ArchAngelAries

I was so hyped for this game.... I approached this open-world Isekai RPG with high expectations. The promise of a high-end, graphical, realistic game made by a AAA developer, featuring a spunky, female POC protagonist, had me excited to dive into the world Square Enix had created. However, upon playing the game, it became clear that while the game featured a vast map and decent graphics, the story and gameplay fell short of many of my expectations. The world-building and rewards for exploration were underwhelming, the story was dull and cringe-worthy, the MC and dialogue was horrendous, and the traversal and combat mechanics, even if fairly fun, were clunky and jarring. Here's my breakdown: Graphics- 4/10 - The graphics in this game are a mixed bag of beauty and disappointment. While the combat, animals, enemies, foliage, hair, clothes, magic, and most environments are breathtakingly gorgeous, the water looks stale and outdated, like it belongs in an unmodded 2011 Skyrim. The models and textures for human faces are decent, but the clunky and lifeless facial animations detract from the overall experience. The skybox also feels flat and unrealistic, even when all the settings are set to Ultra, and fails to inspire any sense of awe or beauty. The landscape, while still beautiful, is marred by poor quality sky and water. The NPCs in this game are generally dull and bland looking, with the exception of Frey and a few actors that were clearly 3D scanned. Clothing designs seem to have been given more attention than NPC faces and animations. Interestingly, the children in Athia are an exception to this trend, with their faces and facial animations being of a much higher quality than the adult NPCs, which compared to other titles is surprising, out of all the NPCs in this game it seems the children, Frey, enemies, and animals are the most well done. The combat, magic, and other areas of the game are visually stunning, but ultimately fall short of a cohesive Next Gen appeal that the marketing materials implied. Worldbuilding - 9/10 - The map is pretty big, I'd wager to say it's about on par with HZD in size; there's plenty of notes and books and things to read and learn to deepen your understanding of the world and it's lore. Not much to say here, the world building felt pretty solid, the only thing that knocked a point off for me was the cringey and unrealistic commentary that starkly contrasted with the tone in the menus. Traversal - 4/10 - The game's movement mechanics are pretty fun, but alas, the parkour abilities are unfortunately hampered by invisible walls and other restrictive elements in cities. Understandably, the game disables magical traversal in certain cities, but it left me feeling cheated as I had hoped to jump and explore on rooftop using parkour throughout the game, which seemed implied by the game earlier on. Furthermore, certain areas and parts of the story force you to walk at a slow pace or prevent climbing, running, and exploring, whether due to poor collisions or simply being restricted by design, which is irksome. In summary, the traversal can be fun but is ultimately hindered by limitations in exploration and unresponsive parkour. Combat - 3/10 - The combat in the game is fairly fun to an extent, with a large skill tree to upgrade abilities, but many skills do not feel organically earned, just "you earned enough XP and here you go, you can unlock this now". Mixing of combat seems clunky and unintuitive, making it hard to stream combos and apply style with parkour system. The game also forces you to switch abilities on the fly with cool-down periods and slow recovery times. Dodging is fun, but seems to be introduced at the wrong point in the story, making it feel inorganic. The magic abilities are gorgeous but not well set up for chain combos, relying more on spamming and taking you out of the action with slowed menu switching. Overall, it feels like Square Enix was trying to mix Witcher 3, PS4 Spider-man, Dark Souls, and Horizon Zero Dawn combat systems, but fails to implement them in a cohesive way, leaving you with a decently fun but not overly enjoyable combat system. Story - 1/10 - The story in this game is an utter failure, with cringey dialogue, nonsensical character traits, an overly mean and un-relatable main character, missed story beats, mis-paced, and overall destruction of the suspension of disbelief. The Isekai plot points are non-existent beyond the very basic "transported to a new world and now have superpowers", and seems devoid of making friends or any romantic interest. The plot is predictable and shallow, as if it was written by a 6th grader. Unfunny, cringey, forgettable and boring, it put me to sleep twice so far and I am left wondering if I'll even be able to finish the game. Overall Score - 1/10 - fun to play overall, but the story and other negative points make this game very boring, un-intuitive and nauseatingly cringey.

What a waste of money. I took it back for a refund. The game is way too full of sjw ideology. Man bad, woman good, trans good, christian bad. F**k you Naughty Dog. I was a huge fan of this IP, but now? Now I'll never buy another game you release! The graphics are good, but the story is crap and filled WAY too heavily with woke politics! IDGAF what your politics are, I buy your products to be entertained! Btw, for anyone who cares, I'm not some neckbeard in a basement, I'm a 29 yr old Lesbian Latina. F**k this game.

Blizzard has destroyed Warcraft 3 with this title, the ad campaign for Reforged was pure False Advertisement. Do not buy!