Its a very well made souls-like game. Its probably the most consistent souls-like game I have played, its very well made the entire way through, not like the highs and lows that fromsoft usually has. I think the game fails due to how linear is, if the chapters were less linear and sections weren't referred to as 'chapters' then I would have liked the game a lot more. The combat was great, but I think blocking was too broken, especially by the end when you spend all your quartz and level up stats. I put most of my quartz into blocking related buffs, where it got to the point where I could just hold down block, hit the boss once, or maybe parry an attack once, and regain all my missing hp back. I didn't learn any boss combos to dodge roll or parry, I just had to block and maybe parry some easier attacks to win the fight and it ruined a lot of climactic fights for me. I still think the game is great though and refreshing.
This game was incredibly hard for me to judge, mostly because this game has everything breath of the wild has and more, and Breath of the Wild to me, was a ten out of ten. At the start of playing this game, if you had asked me what I would give it, I would probably say something like an eight, not too amazing. After completing the final boss, I think I am confortable giving it a 9/10. There are plenty of valid criticisms to be made about the game which also applied to Breath of the Wild as well. The main criticism I have is for the writing. I think the overall story is fine, zelda games have never had complex stories or characters, but the writing for the dialogue was sometimes jarring for me. I am very interested to see the speedrun for this game, because I have no idea what sort of travel method is the most efficient for a speedrun of this game, as far as I know they patched a lot of the bugs that were used in speedruns, and there is no stasis launching. i also felt the bosses were a lot harder in this game and they fixed a lot of the balancing issues that were in Breath of the Wild. Even getting to the final boss is difficult due to how they place enemies, and the heart stealing mechanic makes the final fight incredibly hard without food, armour and lots of hearts.
You know that feeling you get when you play Dark Souls and there's a small cliff that you wish you could jump over but you can't. Or maybe you get that feeling from a different game like old Zelda games. This game full fills that feeling. While it might not have the best combat or dungeons, the open world is and freedom the game gives you makes up for it.
I think the main point I want to discuss is that while this game has gacha and in-game transactions, you are not ever locked out of open world content or quests because of a paywall. You can play the entire game without spending any money. The world levels as your characters do, so you are incapable of being locked due to underleveled characters. I am entirely free to play and I have acquired enough in game rewards to get 3 5-star characters and 2 5-star weapons and that is enough to last me the entire game. This game gets so much hate for its pricing when you can just not spend the money and just play an amazing game for free. There are 2 main issues though that stop me from giving a higher score, the first one being the cutscenes and dialogue. Some quests have great stories that I read through because of interesting characters and tension within the story, but some stories and quests are just awful and there is no way to skip dialogue fast. I get that they paid voice actors but I don't care and I just want to play the game. The second issue are the quests under the "story" header, because I have not enjoyed any of them and they mostly consist of boring copy and paste MMO challenges, and the boring stories I was talking about before, but they are occaisionally mandatory. There are some standard world quests that are way better than any of the story quests, and story quests are supposed to be important and have more effort from the developers put into them. Some of them unlock new bosses, but the mind slog to get there ruins the battle. The other topic I want to discuss is the spiral abyss and end-game content, I am not a completionist so I just stop playing the game after exploring everywhere I want to explore and doing every quest that is fun, so I never dealt with resin or daily commisions because I would just stop playing. I have acquired a ton of fragile resin that I am yet to deplete, and I only grinded domains a few times to make my 2 main dps over-leveled. I think grinding ****, and I don't like how artifacts are random, which is my main gripe with the whole level system. i think what needs to be said more often is that the game has an end after each update, but its not clear because the game is still releasing. The end is when you have run out of fun stuff to do, you don't have to log in every day, you don't have to grind domains, because not doing them doesn't lock you out of exploring or doing quests. Which is why I can't justify bringing down the review more than a point, because the issue is completely optional, you aren't forced to deal with resin or daily commisions unlike so many other modern games. Resin can be seen as either a way to make people log on every day and build some sort of connection with the game so they end up spending money and I am sure that Mihoyo uses the system because of this, but I view it as a way to stop myself from exhausting the game before it has released its final update and completed the full map. Its a single player game and everything outside of spiral abyss wasn't designed to force you to grind. As of writing this, the game is midway through releasing the fourth of the seven main regions on the map, so by that number, the game is a little more than halfway completed. I played this game on release for a week, but the game didn't feel complete so I decided to leave it and maybe return if it got updates. 2 years later I saw the game had a condisderable amount of updates so I decided to download it again. The amount of content that had been released is incredible, it revived that feeling I got from playing Elden RIng earlier in the year, where the game just gets larger and larger even when you think you have explored everything. Finding Enkanomiya was such a massive **** moment for me, as-well as discovering the Chasm mines. I had no idea what they ahd added to the game outside knowledge about a japan themed electro area. The second time through was such a different experience and to anyone who played the game on release and dropped it due to getting bored, I highly recomend they pick it up again. The archon quests also had some significant improvements in their writing and tension, the final-boss/chapter for the electro area was incredibly well done, and my only complaint is that I can't repeat the quest. I hope this explains my high rating **** that is constantly met with hateful reviews. It ultimately comes down to what type of person plays this game, some people despise the anime aesthetic, some people hate in-game transactions that are random, some people like to grind characters to max and then are punished by a daily reward system for wanting to play the game, and I just found it better to ignore these concepts and just play the main content of the game.
Its a fun game but it gets very repetetive once you unlock all the potions in the inner ring of the map, exploring farther gets tedious and so does making substances with the alchemy machine. Its a cool gimick though.
This game is mostly linear with a few branching paths but it has amazing contained level design with Irithyll being explored like a giant loop. The bosses in this game are the best of the series. The main flaw is that some areas in this game, especially at the beggining, are just a drag to get through, you just run past everything and the bosses are boring and easy, the game dramatically improves once you get to Irithyll.
This game had the one major flaw that is worse than any bug or any annoying game mechanic, its the fact that it never let you play the game on release because the servers were full. WIthout that major flaw, it would be rated way higher.
This game is fun if you enjoy the survivalist fantasy, but sometimes it can get incredibly frustrating and you should not play this game if you get angry easily.
This game was fun. I especially enjopyed the multiplayer with friends but healers were a bit busted, but the game doesn't last very long and the campaign isn't worth the effort.
Its my favourite pokemon game that I have played (I haven't played any of the older games behind X and Y). If your able to look past the extremely outdated and ugly graphics then it is an amazing game. I just wish they kept the same catching mechanics from Arceus.
I never played the older version of this game so this was the firs time I have ever played a game from this series, and it was incredible. Its the mix between movie and video game I had always dreamed about. The plot has some of the most realistic characters I have seen in anay medium, and the gameplay is immaculate. The graphics also just look better than real life. Every single chapter feels fresh and unique and memorable. I cannot believe that a game like this was even made and that I just played it.
They screwed up the ranked system. I was hoping for a rank reset so I could play with my friends. Instead they put everyone at bronze 5, so you can play 7 games with your friends, but once you have won 7 more then everyone is all over the place and now my friends who have played the game too much have to play solo because they are gold and everyone else is bronze 5. I don't understand why they put everyone at the bottom rank instead of around silver the vast majority of players can play with each other, and only when you reach platinum do you start getting skill gap problems. Blizzard failed.
There is so so much to say about how amazing this game is compared to other FromSoft games. By far it has the best world and exploration, and the combat is fast paced and intense. Its also the only fromsoft game I'm motivated to kill the basic enemies instead of just running past them because you get healing item drops from killing stuff, instead of the standard estus flask mechanic which only really benefits with bosses.
It has an amazing atmosphere and concept, but the online ruins this game. I recommend you just play customs with your friends. The fact this game is 30$ but you only get 10% of the character roster also makes it not worth the money.
I don't really enjoy roguelikes and this one was still pretty fun. Dying is part of the narrative, and the visual art style is great, but I still don't enjoy roguelikes.
This game requires a lot of patience to play. It also requires 4 people to play. If anyone of those players screws up then everyone is dead. That's what type of game this.
