Recent reviews by null

It's one of a kind game, but it's aging. It's was an amazing game at the time of original release (2012). It's a good game from steam release date to now. I suspect its not-so-well aging design in some areas will place it into "clunky" category in a few years.

I am not into conventional save the world/get revenge/protect the people type of plot lines, that always end well, so I wasn't too interested in MOST of the game plot. With that said it pleasantly surprised me towards the end. Sufficed to say that this story as a whole does not fit into generic story category. Bitterblack Island (Dark Arisen expansion part of the game) builds on that story a tiny bit.

This is obviously the highlight of the game. If you play a couple of classes you will instantly notice their similarities and differences. Fighter and Strider (rogue) are not just different looking variations of generic melee character. Fighter feels sturdier and more powerful, while Strider is more like an agile ninja. Mage feels impactful, as even the very first fireball spell sends small/medium enemies flying (physics).
You've probably seen the videos (if not, do it, to get an idea), but what videos don't show the game encourages you to try multiple classes and some stuff from those carry over to other classes you play. Traits from each class (once unlocked) can be used with any classes and some skills are shared among both classes, so you only unlock them once. Leveling up grants different stat distribution, depending on class you leveled up with, so something like Warrior might sound great to you and you don't want to switch, but if you stick to that you might get overwhelmed by magic enemies.

All large/"boss" monsters are interesting to fight. They all have weakspots and strategies to defend those weakspots. Unless you play a mage/sorcerer the boss fight mechanics give this game some of the best boss fights out there.

With all that said, the game does have some places where its age will shot through combat. For example: climbing said bosses feels awkward (weird direction changes) and animation looks just as awkward.

The game holds your hand in some occasions and then kicks you off a cliff and hopes you'll learn how to fly in others. You can reasonably expect to figure out most of the game on your own, but I highly doubt you can complete this game (side missions mostly) without guides. For instance some quests have you hunt down enemies, that are in specific, but non-marked locations. A lot of upgrades require materials gained by destroying specific boss parts. Most bosses unique interactions, which, if you only play 1 class, you might not even find).

• Stupid pawns/supporting NPCs I am not going to say they are not helpful, but I will say there's a reason a lot of people play solo.
  
• Mediocre port. It has a couple of annoying technical flaws, that will remind you the game is an OLD port from time to time. To give a few you'll face first: no compatibility with ultrawide resolution (mods can sort of fix it, but it brings other issues), occasional freezes when alt+tabbing and if you play online (the way it is indended), you will face these 5-10 second popups that block the game every time the game syncs up with game server after you sleep in game (you need to sleep quite a lot while farming).
  
• Grindy towards the end. Don't get me wrong: you can finish this game without having to grind at all, BUT last few battles will be difficult for because you will not be doing much damage and if you decide to do Bitterblack Island (side content), then you'll get destroyed by most of the stronger monsters. Luckily grind is usually rewarding enough.
  
• Some mechanics are confusing. Imagine being a mage and more or less knowing how to destroy everything. Then imagine you meet a monster you do no damage to. It has really obvious weakspots, but you still do no damage. That's just one thing, the game features a couple of details like this that make sense in real world, but you wouldn't expect in a game like this.
  
• Item variety is too big in some areas. For example: there are a lot of curatives in the game. A lot of them simply recover HP and can be used in different recipes. In this case variety adds minimal depth (through item selection and few crafting recipes), but it also adds a lot of inventory clutter and forces you to waste more time on inventory management.
  
• A trophy which requires all meaningful sidequests to be completed, coupled with easily missable sidequests(i.e. if you do 3 story quests in a row, you will likely cancel some quests you didnd't even see). There are a couple of quests that start in the middle of nowhere. The game only takes you to those locations when it's too late. Luckily the game keeps track of what you've completed and you can complete the few quests you're missing on 2nd playthrough, without bothering with ones you've completed.
  
• Replayability without a reason. The point above + few achievements might force you to replay the game, but there is no reason to do so.

I would recommend to try this game before it ages too much. Dragon Dogma 2 is in development, so it might make a good replacement, but I have generally been disapointed by sequels (mechanics). For now I consider this game one of a kind.

The 600 hour estimate of playtime in the ad is a bit too omtimistic, but you'll definitelly get your money's worth out of this one IF you don't mind roguelike mechanics too much (you don't have to like them).

Most (not all) of my points can be summarized as "Variety" . Here are the main few:

• Sandbox-y. This is the biggest advantage this game has, because it gives you several ways to perform the same task.
  
• Multiple classes/characters, with distinct playstyles. For example, soldier is an average starting class, a robot is built for OP melee, but runs on a rechargeable battery (puts some pressure) and a doctor is not allowed to kill, but can permanently put NPCs to sleep.
  
• Different playstyles are supported. This is the first roguelike I play where the main goal isn't just killing everything that comes close to you (although you can!).
  
• Procedurally generated levels and random quests. This is a relatively small point, but it essentially means, that even if you always play the same character, playthroughs will feel slightly different.
  
• Random loot This is another relatively small point. Loot varies and RNG can either give you a massive advantage by getting exact weapons you need or limit your options by getting a few bananas.
  
• Custom character. Once you get bored, you can mix and match abilities and drawbacks of other classes to create a custom one.
  
• It doesn't take itself seriously. Vast majority of games can't pull off meaningful lore or plot, but they still try.... That makes games that can laugh at their own flaws so much better. Here's a quote:
  The Zombie doesn't actually want to eat people's brains. I mean that's pretty gross. However, society expects it....

It's definitely not easy to start out. Everything, including weapons and armor in this game breaks, so you can't just go in and kill everything, unless you can do it with fists (and that takes some practice). It takes a little while to get accustomed to the rules of the game, but I would say the difficulty is fair.
I did get frustrated a few times, like when I was playing a slow, calculating stealth class and then the floor filled with slime (which pretty much means you have to do things fast or die) and essentially killed me. I came back to the game, though which says a lot how good it is.

• RNG I mentioned RNG being a good thing for keeping the game fresh, but it comes with a chance that you will be places in an unwinnable (with specific class) stage, or trip you up towards the end of a playthrough.
  
• Steep learning curve. It takes like 5 minutes to get the core mechanics, but the game doesn't tell you much about anything else. For example.: you'll find machines like ATM or Loadout-o-matic (or something like that) and it's not immediately clear what they do (even if you interact with them).
  
• Some characters feel useless. That is not to say that they ARE useless, but this is another thing the game fails to explain. Characters like Bartender do not appear to serve any purpose until you learn some of game's mechanics.
  
• Roguelike. As I previously mentioned, I am not a fan of roguelikes in general and this one shares most of common complaints about roguelikes. The problems are alleviated by game's great design, but restarting over and over again for stupid reasons is still annoying.

As mentioned before I would recommend this game to anyone who does not hate roguelikes. It's a unique one.

It might not be a bad game, but it's a terrible port for a full price.

Awful quality of port

• Upscaled graphics = dated look. Also there are a few weird visual artifacts (like a black vertical line at the center of character faces). This is sort of a minor flaw, for a jRPG.
  
• Controller controls are awful. The controls were clearly made for PSVita. There are more options to bind than there are buttons on a standard PS4/XB1 controller. Default controller mapping is really awkward and rebinding them takes a while, because you effectively have to discard some options you will not use. Some stuff cannot be rebound further adding to the hassle.
  
• Input lag? Not really input lag as you probably think about it, but it certainly feels less responsive than last YS game I've played (YS7 on PSP, which is over 10 years old).

Some other complaints

• Most important one is the game feels really old due to graphics and "input lag". It feels a lot like some of the older MMOs, where actions are queued on button click, but only performed on server "ticks" a few times per second.
  
• Monsters that look stunned (laying flat as you combo them) somehow still attack, further adding to MMO feel.
  
• Lots of completely empty/meaningless dialog(at least early on). I started skipping all dialogs, after about 10min, because most of it feels forced and unnecessary.
  
• Meaningless dialog choices. I saw some dialog options before I started skipping them and they all seemed inconsequential. All of those were skippable, which solidified my opinion as a fact.
  
• Invisible walls: 3D environment with 2D layout. It's a minor issue, but you can be directly over another area and you will not be able to jump off (the game has jumping). I feel like this was possible in previous games....
  
• First few playable characters feel bland.

I would avoid it unless it's on huge sale and you're fine with playing a dated game.

• You get a companion.
  
• It follows you
  
• It inevitably dies. I had a mod specifically to make it a little more resilient to damage and it still died. You can make it a person challenge to keep it alive until the end of the game.
  
• (Spoiler) After it dies it follows you as a ghost
  
• It's pretty insignificant.

Maybe I am missing something, but as far as I've seen there is no reason to have this. You will not see it most of the time and you will not interact with it in any meaningful way.

Great game, but certainly not perfect. I highly recommend trying it, but if you don't mod the game, the few QoL issues might force you out of the game.

• inventory management is awful. Default carrying capacity is low, item variety is quite high, inventory tabs are not intuitive and inventory UI lacks some sort of search feature and/or mark as junk feature... I strongly suggest using inventory boosting mod, so you spend less managing junk and more time playing and more time playing.
  
• Kind of hard to start. There's a lot of stuff you have to take in fairly early on. Like every side character you can choose has a default class, but when you choose them you have to choose what they are, going by name of preset. Another example is that goofy armor system, which in my opinion adds complexity without adding anything of value. And did you know you can jump onto crates? No? Well, good because you can't.... but you doubted for a second!
  
• Not all playstyles are equally viable. Maybe it was my imagination, but mages and rangers have a huge advantage over melee classes in. Certain schools of magic seemed a lot better than others. Like you would think water+electric would be a good combo. It is in some ways, but more often than not NPCs can counter it in a way where your own attacks affect you. In other words, it backfires A LOT.
  
• Wonky AI pathing, which often adds the hassle of micromanaging your team. Path finding generally avoids traps, but when I was traveling in a formation my companions would often trigger (discovered) traps. Also, the game also features the longest escort mission I've seen in any game. I had to escort a cat for 1 entire chapter and I also had to escort a squirrel for an entire game. Luckily squerrel is not important, but I had to reload a lot to save the cat.
  
• Lots of dialogue and some of it matters. To me that's a negative, because a lot of NPCs have that 1 bad dialog option, that if chosen prevents you from interactring with them ever again. Meaning, even if you don't care about a particular quest lore, or if you're playing for 5th time, you still have to follow the dialog to avoid locking yourself out of quest (and exp).
  
• NPCs are not impressed by your "tag" interactions. Tags (such as Noble, Jester, Mystic, etc.) sometimes give you additional (tag specific) dialog options. For example, there's a jester tag and as such you sometimes get an options to respond with a joke or sarcastic remark. I try them every time I get a chance and NPC are pretty much always irritated by whatever you say using those tags options.
  
• In-combat stealth is kind of bad. Stealth is pretty much unusable unless your entire team is using it.... or you fight solo on stealth char. Enemy turning to face your other char might turn at your sneaking character for a split second and that will break the sneaking. I guess some might view it as a challenge so whatever.
  
• Progression slows down towards the end. This is not an issue unique to this game. Once I reached the middle of the game (assuming you're not just speedrunning), I stopped feeling any character form of progression. I had a firm combat strategy, and my most of my upgrades were so tiny, that I didn't really feel the difference. That's not necessarily a bad thing, because the game is still fun, but I didn't feel the urge to play anymore sort of had to force myself through 2nd half of the game.... MMOs ruined me....

• Fully voice acted. I love the fact I don't have to read all of it.
  
• Everything you are expecting from an RPG and done pretty well.
  
• Interaction between elements.... even if some are ridiculous. Make it rain to make enemies wet, then either freeze them or shock them with additional effects. Got a puddle between you and the enemy? Freeze it, and make the enemy slip. Stuck in fire or poison? Bless it to convert it to holy fire and make it heal you.
  
• Sandboxy mechanics - multiple ways to do the same thing. For example, if a statue is asking for a key to enter a closed area, you can scale the cliff using teleports and enter from behind! The game embraces these too! Like you don't have to do things "correct" way for quests to proc.
  
• Undead race that is actually worth playing. I feel like this game gives more initiative to play an undead character than any other. For example: Healing damages them, while poison heals. So you can't use normal food or normal healing to heal, but you actually benefit from standing in poison... (while praying nobody sets it on fire).
  
• Mods. Mods fix a lot of issues and add some QoL changes. Like carry weight boost is pretty much mandatory IMO. There is also an overhaul, which changes the way multiple character aspects work. For example, divinity unleashed changes: combat abilities to give unique bonuses rather than flat damage to that school of magic, or armor being used as damage reduction, rather than second healthbar.

In short amazing, unless you're after achievements. Only thing I disliked about the game itself was the way combat looks. Look at any human boss fight to see the worst example of what I am talking about.

At a glace it looks like a generic jRPG (as most of them do), but it has it's unique quirks, which most jRPGs lack.

• Start with any character. Either get the rest later or be hardcore and try to beat the game with 1 character.
  
• Each character has a "special" way to interact with NPCs. Interactions are not unique, but their effectiveness scales with character level, which adds another layer to progression.
  
• Enemy shield/break system, where each enemy has certain weaknesses and instead of dealing more damage using those weaknesses you break enemies shields. Once shields are broken enemy is stunned and the entire party can deal more damage.
  
• Boost mechanic, is kind of the core of the game, so I have to mention it, but similar thing has been done in Bravely Default. It essentially means that each turn you either accumulate 1 boost point or use them to boost character actions.

• Fun Character progression, that doesn't fade 40 hours in. If you remember that rare type of progression the game Vagrant Story had, this one is nothing like it. You've got equipment (nothing too fancy here, but well balanced in terms of power and prices), active skills you can choose to unlock, passive skills that unlock along side passive ones and interchangeable secondary/advanced jobs, which allow you to have 2 classes in 1 and essentially learn more skills. You are incentivised to max them all on each character.
  
• Combat feels fresh... even if it doesn't look like it. Due to shield break and boost mechanics there's usually more emphasis on picking the right type of attack, rather than just defaulting to strongest one you have. I bring this up, because most jRPG random encounters become a chore when you only need to use 1-3 skills out of 20 you have to wipe enemy team in 1 skill and move on. You will not be 1 hit killing anything of similar level until really far into the game and even then it will only happen when buffs/boosts are involved.
  
• Open world. There are a few story-locked areas, which probably make up about 10% of the game. You are free to explore the other 90% the moment you're done with your first "quest". I sorely missed this in modern jRPGs as they seem to become more linear year by year.
  
• Money has weight. Money is sparse early on and shops are stocked with different weapons/armors, so you never know if you should cash in for that powerful weapon or wait until the next city. I like this over having linear traveling path where each new city on the path has progressively stronger equipment.
  
• Music. I actually sat there and listened to title menu song.

• Combat animations look ugly to me. I got used to them (they don't bother me as much), but I still hate them.
  
• Awful achievement design for few achievements. The game has a combination of no New Game+, missable elements and (multiple) achievements requiring 100% completion of said elements. In other words, if you miss something, you need another ~60 hours of gameplay to salvage those achievements, because all 3 of them require quite a lot of quest completion. IF YOU CARE ABOUT ACHIEVEMENTS, USE A GUIDE.
  
• Story is bland non-sci-fi TV series type and not something as grandiose as saving the world. Story is mostly personal journey of each character.
  
• Very little character interactions, which means characters themselves often lack.... character. Initial quests you do to unlock each character will give you enough details to get a feeling for who each character is, but beyond that it's somewhat stale.
  
• "Screen edge shadows" as the game calls it and edge blur. I hate it. You can turn off the shadows, but if you do the game looks too bright to play, so you have to turn the brightness down to minimum, which leaves it pretty bright. The edges remain blurry regardless of what you do. It's an artistic effect, which adds to a certain look of the game, but I would prefer to disable it.
  
• Unique combat actions are useless most of the time. The way summon, summon beast, concoct skills require consumables and using those skills means spending time getting those consumables. You can beat most battles without those skills, which means if you're lazy like me, you'll be inclined to ignore those skills for about 80% of the game to save time. I think that is a waste.

Great game, and I still kinda recommend it, but I don't want to add to a good statistic, because it's a lazy port and it didn't really improve much since the previous game. If you own previous games and you're not desperate to play new characters (or online multiplayer), stick with the old one, because new one is pretty much identical.

• Game is locked to 60FPS. I don't see why it has to be locked anywhere besides online pvp. I feel like this game would benefit from unlocked FPS.
  
• Apect ratio is locked and if you've got a wide monitor, you'll have black bars. I don't see why it has to be locked at all. View centers around the enemy. Having more scenery doesn't give a competitive advantage. Only explanation: Lazy port.
  
• In full screen it does weird things to multi-monitor setup. In my case something on 2nd monitor often gets minimized.

None of this ruins the game, but it subtracts little from experience.

• Time I have to spend in menus. To spend maxed resources I need about 20 minutes of going through items 1-by-1.
  
• Long menu animations. Navigation, battle results, even transition between individual screens of the same menu. It looks good, but when I play for 2 hours those 5 seconds of pointless waiting really start to get to me. I'm jusyt saying, It takes me 5-8 seconds to return to main menu from free battle character selection (which is 3-4 menus backwards).
  
• Story felt generic this time. I appreciate story being shorter this time (I didn't want to play through the same full story for the 5th time), but this time story didn't feel like a connected story. You get fragments which retell final episodes of the anime, but there are just massive gaps in there. Something about 3d "adventure" type gameplay worked better.
  
• A bit too many giant fights in story. Giant fights are like the worst part of this game. They feel slow, clunky and often times it's not clear what's going on. You think you're pounding the enemy in your tail beast form? No, it turns out you're being attacked by a special attack.
  
• Some story battle objectives ruin the gameplay. Kill 30 clones, kill 12 suano's, Kill 7000 of trash mobs. WHY? All of these objectives require to to waste time instead of winning. You have to do the most mind numbing things, like jumping around for 2 minutes, to get those. It's a waste of time.
  
• Adventure mode is reserved for sub-story that has nothing to do with main plot.
  
• No Legacy options. Either 2nd or 3rd game had this awesome feature where otherwise "bad" characters (like one of Hinatas) could activate their "awakening" using analog toggle. It would be nice to at least have this in local free battle.

About half of these problems are new in this game.

It might be the best co-op game out there.

Fun. Engaging. Can be VERY grindy.

• 7/10 solo. AI companion skips a lot of class-specific mobility needs, making the game more focused on combat.
  
• 10/10 multiplayer! Classes play differently and actually support each other beyond boring heals/buffs. There's a huge emphasis on mobility.
  
• Exploration and slowly gives cosmetics as rewards.

• Character upgrades, which come as both equipment upgrades (non linear, even if in some cases there's a clear "best" build) and randomly acquired mods that modify weapon behavior (some tweak stats, others change mechanics).
  
• Cosmetics for character (armors, hair, etc), weapon skins/colors and pickaxe visual customizations.
  
• Prestige(Promotions) - really just leveling your character to max and resetting it to 0. It's a huge time/resource sink.
  
• Achievements - a few challenges that are genuinely difficult, a few tricky ones and a whole bunch of time-waster ones (~300 hours).

• Some weapons lack the impact. For example engineers shotgun, when modded for full damage cannot reliably take out generic trash spider at 3/5 difficulty. At the same time, alternative to the shotgun is better at literally everything.
  
• Acquisition of Overclocks is timegated, and coupled with the fact that a some of weapon choices are bad, you have a very large chance to get something you don't want.
  
• Most impactful progression stops after first promotion (fairly early in game) of each character. Realistically, you will get "best" basic setup for each class before first promotion. After that any meaningful upgrades are limited to timegated overclock.
  
• Pickaxe are a fashion accessory. It's a game about mining, and the pickaxe is not customizable in any meaningful way - just cosmetics. I think it's a missed opportunity. The very least it could give is unlockable upgraded mineral mining speed, or slightly increased area of mining or.... anything that would give me a reason to invest into the main tool of the game.

After 200h or so of multiplayer sessions, I can call bull$hit on those "awesome community" claims. it's a fairly average community for a non-pvp game. You will not know how most people at all, because they will not chat, talk or stand out in any way.
Among remaining minority it's about 50:50 split between

• Awesome people that you want to hang out with(a.k.a. "awesome community").
  
• MMO elitist grinder types (I know this is not an MMO), who rush, end missions prematurely (a no-no in this game) and sh!t-talk anyone who's not an expert.

Anyways, I definitely recommend this game. Achievements are annoying to 100%, but gameplay is too fun to ignore. So far every one of my friends liked this game, even if some played a lot less than others.

It's an insanely fun game in a franchise that you only need to play once (i.e. if you played another Disgaea, 2nd one is too much),
In other words, I only recommend it to first timers.

It's hard to describe this game in a way that gives it justice.

Many people call it that, but that is about as accurate as calling every tab-targeting MMO a WoW clone. Yeah, it has similarities, but guns and lack of punishement for death (beyond restarting from checkpoint) and simple fact you don't need to learn attack patterns of every enemy to beat this game makes it feel more like a tactical shooter than a souls-like.

Another massive difference in this game is the upgrade system. Upgrades do not turn more expensive as you unlock them and unlike in most souls-likes it is actually possible to to max out everything. That is important because you can, in theory grind the difficulty off.


It's difficult if you compare it to something like warframe, where you just run around like a headless chicken with a bullet-hose. As you start out some enemies will be hard to kill and you will have to get in the rhythm of dodging, but it's not terrible. If you're planning to play this as a co-op game with friends (not through matchmaging), keep in mind your maxed out friend might upscale the world and make the game harder than it is for you.


Upgrades in this games come in 2 forms: Equipment upgrades (equipment itself and flat stat upgrades to chosen equipment) and Traits. Both have weight to them, and when paired with considerable difficulty early on, upgrades are very noticeable and feel rewarding.
For example, early on, I was short on stamina (a lot when running, but sometimes when dodging). A few hours later, I got 2 different stamina traits, which (when maxed) fixed that problem (or rather made it manageable). Much later in game I thought I already had a decently built character, but then I maxed out a recoil/spread reduction trait. That extra stability (not much, by the way, like 25%) improved my damage considerably.


This is one of those rare games where you can play it once and be done it with, but it is built for you to play it multiple times. There are a lot of upgrades to unlock, many weapons to acquire and bosses to kill and it is impossible for you to do it all in 1 run.

I've read somewhere that this game has generalized weapon families (i.e. rifles, shots, swords etc) and I thought that meant the game has multiple identical feeling weapons that will just have different skins and maybe stat tweaks.... you know? The stuff that most AAA games started pushing out lately. That is sort of true, but most weapons are designed in a way where similarties with other weapons in the "family" are often hard to spot as there is always something to make them feel unique.

There are a few account-wide items to be earned when playing those 2 modes. I can't say whether those items will be useful to you, but hey, if you choose to make a new character and start from scratch, you will be starting with a few really rare accessories. Also, you get 1 emote, which you can use to give everybody else free copies of 1 of those accessories.

I probably forgot a few, but here's what I remember

• Most obvious one is if you get this game now to play co-op with a friend who is on Epic Games (likely scenario since there was a give-away recently), you will need to get an epic launcher and account...
  
• While on topic I have seen a few odd bugs/crashes in co-op, but they are relatively rare. In about 40 hours of co-op I've 2 crashes and a few (4-6) odd glitches, like being stuck in environment.
  
• Other players can mess with YOUR loot. There are a few places in the game where co-op players can either take a trait (and you can no longer get it without rerolling the world) or screw you out of it (do something stupid, so none of you get it).
  
• The game feels terrible when playing as a newb with high level player in team. Essentially you will take half of clip to kill trash mobs and you will do no damage on enemies.
  
• Confusing maps (at first). Until you figure out exactly how the game generates the layout, you might get stuck looking for the missing "door" to next area for a few hours. It feels like this can be fixed with implementation of "global" map.
  
• If you want to play the game to completion (get every item and trait in game) you will need to play co-op. Few items and traits are co-op exclusive and one needs 3 people for a puzzle.