This game is an absolute blast, to the point where I lost track of time exploring and over 20 hours have gone by while I'm only in the second big map. Brilliant music, puzzles, and voice acting! A few criticisms include, carrying a weapon can be janky. Why do I drop my gun when crawling through a hole or climbing a ladder? The dog enemies also baffle me, you whip (not at) near them (if it lets you) and they just come back around and attack you anyway? Tad bit frustrating.
This is everything I wanted in a co-op shooter, except the matchmaking and load times can drag. Head's up you can't play PVP cross-platform with your Playstation buddies!
If you enjoyed the base game, you'll get a kick out of this. There's some classic Bethesda drama between factions/families, interesting side quests with multiple ways to play out, new companions you run the risk of killing before you even meet them, gorgeous visuals on a new planet and new enemies. Downside is a lack of new skills or notable loot, the game also drops frames on Series X.
Glad Bethesda hasn't abandoned this game and is still releasing patches, updates, and a DLC soon. Mods on Xbox are definitely a perk and will extend the longevity of this game for years to come
Great story, VA, characters! My only gripe was some of the driving sequences are very unforgiving (bump into a car during a chase, game over, reload a far back checkpoint) and I did run into a few bugs that had me reload a save.
These dips in frame rate... THIS is how many years into "next gen" console? Maybe it's my own fault for choosing to get it on Playstation instead of PC.
This gives me the same feeling of exploration and wanderlust as when I first played Skyrim. Quite a difficulty curve, be sure to learn the mechanics, level up, and rest in town before setting out on quests or you will perish quite a bit. Only big issue so far is, why can't we swim in an 'open world' game!
Just rating the "additional content" not the base game. This felt like a fairly lazy cash-grab. There might be minuscule differences in the video/audio, however it looks, plays, sounds exactly the same unless you are doing a side-by-side comparison with your Playstation 4. The lost levels are a joke, $10 for thirty minutes of content. The new mode gets a point, if you are a fan of rogue-like games. God of War Ragnarok did this for free
I feel like I was extremely misled with the 90+ Critic score, this game froze while installing and I've ran into about five or six bugs so far including a few soft crashes, glitched out NPCs, and one early-game quest that would not complete. The building and skybox visuals are beautiful, although the trees look like something from the PS3 era.
I have nothing to add that hasn't been said already, but holy cow should this be the game of the year! If survival horror is your genre, this game does not let up with content, collectables, and replayability. Resident Evil 2 was my first game on Playstation and while I love the REmake version of that too, I wish they had added all of the extra features 4 has. I have probably spent more time in Mercenaries Mode than the main story itself!
Pros include the atmosphere and gore, sound design, and price point (currently included in PS+). In my opinion major cons were getting locked into combat, a major detractor in a "survival horror" type game, not being able to move while listening to audio notes, and a very lackluster story. While the story is well acted with some recognizable faces (Deacon from Days Gone, one of my fav recent games) everything loses steam by the final act and it feels like discarded plot from a Resident Evil game in the early 2000s.
I have mixed feelings for this game as I purchased it originally for PS4 and it barely worked. I wasn't able to refund my physical copy, but it has been patched and updated for free on PS5. The DLC is an additional $35. The storyline here is gritty and mature, it probably will not appeal to everyone. I enjoyed my time with it, although there are a ton of distractions and side-missions that tend to take the wind out of the main DLC storyline's sails. Again, this may or may not appeal to different gamers. I would suggest playing the base game to about level 25-30 in order to better appreciate the DLC!
A wonderful throwback to 90s JRPGs, this game is full of vibrant pixel art, humorous writing and charming characters, and a gorgeous score. Especially fun for mobile gaming on Steamdeck or Nintendo Switch. The only reason holding it back from a perfect 10 is the combat can feel a tad repetitive, with little to no reward from most encounters outside of boss fights.
Since most other reviews have covered story/graphics/etc, this will focus on mainly the outpost and base building. Time spent in-game: 125 hours As a huge fan of Bethesda building, Starfield feels like it has refined the process yet takes a few steps backwards. Resource linking and manufacturing is much smoother and easier to understand than the Fallout 4 DLC introduced. Being able to scan planets from orbit and/or roam on foot and find "hotspots" with multiple resources in a build area is definitely a plus. Hiring and assigning workers will certain skill sets, as well as robots and security, add a layer of strategy as well. On the negative side, bugs put a huge damper on the whole experience. Multiple outpost links mysteriously vanish, decorations meticulously placed in your base will clip through tables or end up on the floor when you load back in, and personally I lost all items I had spent hours crafting in the New Atlantis condo on a subsequent visit. Another criticism is the amount of skill points and research that go into the higher tiers of outpost and base building mean it is better saved for NG+, which many players will understandably find frustrating. In late game, the player will have enough resources and credits to make farming and manufacturing feel pointless.
For fans of games like Inside and Little Nightmares, Bramble has a more cohesive narrative strung together with cut-scenes and literal storybook narrative. The puzzles are fairly easy, with an unbalanced jump in difficulty on the boss fights. However the biggest detractor are the bugs. I found myself consistently stuck on walls or simply not climbing walls that were the only way to progress through a level, ruining the immersion that makes other games in this genre so captivating.
The Season 1 patch makes leveling up, and finding loot, 2 to 3 times more difficult. I'm not sure why this was done, if it's to draw out the amount of time people spend in the game, I feel like it will backfire and more players will get fed up with the tedium and quit instead. Personally, I'll try this game again in a year or so to see if the devs have fixed it.
