Recent reviews by Renéegade

You're gonna hear me refer to the previous game a LOT because, well, that game means a LOT to me due to the point in my life that i first played it, so having a sequel to such an amazing game means there so much to live up to.

Comparing to the first game, the mechanics and combat are IMMENSELY improved. Catching notes is waaaay more fluid and responsive since thats the main point of the entire game. Getting the various one shot kill achievements is sooooo much less punishing than the no-hit achievements from the first game. But while the game's combat flow is an improvement, none of the casual encounters (by that i mean not going for one shot kill achievements) felt very challenging, even on Hard mode. None of them felt as rewarding as beating the Light Being fight on Expert mode in the original for the first time. the small selection of weapons is also somewhat limiting and there isnt much difference between each of them once you have them all leveled up (especially when youre going for achievements)

The music, while good, is not as impactful or emotionally significant to me as the soundtrack of the original. Many songs are repeated (I'm looking at you, non-combat victory jingle), a decent amount of them are reused from the first game, and a lot of them feel too short. While I'm not expecting each of them to be Reconciliation length, once you've mastered the combat, the battle is sometimes over before the main part of most tracks starts. None of them have the same feeling as the first time hearing Tinnitus Dance or Why Oh Are LOVE. And the track names are so much less evocative and imaginative. When it comes to fight themes, they're mostly "[ CHARACTER ] Battle". They seem to have went for quantity over quality in this part (and a lot of others too) and the naming convention for the tracks reflects this. Despite the first game having ~100 or so songs in its soundtrack, each of those tracks was unique and memorable not only in name but the context in which that song was played. EH2 only has about 5 (technically 2 or 3 since one of those is a 3 part boss theme)

On to the story/characters. this is the game's weakest point unfortunately. once again, comparing to the first game, each one of the characters in that game was memorable and had a focused goal in the story. in EH2, however, the story and characters are all over the place. from the illusion of meaningful player choices to an INCREDIBLY disappointing ending to an absurdly large character roster, the devs once again went for quantity over quality. aside from the returning characters and despite the tendency for a simple naming convention, i couldnt list off the names of most of the NPCs throughout the game that weren't directly integral to the story progression. combine that with each of the major characters not really being clear about what is going on/what they are trying to do, and youre left with a confusing and unsatisfying plot that didnt really move me emotionally like the original game did. EH1 is one game in a very short list that has made me actually cry. all EH2's story did was make me a little horny for the slime girls

Overall, this is a good game with a terrible story. while the collesuem allows for some replayability while you go for the one shot kill achievements, that won't last very long unless you really care about maintaining a hi scores board. in terms of story, there isn't any point in replaying it since there aren't any optional endings and the choices you make during the game have little meaning behind them

excellent gameplay, excellent music, excellent characters, and excellent writing

combats are challenging on Expert difficulty, but theyre fair. the movement is so precise that it doesnt need to rely on cheap tricks or ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ note patterns. to quote the Angry Video Game Nerd, "The difficulty isn't all about stiff controls and cheap deaths, but [...] in genuine, fair challenge." and the game isnt afraid to mix things up either. not every fight is dodging notes. some fights may require you to shoot back, others are an endurance test, and the racing minigame is a lot of fun too. every victory, especially with how challenging some of the fights can be, is satisfying

this leads into the music. as a rhythm based game, music is arguably the most important part. so while I had to hear the intro to each song several, several times while trying to get the various no-hit achievements, I never get tired of hearing any of the songs. there was A LOT of passion put into every piece, and it shows

speaking of passion, the character design and writing have lots of that behind them too. no two characters look a like, not even the literal twin slime brothers, nor the various mage characters you will meet. each character's design and personality are unique and unforgettable. i wont touch on the story much because its best experienced yourself with as few spoilers as possible

its criminal that this game is ONLY $9.99, they could have charged $20 for it and itd still be an amazing deal for how much game is in this game. Everhood is an example of the ideal indie game: a small team of people and artists who want a game to be made for a good experience. not to say AAA titles are objectively worse in every way, but they're made with significantly less soul and passion as games like this are

It alright. It not subtle or nuanced. It tasteless and lukewarm. But... it alright.

Gunplay is cool... in theory. Ricochet rounds and being able to see the ricochet's path to hit enemies around corners is badass, but I rarely found it more useful than just running up to the enemy that's behind cover instead. Bosses, especially the cyberpsychos, are just bullet sponges. One boss, about half way into the main quest, I didn't even notice was a boss. He looked almost identical to the other nameless minions I was mowing down, but this guy just stood there while I shot at him for over a minute. It wasn't until he was almost dead that I noticed the health bar indicating he was, in fact, a boss enemy.

Hacking in combat is cool too. It's a lot like magic in a fantasy RPG, gives pretty good horizontal progression in addition to vertical progression. Speccing for high INT and more hacking powers can make some of the boring fights more engaging as you try to manage your character's RAM (i.e. mana if you're comparing it to fantasy). However, most combats can be solved with just bullets. Quickhacking just lets you save ammo. If you try to do it while in stealth, eventually an enemy hacker will notice you and reveal your location to everyone else.

Not much weapon variety. After I got my Body stat up to 10 and could use an LMG without penalty, I didn't find much reason to use anything besides a pistol/SMG, an LMG, and a shotgun. The snipers don't seem worth using (though I admit that may be because of my build), but even if they were, every enemy uses the same weapons I just mentioned.

Gear progression is too constant. I never get a chance to feel like a weapon is **MINE** or that important because the next random, nameless enemy is just going to drop something just as strong or juuuuust slightly stronger if you're following the main quest for the most part. And why bother buying gear? The vendors sell them for 10s of thousands of eddies, but that random gangster around the corner can be stealth killed instantly for free.

Enemy level scaling is wonky as hell early on. You can just accidentally wonder into the wrong area and now you're facing enemies severely over your own level, and if you managed to kill any of them, you can't use their gear because it's level locked. Or you may stumble upon a quest that's too high level and the enemies there instakill you and now you're loading back the last checkpoint which aaaaalways ends up being like 5 whole minutes so you have to redo stuff you literally just did. Often, for me it was having to redo the main quest dialogue, making sure I hit the same dialogue options as my first time through so I don't end up with the ending I don't want.

Story isn't that amazing. It's a cool concept, but it suffers from a similar issue that Fallout 4 does - it lets you spend a lot of time and effort customizing your own character, but giving them a voice actor and only 1-3 dialogue options for major conversations makes it less of a proper roleplaying game, and more of a "Hey, here's this story we're walking you through. Oh, and you can level up too."

Another gripe about character creation is that the background options have little impact on the story itself. Regardless of which one you pick, the only difference is a few dialogue options every now and then. The intro mission is still the same, the main quest is mostly the same, and all of this causes the main story line to feel rail road-y. Like it didn't matter much what I said during a conversation as long as i didn't end up killing the person because the line following their immediate response is broad enough to have worked for any of the options I was given.

Aesthetics are hit or miss. I dig it, but you have to just accept the ridiculous nature of the Cyberpunk style. Once you get over the fact that most of the random civilian NPCs you see on the street look like some ludicrous 1980s reject trapped 100 years in the future, it doesn't look too bad.

The game runs well for the most part, but because I just recently upgraded my rig significantly (32gb of RAM, new CPU and GPU, etc.). Haven't had any crashes or anything, but the visuals are just decent. Attention to detail is there for the environment, but a lot of the scenery objects are unimpressive. And while it hasn't *crashed*, it's a buggy mess. First cut scene after the intro mission, the actors are sliding around in T-pose before it just cuts to a conversation inside a car. A lot of the sitting/leaning animations clip into the seats/walls. A lot of scenes that would have otherwise been interesting are ruined by lack of audio or noticing a buggy animation. Interrogating a corpo goon is less exciting when the NPC that's with you makes no sound at all when she pistol whips them.

Overall, the game was overhyped and not worth paying full price. If you can get it for about 50% off or better, and your computer can handle it, it's not *bad*, but it's not that good either. It is definitely one of the video games of all time. It's *an* first person looter shooter with RPG elements.

Excellent atmosphere, tone, and story writing, but it is ultimately held back by Bethesda's engine and the game's age. The main characters, especially the companions you can acquire, are so well written and actually have some nuance (for the most part) to their beliefs and allegiances. It's not like in Fallout 3 where you had the obvious "I'm evil. I'm going to kill of these people because I want to", "I'm good because I won't follow you if your karma is too low", and "I'm neutral because I'm trying too hard to sound profound, but I actually make no sense". This is especially true with the multitude of factions you can interact with. Even within the same faction, individuals will have differing opinions on what is generally considered a rival faction for them.

However, mods are practically mandatory if you're used to more modern games, or even if you just enjoy having a game that doesn't crash frequently. But when you finally get them ready, you can expect a wonderful world that actually gives you consequences (both good and bad) for your actions. You may decide to kill an NPC for one quest only to find out that they could have been used in a later quest for an alternative route. Or some quests may only happen when you go do a certain quest while a specific companion is following you.

If you like your RPGs to put the RP up front, definitely get this when it's on sale. But if you're just looking for a shooter to mash space bar through dialogue, the vanilla game is too dated to satisfy that itch. I don't think there's any other game where I can live out my fantasy of being a lesbian running through an artillery barrage in a sundress alongside a bisexual cowgirl and our cyborg dog.

a lot of the issues from DS1 were fixed, but not all of them, and i noticed a few new issues playing through this. biggest issue was it seems some of the quick time event shooting sections are bugged. like the one in chapter 4 right after the gun ship E mashing event. i could only fire my weapon if i spammed both mouse buttons at the same time. same with the one right after the train segment in chapter 2 (when i was finished with the upside down part)

the biggest issue from DS1 that was resolved is the smoothness. uncapped framerate, stomping is quick and fluid, aiming is as responsive as youd expect from now modern shooters, and the kinesis module is straight to the point

overall, the atmosphere is a lot less dreadful than DS1, and i think that takes a few points off, but this game definitely has style. the art direction is amazing, especially all the new necromorph forms and the new models for old ones, but the tone of the story is definitely more of an action game than a horror. some good points of tension here and there, but with how plentiful money and ammo were for me (even playing on hard mode), i never felt challenged during any of the combat encounters. and while i was given plenty of power nodes, most of the upgrades on the weapons i picked ever seemed worth it until the literal last 5 minutes of the game when i knew there would be no more stores or benches afterwards

while i love the style, graphically, this game doesnt feel as impressive as DS1 did to me, even on max settings. but being able to run it at 200fps at times makes up for it.

overall, this game is still worth buying, but not at full price. either wait for a sale or buy it on CDKeys (as of writing this, its about $7-8). its a nice wrap up to what happened in the first game, and could have been a great note to end the main story line on if EA hadnt made DS3 a couple of years later.

overall still a really good game despite being 14 years old. visually impressive for the time. sound design is wonderful, but the sound *mixing* is really bad at times. the game's volume is just too loud naturally, especially at the title screen. other area this game shows its age is aiming. it takes some getting used to, but the aiming is just not as smooth on PC as it was when i played on PS3 a decade ago. melee is clunky/slow too, so if you miss a stomp a few times trying to get resources, youre sometimes looking at spending more time stomping corpses than you did actually fighting.

the game is also incredibly easy. i was swimming in credits and ammo, and by the time i finished the game, i still had the same medium health kit that i got 7 hours before. the plasma cutter is a really cool weapon, but i wish there was more incentive to use the other weapons besides curiosity. and once you get a damage and fire rate increase on it, youre taking down common necromorphs with only 3-4 shots... who then drop 3-6 ammo per kill or enough credits to buy the spent ammo back.

overall still fun despite its age. i wouldnt say its worth the full $20 price tag, especially since that money is going to EA. either get a code from a different vendor or wait for a sale before buying. i think i got it for like $3? as of this review, its under $6 on CDKeys.

im excited for the remake next year.

wand building is a lot of fun, but after eventually youll find that the majority of the standard projectile spells are mostly useless outside of extremely specific spell combo builds. at times you could go a dozen or so runs without getting any decent spells/wands (though that is just how roguelike games tend to be, so im not counting that against the game).

after youve learned how spell wrapping works, it can be hard to break the habit of just defaulting to the same busted wand build every time you get the spells available for it. but this is supplemented by the occasional wand you find with a spell built into it thats cast each time for free. sometimes this can give you infinite, high level spells (like Giant Magic Missile) earlier than they would appear normally on wands in the wild. so the randomness does help prevent gameplay from getting stale too quickly

music is *PLATINUM* tier. excellent instrument choice and the drums in every piece are top notch. if you play with no sound/music muted, youre missing out BIG TIME

enemy and environment design are also wonderful. once you master projectile timing, paths, and enemy behaviors, the bullet hell aspect of the game can be a lot of fun. especially if you were lucky enough to get some fun wand combinations in your arsenal.

after the 3rd level, the difficulty does shoot up a bit more than i think most newcomers will expect. but once you overcome that difficulty spike, its very satisfying to beat each level, even if the one after ends your run when you get to it for the first time

was amazing 10 years ago, but with <200 people playing at any given moment, its age is showing. if you arent playing against a hacker, youre playing against a pub stomper sweating their ass off. voice chat is still the classic kind of toxic which is fun to laugh at at least, but there isnt much of a sense of community anymore

camera is a pretty clunky, but once you get used to the controls, the combat dance is satisfying to play through

also...

Memes: the DNA of the soul!

you can skip the DLC though. the Sam mission is alright, but the Blade Wolf mission is subpar imo. theyre okay as extra content, but nowhere near as fun as playing as Raiden, especially after youve unlocked most of the upgrades

dont pay full price. cant believe theyre still charging $60 for an 8 year old game. wait for a sale or get it from some other site