Terrik

Phoenix Wright is back! The series has definitely made a step in the right direction. Great music, animation and humor. Rest assured, you'll get your money's worth

Here's my review of evolve after about 10 hours or so playing: First, my score is 8/10, but like others, I wish to balance out the odd ratings this game is getting. First off, the monster is everything I hoped it would be. You start off weak, and stealth is the name of the game. I didn't really truly appreciate how to play a monster until I played a hunter and saw just how they track the beast. Sneak past the birds (so you don't scare them and give away your position) and make sure you keep your distance as you feed. It's a real rush if the hunters corner you while you're still at evolve level one because, unless you're very good, you aren't going to survive a straight up brawl with them. I lost several matches as the monster initially because I hadn't figured out the balance between stealth, distance and when to strike. Of course, one way to offset this initial weakness is putting 3 points into a single skill in the beginning to give yourself a bit of oomph if you DO get into some trouble. You definitely feel the power as you evolve. By the time you hit level 3, you feel like you're some sort of Kaiju superbeast. Speaking of evolving up: If you play as the monster, you're given 3 skill points to divide into 4 skills. Each time you evolve you're given an addition 3 points to put into these skills. In order to unlock perks and other monsters, you need to fulfill certain skill requirements. For example, in order to unlock the next monster, the Kraken, I had to do X amount of damage with Flame breath, charge, smash and rock throw over the course of several matches. It actually didn't take that long and I expected far worse. The controls, at least on the PS4 seem fluid and combat is pretty easy to control. I guess my only gripe is that I wish you could climb up cliffs that serve as the "wall" of the level because sometimes as I was running for my life, i tried to climb up a cliff that I thought was climbable only smack into it Wile E. Coyote style---but this is a minor gripe. The monsters play quite differently as well. I only have 2 of the 3 unlocked, but there definitely is a big difference between say, the Goliath and the Kraken. With the Goliath, I feel like I'm probably as close as I'm going to get to playing a Tyranid Carnifex or an Ultralisk. You're beefy, you pack a punch and little is as satisfying as charging through a group of hapless hunters and then throwing a rock on them. The Kraken on the other hand can fly, is great at escaping and does insane amounts of AOE damage. I'm not sure which one I like better at this point--I switch out between them. All that being said, playing as the hunters is a bit of a yawn for me. While there are certain aspects that I like--the tracking is pretty cool. You can follow monster footsteps, you get alerted to carrion birds to help track the monster's position and the actual fighting with the monster is intense, but it just doesn't live up the amount of fun that I have playing the monster itself. I do get the feeling that playing with friends as the hunters is probably a **** ton of fun, because teamwork is everything. I just played a game where I nearly took out the team as a level one monster because they were morons and split up. I've won the last 5 matches as a monster without evolving past level 2 (which sets you even with the hunters in terms of power--level 3 is where you start exceeding what they can do) because of the lack of coordination between hunters. That being said, I expect that to get better once people have a bit more play time with the game. Is it worth $60? Eh, hard to say. Maybe? I'll probably side on the "no" side, but I'm not going to deny that the game, at least the as the monster delivers on the fun. If I didn't have to study, I'd spend the rest of the day playing it. The DLC now is pretty much all cosmetic and really shouldn't detract you from buying the game. TLDR: 8/10 for fantastic monster combat, playing as hunters is a bit "meh"