Recent reviews by KneeKo

EDIT 2: The game has released 2 hotfixes in 2 days, 1 each day. Meanwhile, a most recent AAA release (D4) can't even claw back 100+ Uber Uniques, and can't even fix players loading other player's stashes. And it's more expensive, has microtransactions, and has a battlepass. Let that sink in.

EDIT: I still vehemently dislike the colour palette of the world and how there's just way too much comedy in the game. I inherently don't hate comedy, and Larian does a GREAT JOB at these comedic moments, but since this is BG3, I was expecting a much more serious and dark tone in the game. If this was DOS3, or another brand new IP in the D&D universe, this'd be fine, but it IS the third BG installment.

I am still recommending this game just because of how the finished product is so grand. Compared to the unfinished AAA games nowadays that has more than half of it's base content locked behind DLCs, and most of its transmogs behind battlepasses, this game needs to breed.

I also spite the Twitter post talking about gamers needing to settle for the garbage standards that AAA games are trying to set nowadays, so I cannot recommend this game more. While there's a lot of things that I don't like about it, it's purely personal taste, but the world, the interactions, the ACTUAL choices that you make affect EVEN sidequests or random encounters.

If it goes on sale, wait for it not to be on sale, and buy it full price. It's 60 USD, it's complete.

P.S. It has one single stash only, but it's infinite in capacity. Meanwhile, another $70 game that has $25 battlepass only has 4 stash tabs.

Optimization is EXTREMELY bad. I can play Chivalry 2, a game with a much higher graphical fidelity with sharper textures, more texture filters, more complex shaders, and have settings all maxed out (even clutter/corpse lifetime set to max) and I am running it consistently at around 80-90 FPS on a 64-player map, add up the fact that corpses add to the rendering pressure on the GPU, and the game still runs awesome.

Meanwhile, the texture, animations on this game is like 2010-level, there's not even corpses being left behind, and the game loads SO SLOW, texture pop-ins are EVERYWHERE, it takes 1-2 whole minutes after being loaded in the map and playing before character textures load in, and then the FPS is consistently at around 20-30, even at low settings.

Unacceptable for a p2w game. If you want to convince me to buy something on the game, then you should be making the game something I want to stick to, not make the experience so sh**ty for me.

TL;DR: It's an OK game. It'll definitely scratch your Turn-based Tactics itch, but it's not great either. Graphics-wise, I definitely would say this looks VERY good, even better than what other reviews say because a lot of love was put into its design, but the sound production is all over the place, despite having alot of dialogue voiced. There seems to be an imbalance of classes though, and at the current price point, I would say buy it when on sale.

I bought this game even though I don't play it much because I want to support these awesome developers.

The game is mechanically well, but questionable weapon hitboxes, lack of in-depth customization menu, and being unable to view subclasses, weapon allowances on said classes, and being unable to see the pros/cons of weapons outside of a match is beyond silly to the point that it's questionable.

This is what you get when you release on a platform that has very poor feedback system such as Epic.

EDIT: After so many weeks after release and making money, the devs have only done so very little to fix hit detection. Why? Because they don't believe there's an issue, because they're only using analytics data to find anything that doesn't work as intended in the game, and has close to zero communication with the community.

- Hit detection is still absolutely trash.
- FFA still can't be played on quickmatch
- The new maps are still not included into the quickmatch rotation, despite it being close to deserted.
- Still no system in place to stop players stacking on attacker side. In fact, because they are so inclined to treat their community as "they don't know what they're talking about, we're the devs here" players, they rely solely on analytics and in turn don't even seem to know that all high-level players always switch to attacker, making defense an absolutely un-fun side to be playing on.
- In connection to the above, since they are out of touch with their community, they even tweaked attacker sides to be easier, as if the 750 points for winning on a stomped side (defender) actually mattered so much. It was the only incentive to play defender, but these devs are trash.

I bought this game even though it's not something that absolutely thrills me because I want to support good dev monetization practices.

TL;DR: It's not my cup of tea, because it feels extremely empty, but if you love Minecraft, you'll love this game. If you love Terraria, skip this game.

The game depends on ARG and community-driven events to feel "alive". This means that when these seasonal events are over, the game is back to what it is: Base building and pretty costumes. If you are expecting decent combat, a use for your gun, a use for your spaceship aside from travelling, you should look elsewhere, since the game feels extremely empty since there are a lot of static placeholders in the game. There's even only 1 faction that actually is dangerous.

The game doesn't have dynamic events or mini-events in it, making it empty (but pretty) to explore. You're mining stuff, manipulating the terrain, gathering materials to build up your base, doing some mini-quests to have NPCs move in to your base, but these same NPCs are the ones you can find inside very commonly scattered stations. There are a lot of races, sure, but there are no faction wars that you can see happening, there's no distinction between them except language, and learning language is also not very useful.

I am still recommending the game because of how much love was put into it, despite the crappy launch. It fits into a lego basebuilder's wet dream, but not for the action-oriented survival/exploration gamer.

The game is good, but despite being a roguelike, it does not have pure keyboard controls. For classic roguelikes, this is a dealbreaker for me. There are also some issues on the visual clarity in the screen, despite the art, menus, and font being lovely.

GOOD:
- Great gameplay loop. It's a pure roguelike in it's form with modern mouuse controls.
- Unique mechanics. There are some mechanics in the game integrated into the basic roguelike aspect that makes it stand out.
- Awesome-looking aesthetics. The GUI, fonts, and overall aesthetics is just lovely to look at.
- Has a campaign mode! There's the typical roguelike with infinite replayability, but what's great about the game is how there's an actual campaign.
- Good humour. While it can be corny, it's very lighthearted and makes playing the game relaxing despite being tactical and intense in actual battles.

BAD:
- It's a traditional roguelike in it's quintessence, so I expected to be able to play the game in pure keyboard controls, just like how a traditional roguelike would. Definitely a dealbreaker for me.
- While the GUI and aesthetics look awesome, the lack of refinement of the "pixelation" of the font and GUI makes things hard to see and distinguish. The colour scheme of the GUI as well is monochrome, making it hard to distinguish other buttons either.
- Lack of "impact" in certain moves. This is a small thing for other people, but since the graphics are modern and cute, I kind of expected for hits and moves to have some sort of "impact".
- Lack of new abilities to learn. There are things that improve your abilities, which you already have from the headstart that modify or improve the way they work, but other than that, you just have other classes.
- Lack of build variety. Since the game focuses on the tactical aspect of actual battles, there wasn't too much focus on being able to build a character, since there's no equipment and the like.

TL;DR: A great traditional roguelike adapted with modernity and has some unique mechanics to make it fresh, but lack of build variety and the lack of pure keyboard controls I come to expect from a traditional roguelike broke the deal for me. Despite this, the game is highly recommended, even though I refunded it.

The game has great potential but until the devs decide to remove the questionable timesinks that exist in the game just for the purpose of it, PLUS locking progression behind doing the "main quest" means potentially locking out your character of progression if you play solo.

GOOD:
- Solid controls, fluid combat, and somewhat engaging.
- Pretty world.
- A decently-sized map for something that just released from EA, but is extremely small.
- A decent amount of bosses.
- Some engaging boss fights.
BAD:
- Map is decent, but is stoo small at this point.
- PROGRESSION IS LOCKED BEHIND THE MAIN QUEST. And some points of the main quest requires you to kill bosses. If you're playing solo, the more difficult bosses requires or expects that you are not playing solo, so you won't be able to kill it. You can't kill it? Then you're basically stuck with no way to improve your gear, your castle, or anything else.
- QUESTIONABLE TIMESINKS. One great and basic example of this is the day/night system. It does not offer any kind of interesting mechanic whatsoever, it's just a timesink at this point in time. They could argue that DS/DST has this mechanic, but there are tools at your disposal that will eventually allow you to navigate through it. Here though, there isn't, atleast not yet. It just serves to make you wait about 5-10 minutes before you can play again. There's also the absurd amount of time before you can break down nodes to farm stuff, and the absurd amount of resources required. It doesn't translate very well, and requiring 20 lumber for 1 piece of plank when one big tree gives about 70, and takes about 1 whole minute to break is just silly.
- While combat has the potential to be very solid, the weapon variation and the spell variation is currently too basic.
- UNABLE TO USE TELEPORT POINTS IF YOU ARE CARRYING RESOURCES. Really? Why? Why not make it so that the teleport takes much longer if you're carrying resources if it's for PvP? Even on dedicated PvE servers, this is forcefully implemented, and is just another type of timesink that serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever but to lengthen the already tedious farming process.

TL;DR: The game is nice, screams potential, but there are still very immature mechanics and absurd timesinks in place to artificially extend gameplay, and I cannot at this point recommend it yet. Wait maybe for a few months before they iron out these things, and maybe then the game will be more playable.

P.S. inb4 "early access": we all know devs nowadays like labeling their games as "early access" but perpetually delaying release just to make an excuse when the game doesn't work/play properly.

An absolutely worth buy. I was initially holding off hard due to the theme, since I wanted a more serious and darker tone to the aesthetics, dialogue, and whatnot, but the sheer polish of the random quests, relationships, and how it legit confuses me if they are part of the scripted railroading of the campaign or just complete random developments is just absolutely awesome.

PROS:
- Random relationship developments that feel scripted. When I say this, I mean that they feel like they are not random at all.
- Random events that also feel natural. Some characters may discover "Opportunities" that can either give items, perks, pets, or whatnot, and they are so integrated properly and happen naturally that it also feels scripted. Sometimes, the character they are travelling with also gets intertwined in the dialogue.
- Great balance of map pressure and relaxation. You have an allowance of scouting areas, crafting stuff, waiting maybe a day or two for your captured tiles to produce enough resources for you to craft things, but the sense of urgency timed events give also makes things active and engaging.
- Great difficulty balance. The first two difficulties do a great job of introducing the game's unique systems properly. A new player will properly learn the game and not get punished too much for making mistakes. I am not sure about the higher difficulties yet, but I am planning to play some campaigns with the them.
- A great sleu of pre-made campaigns. Unlike some other game that copies Trials by Fire (The Hand of Merlin), this is cheaper, if not at the same price, but offers far more content and build variation, with very engaging mechanics happening seamlessly as you play. (Meanwhile The Hand of Merlin's 3-level campaign is padded by artificial difficulty, and it's so damn short even compared to the 3-chapter beginner campaign of this game)
- Fun, unique classes. My favourite class so far is the Mystic, with so much flexibility of doing AoE, going pure melee, or doing single target attacks. I don't like mages, but this class is just so unique and flexible (you can possess clutter items and use powers depending on the properties of the clutter. e.g. rocks), that I was inclined to toy around with it alot.
- Mutations. This can happen to weapons, or a character. This may require you to sacrifice some body part depending on the mutation, and this happens via random events that happen to said character. This though offers a new set of "toys" you can utilize to make battles more interesting! They can even be upgraded depending on if you want the mutation to progress.

BAD:
- Wish there was more dark and serious tone to random dialogue, but the current format of things fits the game's theme I suppose.
- Some very minor, random typos. This is probably to the randomization of dialogue in the game.
- Lack of helmets and equipment. There's 3 levels of weapons, and 2 levels of armour, each with 2 subtypes, and can "mutate" depending on RNG. In the first campaign, I only had the opportunity to mutate 2 pieces of items out of my 6 characters, and I wish there was a lot more, plus helmets just to make gearing and crafting much more interesting.

TL;DR: The game has very unique mechanics in terms of class abilities, and systems, and it's a game of its own class. If the theme does not turn you off, BUY IT, or even if it does, try it, and I can almost guarantee you'll love it. With the amount of content it currently has, and the still consistent updates, I would urge you to buy the game full price.