Recent reviews by Dick Marcinko

External program required to play a mid N4S because EA can't develop a viable competitive product but still wants your data.

Weird car picks in some areas but overall it probably has the greatest hits for most folks. No e36, e46 with no CSL, Regera but not Agera, no 300SLs of any kind, no GT500, no GTO, but for some reason we have soccer mom DDs.

IGN 94/100, it's got a little something for everyone.

Extremely meh game underneath beautiful graphics, founded upon and paid for with the life of the greatest ARPG of all time.

Absurdly sluggish campaign, half-baked endgame off of the heels of the most successful endgame designs of the genre.

Try it when it's free if you're curious, but it's abundantly clear there's no combination of features, graphical overhauls, boss fights, or builds that individually or collectively hold a candle to its predecessor.

Skill tree no longer feels daunting like it does in Poe1. It's slightly smaller but it's completely stress-free because only jewel sockets and 3 keystones are worth anything.

Charms are bad. Charms are real bad.

Being forced to do at least one map with a gross lack of visual clarity and/or poor design every half dozen is just silly.

Crafting not existing in any capacity is wild.

GGG replacing their flagship product with PoE2 in this state is wild.

PoE1 players not being the target audience of this game is wild.

But hey WASD is DOPE.

Underprice packs, overprice accessories, triple overprice rare cards, refuse to recycle, make a cardboard fort that a customer rampages through and knocks all over the store. Just your standard card shop owning experience, really.

Works swimmingly out of the box on Steam Deck too.

Pretty darn fun

Pros:

• All builds and styles of play are incredibly viable
• Gameplay is crisp
• Surprisingly well-optimized for the size and the engine behind it (UE5)
• Live map such that you see loot and mobs from the sky
• No downtime, you go from action to action to action if you want and get beefed up on a random boss journey
• Blends some of the best aspects of other games into a fun beast
• Exploring is incredibly rewarding, there is ALWAYS something hidden there

Cons:

• Function over form: the unifying theme of graphics isn’t there yet, most things work phenomenally well but those expecting a baked-in visual theme may not feel this meets those requirements
• Story progression through quests is limited and lore/story items are not in the world yet. It’s pretty interesting (especially with Aldric’s history) but it’s not completely implemented yet
• Limited number of vendors in the world right now, mostly vendors for spells, talent points, and attribute points


Heroic Kingdom embodies the spirit of early access. As someone who plays a fair amount of early access games, the developers for HK are more than a cut above the average in terms of focusing on the right things. Every community-facing element is run and managed directly by the devs. They are actively working on the game every single day to the point where you can regularly speak to them directly, watch their development process in real-time, and stream your gameplay to them so they see how folks play and experience the world.

This game is a love letter to fans of souls-likes, build customization, and looting. The re-playability is surprisingly akin to a roguelite. I started a game to run a Poison-Bleed build, found a Fel damage unique and spent the next 20 hours playing as a Corrupted Meteor summoner. I’m hoping to get back to Poison-Bleed but now I’m going to play a Void-Holy archer. No two play-throughs are the same, even if you build the exact same.

Visuals and graphics haven’t really found their unifying theme yet, though the graphics are solid and performance optimization is incredible for it running on UE. The weather effects and live map are very cool. I don’t see live maps often and this is woven into the game pretty naturally and immersively.

Content I can’t even comment on at this point. Every time I open Steam the game has an update that addresses numerous things, content is added 2-4 times a week typically. You can chat, ask, and/or recommend updates directly with/to the devs. Plenty left to be done and they’ll be the first to say there’s a lot more to go. But I dumped 50 hours into this game over 3 characters, and there’s at least 3 other builds I’m waiting to do, but I’m wrapped up in the current character at the moment.

It really makes you FEEL like Baldur's Gate

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They should add a character with no stats and a crossbow whose bolts have a high chance to break. His name would be Van Helsing, and he's the worst character because there are no vampires.

Mundane gameplay in repetitive levels you play over and over again. Polish is nice but that seems to be all there is here, if you don't see the trailer and want it knowing that's all you get it may not be your cup of tea. Definitely not better with friends

Updates have made this game very difficult to actually play