Recent reviews by Oplu

I held off on picking up the game for a little bit, just to hopefully miss a bunch of the launch bugs/other issues. And while it is apparently much more stable, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't still a somewhat buggy experience. I've had incredibly funny lighting bugs turn nighttime into day, I've had invisible enemies T-pose and slide around at me, and I've had several quests essentially lock me out of progression because I killed someone or other a little too quickly.
The dialogue and writing are also not the strongest, though they are serviceable for sure.

In spite of all that, and whatever other bugs you might encounter, the game is phenomenal, both in the context of its development in the midst of the Ukraine war, and just taken on its own merits. I have seldom felt as invested or immersed in any game, and while the frayed edges have pulled me out from time to time, the Zone effortlessly pulls me back in.
I cannot recommend it enough.

Game of the year
Incredible story rich gameplay
best soundtrack of 2024

The art direction has to carry a great deal of the experience here, and it just can't.
The delivery of the dialogue is perfectly fine, but the writing is really pretty agonising to sit through, and the narrative is primarily delivered through PowerPoint presentations of art with voice over.
The gameplay itself feels clunky and kind of unpleasant to control, while the puzzles are fairly simple throughout most of the game, with random elements added occasionally during.

Having bought it on sale for $3 canadian, I'm really not too upset, but it was pretty disappointing, and having seen claims that this exemplifies games as art, I couldn't contain myself.
If you want games as art, try Venba, Journey, or Portal. What people mean when they say games like this are "video games as art" is that it fed them easily digestible nuggets of emotion in the format of some other form of art, in this case a graphic novel.

Uninstalled and haven't played since the PSN requirement, and banning of countries

It's so close to being so excellent, and falls just short in almost every way.
Easily one of the best games I've ever played, I need to finish the achievements.

The gameplay itself is pretty enjoyable, but it's pretty exhausting to be bombarded by references to other games constantly. The league of legends references genuinely kinda ruin the game for me.

It's Fallout mixed with X-com, with loonytoons characters.

It's basically wow but better, but worse.

God I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ suck at this game

I really enjoyed the tutorial campaigns, and I'm looking forward to the leveling grind.