Recent reviews by AWACS

They wanted to take the series in a new direction, but years after release, the entire product still feels like a tech demo, and many of the ideas presented by the game are executed poorly. The game faces an identity of crisis of whether it wants to be an open world RPG or a Musou game, and it unfortunately ends up doing neither well.

Traversing the open world feels strange and stilted, and much of the world is legitimately empty. The moment you start riding from point A to point B, you can immediately notice a shift in the level of detail in the environment. For example, trees not having shadows, or low LOD models aggressively swapping to a higher LOD model as you step closer, aggressive pop-in, mediocre lighting, etc. There are almost no techniques used to mask the landscape well from a distance, even at the highest possible settings, which is weird because the game runs poorly no matter what the settings are, although this is not much of a surprise given that in one of the videos they have on their official Steam store page, they have a severe frame rate dip at 1:10.

Having a limited stamina bar outside of combat for the mounts makes travel even more tedious, and it quickly becomes an issue as you realize that you'll be using the horse very often in this game, spending even more time looking at the environment, as the auto-run pathfinding leads your horse into terrain, NPCs or objects regularly. Luckily, fast travelling makes it slightly more tolerable, but in my short period of playing the game, I think I've done far more galloping than actual fighting.

Hunting animals in a series about ripping through armies is another strange and out of place decision, but I imagine it was used to pad in some extra content in the world. They also throw in random townspeople / villager dialogue in an attempt to add in some flavor text, but it comes off as lazy, as is with most of the other interactions in towns or cities. Additionally, there are points of interests dotted around the map and materials to gather, which makes the game feel like a poor man's open world RPG, as you clumsily gallop over shiny things that liter various parts of the map.

The combat has also been redesigned, but feels stiff and unrefined. You can be completely surrounded by foes, grunt and officer alike, and have no difficulty at all as long as you react to the rather large button prompts that show up over an enemy, and long combos are easy to pull off and maintain, making the overall gameplay fairly unsatisfying and unrewarding. Bows also feel incredibly unwieldy, and the movement feels clunky as well. There's just an overall lack of fluidity.

Optional objectives in missions are also generally quite boring as well, with many of them being 'TALK TO THIS PERSON' and 'GO HERE AND BEAT UP MAN', which is disappointing when you consider that Samurai Warriors from 2004 was able to have objectives with slightly more depth, such as luring an enemy without killing them or deciding to kill officer A or B to pick a different story path.

The gameplay lacks any actual kind of spectacle. For most Warriors games, they have always been games that tricked the player into thinking there were large battles going on. It worked, because occasionally, there was a sense of urgency that compelled the player to launch themselves into the enemy. Maybe you had poor morale, and the red dots on the map were just going to consume all of the blue dots in one push if you didn't do anything, or maybe there was an event where your leader was in immediate danger and you had to run back to save them. There was a sense of direction.

In Dynasty Warriors 9, it feels like most of the engagements overall are just a suggestion. Things are too few and far between the wide and barren landscape for me to worry about anything, and troop movement across the open world was rare from both sides. Hostile positions could easily be sidestepped, or simply ignored because of the wide empty spaces on the map. Enemies would render in right in front of me, warp around, and then rubberband across the enemy structures. I would march headfirst into the enemy's standing army, only for most of them to stand there while I beat down the gate and their leader, and I would be rewarded with a very stiff set of animations in a cutscene with poor English voice acting.

It's main component, which is most certainly the story, tries too hard to be complex and interesting.
The writing is too overt and the dialogue feels uncanny at times. Additionally, some of the cutscenes are quite lengthy, making the 'on-the-nose' writing a bit overbearing at times. The characters aren't exactly memorable either, and the story tries way too hard to paint everyone as morally grey, which feels forced.


The other big feature of the game is the management portion of the game, which also has a few glaring issues that I'd like to mention.

• First of which greatly annoyed me is the severe lack of professionalism by the cops in this game, which exists purely to present an artificial challenge to the player. It's not realistic at all, and it certainly isn't engaging for gameplay. You'll find yourself in situations where you have some cops who just flat out refuse to work at all, saying things like 'I don't want to work with a rookie!' or 'I'm tired, so I'm not going.' The game clearly intends for you to work around their weaknesses and find clever ways to keep them useful, but some players may find themselves to be crippled in some scenarios because of this, especially given the roguelike nature of permanantly losing cops.
  
  
• The next issue I'd like to mention is an artificial stat check.
  The game has a stat called 'Professionalism' which is basically an amount of points that a cop has, and each call that you respond to will essentially be gated by a certain amount of points.
  The problem? As you reach the endgame, the calls will start having higher and higher point requirements, which especially punishes you for making mistakes earlier in the game, and it also completely butchers the immersion.
  Why on earth do I need to send either three of my best maxed out cops, or half of my shift to deal with a call about a prostitute in the endgame, especially when the actual event just ended by sneaking up on her which only required a very minor skill check in the form of needing a single officer with stealth leveled up? It gets even more irritating as the map lights up with crimes like a GTA Online session, and even more frustrating when you dispatch your deputies on a call with a 2500+ requirement only to find out that there wasn't actually a crime taking place and it was just some car that happened to sound like a shootout.
  
  
• The third issue I have is the arbitrary gear check on assaults, in where you assign cops with certain skills and gear in order to plan for an attack against gang members. Sounds like a great idea on paper, however, in reality, you end up being gear checked and stat checked in a game which constantly does minor things to try to rob you of your gear or deputies. Luckily for me, I had all of the required stats and gear for every assault. Looking at the Steam discussions though, you will find a number of posts about how people are stuck on a certain assault in the story because they can't actually initiate the plan because of the artificial requirement. The worst part of this is that you don't actually even need the gear to complete the content. Despite needing to acquire several flashbangs, I never actually needed to use any at all, yet I was still required to obtain them. If you're looking for a tactical game based around a planning phase, you may want to check out Door Kickers instead.

The final feature of the game I'd like to talk about is the 'Tactical' element of the game, which turns the game into a turn-based, tactical strategy game.

• At first you may be fooled into thinking that the game is like XCOM or Tactics Ogre, with how the tile/grid based movement presents itself on the terrain, and how you have to prepare a team to deal with the situation. In reality, the game really just turns into a barebones stealth tactics game instead, making parts of the game even more tedious than they need to be. There's almost no incentive to try to play without using stealth aside from having your cops be ambushed or the final mission, as the combat itself is very basic, giving you limited tools to play with in an actual firefight. Also, there are only 4 perks that each deputy can take at a time, and some perks are significantly stronger than other perks, so players aren't encouraged to diversify by any means.
  
  
• The lack of simple quality of life features, such as a quick save, a confirm button, or a simple move rewind ends up punishing you tremendously for any inputs you may have made by mistake, as you will most certainly lose a deputy if they detect you, forcing you to either restart, or deal with the severe consequence of losing someone, which comes back to the point I made about being stat checked earlier.
  
  
• There's also another mechanic during the tactical gameplay which actually takes control away from you. If you have a deputy who isn't loyal to you, the AI will take control over them and they will do whatever they want, resulting in their death 99% of the time as these renegade cops go on bloodthirsty last stand rampages in their one man assault against some random crackheads.
  
  
• Additionally, there aren't even that many tactical engagements in the game to begin with, I think only did like 8 of them, so I'm actually not even sure why they put the effort into putting them into the game in the first place.
  

And the last thing I'd like to mention is that there isn't even any kind of endless mode to this game, unlike the first game, giving this game almost no replay value.

An mediocre at best campaign, flavorless customization, a truckload of micro-transactions, and a questionable multiplayer experience make the game a bit of a let down. It also doesn't help that there are numerous reports from players of desync and lag with the dedicated servers, which you can experience whenever you rubberband every other match.

For the best value, my recommendation is to play through the campaign with Xbox Game Pass and play the multiplayer as a free to play game. I don't believe the campaign has enough content or quality to justify a $60 purchase.

As much as I am a fan of Age of Empires II, Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition unfortunately has had a ridiculous number of bugs, crashes, and performance problems since it's release. Even now with it's latest patch, the game is a technical mess, and players can find themselves stuck in various menus just trying to even start a lobby, assuming they haven't crashed at that point, or they may face themselves dealing with horrendous lag in the middle of a match, or worse, another crash in the middle of the match.

As a consumer, I can't recommend Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition because of the inconsistent stability of the game.
Each patch shouldn't be a gamble on whether or not you can enjoy the product or not.

If you look at all of the latest negative reviews, they will echo what I stated, and it is quite unfortunate, because aside from the technical issues that the game presents, it still is, at it's core, a very timeless real time strategy game. The addition of new features and content is great, but it's hard to enjoy when the game suddenly closes on you, or a friend.

I really wanted to like this game, in fact, for the first few matches, I actually enjoyed what little I was able to play. I liked the way the world looked, I liked the soundtrack, and I liked the gameplay. The combat system has roots in a Mount and Blade sort of system, and it takes that same formula and adds a few more mechanics to it, so you can do things like dodge or throw your weapon at people. It took me only a few minutes to get myself familiar with the controls, and I was already able to take out a few players in my first few minutes playing the game. For a moment, I was actually having fun.

Unfortunately, that only lasted for about an hour, and every subsequent match since then had been ridiculously laggy. Since the population is so low, the only servers I found were far away from me, making the experience twice as bad as it already was. I'm not talking sort of rubberbandy, but I mean people would moonwalk in place and then a gush of blood and everyone was dead two seconds later. Counting as of right now, I saw 2 servers with a grand total of... 7 people across them. That is really, really, really bad for a multiplayer only game. There is no single player, and there are no matches against the AI of any sort. I get it, making AI is hard. But starting at the main menu and hoping for a match is also hard to justify to a consumer.

My other concern that I will address is the progression system. When you start, you have a very, very limited selection of what weapons you can use. In fact, you actually just get ONE weapon when you start, and you have to play for a bit before you get the rest. I honestly don't care much for the cosmetics. Sure, make cosmetics the incentive for playing matches, you should have a starting weapon of every weapon type at the very least. It isn't just that either, there's also throwables that you can unlock, but it takes long time to get the healing one, which I have seen everyone use.

You cannot have important bits of gameplay locked behind a progression system when there is almost no one to play. Players will not get to experience all that your game has to offer if they cannot move forward.

There's also a Steam market tab for the game, and I'm not sure why, but it certainly rubs me the wrong way.

In the end, as a consumer, I cannot justify a purchase of this game unless you satisfy all of the following conditions:
1) You like Mount and Blade's combat ( or another similar title )
2) You have several people you can play with who also enjoy that same style of combat.
3) You acknowledge that there may or may not be anyone to ever play with and that you may be wasting your money.

I took one final look while writing this review, and there is a grand total of zero available servers online. I hosted one for a few minutes, but then I gave up as I sat alone for a short while.

It is a shame, because I know that I would have enjoyed this game otherwise, but even at $4.00 USD, I think there are still other games you could try, especially when those games are on sale.

Seasons feel cheap and lazy, and there's still only one raid and one dungeon, and the story is honestly worthless.

Fun combat, great atmosphere, interesting design all come together to create Absolver, a fighting game with a unique combat system which suffers due to a few flaws which hold the game back.


The problem is, there's barely any content, there's not really a story, if you could even call it one, and the biggest issue, is that there really isn't a playerbase, which is quite problematic for a game that is focused on an online PvP type of gameplay. As of writing, there are 30 players online. Yes, thirty.

The trailers make it seems like you'll work together to fight other players and explore the world together, facing off against AI foes and hostile players alike, but the few players I have seen have usually just brushed past me, and there isn't much of a world to go through to begin with. Occasionally, I'll spot a random player, jumping on an injured player who was distracted by AI, as the injured player dies a helpless death as they are barraged with attacks from both player and AI enemy. There are even a few spots where you'll fight multiple AI enemies on your own, as they barrage you with a hail of blows, creating fights that aren't exactly fair or satisfying without the aid of another player. In addition, the AI is alright in combat, but it's quite easy to find a spammy combo that just defeats the AI due to their lack of judgement.

I also have a personal dislike for the fact that you have to 'learn' moves. I mean sure, they wanted to give people a reason to keep playing and whatever, but at the same time, the combat becomes kind of stale when you've got to run around and block and dodge attacks and whatever in order to use another attack. When I beat the 'story' I had only ever utilized the same moves I had started with, with the addition of maybe one or two moves in the combat deck. By the time I was done, I really didn't have much of an interest to keep going. I didn't have any other moves to work into my deck because I didn't unlock them. The core gameplay loop was ultimately the same as it was in the beginning, and that felt disappointing. While it was satisfying to learn the combat at first, I didn't feel like I was learning much more past the initial two hours of starting, and by then, there wasn't any new stuff to explore so I just felt like I was done. I guess the best way to describe the situation would be something like playing Mortal Kombat 3, but Scorpion doesn't have the teleport or the spear until you play enough to unlock it.


Absolver is a game I would certainly like to see more of, but I can't justify the asking price, which is currently $29.99 when it isn't on sale.

Whether we wanted it or not, we've stepped into a war with the Cabal on Mars. So let's get to taking out their command, one by one. Valus Ta'aurc. From what I can gather, he commands the Siege Dancers from an Imperial Land Tank just outside of Rubicon. He's well protected, but with the right team, we can punch through those defenses, take this beast out, and break their grip on Freehold.

Buddy sold separately.