hard earned money to be good. Think of it by ordering a burger, if the burger tastes like ♥♥♥♥, I do not care how much effort you put in to make this burger, i dont want it and i just going to ask for a refund...well in this case Blizzard will never refund my pre order. Bringing it steam was a brave move tho, which i am sure it will be bombarded with negative reviews. Keep up the thumbs down and memes everyone!

Elden Ring is a game I've been looking forward to play ever since the reveal on E3 2019. I had high expectations for a FromSoft game, and boy it was a blast playing this game. On graphics side, this game is NOT a next-gen title, nor its trying to be, but damn the art is amazing, it took dark fantasy to the next level such as grotesque monsters, big golden tree, and castles have way more colors than DS ones.

Gameplay
Elden Ring takes their Dark Souls formula and expands into an open world. With each zones connected to each other with harmony, while being an open world and still maintaining the feelings of travel through map to map in Dark Souls. Each zone has its own characteristics and different enemies. Often I lost myself exploring each corner of the map and forgot what the main objective was, “maybe there is an armor set hidden in this cave” but it turns out to be a boss or just some smithing stones. Since our character is allowed to jump and ride on a horse that can double jump, the map design offers way more verticality than DS3. Moments like this are what made this game interesting for me. What is even more interesting is unlike DS3, you can out level and out gear the boss if you decide to farm up a bit. Stuck on Margit? No problem, go to other areas to discover more items and farm up souls to level up. This system is perfect for those who are new to the Souls series and this is the “easy” mode everyone keeps asking about.

Combat
Elden Ring has improved its combat from Dark Souls 3, combining Sekiro’s combat mechanics such as posture breaking(this allows you to land a critical hit on an enemy), Ashes of War(a special combat ability you can equip on non legendary weapons) which inherited from Sekiro’s Shinobu Art, stealth kills and jump attacks. These abilities literally made the Ashen One from DS3 look like a chump. Magic this time around is more relevant, they have less cast time, and there are TONS of spell available for you to mess around, however magic build can be very cheesy(you can cheese a boss or one shot a boss in late game with just magic) which is not my personal favourite playstyle.

THE BAD
Oh boy do we have some bads to talk about. Performance is the main issue for this game, I run on a 2070 super, i7 with 32GB of ram, i have far exceeded the recommended specs and i should be able to run on max graphics with consistent 60 FPS. On launch the game stutters every 10ish seconds, frame drops on object condense areas and boss fights that emit lots of particles, it was barely playable. I turn just about everything off to fix the issue. After the update, it was better, i am still experiencing some stutter and frame drops, just not as often as at launch.
Speaking of PC, did you know this game was also launched on PC? No? Because this game is a terrible PC port. If you launch a game on PC, you should expect people to play on mouse and keyboard. For Souls vets like me I know the game is best to play on a controller, but for those that make Elden Ring as their first Souls game, they don't know that, there is no requirement for a controller in the description of the game. The keyboard binding is completely garbage, none of them make any sense except movement and attacks, like who the ♥♥♥♥ use F key to jump?? And who takes their hand off the mouse and uses arrow keys to switch items? I am sure that FromSoft didn't even test out the game on PC. Also menu UI and keybind are terrible to navigate too because the UI is meant to be navigated by a controller, not keyboards. Sekiro did a really good job at a PC port, most of the keybinds made sense, FromSoft why this game not a proper PC port then? For the game itself there are not a lot of bads that really bothers me, but i’d like to point out there are a lot of copy paste bosses like the Tree Sentinel, Night Cavalry and some dragon bosses that look exactly the same and behave the same except for some color and name swaps but that is not something that is game breaking.
Overall I really like this game, I fully recommend the game to everyone who has or has not played any Souls game. It is a very good starting point if this is your first Souls like experience, and for Souls vets, you're gonna have a ton of fun exploring the map and killing monsters.

This is probably the best Turn-Base RPG ever. It has an interesting story and amazing turn base gameplay, casting a fireball never felt so satisfying. However there are some issues regarding to the co-op aspect of the game, therefore single player or duo is actually the best way to play this game.

Problem with co-op:
I recently revisited the game with 3 other friends that was complete new to the game, for the first few hours at Fort Joy it was fun and happy everyone was enjoying their time, but after we escaped Fort Joy oh boy the issues starts to pop up. As an experienced player, I know which item or which conversion to select and which way to go, but as a new player they do not. One of my friend accidentally got into combat with some enemies or sometimes one of my friends started the dialogue with the NPC and triggering a fight or picking up stuff that will hurt them AKA the cursed amulet, or explore some where they are not supposed to and get themselves trapped. One of the easiest solution is to load a save, but if we didnt save before they screw up, we have to reprogress everything we did. so my friends were limited to only follow me around and let me do the talking, and it ends up really boring for them. which comes to another issue, the other 3 players have no involvement in the story, they cannot talk over while the person is talking to the npc, yes they can click the npc and listen in, but they still cannot interact with any of the dialogues. In the end, they have no idea what the story is about, nor they can do anything about it.

My suggestion for change:
be like SWTOR, where you can actually have a conversation with all members in the party instead of just one person
As for the gameplay, you can have a warning telling the player that "hey this is combat area, are you sure you dont want to wait for your comrades?" or if a dialogue will trigger a fight they should ask that person "this option will start combat, ok or not" etc. its for co-op mode only, then everyone will be safe and happy to explore around the map without getting themselves into trouble.