Recent reviews by Adore

🔥🔥🔥 WE MAKIN IT OUT OF TITAN WITH THIS ONE 🔥🔥🔥

♥♥♥♥ u

TLDR - try it, this game deserves it.

Okay, there will be a few comparisons to the previous souls-like games, I edited my negative review and put it under the spoiler at the end and decided that with all its pros and cons this game as any souls game leaves me with warm emptiness after completion, I don't regret spending my time and would like to erase my memory to experience it again, it's definitely my top candidat for game of the year. So...

Open world

Open world is enormous and indescribably beautiful, but with repetitive copy-pasta dungeons which contain same bosses over and over again, which will be later put as normal enemies or as dual boss. New boss mechanics with dark souls formula doesn't fit really well, especially if you don't rely on summoning buddy, which adds additional layer of frustration and difficulty.

Combat

Main story bosses are beautiful as world itself, but sometimes designed poorly for combat like:
Radanh
early game scion as normal enemy in the keep (???)
Margit as first story boss, especially his double dagger slash
Malenia with hella combo which requires googling on how to dodge that ♥♥♥♥ and shadow step on the
weapon
Mohg with fire and blood all over the arena and small damage windows
and some more
Add flask trigger, big punish for the mistake (any endgame enemy can kill you with 3 hits unless you are overleveled as ♥♥♥♥), triple attacks during one i-frame window, 10 attaks moveset and on top of that input queue with input lag for a half a second, doesn't sound cancerous enough? And don't get me wrong, one of the points above works well separately, it's just the combination of these points which makes fights not just hard, but also frustrating.

Questlines

Questlines are more missable than before as now it's open world and you can easily miss some piece of dialogue if you leave NPC early, don't expire all dialogues, or have no idea whene the ♥♥♥♥ npm just sent you (I missed Renna at first church because I didn't come back at night, and I didn't start Blaidd questline properly because I bought everything from the NPC and didn't comeback after hearing whisles in nearby location, I didn't start Fia questline properly and almost missed dungeon she sends you in), but I like that they kept DS formula with hidden questlines without location marks and quest book as it helps immersion really well.

Multiplayer

For the multiplayer - I wasn't invaded at all, not a single time for my playthrough, and lack of covenants kinda ruins purpose of pvp, if earlier you could farm stuff for covenants for achievements or items, take a look on how you contributed to it, now it's just an addition, in DS3 you could be in family friendly solaire covenant and help people with bosses, be in the darkmoon covenant and help people with invaders, be in rosaria fingers and invade every single being in the world which also gave you currency to change build or look, and some more, here you invade or help people just for fun, you don't get anything from it, as for pvp its even worse, you can easily overlevel (which is easier because open world) your weapon or get it as a reward and you won't be invaded at all, if you do get invaded, or invade, any pvp on 70+ becomes a oneshot fiesta, mages, moonveil katana and jump attacks are especially overtuned.

Technical

For the techincal part - I played on high and had a constant smooth 60 fps except a few buggy bosses (tree sentinel at the beginning of the game and soldier of nokstella), on these with drops it was around 30-40, my spec is: i7 9700k, 1080ti, 16GB 3200 RAM, game on HDD.

With all that in mind I still enjoyed the game, although at some point I had a mental breakdown.

if you want to get frustrated its better to play jump king, seriously
bring nioh bosses with cancer mechanics, add action queue, add copy pasta dungeons with its bosses in the late game locations as average mobs which do half of your health damage with 40 vit and call it elden ring, basically any peasant in the late game deals enormous damage to you, world is beautiful but won't save you from frustration

cool game

Best horror game I have ever played so far. Beware of spoilers.

It has an incredible atmosphere, when you are passing the same area for the fifth time just because you forgot something or wanted to check something, and you hear this crackling floor sound behind you or somewhere aside, a piano button was pressed in the next room that you checked twice, footsteps behind the wall you are passing by, strange roar outside of the house and many more, and even if you know there is nothing going to happen since you cleared this area, watched walkthrough or even cleared the whole game on your own, it still will be scary. At the beginning game made me to take a few breaks for 5 minutes, just to take my balls and get into the game.
It has a really strong plot, maybe with a little lack of choices, honestly I wish I could stay with Eveline, but the only choice I had is to whom I want to give the serum, which has a really small impact on the ending, sigh, but aside from that it's still a great story with its own characters with their own stories, part of which you can find in the different documents. The whole story is on plain sight, but you are always footstep away from getting it, you can't catch it till the very end.
Gameplay is awesome, there are a lot of different puzzles, various enemies, even a lot of death traps! And what is more interesting and impressive - each boss has its own unique tactic, for example, during the Marguerite fight you have to keep an eye on her because she likes to hide, waiting for you in floor/wall holes or somewhere in the corner or ceiling, trying to ambush you, while Jack's fight is more like duel on the f-cking chainsaws , and you don't lack on weapon choice, there a lot of different weapons like different shotguns, different pistols, burner, or even grenade launcher. Game itself reminds me the first game in the RE franchise, especially with the inventory management, safe rooms and cassette recorders, since its the only way you can save the game. On madhouse difficulty it's a way different game, which makes replaying way more efficient. Enemies not only hit harder, they are more tough, they walk faster, you can meet them at different places, or vice-versa, they are missing somewhere, for example basement fridge. All lockpicks, coins and items now can be found in different places. For example, keys from the car during the first encounter with Jack are in the locked strongbox, and he can follow you around the whole house, so he will be always nearby. Lockpick in the Evie's room is in the black-goo-thing at the ceiling. And the sweetest part of madhouse difficulty is cassette tapes, or simpler, the only possible way to save the game for you is find cassette tape and put it into recorder, meaning that you can save your game fixed amount of times.
Somewhere you can go full John Wick, somewhere you have to play hide'n'seek, especially with Jack, and if he finds you, you have to outrun him in order to hide again, I'm not afraid of chases, but chase from daddy was really tense for me, especially with the face grab, and somewhere you can take a break and explore surroundings.
All of that above is accompanied with beautiful soundtrack, which at the same time can be really spooky, truly amazing and well-designed locations, moreover, eventually you will have to back to the place you have already explored, and it will be slightly different , they are absolutely different from each other, and each of them makes you feel differently. It makes you play the whole game in one shot, like instead of Ethan it's you, who will face all of the upcoming events.

Aside from the main game, it has a few good dlc, which are worth buying it, since it gives you interesting game modes, like 21, Nightmare, Jack's 55th Birthday or Daughters, which can shed some light on what actually happend before Ethan's arrival.

11/10, I'm really grateful to capcom for their product, and I would gladly wipe my memory out to play this game one more time and get all of these feelings again. It could have a hude potentian as a separate game with separate universe, and I hope that someday it will happen.
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If I remember something, I will update my review. Sorry for the english, it's not my native.