Recent reviews by Detective Mekova™

Game's fun, but in a multiplayer game where you need smooth gameplay, poor netcode is not excusable.

I gotta be a bit more fair.
The game has a lot of cool features that I can imagine would be a great experience to play. The movement is CRISP. The animations are smooth... but three players can all witness a single event and all three can claim that three things happened.
AKA as goalie, I catch a shot. I see myself catch it.
The player who took the shot sees it hit off me but I don't catch it, so they push it through the net.
My teammate sees that I caught it fine, then I somehow drop it and then it goes in the net.

Different quirks like that means that the game is experiencing too many input requests at once, and it overloads the game server and so it goes with whatever it thinks happened on a whim. The result is a confusing, inconsistent game that I feel has potential, but for a game that is allegedly fully released it feels broken and buggy.

I've played 9 hours of this game over the course of 6 months.
I had hundreds of hours in PoE1 on PS4 and on PC respectfully.

The game just feels... complex for the sake of being complex. The sad part is that it's not even THAT complex, but the UI itself is what overcomplicates the system making it feel a lot more complex than it really is.
Also the game is terribly balanced. I'd breeze through an area then suddenly I get 1-shot by a random enemy. There are no logs so I can't even see what killed me.
I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one dealing with this, as it makes me feel less crazy.

Live Service Games are butthole cancer anyway, but Early Access Live Service Games are actually a joke.

So far I love the game.
It's simple, clean, and fun. There is huge potential here for sure.

**Edit**
The developers have responded to my request and it's already a feature of the game.
S tier support already.

I have since played a few more hours and so far it's a very fun *brain off* kind of defense game. It's very enjoyable building castles and such. The wave defense aspect leads me to build more... function over form designs so they don't really look all that pretty, but once I clear the locations I'll go back and actually focus on building cool castles.

A whole year before Left 4 Dead hit the shelves, you had Zombie Panic! Source.
The game is legendary. There are still active servers to this day, though they're pretty under populated as of late.
It's obviously a lot more fun with a packed server since the stakes are higher and it's harder for survivors to last when they're dropping like flies.

TLDR It's tedious and not very rewarding to play.

Quick aside, I've stopped giving most games the benefit of the doubt regarding their 'completion status' when posted on the steam store as Early Access. The title is absolutely meaningless these days when most AAA games release 'completed' but end up needing several large patches or updates to make their games worth while. Sadly, it's industry standard for a game to release uncompleted lmao. What even is this industry anymore?

So far, the best way to describe this game is... The Sims, but Korean and with more emphasis on Role Playing. You are less like a god, and more like... your Zoi. You move your ZOI using WASD, and you're meant to have a more personal connection to your character rather than controlling your character like an omnipotent being (even though you literally are... kind of... the lore is odd.) There's a karma system which can genuinely affect the town you're in depending on how many of the Zoi's cause disruption. Too low Karma leads to what is basically the equivalent to Business Suit God coming over and yelling at you.
The game actually has a lot of interactions for the player, and the customization is relatively robust. The customization of your character is almost as fleshed out as in The Sims, buuuut it feels like no matter how hard I try, I can't make a Caucasian character that doesn't look at least slightly asian. Which makes sense given the origins of the game. Also the house building aspect is a bit lacking and frustrating. That's one thing that The Sims 4 really excels at. It took me an hour to build a moderately okay looking 1 Bedroom house because of how unintuitive the building mechanics are. Meanwhile, in the sims 4 I can build a decent looking 3 or 4 story house with no problems. I think it has a lot to do with the designer lacking context, such as wanting to expand a room. You need to manually increase the size of ALL OF THE WALLS and sometimes floor. I will give it props though (literally), I appreciate the free placement option which lets your ignore collision so you can place your coffee table IN FRONT OF THE COUCH instead of 5 or 10 feet away from it... with the caveat that your ZOI likely won't be able to navigate around it despite there clearly being enough room. Ugh.

I'm giving it a negative review for one big reason: I honestly can't think of a reason to play this instead of The Sims. When I think about playing this, I immediately go "Well I can do XYZ in the sims..."
That's really not a good thing. I know that I need to separate this game from the sims, but it's literally made to compete against The Sims and so it's really impossible to look at the game by its own merits.
I'm refunding the game because for 40 bucks I can get the complete sims 3 collection or I can acquire The Sims 4 in it's entirety for much cheaper.

The amazing graphics and attention to detail doesn't make this game any more robust.

Update: Got it to work. Had to run it as administrator first while steam was shut down.
But now I get literally 5FPS lows even with the lowest graphics settings. Mind you, I had maybe 50fps lows in cities/towns previously. I don't know what Capcom did but it broke the game.
The only change I've made on my end was reinstall the game after it kept crashing. Maybe I'll go back to playing Rise on Switch or something because this is actually unplayable.

Game keeps crashing. I'd reinstall it, then the next day it'll crash to desktop before even making it to the splash screen. It's been a constant struggle for the past 2 weeks, which is why I stopped playing it.
Besides that and the performance issues, as well as the lackluster endgame content, it's now hard for me to justify a positive review. Yes, the game is incredibly fun, and I really enjoy it, but nothing has changed on my end that would lead to random CTDs when I run it on a 7900XT, 32 gigs of RAM, and a Ryzen 7.
They need to fix their game, as I'm not the only person with this issue presently.

So far the game is great. There are a lot of genuinely good features added to the framework set by MH Worlds.
I cannot say much about performance, since I have a pretty 8/10 rig that can run this with frames locked at 60fps with no stuttering. It probably could go higher, but I prefer consistent frames over more frames.
That being said, despite me being able to run this beast without issue, the fact that so many people are having issues with performance makes me genuinely upset. It's not excusable after the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that was Dragon's Dogma 2.
It's another example of a game that is poorly optimized for a modern audience. When Crysis came out over a decade ago, you could easily run it with mid-spec graphics without issue, so the people justifying the performance issues by saying "I can run it fine, buy/build a better computer" are tools.
That being said, I do enjoy the game personally. The combat feels solid, but the movement is very fluid. As a Charge Blade player (I know, leave me alone) this equates to smoother transitions and guards, along with really good and chunky hit effects and sounds.
The oonga boonga within me is satisfied for now.

I'm playing all of the Dragon Age games up until Veilguard. The first DA game was the game that got away since by the time I played it, I was more interested in ARPG games. Now I want to see what I was missing.
I decided to finish DA:O and Awakening along with the DLCs before this game in order to experience the transition from a semi-isometric RPG into a third person ARPG.
It's jarring, to say the least. It's as if the developers wanted to imitate The Witcher, of all things, and it doesn't really... work... not with how the previous game created such a great open world RPG (or semi-open world.)
The best explanation I can give is that the game feels framed around tactical gameplay but it lacks the tactics needed for it. Bosses aren't hard per se, but they will destroy your entire party because of an unpredictable AOE attack and your companions lag behind while you get to cover. On the flip side, I don't see how the boss fights would even work in a isometric real time RPG like DAO either, so it's kind of stuck between stations. It is neither a good ARPG nor a good RPG. It's just... fine.
The characters and setting (albeit the latter is quite repetitive) are the best part of the entire experience. I genuinely hate the prologue, and the time skips annoy the piss out of me. The time skips between DAO and Awakening make sense because it's such a short period of time and it's not like your Warden was doing much more than just culling darkspawn; and the period between that and Witch Hunt makes even more sense since it was also such a short period of time.
Here... a whole (spoilers) year passes as an indentured servant (which you have no say in the matter despite already meeting folks who would likely pay for your way into Kirkwall without what is essentially being enslaved.) and you've made a small name for you- wait no, that was Hawke. He made a name for him/herself, not you the player.
So then there's a another time skip OF 3 YEARS. So many things can happen in three whole years and YOU don't get any say in what those things are. You bought a mansion, and made a name fo- oh wait, it was Hawke who did that, not you the player.
And that is where the schism of the series started from my now first hand experience. You're not playing as yourself as a Warden or as a Champion, but instead you are role playing as Hawke. This is Hawke's story, and you kind of just get to make decisions about how he/she acts. There are consequences, yes, but none of them feel earned when your character doesn't even say the words that you chose him to say in the dialog wheel lol.
I'm onto Act 2 right now and will update this review once it's finished. I genuinely hope for some sort of payoff, or at least that the game ends quickly.
From the direction that this game took the series, the next game really needs to double down on the ARPG aspects and improve the RPG parts so that you have more agency. Otherwise, I feel like it'll be a mess of ideas with no clear direction.

Edit: I apparently missed a very important companion and I didn't find out until something like 3/4ths of the 2nd act. I'm not wasting 10 or more hours replaying the slog of a game.
I understand in certain games like Baldurs Gate (the OG games) how this could happen, but those characters aren't really necessary like they are in this game. Bioware in their infinite wisdom made it to where the game gets pouty at you for not fixing everyones problems because the developers made no indication that you needed to backtrack to a place that is fairly arbitrary in the grand scheme of things.
Wild.
I'm flat out going to skip the rest of the game because I cannot for the life of me bother with playing through the game with an important part of the story never being able to be resolved because... I missed an 'optional' companion in act 1.
The story is honestly good (A bit too hyped in my opinion) but everything else is so damn annoying or just bad game design.

Good soup.
Even though the game shows its jank so many years later, it's still an amazing experience. Top tier characters, fun classes, and a really good story that is inspired by but is a natural progression of Lord of the Rings and even The Wheel of Time.
I recommend playing it with the unofficial patch that you can find online, especially if you're not going to play it on a PC made in the early to mid 2000's. The game crashes quite a lot without it, and a lot of it is to due with memory leaks and the 2GB RAM limitation. Once the game uses up the 2GB of ram, the game crashes to desktop.

Awakening was fun but really janky. Lots of bugs abound.
Despite that, the campaign was really fun overall. I wish there was more to do regarding dealing with the arls and working on bettering the city but overall it's a fun experience. The loot was surprisingly... mediocre. I don't think I used anything from it besides a robe I picked up (I'm a mage) and a full set of armor from an enemy for which I gave to a companion to use.
FYi when entering the Architect's ruins in the woods, unequip your gear. Yes, all of it, then enter. There's a nasty bug which causes your equipment to magically disappear forever. It's very frustrating.

The only performance issues I've had is when in safe towns. I don't know why, and it's frustrating. It must be either a memory leak or the AI is causing the lag. Otherwise, the game runs very well, and I have literally 0 issues with the performance unlike 90% of the PC titles that came out this year for PC.

The game rewards taking risks, but often times the rewards are dubiously worth it.
You'll pass by a farm house on your way to a contact, and in other games like fallout you'll likely think "I'll just slip in, clear the house, and get some loot probably."
In this game, the farmhouse has maybe a bottle of beer, and a single bullet if you're lucky... oh, and a dozen wild dogs.
On the other hand, it could have a fallout shelter that has a bunch of ammo in it (even if it's ammo for a gun you don't have) and meds.
That's probably both a good and bad thing since it makes taking risks or exploring random POI's a gamble, so you'll either rarely take any risks because they're usually not worth it, you'll only hit one or two locations on your way to your destination potentially missing out on sweet loot, or you'll end up getting frustrated as you deplete your ammo just before you make it to your destination.
Anomalies are scary, dangerous, and very powerful tools. Never underestimate positioning, because you can lead most non-human threats into anomalies and kill or maim them. It's such a huge win, especialyl when you're getting overwhelmed.
I am used to playing the classic STALKER and even Tarkov for a while, so the game doesn't feel too difficult. The only frustrating thing is getting yoinked by an anomaly I missed, or being unlucky in a gunfight where my gun jams or a dude throws a grenade that I run away from only for it to hit a wall and bounce towards me.

Beyond gameplay, the atmosphere is stellar as always. Whatever the first STALKER did, this one did better in most regards. The world is huge, and there's a lot to explore. I appreciate how the PDA shows the entire region without goofy fog of war, so you can spend minutes just marking locations that look interesting. It provides a lot of info too like the locations of supplies, hideouts, and loot.

Lastly, I think the voice acting on the english side is pretty good. Yes, it's better in Blyatanese, but in the middle of a gunfight you're not going to catch me reading subtitles.

TLDR
The game has some rough edges, but if you liked the first stalker then this is more of that but sleeker, better looking, and with a less frustrating UI.

Add Triangles.

EDIT:

Add half walls.