Recent reviews by AdAstraWill

SPOILERS and BOSS TIPS INCLUDED:

This game is phenomenal in that, it is very unique, there are very few games like it and its predecessor. Its instant respawn mechanic upon death is so satisfying, no more running back to the boss, no listening to the same monologue as you run to the fight. You're just back in it ready to go immediately in the bosses or enemies face. Its wonderful. And this mechanic also helps with the learning curve.

If you like;
- Fast movement
- Wall Running
- Platforming
- Samurai swords
- High Mobility and fast paced combat
- A challenge
- Cyberpunk theme

Then you should buy this game you wont be disappointed.

If you don't like any of those, then you probably shouldn't buy the game, particularly if you dont like challenges or have slow reaction times.

The story was "Okay" it could of been a lot better and the hub feels massively disconnected.

That said even if you do here are some tips;

- for the mechs, try to dash above their attack at range when the shoot or slide under it, you will get an ability you can buy later on which will allow you to mark it with a shuriken then blink to the target, instantly killing it, this makes it easier to kil them.
-For the spray and pray enemies, try to deflect the first bullet they fire then dodge to the side.
-For the single shot enemies use the audio queue with distance to determine when to deflect their bullets (deflection is an ability you can unlock like in the first game but via purchase.
- Timing is everything, dont just madly throw yourself at enemies, if you get progression blocked in a certain area, test specific routes around the area. Usually, there is a method that is easiest for the player to clear the area rather than just hack and slash. So prioritise specific enemies and such.

BOSSES:
- For Ahriman, its fairly straightforward, just block his projectiles or if timed correctly reflect them back at him. When he does his AOE use Bakuin as your grapple point to jump over, and just dash around Ahriman while slapping him, rins repeat, some of his attacks will catch you but its fine, just dodge around him while hitting him but save some stamina to dodge away to avoid his sweep too, otherwise it will catch you.

- Rahu is just a platforming section, which is fun and interesting honestly. Just practice.

- Madhu will switch between various forms of attack. Green means hes regening so go kill the mobs around the towers then kill the towers. They add more towers and mobs the lower the health he gets. Otherwise just run around him slapping him so he cant hit you.

- Mitra is annoying due to his knock back so immediately dodge back in, when hes preparing to dash which you will work out based on animation, he can be blocked, if have the slow time perfect parry ability unlocked, you can perfect parry him up close which will slow time and allow you to slash him a bunch before he does his next ability. His bomb ability which create shockwaves are easy to beat and he will always try to backstab you, when he does PRESS NOTHING until the visuals slow down THEN block to parry which will damage him a bit and potentially take you into the next stage.

The X ability he throws at you is a dodge catcher, you will dodge into it most of the time so just walk, unless you need to get out of the way of the cores laser, he will do it about 5 times sometimes 1 X sometimes 2 X otherwise once its over you're back to the other things he does. Sometimes if you get too close he will also knock you back anyway so again try to keep a little stamina freed up.

For his cyber-void phase, you have increase jump height and dash distance. If you dash downward, you can reach the platforms quicker, just be mindful you don't overshoot them. The last leg of the moving platforms which is stage 2 I think, encourages to go immediately. Waiting for the platforms will not help you, you will die. So make sure you jump on the moving platforms as soon as you see them but avoid all the nonsense thrown at you. This section of it encourages you to use the dash down from the higher jump just like the other stages. Its not hard, it just has a tempo too it.

Otherwise thats it. Have fun!

First off, I am not a huge fan of this franchise, but because it was an overhead tactical I had to try it. To my suprise it ended up being pretty damned good. I'll keep this as short as possible as my reviews tend to be way too long.

Pros:
1) Great visuals and atmosphere, the colour settings were greatly appreciated the green overlay is horrible for my eyes.

2) Squad play is great and actually refreshing, very intricate compared to most tactical squad games.

3) Lighting is also fantastic, especially the heavy use of the squad flashlights which at first I thought was going to suck and be difficult to use properly but I quickly adapted and it became very helpful and massively added to the immersion.

4) The story is coherent and pretty good but it feels like some elements should of been dropped earlier and perhaps missions could of been a bit shorter.

5) Squad communication, small layers of banter, the little things, these things are really fun.

6) Soundscape accompanying it was also awesome.

Cons:
1) Not much in the way of weapon and armor customisation that have a gameplay impact. There is no weapon customisation at all and armor has no flexibility beyond different colour patterns.

2) Missions are way too long, I understand they're designed to be done over multiple deployments, coming back and going to the same place over and over in a game like this when encounters are so wildly unbalanced is frustrating, especially early on. Acid damage is extremely painful and you can quickly run out of marines over 2-3 deployments too easily. This is especially difficult with the Doom clock past mission 5. There is an upgrade to get later on to mitigate it completely, still its frustrating.

3) Boss encounters are extremely meh. Especially past level 10 for your marines. Hello hello hello plasma overcharge.

4) Story like I said was good but took too long to develop properly. Began to feel like a chore towards the end.

5) Facial animations are janky at times and some dialogue is just weird, its almost as if Hayes has forgotten she works for WY while whining at other people for doing it, shes also way too sure of her own plan to begin with, then it just randomly stops, thats not characters development thats a "This is gone on for too long, crap, need to cut it off" from the writers lol

I hope there will be DLC expansions or something that adds more missions or context to the story or perhaps just something that adds to what we saw at the end. I know the end is a big reveal of sorts but it still deserves way more attention. Over

Warning, this will be a rant.

I have played every DoW game. I almost every 40k game and I am a huge fan of Warhammer alone. But this .... PoS. Is not Warhammer, its a moba RTS hybrid, too much like a cartoon and not enough grim dark apart from well, blood, but that isn't even grim dark really - artistically it is literally 40k in a DOTA or LoL skin, its awful. The orks, ironically get off the easiest on this as do the Eldari as well in a close second. But the Space Marines? Jesus.

First of all the very idea that you could front flip in terminator armour is straight up a matt ward thought process, that is to say take the most ridiculous concept imaginable in a specific setting and make it happen just because reasons. You're not front flipping in terminator armor. EVER...unless being thrown by a hive tyrant or murderously hugged by Vulkan. Then there is the "weight" there is no weight at all, space marines, terminators, dreadnoughts, these are heavy duty walking super humans in tanks and super tanks, these are not individuals who defy gravity for no reason. The eldar and the orks get off easily from my criticism because eldar are very much about speed and efficiency over brute force, even their titans are built around agility so that's fine. The orks, are always colourful, hell they can even channel their waaaagh energy to will into reality that different colours have different effects i.e Red makes things go faster. So the goofy colourful nature of them is actually acceptable here. But yeah the space marines lack of weight and rationale, yeah absurd. Good job with the knight at least...sort of.

As for gameplay, urgh. The resource management is terrible, boring, slow and insanely painful in the campaign. I don't care much for multiplayer honestly and I can see why nobody else does either, they did zero split balancing for campaign vs multiplayer, which is frustrating as campaign has much more limited nodes and options than MP. Its also extremely slow. No relic points either....and req is shared with energy....come on relic. What is that? In the older games, you build generators and could upgrade them from base. The turrets were far more powerful too and had tiers and entrenched positions.... and on and on. It was so much better, it was still slow, but it felt like a slow build of strength, this game just feels like a crawl, especially with so many times missions that force you to rush. You don't get to play how you want.

Then there is the cover system, its awful. It locks game-play into a controlled map meta in MP and makes the gameplay boring in the campaign. They should of just used the cover systems from DOW1 and DOW2 at least then players could make their own strategies more effectively. Then there are squads, lack of upgrades, lack of options. Why are space marines limited to just plasma upgrades? like wth?

Then there is the art style of the graphics. Like I said, this is literally just DOTA or LoL inspired garbage, there is nothing grim dark about this game whatsoever, no adherence to the Gothic themes and darkness of the universe its just fast moving, overtly vibrant glowing garbage.

Mission structure. This. Is. Awful. Not everyone wants to play as one thing, then another, then another. I just want to play as space marines. DoW has ALWAYS been a primarily SPACE MARINE game series, even though soul-storm and dark crusade had other options (which was really cool) they had a focus on the space marines. The blood ravens in this instance. It made the story really jarring and felt even more weird when it just felt like most of it was just padding. They over did the intrigue, they intrigued me so much I got bored. Then there is the fact you get super cool units like the knight, which you get to use maybe once or twice the ENTIRE campaign which is boring as all hell. Stop being lazy relic, you want to do multiple angles? Fine. make three SEPARATE campaigns like all good RTS devs do instead of this....abomination.

Heroes. They didn't need to be this ridiculous. The leaders of the factions being super powerful sure. But ultimately, they should of been the only heroes, the rest should of just been unique call ins from specific structures as an upgrade or unlock, like terminators and assault terminators. Its fine limiting them, it makes sense lore wise but don't turn them into hero units its just stupid. As pointed out earlier, the outright stupidity of Angelos using his war-hammer combined with a front leap at all is absurd, the abilities are just outright silly. More over, HEROES should be customisation weapons and armour wise. to make them interesting, as it stands they are dull and boring.

Urgh I'll stop now I could rant for hours. Awful design choices and decisions from start to finish. This is what you get for trying to pander to the mythical wider audience Relic. FAILURE.

Review;

I have had this game for years but never completed it until today, I am genuinely suprised by the depth of the lore building this game adds for the people of Kharak, one side thinks you should stay and not go to the stars another wants to and the third thinks the stars belong to them and them alone. Great experience story wise honestly.

Combat, resource management and all of that are well, they're watch you would expect, I think resource management though is just kind of meh, but thats the result of "on the move" gameplay really more than anything. Performance wise its...odd. It was bad a while ago and its still bad even with a 3070 ti but its more than playable, just expect a few crashes throughout the campaign.

Overall good experience, worth buying, No idea about online as I don't play multi-player so I would defer to the other people here who have if the MP is what you're after.

Good game to buy if you've already got HW1 and 2 and are waiting for HW3. I would recommend playing this game first for a backstory dive to prep for HW1 and then HW2 obviously. Have fun!

Absolutely fantastic city builder, immersive and full of life despite being post apocalyptic. It doesn't hold your hand and you absolutely will fail over and over. But that's the point. Its mean't to be hard. Don't give up if you fail, remember your mistakes and try again!

Some tips in no particular order;
- Keep tabs on your research, try to make sure you're always researching something as soon as the last is done.
- Do the same for laws.
- Emergency shift is a life saver for research and resource production. Don't abuse it but at the same time, use it where you get the chance, preferably when you have low discontent.
- Prioritise coal supplies, get coal mining ASAP and eventually have them be automated.
- Do not ignore heating. Its critical.
- Try to get the max cap scouts out when possible, this will greatly help you late game and do not forget to use outpost teams, the resources will be valuable.
- you can fast forward gameplay, 1 to default speed, 2 to medium, 3 to fastest. Much nicer using the keybinds.

Overall amazing game, really enjoyable, its worth getting!

Recommended DLC:
- On The edge
- The Last Autumn

I thought about writing a pros and cons list but I will just list the criticisms instead, the game is great and beautiful but it has some issues that should be addressed in the sequel or in a DLC perhaps who knows. Most of my complaints are story/mechanical. Hopefully a dev will see this I dont know. I just hope the next game is much better.

1) The story & side quests;
I will say honestly, I liked it at first then I hated it then I liked it again then I hated it again. The pacing is awful for some reason, its almost as if nothing outside of the trials you endure is relevant which is honestly kind of annoying. I will also say that the story takes no risks whatsoever. It doesn't get very dark, its actually somewhat generic, it doesn't really feel like good vs evil it mostly feels like thing vs thing without any baring and depth. In other words, the writers were too careful and tried to hard to make the story broad to appeal to everyone. I am trying to avoid spoilers, I apologise for being vague. I will say however, I enjoyed how unique the 3rd keepers trial is. The professors except weaselly and fig are insanely lackluster.

Side quests are the same, only that they are dragged out far too much, there is so much padding structure in these side quests that I genuinely lost interest. There wasn't enough intrigue.

2) Models;
Just a quick one here, female NPC quest givers are not very unique, it seems the model + face has been copy and pasted across the board for a lot of female students barring main story relevant ones. Seems silly and a bit lazy, maybe it was a time issue but its very noticeable.

3) Voices:
I tried really hard to enjoy Nattys story, but I have a real hard time with specific accents, it almost hurt to listen to. Its the same with the protagonist voice (Male) but different, in that the voice actors voice is simply too high pitched for me, even my voice wasn't like that at that age, nor were most of the lads that I knew. I would ask that in the future, focus less on trying to get someone who matches Harrys voice from the movies and more on something unique.

4) Facial animations:
another glaring issue, the emotion rarely ever matches the face of characters or they have almost no emotional reaction at all, they feel almost robotic and unfinished or just non-applicable. Please do better with them.

5) Customisation:
Dyes are missing from this game and need to be added. The fact you cannot dye the colour of your transmoged outfits in a game in 2023 is just sad. Also at the age of my character and as a 5th year (18 years old - first years are 13 when they start hogwarts) you should as a male character have access to stubble and such at the very least. More over you look far too young no matter what template you get. I would like to see body type options, and much more in the next character creator because it feels horribly lacking.

7) Extras:
Economy feels like a grind. High level traits are too easy to obtain. Too much clutter on the map for exp grind. levels are almost pointless past level 30. Loot is mostly random garbage. Oh and not every woman wore pants in Victorian scotland (Glares at virtually all female enemies) lol I don't know even know who or what I am fighting half the time. Nothing wrong with them wearing trousers just...please add some variety, pay some homage to the old "witch" style look. It feels like too many of the dark witches and even wizards were copy and pasted. The lack of variety makes it boring.

8) Dark Arts;
This should not have been an on cooldown thing. These should of been a build up meter/charge up thing similar to ancient magic only that you would have to do something specific to activate them on a bar. On C/D Avada Kadavra + chained cursed enemies is the most broken thing I've ever seen in an open world game. it completely breaks difficulty. You're basically a god with that talent. That said difficulty should not be decided by how thicc someones health pool is as an enemy either,

Allohamora;
This was BS. I am not kidding. You have to go on a hunt for an absurd amount of collectables just to unlock doors? As much as I appreciate there being a system this was just silly. It should of been a talent tree option, not "get X thing and do this for a stupid amount of time". Once you talk to the caretaker and he teaches you level 1, you should be able to just unlock level 2 & 3 based on your character level in the talent tree with points. Then you can just have the quest on the side to do as you bump into them. There was no need for the mini-game either its trivial and tedious.

Thats it, that's my long whiny complaint list mostly, some other stuff too but not worth mentioning. Its worth playing but after doing my second play-through now I think that, ultimately its unfortunately a 1 play-through game. Replay-ability just doesn't feel there beyond the fact that there are some differences in main story based on the house you pick.

7/10 game

If you want to enjoy this game by sitting back and having fun and just making dinosaurs, do not buy this DLC for he campaign.

- You rail roaded into rushing through what you're doing half the time.
- The endless inefficiency of ranger and ACU AI is put on full display.
- Enhances the glaring aiming issues of the game when player controlled.
- When you get to sanctuary, despite being able to make more of the dinos you have saved once they have landed there, you still fail the ENTIRE island if they die and have to restart or reload a save hoping you even saved to begin with seeing as auto-save doesn't always work.
- One disease will outright nuke your dinosaurs VERY quickly I didnt even have time to check what it was, a single dino died and I lost hours of building up.
- Money is scarce and will take you a while to build up your park unless you invest in more and more of the same limited dinos.
- You are kneecapped at every turn for no good reason other than to make the entire game needlessly tedious.
- oh and even if you manage to get past the random disease nukes and build everything up and do a ton of research, you can still fail by way of the dinos you save dying of old age.

I am convinced whomever thought this DLC was a good idea is just trolling at this point.

Do not recommend buying this DLC, so poorly thoughtout.

Calling this game "Good" is a dramatic and unfounded understatement.

The narrative is incredibly good, the world building and character building is inanely good, the enviroments you explore and play in are amazing and combat feels great!

1 thing though, the elves can go bugger themselves. ALL OF THEM. Easily most annoying enemies in the game.

Gear customisation is good, the power system is good although I feel like they could of done without some of the grind honestly. Though its not that bad its just tedious.

Enjoy everything this game has to offer! If I could sum it up in any way it would be this:

BEST FATHER SON ADVENTURE EVER!

- Hot ladies, Check
- Exaggerated Units, Check
- Hilarious Campaigns, Check
- Tim Curry, Check.
- Soviet Power Reigns Supreme, Check
- Kirov Reporting, Check
- The president of the United States is Mad AF, Check
- Its unapologetic and not politically correct, Check.
- Is it command and conquer? Check.
- Is it Red Alert? Check.
- Is it good? Check.

Conclusion: BUY THE BLOODY GAME.

So I am going to be somewhat scathing for this review purely because there is a massive drop in quality compared to NFS Payback and that is the only other NFS I have played apart from NFSU and NFSU2 which are very old today.

Note: This games one redeeming quality is there is almost no micro-transactions. The one thing that Heat did better than Payback. Which is already a low bar.

So the story centres around you and a teen/young adult named Ana and her older brother Lukas. Its mostly what you would expect from a racing game with a story only that it seems to have made the exact same mistakes that Payback made but with the story quality being even worse. There are random moments where she will just monologue to appear badass and they're always at the stupidest times. None of the characters have any Charisma whatsoever and the story feels short like really short. I finished the story today just thinking to myself "Thats it?" I really wish they put more effort into these stories they make for NFS, I know many do not buy the game for the story obviously but when its a good chunk of what you're doing in the game, its frustrating. Ana would of been a much better character had they not made her some stroppy, passive aggressive college drop out who just likes being in cars more than anything else.

Frankly, they should of just made another character like Jess. Now she was a fun character and actually the highlight for me in Payback. Ana on the other hand is literally just the stroppiest kid on the road. Just whine whine whine, scream, impulsive bleh. Boring as all hell and extremely annoying. Its not the voice actors fault, its the writers.


THERE IS NO DRAG RACING. BOOOO.
Ok sure Drags not everyone's thing but I do love drag racing. That aside, there are many things missing from this game.

Driving against cops is boring as hell, they're tanks that are much harder to stop. Would of been way more fun to copy over the way payback allowed you to deal with the cops. They are bricks on the road in Heat and its incredibly boring. Its genuinely not worth going past Heat 3 because then it becomes near impossible to lose them because LoS is meaningless and they're always faster than you and nothing you can do will pull them off the road except the weird car damage system that doesn't work half the time.

Handling of all cars feels genuinely worse. It was nicer when specific cars were specced for specific types of racing without you doing so when you buy them from the dealers.

The music playlist is woefully cringe. Its literally just random rappers, a single indie track and some level of chill beats that's it. There is no rock, there is no metal there is no club there is no nothing. Its just cringe rap from the US and UK. As if the only people like fast cars and driving games like rap. Like wth. They seriously need to go back to NFSU2 and look at the music playlist. Now THAT was a playlist.

The races are what they are, the places you race in are largely the same and boring there aren't many interesting or cool places to race in you're just kinda there and its just the same thing rinse and repeat. Very few unique tracks.

Almost no traffic on the road. Yawn.


Now this is something that really grinds my gears, you can only create a character based on the templates you are given and those templates do not look like real people, the templates look like someone went to a Californian fashion street show and said "yeah lets just use all of this" and then splurged it onto the street and said "hey look, we have normal people too!" .. they don't look authentic at all, they all look like posers who were only chosen because they ticked boxes for marketing.

If you're going to give the player a character to play, let them completely design the character from the ground up or don't do it at all unless its a completely fixed character where only that character is the option.

As for the clothing options and such....look I get it, some of the game was made during the pandemic or all of it idk but dear god there is at least 30 or more face masks. 30! Thats just completely lazy. That isn't variety. Its the same with the weird amount of miniskirts and low cut tops like Jesus Christ, who thought this would be a good idea? More over I don't want too see my dude in 100 different miniskirt and low cut tops for Christ sake. Its just straight up cringe. More over, how on earth was the decision arrived at to say "oh yeah no this amount of the same clothes all the time is going to work!".
Woeful and outright awful customisation for characters.

Car customisation is what you would expect but you feel so much more limited now than previous games.

I am starting to understand why they put this game on sale for £3.00


Buy at its £3.00 do not buy outside of a sale. Only buy if you've got an itch to scratch for driving, racing and free roaming. Thats it.