Recent reviews by Krystalchan

For context I'm currently playing this game solo offline mainly because its a good steam deck game and I want the save at the ready.

With that being stated I'm gonna focus on combat because thats gonna be consistent no matter your playstyle. Combat is very snappy and nice but early on it is *slow*. This is a mix of the fact early gear is lacking skills and your likely on the 2 blood starter skills until you get a few kills in. Overall the hits have good chunky SFX to them along with. Though i wish there were some selections for weapon skills to swap them out like the vamp spells considering you will play with them for so long.

If you are playing with a small group or solo, just remember a lot of the settings are adjustable as rulesets. For instance for my solo play I tend play on base gather rates, but i increased things like stack size and allowed myself to teleport freely around the map. Overall its feeling fine but if I ever have a resource brick wall I might adjust it again. I'm currently keeping the combat settings set to defaults, just the paperwork side is made easier.

Overall its a good game and I hope Stunlock comes out with some more updates for the game. v1.0 was a good update and I hope they just add a bit more to the weapon customizations.

Arrowhead keep up the good work. You have shown nothing but respect for your playerbase. From the core game design to monetization you lit a beacon of how to be fair with monetization. You have very satisfying gun play, the objectives are well done and overall a blast. Your balance updates can be hit or miss but I prefer shaking snow globes over stale metas.


EDIT:: This portion of the review is being kept due to Sony attempting to force PSN and was the only reason for a negative review. I have a feeling the dust might settle and thus I should have this on hand. This review was edited to positive on 5/6/2024, and the positive side of the review is the first paragraph.

But we need to drop on the new threat to Super Earth; Sony's HQ.

Dear Sony; You have now impacted not my ability to play the game, but the ability of my comrades to join me in combat. This game was sold in regions that did not have PSN coverage and now those living there are being punished by your actions. Over the course of this event you had to change your own website regarding PSN sign in for PC games but also now have retroactively removed the ability for selling this game in nations without PSN coverage.

Now I have a compromise, since the goal of the issue in question is to, and I quote, "protect players from griefing and abuse". First I am gonna ignore the fact that AH already takes action on this as steam has SteamIDs and UIDs to facilitate these reports and the addition of PSNs likely doesn't assist in this regard. But in all reality the PC version has the option to enable and disable crossplay with PS5. All you have to do is force disable crossplay unless the user has a linked PSN to which they can enable and disable at their leisure.

I hope this letter/review reaches your burning pit of good will and money. And the PC community has a hard time forgetting transgressions like this. Future titles brandishing PSN will be met with skeptisism or avoidance.

PS: If HD2 would have always required an account link, why did you yourselves update that page three months after launch?

Sources;
Restricted region update for HD2 Steam Sales; https://steamdb.info/sub/137730/history/?changeid=23416542
Sony updating their account linking page; https://twitter.com/Helldiversmedia/status/1786554504789598547

Lets get the elephant out of the way; Yea the launch is rough but keep an eye on Twitter/Socials since they are very responsive about work being done to address issues

As far as the gameplay, think of this a MOBA-Arena such as Battleright. Its a 5v5 slug fest over objective points to gain power and then push the other team's guardian. Rush is the intro mode and this gets you right into the fight, you start at max level and just fight over power points. Clash being the main mode and is a little more moba-lite as you do put minions on points and have to level up.

Just be warned the skill gap is real this early on. You have old Gigantic player and private server player showing they know the game. Just don't get discouraged, you will pick up fast and find your groove

likely the most realistic hacking game your gonna get into without putting your hardware on the line. I have played some other games in the past but they tend to game-ify the hacking side. But this game is just you and your terminal against the world as you crawl through subnets to complete missions, hack other players and just laying your mark on cyberspace.

No Man's Sky and Hello Game's has done its job to claw its self out of the abyss of bad reputation by sticking with the project and creating a game people wanted in the first place. I will say early on this game can sorta be a grind for resources, even more so in survival mode as the consumption on your systems can pretty much be all you gather.

But once your out of the early game, you end up getting access to passive productions to help progress farther. I started by farming and mining all the random specs on the ground, now I build little outposts around various resource hot spots as my primary resource and credit generation. Just a note all of this work when im away, so when I go back the silos should be full.

As far as combat, the sentinels are kinda meh but have some interesting variations as you go up in wanted levels. The starship combat could use some love as the flight controls are lackluster.

For those getting into NMS, be more in there for the exploration and seeing various sites along with the construction side. Overall i got the game for half off, and it seems to be well worth while.

Its Jet Set Radio, play it.

But in all honesty it feels like Team Reptile took JSRF's deign doc out of a time time capsule and polished it up with a modern coat of paint. And the gameplay was the the focus of it, as the mechanics are polished to a shine with movement flowing very well. I personally like the spray paint system over JSR's as it lets you select on the fly what spray you want to use.

If I had to have any complaints, it really shows that its their first out on a single player game. You can definitely see some camera angles and animations that could really be spiced up a bit. For instance on crew battles, when the oldies show the winner its just a very rigid hand wave before the explosive dance of the crew breaks out. They use this hand wave for every crew battle so it makes me wonder why this didn't have more flare on it. I know this is minor but I want to focus on this one as its not a spoiler and its in the gif in the description. But even if your not paying attention you can see a drastic difference in animation qualities.

A good Battlefield game that focuses on the core gameplay, it sets out to do one thing and does it very well. The gun customization is very much classic shooter of 'get kills, get unlocks' instead of looking through a psudo tech tree of unlocks. The guns feel fast, responsive and on point and feel great though some SFX might use some tweaks (starting sniper is really quiet).

For new players getting in be warned there isn't much of a tutorial. If you are playing Recon to snipe, be aware that this game does have zeroing. You can zero all your guns by holding Left Alt + Scroll wheel will adjust your weapons zeroing which defaults to 0m. I found my sniper got a lot easier after figuring this out and even easier with the range finder later on.

*Sigh* its a paradox game, you know where this review is going. Alright?

Lets start with the generic stuff before I moved to DLC. And speaking of Generic, god the empire creation is rather dull compared to some other games in the genre. At least from my experience, these factions are rather safe compared to something like Endless Space 2 or Galactic Civilization. And before the 700+ Hours come in to comment, yes there is variation, some on the unique side but 1) you will need DLC and even then the majority is just moving numbers around than changing an actual playstyle.

Now for the Paradox in the room... Oh god the DLC and some of them feel mandatory. Nemesis has the big end game and spy network features while Federations has the confederation features. Overload has what you expect for controlling vessels and so on. You are looking at $135 (which on sale your looking closer to $75) for pretty much all the big mechanic DLCs. There is a saving grace though, as if you are playing Multiplayer, the host just needs the DLCs and if you pop back to single player you can continue that game if you have the DLC.

Personally I think Paradox should take a look at the features added by DLCs and draft what should be 'core' as they get older. Nemesis should have more of its spy options in base game (For instance; Gather Intel, Smear Campaign, and Steal Tech for base game would round out more options), Utopia could add some of their mega structures, Apoc could add their marauders ect. And again not their full feature list, but just to make the game feel more complete with the expansions now opting to explore more of that field.

Effectively what it kinda says on the tin; EVE Offline. Except there is a bit more player agency with how you fly and such rather than being a just a giant orbit fest. All lines of character development feel good with one exception. Exploration MAY lead to some unintended issues, mainly with the mission boards. See exploring the systems feels great and in the campaign, every sector seems to have a unique note here or there so its worth while to go out. And then you check your local mission board and find all your objectives end up being 10+ jumps away from each other and they pay doesnt help. This can be compounded with having a decent merc squad and their payroll constantly ticking, leaving your cash in a cycle where you lose or break even all the time due to travel times.

So a little new player guide to help get out of the slow start. The start is only as slow as you make it. Once you run some missions, mission boards will populate more and more. Pick up the "Mission Contracts Skill" to get additional mission slots, allowing you to run them in a chain. The "Fleet Commander" skill is also a must, since most merc payrolls are pennies and will drastically boost your productivity (More lasers to mine/salvage, more cargo to haul, more guns to dakka, ect). Also after their loyalty hits 100% they work for free. Lastly [] will adjust the game's playspeed, allowing you to turbo for 3x speed.

As much as I do enjoy the game, it tries to find that balance between complexity and approach-ability that feels like a faustian bargain that GranBlueVS also finds its self in. Granted the game is good, the characters are easy to learn but definitely have room for expression. But at $50 i would wait for a sale if your looking for a fighting game with some unique mechanics or just learning fighting games.

Now I will put my disclaimer in DNF Duel; Its pretty obvious that Nexon and ASW are putting their efforts else where (such as Strive for instance for Team RED and idk what the Blue side is up to after Mori left). Since the release about a year, we have only gotten balance patches with no new content added. It is kinda sad because there are plenty of more classes that could be added into DNF Duel. Overall get the game hop into either a local discord or offical/regional discord to find matches.