Recent reviews by Finzy

A very good hero shooter, or "Overwatch clone", but I think it has its own strong identity with lots of interesting movement and team composition options (that actually give new abilities depending on what you have on your team) and mostly very distinct heroes. Even as a non Marvel fan I'm enjoying playing it a lot. Easy to get into, with some extremely easy heroes like Squirrel Girl for every role, but it has lot of depth nonetheless.

Also it's free and all the microtransaction model seems fair, you only pay for cosmetics/battlepass stuff and so far I haven't felt pressured to buy anything as a F2P player + you can earn ingame currency from just playing which is good. The game also seems well optimized, I have a beefy i9 13980HX 4090 laptop, and it runs at 4K high settings + ultra textures with quality DLSS, with fps ranging from 86 to 120, and only had one random crash in the menu first time I played and none since.

Horrible predatory monetization. At the moment the game is at -50% discount (35 euros), including the Ultimate Edition at -40% (66 euros), but none of the DLC is discounted. I originally paid 70 euros for the standard edition of the game, so I have to pay full 40 euros to get the season pass, bringing the amount I paid for the game to 110 euros total. And I STILL don't have all the content from the ultimate edition, and one of the stages is locked behind an additional paywall at 5 euros. So if you bought the standard edition of the game at release and want to unlock the rest of the (meaningful) content, you'll be paying 115 euros minimum.

Technically I can't recommend the demo. The UI looks like it doesn't upscale at all, I was trying to play it at 4K and the main menu looked so blurry I wasn't even sure I got the settings right (but graphics appeared correctly ingame; just the entire UI looks like it is in 480p quality). Also I had never played a Dynasty Warriors game before, so it just threw like 200 text tutorials at me and threw me in the middle of a battle and I had no idea what I was doing and was trying to get used to the controls while fighting and all of a sudden the generals died and oh, game over. So I hope the full game gradually introduces you to stuff...

In addition, for some weird reason, the game changes my Windows keyboard language to something it is not set to every time I start the game, and I have to change it back after playing. And I'm sure I wasn't hitting any shortcut keys + my windows key is disabled anyway. Seems suspicious so I ended up uninstalling the demo.

Basing this off of the singleplayer campaign, I'd give this game a neutral review if I could, I enjoyed some parts of it and some parts not so much. First off the game does look and sound amazing and does Warhammer 40,000 every bit of justice it possibly can, there's tons of detail everywhere and the environments and scale of the enemy hordes are seriously impressive. And it's not just a cosmetics thing, you can see the swarms climbing walls and such and you can destroy them. The basic combat once you get used to the parry and dodge system works pretty well and the weapons feel like they all have a use; I tried to use most of the weapons I picked up during my playthrough and there were few straight up upgrades, more like sidegrades.

The structure of the missions is very linear and there's generally very few things to find apart from audio logs. At the start of the game it felt like you got obstructed very often, I kept walking into invisible walls, but I think the game opens up later on more and the midway part of the campaign had the best mission variety. Sadly I think the campaign falls off towards the end, but other than that, I mostly had a good time. I wish the jetpacks would have been used more in missions.

Now onto the things I didn't like; the whole campaign seems designed more for co-op play than singleplayer. The AI teammates are generally very bad at covering you while doing objectives (+ they cannot do objectives themselves), and you'll regularily get pinned down by ranged enemies all the time, so in every encounter you have to hyperfocus the ranged enemies down first because the AI won't be doing that. At first I started the campaign on Veteran difficulty and I found it to be too annoying to complete with the AI so I switched to Normal after a couple missions and had a much better time. But still the squad AI could really be better, the game should offer a more balanced singleplayer experience. (EDIT: This was improved in patches which is good!)

Also (potential spoilers warning), the campaign isn't very long, I finished it in just about 11 hours, while generally taking my sweet time to explore as well. Towards the end it's like they forgot the beginning of the invasion (Tyranids) completely and the ending felt very cliche and Disney like. I did like that they introduced more enemies later on and I'm a fan of different than usual Chaos factions being represented but it felt like there should have been more story missions across all the planets. I know there's the Operations mode and Eternal War, and I expect that'll add a lot more playtime, but the main campaign felt quite short. (EDIT - Operations has been quite fun if a bit grindy, Eternal War is a pretty typical pvp mode and could use more interesting maps and customization imo)

The game ran well on my laptop with an i9 13980 HX, 32 GB RAM and Nvidia 4090 RTX 16 GB; on 2560x1600 resolution I could play it on high settings with ultra textures (without any upscaling), getting between 60-80 FPS. Some of the larger fights dipped as low as 50 but not below that. I'll probably test how it runs at 4K later on but I'd expect it to require some DLSS at least.

I didn't like that the game has no support for aspect ratios other than 16:9, so at 16:10 I had constant black bars on my screen all the time and it should really be fixed as it's a standard feature in PC games. Also, there was no support for inverted horizontal camera controls for gamepad, so I couldn't play it on gamepad since I use fully inverted controls (both vertical + horizontal) in all games I play; another thing that should be fixed and added to options. Had to learn to play on keyboard & mouse instead :p

TL;DR:
Solid gameplay; nice WH40K aesthetic; poor AI and mission design more for co-op; short campaign that falls off towards the end; some annoying missing technical features

A very uniquely janky RPG and that jankiness + unique pawn system is just what makes it good. There are so many random events and things happening that you are guaranteed to have a pretty unique playthrough. Plus they made exploration feel really rewarding and fun, it feels very fresh compared to most other RPGs since you just don't know what you are going to get next. Haven't really had that feeling since some older Bethesda games. And the way NPCs behave and talk is almost straight out of TES Oblivion sometimes with their ladder obsessions and whatnot. Besides that, combat is pretty good (big fan of climbing enemies / physics interactions) and I'm enjoying trying out different vocations. The character creator is also extremely good and it's a lot of fun seeing people's creations as party members and also taking care of your own (big part of the game experience is pretty much just that).

Game performance has been pretty alright for me, I have a beastly laptop that SHOULD run the game well (i9 13980HX + 32 GB + Nvidia 4090 RTX 16 GB) and it does; getting about 70-85 fps in the wilderness at 4K max settings with quality DLSS, but it could still be optimized better. There's lots of random one second drops in towns and busy places and sometimes the game can bug out and cap GPU utilization at 50% for some reason. So that can definitely be improved. Not a fan of selling gameplay affecting MTX either but at least you can gain ingame currency fairly fast for the cosmetics at least.

I'm kinda split about this game (would give a neutral rating if I could). On one hand it's a solid RPG but I also think it has major flaws with its difficulty and progression that are holding me back from enjoying it more. Namely, the entire main storyline up to the first end credits was far too easy, and I'm playing the game on the Hard difficulty. There's literally never any challenge in the story progression, the AI teammates are too good, you can go down to 0 hp an infinite number of times and the AI will rescue you every time assuming you have geared them up properly.

People are saying it gets tougher with more grind later on but I really think the game should already challenge me somehow after the first few hours. Monster Hunter isn't like this; you can't infinitely cart in every hunt without consequences there and that game requires far more preparation. The only things that will challenge you are the red markers for optional combat encounters, and some of them are still so easy that you can beat them with an underleveled party if you just keep hitting the same boss for half an hour till its HP drains down (= not exactly great design imo; on my first playthrough I activated every single marker because I wanted a challenge; I did not want to come back to them later to cheese them with an overleveled party).

But I do enjoy the combat, my first impression was that it reminded me a bit of Kingdom Hearts with casting stuff on the fly in between combos and the movement with aerial options, blocking and dodging also felt similar. Leveling up characters gives a good amount of alternate skills to vary playstyles but I do wish I could equip more than 4 skills at a time. Other than that it's enjoyable to play. And the fights in themselves are extremely well done, especially big story fights are incredibly flashy and epic. I just wish it was more difficult.

And the game looks pretty and nails the Granblue aesthetic which I was already familiar with coming from Versus. The voiceacting was generally very good and the same quality as in Versus, given the same cast. I liked that I could recruit more characters even outside the main cast of the game, although it would have been nice to have more side content for them besides the Fate episodes (still was happy to learn more Cagliostro lore lol). Story wasn't super special, it was mostly general epic fantasy stuff, and maybe I would've liked a more chill storyline sometimes (and to visit the original Granblue skydom), buut it gets the job done and there's still some really cool set pieces so can't complain much. The music is also good.

The PC version of the game also has some technical issues which as a main release platform it shouldn't have: there's no support for other aspect ratios than 16:9, ultrawide or custom resolutions. That's completely unacceptable since even a fan made mod can fix the problem. If you try to launch the game on a 16:10 monitor, it will display black bars and only let you choose between preset 16:9 resolutions. Also the game seems to mix Playstation and Xbox controller symbols for me for some reason, even though I play on a PS5 pad. And it would be nice to have support for DLSS in the options. My PC ran the game at max (Ultra) settings at 4K at roughly 60-120 fps; dipping in cities and crowded areas, but it generally managed well above 60 fps at all times; mods also improved the fps (but I have a laptop 4090 RTX, so that's about what you'd expect). And the game is hard capped at 120 fps either way.

Also; not a fan of them selling gameplay affecting items as DLC packs, especially ones that can be used to skip significant grinding. What's the point of playing anymore if you can just buy max level materials?

Overall TL;DR: there's good stuff and bad. Mostly to do with the difficulty and progression + technical problems + DLC policies. But I still enjoyed what I got, and I'm looking forward to more Granblue RPGs and games in the future.

Excellent fighting game, I love the game's characters, universe and music, this is the game that the original version deserved to be. I think the devs went well beyond with providing content for this one, there's all kinds of little details in the game that make it stand out like actually well done & intuitive training mode options (so even a lazy ass like me can finally learn some combos and punishes), lots of things to unlock, photo modes & lobby characters & artwork, and if you feel like chilling there's even a Fall Guys mode. Even the lobbies are fully 3D with...platforming and flying and crane games? And there's a guestbook. And avatars that comment on your matches. It's insane. Plus the OST is apparently partly composed by Nobuo Uematsu and totally rocks. Naturally there's quick casual & ranked queues so you can just sit in training mode as well. Both English & Japanese dubs are solid.

The netcode is also some of the best I've seen, if the connection is stable, you can even play 200ms matches no problem and so far I've encountered zero problems with it, not even disconnects. Another thing the game does well is adding simple inputs as the main way to play, while you can still do technical inputs aka motion inputs (and most of the time I still do them), it makes playing the game way more lenient and less likely to cause hand cramps. And there's still a damage reward for doing technical inputs in neutral which they should keep at least, I wouldn't mind if even combos benefited from technical inputs, but at the moment I think it's a nice balance of both, you can mix technical & simple inputs as you want and it feels really convenient without taking away motion inputs completely.

People complain about the price tag, but I feel it's justified for what it is given that there's a free version; it would be nice if they could fix the regional pricing however. Still, I hope it doesn't ruin something that is otherwise a chef's kiss fighting game and a great comeback for GBVS.

Finished this a while ago on PC, also played the PS5 version (wasn't expecting it to come to PC so that was a welcome surprise, would like to see more R&C titles make their way on PC for sure). As far as new Ratchet titles go it's very solid, I like the movement and gunplay a lot, a lot of weapons are pretty unique and feel satisfying to use. In terms of story it's not that bad, got the classic Nefarious returning and the alternate universe thing with Rivet definitely adds a nice touch. It's not a very long game and I got most of the collectibles on just my first playthrough (including all golden bolts), and later parts of the game could have been more polished, but I definitely enjoyed it for the most part.

Rifts were kinda overhyped, there's a few planets where you do switch places with the alternate dimension and it's pretty cool there for variation, but mostly I feel it's just a gimmick to show off more visuals. And while it was marketed to be only possible with PS5's SSD speeds, the game ran fine on a standard Nvme2 SSD (PCI.E gen 3) on my PC. Load times were only a few seconds longer even with ultra textures running at 4K.

The game is really well optimized though and one of the prettiest games I've played in terms of visuals. On my gaming laptop with a 3080 RTX I could run it at high settings with Quality DLSS at 4K with roughly 60-70 fps all the time, going lower to 1080p I could turn on highest quality raytracing no problem as well and still maintain 60 fps.

Some things that annoyed me were the high amount of invisible walls in all the levels barring exploration. I like to explore a lot for hidden areas and a lot of the times it looked like you could clearly jump somewhere only for Ratchet (or Rivet) to fall down to an invisible wall. Also the humour still doesn't reach the same levels as the old PS2 games for me; a lot of it feels pretty toned down for a younger audience and I would've liked to see Nefarious go even more ham on his speeches. Ratchet's personality is still the same as from the Ratchet & Clank remake, being a stereotypical hero, and same goes for Clank, and I lost count how many times Ratchet says he misses his bestest buddy Clank. At least Rivet is different and I quite liked the parts where you got to play as her.

Also later parts of the game feel like they have significantly less new planets and more straightforward level design; I would've liked it to be a bit longer but at least you get New Game + with new weapons as well.

TL;DR:
Excellent port, if you like Ratchet & Clank I think this is the most solid new entry but no chance of beating the PS2 classics for me. Rivet's fun.

This is currently the best fighting game on the market as far as I'm concerned. Capcom did pretty much everything right with this one; it's packed full of content with the best singleplayer mode ever seen in fighting games so far (World Tour), you can create weird custom characters and save them, and if you decide you don't want to play the game for some reason you can even boot up OTHER retro fighting games and beat em ups ingame. Along with the very solid addition of the Battle Hub, which is very well populated and makes finding people to fight very easy and it's just fun hanging around in a 3D lobby while waiting for matches (and if you don't want that you have all the classic options in the menu as well).

The character roster is very solid too and I'm actually a fan of the new designs, for some of the characters like Ken they are a breath of fresh air like a lot of the things with this game. World Tour mode actually surprised me with how good it was. Usually I tend to ignore singleplayer modes and just play ranked all the time in fighting games, but I actually found it pretty fun to explore the open world (with all the easter eggs and references), and it teaches you quite a lot of the game's mechanics and you can freely try out the different characters' styles and mix up movesets, making it handy for learning other characters as you go along. They put some real effort into it and I also really like that you can seamlessly use the same character that you played in singleplayer in the Battle Hub.

Ranked mode and online play also seems like a step up from the previous games with the placement match system, and separated character ranks. I found the drive rush / impact system pretty easy to get into but it still adds complexity and I much prefer it over the V-triggers in V. Even though I may not be the most expert SF player I feel like learning this one more and the gameplay is super enjoyable.

The game also looks fairly good, and after warming up shaders I can play it at 4K ultra high settings with internal resolution set slightly lower (at 4) with solid 60 FPS all around, slightly less in World Tour sometimes, on my 3080 RTX laptop. Aaannd the soundtrack is pretty good also, especially some stage themes.

I waited a long time to get into this franchise and I'm glad I did, this is the first Persona game I've played and I think it totally lives up to the hype people have for it. Very good writing with surprisingly mature themes right from the get go, likeable characters and I'm hooked to the story so far (without spoiling anything about it; I think it's best experienced blind). Would definitely check out more Persona games after this one.

The game had a somewhat long start with some hand holding, but it opens up pretty fast after that and it's worth sitting through it even for the story. As for the combat, I had played some Shin Megami Tensei V on the Switch before so the combat system felt very similar, even some of the enemies and skills had me going "wait haven't I seen this before?". But it's all good anyways as I quite enjoy it and I thought the difficulty felt like a good challenge on normal, haven't really struggled with anything yet but I could mess up if I didn't pay attention. I even went so far not to use the included DLC accessories (like granting bonus EXP) since I didn't want my characters getting too powerful, and I might consider switching to harder difficulties later on.

Graphics could be a bit better on the PC version, especially anti aliasing looks very jaggy, but I'm willing to forgive that since the original game is quite a few years old now. Other than that I had it crash to desktop once with no warning, but it wasn't a big deal as I had just saved thankfully. The soundtrack is obviously great as well, the art style is very unique and stands out, and there's LOTS of ways to play in between the daily life and "dungeons" you do in the game.

Definitely a deserved staple RPG, would recommend for anyone curious.