Recente recensies door Ryu Makkuro

Ever since I saw this game announced way back when, at the time only title and screenshots provided... I knew this is gonna be the game for me. Years later, it's released and... it's everything I hoped it would be bar one exception, the english translation.

Before I'll explain why the translation is an issue, let me just point out that if you're looking for an action combat jRPG that mixes the best of old with the best of modern, then this game is most definitely for you.
Now the main gripe with the translation is that outside of the fairly consistent typo's is that it makes the characters a lot less likable than they actually are. I'd HIGHLY suggest anyone to play it with JP VAs even if you can't understand a single thing of what they say simply because the way they say it already makes a huge difference to how you even read the english subs. And if like me you know some words and phrases but can't understand sentences, this will GREATLY elevate the experience.

Aside from Bandai Namco's DLC practices with this franchise in general, the game really is solid in all other elements. I don't rate games but if I had to I'd say it's a 9 or 10 out of 10 in all elements bar that lord Bahamut awful translation, which would be 4/10. In the early game you may struggle with EXP though and if you want to keep up with level requirements you will have to utilise battle chain bonus, exp food buffs along with drinking 2 happy bottles before each boss fight to maximise the exp gains. If you don't mind splurging out money though, game offers a lot of exp boost packs so there's that.

I've beaten the game on Hard and there will be moments where you'll be frustrated with AI, but that's just a process of learning which is greatly rewarded with satisfaction for beating said opponents and then a myriad of skits that are just absolutely amazing... as long as you're using JP VAs that is. Stay away from English as far away as possible. As something that may convince you to use JP VAs, one of the villains is voiced by the same VA that gives his voice to Sephiroth. So if you're into despair, that should do it for you :D

Now I'll be going back into Arise, cause I've waited for over a decade for a game such as this and I can't get enough of it :D

I got wrecked before I even got to turn 1. Best race of my life. Game lives up to its name. Server browser is buggy though.

It has Laguna Seca, therefore this is a must pack.

As a bonus you also get Bathurst, Suzuka and Kyalami. All for a price that is the same as a single track in iRent.

You wake up one day and expect to have a blast in the game as always. However you notice all the cars feel... heavier. You're also suddenly slower than the drivers you're normally on pace. You treat it as placebo, blame it on the physics changes in the update and move on only to discover in some latest updates that suddenly because you use a steer assist with a gamepad to have a semblance of control over the cars and not be a menace to other drivers on the track you're now given a performance penalty.

As Kunos decided to show a middle finger to gamepad users, I now show middle finger to them. Thank you for making me stop enjoying this game all so you can please the wheel users that whine about gamepad players keeping up with them. At least now I have more time for other things I suppose.

TL;DR;
If you're a wheel user, you'll love the physics in this game. If you're a gamepad user, you have a choice between a twitchy mess or a heavy car. I picked "f**k this s**t im outta here" option.

If you're looking through reviews wondering why there are so many negative ones recently, know this: People can't read, don't want to understand that this is Early Access or even spend the time playing the game. Your best choice is to ignore said reviews massively as they do not represent the actual quality of this Early Access and the game itself. Furthermore the team has only 9 people as of writing this review. There were less at the start.


Now to the actual review itself. I'll start with the performance aspect of the game.

I've bought into this Early Access from the first day it launched on Steam. At the start I had the game running on an i5-3570k @4.2GHz with a GTX670 2GB and 8GB DDR3 RAM. At first the game was running very poorly, couldn't reach 30FPS outside of the first two zones regardless the settings (resolution always was 1080p). HOWEVER...
On the game's Discord, the developers are very active, open and helpful. They immediately acknowledged the issues, informed about why there are issues and their plan for how to deal with it in time. And indeed, in time with updates, the performance was steadily improving. From a relatively unplayable experience I got to a relatively stable 30FPS at medium settings. While there were still issues and in places the framerate dropped massively, it was still not final and optimisations were still to happen.
Again, most importantly, developers were always open about it and they constantly try their best.

Later on I moved to a 1060 6GB, and I was able to play at stable 60FPS at max settings at 1080p. With the latest optimisations that only improved. Moreover the stuttering that was quite noticeable and jarring at the start was steadily reduced and the frame timing as of now is incredibly good. Gameplay is very smooth even if you run at lower FPS (I tried running at 4K for lols).

Bottom line? As long as you meet the minimum requirements and adjust the settings accordingly, you should have a playable experience that will most likely still improve in time.


Now onto the gameplay:
It's a turn based jRPG, therefore those familiar with Final Fantasy games will most likely feel at home due to the "ATB" gauge. You have normal attack, ability to move on the field, spells and skills that cost mana (HP and MP regenerate between battles, similar to FFXIII) along with some static objects that can be used to damage enemies, heal yourself etc. With the latest chapter also "limit break" ability dropped in for one of the characters. Basically all the good stuff that you'd expect from jRPG are present... bar one.
Gear. This is the one and only gripe I have with the game so far. The equipment system is akin to the RNG loot based system from games like Diablo or Nioh. Every piece of gear has different rarity levels, that can roll different stats with different values on them. While this adds to replayability, I feel like it goes against the jRPG spirit and adds only unnecessary grind that isn't very enjoyable, at least for me personally. Developers have stated there is some unique gear planned that will have fixed stats on it, so that possibly will help, but regardless I feel like the gearing is the weakest point of the game so far.


Audio and visuals:
Game has a specific art style to itself. It's neither photo realistic or full anime style. More of a blend of the two. You may like it or not but the game overall has a rather charming look to it even if it's arguably not among the prettiest games out there. This is probably also where people may feel like the game "doesn't perform well" when compared to the visuals at display, however that confusion is purely due to the art style used (maybe also the weird vegetation system that at lower settings changes lush forest into a barren wasteland). Just because something doesn't look photorealistic doesn't mean it's easier to render in any way.
Sound wise though... it's a much more consistent experience so to speak. If you've played through many jRPGs it's almost guaranteed that many of the songs will "hit you in dem feels" hard, as some of them have strong nostalgic feeling. The rest while not being as good, still presents a good level that matches surroundings where you can easily enjoy exploring without feeling boring or generic.

Early Access experience:
This is by far the best thing about this game. Developers are open, they engage in discussions on the games official Discord server, if you have issues they or community will try to help with it. Also currently they are trying to cycle between a content and optimisation phases, so one month there are optimisations, other there's a content drop.
Most importantly though you can see that said developers are just jRPG fans. They are passionate about their work and the games in general. Feels like the Razer motto here would describe it well: "By gamers for gamers".
Naturally Discord is also the place where the new information usually drops first. It's not uncommon for someone's suggestion to be added later into the game. In fact depending on what it is, it can happen within hours. I've been a part of 4... no, 5 Early Access games so far. This is by far and wide the best, especially if they keep it up. I'm saying that since I was in another Early Access where at the start the devs were open and friendly but later on they just jumped on nostalgia hype and instead of making the game they proclaimed, they ignored community, threw features and just called it a day. Hopefully that will not be the case here.


Summary:
Game is a solid base. There's still a lot to be done but everything is moving in the right direction. Optimisation passes happen after every bigger content update and developers are extremely active and open. There are few things that some may not like but in overall the game is more likely to attract you and keep you playing than otherwise. Also some butthurt people who haven't played more than 1h are bombing with negative reviews. Ehh...

As a disclaimer before the whole review, I've played first DiRT Rally and DiRT 4 and now DiRT Rally 2.0 with a gamepad and on a chase camera. I'm generally on the "good player" side of things as I've been playing racing games my whole life and can place pretty darn high on the leaderboards. With that out of the way, let's get to the proper thing.

Short point out version:
Good stuff
- Better physics
- Better graphics
- Sounds are as good as in DiRT Rally or better in some cases
- Locations are fantastic, New Zealand is beyond awesome
- Long term support plan for the game
- Game prepared for e-sports

Bad things
- Cars performance is... off to say the least. Too much power and traction and lateral grip. Over 5 seconds faster lap times for the RX Supercars on certain tracks.
- RaceNet service which is required for career mode isn't the most reliable thing in existence as of the last day of early access.
- DLC cars (namely Skoda Fabia Rally '04 and Citroen C4 Rally) are already in the game giving the game a lot of the "DLC cut out from the disc" feel.


Long winded review:

So, DiRT Rally 2.0. If someone were to ask me what it is in one sentence, I'd say this: "Bigger, better DiRT Rally".
That statement however is not entirely true, because there are few bits here and there that are not actually better and some will be bigger in a later date (DLC). However most bad quirks about physics in DR have been polished out and there's none of the DiRT 4... whatever that was. Cars have weight to them, you're not screwed by random bumps on the roads, you can save the cars on bad landings (to a degree of course) all while still retaining that DiRT Rally awesome feel of gravel that has been made even more realistic and believable. Unfortunately the tarmac physics while improved are still subpar, although with a decent setup can be definitely enjoyable. There's also the issue that after a while becomes a bit of a "soar thumb" aka cars performance. RX Supercars can be 5 to 6 seconds faster than their real life equivalents on the respective tracks. And that's being driven by me, not the World Rallycross champion. Similar issue happens on the rally side where you can notice the cars having too much power, lateral grip but mainly extremely exaggerated levels of traction. If you're not to keen on performance authenticity and just want the experience, it won't bother you too much. But for those that do look at the numbers and want as realistic experience as possible, you will getting slightly annoyed at some points. Same issues were present in DiRT Rally though, so if you were content with them then you should be fine with them now as well. In other words if you enjoyed DiRT Rally, you will definitely enjoy this game as well... on the physics department of course

Car sounds are even more of "improved DiRT Rally". They sound fantastic, eargasmic even. The infamous Quattro E2 engine sound is a symphony of explosions and wastegate sounds strung together for your ears. For you Escort lovers, you now have a proper BDA engine sound as well. Everything else is pretty much DiRT Rally level. In other words, top quality.

The location list right now consists of New Zealand, New England, Argentina, Spain, Poland and Australia. The tracks look spectacular and the stages feel very realistic. They have been hand crafted so none of the random stitchment of tiles together like was the case in DiRT 4. Unfortunately that means you'll be learning the stages fairly quickly but that is the case with rally games anyway. No matter how many tracks you put in, at the end of the day it will always come down to driving them from memory once enough time has been invested. Season 1 of the DLC will be bringing the Monte Carlo, Sweden and Greece remasters of the DiRT Rally versions which will further strengthen the location roster. And yes that means all the locations have 2 long stages that are being cut in half and reversed for a total of 12 stages per location. A bit too small? Yes. Is it enough to have amazing fun? Definitely.

Gameplay wise, the career is essentially DiRT Rally... just with DiRT 4's slightly adjusted approach to car upgrades. So you still end up hiring engineers, investing in their perks so they can repair things better, you can buy upgrades to your car so you have more durable brakes, suspension and drivetrain (also have to pay to unlock tuning) but unlike DiRT 4 you don't buy more durable engine related parts. Now you have engine upgrades which work similarly to DR, where you need to drive the car to unlock them and each level gives more performance for slightly less durability.
This is also a good point to mention that the career requires constant internet connection due to the games preparation for e-sports. While for me personally it's not an issue and there's the freeplay mode where you have historic, rallycross and custom championships, considering that the RaceNet as of now functions... not the best and you need it just to do about anything in the career mode... can be frustrating at points. It's being worked on and improvements are being made so take it as you will.

Lastly the game already has two DLC seasons planned, first bring the aforementioned locations along with 6 cars, those being Skoda Fabia Rally '04, Ford Focus Rally '07 (both Fabia and Focus actually have 3D models that are of the year older models), Citroen C4 Rally, Subaru Impreza Rally '08, BMW M1 Procar and Opel Manta 400. Also Subaru Impreza '01 is confirmed to be coming as well.
Unfortunately Fabia and C4 are already in the game and not just as hidden files... you can literally "race" against them in the career and see them as occasional broken cars by the side of the road. It does really give a feeling of "DLC cut from the game" which doesn't sit well with me and I can imagine many other people. That said I buy DLC based on their content so it doesn't bother me that much but definitely would prefer if cars that are in the game would not be released in "playable" form as DLC as those are scummy tactics IMO.
Other than that in the coming 6 months the game is meant to be given a full on support on all fronts along the mentioned e-sports competition happening which the single player career is a part of (thus online only so everything is legitimate apparently).


All in all, this is essentially what DiRT 4 was supposed to be. A bigger, better DiRT Rally. There's a lot to love, there are still issues here and there but my dear Lord Bahamut, is this game insanely awesome to play. Probably will spent more time than I did in DiRT Rally in which I sank over 700 hours. And on that note I bid you farewell and proceed to rack up those hours xD

I've played a heck ton of the vanilla, the IZJS version and now this for a moment and... this is already the best version by far. Why? Vaan's chest is fixed!!! xD
On a more serious note, it just looks straight out better due to improved lighting, ambient occlusion, selection of both english and japanese voices, heck, you have 3 different versions of the soundtrack to choose from (original, reorchestrated and OST). And to top it all of it's working at 60FPS with a support for DS4, which means PS icons. And on the subject of performance...

...let me put it this way. i5-3570k, GTX670, 1080p stable 60FPS at highest settings with disabled MSAA. More PC ports like these please :D

If you ever wanted to give this game a chance, now's the best moment. And if you're looking for the grinding heaven... look no further xD

(tekst van recensie verborgen)

I came in with a rather... strange expectations. Final Fantasy game with only one controllable character and no form of party at all? Sounds like heresy, however the gameplay is actually quite enjoyable. The ATB system they implemented feels very good and with the "fashion change" you don't feel as much that you're just a single man army.

Keep in mind it's a Final Fantasy game at core, so if you're not into fights with the same enemies in a rather repetitive manner... this game won't make it up to you. Unless you're a fashion freak, in which case this game is your dream come true.

There are few things to watch out for though:
- completionists, you're gonna have nothing to do on 6-7th day if you're utilising the Chronostasis a lot.
- some say the DLCs included in PC version ruin the progress feeling... there's some truth to that, but there's always the option of avoiding them
- although the technical side is better than previous FFXIII titles on PC, it's still... bad. If you like some ambient occlusion, I suggest googling out GeDoSaTo.

Generally speaking, this game is actually worth playing if you're a fan of jRPG or... fashion.

I've been here from pretty much when the game was released on Steam in Early Access. At the start, it all was looking promising. Dev team although comprised of just two people, was actually listening to community and doing their best to make this a spiritual successor to the Rollcage games. That however was then...

At the moment of typing this review, I've just finished playing the game after a few months break from it. A break that was caused with me not being happy about the direction the devs were taking the game. Unfortunately the game has exactly the same feel as I last played it... one could argue it means it's worse given how much more development time has passed since then.

So what exactly is the issue? The game is advertised as a spiritual successor of Rollcage, but aside from the cars looking similar... it feels nothing like a Rollcage game. The best way to describe this game would be... a mish mash of games like Rocket League, Mario Kart, Need For Speed and what not. This game lacks identity and you can feel it very quickly. It tries to be everything while at the same time it doesn't really do anything well enough to be anything. Racing gets boring/annoying/frustrating (feeling depends on the track) after just few laps, let alone few races. There's quite literally nothing that makes you want to keep playing the game. And that's probably the biggest crime any game can do.

Here's a more concrete list of everything else that is a problem:
- physics are still broken (after nearly 2 years in development...), you get random bounces here and there, cars take ages to settle down properly after a landing and it doesn't take much to make you crash. One could call the game a "reset simulator" and would be very on point with that description.
- Acceleration is brutally low until you get to 350km/h. There are cars in real life that will beat you to 350km/h... production cars that you "can" buy. This means that the start of each race feels like you're in a slow motion and it only forces the "reset simulator" feel even more. Not what you would expect from AWD jet powered tanks with insane traction and brutally low centre of gravity.
- Developers throw features at the game instead of actually tackling the problems. Namely jumping and nitrous. Jumping with few thousand tons tanks? You'd need a nuclear bomb blast to get those things off the ground, let alone some "poof". Those ain't RC cars that you can grab with your hand... and Nitrous? It only exacerbates the problems, since it barely helps with acceleration when below 350km/h... and there's already a pickup that is supposed to act like a turbo...
- Pace of the game is incredibly slow and chaotic, rather than fast paced and brutal. By that I mean everything takes too much time to do, be that cars acceleration or weapons deployment time or the speed at which they travel and you have little to no control over what happens. In Rollcage you could always do something and everything was very quick, almost instant.
- Menu navigation with gamepad/keyboard is still non-existent. Or should I say it went from working (not great but better than nothing) to nothing and ever since it's been "gamepad and keyboard navigation is coming". Yeah, right -_-


That's pretty much all. The main two issues are essentially the devs and... well... game itself being boring. Rest simply adds insult to the injury.
Now to make this clear, I'm not expecting a Rollcage game with newer graphics. That would be a sequel. I expected a spiritual successor. In other words a game that may work slightly different but still has the same feeling about it. This feels nothing like a Rollcage game. In that sense it's a scam. If you're a Rollcage fan or simply value your money... DO NOT buy/support this game.


- Devs are no longer listening to the community and are throwing content at the problems instead of solving them.
- Game gets boring after few laps. Doesn't keep you in.
- Physics still broken.
- Slow paced and chaotic gameplay, instead of being fast and brutal.
- Keyboard/Gamepad menu navigation still not implemented.
- This is NOT a spiritual successor to Rollcage.