My review will try to be short and grounded. I started in 2020.
Dawntrail's middle of the spectrum story really highlights how the game is a bit dated. A lot of users hung on just to play story every 2 years. STORY-(No spoilers here) Wuk Lamat seems to be the #1 complaint from everyone. I found that she didn't bother me too much UNTIL the 95+ quests. Why was she following us and not just staying in her city to rule like Aymeric did in Heavensward? If they wrote her a bit better, I don't think people would care. Queen Sphene(an antagonist)- lacked characterizing, yet her design is really awesome. This second half of the expansion actually had me really interested, but writing fell flat with the Alexandrian civilization. Erenville(dark skinned viera)- community thinks he is the only redeeming character of the expansion, but we didn't get enough screen time with him or his past.
Overall story was passable, but for a story focused game, they need to step up.
Dawntrail COMBAT- It's been the same since 2020. Most classes have a skill you hit every 2 minutes, do rotation, and done. Others have a once every 60s skill. Devs are finally consolidating skills into upgrades to address button bloat, but this leaves me with wondering what else they can do with combat 10 years into the game. DON'T LET super critical reviews scare you away from FFXIV. Buying Dawntrail gets you access to everything the game has to offer. I will at least keep playing until a better mmorpg comes out on the market.
I haven't played a game this good since Red dead redemption 2. The story is great, and some of the side stories are even better than the Ranrok story. There's tons of collectible achievements to do, and the castle is just beautiful. So much attention to detail inside the castle. Peeves, the ghosts flying, almost every portrait on the wall moves, and students have conversations as you walk by. I feel blessed to have been able to play this game in my lifetime!! I wish they would add a DLC or something extra to do with the beasts. Very minor nitpicks: - switching between all the maps is slow. The interface could have been sped up a bit. Me and my partner did have a few bugs in the quests but luckily the game saved our progress and restarting the game fixed the bug.. -the vivarium/ room of requirement with all your beasts collected is adorable but wish there was more depth to that content
the game was honestly too hard during some battles and i gave up. nergigante was just one of those annoying fights of many. the frames are pretty bad on switch but it didn't bother me too much. mostly i think the difficulty lies in not knowing monster elemental weaknesses and which type of attack to use. you also never know what level the enemy is, so if you keep dying you just have to go farm more levels. the story is also a bit childish, though the final boss and artwork design was really nice.
I have 30 hours into this game as of this review. I have a similar love hate relationship with this one as i did breath of the wild. I didn't think they could make the story worse, but somehow, they did. All 4 characters say the same thing when you help them. "Oh, it's my destiny to fight with you Link!?" If you don't know the interactions of the characters between the last game (i.e Prince Sidon), you won't really feel connected to the sequel story. Speaking of that, why was there no mention of anyone from the last game or the divine beasts? Urbosa, mipha?:( So in this sequel, you actually don't get the freeze or bomb skills anymore. Now you have... ultrahand where you can attach things to everything. Thus this game became a build 2 win game. The other power Ascend, i thought it would be amazing. The power to go through anything vertically above you whether it be, mountains, monster hideouts, or caves under the towers. Yet it feels hardly utilized in the game other than shrines. And some terrain ascend doesn't even work on. I have done all 4 temples. They were ok. The wind temple was pretty easy since you could use wind even from rooms that were locked behind gates. I think i am not the target audience for the building nature of this game. THE MOST ANNOYING THING of my 30hr playthrough- Pulling out your bow, scrolling through 100 of items you can attach to the arrow. This is not good UI design. It's like scrolling simulator in the middle of combat? Who said that was ok? Nintendo needs to make a linear zelda game which plays like red dead redemption 2 did. As much as a developmental feat the physics of this game are, I think more of the annoyances outweigh the better areas. You can still make an open world game with deeper exploration into the story and the ability to mess around with the environment as seen in RDR2..
I never give ratings this bad but i cant believe what a glitchy rushed mess this game has been. Do not buy this game because if you do, you're telling Nintendo this is the level of quality you are expecting for pokemon games forever. Everyone was so hyped for a new gen game. Switch has only had TWO good pokemon titles in its entire 7 year lifespan. (Them being arceus and the Lets go! games).
I have played 5 hrs of this already. The better you play solitaire the faster your horse runs. It's solitaire so it'll never get old! You can retire your horses and breed them after they turn 4. Then you get new ones after each one retires. I did not expect to like this game so much!
All of these games in this series are pretty boring. The concept of shop management is fun, but all the customers ask for very obvious things like "animal print hat" or "floral cute dress". It doesn't take more than one braincell to recommend something that they like every time. There isn't a feeling of punishment if you recommend something they doesn't like. Perhaps i'm way above the age range of this game, but i find the recommendation gameplay very boring with no real motivation to keep going.
I loved zero dawn’s characters more. While they do join us in forbidden west again, they are mostly on the sidelines. The entire mid game story became a slog to restore all the functions to Gaia. I didn’t enjoy all the corridors and puzzles and climbing, but maybe others might. The story does get good at the end, but it is absolutely not worth it if you did pay 70$. Combat was made more annoying. Enemies have more health for no reason. You can’t headshot enemies with the bow anymore. Now it takes 5-6 hits to kill them with the bow. Aloy gets knocked down a lot and takes a long time to get up. Upgrading skills/traits was also made more tedious. It’s like they copied the giant spiderweb trait trees from FF15. I’ll be honest, I did not want to grind gear, weapons and coils so I played most of the game on easy and story mode. Environment- it’s beautiful, but the color palette was all the same as Zero Dawn. You don’t feel like the world is anything new. (except for the beaches). When I finished the story, I had no desire to go back into the world and finish 6000 more side quests. In summary I think Guerrilla games tried to do too much with Forbidden West's gear and upgrading systems. It was already at a fine point in the original game. I would have MUCH rather seen Guerrilla put more effort into the middle game story and fleshing out the Tenakh characters to be more likeable.
I think this game is great as is on the 3ds. I'm glad the console got some of the wiiU ports. However, I can say it was better on the WiiU because you could blow on the bottom screen of the gamepad, and overall the bottom screen felt more useful on the WiiU.
The game is a lot of fun. A lot of people didn't buy a WiiU so there's nothing wrong with the game being ported to 3ds. The sounds yoshi makes are so cute!
The game gets repetitive. The dialogue is funny and probably the best part of the game. However every level is mostly the same formula and some of them have puzzles when you fight on the ground, but it’s not fun on a 3.5 inch screen. Maybe I would’ve liked it more on an XL console. I could only play 1-2 chapters a night. I pretty much forced myself to complete this title because i spent 35$ on it. However I have no desire to replay levels on harder intensities or grind for items. Your hands will cramp and this isn’t a game you can play laying down. It’s also not for left handed people as you can only aim Pitt’s shots with your right hand.
I've been playing since release. Taken many breaks in-between. I'll be honest, this expansion is pretty mediocre. The contrast is very high in the colors of the maps. I mean the maps are beautiful, but the colors are super bright. The story seemed great in theory with the Icebrood saga buildup. BUT then they brought back some enemies that were already resolved several years ago as the main antagonists of this expansion. "Ankka" was just thrown into the dialogue out of nowhere to be the main antagonist because "she's so empty inside and wants to kill the gods and all higher powers". The "selling" features of this expansion were some iffy elite specs, a boat, and fishing. And you could already use the stingray to ride over water. So honestly i feel like this was 6 months of free release maps labeled as an expansion. Not worth 30$, infact i might even ask for a refund and wait till it goes on sale.
