Recent reviews by Demonchild

Refunded.
Really had high hopes for this one, but the state it is launched in gave me no faith that it would be sorted. I may revisit in a year or two when they have had time to get the whole experience into a better state and its at a more fitting price point.

First of all, not all features are ready, meaning the game is still early access despite being called full release.

The after actually entering the game, the UI has a distinct made of touch screen mobile feel. Every element is far larger than it needs to be. Full on fisher price chunky. With no options to address that issue. This could be worked around if the multiplayer is good.

So tried to start a multiplayer game. Found net-code that seems very outdated, been a long time since i actually had to port forward on the router to make a game actually work. But that's the least of the issues.

Proper multiplayer is not ready yet so cant be played. Instead you have a turn based mode, old school play by email style. Where you all join the lobby, player 1 then enters the game, takes their turn and upon ending the game is saved and they are kicked to main menu. At this point player 2 can enter the game and take a turn etc...

This completely kills the experience, kicked to lobby after every turn.

The while experience feels like its made by a team that have only worked on mobile games before, never PC and like it is their first attempt at a strategy game with multiplayer elements.

In summary
Poor design choices, lack of options to adjust those poor choices and a general lack luster feel.

I had such high hopes for this game, but although its enjoyable, its still a huge letdown. As others have said it seems to be made by people who never played DOTE and just had its vague premise described to them.

Game-play choices are questionable, most of what made DOTE such an amazing game, has been removed. The fact that DUST, a staple commodity of the endless games, is kind of an after thought in this. Very rare and pretty much meaningless.

The game plays very differently to its predecessor, having to do all the fighting yourself, spawn points being fixed, no decisions to make over which rooms to keep lit and which to turn dark. Its all been simplified which in itself could still work. Its still enjoyable.

Someone choose to have cloud saves off by default, meaning if you change machine you have no progress, if you turn it on on both machines the new machine without the save will over right the cloud save as its newer, costing you progress unless you have copied the save over in advance.

The biggest issue and the reason I am choosing not to recommend this game is the state of coop progression. Its a complicated mess, somethings progress in coop and unlock, other things do not. You cant unlock weapon upgrades if your not the host, so you have to hope the host unlocks them for the guns you use. You don't start with an upgraded gun if you are not the host, even if the host has that upgrade unlocked. You have to leave the lobby to enter your own private lobby each time you do any kind of new character unlock to go and unlock them. Other unlock and progression issues arise as you play too.

If they can just change the coop stuff to work in a sensible manor then the game could go on to be something superb. But in its current state it is just too hard to recommend purchasing.

The game is good and disappointing at the same time. Its not all it was billed to be.

Space and outpost stuff feel very much like they were rushed as addon's at the last minute. In fact most space stuff is pointless, its arrive in system and stay in space long enough to open map and select place to land, so maybe a 60 second space time between load screens.

The story is ok, could be expanded upon to be a great story, we will see what they DLC's bring. Its rather short and am not really a fan of the fact even Bethesda are on record saying the game doesn't really start until you have completed it. Because what happens when you do it could lead to quick burnout if you haven't prioritised doing it first.

There are some bugs and graphical glitches, but for a Bethesda game its in great condition at release.

If your looking for a new Fall Out game this will scratch that itch, if you are looking for a deep meaning full space based game with rich exploration your going to find this somewhat lacking.

Having competed the main story twice now, along with large chunks of the faction stuff, some outpost building and ship design, getting a good feel for all it has to offer i can say;

Overall its a solid AA title at a AAA price tag.

Superb little game.

Its still has much more to be added, but even right now in its early access state its better than many finished products for much higher prices.

Fast paced solid action start to finish.

The only shame is that its limited to 2 player

Got this game for free.

Short Review
Good game, over priced and DLC is a complete con at the current price. Minor bugs and annoyances, nothing major. If you have great childhood memories of the series you will love it. 8/10.


Setting

They have done a great job of getting the feel for the setting right. Design differs greatly in many ways from the movies, but then it differed greatly form movie to movie. The place is large enough for you to spend plenty of time exploring, lots of little side quests and collection things to keep the idle mind busy. Has most of what you would expect to find in the Hogwarts setting.

Story

Story so far, isn't as unique and new as I would have hoped, feels like doing various parts of the original books, just at a different time/locations. But it is engaging enough to draw you in and keep you playing. Even as someone that was never a huge fan of the so called wizarding world it is good enough to keep me involved.

Bad

Although well polished for a new release these days, its not entirely bug free. But the ones i have found are only minor. Issues like clothing clipping with other clothing or body parts, background characters occasionally looking very odd in chat scenes and robe physics going wild at times. Nothing that will really hinder enjoyment of the gameplay.

The UI is not quite a smooth as it could be, not a responsive in opening up etc as would ideally expect form such a high budget offering. But again not enough to really hurt the gameplay.

Performance

Pretty rock solid. not had more than a 10fps drop in frames yet, so running 130+ to targeted 144 near constantly on a 3080ti with 12th gen i7 and 32gb ddr4. Settings on ultra.

Overall Verdict

Well, as a game that has faced its hardships with the original IP creator, it has done its best to stay on point and deliver an experience fans of the series will enjoy.

I had no intention of buying the game, before receiving a copy. I am not invested in the world and have a number of friends who are trans and not happy with comments made by the author. This game will be pirated a lot by those against her but long time lovers of the series. An issue I did find, and I cant even really put my finger on what it is, but the trans character they added in response to the issues, just felt out of place and didn't really fit. It just seemed sort of rushed and made in such a way that it was very obvious who it was etc.. I cant quite put my finger on what it was about her that just didn't feel right. As i interact more with her later in the game that initial thing may fade only time will tell. But it kind of feels like they made a character and changed a voice over at the last minute in direct response, it could have been done much better.

At the release price, i would say its only really for die hard fans, everyone else should wait for a sale. And I would tell even die hard fans to avoid buying the DLC, it just adds nothing for that price. There is plenty of scope for future DLC within the current game, I just hope they don't price it like a full game.

Nice cosmetic items but i would say far over priced for such things.

But the clipping issue on the back of the neck when wearing the dark arts robes will most likely have you taking them off very quickly.

Overall I wouldnt waste your money on them.

Had the potential to be one of the best games of its genre. Game play is amazing, it has multiplayer, great features, mod support, the list could go on.

But and its a big "BUT", the coding issues were never fixed. So no matter what rig you have the game will lag out at some point. Various LUA files cause it, form pathfinding to network send. Meaning after a while the game will become unplayable.

The thing is you will come back and play again after a while, play till it lags, leave it, come back and repeat.

Mod support is still strong, if only someone could fix the core code till fix the lag issues.

Well what can I say about this little gem of a game.

5 Star
10/10

I loved it, and can't wait for the next installment of the series. The story draws you in, I want to know what has become of some of the characters you meet along the way, and what lays in Daniel's future.

The game runs smoothly, plays well. The combat is challenging and the humour is top class. It is the type of game that proves you don't need to be a large Dev team to make superb games. For its price, I can't praise this enough, Its one of those little Gems of a game that everyone should play.

Red Mouse Games has a very bright future ahead.

Many changes have been made the the UI, its not a crisp and clean as previous versions. A lot more cluttered and some of the changes seem purely pointless, like switching the tactics screen around. The player list and tactics part have switched sides, and nolonger are they in there own nice clean rounded off boxes but one big chunky box. The whole thing has been made a lot less nice to look at and interact with.

The font change from 2018 to 2019 is a poor choice. The spacing is off on some of the letters making it a lot less crisp to read and sometime hard when doing so at a glance.

Similarly the icons on the menus have been changed to much less appealling versions.

I am linking an image to show some of the differences i mean between last years version and this. Not the font change, look at shedule on both and see the spacing issues where the e and d touch.

I have come across a bug in the match engine where it sometimes fails to load replays of goals, it flicks to the replay then flickers back and continues the match.

Overall I will be playing the hell out of the game, but at present it has a number of annoying things and some terrible design choices.

Hopefully they will iron out the issues and update to a much cleaner design in the next couple of weeks. Until then i would play stick to last years if you have not already bought this one.

Games is very simple, not too much depth which make is very easy to pick up. Its pretty enjoyable if you were into the Civ franchise. Overall I give it a thumbs up though it does have some issues.


The price is far far too high. The game feels like playing a mobile game and as such should be priced that way. £15 at the most should be the very top end for a game such as this. Its been jacked up as its a GW related product.

More depth in choice of faction would have been easy to add and added much more spice to the game. For example being able to pick a chapter of space marines or ork clan, each with slightly different play styles and units would have been an easy add.

The biggest failing in this game is the lack of Chaos as a playable faction. The 40k universe without Chaos just feels wrong, all GW games should come with Chaos as a playable race. A huge disappointment to not see them especially with the price of the game and the fact they will probably try to milk even more money from you at a later date to get them as DLC.

I do recommend the game, but also recommend you wait for the price to drop in a sale. Current price will leave you annoyed by the lack of substance for your money.