Recent reviews by random_script

A very simple game, maybe too simple some times.
Fun, witty and the story is kind of interesting.
The world is build well, but is not as big as you could expect.
There is material for 10-20 hours easily, and maybe 15 hours more if you restart from scratch and try to take a completely different path.
I reckon this is a good game if you like fantasy, rol playing and making lots of choices.
Due to how short it is I recommend buying it on sale.

I think this game is not for everyone and I feel fifty-fifty about this game.
It attempts to do several things at the same time and there are better games in symbolism, story and gameplay.
Comparing it to the previous Bioshock games is hard because there are many changes. I like the first the best because the story is consistent ALL the time (in Infinite it feels off most of the time and I could tell the twist almost from the start of the game), the gameplay feels more rewarding and fair than Infinite and I don't think this game lives to the hype.
It is a very short game and I guess it could have been quite good when it released years ago.

At least it runs flawless for me on Linux with Proton.

Lots of crashing issues.
The story of this one and the amount of added things from the first game does not seem to be worth it.

This is a very good game. It is easy to get hooked to and well balanced in general. Even playing on easy can be very hard at first.
I have over 100 hours and I still have achievements left to accomplish (even though I have unlocked all the ships and their layouts).

At its core this is a very simple strategy game, with random and role elements, but there are many systems and their interactions lead to many possible scenarios (kind of like chess). Of course there are more complex strategy games, but this is very fun for its price (specially on sale, which happens often).

I played this offline with normal wine on Linux with the Windows' version of the game. For some reason Proton was not working as expected.

This drags too much, which is a common problem in VNs. Half or more of the text is not needed, even more if you take in mind that there is a section where the creators explain their main motivations for the characters and the story.
Taking too long decreases the quality of the product. I know it is hard to cut off things instead of freely adding everything, but this could be MUCH MORE BETTER with less content. This is my issue with this game. It took me months to finish it and there were times where I felt like giving it up because it was a pain.
This reminds me much of Umineko, which is very long and bad paced in lots of parts, but with a complex and dream like story. I love the manga version of Umineko but I gave up the VN and finished it years later.

The base story is good. Some chapters were very good (even being a bit too much), for example chapters: 1, 4 and 5. The characters are well done in general, but also is a bit sad how utterly dumb they behave.

This is not a story for everyone. Some may enjoy it, but I am sure there is a fair amount of people who will not.

The story-telling method is good.
The story is good, but kind of predictable.
The themes are very good and well put together.
The gameplay is ok, is just another shooter with added "magic".
It runs good for me, no crashes yet.
The quest tracking could be better in some parts, but in general it is ok.

This is spoiler free or at least as free as I can for its length.

I have done all the challenges in this first week, 5 games, 2 characters, up to ng+4.
I took my sweet time with everything the first times, so it took about 80 hours, but I plan to do a lot more with challenge runs and so.
I must have about 1.5k hours in soulsborne games and I believe that the core combat in this game is harder to learn, but once you do you get better than in any soulsborne game.
Also I think this is less polished than any soulsborne game and could have been much more better with little work. It feels like they didn't really play much their own game and they didn't even try with some of the core elements of the game. But at the same time with FromSoftware the expectations are out of the roof.

I really like:

• The core combat is now my favorite of any game.
  
• The parry now is not op, the window is better and if you fail you still block.
  
• Hitting parry/block can cancel your early attack. Saved my life tons of times.
  
• Posture is awesome. A fine way to reward good players and punish bad ones.
  
• The level desing. The best I have seen in any game. The level design makes the immersion better, it feels like a real place. The last area you discover is awesome.
  
• Air movement is great. It adds a lot to exploration and combat now feels more real.
  
• Sword play. Is way better than soulsborne games, but still not real enough to be unfun.
  
• NG difficulty. Some people think this is too hard but I like it this way. I found some bosses very very very frustrating because I was dogging/running too much and once you get used to the playstile (which can take a lot of hours) they are very easy and mostly fair. Mini-bosses in general feel perfectly balanced and very worth the time.

I like:

• The music and sound feel good, immersive and don't get in the way.
  
• The graphics are pretty good, at least for my setup and the world is beautiful. The only but is when you kill a certain mini-boss and it spawns mist for some seconds.
  
• The desing of the bosses was pretty good and fits their combat very well (with a glance you know more or less what kind of battle you are in for).
  
• NG+ and onwards difficulty. You really have to manage your posture.

I am disappointed by:

• Combat arts. I expected more, more different and better balanced combat arts. Double ichi just blows everything apart and as the NG cycles go on they seem to be less effective than normal attacks, which makes most of them useless.
  
• The quantity/quality of content. There is not online and it was supposed to be a more polished experience, but it doesn't feel like it. I mean, they copied mini-bosses and bosses, reused areas and enemies have your skills, but they could easily have more indoor areas, hidden doors, events like entering Gun Fort and a couple of states (same architecture anyway). I mean they are probably done with a DLC with a couple of bosses including a certain sword master yet to appear. For example the world being so interconnected feels too small for a fantasy story where you are supposed to be doing something no one could and going to crazy places, but actually normal people could just get lost and find them too; which is normal in these games, but still.
  
• Just a bit with the grappling hook. I wish you could use it more and there are some places where you have too many points to hook to and some times you think you have a hooking point in focus and yet you use a different one.
  
• The core combat mechanic to jump over enemies to increase their posture. I gess it makes sense with the jump mechanic and all, but still it doesn't feel natural to me.
  
• Story telling/lore/events. It is not really bad, but is not good either, just plain. This feels off FromSoftware, I guess this game is different from what they are not used to (which is fine) and actually the game in general feels like a game made by another company trying to mimic them. Overall this feels way too anime-like.
  
• Some times you can deathblow an enemie and in the process you fall to another place and then the animation ends you get instantly back to the place the enemie was standing before.
  
• Just a bit about a lot of boss arenas being too small and with obstacles or things that don't let you see the weapon of the boss. Eg: rocks, trees, grass, armors and doors.
  
• Demon of Hatred. Thematically ok, but is a soulsborne boss fight and does not fit this game. In fact his posture seems to be the same as his life.
  
• Shield attack making me loose my confetti. Why game, why? Who thought this was a good idea?
  
• Camera still has issues in certain places and against certain enemies you cannot see exactly what they are doing.
  
• I expected a bit more japanese creatures and mythology.
  
• Expected a bit of a crazy transformation of the world (I mean with the day changing and all), like roosters turning into something to be scared of. Kind of when people turn into beasts in Bloodborne, it scares you, but here you get confused at best (and phantoms are disappointing and don't really solve anything).

I am very disappointed by:

• Prosthetic tools avaible. If they are going to be our only choice of weapon there are too few, which is very noticeable for the hardest bosses, where it feels almost all are useless. I used the most the shuriken and the firecracker, then I liked the spear and the fan for mobs, never found any use for Sabimaru and found the remaining 5 to be useful only for a couple of enemies. At least I expected to have a gun. I understand you cannot expect them to solve all your problems but still they feel a bit useless for the most part and on the hardests moments. I even prefer the Bloodborne trick weapons to this.
  
• Prosthetic upgrades. They are repetitive, too few and the upgrade path doesn't make much sense mixing them all. When I play again I will probably upgrade the spear, firecracker and shuriken as much as I can without going out of my way and just forget about the rest.
  
• Stealth. Just pitiful. The enemies don't care if someone dies, there is noise or a piece of wood hits their head (it happened). Most don't patrol and when they do they have a fixed path that starts once you reach a certain distance, so you almost always find then in the same place. You can draw their attention and even enter combat and then get some distance and they forget about you, which just makes most mini-bosses trivial (you don't even need to know how this combat works, just spamming op ♥♥♥♥ is good enough). This is the same way in every NG cycle.
  
• NG+ in anything other than difficulty. I expected more enemies, changes or harder stealth, but you get none of that. Rewards from mini-bosses after NG are just 500 sen and almost nothing of experience, which makes them not worth the time at all, which is exactly the opposite they exist for in ng.
  
• Ninjutsu. Only 3 and I didn't find the last one to be useful.
  
• Farming. The first time I beat the game I farmed upgrade materials, experience, and divine confetti like and idiot, only to find there is no need to, because later in game you can buy or don't really need any. I mean that it feels like the game is inviting you to farm and farm and if you don't know better you probably do. Eg: Headless, you fight one and die a lot because you need divine confetti, but you have very few confetti and find many uses to it. Once you know better you just wait for endgame for them or don't kill them. I mean they are optional, but how would you know that the first time?

So overall I think what makes the game good is the environment and the core of the combat. What I think it makes the game bad is mostly the specialization and the lack of polishing. I think is a good game, but not for everyone. Even with all

I can't get used to this erratic combat. I actually play better when I just move around without a pattern that when I try seriously.

The good:

• The missions. In ME1 the focus is on the main missions for the story line and the rest feel just like leftovers, but in ME2 it feels like all follow some kind of good quality standard (and honestly most of them were quite interesting). In the end this quests are one of the strongest points of the game and part of what makes it stand out.
  
• The main story is a bit so-so, but overall good.
  
• The characters this time are very well done. Is the same formula than KOTOR 1 and 2 and ME1, but with a bit more depth and care. The quantity of dialogue is not too many and not too few. The only character that I could not stand was Miranda (the Cerberus cheerleader).
  
• The chance to take parangon/renegade actions during cinematic events. It rewards you for being paying attention, and is cool.
  
• The weapon selection and research systems. In ME1 you buy stuff in vendors and there is the random element for the shop in your ship and by the end you have tons of junk and money. In ME2 you find weapons and researches in quests and also can buy research's from vendors. At the end of the game you should have pretty much everything without clutter and not a lot of credits, so you have to manage your resources, which is why they exist. The way to select weapons feels off at first coming from ME1, but latter it makes sense to change the mechanics of the weapons instead of just the numbers and have a few instead of tons (a bit like what FROMSOFTWARE did in Bloodborne).
  
• The balance among weapons. Each has it uses. Once you get used to them the combat is just a matter of knowing when to use each. In ME1 most of the weapons types are useless.
  
• Is great that you can adjust the difficulty in game without the need to start a new character. At first is best to start in Normal and when you get comfortable change to a higher difficulty, which are really not that hard. If you die there is probably an auto-save just before the beginning of the combat where you died.

The bad:

• A bit too cinematic.
  
• Minigames and scanning planets for resources gets boring.
  
• Parangon/Renegade choices and rewards some time don't make sense. I would say is better than ME1 and KOTOR1 but way worse than KOTOR2.
  
• Changing weapons is slow and annoying.
  
• The combat still feels off, but not so much as ME1. You can command your squad better but still you have to be either very good or pause in combat to do it right.
  
• The romance is still a bit odd (but not so much as ME1) and you can have your way with several characters in the same run.

The ugly:

• Way too much non-skippable content, eg loading screens and cinematics (without mods)
  
• The user interface is not intuitive at all in most cases and you don't get explanations about the basics, but you do for useless things. It feels like things were rushed or it was done without user input, just coding without design.
  
• The default controls feel bad, at least for the first hours, even more coming from ME1.
  
• Moving the ship in a system.
  
• You can get stuck in walls.
  
• The key to skip dialogue is still the same for selection and sometimes the selections are available before the end of the dialogue, so you can select a chat option without wanting to when you try to skip something.
  
• The DLC and Cerberus network. This should be in the game downloaded with Steam by default.

I got hooked and spend a lot of hours exploring the world and grinding for items, vocations and all.
They got the open world mechanics right and I hope Elden Ringe copies some of them.

The combat it is kind of meh, it rewards skill but there are situations where you don't have the chance to do anything.
I think the worst part of the game are those situations where it resorts to aritificial difficulty, like having to fight 2 wyverns and lots of those taurus guys, or that some attacks can one shot you. Also the attacks that one shot your pawns in an area suck.

In short, the game is unbalanced, has lot of poor quality choices, the story and characters are terrible, but also it can be very fun at its core.