Recent reviews by Zygfryd

It's the best co-op shooter I've personally played in recent memory.

There's a wide range of weapons to choose from, though they're not readily available and need to be unlocked via play. Some people consider the process too slow or tedious, I think it's pretty well balanced, gives you extra motivation to play for long hours. You play for rewards that aren't just random re-rolls of stats on the same equipment you've had for ages.

I appreciate the freeform nature of play, where you have freedom to split up or do objectives in various orders on an open map, unlike the corridor-based nature of games like Darktide. The large number of difficulty levels lets everyone find one for themselves (except at the very top, a couple more wouldn't hurt.) People of different skill levels and loadout viabilities can play side by side for the most part. The 20 respawns you get as a team is usually very generous.

There is a lot of polish in the parts that matter most. Enemies are satisfying to dismember, ordnance explodes with a satisfying boom. There's a kill counter to let you know you're doing a good job, soldier.

The game has its issues of course, like a lack of saved loadouts or barren UI that doesn't even let you cancel connecting to a game. Long post-game animations can wear your patience really thin.

I've had 160 hours of fun out of it though, and that's way more than enough for what it cost.

A pretty good Souls-like.

Both graphical fidelity and art direction are pretty good, would have been great if there was more variety, especially in the umbral level and enemy designs.

Gameplay mechanics are pretty good, with some notable innovations like the ammo system. Would have been great if the action buffering wasn't bound to flip out on you from time to time. Don't get me wrong, combat feels pretty good most of the time, but sometimes when actions get queued up, it's like Jesus takes the wheel, and he can't drive at all. You can watch your character do 2 attacks missing the enemy, do a 180 and make another attack missing the enemy, or roll backwards towards the danger you were trying to evade.

The camera does you dirty sometimes, but steps were taken in the right direction by the devs, as it also zooms out in some boss fights to let you see more.

Music... must have been forgettable, since I can't recall any aside from the intro and main menu.

The story and lore are great, I don't think it was a great idea to hide lore behind stats half the players will never invest in though.

As of writing the difficulty felt just right for a melee user. Not all attack animations are quite on par with modern Fromsoft games when it comes to telegraphing or conveying force, some of them feel more like DS2, but most attacks seem designed to be dodged on reaction without memorization, which is nice.

Too bad it's the last game in the series, since they're going Epi *hruk* exclusive.

I can't even... I'm just disappointed in myself for buying this, and letting the refund window pass.

It's a true gem, minimal, focused and well-crafted. Missing button remapping, but there aren't any button prompts during gameplay anyway, so you can use Steam Input.

Allows you to train your motor memory for Sekiro in a very controlled environment, without wasting time or being punished.

A perfect learning environment for gitting gud.

I'm rather disappointed by this title. The underlying ideas are sound, but could have been explored better.

I can recommend a single playthrough, but exploring the whole decision tree of the game to get all achievements doesn't seem worth the tedium.

I think it's fair to say the team was inspired by the 2004 film The Butterfly Effect. They didn't however decide to commit fully to its story structure, which would have made for a better game. As it is the load/save mechanic is pulled into the very setting of world, into the story, but isn't central to it in a way that'd have the player use it to finish the game, to achieve an ultimate goal. One that is only achievable using it.

You can save everyone on your first playthrough and there's no significant motivation to meticulously go back to every story branch and explore it. More importantly I haven't noticed any fast-forward feature that'd let you skip the hundreds of lines of dialogue you've already seen to arrive at new ones. And there's a lot of characters in this game, if you save everyone by the end you'll have like 20 conversations to click through manually every time.

The language also leaves something to be desired, the writers use "they/them" out of the blue to refer to singular characters whose gender we are, or can be made aware of, and it's confusing. If it's because some of the lines can be used in regards to different characters, it's just lazy coding. If it's something else, it's not making a good impression.

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Forgot to tell you what I did like...

The story is of an arctic expedition and it was rather faithful to my expectations of such. I'd hazard a guess it might have been somewhat inspired by the 2018 TV series The Terror, but that was just my most memorable encounter with the subject.

Most of the game you'll be managing two things: resources needed to survive, and loyalty of the crew. These mechanics aren't particularly challenging nor tedious (when playing through once), they're just enough to keep you engaged and feeling like you're two weeks away from an icy grave.

The characters of the crew and passengers are mostly well-written and believable, varied in their motivations and personalities. (Except the journalist, she should have won the Darwin Award years prior.)

The game could have stood on its own being just this, an expedition simulator. They tried to spice it up though, and made it feel incomplete in the process.

I rate it Kinder Surprise on a scale from cold omellete to Fabergé egg.

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The quintessential video game. When you look up "video game" in a dictionary, you should see the cover art for Elden Ring.

It is art.
It is sublime game design.
It is a profound insight into the experience of being.
Or... you know, just a great way to get some dopamine.

Seems promising, but lack of controller button remapping kills it for me. Hopefully it gets patched in.

A pretty great experience.

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I enjoyed the pseudoscientific-esoteric theme, reminiscent of the SCP Foundation, though not as good. The writing could be improved by not relying so much on silly Capitalized Terms. 4th wall breaks in the main story surprisingly kept me invested in it, but the expansions tested my patience and suspension of disbelief.

The game is fairly pretty, but I felt the art direction lacked vision. Imposing, monolithic architecture copy pasted ad nauseam.

Combat is kept fairly fresh throughout most of the game by drip-feeding the character new powers and weapons. Ultimately the character becomes a very mobile fighting machine, who has little trouble with enemies most of the time, but one lapse in attention can easily get them killed. The gameplay reminded me of Anthem and Andromeda, but better.

Would definitely play a sequel. On GOG or on Steam. Epic can piss right off.

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Perfectly executed tiny masterpiece.

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Great setting. Great mechanics. Can't recommend this enough.