Recent reviews by rakkhot

I don't know if it's just me, but this is my experience with the game.
The cards I get don't feel natural, I had one match that was pretty much the best example for my whole experience with this game: I've got a deck nearly fully forrest, I only have 3 strong swamp creatures in the whole 65 cards deck and I manage to get all 3 swamp creatures in the 1st 3 rounds.

When I played this game with physical cards such a situation was the exception, here in this game it was the norm, and it I tried quite a few decks, it was always like this, either you get only lands or you get only creatures and I mean "only" not "few".

I'm disappointed how this ended up after the big kickstarter campaign at the beginning, I understand that this can happen, that fact doesn't change my feelings, this is a shadow of what was promised.

I have not played this through and can't say anything about end game content, but the boss fights are the reason why I won't play more of the game, they are really annoying and no fun to play, the big bosses are bullet sponges that bury the player in increasingly more AOE attacks and minions the longer the fight goes on and you either do enough damage to kill the boss before you get overrun or you don't, that can be fun at the beginning, but it gets annoying quickly, especially with the less that stellar control scheme.

I do like the lvl-up and skill system, but that's pretty much the only thing interesting and unique in the game, the story is also ok with mostly good voice acting.
I'm not saying that nobody will have fun with the game, I also had fun, but the boss fights are to annoying for my taste.

I will compare this game to Dark Souls, so if you don't want to hear that then don't read any further.

This game is from the Dark Souls genre and out of all these souls like games that came after Dark Souls the best one in my opinion, mostly because it gives the player many choices and extreme freedom to tweak the game to your own liking. It is clearly much easier than Dark Souls if you want it to be but players can through very simple changes to the game make it much harder without compromising the actual gameplay.
In my opinion freedom is the best one word description you could give the game, yes that is an over exaggeration, but the game is built on the concept that the player can change the whole feel of the game on the fly.
This brings me to the classes, this game has a ton of different classes and you can change them whenever you feel like it and later on when you used your skills enough to max out their proficiency you can even mix and match different skills from different classes in your build.

Now I have some comparisons to make.
The fighting is pretty janky in my opinion if you compare it to Dark Souls, I think that is because of the much more active abilities that you can use in Code Vein and that the items take ages to be used is also a factor, you can't just pop a stamina enhancer while fighting, you really need to find the moment when you have a few seconds to yourself.
Move sets of weapons vary from weapon to weapon even if it's the same weapon type the same way Dark Souls handles it, but in my opnion the move sets in Dark Souls are more elaborate and interesting than in Code Vein, mostly because you can't really combo heavy and light attacks, so you're pretty much stuck comboing different light attacks, I used probably 10 heavy attacks during my entire playthrough because they just take so much time to end and you don't get more damage out of a heavy attack than if you just do 2 light ones. There are a few weapons that have some special magical attack if you charge the heavy attack, but since the enemies are very prone to jumping around it makes these special attacks easily missable.

The game differentiates itself from Dark Souls when it comes to story, Code Vein is foremost a story driven game with some exploration added in. The story itself is very japanese and suffers from accute anime fever, I enjoyed it pretty much, especially that your impression of the world changes several times throughout the playthrough because of new information you unearthed.
There are 3 different endings and wich one you will get depends on very few key choices in the game, most small decisions do not matter, like giving this or that answer to some person. I have to make a remark about the ending I got here, it was sadly pretty disappointing, I got the "good" ending and it was very unsatisfying at least for me, I don't know the other endings.

So overall I would say a very solid souls like game, it's a little weak in the gameplay and exploration aspect but excels in player freedom and story more than I have seen in any other souls like until now.

I love the idea behind the creature creation, but the base concept of the game is a rush RTS, so you will get swarmed by enemies all the time and that nearly from the beginning of every mission. The game speed is very fast and requires very percise control of you wich I'm not capable in this game.
So conclusion the game could've been great if there had been more emphasis on experimentation and base building instead of rushing the player through the lvl by pressuring them with hordes of enemies rushing them all the time.

It's on the better end of the spectrum of free to play games, at least from the short time I have seen, but I have to warn everyone this game is heavily luck focused, wich is also the reason I stopped playing.
There is quite a bit of pre battle planing you can do, but in the fight it relies to much on what gems you get randomly. So I can't really enjoy the game because I don't have enough control over the fight for my taste.

Another one of those management games where they wear the mask of realism but throw so much unrealistic sh** at you only because the game would be to easy if a boat wouldn't break down after half a day on the water for example, or the employee happiness constantly goes down even though you increased their wages by around 5 $ in a few weeks -.-

If you want to play a game that will fight against you at every turn, then this is for you. Whatever you do the game will always try to go against you, even the smallest thing like walking/running from point A to point B will be disturbed by clipping errors and input lag.

If you are willing to put in hours upon hours to find some fun in the game, then you will certainly find fun, world building and world design are incredible, one of the few open world games that don't have half the map copy pasted, you can find characters, all of them with their own personality and problems, though I have to say they could've used a few more unique character models. Also most of the quests feel unique and are woven into the world lore.

But that's it, a wonderful concept of a great game kept back by horrible game play and mechanics.
I will make a comparison with Dark Souls, not because the game play is comparable, but Dark Souls perfected the enemies that are always a threat, but even the hardest enemies can be dominated, in Elex it's exactly the other way around, enemies are either excruciatingly hard to kill or no threat at all.
Then to this problem you can add the broken controls, many minor clipping errors, surprisingly bland weapons and hit detection from hell, there you have your mix of disappointment.

There are some other problems whom I don't consider as fatal as the combat ones:
- From a world building perspective it doesn't really make sense that nearly all ppl are easily overwhelmed by one stronger monster, because if that is the case they should already be extinct
- It can take up to around 15 hours of gameplay before you're actually able to take on any enemy besides the weakest ones (it doesn't have to, but that's around the time it took me)
- If you don't take any combat skills at the beginning you leave yourself open for having to grind exp later because you can't do any quests anymore, since all enemies in these quests just destroy you, wich means you can't take the quality of life skills whom I chose (that's a common problem in RPGs having to decide between the skills that will make the game more fun or the skills that I need so I'm strong enough for what's to come)

The game is an enormous time sink because of all these problems wich could be alright if the time in the game wasn't a continuous struggle to press some fun out of the experience.

There is a good game burried somewhere under the garbage, but I can't find it, so I can't recommend this.

not enough sunlight, not enough food, not enough space etc. It's an annoying, nagging game.

I don't understand how someone can like this game, except playing in god mode. World building and art direction very good and story also pretty ok, but when it comes to gameplay there are only words like annoying, boring, clunky and infuriating that come to mind. Everything, walking, shooting, sneaking and even pathfinding feels wrong.

Walking: Sometimes you can run fast, sometimes you can't, sometimes you can walk over obstacles sometimes not and so on, you can get stuck or worse at some environmental stuff if you miss the path by a hair

Shooting: headshots don't register half the time, laser upgrade on weapons is less useful than just using the normal crosshair, through some holes you can shoot while not being able to shoot through another that looks exactly the same, enemies are extreme bullet sponges even on normal difficulty and don't really show any sign of taking damage until they die and together with critical headshots not being reliable you're asking yourself the whole time: "How long until this next guy finally keel over?", instead of "Ok, now it take 2 shots and I can move on."

Sneaking: in some sections the game does not let you play sneaky if you don't go a very specific path, they will always notice you if you don't use that specific path whatever you do, throwing knives are very inaccurate, stealth kill sometimes does not register even if you come from behind, enemies can sometimes not see you when you're right beside them while in other situations being able to sense you even though you're nowhere near them

Pathfinding: environments are very confusing, you have a compass but until now none of the ppl i have talked with have ever said anything about a clear direction so it's useless, the drections or what the game thinks are directions you get from other characters are extremely imprecise and can confuse you more than they help you, so you end up just searching every corner for a way forward without knowing if you're actually moving away from your goal or towards it

So after more than 1200 hours ingame and around 700 hours in missions I think I have a pretty good grasp on the game, but there are much more experienced players who have easily double the amount of time in the game or even more, so don't take this as anything more than my opinion.

For a short overview: You get a massive game with content to last 1000 hours easily in most cases much more for free. In my opinion it is quite rough around the edges.

I like this game very much, it's not a masterpiece in my opinion, but easily one of the best games I have played in recent years and probably the best free to play MMO I have ever played. You can get everything in the game by just playing, but it will speed up pretty much everything if you use some real money to get the premium currency (platinum).
This game is massive, as said after over 1200 I think I've got a good grasp on the game, but I have not seen, played and gathered everything the game has to offer, that will probably take another 1000 hours and you can get this for free....but I got to where I am so fast because I pumped quite a bit of real money into the game, so if you aren't some crazy fast and persistent grinder you will put a very considerable amount of time into this game, at least if you plan to get everything the game has to offer and in my opinion that's the endgoal of these games, gather everything and become as strong as one can get.
The content in the game is also nearly always meaningful, for example quests always seem to have a thought through story behind them (not always very engaging though) and they will gift you some pretty cool things at the end, not like other MMOs where you go on a gather quest and don't even know the reason for it because you didn't bother listening to the NPC wich gave you the quest, you just accept it and then run to the place where you gather what you can gather and that's it.
They are also adding more and more content wich is good in theory, but from my personal perspective I dislike the fast pace in wich this game gets new content. I want to be very clear here, this is my personal feeling and I will try to explain why I feel this way, but I don't claim that this is an objective argument. So, there are 2 reasons:
1. I've already thought many times that I would like them to fix very old problems first instead of adding new content the whole time, they do make regular hotfixes especially after big new content updates, but these are normally for bugs and glitches wich were introduces with the update not for problems that existed before the big update came
2. I dislike when I have many fronts on where I could go further in games and that's something you have constantly in Warframe until you have reached peak, meaning you have done and gotten everything or almost everything. This is a very personal point of mine but I do know some ppl who feel the same, I like to be able to concentrate on one way and after I finished that I concetrate on another, but in Warframe you have constantly in the bakc of your head this voice that keeps reminding you of the things you won't be able to finish on this particular day or even do at all in the next few weeks.

Advice I would give a beginner:
- Go to Google and search for a beginner guide, try to find one that is at least not older than 1 year, since they are always updating the game many tips and tricks you find in older material won't work anymore or are just obsolete.
- Don't bother with gathering many weapons at the beginning, try to push as far as you can with what you get, after you get stuck then stop pushing try ranking up your mods and gather material for new, better weapons. After you few hundered hours of this you will be at a point where you can start gathering new weapons much easier. I didn't do this and was running around pretty aimless because I was trying to get materials for new weapons wich I would later on aquire very easily.
- Get the warframe Rhino as fast as possible it will help you through much of the beginner stages and make your life so much easier.
- If you want information use the warframe wiki. I do dislike that much information isn't in the game, but I have to admit that you can find nearly any information you need in the wiki. So, first ask the wiki and if you can't find anything google your problem, many times there are already forum posts adressing your very problem.
- Ask for help if you need it, normally you can find someone who is willing to help.
- If you can't find a blueprint or something else you need to craft try looking in the Warframe market you can find many things there wich you won't need to buy with platinum (the currency you buy with real money) but can aquire with credits (the currency you earn while playing)
- Don't forget that you can sell things you don't need, either sell them through you inventory menu wich will award you some credits for the items you sell or if you find rarer stuff you can also try selling it to other players (to trade with other players you either need to be in a clan that has a trading post or you need to reach the bazaar on Mars)

Now what I will be talking about in this section is linked to my point about fixing old problems before adding new content from above, so this will be quite a negative section. There're many small details that didn't bother me much when I first started playing but increasingly are affecting my enjoyment of the game in a negative way:
- You get partly stuck on nearly everything. Movement in Warframe is really fast and feels pretty nice at the beginning but after a while I realised that the environment isn't very well optimised for the movement because there are very small ledges and obstacles everywhere wich will hinder your movement, sometimes only a bit, but sometimes it can be the loss of a mission because you got stuck on a piece of furniture or a small ledge above the door you wanted to jump through.
- There is also the problem of getting actually real stuck, where you get so stuck that you can't move at all anymore. Unless you go digging on the internet or ask other players you will not get the info that you can use the command /unstuck in the chat to teleport to the nearest save place. That works pretty well and saved me quite a few times already, but I read that in some situations even that won't help you.
- There is a theme of not getting important information wich will force you to go search for help on the internet and/or from other more expereinced players. It's entirely possible that you don't care, for me that is a negative point.
- I really dislike some parts of the UI for a few reasons wich I don't want to discuss here because it would take to much text, to get to my point there is in my opinion not enough UI customisation and I have seen that subject pop up a few times in the forums (because I went there and also reported my displeasure) and it seems to me that DE does just ignore those requests

One last comment for new players, take it as a warning but I also have to preface this by saying that this is also a subjective experience of mine, your experience can be entirely different:
If there is something that you disapprove of in this game and you go to the forum (steam forum) to talk about it, if your posts are just a little aggressive agianst the game, you have a very good chance to get very unfriendly ppl wich will dismiss your problem with the words "well it doesn't bother me" and then they will go on to attack either your character, experience or anything else they can find. (and I don't want to paint myself in white here, I've exchanged verbal blows with these ppl quite a few times and also used some of their tactics against them, this is really only ment as a warning)