F2P game for 60 EUR. Stay away.

A decently fun, yet mostly disappointing game that wouldn't surprise me if came back in a couple months time/ a year as a free-to-play game in a similar way as Godfall.

I'm gonna try and cover what others have either failed to mention or have been too blindsided by the games rabid monetization to actually be talk about.

Combat often feels fluid and reactive until the chore of resource management kicks the door down. Initially feels like a gamble weather your SP (resource that is used both by your more powerful attack and your dodge) will actually last longer than a small combo and one dodge or if it will last an entire fight.

Weaponry feels reasonably diverse but personally there seems to be a bad balance with weapons like the sword/bow being quite versatile and the hammer being astonishingly situational and borderline bad. Using any abilities that use SP rarely feels I'm using them in any tactical way but instead as just a DPS increase when I have SP, making the whole system feels strangely dull if not visually flashy.

Personally I feel that the itemisation is completely horrendous and is prone to some pretty bad stagnation very early in the game. Initially gear drops relatively plentifully, and you are able to increase your gearscore which is the only stat which matters to begin with.
But as you get further into the game, it introduces crafting, which again, initially seems like a fun mechanic, until they reduce loot by about 50%-60% and replace it with crafting materials in which you only get 1-4 of the items you need per mission when you need around 20 just to craft one piece of gear.
You are also heavily subject to the RNG of loot drops, Either you constantly switch your weapon types around and suffer not really learning how to use your weapons effectively or you can keep using the same weapon types and deal with an extremely slowly rising gearscore. Chances are you won't even get the item you need after a mission because maybe you need a higher gearscore chestpiece to drop but it for some reason never does, requiring you to buy that piece of gear from a shop which only matches your current average gearscore (average of all 8 gear slots.)

I'll keep this paragraph about monetization brief cause you can read any other review and see whats up but it genuinely is atrocious. It is like they are trying to sully Square's and Platinum's name with this game.

Graphics are rarely an issue for me but I do not believe there is much wrong here, while the texture and model detailing can feel like its a port from an older console game, it really caries an interesting sense of style with bright flashy colours and effect and interesting styled locations and enemies. Its a shame that there is so much repetition otherwise I think this could have been a very pretty game to look at.

The Music is varying from the forgettable battle to battle sounds tracks to the grand and energising boss themes, its not really a surprise when Square is involved.

Multiplayer is quite fun when you actually get queued with other people and it often makes combat much less tedious as everyone is dealing with their own portion of the enemy rather than just versus which enemy feels like firing an arrow offscreen.

If anyone actually read this wall of text then thank you for sticking it through although I could have wrote so so much more, the game seems riddled with little issues. Its really a shame for me to not recommend Babylon's Fall but Square and Platinum really screwed up with this title, I feel a genuine amount of guilt for spending $90AUD on this game I would have gotten a refund if I didn't buy it through GMG, I could have just waited and put the money towards food or perhaps the other AAA titles I am looking forward to.

An absolutely terrible cashgrab of a game.

My first impression was the awful Square Enix account system. My account is already linked to my Steam as I had played Nosgoth, yet in spite of that, the game would not detect it nor allow me to log into it. If you attempt to reset your password on Square Enix's account portal, they send you login buttons to sign in through Steam rather than a password reset code. As a result, I had to make a new Square Enix account, which let me go through the whole registration only to tell me that the other email I used was already on an account when they sent me a follow up registration email, not when the actual registration was done. Then, I had to use my third email and link it to my Steam, even though Square Enix explicitly says they're on a 1:1 basis. Wild that they couldn't even get the basics of their awful account system to know I already had it linked, if they're going to hit me with this warning.

The graphics have an awful paintbrush shader to make everything have a brushstroke sort of effect, but it makes everything look muddy to the point of being unbearable. The combat is mediocre at best with enemies feeling like sponges. Plus, the resolution support is terrible. It has 2460x1440, but not my monitor's 3440x1440 resolution. To top it off, the default resolution was 1920x1080 windowed mode when the game initially opened.

The UI is the worst kind of console port. You cannot use a mouse for it hardly, it requires navigation across a top bar of sections using your letter keys, and you'll occasionally need arrow keys to properly select buttons. Also, click the left arrow on something, like volume, that goes from 1-10 will immediately put it at 0 from 10.

It's almost impossible to group together. Despite adding my friend to my in-game friend list, we could not party up. We tried making a private HQ and matching the same mission, only to still not be paired up. It was clearly matching though, because I would end up in a party with people on other platforms. Enough to tell me I didn't have to get to a certain part of the story to play with people.

Then to really cement the cashgrab this game is, they immediately hit you with a battle pass you can buy when you first get out of the tutorial. They really think people will be dumb enough to buy a battlepass for this full price, piece of ♥♥♥♥ game.

To say I don't recommend this would be understatement. I absolutely recommend one thing, and it's staying far, far away from this freemium piece of ♥♥♥♥ with a $60 price tag and these studios. This experience was enough to burn me that I would go as far as to say they'll never be getting a dime from me again.

What an absolute joke of a release. Anyone defending this game for its "potential" needs a reality check - a game with "potential" doesn't sell for $60. Nor is the matchmaking more functional than Outriders if I can't even join my friends in a supposed co-op game.

Really wanted to like this. The core gameplay is fun, as you'd expect from Platinum Games. The visuals are... mixed, I'd say. The painterly filter can result in some pretty views, but more often just makes things muddy instead. The story, the premise and the dialogue (both in terms of writing and voice acting) are all fine, or at least that was my impression during my time with it.

The problem this game has is nothing to do with any of those things. The problem is Platinum Games' stated goal to move towards games as a service, which can be seen in full effect here: this fully priced AAA title contains enough microtransactions to make a gacha game blush, though at the very least it all seems to be cosmetic, early game help or time savers - nothing quite pay to win. It has a battle pass 100 tiers deep, with both a free and a paid track of course. From what I could understand, you can unlock a tier by accumulating 1000 BP... my first mission gave me 50. Perhaps later on you get it faster. You can, naturally, simply pay your way, with real money, to the final tier. This would cost you well over $100 if you did it from the first tier. My assumption is that you're expected to grind and get your wallet out if you want everything - the battle pass is only around for 90 days. And that's not the only thing to spend money on. There's also a separate shop which contains similar cosmetics in case you have yet more money - some of these might also be limited time, although I didn't spot a countdown.

Honestly, all that doesn't bother me too much... but this mentality clearly dictates the pacing of the game as well. Getting to "end game", a concept I wish this game didn't have in the first place, is clearly quite an ordeal... even some of the positive reviews I've read aren't happy about it. They really want you to commit to this game.

TL;DR, a potentially fun PlatinumGames title was stretched into a massive time and money sink that is really hard to justify. It's Square Enix's Avengers game all over again.

Edit: I wanted to add, because apparently a handful of people are reading this and one or two of you took issue with my review, that you should really look at my playtime, or near-lack thereof. I stopped playing at an hour or so, which bring me to two points: first, that I'm not an expert in this game and nothing I say should be taken as gospel; and secondly, I stopped playing so quickly because I looked at just how much of the content was either battle pass or some other form of MTX, and all the motivation just bled out of me. I felt like I was at a crossroads: I could either commit to this game and its treadmill, or I could stop and get my guaranteed refund before I played more than 2 hours. I'm sure you can guess which path I took from the rest of this review. And I still think I made the right choice: I just can't imagine what would be waiting at the end of this game that would be worth what I paid, if their focus is on tempting me to pay more.

I can't recommend this game. Here's why:

1. $60 price tag with a paid battle pass, and cash shop. Absolutely deplorable, and greedy.

2. The graphics are straight up ugly. There is nothing redeeming or endearing about the graphics or art style of this game. Characters look like freaks of nature, hair textures are horrible. After playing Elden Ring, this game looks like it was developed for the etch-a-sketch. I get that they were going for an oil painted look, but they failed miserably.

3. Gameplay is unresponsive, sluggish, and just not fun. Feels like there is a 1.5 second delay from when I press a button to my character actually preforming the input. combat in general feels stupidly simplistic, and the only semblance of challenge is fighting against your controller.

4. Almost no one is playing this game. I tried for almost an hour to get into a group with other people, and between the match maker taking 10 minutes to find anyone, and when it finally did they were AFK the whole mission. There is no way to boot someone from your group, and no way to text chat with them. In a co-op multiplayer game this is just inexcusable to not have these basic features implemented into their game.

Overall this was a huge disappointment by Platinum Games. I would even go as far to say this is the worst game they have ever made. I hope they can get their head out of the clouds, and actually try to salvage their reputation after being drawn and quartered by this hunk of garbage.

For the price they are asking for, it's not worth it.
Online only, cash shop and a seasonal battlepass.
Wait for it to drop to 30 or so euro, but until they do that you might have no one to play with.
The community for it will be dead in a few weeks, it already started badly with just 600 people playing it simultaneously on steam. While it has crossplay, i don't know how much that will help later.
This could as well been a free to play game, since it has in place every possible monetization for it.

Disappointing and very boring. It's just another ugly live-service micro-trransaction / Battle Pass game. This also is not presented in the store page as such which I view as deceptive marketing but I can't even refund with Steam because I got the key from a discount retailer and that retailer only appears to refund pre-orders. I might check on it later but otherwise about $50 USD wasted on this and no more going to be spent.

Square, you didn't learn from Avengers.

TLDR: Levels are repetitive, Difficulty is a joke, Combat is somewhat serviceable once you hit end game but lacks any depth during the whole "Campaign", Story wasn't great but don't really mind, Grind is boring, Not so great weapon balance, Lack of interesting enemies, and the monetisation is honestly disappointing for a PG game.

At 79.99 CAD, there are just so many things which just doesn't feel right. This game will not respect your time. Curiosity got the better of me.

This game pushes micro-transactions like it were a free to play game. I wouldn't mind if it weren't a $60 purchase to begin with.

Pros:
I did like the fighting mechanics.

Cons:
$60 FTP game
If you make multiple characters, your inventory is shared between all characters making it a mess to navigate.
Cannot delete your character. Which would be fine if you could fully customize, but you cannot change your faction.
Graphics are mediocre and there are so many graphical bugs throughout the game.
When you create a second/third character, you cannot restart the storyline.
There was a technical bug that left me at the EAC screen, using up my 2hr window for refund.

If this game doesn't go free to play, I strongly do not recommend.

There's not much to draw you in at the beginning and once I saw that on top of paying the price for a full game normally, this thing is filled with freemium micro-transactions I quit. It's not worth your money as there's far better things to spend €60-70 or your equivalent currency on.