Πρόσφατες κριτικές από τον тетеря, блин

first, let players choose maps/modes they prefer, so they'll play with players who like the same. if a player thinks 4vs4 is better than 2vs2, let him/her play 4vs4 if enough players with such preferences are looking for a match at the same time. so obvious step to make the game much more enjoyable. you could say this will make matchmaking slower for those who look for a match without preferences, but by the end of the day – do you really want to force those players to play a game they don't want to play just for the sake of the faster matchmaking? If players doesn't get a satisfaction playing your game, they drop it.

the second, don't update carts and winter cabin. this is not the game's selling point and isn't worth it. the winter cabin could be somewhat cool with many, way many more alterantive activities in it, like «party box» games, a whole catalogue of board/social games, but investing this much in this single map is like making a whole new game buried somewhere in the menu.

third, consider making a mode where every round starts with a new map, it was the fun part of gang beast. one of the fun parts, okay. it would be something like «smash» mode, but without perks and winning points. also, consider making «smash» using just one map. the main smash's downside is the need to wait for all the loading screens. optimize it somehow. the last suggestion game modes wise: regular classic, but every player has some smash perk (the same) – it could be fun and refreshing. imagine a last stand where everyone is berkerk, or a football where everyone has quicksilver, or whatever. just a refresher.

forth, fix throwing mechanic bugs. too often it just doesn't hit the aim or doesn't hit anything at all (no visible throwable). it barely works for the local coop, by the way. you're just too busy with the carts and winter cabing to notice it, even though the couch mode with multiple gamepads is what folks expect from this game.

okay, couple of things on top of that… the game could be drastically improved with new weapons or just items to play with. for example, lasso. it would be cool both for experienced players and for casual ones. or the bombs (throwables) to make a surface icey and slippery. also, please, consider making new smash-perks interactions: not only 1lvl → 2lvl way of progress, but also two different 1lvl perks that could make you choose a new perk that combine their strengths somehow. and rebalance them, please. some perks like the poisoned edibles you've added last time is just too weak, almost pointless. it blurs your vision for like two seconds and you can still see everything pretty well. what's the point taking it when almost every other perk gives a player something more significant? it seems like you either don't have beta testers or they've barely have an experience in this game to give you a proper feedback.

the last one: an idea to make it more fun for those who has been defeated. instead of throwing stuff, allow them playing a «ghost» and fight other ghosts without consequences while the others are still playing. those who are still alive wouldn't see them. just think about it: many players drop the game, because they can't get enough fun playing it. what's the fun if you're dead in the first 7 seconds of the map, after all the loading screens and waiting? think about it.

do we live in the world where absence of microtransactions is already a reason to upvote a game?

if you think about it, it's a very time consuming game with not that many quests, not bad (but not great either) fighting mechanics, but very easy fights. I haven't completed it yet, but folks say that whatever you do with tadpoles it means nothing and it's frustrating. the way your party tries to romance is too in your face, you should actually dodge it, no good old friendship possible. as someone suggested here in steam discussions, it could be so many interesting options like some party member falls in love in another, some could mourn his dead spouse/wife so we could help them find peace or even actually help find\save them, someone could be asexual, or have some specific orientation, but instead they all are «playersexual» whoever you play.

the characters themselves are too flat and unrealistic: what are the chances that straight from the beginning you find a mage that slept with godess and has super unique atomic bomb inside, some devil's right hand who won wars with (also) super unique mechanic heart and magically low level as you, super unique vampire (at least I haven's seen any other vampire in 90hrs of gameplay). it just feels like some DND party made by 14 yrs old players who wanted their characters to be as cool as possible (in their eyes).

inventory is a mess. you can't sort items and leave them be: once you close the menu and open it again you'll get the same mess as it was. why it doesn't save the sorted inventory? and yeah, why camp supplies don't go directly to camp chest? why there's no button to loot straight to camp chest? I spent at least hours sending all kind of stuff to camp.

also, the journal is a mess too. when you see a quest updated with the hint to press «J», do you see the relevant quest notes right away? no. you just try to find it the best you can in the list with sublists, some are location based, some are your personal, the others are for your companions – no system at all. just show me the updated info right away and make a search field so you could find any quest by its name or its content. if it's location based, how about little pictograms or tabs? the same for your party members. or just alphabetically, for gods sake.

gold… well, I had almost no use of it. It was about 15k in the second act just by looting dead corpses, their armors and weapons. no pickpocket or unesessary violence at all.

and, yeah, as others already said, make the 3rd act as good as the previous ones, and it would make it worthwile. «Dragons Age: Origins» is still a better game by far: it had a tight and meaningful storyline without screenplay holes and with massive amount of battle mechanics like cast sleep spell → cast fear = nighmare etc (you could even create your own behavior rules, so your party could be autonomous the way you want them to be). I don't get the way critical misses work: in DND such kind of fail leads to, let's say, damage you deal to yourself. and the shot/spell accuracy: why can't you hit your own party member that stands on the attack line, if you miss? all these things were in «DA: Origins», tabletop DnD and many, many other RPGs. there's no such thing as advantage when an enemy is surrounded or hit from behind. it's just undercooked in so many ways, but, hey, you can customize your reproductive organs and have fun with bear – this is the next-gen RPG we all deserve, I guess.

upd: now, when I finished it… it has so many serious plot flaws and the most underwhelming ending ever. no major spoilers, but you'll just know. your romanced companion, for example, won't say nothing if you decide something… critical, let's say. the romance just don't have any ending. and if such companion wasn't in your party last fight, you'll just won't see her/him again, that's it. only the three party members will have their lines in the end. all the others… well, forget that you completed their quest, decided their fate in some way – you won't have any closure with them. needless to say, there's no fallout-like screens about all the NPC you met through the game, nothing about the decisions you made. and that Karlach patch that made her ending decent… well, if THIS is «patched» ending that «she deserves» (I remember the word «deserve» from the patchnote), then I don't have a clue what was the ending on release. regret wasted 200hrs.

the game to play high, believe me. the awesome voices, the idea, the soundtrack, oh my god. got «to the moon vibes» for some reason.

It requires a lot of space and doesn't provide you an ability to move with sticks for some reason. All in all feels like turn-based/slow-motion duel which is unique, but not super fun at least for me. Haven't tried multiplayer.

outstanding. one precaution: don't rush getting the fourth circle if you're mage. with some runes it's just too overpowered and you'll get bored soon. with guides it's possible to get all the books in chapter 2, very early. on the other hand, lower circles seem too weak and without mana regen it's just all about resources into damage conversion. so, even though the game is great, actually way better than many non-free triple «A» projects, the mage way won't make you enjoy it that much and «guides» may ruin it for you, so don't cheat with metagame. graphics wise, with DX11 and ReShade (tweak the latter yourself by enabling/disabling shaders) it's surprisingly playable, even though the engine is 20 years old. all in all, it actually is the best gothic we have never expected to see in 2020+. it's just stuffed with high-quality content, quests and dialogs. it's easy to notice: everything was made by hand, nothing was generated, and pretty much bugless.

well, it's the absolute must, if you like the first 2 hours of the base game. this DLC will make the compaign 2x longer and add more content here and there, so buy early.

we all know it could be deeper in many aspects (I'd say, some players ask too much), but for now the key stuff I miss the most:

1. motives generator with false traces included
2a. ability to talk about specifics like relations with the victim, were they friends or hated each other, where was he/she at the time of a crime. of course, they could lie, you may find evidence for it.
2b. maybe ability to bluff with the suspected, show him/her some evidence, see the reaction (maybe some implants to see the reaction better)
3. possibility to be found for your own crimes, even though no one cought you in time. like you stole something here and there and some other detective figured the pattern, found your own fingerprints, camera's records. so, you should remove your traces, if you wanna go the crime way. otherwise, it's too easy.
4. Criminals should try to cover traces sometimes: erase camera's footage, break the telephone thing in the basement, wipe fingerprints. But they could leave other traces by doing it.
5. I haven't seen other evidences putting fingerprints aside in my 15h of gameplay. Blood on shoes? A handkerchief with initials laying around? A piece of a torn coat? Should a weapon always be in the apartment: don't murderers try to throw it away backstreet? Last, but not least: blood of a murderer under nails of a victim.
6. Disappeared people's cases. Some could be kidnapped, some murdered by a husband/wife with hidden evidences in their apartments.
7. False su**ides
8. well, mod support with some easy to use constructor? procedural generator is great, but it's far better to load like 100 different hand-made cases like:

victim's wealth: rich/poor
victim's status: alone/married
murderer: lover/neighbor/collegue/stranger/serial killer
weapon: ...
was captured on cameras: yes/no
v-mail #1 time: before the crime/after the crime/before or after v-mail #N
v-mail #1 content: ...
specific traces allowing to find the murderer: ...
motive: %one_of_the_prefedined_motives_to_select%
last speech (when we arrest a criminal with all the evidence): ...
etc

..and let the game do the job with already generated city. if something matters, it could be specified by a modder, if not, it will be generated by default rules. with these features it would be the ultimate detective game, but until then it feels too random. Will follow the game's news and will make it positive at some point.

ps.
DLC adding a «Knives Out»-like cases would be also instabuy, like you're being hired to find a killer in a villa when everyone has its own generated motive. Every little thing, every minute of difference between v-mails and NPCs actions should matter to make the correct decision. well, it's just a random idea, that doesn't really expected to exist (but one can hope).

upd:
okay, devs have decided it's good enough to release. I don't know about the financial side of the project, but I know this: it's not good enough. it's as barebone as it was a year ago. I haven't expect it to get new super-complex features, but it falls shorts in the most basic ones. I don't see any reason to play a randomly generated world where every case is ≈ the same and requires no logic, just pure fingerprint bruteforcing of everyone and every place. you just don't get exited about new cases, while it's the most interesting aspect of playing as a detective.

cons:
- gamebreakingly invisible zombies
- the stealthy night tower mission has problems with LODs beyond imaginable (other new levels have invisible objects too)
- gameplay wise the whole axeman thing is meh as you'll never see and fight him putting the boss fight mission aside (hoped for kinda re:nemesis vibes where overpowered dude tries to hunt you down through the game)
- the priest is also seemed almost rudimentary, story writers just left the plot hang somewhere in the middle
- most of the ch1 locations weren't used, at all, so the game is 60gb just because you can go there, not because you'll need to
- vera is an overpowered reskin of another weapon, even though it could be something with different reload mechanics. also, at some point it glitched and I couldn't reload it
- the grenade launcher has no reload animations
- AI is still dumb: it takes really long time for them to start seeing you even if you slaughter them one by one in a bright room, firing big guns etc. if you thought they have an idea of "alarm" you're wrong, they don't mind you to shoot at their territory and forget everything right away, just hide for a sec, like 3 month old babies
- also, I see no reason why it doesn't have the trial mode from the first chapter, because even loading screens tell you about it
- "new game+" is desirable with harder enemies, so player could play all the quests from the beginning with harder difficulty (more tower presence / zombies, for example); looting with no purpose is lame.
- flares looks cool, but I haven't seen any need for them

pro: ch1 is a great game and it's sort of DLC for it. new receipts, chainsaw, new types of enemies, a save import. But (I can't stop complaining) the story is so meh, I don't know. Why this dude lives alone? Why didn't you put him into a camp with other people? It could be so much richier experience. Let us choose if we want to bring someone there or not, some quests with food stealing, all that zombie apocalyptic kitchen we all know and love. The first season of that Waking Dead game (with Clementine) was so good, I cried. But what we have here is pokerface and multiple excuses to put us into a sandbox with zombies (also known as quests and locations). Well...

still playable.

It's a good game and servers won't fill up with ppl if I leave a negative review.
However, I can't play it properly without other players, even though I'd like to.
It should come out of EA asap or else dev will lose even those oldies who played the first soldat. When you grow up, priorities change. Maybe it's better to position the game as finished and only then, on top of that, release major patches and free updates (people love free updates). It won't change anything gameplay/development-wise, but "EA" is the tag to avoid for most of us.

I perfectly understand that the dev's work should be paid out, but FTP model could give it a new popularity spin. I know nothing about marketing in games industry, but I imagine a very simplified model like you can download the game for free, but you're stuck with couple of basic weapons and limited number of maps (other players' weapons cannot be picked up). Maybe, let's say, 2 hours of demo with all the stuff included with a separate button like "activate fullgame sneak peek". And then, a separate DLC unlocks everything, including advanced match options. On top of this, you could sell new skins etc. for those who want to support you and it would be fair and square (selling these for a paid game is considered as a dirty move).

upd:
I'd like to have presets for game modes. Setting them up everytime is tedious. Also when I set survival with bots, match haven't restarted when I was killed, even though I was the only one in the team (team deathmatch mode). Have sent couple of reports, but for now it, indeed, seems to be barely playable.

upd2:

it's the dead end, forget it.