Recent reviews by ariel

This game's journey has been near flawless to me, getting through all areas and figuring out the rules of puzzles by experimentation, I've loved every second of it. As soon as I got to the end, however, the game decided to bombard me with confusing, trippy moving images. It didn't take long until I got a headache and eventually I couldn't progress at all anymore without triggering a seizure. And I didn't even know I had photosensitivity before this.

I will be recommending it, but only to people who are okay with the game just being a journey, or those who are resistant to nauseating movements and flickering lights.

It's a fantastic game that would've been a 10/10 if I had been able to get through to the ending. If you have photosensitivity, don't buy this. If you don't, you should probably buy it as the journey alone was worth the price tag to me, just a shame I couldn't get the satisfaction of seeing it through to the end. But do tell me if you enjoyed the ending :)

My negative review has nothing to do with the DLC being too "scary". Its hardly frightening after you let one of them get you and see the animation. No, the negative review is that, despite enjoying the game for the just about 80% I've experienced so far, this stealth section is so ridiculously unforgiving that it's making me consider dropping the game. So close to the finish line and final reveals and yet it's walled off by this stupidly challenging stealth section with overly perfected AI behaviour, in a game where it really shouldn't have a place. I don't want to bother anymore. It was a good DLC up until the point I gave up. Just a shame.

Too good.

EDIT: I've realised I've been too harsh on the game. It's my favourite game. The controls are a headache but I can definitely look past it, because once I've made it work, what's left is a masterpiece of a game. So I adjusted to recommend the game. Read below to learn about the headache I experienced because of the control customization.

Haven't finished yet and I'm sure its good if I get to play the game with controller inputs I'm used to. What's the point in having a keybind menu if you're just gonna seemingly randomly change button conflicts and ignore a bunch of other conflicts. One moment I cannot leave the keybind menu without also resetting keybinds to default, the other moment I can't bind a new key without resetting keybinds to default, the other moment I can't open rumor mode without leaving that menu, the other moment I can't read texts in that same menu because the same button closes the menu. The game seems to force switch keybinds sometimes, yet ignores a bunch of other conflicts. And for some reason primary interact is not the same as confirm, and for some reason I can't bind that to the same button as jump even though that realistically never gets issues. I have just had to mess around with keybinds for an hour until I realised I could make it work by using my MOUSE to leave the keybind menu to avoid it resetting all my keybinds. I'm not an expert and please don't ask me how you can fix this but the way this game does it makes no sense at all and makes it unplayable now. Whatever my keybinds were just a minute ago, I can't ever seem to go back and now I'm stuck. Can't recommend a game I can't even complete.

EDIT: After painstakingly editing inputs and having to change it every 3 minutes when I face yet another button conflict, I have played with no big button issues for a little while again. I did have to use KBM to access the ship log entries, because there was a conflic there that I couldn't change without creating another conflict or making the game just unpleasant to play.
I managed to finish the game by now, and I want to emphasize that this negative review is purely to express my discomfort with the button input customization system. It had a significant impact on my enjoyment at times but the rest of the game deserves all the praise it gets from other reviewers. And I am still excited to try out the DLC (I read that in the DLC that system is overhauled? If this is true, then it begs me to wonder how on earth that is reasonable in any way. Pay 13€ to fix the button input customizations? Why not just put the bug fix in the base game.)

i should start off with a disclaimer that i upgraded my pc after noticing the optimization on this game is pretty poor, and it uses up unnecessary amounts of CPU power. still, i think the average system nowadays can probably run this game, although possibly limited to the low settings

lets start off with saying im not into these kinds of games, so i bought it just so i could play with friends. was pleasantly surprised, i love this game so much. called it my favourite game and such. i spent hours grinding for stuff and even though its repetitive its a lot of fun. some of the bosses take ages to defeat but feel so rewarding. barioth is my favourite fight, it started off with me just getting pissed off at his flurry of moves, but then i started understanding his patterns and the fight was over in a heartbeat. felt like id learned a lot

up until like halfway through iceborne, which is when i felt like i was being forced out of playing my favourite weapon (charge blade). by this point, most monsters dont leave openings, breaking my combos and offering me no chance to build up even a single combo sequence. learning the monsters patterns hardly saves me any trouble, as the skill required to time my movements succesfully is just unreasonable, sometimes plain impossible to ask for in my eyes. guess im just bad. learned bow solely for the sake of making it POSSIBLE for me to finish the story, and bow is a lot of fun, but im still sad about the fact that i cant play the weapon i love the most

however, it was worth the full price and its still a lot of fun, hence why i gave it a positive review. just wish capcom knew how to actually make the game difficult WITHOUT making it plain unfair on some weapons, and capcom isnt that great at handling this game in general. but then again this all just boils down to me being just very average at this game and having new way too high expectations from a game that already beat my initial expectations by MILES

tldr: im a peepeepoopoo baby who is bad at this game but also kind of feels like this game is really good at making "a hard difficulty" feel like plain unfair. still recommend the game because its beautiful and a lot of fun and definitely worth every cent

somehow it feels like risk of rain was made to be played this way. dont get me wrong, i absolutely love the first game. in fact, i was kind of worried when i saw what ror2 would be, but after one game i was already convinced i love the way this plays way more than the original.

I didn't know what to expect at first, so the first few minutes of the game didn't leave a good impression. But PLEASE... PLEASE press on. It gets better over time, and the last region was so good.. Once finished, no doubts remained. I like this game more than I thought I would when I started it. It's a good game at first, but it only gets better. Recommended.

this game is so METALLLLLL

I hyped for this game. I was really excited and I couldn't stop thanking my friend for giving me this 'piece of art'.
At least, that's what I would have called it when speaking to me a month ago. Instead, I've tortured myself by playing this game, which is completely my view.
To my disappointment, I think this game lacked parkour. I felt this game was just as focused on parkour as it was on stealth, combat and puzzle.
The puzzle part? Alright, when you're not bound by a time limit, it would be okay. Fortunately, most of the time there was no time limit.
Stealth? Well, trying to hide from snipers sure sounds like fun, but you know? I'd rather not have snipers lethally shoot me down when I'm trying to jump building to building.
Oh, man. How I loved this combat system. When you're carrying a gun, you don't have any aim. No zooming unless you got a sniper. And even when you manage to shoot 'em in the head (without a sniper). Well, no! You're too far away for the game to realise you've landed a correct shot! The game will pretend you hit a wall instead, you wouldn't know how many times I've been screwed over like this.
You'd think that melee would do the job here, right? That just felt underpowered. Confiscating weapons is the most successful, but it takes a mad amount of skill and timing. Not what I hoped for,
I've found some enemies taking me out with two melee hits. All I could do was try steal their gun, but while doing that, I get a bullet rain down on me from another blue. Feels unbalanced to me.
Another point of critique I have, and my main point why I won't really recommend it: It's definitely not for amateurs. I'm not so well at playing games, so I decided to play on easy, yet I still failed over and over again.
I'm at least glad that the story is really well cut out in my eyes. Gave me a sense that this game was at least worth the pain I've gone through.
My thought after finishing this game: I'll never touch it again.
I don't recommend this game for amateurs. If you're not so cut out for gaming, I recommend you watch a playthrough instead.
If you're an experienced gamer, you might enjoy this.
It's a 50/50, but for my own experiences as an amateur gamer, I'll have to give it a pass.

This is the chance to turn your friends into enemies.