[12/20/2024]
The first major patch to fix A-Life is an incredible adjustment to the AI within the zone. Its not perfect, and certainly not "fixed" but it feels way more dynamic and I love the fact that groups of roaming npc groups are now simulated even when they aren't actually loaded in around the player. This patch is a gigantic step in the right direction and made me excited enough to start a second playthrough of the game.

There are still plenty of bugs and the overall performance of the game, although largely improved, is not great so it is still worthwhile to simply wait as more patches roll out. This is still not a recommendation, but the game is ever closer to one and I would venture to guess that if you're someone who IS waiting to pick this game up in the near future you won't be waiting much longer.

[12/02/2024]
Latest patches have changed a lot, and addressed a lot of the issues I had previously encountered but the game is still largely broken. After about the halfway point in the story you get access to a number of quests that cannot be successfully completed. I even had a quest that gave me the failure condition multiple hours after I had finished it...

[11/20/2024]
My system specs:
- Ryzen 7 5800X3D
- Radeon RX 7900 XT
- 32GB DDR4 3600MHZ CL18 RAM
- game is installed on a WD Black NVME SSD

This game WILL absolutely be worth playing when the performance issues are fixed. It is an incredible experience once ive been able to look past the stuttering, bugs, and generally awful performance. So technically this review is a recommendation, just not right now.

The issues I've faced in the brief time ive played so far are numerous. For starters the game has constant micro stutters. Nothing I change really fixes them, except for using frame gen. If I enable FSR 3 frame gen the stuttering disapears and is replaced with an incredible amount of input latency. I find that in this game in particular the input latency granted by FSR 3 is far worse than other games I've played.

If I were to play the game at low settings the stuttering still persists and my framerate only barely stays above 60fps. So instead what ive done is manually update the version of FSR that the game uses (from version 3.0 to 3.1.2) which actually has reduced input latency compared to the older version. Since doing this I found frame gen to be far more tolerable but still a requirement to play as the stuttering gives me motion sickness while playing. But, this means I can play the game above 60fps at max settings with a tolerable amount of input delay and no more stuttering. The caveat is that the vast majority of people will not be able to play the game like this. Please don't waste your money and just wait for modders to fix bugs and improve performance or for the devs to address this instead.

[12/20/2024] The first major patch to fix A-Life is an incredible adjustment to the AI within the zone. Its not perfect, and certainly not "fixed" but it feels way more dynamic and I love the fact that groups of roaming npc groups are now simulated even when they aren't actually loaded in around the player. This patch is a gigantic step in the right direction and made me excited enough to start a second playthrough of the game. There are still plenty of bugs and the overall performance of the game, although largely improved, is not great so it is still worthwhile to simply wait as more patches roll out. This is still not a recommendation, but the game is ever closer to one and I would venture to guess that if you're someone who IS waiting to pick this game up in the near future you won't be waiting much longer. [12/02/2024] Latest patches have changed a lot, and addressed a lot of the issues I had previously encountered but the game is still largely broken. After about the halfway point in the story you get access to a number of quests that cannot be successfully completed. I even had a quest that gave me the failure condition multiple hours after I had finished it... [11/20/2024] My system specs: - Ryzen 7 5800X3D - Radeon RX 7900 XT - 32GB DDR4 3600MHZ CL18 RAM - game is installed on a WD Black NVME SSD This game WILL absolutely be worth playing when the performance issues are fixed. It is an incredible experience once ive been able to look past the stuttering, bugs, and generally awful performance. So technically this review is a recommendation, just not right now. The issues I've faced in the brief time ive played so far are numerous. For starters the game has constant micro stutters. Nothing I change really fixes them, except for using frame gen. If I enable FSR 3 frame gen the stuttering disapears and is replaced with an incredible amount of input latency. I find that in this game in particular the input latency granted by FSR 3 is far worse than other games I've played. If I were to play the game at low settings the stuttering still persists and my framerate only barely stays above 60fps. So instead what ive done is manually update the version of FSR that the game uses (from version 3.0 to 3.1.2) which actually has reduced input latency compared to the older version. Since doing this I found frame gen to be far more tolerable but still a requirement to play as the stuttering gives me motion sickness while playing. But, this means I can play the game above 60fps at max settings with a tolerable amount of input delay and no more stuttering. The caveat is that the vast majority of people will not be able to play the game like this. Please don't waste your money and just wait for modders to fix bugs and improve performance or for the devs to address this instead.