Recent reviews by Scase is KING of Narwhals

Democracy has prevailed. With the change back to not requiring a PSN account, you get back your well deserved positive review.

JUSTICE, FREEDOM, DEMOCRACY.

This game is honestly one of the biggest disappointments I've had with gaming in a few years. It's like you took nothing but good ideas and the executions were just failed at every step of the way.

The game looks nice, but has insanely unoptimized issues that are consistent and reproducible. OC'd 5800x, OC'd 6800XT, and 32gb of 3200mhz ram, all running at 1440p. The game runs around 90fps/140fps on ultra/medium settings, except anytime there's actually something going on. You lose 30fps on the regular with 5 or so enemies, and even more when any enemies have a transparency effect like smoke. Every time a fight ends you have the fragments on the ground to pick up, which causes FPS drops of 140 to sub 60. It's horrendous.

The world is huge and offers a lot of places to go, but the world is bland and empty. All you ever come across are camps with normal, hard, or elite mobs. In between camps there is basically absolutely nothing. The game has a travel system that allows you to turn into a crow and fly around fast to navigate it. Except it requires you to walk across a certain "shrine" that turns you into the crow. These points are tedious to reach and the whole concept is pointless and made to do nothing but pad out game length. If you were able to turn into a crow at will, you'd be cutting out probably 30-40% of your game time. After every fight, you have like a 10-30 second run to get to the shrine that turns you into the crow, just to fly to another enemy camp. Other camps are JUST far enough away that it's 30 seconds faster to run to the shrine and fly as a crow, even if that shrine is in the complete opposite direction of the enemy camp.

It's such a bland and lifeless world that has the experience padded extremely heavily by needless back tracking to turn into a crow, instead of it having an action to turn into it at will.

The onboarding/tutorial are severely lacking. You have TWO systems (hatred) but one of them is permanent(ish) and can only be slightly reduced by beating the zone boss, and the other entirely cleared. They have the same name, which is wildly confusing, and it doesn't clearly explain what reduces which one and by how much. Needlessly confusing when all they needed to do was give them 2 different names. The game doesn't explain any status effects and requires you to read the codex, which is fine. If it were consistently so, or even if it told you READ MORE IN THE CODEX.

It gives you explanations of systems like in the tutorial that require no need, like duh, press space to jump, wasd to move, but completely ignores things like the status effect system, and most importantly the luck system.

The wardens (zone bosses) are the exact same each time, there's no variety and the boss fights are just boring. Just iframe dodge 2-5 times in a row and then attack while they are on cooldown between attack animations. That's it, nothing else at all. The first boss has like 3 attack patterns in total.

Some weapon types are utterly worthless. Hammers and most 2h weapons are really slow and have a lot of windup on even the first swing, so they become almost useless in boss fights. Most attack animations the boss will swing at you about 4 times then retreat on the last attack and opening up a gap between you and them. With 1h or dual wield weapons this isnt a big deal as you can get in quick hits before you weave the next attack animation from the boss. With 2h weapons sometimes no matter how quick you are as the boss enters their cooldown phase, you flat out cant both close the gap AND get a hit off consistently. It doesn't make the boss difficult, it makes it wildly tedious and boring.

This gets EXCEPTIONALLY worse with certain world mobs who have movement patterns where every time you approach them, they dodge back. It makes getting consistent hits in with slow weapons rare and just makes it a boring game of whack a mole.

The gameworld is huge and lush, and gives you like 50-100 different enemy camps you can choose to attack, except the hatred system (the primary game mechanic) actively dissuades you from fighting them. The reward for fighting enemy camps, is that you kill them to get fragments, you collect 3 of these and "empower" them to get passive/active cards that increase/decrease damage in a myriad of ways. The empowering system causes the permanent hatred I mentioned earlier, so the more you get the harder bosses become, this is all well and fine in concept, but it just disincentivizes you to explore and fight lest you make the boss kill you in a handful of hits.

The second reward are chests, these are "hatred" chests as well, meaning 1/3 cards pulled is a negative one such as increasing your non permanent hatred level (does the same thing of making bosses more difficult, but gets cleared completely upon moving to the next zone....see how needlessly confusing this is), stealing coins, stealing mana (needed to "use" your cards") or make merchants in the game (your primary way of healing) 25% more expensive EVERY time you draw one.

The game definitely needs a balance to how powerful it can let you get by pulling cards, vs how difficult the boss will be, but they do not have the correct balance. And even if they did, it still prevents you from wanting to explore the game world.

I got this game at 20% off and I still feel like I wasted money. They have so many interesting concepts or mechanics that are slightly off from being good, that overall it gives you a bad game. It's like if you found someone who you think looks like a perfect 10/10, but if their nose was slightly too big, that's fine they are still really good looking.

But if their nose is slightly too bog, their eyes just a little too far apart, ears slightly too small, and so on, you end up with someone really not very attractive. The best way to describe the games design and how it goes from good to bad, would be death by a thousand cuts.

They needed better QA testers, or people further away from the project who could give criticism from an unbiased perspective.

Lastly, I tried to refund it basically the next day, but I played 4 hours (hoping the game would get deeper) and steam denied me due to exceeding the 2hr limit. The game is just meh, not worth a buy. Maybe at like 50-60% off.

You know, most of my reviews are usually relatively long and break down the game both for the better and the worse. But, for this game i have to simply say, the game itself is really fun.

But it's not worth it. The game has and has had for at least 2 years now, a severe stuttering issue. It has been brought up a multitude of times on the boards, and nothing has been done to address it, let alone fix it. I stopped playing back in EA because the stutter was just making it extremely unenjoyable, but I gave them the benefit of the doubt that it would be fixed upon release.

And here we are, giving a negative review on a game I enjoy. It's a shame really.

The game concept as a core, it's solid. Don't listen to the negative reviews claiming that it is p2w, it isn't anything that impacts game play (aside from boosters) is buyable with in game currency that is only collected from playing.

It's fun for a bit and then it gets absurdly repetitive and boring. The devs are super slow to make changes, there have been 0 significant patches since launch in late January, feature requests that have been asked for over a year ago that haven't been implemented, and we are talking simple things like allowing a key to be rebound.

The net code is awful and desync happens constantly, so enjoy getting hit and dying around corners, hitting someone with a stagger move all for it to be ignore and they just attack through it, and all manner of "wtf" moments as your abilities get ignored.

The game is essentially ignored in NA and the Japanese devs only care for the Asia region, as of yesterday the NA "time zones" hit a low of 231 concurrent players. That means that's enough players for a whopping 10 simultaneous matches without bots, which never happens. Most games are about half or more bots, unless you play in the asia servers.

The game has horrendous on boarding for new players, many systems are not explained, yet their tutorial includes quests that teach the player how to emote, but not how to or why to use siege equipment or other crucial game mechanics.

The UI/UX both in game and in menu is a mess. In menus everything is confusing, and so many basic things are hidden in places where they don't make sense. Applying skins to your items requires you going to specific places in a specific screen, rather than just clicking your gear. This is a theme across the whole UI/UX.

In game you get bombarded by so many messages that they routinely get backed up and queued, so by the time you get an important message like your doors are under attack, they are already broken.

The balance is a mess. Warriors can just left click to kill anyone but other warriors, as their first 2 hits of a 3 hit string cause hit stun. So if you catch any mage with a left click, you can kill them without them reacting. Warriors also have gap closer mechanics that can 1 hit a mage. So even with the pathetic excuse of escape skills a mage has, it doesnt matter since the class you try to escape from, has better ones, and about 3x as many. 5 star warriors have a broken ult that gives you an instant full heal and tons more HP.

Clerics are Valor point farmers (you need VP to unlock your higher tier classes) so you can just spam rezzes and meaningless heals, get your points up and then switch to a 3-4 star class before most others are hitting 1 or 2. 5 star clerics have an utterly broken ult that gives you a (if you played overwatch) lucio style heal that is constantly up, and instantly rezzes every single person in that circle, endlessly until the ult runs out.

Mages are for the most part balanced, but because so much of the game takes place behind walls so many people play them. So to combat this, they got hit with a few nerfs recently that make zero sense. Such as one of the only "get off me" skills having the CD tripled. 5 star mages have by far the worst ult in the game as it puts you 2 character heights off the ground makes you a giant glowing HIT ME target and causes random lightning strikes that can either kill everything near you, or miss everything and nothing dies. They "fixed" this by giving the mage 200 armor while casting. An average 5 star mage has 280ish hp for context. This extends your life during ult by about 1-2 seconds.

All in all the devs are incredibly slow to act, the game has no players, the gameplay is repetitive, their "events" are pathetically bad, and the discord is a circlejerk of toxic positivity.

This is probably one of hardest and least deserving negative reviews I've ever written. I'll start with the good stuff first.

* The controls are great, the character 99% of the time does exactly what you want them to do, they are responsive, and snappy.

* The visuals are also really well done, the vibrancy of the game is gorgeous. It doesn't try for anything ultra realistic and does it's own art style and looks great doing it.

* The gameplay is top notch, the pacing (in level) for the most part is phenomenal. You're on the move non stop and it keeps you always looking around.

* The music just flat out slaps, you will find yourself bouncing in your seat. 10/10

Overall the gameplay and game design are fantastic.

Now for the bad, and the reason I gave this a negative review.

* The length of the game. Unless you are spending countless tries over and over going for the Ace medals (fastest times) you can burn through it pretty quick. I ended the game with nothing lower than a gold medal (Ace > Gold > Silver > Bronze are how they grade them) and it took me about 5 hours. This time was also inflated by my next point....

* The story. Dear god the story is HORRENDOUS. It is incredibly cringe inducing, we are talking written by a 15 year old, bad anime level of cringe. Normally I wouldn't care and I would just skip it and leave this out of the review entirely....

* And bringing it back to my first complaint. You CAN'T skip it, the only option provided to you is a fast forward feature. Each chapter is between 2 and 10ish levels (usually closer to 10) with 12 or so chapters. Your average level is like 1min long, and the cut scene visual novel junk happens usually 2-3 times per chapter. The only problem with this, is that even with the fast forward feature the cutscene stuff is usually LONGER than your average level. If I could outright skip the cutscene garbage, the game would have probably taken like 30-60min less.

After you finish the game you get access to a rush mode that lets you go back and try all your levels without cutscenes and stuff, but that doesn't matter after you had to sit through them entirely. I would immediately move this to a positive review with some caveats if there was a skip cutscene feature, versus the current negative review with caveats.

I normally wouldn't let something like this bother me, but I found myself audibly groaning every single time I was forced to sit through this cringy garbage story. If you can deal with sitting through it, or if you like bad visual novel stuff, pick the game up. The gameplay really is extremely good, but I would still suggest only picking it up on sale as unless you like to rerun the same levels to get optimum times it's too short for the price tag.

I wanted to like this game. I really did. The first dungeon was an enjoyable experience, but the game quickly took a nose dive in fun from there.

First and foremost one of my biggest complaints is how ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ linear it is, and have the gall to call itself a metroidvania. The only metroidvania aspect is simply that skills unlocked, like double jump, allow you to go back to previous areas and access previously unreachable locations. While this sounds like a typical metroidvania experience, the difference here is that you aren't going back to areas that unlock new areas that further progression, you simply can now access places that had unreachable chests for basic upgrade materials. These skills are used in future areas to simply complete those dungeons.

You are forced to complete all the dungeons in the order the game decides, as the unlocks you get from them are required to progress in the next dungeon and so on and so on. It's as if you took a megaman game and put all the stages in an order that you cannot change, and the boss of each stage was weak to the weapon you unlocked in the previous stage. Linear as all hell.

Now for the main complaint you see across most of the negative reviews. Difficulty. I enjoy a challenge and like hard games, I played this game on its hardest difficulty setting. Despite what most reviews mention the game isn't hard. The game is frustrating.It just masquerades as difficulty due to poor design, bad mechanics, cheap enemies, and a massive scaling of enemy HP and damage while you stagnate.

The controls of the game are horrible and cause more frustration and death than anything else. Constantly getting stuck on a hanging ledge just to have one of 5 mobs on screen take potshots and nail you in the back for 2/3 of your hp in 1 hit. Iframes that last for WAY too short of a time for how much damage you take per hit, and how much is on screen trying to kill you at once.

Enemies hit like trucks, have tons of cheap random "patterns", have abilities that do TONS of damage with zero wind up, none of their attacks can be interrupted leading to many many instances where you get your attack out earlier, but because they have shorter frame animations you tend to trade and they die while you lost 2/3 of your hp just to get sniped in the back instantly by one of the other mobs while still locked in your animation.

Enemies can hit you from stages away with potential 1 hit kill skills that you can't react to, and when you can react to it your shield breaks in 1 or two hits......if it's even a skill that can be blocked. Your other option is a dodge that has an unbearably long cool down and is really only useful in 1v1 or 2v1 situations, and only if those mobs don't have tons of attacks that hit in rapid succession. And then top this whole pile off with tons of enemy ranged attacks that are homing with the accuracy of an aimbot.

Wall jumping has to be the WORST mechanic in the game, it is so very unintuitive to how wall jumping works in pretty much any other game in existence. Usually you can jump to the wall, connect with it and then hold away and jump over and over. Not in Souldiers, no no you have to hold towards the jump WAIT UNTIL YOU LATCH ON then you jump, it slows down wall jumping and causes you to constantly just float down a wall 1 pixel away from actually grabbing it until you hit the ground to try it again. It's a horrible implementation and makes the game WAY more frustrating than it needs to be....but wait it gets better, they force you to use wall jump mechanics in boss fights. The same boss fights that typically kill you in 2 hits. So basically you aren't allowed to make mistakes, even when it's due to poor game mechanics and not you.

None of this even touches the characters, how pathetic their HP pools are. How weak their attacks are compared to even basic enemy HP pools. The fact that dying and respawning at a checkpoint revives ALL MOBS, meaning if there was a strong mob inches away from the checkpoint, they respawn when you do, and typically get to attack you the millisecond you spawned back in. Alternate weapons are pretty much worthless, incredibly low ammo counts making them extremely niche and even when you use them, they hardly do that much damage. Upgrades are absurdly expensive and provide little to no benefit, your damage will go up by single digits while enemy HP pools jump up by 50+.

The game seems to have had zero balance testing. I could honestly go on for like 15 more paragraphs of every stupid design choice, bug, unfair mechanic, poor control etc. but it's not worth it.

The game looks great, and I really love the music. That's it. Do not buy this and if you do, wait for a massive sale. The game had so much potential and just went to crap due to seemingly no real testing.

Kaiji Wars is a really interesting and innovative take on small map tactical strategy games. I won't go super in depth with it cause honestly, I don't think it needs it, the game in general is just very good.

Interesting and new concept, you don't get attached to your units as they are supposed to be cycled through and repaired multiple times a map. Small intense battles with interesting ways to approach it depending on how you've upgraded your units with medals. Great sense of humour, story line is ridiculous but also funny, tons of character in even just the main option/campaign/etc select screen.

And on top of this, I reported a bug on the steam boards, the devs recognized my post within 40min and the next day informed me the bug has mostly been resolved and they are looking into the deeper root cause.

Great game, great dev team, and a great buy. 100% recommend.

Repetitive gameplay, cheap "difficulty" just giving the AI an advantage in production etc. rushing is the only way to win, and poor balance. It's as if you took HOMM and removed all the good design choices.

I would've refunded it but, the issues only really rear their heads beyond the 2 hour mark. Maybe pick it up at 50%

I'm surprised I've yet to actually give this game a review.

It's exceptional, arguably one of the best VR games on the market. Pistol Whip to me is a necessity if you have VR.

The game play is exceptional, the game looks great, the music is excellent, and the game is constantly getting high quality updates for free.

There is zero reason to not own this, buy it.

Less than half a day before full release, AGS decides that they will lock servers to prevent more people from creating characters.

Founders items, you know things you paid MONEY for are locked to a SINGLE character in the game, regardless of server. So Amazon either forces you to throw money away to play with your f2p friends, or just not be able to play with your friends period.

Their solution? Give you another founders unlock for another character. Ignoring that any items purchased in the cash shop don't get moved to the new character, literally wasting your money, you lose the time spent on the characters....or you don't get to play with your friends.

All because server transfers are too difficult for them to manage. Don't buy, Amazon is speedrunning ruining a highly anticipated MMO. Trying to out do their record with New World.