Recent reviews by Sergeant Poultry

This is a great Zombie co-op shooter, there is no doubt about that. Apart from the fact that you get snared when hit and your movement speed drops as your health decreases, not much can be said about the core game's flaws. I mean, it would be nice for them to add Aim Down Sights (ADS) like every other modern FPS, but that's probably a limitation on the engine, so whatever.

One thing that I don't understand, is why it is so difficult to get into a game of Versus. 17 thousand players currently online, and yet there is only one game currently one, with zero lobbies. How does that make sense? Are they all bots? Is L4D2 just filled with bots, how is it possible that I can only get one game with 17k players on?

But the community for this game is so unbelievably toxic, probably one of the most toxic in gaming. This is made even worse when you can't mute individual people and the fact that the host does not hold any veto power on members. Meaning, you can have one toxic and rude player join the game, have his friends join and kick out the original host. That, and the fact the community is so unwelcoming towards new players. You're new and you don't know how to bunny hop? Kicked. You don't save someone as they die from their own mistake? Kicked. In my 30 hours of playing this game, I can't say that I hold any positive experiences from playing online with randoms, just pure negativity and toxicity.

This is made all the worse when there is no report system in game, meaning that there is no way for Valve to deal with those players. I find it ironic that Valve is all about creating a welcoming community and ensuring that hate speech and toxicity has no place on Steam, and yet L4D2 is one of the most toxic games I have ever played, even more so than League of Legends.

For those not in the know, this DLC exists because you can now get a version of the game that is essentially a free demo, which is what I will be reviewing here. The free version of the game has the first act of the original campaign, a few historical battles and the art of war (tutorial) missions. Every week you will gain the ability to try out 3 civs online as you play with other players. Furthermore, whilst new players cannot host lobbies they can join them.

I think that this was a great move on behalf of the devs, new players will now be able to try out the base game for free and if they want, they can get the full version. It draws in more players and I think that more demos/free versions should really be encouraged with all games.

After my 130 hours playing this game, I honestly can’t think of any major benefits that this game offers that would have me stick around for more. Nothing, from the writing, the combat, the graphics and the exploration, all reflected below. The only reason why I stayed that long is like most people, essentially having a chore simulator that allows you to “relax” after a long day at work/school. Looking back at my time with the game, the only thing I can remember is messing around with the bandits using the Fus Ro Dah shout at Voltheim Tower for the joy of sending them off the bridge and down the waterfall. Even then, other games do the rag doll and combat element far better (e.g Dishonored series) so just stick with those.

Lackluster combat. This game has awful combat, it does not feel good. First, every melee weapon, from the great sword to the war hammer and battle axe, all handle exactly the same, like a baseball bat. Apart from a non-directional block, there are no moves that you can do during combat, e.g rolls and parries that would give it some amount of skill ceiling. With few exceptions, enemies do not have specific weaknesses that makes you tailor your approach to where you are going (e.g like the Witcher). Instead, most of it comes down to simply swinging at the enemy until they die, or if they are too high level, you bait their attacks, counterattack, walk backwards, make them miss their attack, rinse and repeat. Also, the devs did virtually zero balancing so a stealth archer build is unanimously agreed upon to be the most OP build in the game.

Lack of variety of weaponry. Speaking of combat, not only is the combat itself not all that great, but the tools you get to use are not all that better. There is a real lack of variety of the weaponry in this game, with most of them being autogenerated variants of the same select preset weapons (e.g sword of ice is just the regular sword with a virtually negligible buff applied to it). Here, you are stuck solely with bows, crossbows, swords, daggers, great axes, war hammer and greatswords (with the last 3 being virtually identical). It is not like Fallout New Vegas, where you can roleplay with the huge variety of guns (e.g there are several variants of revolvers, rifles, pistols, energy weapons etc). What is even worse is that the weapons here are boring, there are no throwing knives/stars or a prototype pistol made with dwarven tech infused with Elven magic. This is problematic when you remember that this is a fantasy RPG, not a historical RPG, we want to see the developers imagination and passion.

Moving away from the combat, the story is not much better. The game is set during the middle of a civil war, but it is one that affects virtually nothing. The two main factions, Stormcloaks and Empire have their pros and cons ideology wise, but we never see their consequences. This is made all the worse when you realize that Stormcloaks do not respect other religions and non-Nords, so you should have expected to see broken shrines and mass deportations throughout the game, with other non-Nord regions being disgusted. For example, you can take Whiterun for the Stormcloaks and virtually nothing will change after it, with even the blacksmiths commenting, “business as usual”. Now compare this to Fallout New Vegas, where the first time you meet the Legion, you see a town burn, with ordinary people that did nothing wrong crucified, with the Legion having left booby trapped bodies in the main town hall. That left an impact, made even better by the discussion their leader will have with you regarding politics. However flawed the faction itself was, it still shows what the Obsidian developers understood how to make a compelling faction. By the end of Skyrim, I honestly did not know much more or even care about either of the two factions, that was how bad they were done. It is almost as though Bethesda saw Obsidian do it and decided to copy, without understanding what made factions good in the first place.

Skyrim has little to no roleplay. This is best explained with an example to show the complete absurdity of the game itself. Take the Dawnguard DLC, which introduces vampires. Right from the start, I wanted to be merciless vampire slayer, who would stop at nothing to rid Skyrim of vampires. Pretty standard, right? So imagine my absolute indignation, when for the first mission of that I find a vampire, which the game makes my companion, with nothing that I can do about it. Worst of all, I am then forced to accompany her to her family’s castle am completely unable to kill any of the vampires that are present there. There wasn’t even a lore reason as to why I need to stick with her, e.g in Fallout Sierra Madre DLC you are forced to work with the gang, lest your head blows up. Instead, the potentially redeeming DLC was just another missed opportunity.

Another thing the game fails to do is respect its own lore. Again, I am going to use an example here as it is the best way of showing the absurdity of what is going on in this game. The Blades exists to serve the Dragonborn, not the other way around. Despite this, they give you an ultimatum; kill Parthanux, a dragon that has been extremely helpful throughout the game and in lore, having defected from and helped defeat Alduin (the main bad guy) as he realized the errors of this way, or they will refuse their aid and services to you. The Guilds reasoning? Parthanux could become evil again, so better not to take that chance. So not only is the Guild going against their supposed purpose with the order they gave, but their reasoning makes zero sense. Worst of all, should you go through with it, you do not get any specific loot, only regular dragon loot. This really shows how much respect the developers had for their own lore, which is to say, none.

The game looks bad, even for when it was released. The entire map has this nasty grey hue to it which makes everything look dull and grey. For such an open map with so much scenery, there is a surprising lack of color, diversity and expressiveness in the map, with most of it being open plains, mountains or forests. This is made even worse by how large the map is, which makes getting from place to place a long and painful task. This would not have been the case had there been some epic map traversal ability (this is a fantasy game after all) but there isn’t, you will either be running (with poor stamina), riding a horse or fast travelling. No epic abilities that allow you to move blindingly fast, no building climbing, nothing.

All in all, there really are not too many redeeming features in Skyrim. It is a dime a dozen game and I would genuinely struggle to think off a medieval RPG that is worse than this. I cannot recommend this game to anyone. 1/10.

Overall, I simply can not recommend this game due to its over reliance on RNG and its rampant cheating problem online.

-Inconsistent gameplay; I am not a fan of games that rely on RNG for the core gameplay and unfortunately RISK relies on it heavily. To attack you must do a literal dice roll, which can result in you losing a battle that you should have won and winning a battle you should have lost. Granted, you can do a blitz attack but it still suffers from the same issue. I’m of the opinion that games need consistency at their core and Risk simply does not have that. For some, this may not be an issue but it certainly is for me, I either need the ability to win against a larger foe or just have overwhelming force be the deciding factor. Do not try to do both simultaneously, here it simply does not work.

-Odd map choices; The first thing I noticed upon booting up the official main map was the complete absence of Russia, instead having its Western side taken over by Ukraine entirely. I found this a really odd design decision because they could have done what they did with the rest of Europe, i.e separate it by the points of the compass and label it Eastern Europe, which is a far more fitting and accurate term. I know that it ultimately has zero impact on gameplay but when you combine it with the fact that the developers got rid of the Russian map, you realize that is their way of picking their side in the current Russian-Ukraine conflict. What makes this even worse is the fact that those maps don’t help the Russian economy in anyway, thus we have another case of Russians being punished for being Russian. Apparently, the developers experienced similar backlash with the Israel/Palestine conflict and to that end, so I have to ask why did they make that design decision? Ultimately, it does not change my opinion of the core gameplay, but when China invades Taiwan, I am willing to bet money on the Chinese map being removed/redone.

-Cheaters/boosters; I have not spent much time on the multiplayer aspect of this game, but from a quick browse on the discussion boards it seems that the game has a rather large cheating/smurfing problem. A problem that the developers are not doing anything to fix, it seems. Obviously, cheating ruins the game for everyone so the fact that the devs have not done anything to fix this is a big deal breaker for most players.

All in all, the game itself is a letdown in my opinion solely due to the over reliance on RNG for combat so I can not recommend it solely for that reason. This gets even worse when you try to play an online game and instead get paired up with cheaters/smurfs who proceed to ruin the game for everyone.

First, the positives. The game looks good, as good as you saw on YouTube, a lot of thought went into the small details of the world/animations, exploration is nice as regions are vastly different and you get to do some memorable side quests (tracking down the imp magician was a favourite of mine), getting ambushed by gangs and seeing random encounters for the first time is neat. Seeing what the gang will do to survive, the rise and fall of certain characters and the eventual split makes for a truly engaging plot. As long as you’re willing to turn off your brain and enjoy the pretty sights, it is honestly a great game and I would recommend it. Problem though, is around the early-mid game I started paying a bit more attention and found the following issues, some slight and easy fixes, other more core issues.

After playing this game for as long as I have, I can honestly say that I think most people got caught up in the pretty graphics and the small attention to detail. The below points far outweighed the positive experiences that I had with the game and showed just how deep the fundamental design flaws went with this game.

The game gives you zero freedom when in missions, which is a real shame because it goes against the very principle of its open world design. A good example is a mission with Rain Falls, we are the at the top of a mountain overlooking the valley, RF is just talking and so I dismount to get a better look at the scenery. End result? Mission failed, “I abandoned RF”, even though he was 10m away. Another example, you get put into a forced stealth section and the game demands that you specifically go to the office through the main building, but I decided to attempt to parkour my way in. End result? Mission failed. It’s a real shame because the missions are the complete opposite of what makes the open world great, you can go anywhere and (mostly) do anything.

The story and gameplay is way too repetitive. Every mission more or less consists of going to a location after 2-9 minutes of idle travel (yes, 9 minutes is real, I times it), attempting to execute a plan, plan goes wrong, shoot your way out, ride to safety. There is zero room for anything different and it really wears on you after a while, especially seeing as how towards the later end of the game it becomes a stupid shooting gallery of enemies. So many quests could be redone, cut and trimmed for the better and would allow for more unique gameplay. E.g, in a mission where you have to do a prison breakout, you don’t get the choice of going loud or quiet, what members you bring with you, what plan you will have etc. Instead, it all just turns into a shootout, by the end of chapter 2 you have pretty much seen everything the game has to offer.

The game has telepathic enemies, it doesn’t matter where you are or what you are doing, they will seemingly appear out of thin air. It made partial sense in GTA5 with advanced communications and a large city population, but here there is no such reason. Police will show up by the hundreds within hours to defend a small town of 100, police will be alerted to trains being robbed in the middle of nowhere. It gets worse in the late game, there is a section where you have to cover a teammate by clearing out a town, only for 2 minutes later to spawn in a fresh wave of enemies in the same positions. Really makes me wonder why they had me clear it out to begin with.

The plot itself is only average. I don’t understand the hype for it. It follows a simple “one last hit” premise, but by chapter 3 it’s obvious that the gig is up and there is a rat in the gang. Unfortunately, you have to go through another 2-3 odd chapters before the rat is revealed, which means more of the same, tedious aforementioned crap. Even worse, the rat is the most obvious character, I honestly was not surprised in the slightest. If that wasn’t bad enough, the reveal was done in the classic method of; Bad guy about to kill good guy, reveals traitor identity, gets killed by supposedly weak character. It is a formula that has been done 1000 times over, which is a real shame considering how great it was to watch the gang fall apart.

For the amount of effort put into the small details, they forgot to focus on the more important issues. Basic features are not present, e.g craft >1 item at a time, have the game remember your primary weapons and loadout. Another peeve was making me walk throughout the camp, you can’t run or use a horse which means the first 10 seconds from game bootup is just spent getting to your horse. You will notice the lack of these features much more than you will notice your horses’ testicles shrinking in the cold areas of the map.

Honour and camp management don't matter. You can be the biggest ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in the world who contributes nothing to the camp, be a raging psycho and creep and yet gang will still treat you the same as though you were the biggest and most charitable saint in the world. There will be no new features or quests unlocked, just some slight dialogue and interaction changes that ultimately amount to nothing.

Progression is way too easy, you get money way too fast and easily. Dutch spends the entire game talking about how we need more money, and here I am with $10,000 doing the bare minimum. This gets even sillier when you consider how much stronger the dollar was back then, $10.000 then is roughly $250,000 now. A real shame, as it makes store/train/civilian robberies pointless, despite you playing a game set in a period where such things should be further integrated into the gameplay.

This game has stupid gold medal requirements and it is obvious that no-one play tested them, they are for the most part ridiculous to achieve, from having to speed run sections to having insane accuracy, killing all via headshots, no health items taken etc. Also, on PC doesn't seem to be a way to track mission medal progress or to be able to go back to specific checkpoints/restart a mission. It might be there, but after all my time I haven't seen it, which is a fundamental design flaw either way. It really makes me wonder why they were put in, they don’t make the game any better and only add to pad out the playtime off a game that could be shortened and it would be for the better.

The game starts off strong, but it was around chapter 3-4 for me that things basically took a nose dive off a cliff. Before chapter 3-4 I would recommend it. After that, I would not. Thus, I cannot recommend this game. It has some great work put into it that I can appreciate, but it really is death by a thousand cuts and by 70 hours I had fully bled out.

Every game goes as so; Spawn in, spend about 20 minutes playing running/looting simulator, kill 5-10 bots that have no idea what they are doing, then lose to a cheater or some loser who has wasted thousands of hours in the game. Matchmaking doesn't work, bots don't work. Running area to area to try and get loot and make it into the circle is about as fun as you would imagine it to be. Just give it a skip unless you really like killing braindead bots.

If I had to compare Shogun 2 to a food, I would compare it to bland porridge. Porridge is healthy, it's easy to prepare and eat. But without anything to give it flavour, you're going to get tired of it real quick. I’ve heard that Fall of the Samurai is much better, but it’s something that I think still has some of the core issues I’ve listed below so I’m not in any rush to get around to it. The main frustrations I had with the game are as follows.

Lack of faction diversity. All factions in this game, bar the Ottomo and the Ikko Ikki, play more or less exactly the same. They all have the same end goal, tech tree, religion and are all Japanese. The only thing differentiating them apart are the occasional slight changes to core units to give them +2 melee charge or cheaper recruitment, or something along those lines. There isn't even anything to represent China or Korea, despite the historical Korean invasion of 1592-1598 potentially lending itself well to this game. Furthermore, the European influence of the Portuguese is only limited to several units for the Ottomo, they don't even show up as their own faction! It's not like in Empire Total War, a game that is panned by all Total War players, where every faction gets some truly unique units, religion and voice lines. Could you imagine playing Medieval, Empire or Napoleon, with all nations replaced by the British? That's what playing Shogun 2 feels like, it has very limited replayability.

Boring tech tree. Getting to the mid/lower parts of the tech tree doesn’t really reward you with better units like it does in Empire. Instead, most units are unlocked at the early-mid game which means that there isn’t much incentive to focus on tech expansion, which you couldn’t even if you wanted since you can only research one tech at a time. Some siege/gunpowder units are definitely not worth trying to get, as Matchlock Ashigaru, European Cannons andFire Projecting Mangonels are all pretty bad with much better options available.

Ashigaru spam. You’ll be seeing stacks of Yari/Bow ashigaru (i.e spear/bow peasantry) in the early game and sometimes even into the late game, where they have no right being there. This isn’t made any better by the fact that types of units (sword/spear infantry, cav, siege, bows) all need their own buildings to be trained from, which thus makes it a whole lot easier for the AI to spam them. Even on Legendary difficulty in realm divide I’ve seen ashigaru making up half of a full stack army, even though Katana/Naginata samurai are much better. If you love fighting against peasants, this is the game for you.

Removal of features/dumbing down from previous Total Wars. No tech/province trading means that you’ll sometimes be signing peace treaties on poor terms, as sometimes the AI simply has no money to give. Naval battles are even worse than in Empire, here you’ve traded in cannons for bows and it is as painful and boring as it sounds. I once spent at least 15 minutes trying to take out a medium bune with a cannon bune, where it didn’t even seem to be close to being destroyed. Just pass on the naval battles, they are awful here. Granted, the perks for agents/generals/family certainly made them more fun to use as opposed to Empire, so I should give credit where credit is due.

Also, blood pack DLC is cancer, it should be base game. At least put it on sale sometimes CA.

All in all, I’m not really a fan of Shogun 2. If you like the idea of a game set in feudal Japan focused solely on the more traditional ways of fighting, then you’ll love this game. Otherwise, you’ll be getting bored real quick with the lack of replay value.

This game has done a great job of bringing horror to the mainstream, and I love that. A simple premise, one killer attempts to find and kill/sacrifice 4 survivors, whose job it is to fix some generators in order to power the exit gates, through which they can escape. I still remember my first match, sneakily running around the killer in giddy excitement as I made my escape. The experience is made even better by all the classic horror characters in the game, such as Ghostface, Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, Leatherface, Pinhead, it goes on. Chases, where the survivor attempts to get away from the killer, are great fun as it rewards mind games and map knowledge. It never felt unfair to get beaten by a better player who outplayed me with skill and technique. It is also very rewarding trying to save your downed teammates from the killer as it really plays into the mouse vs cat idea that the game is built on.

Unfortunately, it is weighed down by so much ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that I just can’t recommend it in good faith. Some are fairly simple issues to correct, others would basically require the game to be completely overhauled. They are as follows, and they are very numerous.

Playing Survivor sucks at a core level. For the Survivors, where they must escape a bloodthirsty killer (one killer, Oni, literally gets his power from spilt blood) you’d be surprised to learn that the core gameplay consists of gen repair simulator and just holding down Mouse 1 (M1). To win, you must repair 5 generators and then an exit gate to escape. To repair a generator, your character sits still and just idly repairs it with M1, with a basetime of 90 seconds. Then you need to unhook/heal your team, which also consists of holding M1 idly. Occasionally you’ll find a Hex Totem, which needs to be cleansed by holding M1. Trying to open the exit gate to escape, interact with certain killer items, open chest for items? You guessed it, idly hold M1. Not only is the core gameplay extremely boring and noninteractive, it gets even worse when you realise that the time taken to do all that can increase dramatically with certain killer perks. Unfortunately, this gameplan of regressing progress of all those aforementioned actions is considered meta, so as a survivor you can expect to idly hold M1 for more than half your game time. Some times the game can be stretched out for up to 40+ minutes despite all core objectives taking less than 8 minutes in total. That is, assuming you don’t get camped/tunnelled out of the game in the first two minutes. Now obviously, you do get the chance to be in chase with the killer, and this is where the real (and only) fun lies. The problem is that the amount of enjoyment you get from this lies largely with the killer. You can attempt to bait the killer to chase you, but they have the simple opportunity of just ignoring you, and thus in a 4v1 game by only trying to get chases you are essentially a man down. Which means that those 3 other survivors will spend even longer doing all those boring tasks. Now there certainly are games where you spend the entire time in chase and those are the best matches. But the simple reality is that they are the exception, not the rule. When you think of Survivor, don’t think exciting, blood pumping chases. Instead think chore simulator, because that is what the majority of the gameplay and by extension playing effectively is.

Gameplay that fundamentally rewards unfun playstyles for Killer. Tunnelling and camping, playstyles that are considered by virtually all to be terrible and bad for the health of the game, are very effective. For the killer, it’s a 1v4 game. You ask any person how to deal with a 1v4, they would say get rid of one or more as soon as possible. That is achieved by focusing on killing one survivor as quickly as possible. For the killer it works but it really does suck to be on the receiving end as a survivor. Another toxic thing that is rewarded is gen slow down. The only real fun part of the game lies in chases, yet the meta is centred around regressing generator progress and drawing out the game for as long as possible. Personally, I think it would be better if the game tried to focus more on improving the chase experience but there exists an arm race mentality in the community where one side picks gens perks/items and the other responds in kind. All in all, the chases for killer are the most fun but the way things are set up means at times you aren’t optimized for it by design.

Toxic and bad survivor teammates. A lack of basic team communication means that more often than not, you will have some teammates doing everything and others doing nothing. I have had a plethora of experiences where I can be looping the killer for minutes on end and yet no generators will be complete, get hooked and die, only for the worst teammates to escape. This is made even worse when you realise just how bad of the Killer vs Survivor mindset is. Both sides are constantly trying to one-up the other, by waiting around at the end of the game to t-bag in safety and killers camping and tunnelling, resulting in some players not getting to play the game at all. This becomes even more of an issue when you realise just how bad the matchmaking in this game is. I remember vividly how my first match (ever) was against a killer who had 700+ hours, and in my last games as a high tier killer I would consistently get brand new survivors who have just installed the game. Obviously, there are good survivor teammates and killers who are nice people, but I think that you will notice the toxic side first.

This game has really bad balancing. Some killers remain ridiculously strong and with limited counterplay, e.g Nurse/Blight and others remain ridiculously weak, e.g Clown and Trapper. Add ons are also a big problem, for some they are borderline overpowered and can completely change the game e.g Nurse’s range, Clown’s pinkie finger. For other killers, most of them are all low tier and barely worth using e.g Executioner and Nemesis. Some killers, like Hag still don’t have counterplay when it comes to her camping traps (you need to bring flashlights/crackers in the pre-game lobby before you even know who you are up against) and some others are just extremely annoying to play against, such as Thanatophobia Legion. Yet killers such as Hillbilly still have artificial restraints placed on them, such as an overheating chainsaw. Do not expect good balancing from this game.

Brightness and the colour palette is a major problem. You can’t change brightness in game, the claim is that it would provide an unfair advantage. However, you can do it on your monitor which personally messes with my eyes. So why not just add it in to the game? There are so many maps that are unnecessarily dark and in some instances are all but impossible to see at times. Maps such as Midwich Elementary School, Garden of Joy’s main house and some Autohaven maps. This is made even worse by some killers and their powers. Trapper and Hag’s traps are at times impossible to see and Dredge can greatly darken the screen multiple times in a match to the point where you can barely see anything front of you. The end result is that some maps are so visually bad that when loading into them I instantly disconnect because it is just that bad.

There are a number of other issues that I could go on, such as poor accessibility, lacks features other games take for granted, bad bloodweb design and a very consumer unfriendly monetary practice. I would have included them all but Steam has a limit on how much you can put in a review lol. All in all, the times where the game worked for me was less than when it didn't, so I just can't recommend it. Please, go play something else and don't waste your money and time here.

I will begin this review with the positives. The main pro of this game is the theme and artistic design. This game nails the idea of everything being pointless in a way, as shown with its art style and sound design. Indeed, how far are you willing to go to restore the estate to its former glory? The characters you recruit are made to feel expendable, a means to an end rather than the focus, as is the case with so many other games. We've all had a favourite character who was maxed out and well equipped, with a story behind their progression, only for them to mercilessly die in the following dungeon, to be followed by a a group of new recruits who seemingly have no idea of the dangers that lie ahead. All in all, I really do love the actual theme and design behind this game. Inventory and party management is also well done, having to consider what supplies/skills to take into a particular region and subsequently how to manage that with all the loot you will come across. The regions themselves do feel fair and balanced with regards to what will and will not be effective, there is no character that will not work in one region/team comp or another.

However, that's pretty much where the pros end. This game has some serious fundamental design issues that can only make you go, “what were they thinking?”. I will attempt to list these below.

It gets incredibly grindy and repetitive after a while. To complete the final quest, you will need a team of four heroes, all maxed out. Only to not be able to use them for the following missions as they will be too mentally damaged to do so. However, that region is filled with monsters and tactics that you haven't seen before, which means that you will either have to risk a maxed-out party or spoil yourself with a guide. This wouldn’t be a problem if the base game itself had an incredibly enjoyable design, but after a good team comp is established, the game becomes rather easy and repetitive (apart from one key issue that I will discuss later) with most matched going along the lines off; stun/take out the damage dealers ASAP, then deal with tanks and spend a turn or two stress healing.

I also take issue with the Crimson Curse DLC. This DLC is essentially the definition of anti-fun. The boss fights are unnecessarily long and annoying to navigate, powerful mini bosses are thrown upon the player with at times minimal warning (i.e the Crocodillian). The curse itself is annoying to deal with, capable of crippling an entire party when not managed correctly and at times demanding trips to retrieve more of it which essentially puts the base game on pause. Sure, you can get a solid power spike after giving them the blood but that doesn't make up for how annoying it is. It is not even confined to the new region, but rather will make its way into the vanilla regions, ensuring that you can't even escape it there. All in all, an incredibly tedious and unfun DLC that only goes to showcase the problem that DD has with its game design.

These issues listed above would be fine and I could handle them, were it not for the RNG. This game relies heavily on RNG. In fact, literally everything here is defined by RNG. Probability to miss, hit, have status effects come into play etc. Even when playing into the games mechanics and equipping the right trinkets and gear and so on and so forth, you can still get ♥♥♥♥♥♥ over by RNG. i.e you lose by something that was out of your ability to control.

Take my last quest for example. I stacked two scouting trinkets so that I should get 50% chance of scouting per room. I went through 6 rooms straight, not one of them scouted. (1/2)^6=1.5625% chance of 0 rooms scouted. Then, naturally I got hit several times by traps, despite me doing literally everything correctly to avoid them (i.e scouting and having a trinket that increases chance to disarm it). Then, I had my weakest party members get focused down by the enemy, all of whom had double turns. Double turns essentially dictate that they can have two actions in a row, not giving you a chance to react. They then proceeded to crit three times in a row and dodge three times in a row, despite their dodge being 6 and my hit accuracy being 80-95%. After all this, how is it possible I could have done anything better? The answer is I couldn't. I did everything correctly and yet I still ended up losing my hero to a completely unavoidable death. Sure, there are times where you will get an epic high with your hero surviving several death’s door checks in a row, but for me these always felt cheap and undeserved, knowing that the only reason I won wasn’t because of skill and good planning but by RNG.

Overall, if you're a fan of games that rely heavily on RNG and are willing to accept the highs/lows that come with that, than I could certainly recommend this game. Otherwise, I would have to recommend against it and instead encourage you to find something that is less RNG based, as that really is the main issue I have with this game.

Overall, this is actually a rather solid and well made social deduction game. In my opinion, playing survivor and imposter are equally balanced, with both sides having fair/equal tools to be able to best one another. Playing with friends/one party is really where the game shines, as by seeing how others react/behave you can play a game akin to cat and mouse that is very fun and rewarding.

The game also has a number of features that can be tweaked to your liking so that you can play how you want. Smaller lobbies, different game modes (e.g hide and seek) all allow for the game to be new and fun, even though it's still the same fundamentally.

Naturally, with a game like this the biggest problem is the community. People that don't want to play properly/are incapable of thought and will just meme relentlessly. Using well defined tactics such as using visual queues for an extended period of time or sticking with another player that you know is safe, whilst you yourself are safe and have proven it, can often lead to a swift eviction. Playing with randoms at times is simply an exercise in futility as quiet a large amount of them are not interested in having an actually good game. But that being said, the same goes for any multiplayer game so it is best to exhibit caution.

Overall, a solid game that I could definitely recommend.