Recent reviews by Axle

While I think PoE2 is objectively better than the first, albeit lacking features, I think it fails to solve some fundamental problems with the genre. Getting killed in 1 hit is a major one, and I dont think this is solvable in its current state with evasion, armor, and energy shield defenses. Another one is how little information is given to the player (working tooltips or not) about how defenses even work. Stun and ailment threshold is a much bigger feature in PoE2 and there's basically no information given except that it will go higher with certain passives and skills. It will never tell you what that threshold is.

PoE2, in its desire to be minimal, creates frustration where there doesn't need to be. It also keeps some holdovers from PoE1 that I thought might have done a lot better with a redesign. The best example for this is in gear. The game is ultimately about progressing through levels and gear, fighting increasingly harder monsters in increasingly more complex maps. So gear plays a pretty significant role. Crafting gear is like rubbing your hands together to try and make a fire with a stick. Is it technically possible? Yes. Will I actually accomplish that? Not today. I played PoE1 for hundreds of hours across multiple leagues and I never crafted a god tier piece of gear, and that remains true in PoE2 and it's going to remain true, and that's a damn shame.

If gear is a huge part of the progression, then it should be much easier to craft gear that's actually relevant to my character. PoE1 had this ever so slightly, and it alleviated the problem. But it remains that gear has never been fun. It's a game that's played on a web browser search and it should have been addressed in PoE2. In PoE1 I almost exclusively played in SSF when that became a thing, after crafting got added. In this iteration, I don't see myself enjoying either trade or SSF yet, when it comes to gear.

The combat feels a lot better but there are some very obvious frustrations. Boss telegraphs often don't tell you what type of hit is coming or what shape it is. Some bosses enter the field by attacking, which is not shown to the player and can absolutely kill you in 1 hit. In the campaign this is fine, just die and try again, no big deal. But in maps, this is not fine. I only had one chance to fight that boss and there is no redemption arc. No learning from my mistakes and overcoming a challenge. Either have a build and the gear and the knowledge to kill that boss first try, or go pound sand.

I'm far too casual to remember a boss fight anyway. I get it. I used to be 'hardcore'. I used to play games and progress to the absolute max and sink 12+ hour days into it. I'm lucky to have a few hours to hop on PoE2 at a time. I just want to complete a cool/unique map boss and perfect a build that feels good to play, while grinding out my own gear and make that build that much better.

This used to be my favorite genre, and it sucks that all the biggest names in it just can't get it right. I just want to get occasional gear upgrades that I make or work on myself (and not have to tab out of the game to do it), fight some cool monsters and bosses that are actually challenging (and get more than 1 attempt if they're actually difficult), and make a really unique build.

I don't feel like the build diversity is there, with skills locked to weapons and there being so few. Also it sometimes requires certain skills to interact with others for combos, which end up being more powerful, so they stop being unique to each player. While I think that might help new players, it is godawful for veterans of the genre. I do not want to use the same 3-6 skills as every other person doing something similar to my build. I want to discover a build by testing skills out and seeing how they work, not because two or three skills have an interaction and it's the clear best thing to do.

Is PoE2 fun? Yes, so I'll recommend it. But it is also disappointing. The direction they're heading with seasonal content seems to be very similar to PoE1 and I don't see the majority of these issues getting solved as a result. If you're okay trading for gear by whispering others and hoping they're online, tabbing out and using a search bar to find your next piece, then I guess this is the game for you.

Bugs, yes, a few that really suck. Sometimes you cant talk to NPCs as they are bugged. Sometimes you use an item and it has no effect. Especially bad during combat and you're trying to heal. Sometimes, NPCs will block you from leaving an area. Sometimes the quests will bug out. Sometimes 4 or 5 guns will randomly appear in your inventory from who knows where and unequip one of your guns.

Performance is terrible. A really bad trend of upscaling which produces a horribly blurry screen at all times. But under 60 frames when not using this setting. Tweaked it a little to make it bearable but I just want to have a native render that doesn't crap on itself. Considering how poor this game looks, I cannot fathom for the life of me why this game runs and looks like ♥♥♥♥. Shadows so bad it draws you out of the immersion. Mutant textures look like they're from the early aughts. Environmental props that have no reason being as low res as they are. The game nails the anomaly effects and weather, and is this game's only graphical saving grace.

The story has a lot of parts worth actually listening to. The voice actors are good and the main characters play their roles well, though I can't say they made any of them distinct enough that I can tell them apart by name and looks. Decisions so far, 16 hours in, are not that meaningful. But you do get to choose from time to time. The cutscenes are good, not over-acted, not too long that I stop paying attention. My big gripe though is that if you're currently irradiated the cutscenes play with radiation effects.

Exploration is helped by Witcher 3 style map markers and a Skyrim style compass which points to your markers at all times. But travel is plagued by bad enemy spawns. Enemies will spawn within 50m of you during random events, even in the middle of open fields (but never directly in your view). It fails to make the world feel alive and instead feels like forced action in a game that definitely prefers to set the mood in other, meaningful ways. The stash system sucks, most stashes aren't worth anything. But occasionally you run into big ones with excellent loot so FOMO kicks in and now you gotta hunt them all. There are too many tepetitive buildings that I really hope change later in the game. I've just finished up the poison swamp and it was honestly a wonderful change of pace after two zones of the same dozen buildings, dank caves, and dark tunnels.

Weapons are great but they don't always feel great. Certain enemies can change your perspective and move your camera and the player takes a large amount of bullet punch. Some of these are necessary, some are not and are just infuriating. The guns are one of the highlights of this game but they lack in variety. Some ammo types have only a single firearm dedicated to it. Despite guns having a large number of upgrade slots, I've found a single weapon mod for just 5 guns in 15 hours. Repairing guns costs a frankly absurd amount to upkeep. Repair costs are tied to the value of the gear, and early on you can find some more expensive gear that you will not be able to afford to use. This leads to the inevitable Skyrim problem where everyone becomes a stealth archer. Your pistol degrades very slowly and headshots from stealth are incredibly effective. It becomes one of the only affordable ways to play, despite the game offering you fun guns such as LMGs, or special guns.

Stalker 2 nails ambiance in ways that few other games can hope to achieve. Dark tunnels extend just long enough without any action to build tension. The first introductions to new enemy types are always an adrenaline rush and usually in tight quarters with just the right amount of darkness. And some elements of horror are present, but I wouldn't overtly say this is a scary game. It just knows how to set the mood right and force you to use your flashlight.

Enemies are ultimately the core of what creates that ambiance and the variety isn't quite there. The random spawn mutants become a very expensive chore and can turn an otherwise meticulous trip into an ammo-scavenging nightmare. The AI here is a bit more than bare-bones, but nothing to write home about. The fact that they spawn so close to you, and out of your view, pretty much always makes them a surprise. You'll never see them in the distance and change your plans, the game just doesn't work that way. But constant surprises get old, fast. Especially when they eat up thousands of coupons worth of ammo. I'll let the devs speak for themselves: there's an achievement to get a kill at 75 in game meters and despite using the sniper rifle and carrying it with me everywhere, I have not gotten it. That's how close the enemies are always spawning. It makes the massive map feel claustrophobic and constrained. Like there's always an invisible bubble following me, creating content in my personal space right now, rather than letting me find or stumble upon it.

Ultimately Stalker 2 is something beautiful but it is seriously hampered by trying to do more in places where it didn't need to do more, and doing less in places it should not have done less. The game did not need random spawns so close to the player. It did not need camera effects that force the player to look somewhere during frantic combat. It did need quest npcs that don't bug out. Consumable items that actually work when you consume them. And it needed better performance. I have a fairly high-end PC running on just 1080p. I should not be struggling to run this game when there doesn't seem to be a visual payoff.

Would I recommend this game? Highly. I'll sing it praise any day. But random spawns and running loot to sell have been 1/3rd of my time in this game and it's frankly not what I want to be doing in my free time. I think the single biggest QOL change the devs could add is infinite sprint outside of combat. This game has hours of just running to and from places you've been before. But past all that is one of the best singleplayer games to come out in a long time. It's a hell of an achievement, if not technologically.

If you hate most of the card games available today, then this is probably for you.

If you love most of the card games available today, then this is probably for you.

I kept seeing this game on sale, but never bought it. It's honestly worth its full price, no regrets here. The complexity ups a lot, but the game isn't nearly as space limited as Factorio, nor do you have to balance tower defense versus production. This is the Stardew Valley of factory games, you can explore and fight things when you want to and the factory building is very in-depth. It's excellent.

I play less than 5 hours of games a month, I don't have time for these crashes and getting kicked by asshats.

Commander is the most popular gamemode in MTG. I just want to play commander (there's a similar version called brawl in MTGA). There are no free command decks. I can scrounge together a deck, but without any cards, it's a pitiful and pointless deck.

Why would I ever play this when it neither offers multiplayer commander, nor any way to play their version of commander?

Well, it would be cool if I could play some story campaigns against the AI. I remember Magic 2013, 2014, and 2015 all had enjoyable singleplayer elements. MTGA has none, except for the tutorial which doesn't even let you make your own decisions. You can play single matches against the AI, but there are no difficulty elements, you can beat them handily with the basic decks, they make completely ridiculous decisions, and there is no overarching story (or even rewards, lmao). It's as much a waste of time as you could possibly imagine.

For someone like me, who does enjoy MTG's most popular format, and singleplayer MTG experiences, this is the absolute worst of all worlds.

So I can finally play the game. I refunded it, waited for it to go on sale, then bought it again.

This game is markedly worse than Payday 2. The guns look better, but they don't feel right. There is no fundamental shift or improvement in Payday 3 that justifies its existence. No story that expands upon what the previous game built (not that any of us cared about that). No new mechanics that the player needs to deal with. It is simply a restart from the previous game.

Except this game has maybe 5% of the content of the previous game. And despite that they are already charging out the ass for DLCs. To give back the content that you used to own a different version of.

If I could refund this a second time, I would.

The amount of enemies seems to be higher than in Payday 2, and the same core system of them beaming you just because you're in their vision, but you having a ridiculous amount of armor/health to compensate, is still present. Objectives have been improved in this game, no more restarting the drill randomly (okay, maybe just a little). But now you have to find items to fuel the objective. This ultimately leads to the party splitting up, and NPCs do so as well, so that each player is essentially playing their own little mini Payday 3 and everyone in the game just so happens to share in the loot. Yes, you can get carried through this, and if you die along the way, you lower the payout for everyone else.

I don't know what schools for game design are present in Sweden, or how much control the creatives have versus the higher ups, but this formula is old, stale, and tired. If they had gone back and focused on the gun-play. Rewatch Heat. Scrapped the frustrating elements from the previous game and started fresh with new ideas... No. That would be too reasonable.

Unironically, Payday 1 is a better game than this, and Paydays 2 and 3 are too bloated, content locked, and credit card warrior friendly that I think this series is dead. It exists to get people to shell out $10 every 2 months on a new map and 2 new guns. Maybe, if corporate daddy is feeling generous, he'll give you a new attachment. But I think any self respecting person would opt not to get in bed with that man.

The developers need to seriously rethink their lives. What they consider to be art. What they consider to be fun. And whether or not they even want to go to work anymore, because this isn't worth anyone's time, and it would be a surprise to absolutely no one if they all lost their jobs over this disaster of a game. I once heard that the developers were at risk of going under. I honestly wish that they did.

The state of this game now, and its foreseeable future, is bleaker than any dead game out there, because at least they had the dignity to die. Payday 3 exists as an endless whirlpool, the idea of new maps and guns, its sirens. And they want to eat your money. Take it from me, friend, there are so many more interesting things that you could be doing in your time.

I'm not surprised only a third of players have killed the bandit commander. This game is brutal.

There are a lot of shortcomings with Starfield.

Early on, I completed the Ryujin questline which unlocks some social power, allowing you to get people to do things they wouldn't normally do. I've done several quests where seemingly this power would come in handy. But, the developers didn't think to make this power compatible with other quest series. What should be an extremely interesting bit of gameplay becomes exceedingly dull once you realize it only worked for that one questline.

Then there's the difficulty. The game is balanced like hot garbage. On normal difficulty, enemies are a bit bullet spongey, until you get the high tiers of weapons. Then they die in a single hit. So I up the difficulty, and they still die in a single hit. But, if I max out the difficulty, the space combat becomes impossible. I have basically no perks allocated to ground combat, and nearly all into space combat and ship building, and there are still some impossible star systems that I cannot visit because I will instantly die. With no difficulty customization, I am left in the middle ground, where all the balance feels like crap.

And finally, the bugs. It took hours upon hours of troubleshooting to get the game to run without crashing. I wrote a guide on the Steam community page, if you're having similar issues. I have encountered more bugs than I can count, some of which keep appearing, some of which block quest progress. Anyone who says this game is bug free, or has less bugs than other Bethesda games is lying to you. It has about as many bugs, they're just willing to ignore them.

I had to implement other fixes as well, like with my FOV. I understand that Xbox demands feature parity with PC, and that consoles can't handle an FOV slider, but the default 70 FOV feels like ♥♥♥♥. With a big ship, you can even have your ship take up more of your screen than the rest of space with 70 FOV. I highly recommend you look up the way to change your FOV.

Player choice options are often severely limiting in dialogue and actions. As an example, most characters have safes or lockboxes in their offices. I have never found even a single interesting or story related item in any of them. Most quests only have 1 'bad guy' option, and the rest are varying shades of good. And the 'bad guy' option is often cartoonishly evil-villain bad. Sometimes you're offered a decent set of options, for example, with a large ship stranded in the orbit of a planet. You get an option to settle the crew on planet, but they would become indentured servants. To repair their ship. Or to simply blow up their entire ship. But this quest takes all of 10 minutes, so even an interesting set of choices becomes disappointing. The majority of major quests only deal in straightforward platitudes. And even the evil corpo quests gives you the option to 'reset' all the damage you've done. Frankly, the writing is ass.

With all that being said, I'm still enjoying my time with the game. It's not perfect, it's definitely not the best RPG to come out even this year. Exploring planets is half assed. The procedural and radiant stuff is incredibly boring. And the armor and weapon modding system leaves a lot to be desired. With largely trash writing but fairly good voice acting, though I have encountered more than 1 voice bug.

It's a fun game and I'd recommend it.

IMO modded Mechwarrior 5 is better than this, but it's still good. The difficulty fluctuates from 1 to 100 with not much inbetween. Can't say I'm a fan of that but it isn't stopping me from playing.

While there are better mech games, none have the boss fights or the spectacle that this game delivers. Definitely some mixed feelings but it's undeniably fun.