Recent reviews by Xafron Chi

I am the type of person that usually bounces off of survival crafting games unless I am playing with friends, and at that point for me the fun is more about the friends than the game itself. However I saw this being pitched by more than a few people as "more" than just a regular survival crafting game (and one that's fun solo). After all it has a story, quests, characters, good voice acting and so on, and those things set it apart from its peers right?

I decided to try it out. Sixty-nine minutes in (nice), and I honestly am just bored out of my mind. It may have a story and quests and characters, but I don't care. The core gameplay loop is not satisfying to me, because at the end of the day it is still a pretty typical survival crafting game in terms of core gameplay. Get dumped into a big desert, harvest resources, unlock blueprints, build stuff.

It certainly doesn't help matters that the combat sucks. The melee felt super janky, and the shooting wasn't satisfying in the slightest. Considering everyone says that the endgame is entirely based around PvP, they need to do better than this.

It also has systems in place like shields for your base to protect it from sandstorms. These shields need to be refueled, or else you'll lose your base. I've heard there's another similar system in the form of paying taxes as well. I suppose this is to be expected, after all it's an online only game and they can't have the landscape littered with endless amounts of abandoned player housing. But having those kinds of systems (along with fast equipment degradation) in a game always ends up feeling like a chore to me.

The world of Dune is an interesting one in terms of lore. However using it as a setting means the landscape is, well.... desert. And desert is often the most boring setting a game can possibly have in my opinion unless done very well. I'm sure there's interesting little things to find, but again, an hour in and I already have completely lost any desire to play this.

I'm not going to sit here and tell you it's a bad game. It does have some things going for it that other survival crafting games don't. And things like ornithopters and sand worms look cool. If you like survival crafting games a lot, this will undoubtedly be a hit for you. But if like me, you're the kind of person who doesn't normally like these kinds of games, but you're seeing people say "this one's different"... save your money.

One round lasts three "days." The first day, you run around the map killing mini-bosses trying to level up and get better items and upgrades. As the day progresses, a ring of blue fire closes on the map and once the circle is at its smallest you will fight a bigger boss. Then the map opens back up for the second day, and you do the same thing again. If you get through the first two days, the third is a fight with a Nightlord, the biggest challenges in Nightreign. There are currently eight of them in total.

Some have said the Nightlords are too hard. I don't agree with that at all. Pre-nerf Promised Consort Radahn in SOTE was hard to the point of being not fun, but so far these feel challenging but fair. I've defeated the first three Nightlords, and the fourth I've come close a few times. Also tried the fifth once, and it seemed totally doable.

There's also eight playable characters currently, two of which you will have to unlock. I've tried seven of them so far and each of them look and feel fun and unique, and cater to different styles of play.

After you play a round, you will earn relics you keep for future runs, which give your character stat boosts and effects. You can equip three. Admittedly, most relics are junk items I just sell, and it can be annoying to sift through them all to find something worthwhile. It would be appreciated to see a more interesting range of effects on them, and hopefully they will add more.

You also will unlock new map events as you defeat more Nightlords, helping to keep things a bit fresh.

I've seen complaints about the servers, but I've had no disconnects and only lagged once. I've also seen a few complaints about performance issues. I've fought Maris Fathom of Night several times, and in only one instance did that fight give my PC trouble for some reason. That was the only time it happened. Your mileage may vary.

One major complaint I do have is the lack of duos. If you really want it, there's already a mod for that. And Fromsoftware said before launch they are looking into adding it officially due to demand. It is kind of annoying though that it wasn't supported at launch.

It's not for everyone, and it's not a "masterpiece," but I really like it. It's co-op Elden Ring with some ideas borrowed from roguelikes and battle royales, and it all comes together to make for a fun and unique experience, albeit with plenty of room for improvement.

EDIT: Duos have now been confirmed to be coming in a later update. Since writing this review I have also used all of the playable characters and beaten all the Nightlords, the characters are all fun and the Nightlords felt reasonably challenging.

I'm not entirely sure why after 8 years this game is hitting its highest player count ever.

It's not without issues. The game at launch had extremely predatory microtransactions, and the star card system was a part of that. The microtransactions were gutted from the game following controversy the likes of which not many games have suffered through that even saw EA win a Guinness World Record...

Unfortunately the star card system stayed. And in my opinion, it brings the game down and feels out of place.

EA also ended support for the game just a few years after release. So much potential flushed down the toilet. What could have been one of the best PvP games out there, ended up feeling never finished in more ways than one.

Despite all of that, it's still fun from time to time, and it goes on sale for as low as a few dollars. And with so many new and returning players flooding the servers recently, there's no better time to play. A warning, you may get an error when trying to connect to the game for online play. This is a bug that was never fixed. Just keep hitting connect and eventually it will work.

I do hope to see a Battlefront "3", or rather "5" someday, but not from EA and today's DICE. At this point I have little reason to believe they could handle that. And sadly, Pandemic was shut down by... oh right, EA.

Some of the former Battlefront 2 developers who since left DICE have expressed interest in coming back to the series, and some Pandemic developers have lamented what was lost with their canceled Battlefront 3 game. I can't think of a better place for these people to join together to make the next Battlefront game than Embark.

They call me the Oni Musher...

I missed out on most Capcom games growing up. In fact, aside from Street Fighter I hadn't really played any Capcom games for most of my life until fairly recently thanks to a friend who likes a lot of their IP. However he never played Onimusha, so I decided to try it out.

I had no bugs or any other problems. I played it a bit on Steam deck and it works great on that. It has tank controls for those that want it and free controls for those that don't, as well as fixed camera angles. And the game overall was a fun time, there was really nothing I disliked aside from one boss I found to be annoying. The story, exploration, puzzles, combat, music, characters, it's all enjoyable.

The only downside is that unfortunately this was not the Genma Onimusha version made for Xbox. That version had more armors (at the cost of the original ones), a new "green soul" mechanic, increased difficulty, new enemies, a new explorable area, and it combined the upgrades for swords and orbs. There may have been other changes as well.

If you've never played Onimusha, there's no better time to try it as the second game is getting a remaster soon (and hopefully the others will follow). It's also finally getting a new entry to the series in 2026, the first one in 20 years.

Listen to me, Burnt One. If you're intending to walk The Midnight Walk, you better be sure to keep your spark safe and burning...

Everything about this game is beautiful. The soundtrack, the animation that emulates stop-motion, the voice acting, the story, the handmade clay models they scanned into the game. It's just amazing. A really unique and artistic project with so much passion on display the likes of which we rarely get to see.

The Midnight Walk is so special, and I can't wait to see what MoonHood cooks up next.

When Oblivion came out in 2006 I was only a kid, and wasn't allowed to have M rated games. My friend's brother had it, and I would sneak playing it a little bit but he would always catch me. Years later I bought it for my PS3 and played a tiny bit, but then my PS3 broke. By the time I bought it on PC for dirt cheap, Skyrim had already been out for years and Oblivion just kind of fell off my radar, having never really experienced it properly.

Needless to say I was thrilled when the remaster got shadow dropped. It feels exactly like an Elder Scrolls game, just with new textures and models wrapped around it. They also updated some things like UI, leveling/attributes, character origins, animations, and they added sprinting. In the end the game feels like less than a remake, but more than a remaster.

Of course, you still get all the Bethesda jank (both the fun and the bad). I had to mod my game and use console commands to fix the thieves guild quest line, a bug which has existed since the original. There are also some new bugs, one of which was an early quest spawning way too many goblins and killing the people you were meant to protect, which I also got in my game. And being updated with UE5, the game crashed periodically, and there were stutters and FPS drops, mainly in the open world. Your mileage may vary, not all are experiencing these issues.

Despite all the problems I encountered I'm thoroughly enjoying my time in Cyrodiil, I've hardly been able to pull myself away from the game in my free time. I even completed the achievements. The game really is a stark reminder of what we lost with Starfield, and what Bethesda used to be capable of (and hopefully still is).

I think it's an incredibly fun experience that largely holds up, and still can impress when compared with much of today's AAA offerings. 10/10 would read The Lusty Argonian Maid with my thicc flame atronach again.

I rarely touch horror games because I don't handle them well, but every now and then I try one as a personal challenge I guess. I saw this one was only about two hours long (I have more time than that because I tried doing the achievements) and decided to play it.

So is it good?

It's certainly well made. I really felt for some of the characters, they were a strong point. The set up is interesting, the story unfolded in a really satisfying way, and the twists were in my opinion unexpected. I liked the art style. Overall the game was very atmospheric and at times extremely surreal.

However it gets progressively more and more disturbing and sad in a way I didn't enjoy. I don't think it was bad, I really enjoyed the process of seeing everything unfold up until the last handful of chapters when things became... let's just say extreme.

Also, while I usually think "content warnings" aren't needed, the developer didn't list some pretty big ones on the store page. I suppose they are spoilers, but this game contains suicide and SA. While it does happen off screen, you'll still be dealing with the impact of these events to an extent. There's also forced self-cannibalism. Fair warning if you're extra sensitive to these things.

I'm giving it a positive review because it does have a lot going for it and I think fans of horror games will especially like it. I didn't hate it, I don't regret playing it... however I really don't know how to feel about it on a personal level, I'll probably be thinking about this one for awhile.

"What are your pain points? What's your problem? What are our business struggles today? Let me help you invest in your future."

ƎNA: Dream BBQ is pure surreal art. The 2D animations and voice acting are stellar, the music is great, the characters are fun and the environments are weird. ƎNA, the protagonist (protagonists?), in particular is superb.

Did I understand a single thing that happened? Barely. Do I care? No.

If you like what you see in the trailer and don't expect too much in terms of the actual gameplay (it's fun but relatively simple), then it's a great experience. Sit back and enjoy the weird dreamlike ride.

Steel Hunters is a PvPvE extraction game played in duos. It seems like it has potential, I was having a bit of fun...

Until an hour in when my FPS dropped to single digits and the game turned into a slideshow that I had to force quit. It lost me the match when it was down to the last two duos.

I've since learned this problem has existed since the closed beta playtests last year, but Wargaming has not fixed it.

Between that, and the fact I definitely remember seeing more hunters in promotional videos (no doubt removed to sell to us later), for now it is a hard pass.

When they fix the huge FPS drops, I will update the review.

Shadow of the Erdtree got a lot of hate. I feel like most of it wasn't really fair.

One of the most common complaints I saw was the new progression system added: scadutree fragments. Personally I was fine with this. It was kinda fun to hunt them down, but I also didn't feel the need to find ALL of them. It also felt like it served a purpose... that being that high level players couldn't just waltz into the new area and mop the floor with all the bosses in a day.

Another common complaint was performance. Aside from one boss fight (you can guess which) I never had any performance issues in the expansion.

Personally my gripes with it are that a couple of the boss fights were hard to the point of not being fun (I did them, but they weren't fun), and the map design... I was so confused trying to get anywhere I had to consult guides and videos half the time.

So it's far from perfect, but overall I really enjoyed it. And if you liked the base game I'd definitely say to give it a try. It has a lot of fun content to offer, and some really beautiful and strange places to explore.