Beautiful world, but strangely empty. The last few days I have been running around the map looking for things to do, and finding nothing apart from history notes and locations to paint. The contracts are all the same, literally. And the combat is dull and unbalanced. I find it super hard to parry, but dodging is super easy. Some very strange game mechanics. It seems to be mostly a sandbox focused on building and decorating your hideout. Most of the loot is items to place in your hideout to add pets, bushes and gardens and stuff. Game borrows heavy from Ghost of Tsushima, while adding their own touch. While built on a strong foundation, the developers clearly didn't know what to do or how to finish it once the world was built. The changing of the seasons is really cool though.
A grand, wild adventure! In terms of game design there are definitely stronger & weaker points, same with the worldbuilding. I got a bit tired of the game 2/3 through, but overall it was quite enjoyable. And the Norse setting and the mythology was definitely very cool. There was more to do after I finished the main story, but it just wasn't engaging enough for me to grind through the rest. I was glad to finish it and move on to something else.
This game is difficult for all the wrong reasons. The controls are unconventional and extremely clunky. Long animations make any mistake very punishing, and key actions require synchronized dual controls. If one is off, a different action is performed. Mastering the game should not involve spending many hours working around flaws in the game design.
Wow, this game is from 2018? It looks and plays like a game from the early 2000s. The graphics are terrible, the interface is terrible, and the gameplay is the worst I have *ever* played. Glad I tried this before spending money on Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
Not the best uncharted game. The story is predictable, full of cliches and tropes. Gameplay is very basic. Some great scenery, but it's a very short story. Still, it's worth a quick playthrough.
It's amazingly creative, with beautiful visuals, stunning scenery and an intriguing story. It's also boring. There game basically relies on one single mechanic. You have to press the dodge (or parry) button at the exactly right moment, over and over - or get creamed. That is it! That is literally the ENTIRE game. There is very little story, which is also reaaaally slow to reveal itself. It's basically a 3D platformer with fight after fight after fight, and they are basically all the same. OMG. 16 hours in and I gave up. Also, the confusing skill trees and and overabundance of very similar abilities that you can equip and learn just add unnecessary complexity without actually doing much to aid you in the game. And while the visuals are stunning and very creative, the character movement is far from fluid and the rendering leaves much to be desired. Especially the cut-scenes, with compression artifacts and blocked up colors. I blame the Unreal 5 engine. It feels like a 10-15 year old game. Bioshock Infinite comes to mind.
Probably the best Assassin's Creed game since Odyssey. The execution and the historical backdrop & research is top-notch. Assassin's Creed is by far the most fun way to learn about history. Game is not a bloated mess like Valhalla (easily my least favorite Assassin's Creed game), but a satisfying 40+ hours. The gameplay is a little simplistic, the controls a little finicky, and the polish a little bit missing in some places, and some bugs here and there I wish they would fish. But overall this is a solid effort. Ubisoft in general unfairly gets a bad rap IMO. Having played a bunch of highly rated but ultimately mediocre games lately that I didn't bother to finish, Assassin's Creed Mirage is a breath of fresh air. Sure, it's a tried and true formula, but the quality and the entertainment is there. Looking forward to try Assassin's Creed: Shadows next.
Tedious turn-based combat. Each battle takes forever. And the difficulty skyrockets. Make one mistake. Guess what, you are replaying the whole 30 minute battle. Over and over. Who has time for this? I was expecting more RPG, more story, more history. This is just a tedious turn-based strategy game, of which there are many, many, better.
Starts off really strong with a top notch story and interesting world-building, but then quickly tapers off into tedious mediocrity. I am nine hours in and about to give up. This is my 4th FF game, and I only ever liked one (FF7 Remake). I doubt I will ever buy another one.
While I loved the first installment of the Final Fantasy VII remake, this second installment is really lame. It is childish and cartoonish, with Yakuza-style exaggerated two-dimensional comical characters, lame MMORPG-style game mechanics, and a boring empty open world. I completed chapter one, which I didn't find interesting at all. Now I am on chapter two, and the game is not getting any better. The best part so far is the Queen's Blood card game, which I found surprisingly enjoyable (I never tend to care for these in-game card or dice games). I am really regretting my purchase.
It's all right. Not the most engaging game I have played. At least not so far (25 hours in). Also, the game is unstable. It crashes, or the framerate crawls to a halt. There is also stuttering and it will briefly hang from time to time. Performance and stability could definitely be better. Hopefully this will be fixed over time. I can't really recommend buying the game right now.
This is pretty much an Assassin's Creed clone, except it's set in Japan and you are some kind of Samurai-Ninja hybrid. Story and side quests are for the most part excellent. Graphics are garish, syrup-y overly eye-candy-ish, but there is admittedly some stunning scenery, and the wind effect is neat. There is some great game design here, and the combat is pretty good. A much higher challenge than Assassin's Creed (I played on hard). One flaw: the game is downright brutal in the beginning, and gets easier as you level up, to the point where you can mow down most enemies by the end. I must have died 50+ times in each of the first few duels. The biggest flaw with this game is it's mind-numbingly repetitive outside the main and side quests. There are like five random encounters that endlessly repeat, as well as countless foxes to run after and random Haikus to compose. I almost gave up mid-game as it got so boring. Clearing the fog from the map gets really tedious, too. Even with a fully upgraded traveler's garb. They could have easily doubled the discovery circle in size. Overall it's a good game. Probably a classic. But I am not in a hurry to buy the sequel, as this was a slog to finish (straightforward to get Platinum though.)
For a 3D point-and-click adventure with some action elements the hardware requirements are outrageous. I have a GTX 3060 laptop, and the game is unplayable because 8GB of VRAM is a hard requirement (GPU comes with 6GB). Otherwise the game runs fine, 60 FPS on low, 40 FPS on medium @ 1080p. I gave up after several crashed due to OOM. (Played this on XBox subscription.) Game seems fun. A mix of animated movie and point-and-click game with some basic hand-to-hand combat mixed in. IMO they should have toned down the combat and focused more on quests and puzzles. Indy is not an action movie star. He is an adventurer. And the game should reflect that. This is not supposed to be Assassin's Creed, but feels like it sometimes with all the stealth kills and sneaking around. I may give this another try on PS5 when it's on sale.
This game has been unfairly maligned I feel. I almost didn't buy it because of the reviews, but am glad I did. The game is much better than other Ubisoft efforts I have played. The Assassin's Creed games are rightly considered mediocre, but this game is far better than Valhalla, which I played recently. I had a blast from start to finish, and feel the game ended too soon. I wanted more! The main drawback of this game is that it is somewhat buggy. Nothing major, but you do encounter glitches from time to time. Hopefully Ubisoft will keep polishing it. The game is also marred by all the woke propaganda nonsense.
Probably the most over-rated game for PS4/PS5. Childish and cartoonish with garish graphics, an infantile story, simplistic combat, long uninspired dialogs, mediocre voice acting, and lots of tedious resource harvesting, this game is average in pretty much every way. I am 15 hours in now, and I am about to switch over to something else and more entertaining.
I would consider this game as well as the first installment to be "must have" games for the PS5. It's an incredible game with a really solid story. It was made during the woke era and thus did not escape unscathed, but that is just a minor detraction really. The game can serve as a historical reminder. Graphics and gameplay are really top notch. There are however two drawbacks worth mentioning: 1) The navigation menu is almost unusable because the highlighted menu item is practically visible. It shows up as slightly brighter white text, and is almost impossible to see on my Samsung TV. 2) There are numerous checkpoints in the game from where you cannot return to previous areas, and these are completely unmarked. So I find myself missing content multiple times because I would inadvertently advance the game before fully exploring an area. This makes it hard to complete the achievements and fully enhance your character and weapons. Overall, this is a really solid effort, and easily on of the very best games available for PS5.
Probably the most amazing game world I have ever seen. The open world is both huge and varied. And the attention paid to historical details is awesome.This game should have been a lot of fun. **** game world is soulless. The main quest is simply terrible - a basic hit list to complete. Some of the side quests are somewhat interesting, but there is little variety. It's basically all about killing scores and scores of people. There is little enemy variety, and strategy & tactics are simple. The game engine is very limited in what it allows you to do, so everything becomes repetitive. There is little item variety, so looting is largely pointless, as is discovery and exploration.There is this huge open world begging to be filled with content. And the world itself has a lot of variety. But what you can do in this world does not, and large parts of the map are pretty much empty.Midway through the game I really just wanted it to end, but I played on just in order to finish it and move on to other games.
What exactly is this game? And what is the point of it? Clearly made during the woke/DEI era, it seems historically inaccurate, and the assassin theme is a really bad fit. It's set in the Viking era. It starts off in Norway, promising enough... and then quickly pivots to.... England? So you are a Viking assassin in England, building a settlement and forging alliances? It doesn't make a lot of sense, and is a huge missed opportunity in my view, ignoring all the lore and history from Scandinavia during that time. And then there is Laila's jarring story and the stupid conflict between the hidden and ancient ones, or whatever they are. The main story is interesting enough, if repetitive (forge alliance after alliance) but that's also it. There are no side quests apart from childish (literally) "world events". I thought Origins was cool (if boring) due to the historic aspects, and loved Odyssey, which I completed to platinum, but Valhalla doesn't hold my interest in nearly the same way. It just doesn't feel historically accurate all. Plus, let's face it, England in the year 1,000 isn't really the most captivating historical period. The game basically endless, in the sense that you are going to run out of patience playing this game long before you run out of things to do. The game is average in pretty much every way, and doesn't excel at anything, with silly mechanics, poor combat, janky controls, confusing skill trees and no loot to speak of. Ultimately it boils down to solving an endless array of puzzles, interspersed with very basic and unchallenging battles. Ultimately, the game doesn't have a strong idea of what it wants to achieve. It's a mish-mash of half-baked ideas cobbled together into one huge game. This is easily the worst game in the revamped Assassin's Creed trilogy, and has made me very wary of buying future games.
It's Tomb Raider in Space! I just started playing, but so far the gameplay is super similar to the Tomb Raider games, except you have a light saber instead ****. The world and the graphics are stunning. Fantastic even. Everything looks super cool, and truly feels like the Star Wars universe. Controls are super janky though. My characters moves in fits and spurts and looks incredibly artificial doing it. It's been a while since I have encountered such bad animations. Character animations in cut scenes are not much better. But so far the game is pretty fun, and the story and writing is pretty good. We'll see how it develops.
Possibly the most overrated game of all time? I just started playing, and so far the writing is decidedly amateurish. This could have been written by my friendly local DM in his basement. Graphics are decidedly subpar. Characters look like plastic figures, and the scenery and rendering is way below other AAA titles. The game is also buggy, even years after release and many patches later. Nothing game breaking so far, but I already encountered quite a few glitches.
Probably the game with the very worst mechanics that I have ever played. Hold a bow string for more than five seconds? You are now exhausted and need to eat to recover. Fleeing from an enemy? They will still hit you with a revolver at 300 paces with pin-point accuracy. The janky save game and mission start/stop mechanic inherited from GTA also work very poorly in this game. Slow and boring, this game takes forever to get into, and the poor mechanics of the game are a constant irritant.
Overrated game in my view. The world building of Fallout is pretty amazing, but the execution of this game is lackluster. While moving Fallout to a full 3D world was amazing at the time, the main story is thin gruel, and the side quests are largely unengaging. Although the world is massive, it's grey, bleak and boring. IMO this game has not aged well. Bethesda's 3D modeling skills were never great, which makes the game age that more rapidly. There is little variety. You pick up the same ubiquitous junk, fight the same few enemies (super mutants, raiders, ghouls). The entire landscape looks the same. A much better execution IMO was Fallout New Vegas. That was a partnership well worth repeating.
This has aged poorly in my view. Poor graphics aside due to the age, the story, dialog and role-play aspects are super-thin, and combat and exploration is cumbersome and boring. I only played until I reached the Hub, then I gave up. I didn't have a single memorable moment so far. The best aspect of the game is the atmospheric music, which must have been groundbreaking at the time. Apart from that, it lacks all the character and atmosphere of the later games. I didn't feel like I was in a post-apocalyptic dystopian world. More like the deserted landscape of the American West.
This game is pretty awesome. It's the only city planner type game that I have the patience to play at length. It's consistently challenging, and constantly engaging with fun events, challenges and a mystery storyline. The green planet expansion is a very worthwhile addition, and adds a whole new dimension to the game. That said, a few of the mechanics are frustrating and buggy. For example, passages between domes are hard to place, hard to understand and challenging to manage. And resource management between depots seems buggy. But those are minor detractions from an otherwise excellent game.
This hasn't aged well. The 3D graphics are really dated. The gameplay mechanics are really bad. I spent a lot of the in-game time bashing open chests and containers. You basically obtain all the equipment you need for your character in the first chapter. After that, loot is pretty much worthless. The in-game economy is completely unbalanced. I acquired a dragon's hoard of hundreds of thousands of gold coins by the third chapter. Most fights are completely trivial. The story is OK, but it's slow going. I gave up before the end of the 3rd chapter. I know this game is supposed to be huge, but there are so many better games out there.
A much better game than Origins in every respect. While I found Origins boring and tedious, Odyssey has me hooked. The game world is huge and there is tons to do. The main quest is engaging, as are many of the side quests. The historic setting is interesting as well. I really enjoyed this game and it's hard to see how Ubisoft could have done anything better.
A great expansion! Easily equal to the best parts of the base game, and really lifts the game up. I really enjoyed playing this, and highly recommend getting this expansion if you are a fan of the base game.
This is the best edition of The Outer Worlds. The game with both expansions offer close to 100 hours of gameplay, most of it fun. The game runs great on PS5. I used the quality 30 fps mode and never had any issues with the graphics or the framerate. I especially enjoyed the Peril on Gorgon expansion. If that's the direction Obsidian is heading with Outer Worlds 2, the game is in good hands! The game is clearly inspired by both Fallout and Bioshock. But it fails to achieve the greatness of those games. As a FPS shooter it is really mediocre. The gunplay is boring and unchallenging (I played on "hard")'. An as an RPG it lacks the exploration and discovery aspects of Fallout, and also suffers from worse mechanics and less than stellar writing. Still, the story and writing is the strong point of The Outer Worlds. It's not Obsidian's best effort, but better than most other games out there. Sometimes ham-fisted, sometimes cringe-worthy, and frequently excessively satirical, it is still a good effort. Apart from the over-the-top satire, the graphical style is also over-the-top, with garish and loud colors. Especially the outdoor environment. Indoor scenes are more refined. The outdoor environment is definitely one of the game's weak points. There isn't much to explore and discover, and the world is filled with the same three kinds of monsters in a few variations. The mid-game world of Monarch is easily the low point of the game. It was a bit of a slog to get through, with a confusing map without logical progression, which tended to mangle and confuse the story. The latest 1.2 patch caused a bunch of issues, and I experienced frequent crashed after I upgraded. I highly recommend waiting for a more stable release before playing this. I don't think I would pay full price for this, but it's worth picking up if there is a sale.
One of the best adventure games ever made. The size and scope of this game is amazing, and the world is so rich and detailed. I played it on PC before, now replaying it on PS5, and it's just as good if not better the second time around. The game is not perfect. Crashes are frequent on PS5, the skill system doesn't add much, with many useless skills, and most of the loot is trash. And there are some bugs here and there. The main reason to play this game is to experience the great story and immerse yourself in the world of the Witcher. And here the game really shines. As good as the main story is, many of the side quests are even better! There is just a ton to do in this game, and it's almost all engaging and fun. A true joy to play and a must-own for the PS5.
Probably the most amazing game world I have ever seen. The open world is both huge and varied. And the attention paid to historical details is awesome. This game should have been a lot of fun. But.... The game world is soulless. The main quest is simply terrible - a basic hit list to complete. Some of the side quests are somewhat interesting, but there is little variety. It's basically all about killing scores and scores of people. There is little enemy variety, and strategy & tactics are simple. The game engine is very limited in what it allows you to do, so everything becomes repetitive. There is little item variety, so looting is largely pointless, as is discovery and exploration. There is this huge open world begging to be filled with content. And the world itself has a lot of variety. But what you can do in this world does not, and large parts of the map are pretty much empty. Midway through the game I really just wanted it to end, but I played on just in order to finish it and move on to other games.
A masterpiece. It's worth buying a PlayStation just to play this game. And this game belongs on your shelf if you already have one. This is an exceptionally well-crafted game. Fantastic story, great characters, stunning graphics, amazing score, cool combat system and engaging gameplay. I have played dozens of games now on my PS5, and this is my favorite so far. I was hooked from the first minute, and can't wait for the prequel/sequels. And I am not even a big Final Fantasy fan. I played FF XV also and was did not care for it very much.
It's OK. The main story is decent, if a little sappy and very unbelievable, although the cutscenes are endless. The side quests did not grab me. The game can be very annoying at times. Sometimes it gives you no (or very vague) pointers on where to go and what to do next. Combat is both simple and overwhelming, There are far too many skill choices and combos, most of which only trigger in special conditions and are hard to remember. I found it very confusing. In the end it doesn't matter, as the game is not hard, but many fights are very repetitive and drag on forever and ever. Fighting gunmen in particular is super annoying, as they constantly knock you down over and over. The combat would make a lot more sense if guns and blades were left out. But no, you, the lone ex-Yakuza, fight hordes of bad guys who slash and gun you down repeatedly - yet you take little damage. Even the Terminator was easier to kill. Also, the endless fights with Majima get old fast. I made it to the end, but was glad when it was over. This is the third Yakuza game I tried. I found them all flawed. I won't try to play another one,
Lame game. Graphics are very dated. Super slow load times on PS5 (Why? How?). Really clunky UI. There is very little voice acting or animations. Lots of subtitle text reading. Side quests require you to memorize words and phrases. You need pen and paper to play this game, and write down answers. I gave up when I was asked to TYPE a 20-character password phrase (in Japanese of course). Main story was OK for as far as I got... it didn't grab me in any way. It was all very cliche, and not very believable. It's also a lonely game. You run around by yourself and do solo things, like playing video games within the video game, and there are few meaningful interactions with NPCs.
This is the first JRPG I have played. It's kind if cool. Kind of like a Manga in video game form. The world is massive, and the graphics are top notch. It's all very creative, including the various animals and monsters. The main story is fairly good, if somewhat confusing. I didn't quite understand what was going on half the time. Again, kind of like a Manga. Combat is confusing, and there are few tutorials to explain what the stats mean, the various combat techniques etc. There is very little gear in the game, and what gear there is doesn't really make a huge difference anyway. Exploration, apart from the scenery, is unrewarding. There is little to discover. Side quests are uninspiring - mostly lame FedEx-style quests. The game has a somewhat strange structure. It begins in a large open world, but then becomes progressively more linear and restrictive. It's a strange choice. The game also gets more and more tedious. The last few chapters were a real chore tp get through, with endless running around and endless fight after fight. And the game feels more and more rushed, with the quality of the story and the world going downhill. I will skip the DLCs, and doubt I will play more Final Fantasy games, but it was a somewhat interesting experience.
Fantastic story, filled with quirky humor and many life lessons. This is probably the most emotionally intelligent game I ever played. Unfortunately, to get through the story, you have to grind through thousands of boring encounters and repetitive fights. The turn-based combat is not very engaging, and most fights are without any challenge. The game is also very unbalanced, so you go from easy-easy-easy-easy-easy to super-hard. And then you have to grind for hours to level up and get better gear just so you can get through that next fight that blocks story progress. There is a lot to do in the game. From side-quests and collectibles to many, many optional mini-games. I didn't really care for the mini-games very much, but they do add some depth and flavor to the game, and you can play the mini-games for hours if you so choose. The game auto-save feature is useless, so you have to save frequently yourself if you don't want to lose progress. Except many areas disable the save feature. And then, if you then forget to save when you get out of that area, you could lose a lot of progress. There is no load. So if you want to load a previous save, you have to quit and restart the game. Overall it's a pretty good game, but the flaws mentioned are frustrating, and prevent the game from being truly great. A missed opportunity from SEGA.
Naughty Dog delivers! This is a must-play for Playstation. It's a very good game that pulls you in. I finished it in a few days. The game does, however, have a few flaws. The story is not as great as I expected. It's a bit contrived at times, and not all that creative. There is a lot of gratuitous violence, and the game glorifies torture and perpetuates the myth that torture is justified or effective. The main character is frequently unlikeable, and acts like a jerk many times. The AI of human enemies is pretty dumb. And the trophies are few and almost impossible to achieve. (I explored extensively, yet finished the game with a single trophy, lol.) Still, despite its minor flaws, it's a great game, and well worth playing.
A great game marred by very poor design decisions. The story is great, if a bit too creepy. I got really tired of fighting thousands of rats all the time. But the checkpoint system is a total failure. The checkpoints are frequently set well BEFORE the action, so you have to redo and redo the gathering and exploration, listen to the same story over and over again, wait for the same animations etc. etc. It gets so tedious. The game is also quite finicky and at times really hard. I almost quit quite a few times, but finally gave up, in the very last chapter. I tried a dozen times to get past the point with the archers and the cart, but kept failing. I am sorry I wasted all this time on this game.
I bought it on sale once the 1.5 patch came out, just to see what all the fuss was all about. The game is still buggy - probably the buggiest game I have ever played. NPCs have numerous glitches - they clip through furniture, sink into the ground, float in the air, smoke cigarettes hovering in the air, go invisible, etc. My motorcycle exploded and disappeared in the middle of a main quest, forcing me to walk the rest of the way. Dialog options go invisible, making it hard to continue a quest. NPCs lose their voice. Etc. I also had the game crash on me a couple of times. I don't know why they put so many pedestrian NPCs in the public areas. They just wander around aimlessly like ants. Or bunch up in long lines due to the glitchy AI. There are few interesting conversations. They don't have much behavior. They don't react if you stare at them, block their way or interfere with their meaningless business. And since they crowd the place, they tend to bump into each other, showcasing their poor AI and behavior. Bump into any one of them with your car, and they run away in droves. It's the kind of behavior you would expect from a flock of pigeons. I don't quite see the point. Might as well reduce all the clutter and free up GPU cycles for more meaningful things. The art direction in my opinion is poor. Rather than building a glorious futuristic city, they built a stale concrete jungle filled with literally heaps and heaps of trash, clutter, ugly graffiti and badly dressed rag dolls. Who wants to spend time in a place like that? Even the real world doesn't look as ugly as Night City. If you are going to spend all this effort creating a fantasy world - why not make it a cool one? The city is also 95% empty. There is very little reason to explore Night City. Light sources tend to be glaring primary colors - red, blue, green, purple - which color everything around them, leading to monochrome scenes where everything is red or purple, etc. It all looks very fake, which breaks immersion - just like the sloppily animated NPCs mentioned earlier. HDR is also badly handled, and very hard to configure. Blown out light sources and white-outs are frequent. On PS5 at least there are a lot of low-res textures. Every display, neon screen, etc. is noticeably low-res. As are the 2D stand-ins for remote objects. There is 16 GB of RAM to play with, so not sure why this is. I am thinking the game is still poorly optimized. There are these in-game computers you can access and interact with, and they sometimes offer such low resolution that you can't read the screen. It's a shame because many other parts have very high graphics quality, and it creates this weird contrast that mars the visual effects. Hopefully this will be improved this in future patches. NPC hair is another issue. It just looks terrible. Many NPCs look like they had a severe bad hair day, with pixelated and aliasing hair. I am guessing anti-aliasing is not turned on the PS5. Again, it seems like the game is poorly optimized. So why even play this game? The main and side quests are well done, with interesting characters and stories. Even though the story can be confusing at times. After finishing the main story, I think I only understood about 60% of what was going on. The longer I played, the more I enjoyed it. I admit it was rough going at first. The game has many, many flaws. It's this weird mix of a bad and unfinished GTA clone and a strong story-driven video game. It's frustrating, too, because this could have been a great game, rather than a pretty good one. It's clearly a very ambitious undertaking, ultimately too big for CDPR to handle, but I have to admire their effort. It took me less than 30 hours to finish the game at a leisurely pace. I completed a number of the side quest arcs, gigs and stupid shoot-outs in addition to the main story. That is quite short given the size and scope of the city world they built. Kind of makes me wonder what was the point of building such a big world. If the game wasn't so buggy or short on content I would probably have rated it 7/10, but in its current state 5/10 seems about right. I may pick up Cyberpunk 2077 again for another playthrough if they release additional patches and content. But for now this one goes back on the shelf.
This is the best game I played so far on my PS5. The game is a breath of fresh air in many ways. The story is great, the world is huge and very well built, with great graphics and scenery. The controls are very good for the most part. There are however some negatives. The game is buggy. Nothing majorly game-breaking, but I have seen bad guys floating high up in the sky, or jumping around like super-heroes, frozen in place or getting stuck. Objects sometimes fail to render. Missions can auto-complete if you don't follow the steps in the right order, or fail to complete at all. The voice acting is also a mixed bag. Most of it is good, but some of it is atrocious, e.g. the acting from random hostages that you rescue. Deacon also tends to shout a lot for no reason, which is jarring when in dialog with others who speak normally. The sound engineering of dialogue is mostly terrible. Easily the worst I have encountered in any game. All the characters sound like they are standing right there next to you (the player), instead of originating where the character actually stands on the screen. This is really jarring at first. Eventually I got used to it. Deacon tends to radio people at random times. There are no visual cues for this (like picking up a radio), and he can do this even though he is busy with other thing, like gunfights with no hands free, while riding on the bike, running / fleeing, etc. This is a very poor mechanic that I wish Bend Studio had implemented this better (e.g. by making responding to the radio an explicit action the player has to engage it). I also thought the NERO storyline was pretty lame. Making the NERO soldiers invincible breaks immersion and the stealth missions aren't very engaging (they are not hard). Despite the flaws, I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent playing this game (80 hours total), and highly recommend it.
This game is incredibly over-rated in my opinion. It completely pales compared to previous Fallout games. I played about 50 hours, and don't think I met a single interesting character. In fact, I hardly met any characters at all. The world is pretty much empty except for raiders and bugs and what not, and filled with enormous amounts of trash that you are compelled to pick up so you can craft various armor and weapon upgrades, or to build pieces for the useless settlements. In fact, that seems to be the main point of the game. Collect trash, and build and maintain settlements all over the map. The graphics are very sub-par, so is the music/soundtrack. I was surprised how poor the game looked. Not much of a step up from Fallout 3. Controls are super clunky on PS4. I had the hardest time aiming and targeting. There really are so many much better games available for PS4/PS5, I don't know why anyone would bother with this trash.
It's a fun game. A little more lighthearted and cartoonish than Civilization 5, but also more streamlined. The mechanics are pretty good. I recommend that you don't get the expansions, unless you want to really complicate your game and micro-manage everything. The base game is fine. The UI is however pretty atrocious on the playstation. It's very difficult to see which city production selection is highlighted. Same for the highlighted choice in dialog boxes. Navigation is clunky, and not intuitive at all. When trading for example, if you want to change the number of items on offer, you are presented with a popup where you select the number of items, and it only has a "Back" button, which really means "OK. And if you hit the circle button, thinking that it takes you back as well, it does, but cancels the change. Figuring out which promotion your Apostle has is very difficult and time consuming, requiring multiple selections. You also have to pause and wait everywhere for info dialogs to pop up. This also requires some back and forth sometimes for it to show up.
I like the base game, but this expansion just adds drudgery and makes everything a lot more complicated, without making much sense. The natural disasters just add noise and distraction. The world congress and the diplomatic victory was my least favorite mechanic of Civilization 5, and here it is again, even more obtuse than before, with all kinds of complicated voting choices. There is so much stuff that needs to be micromanaged. For example, cities need power, and you need to build power plants, which requires coal/oil, which contributes to global warming. Plus the strategic resources needed are rare. I had six cities spread over a good portion of the map. No coal or oil in sight. So no power plants for me. The whole thing is just silly. After one play-through I already had enough and decided I don't want to play this expansion any more.
