Recent reviews by Larsen | Z

game sucks, cool butt tho

we need more of this stuff instead of the usual soulslop

HOWEVER, the anti-cheat is terrible for this game's optimization
i got stuck like 4 times in the starting loading screen before turning EAC off
when i turned it off, the game ran as smooth as silk
also the game crashed once when i exited out of photo mode
the japanese really don't know how to optimize their products huh

elden ring is elden mid
it’s not a flawed masterpiece or a rough diamond or whatever else the meme 2 hour video essays tell you, it’s just mid
DISCLAIMER: this is my second time playing this game, don't mind the hours, the first time i was doing the hand hook and eyepatch build

>open world
probably the best aspect of this game by far, you just can never get tired of exploring the lands between
one complaint about the open world i often hear is that you often find yourself just traveling way too much from point a to point b, but i don’t see this as a negative, since the game’s beauty alone is enough to keep your attention
legacy dungeons are also good but that’s been said a million times already
however, even this kind of open world is not without flaws

>copy paste
why does this game have 5 or so dungeon types?
no, i don’t want to explore yet another cave or a mine or some lazily copy pasted catacombs (sometimes with a chariot), but sometimes you have to, to get the smithing stones or that talisman you want
but it’s not just the dungeons that get copy pasted, bosses and enemies do too
can you imagine my disappointment when i got to the mountaintops of giants and was like "holy, this area is so beautiful, i wonder what kind of enemies i'll be fighting in here"
can you imagine my face when i saw the caelid dogs, the caelid birds, the stormveil birds, the demi-humans, the bats, the marionettes, the hands, and the vulgar militiamen
a-at least zamor dudes became a normal enemy instead of a m-mini-boss, so it's at least ONE unique enemy tied to this area, r-right?
miyazaki, my brother in Christ, I HAVE BEEN FIGHTING THESE ANNOYING BIRDS AND BATS AND DOGS THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE GAME, I’VE KILLED SO MANY OF THE DEFAULT SWORD/SPEAR SOLDIERS, CAN YOU PLEASE ADD MORE ENEMIES INTO THE GAME
NO, YOU CAN’T JUST PASTE OLD ENEMIES FROM OLD GAMES, YOU DID THAT TWICE IN ELDEN RING ALREADY WITH ASYLUM DEMON AND CAPRA DEMON
i am especially sick of the copy pasted dragons, erdtree avatars are at least fun to fight
ROT DRAGON, ICE DRAGON, NORMAL DRAGON, MAGIC DRAGON, MAGIC DRAGON 2
ALL OF THEM HAVE THE SAME MOVESET
this is a triple a game, just to remind you
edit: there is way more copy paste from previous titles as it turns out, just today i found out about red wolf of radagon having the same animations as sif and the death blight frogs

>combat
this is where things get bad, such outdated souls-tier combat where it feels like you’re handling a bus instead of a human SHOULD NOT EXIST with such fast bosses that feel like they come straight out of sekiro
either make the player faster and give him more movement options, or make the bosses slower
it is infuriating having to dodge 5-10 boss attacks only to get ONE hit in and then repeat the cycle
torrent is awful to control, and it feels like he's not listening to half my commands
wow, it's just like a real horse!
the decision to make your stamina tied to torrent's is also bizarre and unexplainable
also, input buffering is more often than not the result of your character’s demise, as it's been countless times that this trash read my ash of war as ash of war + left handed attack after it and i died so many times because of this
before fromdrones shout “skill issue”, i am literally putting my hands off the keyboard after doing the ash of war and my character still does the normal attack after it
but, despite that, my character drinks only 1 flask half the time despite me mashing the heal button
i often miss the opportunity to reposte thanks to INPUT BUFFERING, so why not let the player know when the boss stagger is coming up?
you're gonna make a posture break mechanic without implementing at least some kind of sign?
i swear to Christ miyazaki has never played his own games
also, why do the enemies' arrows home in on you, yet the player's arrows don't home in on enemies?
do the enemies have special magnet arrows or something?
can some lore expert tell me how this is explained in the story?

>bosses
and these bosses, oh God, these bosses
delayed attacks, input reads (these are especially “fun” if you’re doing any run that involves projectiles), blatant destruction of established game mechanics, they got everything you don’t want in an action rpg
and i can't stress enough how awful the input reads are, the best bosses for showcasing such nonsense are margit for his combo extender that he won't do unless you attack and the godskins who shoot black flames at you IMMEDIATELY upon pressing the heal button
someone needs to teach miyazaki that's not how reaction time works
but, being completely honest, i had fun fighting malenia
sure, she is actually one to break established mechanics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9Vbsr3Ko7M
but at least that boss has a unique feel and dynamic to it, akin to an old samurai standoff, where the two warriors exchange blows and then fall back to circle around each other
her attacks are more or less intuitive, and she does have a flexible moveset that’s fun to play around with on your part
EXCEPT FOR WATERFOWL DANCE AND VAMPIRISM, WHOEVER DESIGNED THOSE INTO MALENIA NEEDS TO GET FIRED FROM THEIR JOB ASAP, AND UNLESS YOU’VE NOT DONE SOMETHING AS ELEMENTARY AS BEATING MALENIA WITH A +20 CAESTUS, NO SUMMONS, NO SLEEP POTS, NO BLEED, NO FROST, YOUR OPINION DOES NOT COUNT
also, elden beast is the worst final boss in any video game ever, radagon was such a good conclusion to this mediocre, but still charming game, but nope, my face gets smeared with the broken unfun mess that is elden beast
he's constantly running away, he's not at all dynamic like radagon, and he even looks like crap
come on, who wants to fight a giant space spaghetti as the final boss?
also, ulcerated tree spirit
just ulcerated tree spirit

>story
average fromsoft fan be like:
OH MY SCIENCE IS THAT LE HECKING MIYAZAKI TELLING THE LORE OF THE GAME THROUGH ITEM DESCRIPTIONS FOR THE 1488TH TIME??? HOLY GOSH OOOOOOOOOOO ELDEN RING
seriously though, the lore of this game is admittedly pretty interesting, but the narrative sucks
to give an example, in the beginning we are shown a literal powerpoint presentation about the world
okay, what’s the night of the black knives?
not gonna explain?
oh, okay
i’m a tarnished?
i don’t even understand what that means
what the hell is an elden ring?
and so on and so forth
stuff like this continues throughout the whole game because the narrative feels like a jumbled mess of in-universe terms and seemingly random events
on that note, quest design in this game is unintuitive as hell
to take varre’s quest for instance, how the hell am i supposed to know that i need invade other players THREE times to advance his quest?
or patches, it’s like he’s teleporting around the map at random, he doesn’t tell you where he’s gonna go

>leveling
softcaps?
really?
at least tell the player when they get to them, so he doesn’t have to google it
i suggest this is due to pvp or some crap like that, but pvp is a portion of the game, not the entirety of it and you don’t balance stuff AROUND it
the smithing stone grind in this game is obnoxious because of what i described about the caves in the open world section
such game design is almost ubisoft-tier, and those are the items that actually get you through the game

>optimization
it is just bad
it is understandable why my fps are bad on medium settings, seeing distant lands is part of the charm of this game
but the crashes are inexcusable
i suspect it is due to the botched anti-cheat, since without steam this game didn't run half as bad

IN CONCLUSION
i really cannot recommend this game if you're into the ACTION part of the ACTION RPGs
it's a strong MAYBE if you're into the RPG part, but it's just simply so tiresome to even control your character
this game is just outdated, through and through, and i think we all know why it won goty
it is because there was nothing else better than elden ring
i mean, come on, you're gonna give it to god of soy?
miyazaki is a hack

for the love of Christ, LESS INQUISITORS ON HIGHERS BCS
why does the game start spamming these enemies on 2+ BC?
it's NOT FUN to dodge 3 or more projectile enemies simultaneously in a cramped 2d environment while you're trying to deal with more aggressive enemies

also, curses are way too harsh past the lower difficulties
i just don't like having to cleanse 3 curses just to die on the 4th one
"just don't take them lol" and miss out on scrolls, which would screw you up in the long run, making you weaker on the last bosses where that matters A LOT? and miss out on 10k gold on a difficulty that makes healing virtually impossible unless you have cash?

other than that, fine game but nobody will notice this complaint unless this review is negative

devs actively support the satanic p*dophile ring known as the lgbtq+ community

>bro nioh is nothing like souls xD

>can’t learn most of the enemies’ attack patterns without dying to them at least once because of how much damage they do, especially if you're wearing light armor
>forced to chug le reddit estus on bosses after getting hit once, breaking the flow of combat
>annoying anti-fun enemy placements (gaki and skeletons that hang out with bigger yokai, same small fry hiding behind walls, irritating snipers everywhere)
>enemies that don’t play by the same rules as you (human bosses can spam combos even on 0 ki (maeda toshiie, hayabusa))
>repetitive world design with le shortcuts, and at least dark soyls made them coherent, unlike this game, where some shortcuts 0 sense if you think about them for more than half a second (why can i break a stone fused with amrita but can’t break an already half broken wooden gate?)
>environmental hazards that blend in with the rest of the environment because falling down in a hole while you’re capable of slaying literal demons is extremely fun
>narrative that no one wants to follow (at least here they had the decency to not tell it via 500 word essays in item descriptions)
>obnoxious camera that simply does not work in tight spaces, which is most of the game because every second level in this game is a castle, and it’s even worse on bosses


now that i’ve compared it to dark soyls, i want to rate it as an actual sequel

>the new burst counter mechanic is pretty cool on paper, but it should’ve been balanced more - as it is there’s literally no reason to use brute over the other two. it’s the only counter with a delay, which means unless you have 0.01 sec reaction time, you’re not gonna be able to parry some of the attacks. luckily, the devs seemed to have realized this halfway into the game and they put like 2 attacks in the entire game that can only be countered with the brute counter, bravo
>yokai shift is pretty much useless compared to living weapon from nioh 1, they probably nerfed it along with the guardian spirit buffs because they added a bunch of yokai abilities to compensate but i literally see no reason as to why this nerf was needed. it's a single player game, balance doesn't really matter in those as long as you're having fun
>first game had bad enemy variety, this game has it too but in the exact opposite form - there’s too much filler enemies that are either just glorified punching bags (yamanba, waira) or just annoying to deal with (koroka, ubume), the only new ones that are actually fun to fight (base game) are enki and ippon
>continuing on enemy variety, where are my new human enemies? i think, off the top of my head, they only added 1 new human enemy, which is the sohaya hunter which has bs hyper armor half the time, seemingly at random, it’s like this game can’t even make its’ bs consistent. so then this begs the question: why did they add a bunch of annoying and unfun to fight yokai but still haven’t figured out that making a unique enemy for each weapon is a really good idea? get on it for nioh 3, team ninja
>particle effects out the ass, what were they thinking? i can barely see what i’m doing during gameplay with rainbow vomit all over my screen, especially annoying in coop
>optimized worse than the first game, they couldn’t even do the 144fps cap right, making it so the game would try to produce 144fps at all times, making the game extremely slow half the time
>still the same bs level design amplified to 11, ganking enemies and 1v10 encounters galore, just super fun to deal with in a game that’s nearly perfect when you’re in an actual 1v1
>the overall at atmosphere of the game is worse, compared to the original nioh, because it seems as if sometimes it’s just too much; an example of this would be an addition of the new switchglave weapon, which looks and feels as if it came straight out of a mediocre shonen manga; i hope i coveyed what i was trying to say properly because it’s hard to describe, but it’s there and you can feel it if you played both the nioh games
>visual level design falls apart in the second half, it seems like the devs blew their load early because practically every level in the second half of the game is a castle, as i previously stated. this is also one of the reasons why the game's atmosphere suffered, compared to the first nioh


so, in conclusion

greatest combat system in any arpg ever but it’s stuck in an awful clearly fromsoft-inspired formula that’s actively trying to punish you for experimenting and trying to learn it
i really wish this game would suck fully so i could just call it bad and move on but i can’t, this game would be a masterpiece with this kind of combat system if everything else was just done correctly
but honestly, i can cope with everything listed above, i love the game and i got good at it, it offers so much tools to overcome all of the bs (unlike dark soyls xd) once you’re good but i can’t hand on heart recommend it or call it objectively great
considering everything in this review, i would say that the game is mediocre
so i guess wait for sale

trickstab? lol

Smokin' Sexy Style!!

лучший автосимулятор? не смешите меня.
начнём с того, что в это на клавиатуре играть практически невозможно, ибо машины водятся как тяжёлое мыло. чтобы полноценно "насладиться" этой игрой нужен руль. самый недорогой нормальный руль стоит примерно 9к. за такие деньги можно взять форцу, которая замечательно играется даже на клавиатуре + весь длс контент к ней. кстати о длс контенте, тут его СЛИШКОМ много. а ещё его нельзя скрыть в игре, что дико раздражает. но самое смешное, что даже с ним в корсе 150 машин, что в наше время довольно мало для автосимулятора.
спешу добавить, что в игре ужасное кол-во багов, как и в самой игре, так и в меню. порой список онлайн серверов просто зависает, и это нельзя исправить ничем, кроме как перезапуском. так же в этой игре вас ждут крутящиеся болиды в небе, машины, застрявшие в асфальте, невидимые ограждения, респавн колёсами вверх и многое другое.
в этой игре ужасная модель повреждения. я понимаю, что это не симулятор аварий или детализированных повреждений, но ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, машины не должны просто брать и ОТЛЕТАТЬ ОТ СТЕНЫ при столкновении с ней на высокой скорости. кстати о скорости, тут тоже проблема. в этой игре 100 км/ч чувствуются как реальные 60.
о симуляции я могу сказать то, что машина нормально ведёт себя на асфальте, НО СТОИТ ТОЛЬКО С НЕГО СЪЕХАТЬ, И ТУТ НАЧИНАЕТСЯ ТОТАЛЬНЫЙ ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. машину мотает влево-вправо, она начинает непонятно прыгать, даже порой застревает в земле. я понимаю, что это не симулятор внедорожного вождения, но как можно было так обосраться с этой темой? алсо, машина визжит при малейшем повороте. этот визг настолько убог, что мне пришлось его целиком отключить.
ну и самое главное: СРАНЫЙ ИНТЕРФЕЙС. он просто ужасен. абсолютно неудобная навигация, непонятные меню, какие-то непонятные провисания в настройках.
это довольно достойный симулятор, признаю, но как игра, корса - отвратительное убожество, в которое противно заходить.

absolute trash in its' current state
valve doesn't care at all about all the bots that keep popping up nor do they care to update the game so it stays at least somewhat alive

the community degraded overtime, now it's all just a bunch of reddit zoomers who play just to win or to farm kills like the boring morons they are, i suspect this is due to the garbage matchmaking system that replaced the perfectly good old one
can't choose teams, can't spectate, the only thing you can do is to get queued into some dumpster fire of a match where you either get rolled or roll because apparently this game has no idea how to balance the two teams
i also wanna address the fact that they could fix this by simply adding back the scramble teams vote, that way we could mostly get rid of unbalanced matches by having a vote to mix up the teams
valve implemented autobalance (the worst mechanic to ever exist in any video game) to fix it, but it does absolutely nothing, and that's not all
when you gave your all to cap a point and get your team more time to win YOU CAN GET AUTOBALANCED BECAUSE SOME BRAINDEAD MORON IN THE ENEMY TEAM LEFT MID MATCH, WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA?

speaking of balancing, some of the fun weapon combos got nerfed into the ground (sandman, caber, bfb), as if the game wasn't dead enough
some of the weapons are BLATANTLY OVERPOWERED WHILE THEIR SKILL-BASED CONTERPARTS GET ABSOLUTELY MURDERED BY THE BALANCING TODDLERS (looking at the ambassador and the diamondback)
also i may have figured out why they balanced this game in such a ridiculous way, it's because they listened to b4nny of all people
the 6v6 rat, who unironically had the gull to say that pyro is the weakest class while having like 7 hours on this class, was asked by valve to make the balance changes for this game, it's just completely baffling to me

and pyro?
pyro is ABSOLUTELY BROKEN, thanks to the jungle inferno update
airblast is a spammable win-any-encounter button, flames do way too much damage and can kill any class (except heavy (and even then, dragon's fury can obliterate a heavy on full health)) in less than half a second
we got to the point where PHLOG is the most fair weapon for pyro, because it lacks the most broken weapon mechanic in this game

also this game still has random crits, what an excellent mechanic
yea right
they were designed to "settle stalemates", but all they do nowadays is just slow the game down when your team does a push
all they get as a reward for that push is a lucky soldier spamming a random crit into a choke and killing everybody
sounds just fun putting RNG mechanics into a skill-based movement shooter, doesn't it?
they are also mostly at fault for this game having so many unbalanced matches, because if you didn't know, random crits scale with damage, meaning the more damage you do the better your chance is to get a random crit
so, the turbosweaty tryhards playing spam classes with pocket medics up their ass will constantly get rewarded because of how much damage they do and there's not much you can do in this situation, except pray that they don't get random crits

also, the game has become so bloated with stupid hats, skins and gaudy unusual effects that it's hard to play this game without a gamer config that turns it into roblox and kills the charm
can you genuinely imagine getting 30 fps in a 2007 game with something like 1060 6gb and i5 6400?
well, you don't have to imagine in tf2

this is kind of a nitpick, since this only affects new players and there's not a lot of them, the default settings are also absolute dumpster fire - defaults for the fov are 70 and the interp is set to 0.1, are you kidding me?

this game is a prime example of outdated game design, and this game comes from one of the biggest gaming companies on the planet
shame on you, valve
and shame on you, gabe, for turning this soulful game into a husk of what it once was