Recent reviews by Azareis

tl;dr: I shouldn't have ignored the obvious signs. Hadn't intended on writing a negative review until I reinstalled and logged back on, then saw the laughably stingy "welcome back package" that reinforces just how disrespectful this game is of your time. I handed the sad excuse for a return package off to a friend who still plays, and then deleted and shelved the game for good. I strongly recommend you go play something that's actually worthwhile, like Enshrouded, instead.

Having played a great deal from when it first released and having high hopes, sadly I can say with certainty that Dune: Awakening is a huge waste of time. The gameplay is extremely repetitive and one-dimensional, and the survival elements are barely a nuisance that fully stop mattering past very early stages. Strange, given the setting the game takes place in. Water? Mostly just a crafting material. Sandstorms? Park your vehicle next to any wall and AFK for a quick bathroom break. Worms? Bait it into a long animation and hoover up spice while it's busy trumpeting right next to you, then fly up a bit when it starts to dive back under and repeat.

Most of the gameplay is grinding extremely repetitive resource gathering just to make marginal upgrades to your base that let you do exactly the same things you already could, but with larger numbers. Also, you'd better not let life happen because if you take a hiatus from the game, you make a ton of backwards progress. They have a pitiful "welcome back" package, where the supplies it provides are a drop in the bucket compared to what you need to make any meaningful progress even in recouping what you lost from your base deterioration while you were away. From start to finish, Dune: Awakening is extremely disrespectful of the player's time, and with no real payout in terms of gameplay experience.

Apart from the survival and building elements, the combat is also bottom-tier awful. As someone who greatly enjoys buildcraft, I was initially worried that the limitation of only being able to have 3 skills "equipped" at a time would be severely limiting. It turns out that I was wrong, but for a terrible reason: there were only two skills worth bothering with at all. Bindu Sprint and Shigawire Claw both allowed you to trivialize navigation, especially when paired with any tier of The Emperor's Wings. They were also both excellent in combat, as Bindu Sprint allowed for easy repositioning to use the sniper rifle (which is one of the best weapons in all cases anyway) and Shigawire Claw would force an enemy to stagger and allow you to perform a melee execution. It wasn't just that these were strictly overpowered, though. All other skills were either extremely niche or barely usable, as if the devs had never bothered to playtest them at all. An easy example of these, and the one that irritated me the most, was the skill Shield Wall. Playing a sniper, you'd naturally think that an ability which grants deployable cover would be a huge asset, right? Wrong. Your character is just tall enough to see over the barrier, and has to look straight through a "haze" VFX that warps the air and absolutely destroys any chance you have of firing accurately. The effect is so strong that even at mid range I barely landed any of my shots. In short range, the skill is also useless because it doesn't physically block movement. Apart from the active skills, the passives were also completely uninspired and most of them could barely be felt at all. The worst offender for me in this case was Overcharge, which increases the maximum capacity of your power packs. I had hoped that the UI was incorrect and the "+20/level" increase it gave was a percentage value, but no. It is a flat value, and you literally cannot feel any improvement because power packs naturally come with max capacities of several hundred. ALL of this is exacerbated by the fact that the enemy AI is abysmally moronic. Hostile creatures run in predictable paths and hardly make use of cover, so it's near-effortless to mow down the gormless wretches even if you're barely paying attention.

Worst of all, the devs have knee-jerk reactions to certain types of player feedback and make sudden, jarring changes to the game that damage the few parts that feel even remotely good, while ignoring other glaring flaws. For me, the final nail in the coffin was how they addressed the issue of players killing other players who were on foot by stomping on them with their ornithopers. They made it to where players wouldn't get damaged by vehicles falling on them (which is understandable and fine), but ALSO made it to where entering vulture mode in your ornithopter nearaly grinds you to a sudden halt mid-air, causing basic flight to feel extremely unnatural. Meanwhile, they completely ignore how sandbikes are entirely pointless past the very start of the game, and how in any land vehicle you can just yeet yourself off of cliffs with not a care in the world. Despite what should obviously be a fatal crash that also destroys the vehicle, you just get flipped around with nary a scratch, and go on your way.

Even if you're a die-hard Dune fan, and honestly especially if you are, pass on this game entirely. I wish I could take back the >100 hours I spent on it. Go play something that's actually worth your time. For me, that's been Enshrouded, where adventuring actually feels enjoyable, and the building system isn't a bland mess designed to waste your time.

The devs told us it would be a roguelite, and guess what, it's a roguelite. Specifically, it's a roguelite that uses soulslike mechanics. The two genres already share quite a few similarities, so the marriage of the two feels pretty natural. If you're not familiar with the roguelite genre, look it up before buying this, Because, much like soulslikes, roguelites are not everyone's cup of tea. If you already like both roguelites and soulslikes, you'll probably like Nightreign.

The only real issues I've run into are that at the time of writing this, single-player mode is extremely unbalanced, there is no duo mode (though you can team up with a friend and together queue with a rando), and there are a few QoL issues. FromSoftware, you know damn well that catalysts are designed to be in the offhand and melee weapons in the main hand, so why tf does Recluse's staff default to a right hand slot??? Jokes aside, I do wish the UX for Recluse's affinities was better. Right now you can only ever see the affinity on a single target, and when you swap to a new target the affinity takes a moment before it shows. Time is precious in Nightreign, so this gets annoying (but isn't a dealbreaker or anything).

Weapons, spells, and weapon abilities currently are all things that existed in the Elden Ring base game, with a few minor tweaks. For example, the Swarm of Flies incantation now does small amounts of physical damage instead of fire, which prevents it from generating a fire affinity for Recluse to absorb. Similarly, while Roiling Magma is still busted as ever when it directly hits an enemy, the lobbed orb now also doesn't even do fire damage.

For new players, my main tips are as follows:
- Go into the map in single player with the intention of not winning, just to give yourself some time to familiarize yourself with how the map is laid out, and what different iconography means so you're less lost when doing actual runs.
- When playing either as Recluse or with a Recluse ally, make a point to collect and use a variety of elemental weapons and spells, especially Fire, Lightning, and Holy damage types. Having a spread of these allows Recluse to more frequently use her strongest Magic Cocktail mixtures, some of which can instantly delete minions, making fights that much easier.
- You have a chance of getting elemental gear anywhere, but certain areas on the map have factions associated with a particular element that will guarantee at least some items and weapons associated with that element (e.g. Oracle Envoys for Holy). If your Recluse is marking an elementally aligned camp, follow their lead, as it's likely a sign they need the party to have more of that element accessible.
- Merchants in the map have fixed locations, and the same inventory across the map on any given run for days 1 & 2. They will always have some lower tier upgrade materials, consumables, and a variety of weapons. They seem to always have at least one weapon of each element available, though melee weapons are more commonly sold than spell catalysts or bows. It is worth at least checking their stock when you cross paths with them and taking note of anything you will want to buy, as well as its cost.
- If you see Recluse breathing fire tinted with some blue magic effect, *stay in the fire*. It's her Magic + Fire + Holy cocktail, and is the only one that is capable of healing allies. No idea what possessed the devs to make her primary healing ability something that players are likely to panic roll out of.
- If you see Recluse release a cocktail that produces a soft blue glow in a wide area, spam your strongest FP skills ASAP. It's her Magic + Holy cocktail, and eliminates all FP costs for a very brief window of time.

My review is a tl;dr set of statements for people who don't want to read a bunch of reviews.

1) Official reviews/ratings are either outdated or inaccurate, and many of the issues they had (especially with mechanics) I haven't ran into. The game isn't bug-free, but I haven't encountered any significant ones. (There was one mildly horrifying one where a citizen was talking about victims of The Gloom pushing in their eyes, and his eyes whipped around in their sockets [the backs initially faced me].)

1a) Some reviews complain about how close combat is basically a death sentence if multiple guards are after you. This is intentional (The whole point is to NOT be caught in the first place!).

1b) Some reviews complain about a disjoined story. I don't know where they're getting this. Everything plays out fine as far as I've seen.

2) The gameplay is solid, although it feels slightly more restricted than most people (read: those not already fans of the Thief series) expect from an "open-world" game.

3) For existing fans of the series: The developers appear to have abandoned a great deal of the humor in previous Thief games in favor of making it more dark/serious. Personally, I'm okay with this.