Recent reviews by Sharty Gonzales

In terms of the game, really amazing game. Negative review is due to PC port performance issues.

Funnily enough, the gameplay actually runs really smoothly, and looks good. But the cutscenes are not only locked at 30 FPS, they look pretty awful and blurry, but I had three separate cutscenes that were genuinely running around 10 FPS.

Overall great game and gameplay actually runs nicely, but we need to see a lot of improvements to optimisation and release is less than a month away, so one can only hope this demo is an old build and the release version will be significantly more optimised. This is Square Enix though and their PC final fantasy ports are always awful so I don't know what to realistically expect

Game is obviously heavily inspired by Dark and Darker. Why play this over Dark and Darker?

Pros:
Better graphics
Flashier, exciting combat.
Classes feel very unique and feel like they compliment each other to create combos
Much better server stability than DaD which goes down for several hours most weekends.
Better UI
Only 3 NPC merchants. Much less clunky, processes are simpler and faster between matches.
Free to play with the option to have many characters
Much bigger maps, feel very satisfying to explore
Bosses are much, much cooler, both visually and in terms of mechanics
Even regular enemies/minibosses feel more fun than DaD's equivalent
A better, simpler marketplace/trading system including auctions
Has an arena mode
Isn't made by a shady company caught up in controversies who constantly implement random ideas and waste 4 months testing them only to remove them (Ironmace)

Off the top of my head, I cannot think of a single reason to go back to playing DaD after playing DB. It genuinely does everything better on launch day, than DaD has done over the last year. Most DaD players hating on DB haven't even tried it, and they just hate the game because "it copied DaD" so they consider it an inferior version despite the fact it's significantly better.

-DaD player of 10 months with roughly 170 hours

Every time I think I learnt something, I learn that I didn't learn anything.

jokes aside game has endless replayability. Very difficult game but with dedication you'll learn and get a lot of satisfaction. For me, about 40 hours in and watching some YouTube tips/guides on wand crafting was where I really started to love the game. Got my first win around 50 hours in

One of my favourite games at the moment, really a unique experience

The game is kinda mid overall but the glaring issues are the company behind it.

Particularly scummy, anti consumer practices. As two examples, firstly the way this game is sold on Steam. It's listed on Steam as free to play, and your account must be "upgraded" using in-game microtransaction currency. This is purely to circumvent Steam's refunds. With games on Steam, you can refund your purchase for a variety of reasons. Ironmace clearly didn't like this, but wanted the publicity Steam gives, so they found a way to deny players the ability to refund on Steam.

Not only this, but during Early Access the game was sold at a 50$ deluxe edition for exclusive access to Test Servers. These test servers are now available for all legendary accounts, meaning people bought a 50$ deluxe version were scammed.

The servers are frequently down, primarily on weekends, the game has no consistent direction, there are cheater, RMT, teaming issues which the devs refuse to acknowledge and in the past have been exposed for supporting these teaming issues.

Overall, I would recommend you try the free version of this game. I highly recommend you do NOT spend money on this game. The devs are scummy, and will likely screw you over in some way given their past actions. It would not surprise me if we see them decide to add extra editions of the game/DLC later down the line so that they can scam you out of even more money.

Don't risk your money with this shady company

DON'T BUY THE STEAM VERSION! Buy it through Square Enix/Mogstation instead. Steam version is more restrictive.
Game review:
Pros:
Very high quality story, most trials/raids have their own unique songs which make the encounter feel amazing, each job is relatively balanced and in casual gameplay all jobs are equally useable. Community is very welcoming and help new players, very low toxicity (I have only seen toxicity twice after 7 years of playing). You can kinda do whatever you'd like, explore whatever you want, do cosmetics, housing, raiding, collectables. Anything goes. You can take breaks when you want from the game and you can return without feeling too left behind.

Cons:
If you're the sort of player who only values MMOs for their latest content, and you ignore all the previous expansions, then you won't enjoy the game. The beauty of the game comes from enjoying the journey and the experiences. If you only want to do the latest raids, you're better off investing your time into another type of game. The early game of FFXIV feels slow but they have really reworked the early game so levelling to 50 is pretty fast and beating the base game even with cutscenes only takes about 30-35 hours now, probably like 20-25 hours if you skip all dialogue and cutscenes.

Summary:
If you aren't rushing anywhere, the game really just is amazing. Huge variety of things to do, for many different types of players, and the game is only getting better and better over time. Just launched on xbox too so there's a lot of new players to experience the game with.

There's a chance the game is maybe good but there's no way to play it on PC. The FPS is constantly horrible and there's a high pitch buzzing noise constantly playing. The only fixes are through community mods/fixes but every time I tried to use those, my game would randomly crash and I'd lose all my progress.

Game actually felt fun from what I played but it's kinda impossible to play this PC port of it lol. Crashes, FPS, and a constant loud buzzing made it horrible.

cheaper than most AAA games. more regularly updated. microtransactions can all be fully earnt in game. more fun than any game i've played in the last couple years, both solo and with friends

biggest downside is the servers have some issues here and there because the game is too popular lol.

game really is a 9/10

Elden Ring as a game is really amazing. Elden Ring on PC doesn't live up to what the game could be and should be.

The game itself is the best souls game so far. But frequent crashes (sick of these happening during boss fights), glitches that can kill you, online play that works 25% of the time, and performance issues that pretty much pop up anytime you fight a large boss/are in an area with a lot happening all drag down what this game should have been.

You can have the best PC with the best internet; you are still going to run into issues with this game frequently. They kept the status of the game in secret for years so that they didn't fall pressure to rushing the game. They purposely delayed the game even though it was ready for launch in January so that they could prepare a day one patch. And yet it still released like this. I love the game, but AAA companies have gotta stop taking the piss with charging £50 (and nicely placing deluxe editions there too) when the game is still riddled with problems.

tl;dr
-Play Elden Ring, but don't play Elden Ring on PC at full price

Lost Ark is a weird one. when i first started playing it I was hyped like crazy, loving how much there seemed to be and do. and as i played more i had fun, whilst I have only played 10 hours, this was enough to reach the capital and unlock the pvp arena. i found by the 6/7 hour mark I was already getting bored, things feeling repetitive. the game feels the exact same as black desert, just presented in a 2.5D style instead of 3D. it at least has fast travel and seems to have plenty of new content so it's better than BDO on that.

Pros:
The few dungeons I did felt really cool to explore and clear through together, and a very fast + simple matchmaking system
Looks great for a 2.5D game
Variety of classes etc with very detailed + satisfying effects
Seems to have a promising playerbase with content to follow that demand
It's literally free, it doesn't hurt to try it

Cons:
Feels like your average eastern mobile game/mmo with hundreds of popups, different login rewards, challenge rewards, etc to make you feel like you're constantly getting rewarded. Just unnecessary, annoying, and confusing at first.
The game very heavily relies on this instant gratification, and the progression of the game is to just make numbers bigger and bigger! Kill bigger groups of enemies, bosses with bigger health bars, bosses with 26 health bars! You get the idea. No matter how much the numbers are scaled up... you're not doing anything new, you're just doing more of it.
I'm sure the endgame is probably cool, but it doesn't feel worth getting there. The whole novelty of trying to make you feel OP/crazy strong and be super cool killing loads of enemies wares off really quickly when you realise you're just doing the same thing constantly.
PvP is pretty ♥♥♥♥ in my opinion, it feels like a perma stun lock ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Even the matches that I was dominating, I didn't feel like I was having all that much fun. I only played the one class but it felt like CC was all that mattered, since you seem to (may be wrong) be able to CC someone constantly so long as their dodge ability to on cooldown.

Overall it's a matter of taste in games I think. But whilst I had amazing fun at first, it got boring fast, and the mobile like/free to play pay to win elements really drilled in the nature of the game. No harm in trying the game since it's free.

Really fun game to play with friends, and still good by yourself. Friends don't even need a copy of it.