divinewakefield

Pros: Excellent connections and performance: Online stability is phenomenal, and performance on the PS5 is rock solid even during chaotic team fights. Generous monetization: The amount of free currency given out is surprisingly respectful for a modern live-service game. Strong content support: The first year delivered substantial new content, including standout modes like my favorite being the Marvel Zombies-inspired horde mode tied to the Disney+ series. Outstanding art style: The blend of western comic and eastern anime aesthetics captures the Marvel characters beautifully and feels unique. Issues: Developer favoritism: Certain characters (including major Marvel icons) receive noticeably less attention in balance updates and cosmetics. This favoritism extends to roles, with Duelists and Supports favored over Tanks, contributing to rather stale metas and discouraging tank players. Role imbalance: The roster heavily favors Duelists (25) over Vanguards (13) and Strategists (10), making team composition harder to balance and encouraging selfish DPS picks. Severe community toxicity: Frequent rage quitting, 5v6 matches, and unchecked racist/sexist/homophobic remarks demand stricter penalties and moderation. Power creep: Newly released characters often overshadow older ones, sometimes rendering them nearly useless. This is unacceptable. Terrible matchmaking: The system frequently creates wildly uneven matches, making outcomes feel artificial. Despite developer claims that it isn’t engagement-based matchmaking, the lack of transparency fuels skepticism and has driven many players away.

Dynasty Warriors Origins is a fresh take on the series that was definitely needed. Pros: - The gameplay is the best in the entire series, and feels like a phenomenal AAA action game experience. The different weapons here encourage different playstyles, the use of your own personal troops to be strategically used within battle, the dynamic camera that captures perspective in game that makes everything look more intense and super engaging, and the different abilities and combos you can do all make this an addicting action game that is a must-play for action game fans. - Graphics are very good, which greatly distinguishes it from previous entries in the series - Performance was excellent and that is something worth highlighting considering the overwhelming amount of enemies, allies, and action present in large-scale battles, which is really impressive. - The story I am a bit mixed on (leaning more positively with it though) as I liked what they have done with particular revamps of known Dynasty Warriors characters like Zhang jiao and Dong Zhuo making them far more interesting than they were previously throughout the series. Issues: - I am not much of a fan of the main character’s (MC) inclusion here. Having him only speak a little in-game during battles and not speak at all during story cut scenes seemed pretty dated of a trope for RPG games, and in some ways broke the immersion that I had in the story. - The dialogue lines that the player can choose for the MC does not seem to lead to different scenarios, outcomes, or even relationship statuses with other characters, which makes having the player choose a particular line seem meaningless. - The lack of customization options for the MC is almost non-existent. If you are going to have a MC that is not any other characters that are known throughout the series, and not allow the player to create their own characters for a RPG game like this, you should at the very least lean on allowing players to have far more customizable options for the MC. This also helps with exploring more interesting ideas that are a staple for many action RPGs like acquiring armor with stats, and contributing to builds, which also seems to not be emphasized in this game. - There is an overall lack of replayability for the game. When done all the challenges, 3 stories, and hypotheticals are done there is not really much else substantial to do. This game definitely needed some sort of endgame mode (similar to those given previously in the series) to keep players active and engaged with the game. This is unfortunate because since this game is so fun to play, it **** that when I beat everything there is nothing else substantial to do to give me an excuse to keep playing.

Overall a great first step for making a 16 bit major horror movie ip game. The games' music captures the Halloween theme very well with good sound design overall. The references to the Halloween 1978 movie are cool and well done. The game is fun but challenging, which is great. The game has some interesting mechanics like the dimension transfer mechanic (going back and forth from real world to the hellish dimension), which is pretty well done. The game could do better on replayability and rewards - being that collectibles do not earn the most interesting or interactive of rewards. The responsiveness of controls, especially the regular melee feels delayed often times, which may increase unnecessary frustration for the player. Also the original retail price at $24.99 seems too expensive for this game due to its relatively short length and lack of significant replayability.