DAMreviews

This game is about the story first and foremost. That impacts the structure of the game and replay value. The gameplay is very solid like a Resident Evil 4. You have a mix of weapons, upgrading and enemy types that gives the game plenty of mileage with mixing up scenarios. Unfortunately the flow of the game is broken up by the narrative being told and gameplay In the world is disjointed in service of that. Playing through it was like enjoying a Walking Dead movie. I was into the characters and story but it was something I was fine thinking about for a little bit and then being done with it. If you’re replaying the game, whether on new game plus or a harder difficulty then I think the enjoyment of the story will continually be diminished. You may as well be watching a gritty zombie film or TV show. And if you’re less interested in the many seeing the many cutscenes more than a few times then you’re left with the solid stealth/action combat that is pretty non-linear. Story is the most important part of this game and takes precedent over everything else. Overall the game is well crafted in all of the parts that make it up. It’s also very diverse with its cast of characters if that sort of thing matter to you. I was left a bit bummed by the conclusion of the game but I respected the choices it made as a piece of art on its own. The gameplay was enjoyable but not wholly satisfying due to the game being structured for the story.

A step above the typical “budget” RPG. This game has several elements - solid character and story, ok combat and a unique npc mechanic that made this a intriguing and enjoyable experience. Load time waits were long for maps and in irritating ways. The main character, the npcs and the world they are in are solidly crafted and nice to follow. It peppered in various elements of vampires that was an intriguing layer. The dialogue and map system for the main characters role was something unique to the game. It works towards XP but I’m not sure how much it affects the ending and or story as I only played through once trying for “good”. But there’s also an added twist where you can consume the XP or not for the benefit/negative. It’s different and ok enough to engage, and in a world whose settings and characters I enjoy, so it worked for me. I never found a fast travel and had to travel the map back and forth while I completed nearly every side quest. It’s not uncommon in games but it become a chore to run from point A to B. The menu to see the map was effective and allows your to zoom in which helps. Sometimes the map loaded slower than I was running past it. Textures and such would need time to load beyond moving around at a slow pace in the open world. Sometimes a short load screen would happen in the open world for it. Worst was using a door to enter an interior building or the sewers. That’s the long loading screen. If you made the wrong choice or changed your mind about entering, you’re gonna have to wait. Combat is ok; stamina, “magic/blood” management kind of like Dark Souls. I didn’t experiment with the different level ups available in one play. Graphics were fine, but does have a smoke-y haze to it. Ultimately I was hooked by the depth of the main character and their story. For smaller, “budget” rpgs, this game out does them all by actually succeeding at having solid pillars. I was left wondering if I could have different, probably slightly, ending screens. Would I want to slog it all out again to see that right away? Kind of not. But I cared, enjoyed my experience and would be interested to see a sequel.

PS4 Pro. 20-30 hours 70% completion. Strong world and visuals, bland combat, but overall a solid play for RPG fans of games like the Witcher. The HDR visuals look about as good as a AAA game and the colors pop. The 16th century setting is well crafted; from the interiors of buildings to the towns and nature you visit. Early on I stopped to admire the great level of detail of ships in a harbor. This is around the time a large enemy was introduced and the excitement of the story in the setting hooked me to continue playing. It’s not unlike the Witcher in regards to dialogue with NPC’s and having a world to explore. The combat is simple - mash and dodge. There are options for ranged and magic builds, two-handed or single handed, blunt and blade. So there is a little bit of variety with combat and also armor options - all of which is used by adding stat points into options of strength, endurance, etc. The same stats allow the character to approach solutions to accessing areas for missions. And there is a third option to level up things like charisma or lock picking. There is variety but ultimately it’s not that deep when it comes to using practically; the most significant I’ve seen is used for dialogue options. The game doesn’t explain how to maximize your equipment and vendors to keep combat balanced. I found using a blacksmith to upgrade equipment in town helped. You’d want to outfit your party with the best options available and utilize these options. Any time you move to a new area, you get access to a vendor and your party memberships in between loading, which is a nice touch. And loading times are relatively short, which was a plus for me. I enjoyed the story and characters which has you balancing your reputation amongst factions. Story missions will give you A or B choices which will affect your reputation with companions or factions. Sometimes your choice may not be clear and for someone like me who was invested in the good-guy-everyone-likes-me character, this killed my momentum. I made a choice that later in a mission proved to be against what I wanted for my character and would have had me kill someone unjustly to suppress a truth. That’s when I decided to stop playing. I was too deep into the quest and there was no flexibility for the game to let me back out of the choice or go back to speak to a character. It didn’t make me hate the game but since I rented the title and I enjoyed my play up until then it was easy for me to stop playing because I was so annoyed at how it affected my investment in my character up to that point. The same kind of vagueness also happened with companions. I completed every companion quest and I wasn’t aware you could choose to romance one of them. One asked me to talk to them after I selected a choice I didn’t know locked me into romance. So it made my character gay with a fellow male companion, which wasn’t the issue, but it wasn’t the companion I would have chosen. The options menus are ok. Any time you switch to one of the two party members that can accompany you, it resets to the first option of choosing weapons and armor rather than leaving you on the item you had selected. So you’ll use the D-pad to switch, L1/R1 for menu, and R2/L2 for sub menu. It gets a little confusing and is cumbersome to have to use switching back and forth when equipping the party. For completionists, you’ll be jumping to the menu and clicking over to the map often instead of just having a map to pop up in one click. After going through several areas, I started to get a little bored opening up the map and running around to search through each area. Overall this is a very solid offering for a “mid-level” RPG and it’s good qualities almost elevate it to being very good. The meh combat and lack of flexibility show a lack of depth but it’s not bad. I was pleasantly surprised and admired what it offered.

Solid art style, story and environment, but easy deaths along with bad check pointing and load time hurts the momentum and flow. Recommended rental. The game’s story isn’t anything new - shadowy government and inter dimensional beings similar to Stranger Things - but it’s well executed. You’re along for the ride with the main antagonist’s inner dialogue and interacting with the environment. Story is also told using other media like human actors, puppet shows and audio recordings. It’s solid. I completed in maybe dozen hours more or less and reached a new game plus to continue. The single, semi-open world is also done well. You can interact with most objects around by shooting and destroying them. I get the sense that a good amount of effort in design and “under the hood” type stuff is going on to allow a stable world to interact with. But the design of the world - a secret government building isn’t that fun to traverse. You are rewarded for exploring, if you have the right key cards and abilities, and there are secrets and gun mods to pick up. But the bland office settings can be confusing and dull if you run back and forth too much; but you are rewarded. There are also puzzles with answers that aren’t instantly apparent, but I think it comes down to design choice and the game does not hold your hand or tell you exactly what to do, so I don’t count that as a negative. It asks the player to think. The biggest problem is that your character can take huge damage quickly. Sometimes you won’t see what’s outside of your field of vision and the controls can be a bit stiff to reacting quickly. So in a few hits you’ll be dead. And then you have to sit through a 20+ second load time. If you’re dying a bunch and having to repeat the process, it’s frustrating enough to consider not playing anymore and that’s the biggest knock. You can also fall to your death easily. In all, it’s a solid 6 other than the death check pointing and to a smaller extent, less than fluid controls. I wouldn’t be satisfied paying full price. It’s a good backlog game when you have no big games to play.

PS4 Pro, Singe Player - This is a very good game. I dither between 7-8 score because it offers up so much solid content that it is just shy **** game, with arguments to be made for or against. The shooting is fun. I never got tired of it. However the single player campaign leads you on a leash the entire time. Each quest involves a character directing you on the radio, which can stumble over itself. Once you pass an invisible line, the dialogue kicks in. You could already be in a dialogue and you can trigger another. Add on picking up Echo recordings, as I have done, and you can have 3 different dialogues stepping over each other when you’re not done with the first. (You can view/listen to all lore in the pause menu) The areas in the game and large and there are more than I reasonably expected, which I was overly pleased with as a consumer. But fast travel points are limited. So if you need to sell off a full inventory of guns, you will have to restart at the beginning at a vending machine to then run back to where you left off. Enemies will respawn in each area for you to grind or just run by - which is more likely. I can’t say it’s bad, just the design they went with. The bad is the NPC A.I. Anytime I had to follow a character, they slowly moved into place as though they are thinking hard about it. Sometimes the npc will get stuck and the game will need to be restarted. This happened about 3 separate times a good ways into the game. In all I had to restart my game no less than 5 times due to minor bugs. I didn’t touch multiplayer but still enjoyed the single player very much. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that multiplayer works and adds another layer of fun and engagement for the game. For the most part I enjoyed the writing. It’s a violent, slapstick world. Characters like Tina made me chuckle, while I found some like the character voiced by Chris Hardwick to be totally lame. So I spent a good 30 plus hours in the game without even starting new game plus. There are a lot of elements that I thought about critically as I played the game. Ultimately, the game offers up so much content that is done well, I couldn’t help but feel like it’s giving me my money’s worth.

PS4 Pro - I finally tapped out at after 5 hours due to the balance of difficulty hindering game progress. The world looks like a mobile game, very similar to the Elder Scrolls Blades. Load times take 20 seconds-plus. So moving back and forth for some quests began to feel like a chore and caused feelings of dread about simply wanting to grind outside of the main quest. Combat is the biggest issue because of difficulty. Every meaningful quest encounter is balanced to be barely passable and often felt due to the luck of draw. I died several times on any mid-level battle and then sat through another significant load time, stunned at how punishing it is. After trying new areas, progressing the main quest out of sheer luck, only to repeat the punishing process with no direction or tips from the game, I had to stop. I want to support InExile but I’d be lying if I said this game wasn’t trash.