Recent reviews by Blank

Worthy of the praise this game gets.
A true modern masterpiece of a title.

Great core gameplay loop.
Bit arcadey.
Buy it on sale, don't pay full price unless you really like monster hunter.. but you would have already played it by now so.

So, I've played this for 82 hours and I think it's time for a review. I'm still not done with the game but I've made my mind up on it enough to post a review; I don't think the last part of the game will sway how i feel about it.

I played the first game, and loved it so thought this would be a no brainer, which is why it sucks to be posting a negative review about a game I can tell had a lot of love put into it.

***Let's talk about what's good first.

-The graphics
really well done, beautiful game, I've taken so many screenshots and really enjoyed some of the exploration around forbidden west.

-The story
Like I said, i'm not done with the game but i've enjoyed the story so far, I'll update my review should I feel this will change but given where the story is headed, I can safely say this is a positive aspect of the game.

- Things to see and do
the game has lots of different side missions, quests, mini games, puzzles, etc and I feel they are spread out enough to make the game interesting.

- The stamina system
Love the ability to swap different firing modes for my weapon and having that controlled by stamina, this just felt like a better version of the valor system.

- Quality of life features
Infinite inventory, things going to stash when my inventory is full. Nice quality of life feature.

- The map
The way the map looks and displays information is better than any video game I've ever played, the little 3d effect and uncovering parts of the map was super cool.

***So why a negative review? What was so bad that graphics and good story drove a thumbs down?

- The combat
I don't know what happened between this game and the first one but something dramatically changed in the combat cycle. I went back to try out the first game to see if it was just me, but no, the machines feel have so much more armor.

The game leans on much larger machines, that are much tankier and difficult to deal with, the machines move faster and are overall much more aggressive.

Many more AOE knockdown mechanics, or machines screaming to make your character dazed, you spend much more time on your butt than in the first game.

The melee combat in this game and the melee fights was just... horrible. Learn this entire system to do a handful of fights, you'll never use this against machines because they'll constantly stun you if you get into melee with them.

- The weapons
For some reason, the weapons in this game don't feel as impactful as the first, for example the ropecaster in the original game felt like it was useful enough to tie one machine down, however in this game it feels like i need double the shots to get the machine into a tied down state and then have only half as long to shoot before the effect wears off.

Status effects expire much quicker meaning you have less of a window to do things in.

Bolt blaster vs rattler is feels like a downgrade.
Warrior bow is terrible. RIP War bow which was great for elemental infliction.
Blast sing feels all around less effective.
Shredder gauntlet is fun but hard to use well against the large machines.
Spike thrower is pretty neat but is really hard to use against larger machines.

So where does that leave you? Hunter bow, hunter bow, hunter bow, hunter bow. The first games weapons felt impactful and strong, but if you're not using a bow like a lot of the combat guides on youtube show up - you're gunna have a bad time.

- The skill tree
Just like the first game, the skill system is definitely the worst part of the game. I think the game would have been so much better if aloys overall ability was higher without the need to invest skill points.

There are so many options, so many choices that as a player, I feel overwhelmed with choice but when i actually get into the talents, they aren't that interesting that it could have just been baked into the characters core power rather than this bad talent system.

The trap skill tree sucks btw.

- The valor system
I really dislike the valor system, investing skill points unlocks these power up modes that make Aloy do more damage, have better tear damage or whatever but honestly, having to see a cut scene for a quick power up is so so immersion breaking. This is honestly the worst thing in the game, again - why do I need yet another button to press.

- The notebook
Wading through a giant notebook for a quest objective was infuriating - why make me look through this junk to tap in some code when you could literally say "aloy knows the code now, when the player goes to the door she taps it in" why do i have to sift through a bad menu system to find some junk code to punch it in, not an interesting gameplay mechanism, just annoying.

- The game lacks "soul"
I don't know how to put this and the first game was a little bit guilty of this too, but sometimes zero dawn feels like it's missing that little something that makes it special. This is probably a me problem because I think the new Zelda games have the same problem despite them being acclaimed games.

*** Overall
A game with many cool things about it but the core combat loop system lets it down, I find myself being frustrated with having to fight machines and than my weapons often suck and I need to lookup a youtube video to figure out where to go and get some better equipment.

The game is bloated and gets in its own way with way too much random stuff to do that feels mandatory as I'm constantly underpowered for the task at hand. My talents don't feel impactful nor do my decisions.

5/10. Sometimes less is more.

pay2win

its good, buy it >:(

Meh.

A truly unique experience that make this one of my favourite games to play in recent years.

--A few caveats to anyone buying--
play it with your friends, it sucks solo.
there are cheaters
there are a lot toxic people
the game can be frustrating
some of the mechanics (like collecting loot) are clunky
You will be bullied by older players, be ready to invest time to git gud

--why buy?--
There is nothing like this out there
Treasure, everyone loves treasure especially other peoples treasure
Combat is simple but nuanced and will take a long time to master
sometimes you find really nice people who make the game special
the game feels very rewarding to play

so if you're looking for something fun to do that's different with your friends, check this out, don't play with randoms or on your own though.

Not much to say, a beautiful remake of an excellent game.

Really enjoyed it! 5/5

I wish steam had a "meh" button, I'm going with a thumbs up rather than down because I can tell there was love put into this game and a solid effort was made by the devs; this is a well-crafted game and very polished – I just think the overall design is poorly thought out.

If I could reflect a neutral review, I would. I'm leaving this review for potential buyers to be aware of the games major issues that may or may not be a problem for different people.

1) Hide and seek - this game loves hide and seek, which is great the first 5-10 times you do it, when you’re 40 hours into the game doing it for the 113th time trying to find the random thing that is hidden in the level it just becomes tedious and annoying.
If you’re a lover of hide and seek and won’t get tired of that, you’ll be doing a lot of it but you’ll have a lot of fun here.

2) Uninteresting loot – the game starts out with some really interesting and different weapons but over time you kind of learn that bigger numbers = better, there are some interesting decisions to be made but like many modern ARPGS the choices are largely numeric.

3) Repetitive puzzles – you would think a game about spaceships would have a focus on that but I’d say this game is 40% space combat and 60% wandering around figuring out where to put the power conector or aim an ancient lens, the game has a grand total of around 5 main stay puzzle “types” and that’s it, that’s your lot, for the entire 45-50 hours.

By the end I was outwardly sighing whenever one came up, I felt like my time was being wasted for no reason at all, there was often a small story beat connected to a puzzle but something like “we need to open this building, let me waste 20 minutes of your time” was really tough to digest as a player.

4) Story – Other people have touched on this but I think overall the plot of the story is interesting, it’s just badly paced because of the games repetition, that goes a long with some “meh” voice acting to just make it overall a really dry experience.

The story does however have some very good high points, especially towards the end.

Okay, we’ve discussed the bad, what’s good about this?


1) Combat – while sometimes flat, getting involved in bigger fights is really exhilarating – I’d recommend doing every high-risk area, rifts, they are very much the most fun parts of the game. It was great using large cruise missles on large ships.

2) Ships (classes) – I like the variety of ships and ended up using a ship that summons drones to help fight, you could tell that some real thought had been put into what would made a ship fun and a playstyle to construct around it.

3) Visuals – it would be an understatement to say this game is pretty, it’s gorgeous and immersive, the universe designs, the way you pass through nebulas, how the stars radiant light and heat, so good. Space battles are dances of light amongst the dark of space.

A beautiful rendition of space and really encourage me to explore, this is probably the main reason I kept going, the Khait nebula was so beautiful.

4) End game – I’ve not done much end game stuff myself, but it focuses on the fun parts of the game which means that your end game experience is a lot more fun after beating the campaign.

Summary *light spoilers*

I think the saying "less is more" would have helped Ever space 2, if the puzzles were spread out more, the side areas had more fighting and the game was balanced more towards space combat with a 80 to 20 split, I think this game would have been better.

I think if rifts were introduced earlier in the game and high risk areas made part of the campaign with more space battles occurring - the game would have been a lot more fun.

This game felt like a tedious puzzle solver with some cool space combat and a meh loot system thrown in, it's some great potential but if you don't like puzzles or down time, give this one a miss - even on sale.

Played the full game, beat it, loved it!

-- AMENDED TO NEGATIVE 25/07/2023 --

Recently saw the update and thought I'd hop back in to try; I understand that the original player base in dying light 1 wanted one thing but as someone who did not like your first game and loved your second game, I was disappointed when I came back to try.

The night mode is unplayable now with constant chases, a lot of the things that need to be done at night don't work properly or are interupted by the volatiles. Your game took me 73 hours to beat WITHOUT the constant harassment from this enemy type, I can't imagine how much longer it would take with this nuisance enemy following me round wasting my time.

The chases are fun the first 5-8 times, then it becomes so annoying. I don't understand why this gameplay is fun when progressing the game has now become a difficult grind that's not FUN but TEDIOUS.

Why would you put this change in and not give your players an option to choose between the original experience as the game was designed and this version that feels like a layer over the top and doesn't fully interact properly with the original game. (bugs such as volatiles spawning in GRE facilities for example).