Recent reviews by Kahō Aoki

Peak of the series, everything released after this and Black Ops is a sad spiral towards shameless corporate moneygrubbing.

This game has a "forced arbitration" clause in its EULA which basically means that you can't take CDPR to court. Not enough people are talking about this.

It's a shame it took almost four years for CDPR to get the game to be considered decent but nothing close to what they promised and what customers paid for it in 2020. At least they didn't run with the money and actually committed to long-term developement of the game.

Overall, it's enjoyable when the inconsistent modeling work and clunky character animations don't ruin the illusion. My personal biggest issue, however, are enemies who use Sandevistan and practically act out the "telplelorts behind u lol" meme whom are just frustrating, unfulfilling and outright annoying, taking the immersion away from what's a unique and well crafted world and storyline.

Oda and Smasher stand out particularly, requiring me to switch the difficulty from the highest to the lowest to have the slightest chance to progress through the story. Granted, it's a singleplayer game where everyone builds their characters differently so balancing the game so that everyone has a similar combat experience regardless of build is very hard, but it is nevertheless frustrating to jump through hoops to get both a consistent story experience and a challenging gameplay experience. The aforementioned bosses on Hard aren't challenging and fun like the rest of the enemies; they're outright unfair, relentless bullet sponges who give the player practically no breathing room and punishable windows on their attacks.

At launch this would have been a 1/10, but given the studio's long term commitment to the product which is unfortunately an exception rather than the rule nowadays, 6/10. Excellent story, immersive worldbuilding but some of the combat has too much "zoomer adderall shooter bing bang wohoo yippee" in it.

The game is impressive, amazing and fun but the developer is a piece of ♥♥♥♥

-Gameplay-
* Following NPCs is still a pain, they walk faster than you but run slower. CDPR takes the win here.
* The menu is quite unintuitive, especially the science research and crafting menus. Items laying around in the world or in storage containers aren't categorized properly until picking them up.
* Inability to inspect items before taking them out of storage containers makes comparing weapons and armour a major chore.
* Underwhelming gunplay which Fallout does better. It's tough to understand why they took a clear step backward in this regard.
* Space flight is incredibly unrewarding, there's no real ability to fly freeform as most transitions from planet to planet and even landing take place through a loading screen.


-Graphics-
* No HDR support. FROM Software takes the win here.
* No option to set Maximum FPS apart from VSYNC, which doesn't work with Variable Refresh Rate monitors.
* No option for texture/material quality and view distance.
* Even at maximum settings, the world looks like it's made of modeling clay.
* No obvious progress with facial animations when compared to Skyrim. At least it's not ME: Andromeda.


Overall, 2/5 so far, doesn't live up to the hype or standards of the decade set by other developers. Endgame, replayability, modding and overall worldbuilding are beyond the scope of initial impressions.

As a space game it's beaten by Elite:Dangerous, and as a Bethesda game it's beaten by Skyrim.

Hopefully Bethesda takes a page out of CDPR's book and actually commits to post-launch developement instead of letting the fanbase take the reins as with Skyrim.

Impressive in scope, amazing world to explore and no usual AAA developer ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ like battle passes or microtransactions. However, most of the enemies and combat in general have too much bloodborne and ds3 in them, which I consider a major drawback.

Combat is an ADHD-fueled spamfest of roll-r1-roll-r1, which is inferior to the more methodical combat of From's earlier titles. It may have worked for Bloodborne which allows you to trade damage and regain lost health by attacking, but it's unbearable when healing requires using an item.
As if this isn't bad enough, most enemies and bosses are also way too big to fit on the screen making them impossible to read, and too fast to allow any form of punishment for missed attacks. Several enemies have absolutely no openings at all, they just spam attacks with infinite stamina without giving any room to retaliate, heal or run away.
Melee builds can barely get any hits in before the enemy jumps back 30 metres, and caster builds seeking to output any significant form of damage have to minmax to the point where a single attack from most midgame bosses is an instant death even at level 100.
Most enemies also have absolutely engregious input reading which basically forces any casters to just use Night's Comet.

The game thinks that you have three thumbs in each hand. Either you move the camera to see an enemy, or spam roll hoping for iframes to save you.

Lastly, here is a list of enemies whose designers need to be fired and have their gonads slowly crushed in a vice:
- Revenants
- Kindred of Rot
- Fanged Imps
- Cleanrot Knights
- Lesser Red Wolves (the boss is alright)
- Lobsters

Overall, 3/10. Worldbuilding and story is great but combat is serious ass. Dark Souls II was better.

This game strives to actively punish those who have played both of the previous games in the series.

J I M B O

This game is about being a fox with a glowing friend.

You can:
- Explore a nice snowy landscape
- Carry sticks in your mouth
- Swish your tail
- Bark

But most importantly, relax

The last good game in the entire franchise.

This game is excellent.
However, bethesda can still go suck a fat one.