Chadpowers

It's like the creators of this interactive movie novel (that is being marketed as a game) tried to make it as bad as possible. Even the aspects where such a "cinematic experience" should be strong, i.e. storytelling are being abused to propagate the developers unrealistic world view and extremist political agenda. Also, clearly video game journalists get paid by the gaming industry. How else could a media so out of touch with its customers get funding? Next what is with the M rating for this? This is clearly not for a 17+ In fact in many countries abhorrent material such as this would get banned for anyone to see. This website is great since it shows those issues in the industry for everyone to see. I really hope this marks a turning point towards games actually focusing on gameplay again in the future instead of all this dirt we get to see here.

So I got myself this game right away, because I was looking forward to the improvements that I expected from them. However, I got utterly disappointed. The game suffers from exactly the same issues as the first game. They have improved only minor things, such as there now being a character editor and adding some pointless moves for weapons, that you will never use, because there is a single best move for everything. The game itself is just really not good at all. The same bad lighting. The same poor level design. By that I don't complain about the looping, just the overall layout, playability and believability of the levels is extremely poor. The same way too easy combat. It's still possible to just jumpattack everything to death. No skill involved whatsoever. Also I can stack my stats way too easy. The same pointless limb targetting, that is more of a chore than a fun addition. I swear this system is just a poor excuse to make the player grind and artificially stretch this game with 10 hours of actual content to 20 hours. It sounds good on paper, but in reality it's just annoying. This time they also managed to poorly optimize the game. While the first one worked flawlessly for me, this one has some unexplainable stutters all the time, really making an average experience feeling even worse. Also, again, the game is super short and they are asking the same price as for other 100h+ games. That is just not acceptable. Why can't the devs set a price that actually reflects the value of their product? I don't even want to bother giving this thing detailed points, so in short: The game itself is maybe a 6, but with the technical issues and the poor price-performance it's a 4 at best. Though that is just objectively speaking, since I personally derived no fun from the game, because it was just way too easy to cheese things, even if I didn't try to, while most of the moves in the game are utterly pointless to perform. So for me the whole things was a big fat 0. The 4 is basically for people that don't play too seriously.

Visuals: 6/10 The game looks good all around. The world design is decent, but big minus for invisibile walls. Also the lip sync is atrocious, which is a no-go for a story driven RPG. The equipment and factions all look very similar, which becomes very boring, very quickly. The UI looks like a more adult version of Fisher-Price. Lots of unnecessary elements and handholding there. Sound: 8/10 Decent in any regard, voiceover, music, sfx... Just nothing really memorable. Story: 2/10 Nope. Just no. The setting sounds interesting, but the devs didn't do anything interesting with it. The story itself is pretty much counter-productive for what makes an RPG enjoyable. The factions hardly differ from each other. The player character has no personality whatsoever. All the characters in the game are extremely one-dimensional. The game doesn't even have an interesting goal and there are hardly any real choices for the player to make. Also the whole story is stretched out way too long for what little content there actually is to it. Also, again, the lipsynch is just so bad, it destroys any possible immersion in the game when looking at their mouths while watching one of the way too many cutscenes in the game. Gameplay: 4/10 Nothing new here, literally. Just a bunch of things copied from other games. There is a armor mechanic, which in essence is just another layer of hitpoints, so that doesn't count either. Even if it would, it's so minor it doesn't even matter. In combat the player feels disconnected from the action due to the nonsensical camera handling. The combat system itself is extremely simple. But it's overall workable. Just not fun enough for more than one playthrough. Exploration? Not for you! Invisible walls everywhere, nothing to really discover, minimap and common buildings in cities being mazes are sure to ruin any possible joy out of exploring the world. The companions are very annoying with their constant commentary during combat. The Balancing is absolutely horrible. Lots of abilities that completely negate game mechanics and also lots of abilities that are utterly pointless. The RPG mechanics couldn't be any more simplistic and vanilla than in this game. Also UI is a huge mess and destroys any possible immersion in the game. Summary: 5/10 Greedfall is yet another soulless RPG made by ticking little boxes on a checklist. It doesn't do anything better than any other RPG. It doesn't have a single creative idea in it. It is very average in most regards and horrible in some others. Regrettably, there isn't a single thing in the game that could even be considered as above average. Except for the Sound, but that isn't exactly a reason to play game. It raises the question why the devs even bothered making this game... though obviously it's just a cashgrab by disillusioned devs that ran out of ideas a long time ago. So if you love RPGs and looking for an all in all slightly below average one, this is your game. Though ultimately another run of Dark Souls, Nioh, Breath of the Wild, Gothic or even Witcher or Skyrim will be more enjoyable than this.

It's empty, doesn't respect the players time, the systems are unnecessarily complicated and slow paced and the combat is no fun at all. Also it doesn't even have stats to raise, as if my character would have this not very exciting but long and drawn out adventure and never gets even a tad stronger or better in anything. It's the absolute opposite of what they promised in the description of the game and I feel scammed out of my money and time. Graphics: 3/10 really, really poor world design Sound: 5/10 meh Story: 4/10 utterly mediocre Gameplay: 0/10 Overall: 3/10

This game is kind of a soulless mashup of popular elements from other games, combined with some poorly thought out systems, so I will just give it a real quick review: Graphics: 7/10 It looks fantastic. However, the world building and level design is very unimaginative, with a lot of copypasting going. What's the point of having all those high quality assets if you don't do anything special with them? Also in terms of performance, this seems like a real bad console port. Sound: 5/10 Sounds alright. Nothing special though. Also some pieces seem oddly familiar from other well known open world games... Story: 1/10 It has a story, alright. But it's beyond stupid to needlessly wrap that story up in another frame story of time traveling historians or whatever, which ultimately is just some pointless filler. The world has tons of empty space, with little incentive for exploring and while the Setting is nice, it has been only superficially implemented. And whatever happened to the Assassin thing? Also lots of historical revisionism. Gameplay: 0/10 Yeah, no. The combat system is a joke. The RPG system couldn't be any more lackluster. There is no Assassin going on at all. Little point in exploration. Horrible pacing. Constant, pointless Cutscenes. Nothing innovative at all about this game. Cash Shop for a single player game. Normally I would go more into detail, but this is just too horrible. Just make it stop. Overall: 3/10 Though what's the point of 3/10 if the most important components, gameplay and story, **** this hard? It might as well be 0/10 and nothing would change about it. Just really makes one wonder why the people working on that became developers at all, if they create soulless empty husks like this. Don't even get me started on the obvious bought reviews...

Graphics: 8/10 Not the best, but functional enough. Loading times can be quite long. Sound: 7/10 It's ok. Story: 4/10 Below Average. Some nice ideas for the setting, but drops off hard right after the start. By now, the "you are nobody special" setting is just as much a trope as being the chosen one. All in all the story doesn't really create gameplay and is more of a backdrop / excuse to make the player go to places. It also lacks strong characters and the world design is very generic and uninspired. Gameplay: 3/10 The game has some nice ideas but poor execution and lots of tedium. Survival stats and carrying backpacks, weight limit, item degradation are all nice in theory. But only once in practice... Constantly being forced to look after all those things mostly gets in the way of playing the actual game, i.e. exploring and fighting. Also there are no stats to improve other than some skills and items. It's kind of stupid to think your character doesn't get a little bit stronger or faster etc. during all the adventuring. I am sure they had some gameplay related idea when they opted for not having experience or levels, but they also failed to think about why those things are in games. As a result all the fighting and exploring feels not very rewarding at all. Lastly the combat also suffers from good idea, bad execution. In melee combat, you gotta balance your stamina, poise, dodging and attacking. In theory that makes for challenging gameplay like in Nioh, but in practice all those elements are terribly unbalanced in outward. First of all, the stamina regenerates way too slow compared to its consumption and overall amount available. Because of that, as a player you will seek to maximize your performance : stamina ratio, which means using twohanded weapons. Twohanded weapons are grossly overpowered, allowing the player to kill most enemies in the game with a single combo that will hack through their shields, poise and health. Onehanded weapons and shields on the other hand seems almost useless, since the enemy can just as easily overwhelm the player. Ultimately each fight boils down to baiting an enemy attack and then unleashing the killer combo with you twohanded weapon. If you don't end the fight within that combo, or you got a couple more enemies, you will spend the next minute running in circles waiting for the stamina to come up again. Of course the game comes with the obligatory way too fast / powerful dodge roll that makes outplaying the slow as enemies child's play. Ultimately melee combat is too easy, too tedious, enemies die too fast and in general it's not very exciting. In ranged combat, the fact that enemies are so slow and the player can be so ridiculously fast and nimble completely destroy the gameplay. Also the range on ranged weapons is way too high for this game, allowing to kill enemies without them ever reaching / finding you. Even in tight caves it is incredibly easy to avoid enemies while regularly shooting at them. They won't even think of defending against your shots or evading. Ranged combat is the easiest way to cheese the game or in other words the absolute easy mode for this game. At least in melee you can still die if you don't roll away fast enough. As long as you keep moving, no enemy in the game has any chance to ever hit you. Almost as bad as shadows of mordor, though it takes more than one button in this game and it's very easy to die. Talking about dying - in this game you can't die. Instead you can be captured, which will add the tedium of having to fight through some generic enemies instead of just reloading and fighting again. But then again, if you could reload that easily and repeat the same fight, the game would become so incredibly easy. Magic combat is just as sad. Basically most stuff that applies to ranged combat also applies to magic combat. However, magic is in addition also tedious. The game forces you to draw some magic circles in the ground and lure enemies over it to make the magic work... That kind of stuff works nice in a book or a movie, but is absolute antifun if you have to do it for every enemy yourself. It's really a shame, as it is clear that the devs thought about many ways to create good combat. Regrettably in the end the combat turned out barely any more interactive than clicker games like Diablo and many of the mechanics such as stamina and poise are unbalanced or easily circumvented. Overall Score: 5/10 That 5/10 score comes with a 3/10 gameplay. Unless you really enjoy exploring yet another generic fantasy world and getting some loot, you will most likely be disappointed by the below average gameplay. Also where other games still might draw you in with a decent story, there is no such thing is this game.

I was really looking forward to this game, one of the few I bought right at release time. However, I was disappointed in many ways. Graphics: 6/10 It looks great on pictures, but in motion there are a lot of things that just feel wrong. Especially the transitions between animations look too goofy. The world design is pretty, but monotonous. The game consists of mostly fields and forest, while that might be realistic, it's boring after the first few looks. Not to mention that the dense vegetation can make navigating quite a chore. The performance of the game is also somewhat lacking, a few graphical bugs, weird pop in, extreme loading times. Story: 5/10 There are a lot of realistic stories out there that are really entertaining. Sadly the story is this game is only somewhat realistic and not very entertaining at all. The main character is incredibly ugly and unsympathethic. It feels downright disgusting having to play him. Most of all the story is very short, but I don't want to spoil anything. If you just focus on the story, the game is extremely short and the miniscule combat will be no hurdle to finish it. Sound: 7/10 Again they tried to have realistic sounds, but those are simply boring and unimmersive. The music is decent, but the voiceover is ok at best. Gameplay: 2/10 The gameplay should be the core **** and yet again, like so many other games, KCD doesn't really get it right. Their failed sense of realism and all that talk about historical accuracy lead to a combat system that is little more than Skyrim + extra attack directions - so quite rudimentary. It also features a lock-on system despite being first person, which makes no sense whatsoever. Fighting more than one enemy is a huge pain. Of course the damage calculation is just a rudimentary like in every other game (basically just damage-armor), despite the game being supposed to be realistic. Ranged combat without reticle is a joke and also numerically underpowered. The AI is just about ok, but still has the typical game AI flaws. While the game seems great for exploration, it really isn't, because there is no need to explore because you can find all your equipment from defeating just a few enemies. The 16 equipment slots are a chore to deal with. Quests are for the most part rather unoriginal. The crafting is the most arbitrary thing I have ever witnessed in any game. You can sharpen your weapon, yet despite being forced to play the son of a blacksmith you can't smith a thing. On the other hand you can do alchemy and that's it for crafting. It clearly shows that the devs had no real plan on what to do with crafting, lazily implemented the alchemy system, figured everything else is too much work and left this incomplete mess. The character development is also badly realized. First of all the game features pointless stats such a charisma, which allow to do things by simply having the right number - which is the opposite of gameplay and forcing the player to just fulfill arbitrary number requirements. The system itself is an uninspired mess of your usual pointless rpg stats, despite not being anywhere near realistic. The game also adds stuff like being dirty having an effect, but after the first use of that it just becomes a chore too. Not to mention the annoying feedback for the survival elements. The game features way too many cutscenes and again forces the player to take the role of an observer, despite this thing being called a game In a sense, even Skyrim has better combat and overall gameplay, since it at least feels good and smooth to play and the systems there work well together, while KCD not only has very rudimentary systems but also didn't do a good job of making those systems work well together. Overall: 5/10 The greatest weakness of KCD is the creators obsession with realism and being unable to compromise between that and actual fun gameplay. A lot of things in this game could have been better if it wasn't for stubborn decision makers on the team. I feel sorry for all the great artists and other members of the team that had to waste their talents on such a lacking vision. It's sad to already see a lot of critics and players throwing those 10s and 90s ratings out, because the game clearly isn't that good. On the other hand it's also not that bad, like some other critics try to make it out to be. All in all this "game" is worth a buy if you are looking for an experience of the walking simulator kind. In terms of gameplay it is way behind any other random rpg ever. So ultimately I wouldn't recommend it all, despite the production values being decent enough to push the overall rating to a 5. It's just that a 2/10 gameplay doesn't really make the cut as a game.

Great game, same as console version. Controls even better with mouse and keyboard than with a gamepad. Only downside is that the game is poorly optimized and won't run properly on anything but the most modern hardware. In turn visuals are noticeably better than in the console version. The game includes all the dlc, which easily gives you around 70 hours of fun for the first playthrough. So that alone is worth it. Further playthroughs in the various ng+ modes are not recommended though, unless you enjoy grinding and getting oneshot by even the most basic enemies. If that is your thing, the overall playtime is anywhere from 150 to 300 hours, depending on how well you do in the game.

Graphics: 6/10 Poor assets, effects and animations. However they manage to use those resources to create a beautiful, but cheesy world. Sound: 8/10 Probably the best aspect of the game. Nothing memorable and a few sound effects are rather weak, however the overall composition is satisfying enough and just misses that little bit to be really great. The voiceover however often sounds rather unmotivated. Gameplay: 4/10 The combat is just horrible in various regards. It's an uninspired and clunky mess of failed attempts to copy other games, and that is just the melee combat. The ranged and magic combat are just a one button joke. All of that doesn't get better with the poor animations. The balancing also has some issues with spamming or abusing the jetpack that is available way too early and a few unintuitive mechanics like the weird combo mechanic in the game. The character development is also lackluster, lazily done and navigating the various menus is a nightmare due to the poor UI design. At least the game offers some decent quests, gathering and exploring. Too bad the player won't ever find anything of value because everything in the game just feels like a cheesy and cheap copy of something better from other games. Story: 3/10 To sum it up, everything in the story, the setting, plot, writing and storytelling are poorly done. Not really worth going into detail, many of those things are just embarassingly badly written. But here is one example, right at the beginning of the game the hero talks to himself: 'What is that? Emotions? Must be the Elex withdrawal!' There is just so much wrong with just this one setence already. First of all it's poor style if you have to drop exposition like that. Then emotions are something the player will experience when he does so himself not when the game tells him to (duh). Further the whole sentence sounds so incredibly artificial it's just beyond cringy. The whole concept of emotions being a gameplay mechanic and story element is poorly thought out and even more poorly implemented. The whole game is riddled with things like that and overall gives the impression it has been written by some 10 year old after he played Fallout and Skyrim for the first time. It's just embarassing to watch. However 3 points are awarded for the little amount of fun once can have with some of the better written quests and the amount of effort put into the game. Though a smaller world, with less cheesy locations would have done the story and gameplay a big service. Overall: 5/10 It hardly even deserves that since basically anything positive you can say about the game doesn't really effect the core gameplay and I can't recommend buying a game just to run through a somewhat pretty, but cheesy world to talk to NPCs. It's a shame that so many people abuse the review mechanic for this game. It definitely isn't a zero and it also isn't anywhere near a 10. The devs have stated themselves, that they largely rely on their communities wishes, so if blinded fanboys keep rating that high, the devs will never learn from their mistakes and this has been going on since Risen. Update: New Score 4/10 After some testing I have figured out, that most of the ingame stats and skills have no function or don't function as they are described. Many of those stats are completely hidden from the player in an effort to conceal those bugs. So in terms of gameplay the game is a 2/10 at best, which lowers the overall score to 4.

Quick review: Graphics: 8/10 Good enough. Nothing special. Sound: 8/10 Again, nothing special. Story: 7/10 Standard stuff with some extra embarassing and cringy dialogues, lots of unnecessary rambling done by many characters. Gameplay: 5/10 The combat and overall game mechanics would have been nice 20 years ago, by now they are just outdated. Games should be way more interactive. Especially the many scenes were the player is just told what is supposed to happen by some narrator, while the characters are just standing still, are a huge disappointment and one would be better off reading a book instead. It still gets 5 points for gameplay because it has some good puzzles and exploration. Overall: 7/10 Could be a 9/10 if you like that kind of old fashioned game, though still not as good as Baldurs Gate. For everyone who doesn't live in the past it would be a 7/10, they can accept the old school stuff. If you expect actual action and interaction from a game - this game is not for you.

Graphics: 10/10 Not much to say here, it's basically the best practice for this genre. Sound: 5/10 Not bad. Not good. Overall Quite forgettable. At least decent SFX. Gameplay: 3/10 This one is really hard to judge, since the player will spend 50% of his time watching cutscenes and 45% following markers on the map. The other 5% the player will frantically spam light attacks and stunlock every enemy to death. The pretty animations brilliantly hide the fact that the combat system couldn't be any more simplistic and free of any kind of challenge. The Character of Geralt is already overpowered at the start of the game, as someone who is stronger than any human or monster and a master of Swordfighting, Crossbows, Magic and with superhuman strength and endurance. Not only is the character stronger than everything in the game by lore, also will he not change a thing about the gameplay for the whole game - there is no feeling of progression whatsoever, it's fast attack spam for 100% of the fights. Also enemies respawn and scale, making the huge, but stale world even more static. The combat itself is worth about 1 point and the other activities in the game also are worth a single point. Even the crafting system doesn't really score, since the items the players gets from that don't matter compared to what he can get from other sources and faster and easier at that. At least the game has a lot of content, which nets a third point. But what good is a huge world like that if it's filled with only meaningless activities in and between following map markers? Story: 8/10 Story in the witcher is very polarizing. Some people love it, other people hate it. The plot itself certainly isn't as epic as one would expect and the overpowered nature of the main character really leaves very little room for actual surprises. Personally I dislike everything about the characters, the plot and most of the dialogues. However, everything adheres to high standards - just not everyones standards - and the overall quality and detail are extremely good. As per usual for most games though, the story loses drive after the first area and stays comparatively underwhelming for most of the middle of the game, where the underwhelming gameplay is much more noticeable, so that's -2 points. Summary: 6/10 The game can be a 10/10 for people that love cutscenes - but then a movie might be a better investment. A more realistic scoring would be either 6 or 7 out of 10, depending on how much one is bothered by the cutscenes and the follow the marker gameplay. That score might seem low, but if one looks past the fancy graphics and sex scenes, the game really has very little to offer in terms of actual player interaction with the world and gameplay, which is after all the core ****.

Graphics: 9/10 Not the best ever, but also no visible flaws and overall very pleasant to the eye in any regard (environment, characters, gfx). Environments repeating too often deducts 1 point. Story: 7/10 Plot, setting, characters and storytelling are all equally unoriginal. Despite this major flaw, everything is actually portrayed with superior quality. Overall the story and storytelling are interesting enough to always keep the player looking forward to what is happening next and creating motivation to finish the game. Sound: 10/10 Really great soundtrack. SFX are also adequate. Gameplay: 9/10 It truly is the best iteration of 3rd person action combat out there right now. The overall gameplay is challenging and highly rewarding. The item system also gives incentive to continue playing. At the same time the item system is also one of the flaws of the gameplay. The random attributes just don't really help the overall balancing, which is already weak. While the game starts out very challenging, it quickly turns into a walk in the park. Especially some attribute combinations and some special abilities completely ruin the balance later in the game. One of the patches already improved the balance on some things, though they will never be able to remove the balance issues that result from the random loot system. Only other flaw is the world not being connected and the large amount of simplistic side missions that result from that. However, the gameplay by itself is already 11/10, so these flaws only have small influence in the big picture. Overall: 9/10 If you really love 3rd person action rpgs, it's a 10/10, but objectively speaking, the flaws in story and gameplay just don't warrant a 10/10.

Graphics: 7/10. Not much to say here, pretty good overall. Characters mimics are a joke though and some gfx don't work properly. - 1 point for the absolute joke of a bow animation that the player has to watch throughout the whole game. Story: 4/10 Quite original plot and setting. Characters are horrible one dimensional cheesy carricatures though. Main char is ugly as sin and as sympathetic as a brick wall. Overall storytelling is rather boring, doesn't really make one excited for more. The end of the game is horribly portrayed and anticlimatic. Sound: 5/10. Overall forgettable, but at least not horrible. Gameplay: 1/10. Gameplay is nice in theory. In practice it's a one trick pony with a lot of questionable decisions and 0 replay value as well as 0 incentive to continue playing. Overall gameplay emits the feeling of this game being made for toddlers that have trouble pressing more than 1 button at the same time. Neither challenging nor rewarding and sometimes comically bad in execution. Overall 4/10. It could have been 5 if the game at least had some eye-candy. But all the characters look so bad, it kinda makes one want to stop playing, despite the great looking environments. I feel sorry for the people that put together the great engine and other graphics, since they got paired up with horrible character artists, writers and even worse game designers.

I always enjoyed a few rounds of this game in the past, but all of that changed in the last few months. You can read all about that in all the other reviews, so I keep it short: The game went full pay to win in the last few months. I would recommend for everyone to stay away from the game. Even if you pay for the new unbalanced tanks, they are usually made in a way that they will still lose you money to beat all the other new unbalanced tanks. In other words, it's a game where everybody loses, even those that 'win'.

The combat in this game is fantastic on a mechanical level. The combination of the combat, puzzles, great enemy design and compelling AI make for an overall near perfect gameplay experience. However, the game has some flaws in the systems and rules around the gameplay. The character development is very similar to typical jrpgs, i.e. while there is development, it is very one dimensional with very few choices to make outside of equipment. The talent tree might be large, but it's mostly filled with poor +x% of y talents and the few gameplay changing ones are very binary. Overall there is no real replay value due to this linear character progression. There are a few other unlucky design decisions, but overall the gameplay is damn good. The graphics obviously aren't modern, but they are still highly pleasurable for the eye. Only flaw is that the devs not only copied the snes art style, but also the snes level size. Having to go through loading screens after progressing 2 screen lengths is not acceptable anymore today. The sound is great and captures the feeling of old school action rpgs. Not much else to say about it, full marks on sfx and music. The only real flaw of CrossCode is the story. The setting is extremely unoriginal to anyone with some knowledge about jrpgs. The real mmorpg setting is a dead horse that really doesn't need any more beating. It really oozes the impression of a 40 year old obese virgin living in his mothers basement. The characters are beyond cheesy and couldn't be any more clichéd. Some of the are straight clones of 80s anime characters. The silent main character is an extremely poor choice and highly non entertaining. Then again, she probably wouldn't have anything interesting to say to anything other than 'yes'. The plot is presented in such a drawn out and most of the time uninteresting way. Yet at other times it's overly dramatic and again horribly cheesy. All of that is already present in the horrible intro / tutorial. Ultimately, any element of the story is more or less bad - so bad that it really sours the experience one could have with the great gameplay. Even just a slightly more generic setting would have warranted a much higher score. But as it is, the story is just killing everything. Even if you are a massive japanophile, you will feel insulted over the impudent copying of cheesy jrpg clichés. In summary: gameplay 9/10 graphics 9/10 (if you accept 2D) sound 10/10 story -5/10 (yes the story is so bad it negatively impacts everything else).

Combat is ok by itself. Though in comparison with similar games it has some major flaws and is below average. Regrettably, the combat is already the best thing about this game. The rest of the content, activities and other game elements are best described in as few words as possible as 'thin' and 'just barely enough to not be bad'. After the novelty of the combat wears off, the game offers very little in terms of motivation to finish it or even to play it again. Worse, the flaws in the combat and the supporting systems become glaringly obvious after a couple of hours, destroying even the last bit of incentive to play. Ultimately, this game is ok to buy right now if your really enjoy 3rd person action combat but don't care about anything else (i.e. story, plot, characters, level design, balancing, other activities than combat...) If you have standards, but still want something new to play with, buy this once it's on sale. For anyone new to the genre, this is definitely not worth full price, probably not even worth getting on a sale. .