Recent reviews by Dasd

Я, якщо чесно, мало чого очікував, але гра мене здивувала, і при тому багато разів. GSC великі молодці! Почну з хорошого, потім про погане, але підкреслюю, що плюси своєю якістю сильно переважають, і грати точно варто, можна і вже зараз, але з часом має стати тільки краще
Що сподобалося:
1. Зона дійсно гігантська, але при тому неймовірно насичена - якщо ти бачиш хоч якийсь пагорб, хатинку, камінь - там щось точно буде.
2. Сюжет - усі гілки підтримки різних фракцій звучать резонно, і кінцівки виглядають як логічне завершення того, до чого ви йшли протягом гри.
3. Побічні квести - отримав задоволення від усіх, які я знаходив, і хотілося б ще, що добре. Кожен квест мав щось, щоб відрізнити його від подай-вбий-принеси, це супер.
4. Атмосфера - це була найбільш відома фішка попередніх ігор, радий, що все з цим в порядку
5. Схоже, що ситуація з модами також непогана, незважаючи на зміну движку. Сподіваюсь, що більш серйозні моди також колись стануть реальністю, зараз вони в основному про зміни чисел в .ini файлах (ігровий баланс, тощо).

Не секрет, що є баги, і наступна секція, сподіваюсь, дуже скоро буде не актуальна:
1. На сюжетних квестах все ще можна спіймати софт-лок, виправляєься командами в консолі (прямо як в дитинстві)
2. Репутація в деяких фракцій/локацій працює дивно (конкретно в мене
Малахіт завжди був в поганих стосунках, не розумів чому. Сайд-квести виконував, але вони не виправили ситуацію, інтернет каже, я не один такий). Також після нападу Варти на Малахіт, все ще можна туди потрапити за допомогою fast-travel-у, в гілці за Зірку. При цьому, при спробі покинути інститут вас вбиває моментально, як і при спробі зайти туди без провідника

2.1. В проходженні за Зірку, коли уся Варта стріляла в мене при зустрічі - чомусь Долг був дружнім (але не завжди). Я так і не зрозумів, як так.
3. A-Life потребує ще доробки. Вже був патч, який ситуацію покращив, але все ще не все супер круто. Є підозра, що більшість мутантів почали спавнитись лише групами по 3+ особи - це досить втомлює, коли ти зустрічаєш за один вихід 4 групи по 3 кровососа, і сильно обмежує тебе в тому, який еквіп з собою брати.
4. Мутант-собака, який спавнить клонів - робить це занадто швидко, і через це по рівності складності він десь наближається до псевдогіганта для мене, хоча це навряд задумано.
5. В деяких локаціях ближче до кінця гри досить сильно падає FPS. Дуга, Припять, весь заключний сегмент з Фортеці , але поза цим все йде ок (60 fps на ultra), на Ryzen 9700, 7800XT
6. Типові проблеми з діалоговими системами подібних ігор: НПС іноді глючать між позами і не можуть вирішити - сидять вони чи стоять, іноді вони вирішують піти направо під час репліки, а камера - ні, або ви встали невдало, і розмовляєте з персонажем через стіну (особливо часто коли більше двох людей в розмові).
7. Вильоти і зависання - не дуже багато, але є. Чомусь, при діалогах з торговцями на Розтоку найчастіше. Загалом десь 5 разів там і 3-4 десь в інших місцях протягом за 70 годин.

Те, що можна виправити, але можливо це і працює як задумано:
1. Відсутній бінокль і ПНБ. Якщо бінокль ще можна обійти, взявши снайперську гвинтівку, то без ПНБ буває часом дуже незручно
2. Складно дізнатись належність груп НПС до фракцій. Ну має ж бути спосіб кращий, ніж видивлятись шеврони на трупах? Під час перестрілок також дуже важко відрізнити форму Варти від Моноліту

3. Складно дізнатись свою репутацію в деяких з фракцій - конкретно, з найманцями, Долг, і подібними військовими - окрім Варти
4. Безкінечний спавн монолітівців в Припяті . Це повністю вбило мій інтерес з дослідження локації, хоча початок був дуже цікавий
5. Окрім як в межах квестів, нема мотивації вбивати мутантів. В певний момент часу я почав просто втікати від них, бо рандомні сутички з мутантами це просто витрачені дарма патрони
6. Досить дивним здається відсутність динамічних тіней від персонального ліхтаря.

Те, що не сподобалось, але то вже є як є
1. Починаючи з появи Монолітівців , вибір зброї, яку є сенс використовувати, сильно звужується. Купа зброї просто не наносить достатньо шкоди щоб виправдати своє місце в інвентарі. Особливо сильно це відчувається в усіх локаціях починаючи з Янова

2. Фінальна секція через п.п. залишила не найкращі враження. Також дуже відчутно, що замість більш резонного способу виправити Моноліт, вирішили просто засипати гравця ресурсами, щоб був хоч якийсь спосіб це все пережити. Нагадувало Shadow of Chernobyl, хоча і зроблені останні рівні відчутно краще

I have lots of mixed feelings about this one. Going in, the setting seems refreshing, and I was expecting a somewhat grounded tactical strategy, similar to XCOM, but with some real-time elements. Well, turns out, this is only grounded by anime standards - you still get some really annoying anime and JRPG-ish tropes in game design and in plot. On the good side, it still avoided some of the most common pitfalls (At least we're not in school and all the main characters are older than 15).

1 - I somewhat expected, but still was disappointed when the fantastical elements appeared. I can live with existence of a magical rock that can work as ammo, armor, healing potion, gasoline - but the "Valkyria" part of the title got me rolling my eyes more than once, let's say.
2 - Maybe it's a "me" problem, but the strategy part heavily incentivizes you to adopt one strategy that works on at least 70% of missions: you spam 4-5 orders on your scouts, and rush into enemy frontlines, ignoring 90% of damage, and kill your target in one to two hits because you can destroy a tank with a regular rifle in one shot now I guess. You can certainly play in other ways, but I don't think it's possible to get A rank without doing this. And the game punishes you for not doing this, not giving you as much rewards for playing "badly" (which in 100% of cases means "slowly", no other metrics that matter).
3 - Real-time part of gameplay also works a bit strange: enemy units fire at you when they see you, but not every unit (that I can understand), and only when you are not aiming (this I can not). This motivates you to cheese this mechanic a ton, and at the very least spam the "end turn" button to avoid getting hit/spam "aim" if you see your unit may be in range when turn starts. This together with previous point makes me constantly feel like I have to cheat the game in order to play well, instead of playing how I imagine it should have worked.
3.5 - Using covers also seems like a cheat often - if you are ducked (and you can only do this in a specific location), you always receive less damage, even if you sit on the wrong side of the barricade, to the point where it's useless to shoot anyone who is ducked, however good of a view you get of them.
4 - This comes with a genre, but similar to XCOM, you can miss shots from pretty much point-blank range. This is probably meant to somehow balance the previous two points, but it feels cheap.
5 - AI is incredibly dumb. Like, unfathomably dumb. The most danger you are in usually is by underestimating how much damage they can push to you, and if you are just unlucky and they manage to hit your tank with a rocket 3 times in a row. Mostly they will just shuffle around aimlessly, until they see someone in your team and then shoot (maybe).
6 - I liked the way load customization works, but wanted upgrades to tank to scale more. For example, I don't understand why I want an upgrade to thread defence that gives me, let's say, 75HP, when I have two parts that have the same size in total, and they sum up also to 75HP. IMO it makes more sense for the large parts to sum up to more than the little, because it's harder to fit them into your machine.
7 - I guess I should point out that maps had lots of variety, and without the order-spam tactics, will force you to change your roster and tweak what you have to do to win. I wish there could be more details in the briefing part of the set up about what can we expect, because there were multiple times where I had to restart an hour-long mission because I had messed up who I've deployed at the start and wasted too much time fixing it during the mission.
8 - Got used to this by the end, but some of the unskippable "flare" type of stuff takes a bit too long: calling for a medic, issuing orders, receiving potential buffs leads to an unskippable animation, that sometime feels like a waste of time. At the same time, there's no way of knowing in the moment what do those animations imply - you still have to sift through a couple of menus to figure out what exactly does "Tank Lover" means.


I can't say I hated the experience, but given the hype I've heard about this game, I was certainly disappointed, and from what I've heard about VC4, I don't think I'll be playing that one.

tl;dr: yep it's good

I have played through Phoenix Wright collection, and compared to that, this one fixes a bunch of things that bothered me (all of the spiritual aspect of it, lack of things that can happen in a court), adds a couple of cute mechanics to spice up the gameplay. Even though they still are pretty simple, I did enjoy them when they popped up.

These games are a bit more grounded, the cast has lost some of it's craziness, which I did miss, but as a benefit - there's a much larger set of characters that can't be summed up in 1 sentence and have actual depth, so this might be seen as a plus or a minus, depending on what you prefer.

It's important to note that with similar playthrough time to the Phoenix wright trilogy, this game has 10-ish cases, whereas the original trilogy had 14 (if you count tutorial ones). This means two things:
1. Mysteries are more developed and not as obvious. I enjoyed discovering what really happened much more than before.
2. Sometimes, the plot really drags on and stops moving. If you plan to binge all of it, lots of information dumps will be repeated again and again - this was present in previous titles also, but here I think there's more of it, because clues within the case get repeated together with overarching plot points again and again. Because of that, the game really benefits from making significant breaks in between cases,
otherwise you might feel exhausted at the end, as I did.

Other things that I think would really improve the experience - but I'm sure there's good reason they aren't there:
1. More voice acting!
2. More animated segments! I think there were none in the second game, and it was a bummer

Also huge kudos to the addition of the autoplay, I hope it's also in the Apollo Justice port.

To sum up, I do think this is an improvement over Phoenix Wright trilogy, and worth playing if you liked it, or if you are a newcomer and this would be the first game.

Considering how silly the setting is, this is an unbelievably good tower defence game with lots of ways to approach things, and an impressive set of creative maps. Had to work a bit past my initial impressions, really glad that I did.

monke.

My only regret is that I did not play this earlier

This was okay, pretty much exactly what I expected from trailers. Some quality of life improvements like a map would be welcome - towards the end it's easy to get confused, especially if you want to 100% the game, which requires a bunch of backtracking.

Really nice card game with lots of unique unexpected ideas. Can't really talk about those without spoilers, just play it. A giant leap forward compared to the previous project from the same developer, Pony Island.

This game is incredible. I've played first game first time this year, and had a bunch of complaints to it - a lot of parts haven't aged well there. This one fixes every single issue from the first game, explores much more ideas in the setting, and has like the most unique and creative level design I've seen in 3d platformer, maybe ever. It feels great to control, might be lacking depth that something like Mario games have, but it never was an issue to me. Absolutely recommend to everyone, you can even skip the first game IMO.

Art and humor is cute and the best part of both games. However, I have a lot of grudges with the actual gameplay:
1. Huge amount of places with one hit kill. Basically, if a room does not seem challenging enough - make it one-shot you and force to replay not from last standing point, but from beginning of a room (sometimes a few minutes back). I don't think forcing players be pitch-perfect and not allowing any mistakes is good design - unless we're talking about some additional challenges, more on that later.
2. If the enemy arena does not seem hard enough - add some one-shot bombs to it, and make arena essentially a sort of puzzle, instead of what combat arena is supposed to be.
3. Add unavoidable damage to the end boss fight to force people grind side areas, which are generally more "challenging". I couldn't once avoid some hits, and couldn't see any evidence that it's possible to evade them.
4. To "fix" problem of unavoidable damage, add a skill that allows you to heal to the end of one of skill trees. This means that if you decided to not put skill points to that skill tree, you're forced to grind enemy areas to get that skill - I believe it's essential for the boss fight. Almost all damage up to this point was telegraphed in a way that made me believe usually getting hurt was your fault. But the last boss breaks that rule, so you're actually forced a certain upgrade path, and that suucks.
5. Moveset of your character is not cancellable. Because of this, sometimes you feel robbed of your health, when game registered a move "right + B" when you actually pressed "up+B" and you can't dash mid-way of your move to avoid incoming attack. I believe that this also interfered a couple of times during platforming sections. I think this there's a reason most platformers (also brawlers) give you some window to cancel the move - when you're fighting against 10 enemies, a lot can happen during your attack, and you can be forced into getting damage that feels unfair.

I really wanted to like both guacamelee games, but the final boss of second game made me drop it. Would recommend only if you're some die hard fan of genre or really looking into challenge that feels sadistic at times. For most people though I think there are better metroid-style games that are much more fair and fun to play.

Adore both games, an exceptionally good examples of the genre.