netherforce

This game impressed me since I saw the first trailers: the atmosphere and the weapons made me get really interested about trying this game. For the positives: this game has a great atmosphere, original and well made; the whole scenario is really pretty and it shows that the developers wanted to put their own personal spanish touch into it. Also the weapons are fabolous, they look really cool and they're reloading animations are one of the best and most original I've ever seen in a videogame. The game mechanic based around your life being converted in bullets is pretty cool and original. For the negatives: I played on normal as I usually do because I like to experience games the way devs intended it, and it was way too easy; As pretty as they are I played 80% of this game using only the basic gun, because all the enemies are super weak and almost always placed super far from you. There is a knife to do parries, but you barely even do them since most enemies can be killed with some basic aim: the knife breaks after some uses so there's a mechanic where you can sharpen the knife again costing you 1 gas tank; I finished this game with 13 gas tanks in my inventory. The other guns are useful during the few bossfights in the game and in the last part of the game, during the 80% of the games you basically only use your starting gun, that deals big damage and cost a lot less blood than the other guns. Also a big downside of this game is the fact that, despite being so pretty, not a single one of these weapons (except the sniper rifle) have the option to aim down sight. Another thing I didn't like about the game is that it should be a scary survival horror game, but it isn't, the monsters aren't scary, even when they appear out of no where they're more annyoing than scary. Even the big scary monster, Dolores, isn't freightening at all: it should be the Nemesis/Mister X of this game, the extremely dangerous enemy that you have to avoid and can't kill until a proper boss fight gives you that chance. There's a problem: she's not scary at all, just a big boring pain, you just wait for her to go away and then you do whatever puzzle you have to do to reach the next area. The story isn't anything great either: despite the big reveal at the end there's nothing really impressive about it. It's an alright story, very forgettable, but still decently appealing to make you want to finish the game, but nothing I will remeber in the future. The graphics aren't particularly impressing either, not that I expected a lot from and indie game. To finish this off this game has lots of potentials and creative elements, but lacks some good design of the enemy encounters, weapon balance and some better story. I think that this developers can make something even better in the future. For its price it's still an enjoyable game for a few hours and worth playing.

I really enjoyed this game, but there are still a lot of flaws. The world and lore are really good, I love how everything looks, every scenery is worth a screenshot, and the Arthurian legends' lore is really really good, wish more games and media in general used them. The choices in this game actually matter, you can actually shape a lot of the story with your actions, unlike lots of AAA games that claim to do the same, early choices can lead to quests or even endings in the late game. The weapon and armor design is really good, every single piece I've found made me want to wear it, luckily there's a feature that makes you change the appearance of every armor or weapon without destroying your build. The combat is decent, nothing super crazy about it, if you've played other RPGs like the Elder scrolls saga you've probably already seen a lot of things in it: it's nice, it doesn't feel bad neither impresses me, it's fine and it fits this kind of games. The story doesn't have a super complex writing or anything particularly genious about it, it has depth and lots of stuff to discover about it, but it's nothing crazy, I loved it especially because of the Arthurian legends. About the bad stuff, this game is really poorly optimized, I have an average gaming PC capable of withstanding every modern games and this game really gave me troubles: having vsyinc on makes the whole games stutter and generally it doesn't run really smooth, despite not having very complex graphics, so it's just optimization problems. In a certain section of the game there was a big fight with lots of entities you had to fight, and the game stuttered really badly, making me lower the difficulty to the minimum just to get over that part. Also the game is full of bugs: events randomly don't get triggered, NPC don't spawn, NPCs or enemies sometimes clip into the ground, sometimes wearing an armor with lots of element sticking from it makes it clip into your vision while you run, nothing game breaking but still a pain. Design-wise I find the settlements in the game quite dead, the NPCs don't have a routine other than standing in a place during the day and going at home at night, I didn't feel immersed in them, but since it's an indie team I understand this. Also the enemy balancing it's really off sometimes, especially when going to a new region of the game, the early game is basically getting one shotted most of the time until your build kicks in, I had to really tryhard some fights in the early game and early parts of the regions, I like making builds, but I'm not really the type to minmax everything. To conclude I really enjoyed this game a lot, but there are a lots of flaws that makes me question if it's a good choice to play it, especially because of the bad optimization and bugs: if you're already a fan of the RPG genre or you love Arthurian legends I absolutely suggest you play this title, but if you just want an RPG to play Skyrim or the Oblivion remastered are still a better choice.