Recent reviews by Shia

Been playing the game since before the launch of HW and oh boy has it been a ride.
Now I'm a story skipper, I don't give two ♥♥♥♥♥ about the story, if you enjoy it great, if you don't I'm sure there's other reasons you find to play. But that does not excuse the sorry state the game is in.
We have veterans praising heavensward as the best expansion ever because even though it was rough around the edges with the fight design being extremely overtuned for the majority of it, tons of systems that either didn't make sense or had no place to be there (ACCURACY STAT LMAO), it was charming, it was incredibly charming and fun to go through all that jank because the sky was the limit in regards to fight and job design.
Jobs were difficult but they all had a very strong identity. Almost every job had utility and fight specific uses, which did create things like the drg + nin + bard comp being by far the best one to run, but ♥♥♥♥ me if it wasn't still fun.
We had difficult to execute rotations and openers, vastly different tanks with offensive and defensive stances, healers with more than 2 dps buttons.
What do we have now?
2 minute burst windows making most jobs feel exactly the same with slight variance
Tanks have 4 different flavors of warrior
Melee dps has 3 different flavors of dragoon (seriously why is viper just a less edgy reaper)
Ranged phys has 3 different flavors of priority based rotations with an aoe mitigation skill
Healers have a dot and a dps button and overloaded kits that do not require a decent healer to almost ever gcd heal

What did this expansion bring?
A few small reworks and qol changes, maybe an extra button or two for the luckier classes and flashier animations

This has been a very special game to me for well over a decade and I would hate to see it continue with the same design philosophy.
Square, please make 8.0 good

You're testing my patience, dwarf. For the last time it's SIGMAR. You should do well not to disrespect the faith, lest you incur Sigmar's wrath.
Wha-
SUGMAR ♥♥♥♥?!
BY THE HAMMER AND THE EMPIRE, I ABJURE THEE

Walked in on an orc rawdogging an ogre and had to roll a d20 to laugh at his peen. Needless to say 10/10

This game lures you in with a sengoku period japan aesthetic, cool looking executions and beautiful world and then it starts bullying you.
This game was a roller-coaster of emotions for me. When I first started out I absolutely loved it, then those feelings would gradually starts shifting into hate for the uselessness of most of the skills available to you, extremely punishing bosses with (what I thought at the time to be) nigh impossible to see movesets of minibosses, the seeming lack of options in combat. Then after I finished fighting Genichiro for the 2nd time the game started feeling a lot better. Probably because the game kept drilling how to utilize the game's core mechanics into me while I was fighting said boss on top of some others before that one. At this point, having a firm grasp on how to deflect attacks, having been trained in how to react to specific perilous attacks, I started having more fun, because I'd realized how this game is played and having my skills tested against upcoming challenges was genuinely fun for the most part ♥♥♥♥ you demon of hatred .
My main gripe with the game is the fact that most shinobi tools feel obsolete, you can use them, but more often than not you'll end up opening yourself up to getting punished, as such it ends up being a high risk - low reward scenario, the only reliable answer to whatever the game throws at you ends up being your folded steel sidekick along with your trained reflexes.
I do understand people getting discouraged, by the seemingly steep learning curve, but it's absolutely manageable as long as you sink in a little bit of time in it or basically just play the game instead complaining about how it's too hard.
Overall pretty good, 8.5/10

The best DMC game to date with superb graphics, the most polished combat amongst all other hack'n'slash action RPGs. It feels great to play and getting a better grip on the game makes it even more fun, adding a lucrative amount of replayability. The game's accessible to any type of player looking for some dumb action and fun and to any newcomer to the series: don't pay too much heed to the game's writing, it's always been this way and the story should be inconsequential to your DMC experience, because the whole point of the game is killing hordes of demons in style.

This must be some kind of sick joke

I love tempered Kushala Daora as a melee user.

EDIT: I am now using stickies. Kushala is my ♥♥♥♥♥.

Came in hoping for great yakuza action, left as a mahjong addict. Pinfu/10

10/10 would get astral mix-up'd again

Incredibly good ideas lying beneath this game, although ubisoft doesn't want to address the most important issues. I can't recommend this game in its current state, wait for updates and hope that perhaps ubisoft will realize the potential this game has and will start working towards polishing this gem.
EDIT: Game has been fairly balanced out and with all the new characters and reworks that have come out the cast feels pretty fun and diverse.