Recent reviews by ☭slam jam☭

Man, gameplay is 99% stuck lock by getting knocked off your feet, with the enemeis not changing their behavior to compensate this.
Also the idea of hunting rougelike mage enemeis constantly to progress.. kinda sucks.

Game is beautiful, gameplay is tight, although the story is.. needlessly complicated at times, but still servicable.

It's a beautiful love letter to H.R Giger's biomechanical artstyle.
Exploring the environments was a proper treat.

The gameplay mainly consists of puzzles, which were surprisingly enjoyable to someone that never plays puzzle games.
Other than that you could compare it to a walking sim, but the artstyle elevates it to another level.

The worst part of it is definitely the ending, which objectively sucks compared to what the devs had claimed would be possible, but one can hope they will do something about it at least.

Having 100%'d the game (Yes, White's Hell Rush) I can safely say this game is definitely worth your time if you like going fast.

I haven't even come halfway through but I seriously can't recommend this game to anyone, since the combat is the worst piece of ♥♥♥♥ I've ever played, it's boring as ♥♥♥♥ since they removed comboing (who the ♥♥♥♥ thought this was a good idea?) and guarding, which means you have to rely on a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ useless dodging mechanic that never lets you out of a stunlock.
everything else about the game is passable, but the combat is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bad that this is not worth buying for even 5 dollars.
if this is their idea of "modernizing" the Tales series, please never do it again.

Decent game, but as other people mention it is generally janky as ♥♥♥♥.
I 100% it in 25 hours so it is definitely playable.
One could argue that it is too easy, for example being over encumbered doesn't become an issue since I ran around with 200kg/60kg each run.
If you upgrade your stamina knowledge skills it just becomes a game of managing your attacks in a smart way.

Incredibly.. boring..
Graphically it's pretty good, some areas have quite the feel of scale to them.
The loot system sucks ♥♥♥♥, it is unneeded and feels like an afterthought
The melee power ability just sucks, never used it, same with wallrunning actually, since it was extremely wonky.
Story is ♥♥♥♥, I had no idea what exactly was the goal besides killing a dumb bimbo, plus some missions just happens because.. reasons.

If one word could characterize this, it would be: jank.
Animations are janky, takedowns are horribly janky.
Even the cutscenes at times is literally someone using a mouse to look around and captured it.

Get it like 60% off minimum, if you want a mindless shooter that isn't even in the slightest interesting.

There has been nothing quite like this game.. from the way they implemented the multiplayer aspect to the pretty out there plot.
I got it like 50% off or something, but I should easily have paid full price for this.

If you're not a numbers kind of guy, delivering cargo, seeing numbers go up in satisfying manners, the plot alone might be good enough for you.

This is the most frustrating game I've played since I first played Dark Souls 1, and that is not a good thing.
Some enemy designs are downright full of ♥♥♥♥, bootleg Crysis 2 pingers which are placed so perfectly to piss you off every time, and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ exploder enemies you literally cant fight.

For a game about parkour it sure as hell is janky as ♥♥♥♥, I can't even count the amount of times I died because the wall riding straight up refuses to work.

And finally, it likes to crash.
DirectX12? Fatal error within a minute of starting a new game.
There was also a specific part of the Lab where you first meet the exploding ♥♥♥♥ enemies, that if I restarted twice at that checkpoint (which had a 90% death rate), the game would crash without fail each time.

I got this 60% off, don't get it for more if you value your blood pressure.

Get it on a 40% sale or there about, mostly because it needs a lot of polishing.
Sure, the game is released, doesn't mean they're done with it however, more stuff is still on the way.

My main issues are the following:
"Jank": There was a lot of minor things, such as voicelines not corresponding with whats written, typos, player placement not even close to where the cutscene ends them (constant, just felt weird to me) and even a quest that put me in a different place on the map for no reason.
Selene: Painful character, just.. no.
Animations: Compared to the standards nowadays, the average animation work is fine, but often goes stiff, such as the Ultimate Attacks for each character, especially Daryon.
Facial animation barely exists but that's fine with me, as that's probably one of the hardest things to do right.
Combat: The combat tries something unusual, with a grid based system.
That in itself is not a problem, but when moving uses a full turn, and some characters are ungodly slow as charging their ATB (Ysoris and Theia, even Selene towards the end of my game), it caused me to never use some abilities.
I barely even used Ysoris because of how slow he is by default, so whenever it was his turn and he was out of reach, I would sometimes just skip the turn.
Theia is just the odd one out considering they need a buildup of energy, which again is a lot of turns of nothing.

For the rest: the story is pretty good, the Corrosion design is great, the music is extremely forgettable and dialogue quite often quite annoying in the way its written.