Satisfactory has its name well chosen because it is about building automated factories while being very satisfying once you see the result. The game starts pretty small with a decent introduction on how to do stuff. The basics are easily learned. It then quickly starts to expand and provides a lot of things to explore and try out while never forcing you to rush anything. If you enjoy the creation of bigger and bigger production chains with various tools to additionally add buildings or transport goods from one place to another you'll likely have a good time here. It's like a puzzle game where you also use math to fit the pieces together and make it produce the desired numbers products. There is one map that you can explore and exploit to your hearts content which has 4 different spawn points that will affect difficulty somewhat. There are a number of collectibles which are all related to and useful for your production chains. It's not just for some silly achievement. Exploring actually provides something of value even though I'll also admit that times it can become somewhat tedious due to the sheer amount of things you can find and collect. It is also important to mention that Satisfactory does not come with any additional cost. When you buy the game you get all of it. There are no Microtransactions which is always a big plus. The game is designed with Co-op in mind meaning the core aspects somewhat are intended to be used with multiple people playing together. Still you can enjoy it solo as well. But even while playing solo the game somewhat behaves like an online server (you can't really pause the game through the game menu). Satisfactory has some flaws though. As mentioned above some aspects in exploration as well as the construction can become somewhat tedious. Especially if you decide to start over on a new map having to search for a lot of the same things again to unlock specific recipes can become more of a nuisance than an exciting adventure. And the less exploration you do (especially early on) the more time you spent creating factories as the standard recipes especially for later products can be very resource and construction intense where you suddenly are supposed to build over a hundred production facilities with respective connections to get everything you need together. You can use blueprints to optimize that process somewhat but the size for these blueprints is limited and their usability often cumbersome. It's enough to build basic modules but very difficult to prepare entire factories. So the construction of factories can become a time consuming process - especially if you misjudge or misplace sections of your factory and have to start over or do extensive adjustments. Still once you complete a project and you see exactly the number you expect to get (meaning your production chain runs optimal) then it is very satisfying to see. One more aspect that I see somewhat critical are road vehicles. By default none of the maps have any roads. They are undeveloped worlds afterall. You can construct a number of vehicles to use in your playthroughs. All have different strengths and weaknesses. Some of them are intentionally designed to automatically transport goods around the world. The problem though is that without roads that becomes a bit of a tricky operation (the AI seems to have problems with path finding). So you may want to build roads. But the construction of roads is a pain to deal with as there are no good tools available for that. You'd have to create blueprints to cover that but even with blueprints creating roads with corners, ups and downs is very time consuming and annoying. The game has trains in it and building train tracks seems to be pretty good (which is why trains are the preferred transport option in later parts of the game). it doesn't have something like that for roads though. So there is no 2-way lane road pathing out of the box which is why are required to create your own modules and fiddle around with those. It's unfortunate and makes road vehicles limited in their usage but at least there is an option. And if necessary you can always create conveyer belt spaghetti instead... Anyway the game is fun to play even with its flaws. For the first playthrough it is recommended to do it without guides and explore it on your own. it's massive and will easily provide you with over a hundred hours of playtime without reaching the end of the game. I'm not sure on the replayability though because of some of the negative aspects brought up above. In the end it's a sandbox. So if you like playing with sand and build castles then go and have fun.
If you like Dragonflight => it's more of the same. If you dislike Dragonflight => well - it's more of the same. It's basically a content patch with 4 new areas instead of one and an item reset that involves getting 10 more levels. The leveling process is easy to the point of a brain dead monkey just bashing their head on the keyboard being able to do it. Basically nothing in the outside world poses any resemblance of a threat. You can pull multiple groups of normal enemies and just blast them down quickly. Even elite enemies can be easily handled one on one and might only become a threat if you pull 3 or more of them and that is only when you aren't a tank or a healer. Currently only normal and heroic dungeons are available and they are also really really REALLY easy. It's basically just running through "quick, quick" and bombing everything down. The whole faction and renown system as well as the professions and currencies are heavily time gated to the point where you literally can't do anything after you've completed the minor stuff allocated to you for the current week. When you're done with that you can basically log off unless you're dedicated either to PVP or collecting useless stuff from earlier expansions. The first raid is still closed for arbitrary reasons (gotta keep you subbed for one more month after the first one I guess) and the same goes for Mythic and M+ difficulties. It's all centered around season 1 which will be another item reset. Delves are meh. They are okay when doing them the first time for the interactions with Brann Bronzebeard but they lose their appeal rapidly. The story is also not really interesting and heavily filled with current day politics. Basically all faction leaders are women now and the guys play second fiddle. You have for example the extensive plot point of the "diverse" female character with multiple physical disabilities having to teach the "privileged" whiny king about how not to be a whiny baby. And of course that diverse character has to be somehow related to a major character from lore even though when you look at it objectively it makes no sense. Other than that the main plot is so thin that I can't even make out any real direction. Is there any reason for what the big baddy is doing? Not really - I mean at least the game doesn't indicate anything outside of wanting more power and just acting like a stereotypical comic book villain. It's really unfortunate as I gave the game another chance after having a multi-year break and went in with a generally positive mindset. Unfortunately the more I saw the more frustration and boredom set in...
What the hell have they done to this game?
I used to play Hearthstone several years ago occasionally and quit because I got bored of it and annoyed by the constant push for new cards and packs and so on.
Now I booted the game up again today for a couple of matches. All my old decks were useless because most of the cards are either gone or disabled for standard matches. So I went through the horrendous menus while constantly having the screen orgasm at me about achievement this and new unlock that (I had no idea what most of it even is). After going through all this nonsense I then wanted to get a feel for the game again to see cards and playstyle and so on. I had no idea what cards to use for a deck so I went with one of the 6 premade "loan" decks where supposedly you can keep of them at the end of a certain time period. I tried several of them and play about 10 matches. I lost every single one of them on the lowest rank and it wasn't me making mistakes. I simply had no chance with the deck because whatever these other players had always literally obliterated me. And a lot of times I didn't even understand what moves my opponents made. I saw mages use his 1 damage class ability mini fireball that killed a minion that had 2 hp. I have no idea how that worked. The log didn't show anything special. It just died. There's also way to many weird effects jump all over the screen and are difficult to keep track off while you're under constant time pressure to make your moves. I have no idea what kind of players enjoy Hearthstone at this point but I can't imagine it's anyone doing it for casual fun. The UI is messy and the gameplay is terrible. Not much else to say.
Visually it looks great for the most part. It has some of the typical "quirks" you'll find in Asian games. The background characters appearing side missions for example do not have proper lip synched dialogue. If they have a proper mouth (even behind a mask) you can see some movement but it doesn't fit the words spoken. It's done properly for the main cast though. Gameplay is fine for the most part. Combat has lots of options and things you can try out. The fights against enemies are mostly fair but towards the end there are some serious difficulty spikes that can be quite frustrating. Biggest problem in Stellar Blade is the story. It's good that they aren't overloading the game with tons of video sequences and focus on delivering dialogue during gameplay. The story told in those sections is rather "meh" though. There are plot holes and contradictions. Some aspects are not addressed at all. I could never really get invested in any of the characters because quite honestly outside of their beautiful visual design they are quite bland. They aren't unlikable which is usually a good thing. But they also do not exactly stand out in a positive way where I'd relate to the character. Part of it might be a lack of good back stories and that they're lacking proper personality traits. It's a fun game for a single playthrough but I'm not sure if or when I will ever play the game again.
I seriously don't understand the high ratings for this game. To me it just feels like a lesser version of the Dark Souls series. Everything just feels bare bones. The gameplay feels off. The writing is just bad and leaves you with nothing to go on with. You get thrown into the game with basically no real background information or general goal. You just see some creepy scenes and then your character will die on the first enemy to then go back and kill it easily a couple of minutes later. You then kind of aimlessly roam around a city to find stuff and some kind of purpose of why you're even doing what you're doing. I managed to find two bosses in that city. That bird monster boss fell on first try and the human-werewolf mix boss fell on third try. Both of these bosses were not really exciting. Also even roaming around these city streets and hearing stuff about hunters and monster I still have no idea what I'm really doing there. Also Bloodborne managed to annoy me with things like its confusing map layout and by making the use of the bonfire mechanic more annoying. You want to teleport to some other spot? Better return to the hub first and then teleport to the next location. Better be sure that it's the right location because each time you teleport to the wrong place you have to add two more loading screens to teleport to the next location. I've heard a few times that Bloodborne supposedly took lessons from predecessor games like Dark Souls 2 and improved the formula. I'm not seeing it though...
