Recent reviews by ErrantOverflow

ᵃⁿᵈ ᵃ ᶠᵉʷ ᵒᵗʰᵉʳ ᵗʰᶦⁿᵍˢ

If I had to describe this DLC in one sentence, it would be that it's just more Elden Ring. More bosses, more enemies, more weapons, and more areas to explore, and that's absolutely where the base game excels so it almost feels like a no-brainer to recommend this DLC.

I've had an absolute blast, pretty much every boss has immediately become a top 10 contender in terms of spectacle and fairness, the new weapons and spells are pretty fun to use, and I am proud to say that the open world has far less recycled content in terms of bosses and dungeons (although it's still a problem, just not as bad as the base game).

So, why am I giving this game a thumbs down? Well, mostly for 3 reasons:

The pc performance is honestly shameful. Not only is the game still locked at 60 fps, but it can't even maintain a stable framerate half the time, specially on bosses. And we are talking about a game where reaction matters quite a lot, so suffering stuttering and frame drops can be de difference between living and dying. It gets particularly bad in 2 bossfights, specially the final one.

The camera controls are really showing it's age in this DLC, particularly on a few bosses that are just too big for the camera to properly track and show what they are doing.

Then you have the final boss (which I won't spoil), I'll just say that the amount of visual noise introduced in their fight makes it far too hard to properly read their attacks, some of which feel almost undodgeable, combined with the terrible performance and high damage they really put a stain in what was otherwise a very enjoyable dlc experience.

I'll also like to add that the actual ending of the DLC was quite underwhelming, no extra dialogue with npcs or a new game ending, just a half-assed cutscene and that's it.

In short, wait for the game to get patched to run better and balance the final fight.

If you are looking into getting into the series, do not start with FEAR 2, play the original FEAR first. The publisher, in their everlasting wisdom, decided that you have to buy all the FEARs in a bundle, so don't pay full price for the bundle, because nearly half of it's package is dead weight.

Now onto the actual review. FEAR 1 had it's shortcomings, but overall it was a superb first person shooter, weapons sounded and felt amazing, enemies were undoubtedly some of the smartest of any first person shooter, and the lighting and destruction was ahead of it's time. Granted, the story and horror sections weren't as good, but if you ask a FEAR fan what they liked about the game, they will probably tell you just what I said.

So what does FEAR 2 do? It throws everything that made FEAR 1 good into the F*CKING TRASH, that's what. This game is nothing but a generic FPS Call of Duty clone with a neutered slow down mechanic.

• The weapons sound and feel terrible
  
• The enemies and level design are so poorly conceived, instead of having the thoughtful and intense firefights with room for flanking for both you and the enemies, you now have linear corridors with a bunch of brain-dead sacks of meat rushing at you just to get popped in the head.
  
• The visuals are an utter joke. There is more color and variety on the levels, which is a welcomed change, but they also stripped the series of it's identity, now everything, specially the weapons and enemies look generic and cartoonish, paired with a ridiculous bloom effect and shadows and lighting that behave worse than the original.
  
• Predictably, the destruction felt inferior in this version as well. On the original game, a firefight would look messy, full of flying pieces of paper concrete and physics objects, the bullets would make sparks and leave sizeable sections of the map rendered completely unrecognizable. These effects are now either non-existent or toned down significantly.

Ironically, the few sections where this game improved were the story and horror sections, but only sometimes, and they are certainly not good enough to make me recommend this game over the first one.

I could talk about the multiplayer, but I don't have the willpower in me to keep playing this game nor can I actually play it, since it used GameSpy, a multiplayer service which no longer exists.

I think the game has a lot of merits, the first hour or so really brought me back to playing Minecraft for the first time, collecting stuff without knowing where to go or what to do, not to mention that the visuals and music of this game are fantastic, I was particularly impressed by how the shadows changed dynamically during a thunderstorm, and even though I didn't have many materials, I was really pleased with how fun it was to build stuff.

In the 14 hours I've been playing, most of my time has been spent running back and forth trying to haul materials, the world is just too big, and at least at the beginning, my character is not fast enough nor does he have a big enough inventory space.

This is further exacerbated by the fact that you get significant buffs and debuffs incentivizing you to both play during daytime and stay relatively close to some form of shelter to have the "rested" status effect, which gives me the following options:

• I can either take a significant amount of time gathering materials and build or repair a building for me to store stuff there (which still doesn't change the fact that I will need to get those items to my main base at some point)
  
  
• Or I can do multiple trips per day collecting stuff until my inventory is full.

I've heard you can get stuff like portals or carts to circumvent these problems, but the experience was just so boring and tedious for me, including the combat, that I have no interest to keep pushing through this game, at least for now.

Even though there are some enjoyable parts, specially the sense of progression, it gets even more tedious later on, Iron for instance is only obtainable very far away.

The teleporters conveniently don't allow you to move the heavy and hard to obtain stuff like ores that are on the other biomes, so I can either:

• Process it on site (aka make tools out of it) which requires hauling back materials that can't be teleported from the base (so even more wasted time)
  
  
• Or transport it using a boat (which might not be possible in the first place thanks to the wind blowing in the opposite direction), and even if you decided to still sail, depending on the distances you will be staring at the screen doing next to nothing for 5 to 10 minutes at least, with the possibility of being assaulted by the sea terrors and loosing all the precious loot.

So yeah, even though I really want to love this game and has some very cool features, I can't really bring myself to fight through all this grind and waste of time.

I will keep this review brief, since I can't be bothered.

I'll give the game it's credit where it's due, the visuals are incredible, there is a lot of variety in terms of cars, and a fairly decent level of customization with how accurate or arcade you want it to be.

I found the characters very annoying, and so was the "gain followers to level up" gimmick we see so often in racing games nowdays, and the avatar customization is laughable, only being able to choose from 12 presets or so, however, by far, the worst part of the game is the:

AI drivers
They drive like if the terrain didn't affect them, moving effortlessly through water, making impossible turns at 200 km/h without needing to slow down, making you fight position for position, but the moment you get the first place, they turn brain-dead, you can literally drive at 60 km/h on first place and they will not overtake you.

Or in better words, break Linux compatibility, add an external launcher with its corresponding store and account linking to play a game I bought years ago.

Or in better words, break Linux compatibility, add an external launcher with its corresponding store and account linking to play a game I bought and played years ago.

Or in better words, break Linux compatibility, add an external launcher with its corresponding store and account linking to play a game I bought and played years ago.

This game let's you do a lot of things, from space combat to base building, but most of them are mediocre. I really can't name everything, but here are a few things that really bothered me:

Procedural generation can be interesting the first few planets, but later on you see patterns, plus most planets look terrible.

Learning words of each alien civilization to have conversations is fun at first, but it takes too long to have enough words to have normal conversations, and even when you understand everything an NPC is saying, it usually doesn't have a significant impact.

Space combat is straight up brainless. Just sit still or press the follow enemy ship button, and shoot until they are dead. Occasionally recharge shields with items, that's it.

Quests are mostly "go there, interact / collect x", which is understandable, but boring. This includes trading.

And inventory space. It's not so bad after you reach mid-late game, but at the start you barely have any space to store stuff. It sucks, since there are so many minerals, plants, components, trading products etc to collect, but you can only choose a few.

Naturally, there were a few bugs here and there (AI stuck or going through terrain, cargo pods opening when I haven't repaired them, etc etc), but I was fine with that.

So, why am I recommending this game? Well, I am not too sure. Truth is, I am having a good time. The promise of a galaxy, all yours to explore (or with friends!), with so many different things to do, even if none of them were particularly great, was good enough for me.

Terrible pc performance, too much recycled content, unstable and unbalanced multiplayer, broken endgame, annoying and unfinished npc questlines and outdated UI. I won’t go into much depth about what Elden Ring does good, because a lot of people have covered that already.

PC PERFORMANCE

• Constant micro-stuttering (has gotten me killed several times, and is somewhat nausea inducing)
  
• Frame-rate dips
  
• Sometimes the game takes several attempts to start
  
• INSANE amount of crashes, 22 out of 150 hours of gameplay

Recycled content

• A lot of enemies AND bosses share the same animations from previous Dark Souls tittles, the most obvious example being that dragons have the same moveset as Midir from Dark Souls 3.
  
  
• That doesn't bother me as much as the insane amount of repeated bosses. It's no exaggeration to say you will fight the same bosses 4 to 6 times with little to no variations, in an attempt to fill the open world. I would've rather had a linear experience with unique content than so many recycled bosses.
  
  They try to mask these recycled encounters by simply adding more enemies for you to fight at the same time, which feels super cheap.
  
  
• From Software's level design is for the most part, spectacular. The legacy dungeons incorporate jumping in so many unique ways, making everything seamlessly interconnected. However, the optional dungeons you find in the open world, are a different story. They are the same copy & pasted rooms arranged on a different order just to fight the same boss you've killed before to get an underwhelming item.

Balancing and design

• I really liked the mounted combat on the game, and it makes traversing through the game a breeze, but later on in the game it gets stunned and killed in 1 or 2 hits. It’s health doesn’t scale, nor can you upgrade it, which means it’s sometimes easier to fight an enemy on foot instead, despite many encounters being designed to be approached on horseback.
  
  
• One thing that I've always hated about From Software's games is dying to a boss and then having to run all the way from the spawn to the arena. It's dull and boring, thankfully, Elden Ring has implemented an excellent feature that alleviates this a lot called Marika's statues, that act as respawn points if you die close to them. Except you don’t, because a lot of areas do not bloody have them.
  
  
• Also, Great runes are worthless. They act as a special equipable item you get by defeating very strong demi-gods, each giving you a special effect that is usually not that good, but to activate them you have to use a consumable item that is fairly hard to get early to mid-game, specially if you die a lot. Talismans are equipable items that are not consumed and have a bigger impact on gameplay.
  
  Oh, and did I mention that said great runes are lost when you go to new-game plus? That's right, every time you loop the game you have to get them again, which gives me even fewer reasons to bother using them.
  
  
• An issue present in all the souls games, Elden Ring included, is that many enemy attacks can go through walls. On smaller enemies it won't matter because their weapons aren't big enough to penetrate the wall, but fighting against bigger enemies will most definitely get you killed even though you were taking cover.
  
  
• Magic has gotten a massive rework on Elden Ring, and it really shows. Animations are fluid, you do a lot of damage, and the effects are cool. There are a few issues though. First of all is the outdated UI. It doesn't bother me that much when I have a just a few spells, but after 4 to 5 selecting the spell you want to use feels super clunky.
  
  
• There are 2 schools of magic in Elden Ring, Sorceries and incantations. The former has a lot of variety, but Sorceries are pretty much the same spell that does more damage and consumes more mana and are overall, pretty generic when compared to other RPGs.
  
  
• No mana regeneration

NPC QUESTLINES

• Obscure and hard to follow. You talk with an NPC, rest on a checkpoint and next thing you know he is nnow on a completely different side of the map for no apparent reason. Not only that, but the map doesn't always display an NPC location. Realistically speaking most questlines can only be completed if you check the wiki.
  
  
• Most actions have no impact whatsoever on the world, like for example Joining the Volcano Mannor
  
  
• Blatantly unfinished. Even after From Software added a few more dialogues in the past updates, you can tell a lot of NPCs have incomplete questlines.

PVP
Now I get it. Not everyone does PVP or coop. But *I* do, and it's a major feature of Elden Ring, just like in previous souls games. And in a lot of ways, it's a downgrade to dark souls 3.

• Afk farmers. People use the horse that let's you double jump to get to somewhere were you are unreachable, and then proceed to invite invaders to attack them while they stay afk, wasting everyone's time
  
  
• Reduced amount of players. Previous games allowed you to have 6 people playing on the same world, here is only 4, which is obviously less fun, and leads to more unbalanced fights were the host and the summons gank on a single invader.
  
  
• Cheaters. From Software is pretty notorious for having terrible anti-cheat protection on PC, and although Elden Ring is a bit better, you will still find cheaters with infinite health that insta kill you, and I only expect things to get worse from here.
  
  
• Map doesn't display player activity correctly, so it's hard to find places to invade or play coop
  
  
• Compared to other entries, time to kill is too low, you die in 1 or 2 hits, shifting the combat from positioning and managing resources to stacking whatever build is the most broken and spamming the same move over and over again.
  
  
• Unstable. You can get randomly disconnected when playing with other people
  
  
• Overly complicated coop system. I am used to it since I've been playing souls games for a while, but it shouldn't be this complicated to play with a friend, when other games have done it much better.
  
  
• Terrible matchmaking. Despite there being "regional matchmaking", people on Europe will very often get paired with Australians or Americans, which means you will often play with people that take no damage and teleport constantly.

Multiple people have complained about this boss, and rightfully so. What bothers me so much about this boss is that it's so painfully close to being perfect, but ends up being so stupidly unfair.

I am of course, talking about Malenia Blade of Miquella. Everything surrounding this boss is great. The music, the boss arena, the visuals, the animation and voice acting. But the actual fight is a pain in the ass.

You have a boss with a LOT of health, that does an insane amount of damage (kills you in 3-4 hits at max hp), attacks very fast, has a lot of combos, and REGENS HEALTH EVERY TIME SHE F*CKING HITS YOU.

That's borderline unfair, but okay. However, the final nail in the coffin, is that she can do at any point in time do a move called "waterfowl dance", that gives you such a narrow window to react (so much in fact, that if you attack at the same time that it starts to wind up, you don’t have time to dodge it), and takes multiple attempts to fully dodge correctly. If you don't, you will either die or take a lot of damage (which let me remind you she REGENS).

Oh, and did I mention that after you kill her she gets a second phase were she does all of this, with clones and poison?

Yeah no thanks. This boss ruined this game for me, and there are many others that are close to this level of bullsh*t.

Did I like the game? For the most part yes, but it's very far from being perfect

I am quite surprised at the level of polish throughout the game. The movement and shooting felt of AAA quality, with a lot of customization. The game looked beautiful, even tough I played it on medium settings.

There is a decent range of weapons, armor, abilities and items that can completely shift your play-style, I feel like just from the build variety alone you will get enough replay-ability to play the game 3 or 4 times.

Boss-fights are for the most part fun and tough to fight, and add another replay-ability point since you only get to fight like half of the bosses each time you make a game.

This game is often labeled as "dark souls with guns", and although this game does borrow some elements from the souls series (mainly the bonfires and invincibility on roll), it does more than enough to add it's own spin and stand on it's own. You don't need to be a dark souls fan to enjoy this game.

The most prominent is the level design. It's hard to describe it, but it felt like I was just traversing through a bunch of copy-pasted template rooms, filled to the brim with enemies. Despite finding items here and there, exploration felt shallow, aimless and meaningless.

The second problem is enemy variety, which is quite odd, because there is decent amount of enemy types (although a lot of them are interchangeable). The real issue here is that the game keeps spamming hordes of enemies over and over again every 15 meters or so. It wouldn't be so bad on itself, but coupled with the level design ...

And lastly, as a honorable mention, I would like to remark that I felt like leveling up my weapons and armor was pointless. It felt like enemies health and damaged scaled with my equipment, so I always ended up killing my enemies in the same-ish amount of shots. This however, didn't apply to the special abilities and traits (essentially stats like more health, faster speed, etc).

I am not sure of what to make of the story. I never managed to connect with the characters of the world, and for the most part the lore was quite boring, but there are also a few glimpses of good storytelling, that reminded me of the SCP universe, but for the most part, story was just "there".

I suppose if you played this game on coop it would make things a lot more tolerable, but if you intend on going solo I would recommend you to wait for a sale, and watch a few walkthroughs to make sure you are into this.

For the record, I played this game on normal difficulty, explored all areas, killed all the bosses I encountered, and finished the game once. This took me around 16 hours. (Didn't try the DLCs)