Recent reviews by Murfle

It has recently became apparent how deep into ArrowHead Sony's gloved hand has actually reached.
I understand having to follow mandates, hit goals and quotas for the success of your partnership, but when your "partner" demands something of you that will damage the reputation and user experience across the board then I would think you'd have to take a stance.


Lets look at some of the facts:

- The Sony PlayStation Account linking requirement was never mentioned when the game was being sold. Announcing it after 2 months can be called nothing but misleading the customer. We call that the bait-n-switch.
- Due to the 2 month timing refunding is now not an option.
- People in certain parts of the world (including people I actively play with) will lose access to Helldivers 2.
- In some countries you CAN'T make a Playstation account unless you buy a PS4 or PS5, effectively locking access to the game behind a several hundred dollar purchase of a device you may or may not want.
- Sony claims this will improve account security.
- Sony's network security record is poor and their online service security team can can at best be described as following the rule of "good enough".
- Sony's lax security has resulted in over 77 MILLION accounts being leaked and posted for anyone to look at, including the real name, home address, email and password of each existing user.
- Sony lists entering a fake name for this account as a banable offense meaning they expect you to give them your real data, data that they can't seem to be able to keep private.
- The above hack occurred in 2011 but Sony has had many hacks and leaks since proving their security policy remains the lackluster.
- Claiming need for account linking is for the purposes of improved account security under these circumstances can therefore be called misleading the customer.
- Saying "We've had 500.000 new registered PlayStation accounts in Q1 of 2024" to shareholders will undoubtedly have a positive influence on Sony's stock value.
- Having to link the account adds no value to the users Helldivers 2 experience.
- Secondary accounts and launchers are user unfriendly and negatively influence the player experience. There have been countless times in the past where single player Ubisoft or Sony games were unplayable because the launcher/servers were overwhelmed of offline.
- Biating users into making a PSN account is a blatant attempt at having Helldivers 2 being a "gateway drug" for converting potential new account owners into entering the Sony ecosystem.

- TL;DR: Corporate upside, user downside.

We now move into phase two. More facts:

- Sony has removed the ability to purchase the game in 177 Countries. (Side note: There's 195 countries,)
- As Sony has failed to clarify why this was done, we can only assume it was to avoid further negative backlash for new sales to unaware parties in said countries until the issue of PSN linking was resolved.
- The issue has now (supposedly) been resolved.


We now need ONE of the following to happen:
- Since the game is no longer tied to PSN accounts and everyone is able to own a PC and an internet connection, Helldivers 2 should now be freely available for purchase everywhere previously possible.

Failing this there is only one other alternative:

- If the game can no longer be bought in these countries then this means Sony is now creating exclusivity and artificial scarcity. (Think of what happened with Flappy Bird and how much iPhones containing it were sold for after it was removed from the Digital Store). Sony should issue refunds to everyone that purchased the game and was effected by these circumstances. This not only means users in living in effected countries, but also means the people regularly playing with their International friends who would have lost the ability to do so, making them also eligible for a refund. I will be refunding if this happens, since I would have lost the ability to play the game with the friends for which I've purchased this game for in the first place.

I will NOT change this review to a positive one until the issue of Helldivers 2 Global availability is resolved one way or the other.

TL;DR: Everyone or no one plays.

I skulked the critters of the meadows. Sneaking slowly, tossing my spear with deadly aim until i had enough pelt to fashion myself a tunic. The deer, I slayed their god, and with its horns I made tools sharp enough to bite into the rich resources of the darker forests of the land. With sharpened metals of the earth I slayed the Elder and from its flesh I built a longship that sailed the oceans in search of stronger steel. I harpooned great serpents of the sea, dragged them ashore and partook in their flesh. I hauled the corpses of the dead and feasted on their meat. I skinned the most ferocious of man-beasts that stalk the mountain and felled the great scaled mother. I forged a hammer of pure silver and imbued it with frost. It now bites into the flesh of the scourge of this, most deadliest of lands as I defend Highhall - a grand village entrenched into the mountianside, as the heads of the elder gods adorn the pillars in my great mead hall.

Viking/10

Reminds me slightly of the old Supreme Commander Forged Alliance, but sadly - falls a bit short. The UI is just a little clunky, the unit selection is just a little scarce, and the factions seem to be very similar. I could be wrong, so I'll update this after I've clocked in some more hours.

Bannerlord picks up its predecessor, Warband, and quickly makes an erratic attempt to staple more bells & whistles to its by now - a decade old formula. Thankfully, the formula is very good, the new features are largely welcome, and make the world seem more alive. There are, however, some questionable tweaks here as well.

While the prequel had you schmoozing up to the lords and ladies of the land, gaining influence was never a core part of the experience. There was something to be said about the simplicity of expansion trough military might and strategy, where is now, there's a lot more to think about. Your clan has war parties to manage, fiefs to upgrade, heirs to raise, companions to mentor, aging to consider and so SO much more. Outside your clan, there are local bandits to mess with, mercenary companies to... well... farm (if you want their elite units), workshops to build, resources to gather, NPCs to hunt down and talk to, caravans to protect... its almost a bit overwhelming. This is all wonderful and adds much needed depth to simply moving your stack around the map and taking over territory, but it feels as I've said - Tacked on, instead of it naturally expanding the formula. Having to stop my military conquest to delve into the games encyclopedia for 5 minutes just to figure out weather to release or imprison a lord I've just taken captive does not make for exhilerating gameplay and breaks up the flow somewhat. Same goes for turning my large army around and marching from the heart of the enemy lands all the way back home because that one companion's band of 50 men cant outsmart or outrun an army much slower than itself, even though I've invested in that same companions scouting and pathfinding repeatedly just so this sort of stuff wouldn't happen while he was part of my merry band for the previous 10 hours of gameplay. There's also features that are downright unbalanced or unusable. As of playing, executing a lord does very little apart from breaking your ability to have any kind of diplomatic relationship with his faction, dealing with bandit hideouts are for some reason mandatory stealth missions that may cause your entire army of 200 men to disband should you fail to take the hideout with 10. Questionable design to say the least.

Suffice it to say, many of the games mechanics feel rough and unfinished. Why do i need to take rests and reenter the smithing menu for every 5 to 10 swords i make? Realistic, sure, does it add to gameplay? Not once you've been doing it for several hours. As such, when I play Bannerlord i do enjoy it, but It always feels like I'm putting up with its unfriendlier features and UI design flaws, and ultimately - there is only so much abuse someone can take. Hence I'm forced to take breaks more often than I'd like, and look to titles like CK3 (also flawed, also suffers from UI issues), more often than I'd like.
I believe the game is far from finished balance wise, and It's got a long way to go before it reaches its true potential. If nothing else, theres' a rabbid fanbase just waiting to storm the gate once the battering ram built of official modding tools is handed to them. The prequel has enjoyed 10 years of improvements and full conversion mods of excellent levels of quality, ranging from Warhammer, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, Feudal Japan, Viking, and many other heavily tweaked releases, and there's little reason to believe it'll be any difference with Bannerlord. This is one instance where time above all will surely tell if the release worth your money or the hours invested, but even in its rocky and unpolished state, those hours sure do seem to rush by and there's few (none) substitutes that let you take command of a battlefield quite like Mount & Blade.

A game with a familiar painterly art style and a deep combat system. Its like if you mixed exploration from “modern classics” like Slay the Spire or Darkest Dungeon with combat from more traditional tactical games like Final Fantasy Tactics or Heroes of Might and Magic series.

The formula has tons of potential, but as It is right now, there’s flaws in the execution:
- The jump of difficulty from the first dungeon to the second is huge. Its hard to adjust.
- Managing your deck and keeping it small is near impossible. It feels like the player is always trapped on the losing side of the struggle between getting new and better cards and replacing old cards/keeping the deck small and synergetic.
-The talents are a little too infrequent and will take a while to get a build going, with what feels like only a few options being truly viable.
-The early game drags on a bit.

Please note that all this is all based on my personal experience, and I might well just be bad at the game.

The game also has a ton of keywords and factors to consider, and while that’s generally a good thing, it gets overwhelming quickly, when I need to check out enemy decks, hover over each of the cards, read all the tooltips and figure out a strategy for every fight if I want to survive and the hero to come out undamaged so I can progress further reliably. Eventually I just can’t be bothered anymore and It leads to this slow progression into a slog where I’ll lose the game because of an overload of plates I need to keep spinning in order to not die.
By dungeon level 2 the average enemy will have 35+ HP, while my hero will still likely have 10-15 and very little to no means of healing him/herself. Meaning I have to play smart and avoid about 95% of all damage across 20+ fights.
I would recommend that the authors look into streamlining certain mechanics to make the experience (managing the deck, reading the battlefield) more straightforward and fun for the player.

The game really has potential and is a gem in the rough - that's why the recommendation stands. If this is your kind of game then consider trying it out, and hope it gets nudged in the right direction with future development. :)

I'm sick and tired of this thing. I've bought this when it was first released and I've been either ignoring or regretting it since. Its been YEARS now and the Arma2 mod is still more feature complete, less buggy and generally an actual functional game. As far as I remember the standalone version was supposed to upgrade on existent mechanics, add a proper anti-cheat system and a sleeker interface, and be done with it. Released. Finito.

What It feels like its ACTUALLY done, is that it took my money (+ ~26 million USD) and used it to fund the dev's trip to Hawaii. I hope this is in a released and playable state before me and my buddies keel over from old age.

Yes. I talked several of my friends into buying this when It was first made available and I regret it immensely. Every once in a while a buddy will go "Hey, you know what we can play? That DayZ thing, Hows that coming along?" and every time I have to replay " *sigh* ...look man. Forget you ever bought it. Please. Forget it exists. Treat it like It's never coming out."

Oh yeah. And if youre wondering If it has any issues that the mod had over 4 years ago then Yes, youre in luck! It has all the features you've been missing:

☑ Zombies that walk trough walls & floors (if you can find any)
☑ Zombies that only respawn when the server is manualy reset
☑ Loot that only spawns when the server is manualy reset
☑ Loot that spawns underground
☑ Loot that plain old doesnt work or is unequipable
☑ No vehicles
☑ Randomly breaking bones when walking down a flight of stairs
☑ Zero Anti-Cheat protection (To my knowledge)
☑ Hackers
☑ Messy, laggy menus that require a perfect zero-latency enviorment to function properly

Please. Avoid this like the plague until its patched and released, If ever.
(Keep in mind this was scheduled to release late 2012.)