Recent reviews by shirakansu

They are turning one of my favorite series into a hack-and-slash live service game and no one seems to care because it's constantly outselling itself and is the company's most successful IP

No more prep phase, monsters barely put up a fight, and yet another low monster roster post-console migration (29 at launch, really?). The story, while better written than the previous entries, is constantly intrusive to the core gameplay of hunting monsters. Multiplayer is needlessly convoluted with multiple layers of connectivity leading to confusion, and it's virtually impossible to progress the story with other people.

If the game takes a $50 expansion and 3 years worth of updates to get interesting, and even then only is "fun with friends", then the game isn't good and you're getting ripped off.

ALSO it performs poorly, with frame drops, crashes and visual bugs that persisted through two sets of betas.

Maybe the portable team makes something good in three years, we'll see

I'm at risk of not graduating because they dropped the sequel to crack in my final week of school

Basically a perfect follow-up to POE1 when they fix the following issues:
* Area sizes are too big for the move speed characters have; solution would be to add a sprint or some passive out of combat movement speed buff when you kill the main boss in that area
* The intended crafting system doesn't make sense for how much currency drops. Playing fast and loose with currency is only fun when there's enough currency to spend (3 exalts by the end of act 1 was cap LOL)
* Asymmetric difficulty curve, the numbers for both the Act 2 and 3 trials seem overtuned compared to the rest of the areas in those acts. This is not a "git gud" issue, four stacks of sanctum banes/ultimatum debuffs at level 20/40 with ruthless-tier gear is going to feel disproportionately difficult no matter what. Aside from the trials, the rest of the game's difficulty is the needed step up from the first game

This one is just for me, YMMV
* Canned interactions for weapon types; bows have 8(?) skills with lightning/shock support, meanwhile there are 4 poison skills, 2 of them being actually useful. I get they want to push lightning arrow/shock playstyle but I just wanna play chaos dot man

Other than that it's crack 2, and You Know I Am An Addict LOGIN

UPDATE: I have played a majority of the endgame (Map completion bonuses done, working towards pinnacles) and have a better idea of what it looks like -- it's a lot less cooked up than the campaign. It's basically just POE1 with better combat and worse visibility of things that kill you, and bosses are nowhere near as threatening as they were in the campaign. Once your build hits a breaking point, you start gunning down everything that comes your way, which is awesome btw, but also not exactly what I was expecting from their goal of making combat meaningful. Map nodes with no mechanics (boss/deli/breach/exped/ritual) and the tower nodes are literal filler content because you put T1s in there just to traverse through them. They need to revamp the atlas system as it is 80% there but needs a bit more tweaking to match the campaign's luster. Also, white mobs being more threatening than bosses needs to be fixed ASAP. Why can Doryani not even touch me and a random guy with a crossbow can oneshot me off-screen?

Basically, the endgame is like POE 1.25, and it's where the Early Access part of the game is. It's got a new coat of paint and slightly more meaningful combat, so it's still pretty fun. Is it what I expect from POE 2? No, but I have faith that they will fix that in the coming months up until full release.

maybe portable team should be the main team... just saying...

perfect game for hearthstone bg addicts who dont want to support a dumpsterfire company

there were some technical issues that plagued me but when this game worked, it was incredible

(Outer Wilds was a timed exclusive on a competing digital games platform, my actual play time is ~14 hours)

A unique game experience. Outer Wilds is an "exploration" game which gives the player no set goal at first. The game loop consists of finding things in the game world(Locations, text logs, concepts) which may lead to other points of interest. This may seem boring but the world was crafted to spark interest or mystery, as every location has something that gives you more of the story or a lead on another unknown idea/location.

Game has flaws (One puzzle is still somewhat vague even after the devs updated it multiple times) but it's an intriguing game which will most likely have you hooked by the end of the 2-hour Steam refund timer.

phonon 3c

this game will break my wrists sooner than any other game ever will but that doesn't mean that i'll stop playing the beyblade build

There were a lot of problems with this port at launch but most of them have been alleviated. Matches go off without a hitch and the netcode (while it isn't rollback) is pretty good. When it comes to game mechanics I really like the tag meter as a resource that dictates both players' offensive and defensive options. It's fun even when you're brand new to fighting games.

My main gripe with this game is the difference in sprite quality when scenes are still, e.g. during intros and win poses; the RWBY sprites look beautiful but they look good to the point where they make the other games' sprites look bad (Especially these 10 year old BB sprites.) This isn't as big of an issue during gameplay because the movement makes it not as noticeable.

also this game gets a lot of props for making me watch rwby in the first place

MARN'S LEG is an Armored Launcher