Recent reviews by Bassomitron

Just posing my specs so others can gauge how it'll run for them:

AMD 5950x, RTX 3090, 64GB DDR4, PCIE NVMe SSD, Win 10. I'm on latest nVidia driver as of 07 Nov 23.

Running at 1440p, borderless window, all settings High except Textures and shadows (which are at Ultra), and DLSS Quality. Motion blur and chromatic aberration turned off, Vsync turned off, FPS capped at 120.

With those settings, I averaged about 100 FPS and I just got the Radiant ending a couple of days ago. I haven't experienced any stutters unless I'm flat out sprinting between areas super fast (as in, leaving the hub area and sprinting out to Pilgrim's Perch), and even then it's for maybe a split second as the area loads, then it's smooth again. Haven't had a single crash or crazy bug yet. That being said, I have had times where during long sessions (multiple hours straight), FPS would start to dip into the 60-70s

I did coop for a little bit and the netcode seemed stable, neither of us dropped or rubberbanded like crazy. However, this is an extremely, "your experience may vary," type of situation, as I've seen numerous reports of unstable multiplayer.

Quick gameplay review:
- B+ tier Soulslike, almost A tier. I'm almost done with Lies of P and I'd rank this above that game. I know, this is extremely divisive, but I just love how much exploration there is in LotF. This game oozes atmosphere and world immersion. Lies of P, while good, is very linear. This isn't a bad thing, I enjoy linear games, but when it comes to Soulslikes, I prefer having a world to get lost in. LotF's world is all interconnected and some of the shortcuts you open back to the hub will have you going, "Whoa, so THAT'S where that locked door at the beginning of the game that I totally forgot about leads to."

- Combat has weight to it, poise/stagger/hyperarmor exists. A decent amount of moveset variety, and dual-wielding weapons adds even more moves. Pleasantly impressed with just how much movesets there are (jumping, sprinting, strafe dashing, rolling, charged, follow-ups, etc all have their own animation style).
--- HOWEVER, the main drawback is that individual weapons do not have unique movesets. The movesets differ by weapon class, so a great axe will always have the same moveset as another great axe, a short sword will always have the same moveset as another short sword, etc. There are some exceptions to this, as some unique weapons have "special/unique" attacks (on PS5 controller you do this by pressing L1 + R2).

- Coop is like Dark Souls multiplayer, so don't expect it to be truly seamless. In other words, while you can go anywhere with your coop partner and you don't get "unsummoned" after beating a boss, the guest player will not receive any of the world progress on their local save that's achieved while helping the host.

- Large amount of armor/weapons to discover, including from enemy drops. A decent amount of spells across 3 schools of magic (radiant/holy, inferno/fire, and umbral), maybe a couple dozen or so.

- Ranged combat is top notch here. Being able to viably use ranged weapons for any type of build is a huge boon. Gone are the days of having to waste stats into DEX/AGI or INT/WIS just to at least have a ranged option in niche situations (e.g. a pure unga bunga STR build can use throwables like javelins/grenades/etc that actually do great damage).

- Dual world mechanic makes exploration interesting while also adding a suspenseful element due to increasingly difficult enemy spawns the longer you stay in Umbral.

- Quests are... weird. It follows the same vague, obscure quest design as FromSoft games are well known for. However, much of the quest line progression in this game are handled very awkwardly and sometimes just straight up badly (e.g. having to die once to a boss just to get NPC summons to appear outside the boss arena so you can summon specific NPCs to progress their questline). Some of the quests are good, but there's a handful that will make you wonder, "wtf were they thinking?"

Now let's talk about bosses. This is arguably the game's weakest aspect (yes, I know console players will disagree and say performance is, but this is a PC review). Some bosses are great! Many bosses are... not.

The primary issue is that many of them are quite easy. And even the ones that aren't easy, they often resort to cheap and/or boring tactics (e.g. having to wait your "turn" to attack versus feeling like an organic dance ala the Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower fight in Bloodborne--now THAT'S an example of some amazing boss design). Now, I know in NG+ the bosses become much more difficult for many folks, but the majority of players will likely only do a normal NG run. Supposedly the devs are addressing this and the patch yesterday (06 NOV 23) made some AI/boss adjustments, but I haven't played since beating the game, so I can't attest to see how much that actually changed things.

There are more things I'd like to go over, but 99% of players won't care enough to read more than a few sentences, so I'll wrap it up.

TL;DR, if you liked Dark Souls 2, you'll more than likely enjoy this game. As in DS2, the environments/areas are the boss fights moreso than the actual bosses of each area.

This review will not contain spoilers without a clear warning right before a spoiler is given.

A masterpiece in delivering an emotionally charged narrative experience. I don't think I've ever had so many powerful, moving, and relatable moments in a game my ~30 years of gaming. I don't know what else to say in regards to the characters and story, because it's just something you have to experience firsthand to truly understand why so many people say that you will almost certainly get misty-eyed throughout the course of the game. Some of the farewell speeches that the spirits give are quite memorable, meaningful, and even inspirational.

GAMEPLAY:
That all being said, the game *does* have its faults. Because this is a game, the gameplay and general gaming experience need to be critiqued and they have some issues.

The first 40-50% of the game has great pacing, there is little downtime and all your side activities don't feel that tedious and generally feel quite rewarding. The whole gather, farm, mine, cook, craft, build, explore loop is addictive and satisfying. This becomes less so in the last half of the game, *especially* the last 1/4 of the game. You'll be having to juggle between multiple crafting/farming/gathering stations: Loom, Smithy, Cellar, Kitchen, Forge, Sawmill, Orchard, Garden, Windmill, Fields, Cows, Chicken, and Sheep. Fortunately, the animals are very low maintenance, so they are virtually a non-issue (except the chickens if you hadn't been hoarding sunflower or some other type of seeds throughout the game). The biggest complaint I have is with the Forge and the Smithy. They are slow, tedious, and not fun. The sawmill and loom are fun little mini-games, I enjoyed crafting with those most of the time. The Smithy and Forge's minigames aren't really a game, they're just a test in patience and *some* timing. Mostly patience. The garden/fields are also tedious, but at least they become less so after you get the upgrade to have the soil retain water for longer (fortunately, you don't *have* to water plants for them to grow, but they'll grow much slower).

VAGUE SPOILER WARNING:
The last half/last quarter or so of the game also has awkward story pacing. I won't go into major spoilers, but let's just there's a noticeable gap in spirits and their meaningfulness from the first half of the game to the last. With the exception of two spirits, I just did not connect with them like I did with the earlier spirits. And the last spirit was almost an insult to the rest of the game. I'm sure they are based off of a real person, as all of the spirits in this game are inspired off of real people the devs were close to, but the last spirit is just so cold and disconnected from your character that it was really, really weird to have that be your next-to-last voyage to the Everdoor.

I also felt that there was a noticeably awkward amount of stuff you gather and craft that really have no purpose. There are 91 recipes you can discover and cook, but you have a few spirits who share the same kinds of foods they like, so some of the food categories are literally not one spirit's preferred kind (e.g. breakfast and incredible categories come to mind). Additionally, by the time you get to the part of the game where you can actually cook the majority of these dishes, you're SPOILER: down to maybe 3-4 spirits left.

Lastly, I really think the mid-to-late game should have included more boat building customization options. You have metal ropes, bouncy umbrellas, and fans, but those just help with mobility. I'd like to be able to build my own type of building/decks/decorations/whatever. That'd make it possible to have a lot more activities and things to use all of these materials on besides the Spirits' needs. By the endgame, I had a ton of mats that I hadn't touched since the beginning of the game, which felt like a waste.

A long review, but that's only because I loved this game so much. Despite my negative comments about the gameplay loop in the later portions of the game, I truly enjoyed my time spent in this beautiful world Thunder Lotus has crafted. I also happened to be playing around the time the Lily update dropped (free DLC!), so that was an awesome surprise and bonus content to get through before I finished my first playthrough. I hope to see what future projects this team creates, because this one truly blew me away. I've never felt so consistently emotionally impacted by a game, and I won't forget it anytime soon.

TL;DR: 9.5/10, one of the all-time greats.

All the negative reviews are mostly from people ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about the rocky launch with their servers the first 2 days. Ironically, Microsoft's PlayFab service is what powers their online services, so it doesn't even seem like it was the developer's fault (on PlayFab's server status site, it looked like their entire network was down during the same outage period Outriders was down, so it was affecting multiple games). Server stability has drastically improved within the last 24 hours. I haven't had any major bug issues and the performance is smooth for me on an RTX 3070 (1440p @ max settings averaging around 70+ FPS.

Anyway, it's pretty much Mass Effect (in terms of style and sci-fi vibe) meets the Division and Remnant, but much more aggressive. If you like looter shooters, you'll probably like this. I'm enjoying it much more than I did Division 1/2 and even Remnant.

Game has a lot of potential, but as it stands right now there's just too many stability and optimization issues. Stability issues in my experience results in your game will randomly freeze up and crash, most likely losing progress in the process since the autosave in the game doesn't occur nearly often enough (outside of console commands, exiting the game is the only way to manually save). Optimization issues are frequent, with large FPS drops occurring somewhat frequently (I'm on a 3600x and RTX 3070). I haven't tried online multiplayer, so I can't comment on the netcode stability firsthand, but I've read many complaints that it also has its fair share of issues.

Edit: So I've heard from others that the crashes *might* be related to overclock settings. I've reverted my GPU settings back to normal and will test it for a bit while playing to see if I get anymore freezes. I did have it freeze once using Valheim's Vulkan mode, but will now test in default mode and see if it has any success.

Edit2: Changing overclock settings did nothing. Still crashing a bunch. I've tried numerous solutions and none seem to work. Tons of threads online with this issue and nothing but silence from the devs. It seems to be a problem with nVidia GPUs and Unity Engine's framework. Until this issue is resolved, I stand by my non-recommendation. The fact that it happens so frequently and there's no way to manually save (console command does not save for me correctly) means that you could potentially lose 30+ minutes of progress upon crashing, making the game incredibly tedious to play.

Edit3: Someone on Reddit pointed out that it wasn't their overclocking settings that was the issue for them, but rather UNDERclocking. I had my GPU underclocked (it was stable, literally have had zero GPU-related issues with every other game I've played, including Doom Eternal, Cyberpunk, Dark Souls franchise, RimWorld, etc. etc.). Anyway, I removed the underclock and started up the game and haven't had any issues SO FAR (~3 hours). I ALSO dialed my RAM (DDR4, not VRAM) OC back to 3000 from its rated 3200, as someone said that could potentially cause an issue with this game. Honestly, I don't think I can even really blame the Valheim devs at this point, these issues seem to be related to Unity itself. I love Unity's accessibility for indie developers, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ the engine needs some serious work still when it comes to intensive 3D open worlds.

Anyway, hope my struggle with the game's stability either helps someone else who's having similar problems or at least informs potential buyers what they might be signing up for.

It's fun for a couple of hours but then it becomes a chore of keeping track of everything. Needs lots of QOL improvements in my opinion (i.e. blueprint system, maybe a top-down or isometric view mode where you can easily re-arrange your buildings, etc.). Also, a base defense mode (make it optional, I know lots of people would prefer no combat whatsoever in these types of games), along with weapons and turrets or something, would be very welcome. As it stands right now, it's a vast, empty open world where you're just building stuff just for the sake of building, there's nothing interesting to find during your explorations (glowing slugs and hard drives is all you're rewarded with).

There's a lot of potential here, but unless your have hours and hours and hours of free time to grind for the sake of grinding, I don't recommend this in its current state. At $30, I wish I could get a refund, but who knows, given that it's early access and the dev team appears to be quite active and possibly listening to feedback, this could turn into a real gem.

TL;DR:
Improvements needed:
- QOL additions to make building and management easier
- More native wildlife/creatures
- Base defense against said wildlife/creatures/intelligent aliens natives or something, maybe another corporation that is competing for resources
- Make exploration more interesting by adding ruins or native villages or something instead of just crash pods with hard drives for tech research
- Make researching less tedious

Yet another gorgeous, immersive, and moving masterpiece from Moon Studios. I actually enjoyed this more than the first Ori, which stands among the greatest Metroidvanias of this era. If you liked the first Ori, you will definitely enjoy this refined sequel. They added more side activities and characters, helping to flesh out the world of Niwen and make it feel more alive. I had fun hunting down the ore to rebuild the Wellspring Glades village a lot more than I thought I would, and finding secrets/items feels organic and fun versus the typical collectathon grind that these types of activities usually entail in other games.

I finished that game at about 94% completion (according to my save file) in around 19 hours of actual playtime. I took my time, didn't bother doing the spirit trials (just wasn't my cup of tea, though some people may enjoy the competitive side of that activity), but I collected all the life and energy orbs, abilities and shards, and the Gorlek ore. This may seem short, but I think the pacing and overall length fit perfectly for the game's scope and goals.

As for the story, well, it's heartwarming as hell. It doesn't open up with sadness quite like Ori and the Blind Forest, but it does take you on an emotional rollercoaster throughout the game. I won't spoil the ending, but I will just say that I really loved it. The art, music, and animations further amplify the story's ability to capture your heart and mind. My wife walked in while I was playing and commented, "Wow, this music is really soothing and nice." And yes, the music throughout the whole game is just incredibly well done and placed masterfully.

In short, I absolutely cannot wait to see what's next for Moon Studios. They really nailed it in a genre that has become quite crowded in recent years, while still bringing some new ideas to keep things fresh and--most importantly of all--fun.

Overall: 9.5/10

My background: I have played every classic isometric ARPG dungeon crawler (Diablo 1-3.5, Titanquest, Torchlight 1-2, Path of Exile, Dungeon Siege 1-2, etc.)

How does Grim Dawn stack up? I'll be succinct and put up a list:
+ Pacing is on par with D2, slower than D3 and PoE (I just beat base game @ around 40 hours fully exploring and taking my time, also finished it @ level 49)
+ Itemization is plentiful and progression feels fluid and steady, it also has a loot filter built-in that you can tweak but there are loot filter mods for end game that make spotting useful items even easier
+ Leveling is fun and plenty of viable build options are available
+ Tons of lore books scattered throughout the game to expand world building
+ Plenty of monster variety
+ Faction system where you can gain rep for actually useful vendor rewards (Note: be aware that gaining higher than Respected with almost any of the factions is not expected in the Normal difficulty setting since faction rep carries over to higher difficulties)
+ Viable to either do single class or multiclass on Normal, not sure about higher difficulties
+ Graphics are great, comparable to PoE (environmental detail is better than PoE IMO) and it is also fully 3D (i.e. can spin the camera 360 degrees)
+ Quests that actually make you stop and think since it can impact your faction alliances
+ Huge world, tons of dungeons and overworld areas to explore
+ Single player support, as in no online connection is necessary, but multiplayer is also supported
+ Full mod toolkit that is supported by devs
++ A couple of full conversion mods are out and are great, including Diablo 2 remake inside GD's engine called Reign of Terror and a Warhammer 40k mod that's in progress
+ Controller support that works well

All of the cons are that which any isometric ARPG has, such as being a grindy, loot-focused game. Some people don't view that as a con since it's a staple of the genre, but just putting it out there. Since the base game is so large, replaying through on higher difficulties seems a bit daunting and tedious for me personally. I just hit the expansion content, so maybe my opinion will change on this point. I will add that the game feels kind of slow and clunky at first. It took about 10-15 levels for things to really start picking up for me.

All in all, it's a fantastic addition to the iso ARPG genre and anyone who enjoys these types of games should definitely check it out.

Not sure why this game is getting so many downvotes. Bottomline up front: If you liked the first two games, you will like this one. I'd give it a 7.5/10.

Pros:
- Amazing environment design
- Some of the puzzles are really fun to figure out and execute
- The 'mud' stealth mechanic is pretty fun
- Artifacts add a lot more interesting backstory and historical information about the various native South American ancient religions and cultures
- More focus on exploration and puzzles over action combat

Cons:
- Main plot is relatively barebones, really wish they had fleshed out the characters more and given a more satisfying end to this trilogy
- More focus on exploration and puzzles over action combat (I think this is a pro, others do not feel the same)
- Skill tree is lackluster, I had 5-6 skillpoints at the end and didn't really care about 1/4 of the skills as they're not really that useful. Additionally, because combat is sparse, it makes the combat tree (which has some really fun/cool skills) pretty underutilized.
- While there are more puzzles and exploration, I felt that many of the puzzles were far too simplistic and/or relied too much on trial and error versus logical problem solving. They were still pretty fun, but not very satisfying after solving them.
- Outfits were kind of cool, but felt kind of out of place and most were completely useless to spend time obtaining.

Overall, it's a solid 7.5/10. I'd give it a 8.5/10, which is what I felt Rise of the Tomb Raider ranks at, but it failed to really innovate or add anything fresh to the trilogy. That being said, this does improve on some issues Rise had such as the world being bigger and more immersive than Rise's. Like I said above, if you enjoyed the first two of this trilogy, you will enjoy this one, even if the ending feels like a bit of a letdown.