Endrance

Graphics: 10/10. Absolutely gorgeous. Combat: 8/10. It's no Sekiro, but the sword combat is still well done, especially the duels. Open World: 8/10. It does nothing new, but everything old right. -2 for missing innovation. Story: 7/10. It's rather "realistic", kind of has the feel of seeing an inaccurate history enterainment action movie. The characters are kinda weird and the dialogue often awkward. Although I like japanese culture or it might just be me, but this feels no better than the average japanese B movie. I couldn't really bring myself to care much about any character, because their backstories are told very superficially. I actually agree with the 8.3 average critics review this time. The massive amount of 10/10s are very much over the top from my point of view. It's an enjoyable game that has no real weakness, but no game that doesn't innovate at all should ever get a 100% rating imo. Ghost of Tsushima really does the same old AC/Witcher formula with a Samurai era japanese setting. It does it really well, no doubt. No GOTY material for me though. That currently goes to Hades for me on PC and FF7R on PS4 unless Cyberpunk 2077 holds up to the hype.

I think this game captured the original charme of the games from the early 2000s pretty well. Just the nano-fauna and how they can't be locked on are pretty annoying, especially when you're using slow weapons. Solid though.

Gameplay: 8 The gameplay feels rather smooth and there are a reasonable amount of build archetypes that makes theorycrafting complex enough to be enjoyable, but not so complex that one is lost without extensive guides. So if you compare it to PoE and D3 (which are the two games most people know), it's somewhere in the middle in terms of complexity. For my taste the mob density is still too low after release and the game feels kind of slow as a result (and because of long cooldowns and generally slow movement), which is a -2 points in gameplay for me. If gameplay is all you care about, this game might be worth looking into for you. Story: 3 If you've played MMOARPGs before, this feels pretty much exactly as shallow and generic. If I could just skip the story altogether, I'd do it. Music: 5 I usually play with my own music on anyway, but to me the Wolcen soundtrack doesn't create an atmosphere that fits the areas very well. It's not terrible by any means, but I'd rather play with it off. Graphics: 6 I personally don't like most of the level designs, although objectively speaking the game looks pretty solid. Probably a tad better than PoE and D3, but that shouldn't be too hard considering those games are both pretty old. Graphics are personal preference for the most part anyway and I can totally see if some people would give it an 8 here. I purposely took the server issues aside, as the game was playable offline. I also didn't include all the bugs in this review, as most of those tend to be fixed within the first week. Overall I don't think the game is worth it's price tag in it's current state. It has potential (other than the storymode) to become one of the big games of the genre, but right now I'd place it somewhere on low average. I'd give it a 5.5, but am rounding it up to a 6. Again though, if gameplay is all/most you care about it might be worth trying.