Recent reviews by CuteRedUnicorn

Starfield is an amazing game, but, sadly, suffers from overhyping and having unrealistic expectations from players. I must admit, trailers made by the Bethesda was... very vague and Todd Howard always stressing exploration part lead many people to think that it's going to be space exploration/traveling game, namely - something like No Man's Sky. This is not a game like this, and honestly, I can see how people expecting this could be disappointed. However, Bethesda is Bethesda and knowing what they are best at and what they did in the past (namely TES and Fallout games) - I was expecting more of this formula and this is exactly what this game delivers and shines at! At the end of the day - it's Skyrim, with guns AND in space. 

This game is a typical Bethesda game in soooo many ways:
*Wonky and goofy bugs happening with characters/objects/physics at launch (luckily, most of them are minor and more silly than anything!). i know some people sometimes encountered game breaking bugs, forbiding them to complete quests or progress, but I haven't experienced that and I'm sure they will be patched out soon enough.
*Amazing side quests, both, storylines of the bigger factions and fun standalone quests, immersing you deeply into the world, it's setting and stories of every settlement/city/faction in the game. That being said - main story is... okay, I guess, it's not too amazing and sometimes it's a bit cheesy, but then again, I personally wasn't particulary fond of the main quest lines in Skyrim or Fallout 3/4 (Morrowind and Oblivion ones were better, but still side quests were the part where every Bethesda game shined!). It's exactly what you would expect from Bethesda game - serviceable even if not too great main story with extensive, amazing and very immersive side quests/storylines.
*Great enviromental storytelling! Remember how you would go to the location in TES or Fallout game and you can feel like you can piece the story of what happening by all the clues, items, dead bodies, logs and what not? This game has this too and does that as great as in previous titles!
*Cool and improved settlement system from F4. Here your outposts in planets generates specific materials and can even manufacture some crafting parts that you use to upgrade your guns/space suit, craft meds and what not. Outposts here feels like a MASSIVE step up from Fallout 4 in many ways, and while I haven't delved in that as extensively yet, while they are not as much early-game friendly like they were in Fallout 4 thanks to the sheer ammount of resources needed (and, depending on the planet you are building on - resources too!), it gives you a big satisfaction to make a proper functioning settlement, staff it with colonists and set up supply lines between your outposts! And the time, skills and resources needed makes it even moresatisfying when you colonize and conquer extreme environment planets, such as Pluto (#plutoisaplanet)
*Companions here are very similar to the ones from previous Bethesda games, having quite wonky AI, but also quite distinctive personalities and interesting personal quests. But here you can utilize their skills accordingly, and assign them tasks, and their skills gives quite significant bonuses, like increased ship's cargo limit while being in your crew, increasing your starship's shields, alowing more people to be assigned to the outposts, etc. That being said, Sarah seemed the worst of the whole lot, as she seemed both, more wonky/buggy as a follower and quite judgy and naggy personality, constantly disliking everything if that's not being done according to her very specific preferences, a.k.a. you are not actively trying to be paladin-like hero goodie 24/7.
*Carrying capacity feels reduced, while compared to Skyrim/Fallout. While previous games encouraged you to haul everything/most of the stuff you wanted, this game teaches you to know what you need! On the plus side, even when being overloaded you can still run, just with taking some breaks for oxygen to restore. The more over the limit you are carrying, the faster oxygen depletes and you need to take a rest. Also, unlike in previous games, here your have your big time cargo mule - your starship. If you add a few extra cargo containers, you can just dump quite a lot of loot there before you go to sell it and you don't even need to take it out, you can sell the stuff directly from the ship!
*Quite extensive ship building. Do you want own a small nimble fighter? Or would you rather fancy a massive, oversized cargo ship? Your imagination is your main limit here. Ship building is interesting and while it requires some piloting and starship designer skills to dive to the bottom of it - it is very satisfying to make your own ship in a way you want it. Fighting some pirates and space cultists (or escaping them if you choose so!) and hauling your cargo to sell it or suply your outposts is even more satisfying when you made your ship from scratch and in a way that you wanted!
*By far the smoothest and most satisfying gunplay/combat that any Bethesda game had before. As I said before - this is basically Skyrim with guns AND in space too! And gunplay is really satisfying! It feels more impactful, smooth and dynamic, plus, your boost pack is a cool adition to make you and the combat in general more fluent and exciting. And some enemies have/use their boost packs too, either to quickly jump to the cover when you start shooting at them or... fly in the sky before dropping down dead if you hit them in their boost pack with your gun! Different gravities, conditions and environments affects combat too, so it varies greatly from where you are fighting, from leaping high into the sky on low gravity planets while raining bullets on your enemies, to being pushed back as you fight your gun, fighting in 0g space stations, to utilizing all the explosives in the abandoned science outpost and shooting them with your gun to chain big explosions!
*Space travel/combat. I know, I already said that the game isn't a proper space exploration game if we compare it with a games like No Man Sky, but that being said - starship combat is satisfying on itself and you can even do some piracy too, if you choose so, and in general, moving resources to your outposts or just items to sell and smuggling contraband is very fun and satisfying. It's a nice variation and a breeze of a fresh wind to standart Bethesda games formula!

To sum this up - this is a great, amazing game if you already like Bethesda games and are familiar with their formula - I'm sure you'll love this one! It's a new take and a new setting for a standard Bethesda formula - the thing they do the best and they indeed excel at adding new stuff to this, like improved settlements, starship building and combat and vastly improved and more dynamic combat. If you are not famliar with their games, but are into the concept of traveling, exploring in an open world and questing at your own pace and order - I'd suggest you to give it a try, just don't expect it to be too much like No Man Skym after all it's Skyrim with guns AND in space!!!

As someone who played this game with a lot of passion from the very early days (times, when there was no naval combat and armed land forces were still far away in the future) it's extremely sad to see this once good game to fall so low. It seems, like over the years Gaijin got more and more openly and outrageously greedy with their "microtransactions" (tho, I think those should be called macrotransactions at this point, seriously, all DLCs in the steam page alone costs over 1000 euro and there's even more stuff to buy ingame!). It seems, that with every patch they are making this game less and less players friendly and I'm not even talking about F2P players, cause this game became P2W long time ago, no, it's getting less and less friendly to play even to the people who pays for their premium accounts and/or buys golden eagles. This is horrendous business practice and absolutely unethical and poor way to treat customers and playerbase.

Placid plastic duck,
Floating idly in the pool,
You are happy duck!

If you ever wanted to play Factorio, but relaxed, and with cats - this is the ideal game for you! I mean seriously think about it - cats!

Okay, first of all - I don't usually write reviews, but seeing this game getting so much undeserved hate forced me to make an exception for this one. To begin with - yes, this game is not perfect, yes the basic game concept changed a few times during the development of the game and it clearly shows but there are both good and bad sides of this.

Positives

• Graphics are similar to those from the previous 2 Torchlight games. I guess this could be both pro and con, since those looking for serious, grim and gloomy aesthetics used in majority of ARPGs wont find it here, but it's Somewhat cartoonish, colourful and vibrant.
  
• The classes, like in TL2 are somewhat unique, considering another ARPGs, meaning that even most vanilla ones, like dusk mage and sharpshooter has some differences instead of being yet another pew pew shooter or spell caster. Forge and Railmaster are especially unique, having interesting and cool skills and possibilities for builds.
  
• Skills and combat itself are both very fun and engaging, skills feels responsive and pretty smooth, and while the combat itself may be a bit clunky at the start, it quickly goes to fast paced once you unlock a first few skills and/or level you main skill(s).
  
• Contract (a.k.a. f2p battle pass) system is fun and cool way for unlocking more stuff, like decorations for your forts, more character slots or gear stash tabs.
  
• Fort (a.k.a. player housing) system is a fun way to decorate your fort with practical stuff (like workstations and mannequins to store armour and weapons) and decorations, especially since others can encounter your fort randomly while travelling the world!
  
  Negatives
  
• The builds system itself is not too deep, it's quite simplistic,that can also be both pro and con, but if you are looking for something complex like Grim Dawn - you will be disappointed. It's a light game for someone new at the genre and/or someone who just wants to have more chill and casual ARPG experience.
  
• There are quite a few legendary items, but it seems that more of them or another tier of gear above legendaries would do good here.
  
• Endgame is somewhat lacking. While the devs have mentioned, that they are going to add more stuff to do, but at the time I'm writing this - the endgame is somewhat lacking
  
  Overall, it's not a bad game, to be perfectly honest, it's quite the contrary. Mixed reviews this terribly underrated gem is suffering from can be explained by it's terrible EA launch and the disappointment from those, who wanted "yet another diablo clone". ARPGs is a very niche genre, according to the statistics, and while ARPG fans (myself included) can praise and defend their favourites, they can be also really hostile against any game that doesn't follow their beloved formula. TL3 is a mixed bag, it's a APRG MMO game, that turned out loosing the majority of it's MMO parts in the development, but leaving some of it's elements there. While I wouldn't call it "perfect game" the game itself is good, and fun to play, and that in itself deserves a positive review!