Radrin

Negatives The game suffers from a huge number of technical issues. I experienced frequent crashes to desktop, NPC conversations getting stuck, enemies clipping into walls or freezing on ladders, as well as constant frame drops and stuttering. Overall, the game feels unstable and unpolished. It also relies heavily on what I'd call artificial playtime extension. There is an excessive amount of backtracking, with NPCs often sending you across the entire map only to immediately tell you to go speak to someone else and then return to them. Many interactions are unnecessarily slow as well. Climbing ladders, opening gates, and similar actions have long, clunky animations. One quest, for example, requires you to hand out water to farmers, forcing you to watch every single NPC go through the same lengthy drinking animation. The lack of an autosave option every few minutes only adds to the frustration by making repeated progress losses more likely. Combat is inconsistent depending on the enemy type. Non-humanoid enemies often have poorly telegraphed attacks with extremely fast, jerky animations, making it frustrating to learn their patterns or reliably dodge and parry. Humanoid enemies, on the other hand, are much better designed and provide genuinely enjoyable combat encounters.Finding NPCs can be a nightmare. Characters constantly change their locations, often with little indication of where they've gone, forcing you to spend large amounts of time running around simply trying to continue **** game also wastes a significant amount of the player's time through excessive travel and counterintuitive design decisions. One of the most useful early-game mounts, which dramatically reduces travel time, is locked behind selecting the exact same dialogue option three times in a row—even after your character has already rejected it. Expecting players to repeatedly choose an option that has already failed just to unlock such an important feature feels incredibly unintuitive. The three combat styles are also poorly balanced. Magic is by far the weakest. There is no practical way to replenish mana besides constantly smoking or drinking potions, spells require long channeling times, and they often deal less damage than simply swinging a sword or firing ranged weapons. On top of that, you can't truly play as a dedicated mage until Chapter 3, and even then you're limited to a handful of weak spells, with only a single offensive rune and a few scrolls available beforehand. The Positives Despite all of its flaws, the game absolutely nails the feeling of starting as a powerless nobody and gradually becoming a true powerhouse. The world, story, factions, characters, and overall atmosphere are engaging enough to keep pulling you back in. Enemy variety is excellent, the lighting is beautiful, the soundtrack is legendary, and the game refuses to hold the player's hand, making exploration and progression feel rewarding. Conclusion What hurts the most is just how much potential this game has. Beneath the technical problems and unnecessary time sinks lies an excellent RPG with an incredibly immersive world. I genuinely can't wait to play the Gothic 2 Remake—I just hope it launches in a much more polished state and trims down many of the mechanics that exist solely to waste the player's time.

Great idea but somewhat poorly executed. Having a sort of interactive movie experience where you can make decisions and shape the story sounds fantastic. Sometimes while watching a movie you can't help but think "what would I have done in this situation?". This game gives you that option, for the most part. Unfortunately, it's plagued with a very convoluted plot, plenty of eye rolling mediocre horror tropes, lots of cheap jump scares, some dodgy dialogue and poor scene setup where you can't help but wonder why characters are complaining about barely being able to fit through a massive window or a door with a tiny fence being locked... Also some character choices which you don't have control over really boggled my mind. (ex. in a dangerous situation, would you use a shotgun to bar a door, or a steel pipe?) The horror schlock I can excuse, it can be fun even if it's "bad" but one of my least favourite things about the game is the fact that it's an extremely slow walking simulator. I swear I spent 70% of the game taking leisurely strolls all over the place and slowly turning handles or inserting keys... Only about 30% of it was either interesting, had tension or people actually did important things and moved the plot along. I don't wanna include plot details but let's just say the game also takes the "No one's ever really gone" approach to things from Star Wars sequels to heart, which was a big nono for me. Also one of the plot twists was quite unbelievable as well just because of how scenes were set up again, in essence it was quite cool. It would just be way too hard to do all the things that character did to keep his plan going without getting discovered. The cast was great and the production design was quite good for the release date. I also thought the last few chapters of the game were significantly better than the rest, I was pleasantly surprised when certain enemies started appearing to spice things up and make sense of previous events. Hopefully the next installment can fix some of the frustrating things that held this otherwise great game down for me. I love the choice to play out a movie like this without too many inputs or mechanics like a God of War game for example. You can sit back, chill, grab some popcorn but still influence the character choices and get different outcomes.

Great exploration game, especially if you enjoy the sea. It has a beautiful art style and a pleasant mystery story that you have to discover by yourself like a marine detective :D Unfortunately the game could have used a lot more polish, as the controls for certain transportation options were very clunky, frequently getting stuck on edges. Fish and other more dangerous creatures would oftenly clip through solid objects, which also hurt the overall experience. The enemies were also quite derpy and once you get used to them it becomes trivial to avoid them. In the second half of the game, especially the end, it did really get excruciatingly dull when it came to gathering materials for the "final ingredients" and components in order to finish. Overall this is a fairly enjoyable game if you're a fan of diving and exploring the natural world, with a few caveats.

Ragnarok gripped me from the first second to the last, providing a sensational conclusion to the series. With great enemy variety and super diverse combat options even from the start, it felt even more fun to hack n slash monsters than in the original God of War (2018). The great cast of characters was a lot more fleshed out, involving them in different parts of the story, usually as team ups with varied combinations. This ended up being a fantastic idea in order to give each of them a lot of time interacting with each other and expressing their feelings or telling their stories, also further developing different relationships. Atreus was more mature and had a lot more to say in this one, he was no longer either a docile punching bag or a bratty rebel, Kratos himself grew a lot as well. The set pieces were spectacular and I've also enjoyed the enemy design a lot more, especially in terms of the bigger opponents, it felt like I could interact with them consistently and they were a lot more visible and transparent with their attacks. The acting performances were also amazing, I could really feel the emotion coming out of them during dramatic moments as well as being charmed or otherwise amused at the more comical scenes. If I had any criticism it would be with the way some fights are designed... in the sense that sometimes there seems to be a philosophy of "throw as much stuff at Kratos as possible in order to increase difficulty", which, combined with the enemies being able to instantly jump backwards on the opposite end of the entire arena and multiple enemies surrounding you or throwing moving balls of fire at you, it turns into a fiesta where you have to track a million things at once with a relatively limiting camera.

Scary, tense and immersive experience. The night really brings the best out of the game, not knowing whats around the corner make you feel very vulnerable especially when a chase can start at any moment and those monsters can really pack a punch. The story and dialogue were a bit lackluster and the game overall got repetitive quite fast though, felt a bit bloated especially since a lot of the characters and side stories didnt offer too much in terms of a compelling narrative, bar a few of them here and there. The parkour + hack n slash melee 1st person is a very nice combo. Overall a must play game for zombie horror enjoyers and a decent fun time for everyone else.

It's not necessarily worse than it's predecessor, although the night chases are much more relaxed and less tense since you can more or less be safe at all times either hiding or simply outrunning everything... Only the streets are dangerous at night since that's where howlers are and the chase levels go up too slowly, you can mess around for a long time before it even becomes a problem. The reason why I was so underwhelmed was because I expected the sequel to improve upon the original in significant ways and be more polished than it currently is. Technically, the game suffered a lot during my playthrough, my character kept getting stuck in walls after jumping, animations broke really frequently, my camera was spazzing out during "use" animations, my character would often times not grab obvious handholds and repeating the jump the same way would be fine the second time and so on... The monsters (rare/unique infected especially) are very repetitive, GRE anomalies are basically the same. This is the case with environments too, the same assets are used over and over to the point where big rooms and hubs look the exact same which gave me a bitter taste. The lore is quite decent, watching how people adapted to live in a world such as this, growing crops on the roofs, relying on solar energy, sleeping on shacks up high and constructing an environment that's easy to traverse by free running or using hooks/paragliders to be safe from the zombies below. One thing I didn't get is how people did not manage to make a relatively small city safe after 15 years of living in it, you would think with their high walls the only zombies left would be picked apart slowly until nothing was left... The parkour and combat system combined make for a decently fun experience once again, although I would have liked a "heavier" feeling parkour movement, it feels quite floaty. The combat can also feel somewhat unresponsive, a lot of animations have noticeable delay to them even if you're not using a 2h weapon. The control scheme was quite frustrating as well, there are a LOT of key combinations that do different things, one combo for example includes using caps lock... Also, the idea to have the jump key be THE SAME as the dodge key with directions made it feel really clunky as well. The very frequent cinematics that would take control off the player felt quite repetitive and annoying as well, my character would walk into a room and start looking around for 10 seconds before starting to speak with someone. I could look around myself you know. Conversations are extremely verbose and also include character actions and movement so if you decide to skip dialogue lines you can miss those. There must be 8 hrs worth of cutscenes like these in the game and I wasn't fond of them. The game also has a very old gen feel to it where friendly characters would run away from an infected with you but they would be unnaturally fast and would SLAM like 9 doors behind them, leaving you to open them again, once more, with a cinematic approach. Often times when in conversations with certain characters they would completely disappear afterwards, teleporting to another location as well. All of these felt quite jarring. The story and dialogue weren't anything to write home about but they were serviceable enough, the decisions you make do have an impact on who lives and who dies for example. There is something to say about obliterating a big group of zombies with a massive 2 handed weapon, body parts flying everywhere while maneuvering around like a mini spider man. The game certainly has its moments. Overall if you feel like hacking some zombies' limbs off while freerunning on rooftops, this will be an enjoyable experience for a while, until the repetitive monsters/zones/glitches start to annoy you.

Replayed it so many times, extremely good gameplay and story. The characters were well written with great voice acting, the world building and universe was super compelling so I'd always want to learn more about it. The story was full of plot twists, sacrifices and fairly complex war situations. The animations for units and buildings were inventive and really fun to look at as well as the unique designs for each race. The soundtrack was a banger and it really fit each faction like a glove. Every faction was unique in philosophy, military strategy and had relatable characters that had me fully invested in them, including the ones you would normally consider "evil". Messed around in scenario mode for hours on end, which offered a great deal of extra gameplay options and experimentation. Incredibly fun. Modded custom game modes added a lot as well to the game. Hard to find weak points, this game was a masterpiece. One of the few games ever made that I can unironically consider to be perfect. The multiplayer especially, this game has given birth to E-Sports in Korea, was played for well over 2 decades and it only had ONE big balance patch in ’99 and a small one in 2001. In 20 **** years. New strategies and counters to popular ones were found even after a decade of playing. CONS: Small issues like pathing for some units Arguably the higher focus on micro management due to unit control limitations can be seen as tedious, separating it from other RTS's at the time

Beautiful dystopian underwater city with elements that stuck with me 16 years later: the story, the unique setting, THE SOUND DESIGN, the big daddies, little sisters and the psychos inhabiting the city and so on... The atmosphere in this game was so encompassing, I never felt it with any other game. Offered a lot of gameplay options and freedom of how to approach certain scenarios in the game. It also had a very cool twist. Immersion is the key word for this game.

A game with a very unique premise which made me very excited to explore its world and uncover its secrets. PROS: - Incredibly ambitious world and unique setting/premise - Excellent gameplay; fun, engaging and diverse combat scenarios with freedom of approach - Strong story and lore - Excellent presentation and production value - Great enemy variety and design - One of the better mystery plots out there - Beautiful visuals - Satisfying environmental exploration - Fantastic sounds - Smart robot A.I. CONS: - Technical issues/limitations such as texture pop-in, several assets flailing and spazzing around in each scene, game crashes and micro stutters etc. (possibly only PC port problems) - Iffy facial animations - Camera constantly changes position from center to left/right and also changes zoom level - Characters weren't as fleshed out, interesting, memorable and relatable as I would've liked - Moving around in the game world is sometimes difficult and clunky - Underwhelming human A.I. - Cumbersome UI/inventory

A very interesting concept which offers an overall satisfying and unique gaming experience, with a few gameplay annoyances that bothered me. You are thrust into the solar system as an explorer, with space exploration being the only objective of the game. Within your journey, you unravel more and more of the mystery present throughout the worlds you discover, usually done through written accounts. The lore and story are very rich and compelling and it is driven entirely through your own curiosity, piecing together the events past. Knowledge is also what will almost always help you get past obstacles and understand the mechanics of some natural or artificial elements. I would recommend everyone to at least try playing this once as it is such a unique and wonderful gaming experience. All of that being said, the technical performance on the PS5 was very disappointing, the game not being able to keep a steady 60 fps. There were very frequent fps drops and lots of stuttering for me. The game also feels like it's not respecting your time, I've found myself just waiting for certain world states to happen for me to progress to where I wanted to be, or dying in ways where it wasn't really my fault which all prompted a lot of backtracking, and more waiting, which was quite frustrating. Requiring key items that you had no business of having once you've found your way into important areas through incredibly confusing mazes, would also require backtracking. Missing very tiny time windows in order to solve some puzzles would also make it so you'd want to restart, and thus, wait and waste more time. All of these issues and more will bother people in different ways, or not at all, so if you can get past them there is definitely a lot of good stuff to uncover if you like this type of game.

This game offers a fantastic game flow where you gotta keep your momentum going, shotgun blasting demons heads off or brutally executing them for extra goodies. The super fast paced adrenaline fueled rampage alongside the superb and really fitting music blasting in your ears makes up for a great gameplay experience if you're into this kind of FPS. The game also runs great, it's incredibly well optimized. I'd also like to add that I love the idea of demons being scared of the protagonist, that's a very nice twist on the genre. The story is quite bare bones and characters get very little in terms of development, but there is a bit of humour in there to spice things up. The arenas can make the game feel a bit less immersive and more "gamey" as well. Overall a great time if you like the genre.

- Very well-written, in-depth characters and nuanced interpersonal relationships; - Great visuals for a huge open world game; - Fantastic music; - intricate story with some great plot twists and moral dilemmas; - Exploration/sidequest with a heavy focus on dialogue and narrative hooks which is rare to see in most open world rpg's since they're riddled with standard fetch/kill quests without anything interesting attached to them; - Stellar voice acting alongside natural, realistic and witty dialogue; - Compelling lore to explore; - impactful decisions that change the in-game world and story; - Great world design that hooks you into exploration; Absolutely tear inducing after I realized it was over, like finishing a really amazing book, movie or tv series. One of the greatest strengths of this game, besides the characters, is how they introduce diverse, (not copy pasted) carefully written narrative and story into side quests. The vast majority of content in this game feels unique and worth exploring even without any material gain, because while you might find 2 quests that involve “finding someone” which introduces you into the same core gameplay loop of searching for clues that lead to your objective and fighting/talking your way into completing it, one of the quests might involve trolls that kidnapped a shoe maker because they have an obsessive love for shoes and the other could involve a sweet old couple that, with further investigation, you might find, are cannibals that feed off of live people or corpses, and in both situations you are given options to decide what YOUR version of Geralt would do, with valid reasons for each choice available. The game could have benefitted from harder enemies and better, more diverse and impactful loot.(weapons and armors mainly.) As it stands there is no reason to use anything other than the witcher school armor/weapon sets since they're way better than anything else and it's a bummer because the weapon and armor design is really good in this game, so it would be nice to have some incentive to use other equipment. While the gameplay and animations are extremely smooth, playing Geralt, a witcher, might feel restrictive in terms of gameplay options, although I didn’t mind this compromise in favor of immersion. While the graphics were amazing for a game this size, the grass/plants/tree didn’t have volumetric textures. There is an argument to be made to shorten the main story for the base game as it can overstay its welcome at times, although most parts were very compelling. Best case would probably be taking parts of the main story and making them side content since they're still really good so cutting them completely from the game would be a disservice. It's worth mentioning that this game is very dialogue based and it goes usually goes into detail without cutting any corners so it will involve A LOT of reading, if you prefer gameplay that revolves around a lot of action instead then this might not be the ideal choice for you.

The game has decent rpg mechanics, you can choose a lot of different play styles and they're all viable and your decisions have a real impact on the narrative. There isn't a LOT of enemy variety but the ones you face are quite well designed, they're different enough and have their own strengths and weaknesses. That being said, the game lacked any challenging content on any of the builds I have tried on the hard difficulty (full melee, sneak, guns blazing), the enemy A.I. is easy to overcome and the combat stats that you are able to get even early on end up overpowering them quite easily. Supernova difficulty makes you pay more attention in managing your consumables and taking certain fights more carefully because you can't save but in the end the unique mechanics of the difficulty make the game more annoying rather than challenging. Your companions have their own quest which is usually pretty good in terms of offering them character development but I wish they got more than just that. The main story is quite short but it does offer different endings due to its branching narratives, although to be perfectly honest I've only found a handful of decisions to be somewhat hard to make due to their morally grey characteristics. Unless you're roleplaying an overtly evil character without any moral consideration then it's pretty obvious what you would choose to do most of the time. It's worth mentioning that there are a few side quests and areas that contain some endearing or humorous stories, especially if you bother reading messages on terminals as well for more context. I do wish they had more of those and cut back on some of the standard fetch/kill quests. The dialogue is witty and creative most of the time. and the voice acting is quite good. The sounds, music and graphics don't stand out in terms of overall quality but the world they've crafted is brimming with color and style. The character models and face animations could benefit from more polish. There are some unique science weapons that can make the combat a lot more fun so I'd definitely recommend trying to find them. Overall, it's an enjoyable game especially if you like the setting and premise.