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I am playing AC shadows, 35 hours in, level 22+ Naoe (playing it slowly and exploring casually instead of mainlining the "quest line") and now have Yasuke as a playable character ... the world is absolutely gorgeous (kudos to the world builders) but tragically mostly empty, the game **** awfully (shame on you game designers). AI is some places is seriously broken. There are visual and tracking glitches. I too have experienced assassinations that produce a corpse that revives and has to be killed again, NPCs failing to track properly and walking stuck in low lying walls, watching NPCs that are "active" but cycle through their limited action path repetitively. The game designers were simply lazy. I have encountered potentially game breaking bugs (Valhalla anyone!?). It's terrible sameness template and awful collect 10 of these hidden in distant random places (good luck finding them), kill 25 of those, kill another 25, kill another 50 ... find this, go there, come here, go there deliberate interruptions. Plot irrelevant collection side quests, storyline interrupting "go get this and then we will progress our conversation" fetch quests. The Naoe toon will not parkour as she should, the pathing failure is sometimes ingame deadly. She won't climb or jump where she should in far too many places. The grind for gear, coin, upgrade materials, hideout building materials ... all is tragic. The sort of **** one expects from an online MMORPG not a single player game that we are supposed to **** dialogue choice for the most part superfluous. The last AC in the franchise I enjoyed was Origins. Odyssey was tolerable, Valhalla **** **** pay to progress microtransactions ... FFS! make the game such a **** grind ... then offer pay for progression map reveals, crafting material boosts, gear (not just cosmetic) to try to reduce the grind ... egregious BS !! The further I progress in this game, the more I realise that the actual storyline is also lazy, incredulous in places, simply illogical in others. Genuinely will be the last Ubisoft product I will ever buy ... they ruined the Farcry franchise the same way, the last good one was Farcry 3. They ruined WatchDogs, Rainbow series, Tom Clancy franchises. Edit : completed with slow progression, about 125 hrs play time. Serious disappointment remains, a tragic missed opportunity.

I waited until storyline completion before reviewing. I played on a PS5 with resolution mode on. I reached the level cap of 50. I did not fully enhance all of my gear. I focused on Infiltrator and Hunter in Aloy's skill tree then spent excess skill points across all others. I had high hopes for this following New Dawn and I can't truly say I was disappointed but when I got past the stunning graphics (minor glitches forgiven) and complex storyline the additional complexity of the game mechanics forcing one back to older areas because it takes a future obtained item to be able to get past an obstruction was frustrating. The lack of ability to climb (being forced to use identifiable designed pathways) was often frustrating. The realisation that choices that felt like they should have been significant had little bearing on the actual game outcomes was a disappointment although a few that produced world cosmetic changes were good. The huge number of conversation choices, particularly with companions, became frustrating instead of informative. The "completionist" objectives were gratuitously excessive. The ridiculous twitch mechanics parkour profoundly frustrating. The complexity of ruins puzzles unnecessarily high. Some combat encounters in quests not progressing as they should have (probably bugs that will eventually be fixed) a huge time waster. I thought I would be annoyed by most of the best "gear" being hidden behind arenas irrelevant to the story but I completed without. I don't think I have been so frustrated in a game that I have also enjoyed enough to simply skip the frustrating parts to complete the game.

Had high hopes for this being an older gamer and a fan of Baldur's Gate style RPGs and a casual D&D gamer. The visuals, story and mechanics are worthy but even in 2022 (bought this discounted from the PS store) is seriously bugged and the level of frustration. Doubt any development time has been made in the past 2 years on bugs and playability even on a PS5. Sorry, cannot recommend this. Watching OwlCat's new iteration Pathfinder Wrath on console but no way I will be pre-purchasing with the substandard technical quality of Kingmaker.

A gorgeous game (on PS4 pro) with frustrating mechanics, invisible walls, twitch response events and the occasional glitches. Progression requires practice, willingness to parkour and puzzle solve without much in the way of hints, and boss battle willing to lose until you learn individual battle mechanics and damage avoidance.

I am finding it playable on PS4 Pro, with laughable occasional bugs and graphical glitches. It has a promising and acceptable storyline but I have not completed this game yet. For a product from the publishers of the magnificent Witcher 3 this is disappointing. Should have been clear from before release this requires a high end PC to be functional, and should not have been released for current consoles. I will watch the patch/update releases closely and perhaps adjust my review accordingly but it is not on my active play list at the moment .

This will hold your attention until it gets to the inevitable progression blocks early with appalling grinds in areas that are limited to only certain days of the week. The game has open world exploration potential (although a very limited set of options and areas at its early release stage), merely ordinary storyline, that also has progression block and arcade style combat. The thing that is most disturbing though is the monetisation model is nothing more than unregulated gambling. Beware.

I came back to this after a few years break and started a new "season" with characters from scratch. Played my preferred character through the story again and enjoyed it as much as I remember when I played for the first time (I have been a Diablo player from the first edition) .... then for the sake of it maxed out all different characters as a nostalgic exercise (via a select leveling process and metagaming, not storyline for each) I guess this reflects my enjoyment of the series (and I have to admit looking forward to Diablo IV) but this does not get a 10 because I recognize that outside the storyline all this ended up being was a loot grinding dungeon crawler. I have a twisted admiration of the top grinders of the Season but I was not interesting in engaging with post-endgame "best of the best" theatrics. Fantastic, engaging storyline ... but nothing genuine to offer for RPG gamers in the endgame. Its a game to play, enjoy and finish. I have no regrets to this year's return, but I have not continued and will not likely return. Diablo IV ? ... bring it on !!

I had high hopes, played for as long as I could tolerate. The loading times killed it for me (I can forgive the occasional glitches and crashes) ... go inside a room and load, load ... single gameplay task, leave room and load, load, load ... in some sections of the game the loading time exceeds the actual gameplay time. Particularly fond of RPG and THQ Nordic but this one is seriously frustrating. ( opinion from a Bard's Tale tragic )

I tried, I really did ... the story concept fascinated, the graphics quality was good (despite the locked in square edge room/level design) but when it repeatedly morphed into a twitch reflex over-the-shoulder view third person shooter I hit the wall of frustration. I am not an action shooter fan so that is influencing my rating ... may well have not bought at full price anyway, but purchased heavily discounted and because I have been a long time fan of Wales Interactive.

Profoundly disappointed, the conversion **** story in Part 1 into revenge porn and forced direction change in Part 2 is heartbreaking. Games like this are not just about graphics, they need purpose and engagement.

As one who enjoyed the choose your own adventure style reading of old, I find the new generation of choose your pathway movies an interesting diversion. For those expecting game play or complexity you will be disappointed. This is nothing more than a movie with the capacity to change some of the direction and ending. With a social element it could prove to be enjoyable with the aggregate of multiple people determining the outcome of actions. Some of the decisions are challenging both morally and emotionally - this is an interactive movie and as such this is how I rated it. A butterfly effect, multiple pathway game this is not. There are others that do the mixing of gameplay into the interactive movie genre much better than this and if I was going to compare and rate this as a movie/game hybrid it would have scored much lower but as a pure interactive movie it does well in my opinion.

Profoundly disappointed. Having spent more hours than I am prepared to admit on the original Skyrim and a revisit with the enhanced version (via Xbox) to experience the gorgeous graphics I simply had to purchase VR (yes I have migrated from an Xbox over to PS4 Pro and VR) The massive drop in graphics quality, the clunky controls and the "look to aim" / "look to loot" mechanic was too much for me to manage. I tried, in fact I deleted after about 2 hours of game play .. had a break and thought, I really must give this another attempt so reinstalled. The overlay of the standard 2D UI at times was near impossible to manage. Nope, this was not a good experience. I had hopes, maybe too high given the 3D quality of some of the VR Pro items currently available. The VR experience has to be seen to discover how bad it is ... it is the same disappointment I had after seeing Avatar in 3D and then cringing at the poor fabricated CGI efforts of some "3D" movies released afterwards. The true depth of field is missing .. Skyrim VR looks like it is VR elements pasted over the 2D background. The best I can say about this is that it is a proof of concept ... grand open world gaming can be done in VR, but it needs better than a reworking of low res graphics badly converted into 3D for me to be excited over this one.