Recent reviews by Rubat

Stuck on an infinite loop of "Logging in" in a SINGLE PLAYER game after having to restart the game to change graphics.

Funnily enough, on first launch it loaded correctly and allowed me to "play offline" after it tried to get me to log into an EA account.

♥♥♥♥ EA, and ♥♥♥♥ this telemetry riddled "modern gaming" quardruple A ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with accounts and privacy policies in singleplayer games.

I have mixed feelings about this game, and I think the bad outweigh the good.

The biggest issue are PC controls. The keybindings are actually insane, you will have to rebind them, and the camera movement is inconsistent (sometimes the sensitivity is normal, sometimes super slow, most noticeable in vehicle sections) Shooting is done in a very weird way too where it's basically a special mode toggle with aimbot.

The platforming/climbing is quite inconsistent, I have had quite a few issues of the character jumping off in unpredictable directions. Some puzzles are unintuitive.

There were just too many frustrating moments where some bull---- happens and you die in what feels like no fault of your own for me to recommend playing this, let alone buying it.

I did like the character animations though, for the game's age they are very fluid.

A breath of fresh air from "modern gaming". In my opinion it's not as good as the original is some ways (story, atmosphere, progression), but overall it's still a good game.

The game just works. And it runs very well on maxed settings @ native 1440p without any upscalers. It's silly that these days this is something that needs complementing, but given how atrocious a lot of big budget game releases are these days I felt that I should point this out. No microtransactions as well, however it does have analytics.

The graphics are very good, even though not the best, and most importantly the game is crystal clear. No forced blurry TAA. You can actually see details in the environment.

Not much to complain about here really, a very solid port.

The bad:
* The game REALLY discourages exploration in the first HALF. A lot of collectibles and stuff are locked behind story progression. It's very frustrating, and it made me really not care about collectibles at all.
* The main character never shuts up. She will explain every puzzle solution 2 seconds after you reach the puzzle, even with "exploration mode" setting. She will try to fill silence at all times, even when standing still in a bush waiting for enemies to pass. And there's no setting to tone this down
* Movement, especially climbing is not as solid as it should be. You just can never be sure whether the character will grab a certain ledge or land on a beam, or just fall to her death for no reason.
* The glider mechanic is also unreliable, sometimes it will just not activate because it's a "hold to open" action, not instant on key press, sometimes the grappling hook will activate instead because they are bound to the same key.
* Ammo type variety is vastly expanded here, but it feels too extreme. There are so many special arrows and I don't even know what most of the non-elemental ones do. On normal, the default Hunter bow did 90% of the job for me. The first game required me to use a ropecaster to take down stormbirds, made it a lot easier, but here it seems to not really do much.
* Outfit and Weapon upgrades are straight up just worse here, especially the higher rarity items. The problem is that they require specific machine components that you need to manually shoot off of enemies and that gets very tedious when enemies are quite slow to kill. Some of these items are entirely RNG based, and each weapon requires a decent amount to upgrade. There are a lot of weapons and weapon types, and upgrading them each to test what you prefer is just not viable, so I ended up just using 1 weapon for most of the game, compared to 3 or 4 in the first game.
* Traps are still largely useless, at least on normal. More so than the first game even. They are not very strong without upgrades, have weird limitations and are slow to place, and there aren't many situations where you know enemies will walk towards you so you can prepare.
* The game felt kinda too long. This may be a good thing to some, there's undeniably a lot of things to do, but far from every quest is compelling.
* Some keybindings are weird - fast travel is right click, world interactions are sometimes via a "use" key and sometimes left mouse button. Stopping a playing audio log is E, and so is "pick up item". Map panning is very slow for no reason.

The good:
* They removed annoying inventory limits that were present in the first game
* A good amount of accessibility/difficulty settings
* A lot more fights alongside friendly NPCs
* Each Cauldron and Tallneck feel very distinct from each other compared to the first game, they are not just different parkour paths, there are actual different gameplay elements involved
* There are also no long overdrawn animations in the UI, everything feels snappy, as it should

The overall story is a mixed bag. The best part of the game is still the world building in my opinion. The first half of the game is kinda cool and there are lot things that happen that make sense, which I liked.

But the main villain(s) (The Zeniths) are not really fleshed out and therefore are not really interesting, They feel like generic bad guys without any logical motivation for their actions. The last few missions of the game feel kinda rushed, and the conclusion is not really satisfying, but I guess I don't know what I expected.

I also didn't really like how they handled certain character(s) from the first game here. Ted Faro just being killed off screen with a torch, like what the hell? He also feels a bit retconned in this game.

Burning Shores DLC is not much better. The main villain is just as generic and uninteresting as the main game, and I really didn't care for the the seemingly forced in romance subplot, it just doesn't feel believable. The only saving grace is that the final boss fight is pretty cool, probably the best between the 2 games.

It's fine. 30-40 minutes for entertainment for free.

The puzzles are very simple, and the achievements seem to be bugged for non host. We also had a connection issue where my friend could connect to me, but I couldn't connect to his game.

I liked it overall, but it is a bloated with collectibles and puzzles. I'd also like to extend my "screw you ubisoft" for including microtransactions and daily/weekly challenges in this singleplayer game. They have no place in singleplayer games. So, I'd only recommend buying this on a sale.

The game itself is not bad, but it did take me a while to get used to the rather dated graphics and animation quality. I usually don't pay that huge attention, but it was quite jarring at first in this game.

The gameplay is fast paced. The movement takes some time to get used to as well. The progression (upgrades, skills, some exploration stuff) is directly copied from the RPG Assassin's Creeds, unsurprising since the game runs on the same engine. The map is fairly large and is filled with collectibles and a lot puzzles to complete.

Music was surprisingly good.
Narratively, the game doesn't take itself too seriously, constantly trying to make jokes.

I didn't quite like the voice acting of the protagonist. I don't why, it just didn't feel right.
Some of the controls are also frustrating, most notably the way you activate your "godly powers" has the same key bindings as using potions, but with holding middle mouse button. This results in quite a lot accidental potion usages.

I also didn't like the fact that there's no "post-game" as such. You get a "point of no return" warning + a save and that's it, so you can never complete all quests and collect everything. The final quest will always be on your map. There's also no checklist for game completion of any kind, so you will never know if you missed some boss, puzzle or collectible.

I also had a bizarre bug 2 times after playing this game all day long, where my entire Windows would get bricked - being unable to do anything, open start menu, open task manager, open files, could not even shutdown my PC without a hard reset. I don't know if it is something with the game or not, but this has never happened before or since.

The 3 DLCs add around 25 hours of content total, if you liked the base game, and want more, could grab it on a sale if you didn't get the gold edition.

It's alright. It's completely separate from the main game, narratively and progression wise. I liked the aesthetics, and the fact that it wasn't too long and therefore repetitive.

The dialogue is still a bit cringe, but it's not too bad.

Puzzlingly, unlike all other DLCs and the base game, there's no character customization at all. You don't even get to import your cosmetics from the main game.

This is a narrative continuation of DLC 1 (A new god), and it's at least tries to be a little bit unique from the base game. Whether that uniqueness is good or not is another question though.

The DLC is separate from the main game, and changes up the gameplay to be kind of a Diablo ARPG type of thing. The only thing is, it kind of fails at it, and is completely unnecessary. The top down camera adds nothing to the gameplay, and makes certain things like bow aiming and throwing puzzle elements just that much more frustrating. The loot is still basically the same system as base game, but changed up a bit to be "more unique". Basically your base game skills have "skill gems" that you can install and your gear perks were also replaced with these "gems" that it applies to pre-set skills.

Fast travel was nerfed - not only it costs resources now, it can only be done from already discovered fast travel points. This adds nothing but annoyance to the experience, so why was it changed?

They also make you click spacebar to progress conversations for no reason.

You unlock sprinting way too late into the DLC.

Despite all that, I didn't hate it like I did the first DLC. It's mid. Get it on a sale.

Just like DLC 1, you can only import cosmetics, and only cosmetics are carried over to the main game.

And just like the first DLC, this one also took me around 10 hours to complete, but at least these 10 hours were not as boring and frustrating as the first DLC.

Also just like in the base game, there's no post-game exploration as such, but this time it actually makes sense narratively why you can't. I still dislike this though.

It's boring. It's just a bunch of challenge rooms (vaults).

It is completely separate from the main game, but you can IMPORT your cosmetics, not the progression though. The only things carried to the main game are also cosmetics.

The narrative could be summarized on one sentence, and there's very little dialogue.

This DLC also makes the subpar controls of the base game painfully obvious. The juggling of holding keys, pressing buttons that have multiple actions, it's a mess. The further you go, the worse and more frustrating the challenges become,

The longer I played, the more I hated my time with it. Overall took me around 10 hours to complete. I don't think this DLC is worth is full asking price.

The game shines with its amazing atmosphere and decent story, but it is undoubtedly bogged down by ridiculous "realism" in my opinion.

The graphics are amazing (despite weird graphical glitches on everything ULTRA - foliage fading in and out right in front of you, striped shadows from thin geometry, buggy volumetric fog effects) and in combination with the amazing weather system create just such a good atmosphere. You can feel the wetness of the rainy weather. Whenever stormy weather came, I just ended up sitting there or walking around just soaking it in.

The story is decent, I wouldn't say 10/10, but it kept my attention and the final missions are very fun. There are a few things I could point out here, like the constant murderizing of every town the characters went to and in general, it is pretty hard to sympathize with these characters, especially at the first half of the game. The second half is also quite difficult to give a damn about given that the main character gets a terminal illness long before the end, so you know how it ends after that point, so there are not really any stakes so to speak.

The ending itself is quite disappointing in my opinion, solely because of the fact that you lose good chunk of the things you were collecting for like 80 hours. A lot of your time is undone by R* just because. This is especially stupid given that Arthur literally gives John the bag with all his stuff, but for some inexplicable reason R* decided to screw you over and not carry over the items, not even after the Epilogue.

Coming from GTA5, I had certain expectation regarding the shooting mechanics, but I was wrong. The inconsistent usage of having to manually arm/draw the hammer of your gun after every shot for most, but not all weapons, and the very shaky aiming make for a sub par shooting experience. You basically have to use dead eye to be efficient. You can say "skill issue", but I never had such issues with GTA5.

A lot of missions have a secret time target or a "don't use health items" secret objective, which really discourages exploring and using consumables during missions, and that's simply anti-fun.

The realism parts I also did not appreciate. Specifically how slow a lot of things feel to do for questionable reasons. Again, it feels like R* are just wasting your time on purpose. Read Dead Online applies a lot of "QoL" changes in this regard, speeding up a lot of interactions, which shows that they knew what they were doing with slowing singleplayer down on purpose.

The bounty system felt quite unfair in many cases. Standing on top of a train for too long? Wanted dead or alive + a bounty. Walk near an NPC weird or stay too long? Die scum. And pay reparations.
Looting some dead bodies gives you negative honor, others don't and give you unique items instead.
The honor system is also no better, Killing someone in self-defense? Negative honor + bounty. Killing dogs of bounty hunters that are attacking you? Dishonorable.
Some missions force you to mass murder innocent people, reducing your honor and giving you huge bounties.
I also had many instances of accidentally running into NPCs in towns with my horse which insta kills them. Sometimes they even just walk into your path. BOUNTY + NEGATIVE HONOR.
Robbing a train in the middle of nowhere? Guards gets alerted from the other end of the train and cops spawn in as if they were waiting in an ambush.

You get a bandana to "hide your identity while committing crimes", but even that barely works. You still get a bounty sometimes, you still get negative honor, not only that, wearing one in towns get you wanted as well.

Hunting animals for challenges and crafting can get extremely frustrating, especially for small animals. The game tells you to use "small game arrows", but no matter how much you try, the small animals (such as rabbits) don't die in 1 shot in almost all cases, which ruins the pelt, so you gotta waste more time finding another 3 star rabbit. And a lot of progression systems are tied to this mechanic.

Another point of frustration - your rifles get unequipped on their own all the time. So you just did a mission, riding somewhere, get ambushed or knocked from your horse by a predator - congratulations, you now are left with no proper weapon to defend yourself with.

Menu animations are another classic way to waste player's time, and this game is no exception. Wanna check time while in a state you have a bounty in? Gotta wait 5 seconds every single time. Why? Screw you, we are R*.

Speaking of animations, the horse brushing is one of the worst "realism" mechanics in the game, on par with looting bodies. It's there solely to waste your time, and you HAVE to do it so your horse doesn't magically just die from being dirty I guess. Worst part is that there's no obvious indication when you need to stop brushing. You could do it 7 times, get back on the horse, and it will be immediately continue dying from dirtiness.

Ultimate edition gives you some items from first hour of the game, like the best horse in the game for free. Why is this a thing?

Controls are also quite annoying, mostly relating to horses. They just DO NOT STOP, no matter how much you mash CTRL. This is mostly an issue in gun fights and in towns, where the fragile NPCs can get killed.

Fast travel is done by name only, and only through your camp (which you can't activate in towns), so unless you memorize names of each location, you don't really know where you will end up. They don't even mark the current camp of your gang, you really need to pay attention.

It's fine. There are still cheaters. The main "story" still requires other players to play, so they learned nothing from GTAO. If you got friends to play with, I think it could be worthwhile to blast through what's there once.

All in all, the realism parts really did ruin the game a fair bit for me. I'd recommend rushing through the story for maximum enjoyment, and don't bother with any of the challenges or collectibles, they are just an exercise in frustration.