Recent reviews by da liqa sto

The early access definitely shows. That is not to say it isn't a good game. I did not enjoy valheim, but the lack of gameplay friction in Dragonwilds makes it a significantly more chill experience. You will never encounter brick walls in progression.

If you don't like grindy games, and want a serious difficulty challenge, it isn't for you. If you like prepping for a long time for bosses like in Terraria, this game is for you. In traditional runescape, gear swaps for specific bosses are required, in Dragonwilds it's possible to pick any class.

In dragonwilds, most things are gear-locked rather than level-locked like in runescape. Levelling up certain skills is worthwhile, but the grind does not need to be as long as it is.

Multiplayer is where the game really shines. Similar to project zomboid, having specific players be experts in specific things is a giant boon. Many things are level-locked rather than gear locked, like runecrafting, meaning dedicating one player to runecrafting or having each player lock themselves to a class can be convenient for all parties involved.

The game optimization is not very good. DLSS is not a crutch for bad optimization. Without DLSS, expect framerates in the 80s at medium settings even with good hardware.

The game does feel quite clunky in certain places; combat is extremely easy to cheese and the fatigue system usually tires you out before you finish a dungeon, meaning that for longer dungeons you have to walk back to the entrance to rest or just endure the stamina loss. I would prefer if the fatigue system was completely removed. It adds nothing to the game other than waste time; there's a spell to create a portable shelter to restore fatigue that's extremely easy to unlock. The mining spell unlocked by skill level is entirely dependent on luck, as most ore veins aren't tightly packed enough to break with the spell. The spell is also so powerful that it's faster to wait for the cooldown and go on a "mining run" than to actually mine deposits.

Despite the jank, which I'm sure will be ironed out in later patches, the game is relatively feature complete and is a complete experience on its own, well worth the price tag.

if you have exactly one friend, host a public lobby with them; it will fill quickly with a region tag. If you have 2+ friends, this game is a blast to play in a private lobby.

The settings require a lot of tinkering. I wish it was possible to auto-adjust the settings based on how many players are in the lobby; the difficulty changes drastically based on how many people are playing.

Infection is by far the most fun gamemode. In lobbies with 5+ players, 2 hunters are ideal. One bad hunter can run the round timer for a long time.

General balancing rules of thumb:
• The default hunter wait time (painting time) is too short. Increase it to at least 120 seconds.
• If the first hunter(s) are struggling to find players, increase the whistle frequency.
• If the rounds end with lots of hiders, but the first few people are found quickly, increase the round timer.
• Don't use custom maps in public lobbies. It takes a long time for people to download them, and many people leave during this time.


Though I will say, with the SPEED that this game is getting updated, I expect most of the problems in the negative reviews to be gone within the month.

I played it every day since the pre-order early access opened.

so let me share every single negative

• Memory leak issue during long sessions - tanks performance, game needs to be restarted (I'm relatively immune with 32GB of ram)
• randomly the game starts extremely laggy - my FPS is 1/3rd of what it normally is, and there's lots of stuttering. idk what causes it but restarting the game fixes it

• festival playlist FOMO still exists, but is diminished by aftermarket cars (I still wish they would populate the autoshow)
• leading from that, the majority of the autoshow cars aren't that good
- not many tuning options, boring generic cars people generally don't care about (don't get me wrong, there ARE some cool ones!!)
• PI system is still just as unreliable as ever. While the pain points have been alleviated (the system is now a lot tighter with the R class, and cams are slightly less of a free performance boost), there are still issues where rally diffs/suspensions become the best option for certain cars
• while SEVERAL models have been updated, many models are still the same ones from 15+ years ago (most apparent with the 86 still having the paltry selection of parts with no bodykits)
• engine sounds are more correct than ever, but there are still many times where they're wrong
• ANNA is still completely useless
• progression is still all over the place. While I like that you are now restricted by class for races depending on progression level, you are not incentivized to take the fastest classes since they all affect progression equally.
- Also, the unfortunate side effect of having so many collection log components is that you unlock extremely fast cars before you can even use them
- Having the DLCs means you get every car you will ever need
• dialogue still sucks, the japanese voice/english text glitch makes the overacting more bearable
[stolen from @zackreese on twitter]
- In-Game: Go to Settings > Language Select > Choose Japanese
- Let the game close. Go to folder \ForzaHorizon6\media\Stripped\StringTables. Rename JP.zip to something else, rename EN.zip to JP.zip.
- Launch the game.


• AI is extremely inconsistent. On shorter races or races with lots of straights, they are WAY stronger due to the lack of turns to compensate for the speed difference that they have. Unbeatable AI is now actually difficult, which is GOOD, but i wish that the horsepower they gain was compensated for.
• locked progression system forces you to use the same few cars over and over and over again. I want to use my supertuned ford focus, not the same lamborghini/ferrari hypercar for the 10th time.
• forza horizon has always been extremely generous with money, but the fully AFK autodrive method doesn't sit well with me.


• sometimes seasonal cars show up as random aftermarket cars for sale
• SEVERAL models were updated; the r34 skyline specifically is night and day
• brakes no longer suck ass compared to fh5
• the map is good, unlike fh4
• you can put decals on windows now
• s1 class got bumped down a peg due to the PI system changes. This has the convenient side effect of being a lot more bearable to race in
• unbeatable AI is now actually difficult
• some difficulty settings that nobody turns off now don't affect credit bonuses
- turning on car damage, launch control, etc.
• buggy races are less unfair compared to previous horizons

It's a good game, but if I knew that 2.0 was coming out 2 weeks ago, I would probably have waited for the release before I bought the blazing edition (now the 2.0 starter edition) and gotten all the DLC + season pass 5 for the same price

really good CYOA. digital deluxe has extra comics which flesh out the story.

shroud is a fraud btw.

it's a masterpiece. It feels insanely good to play. Played through the main 5-6 hour story in one sitting.

if you liked Hotline Miami, Trepang2 or Neon White, you'll probably enjoy I Am Your Beast.

If I had any complaints, it would be that some of the side objectives are a bit annoying to complete (accidental headshots for bodyshots only, accidentally shooting a barrel in gun kills only, or stomping on an enemy on accident invalidating a run)

regardless of hiccups, getting S tier in every level is a power trip. Every aspect of the game - from the one shot kills, to the enemies commenting on how good you are, to the story itself - is meant to hype you up.

I can't recommend this game enough.

don't get it confused, this is just a paid admission online fishing chatroom

okay so before you go in:
- install it on the drive steam is installed on or it might crash
- do not alt tab, it creates instability and makes the game liable to crash and stutter
- lock the game to 60fps with something like RivaTuner (bundled with msi afterburner) or graphical bugs and physics glitches happen
- don't play on hardcore unless you hate yourself. It's more annoying than hard since it just ramps up the numbers on all the enemies. Cars become made of paper mache due to the increased damage numbers, making you constantly change cars in trafficking and wrestling with the AI to get into a new car.

In snatch missions, the five second animation that plays when a ho/contact gets up off the ground is enough to get enemies to do enough damage to destroy your car, so you end up having to recruit them, driving away for a moment, then driving back once the animation finishes playing. Escort missions Brutes take entire magazines until you unlock weapons that actually do damage.
In the Trouble With Clones DLC, the helicopters shoot rockets at Jimmy's car, and it's literally impossible to destroy the helicopters before they shoot that first rocket (if you get bad RNG they shoot you the same frame that they enter your FOV). I got stuck in a loop of getting hit with multiple unavoidable rockets and restarting. I had to turn the difficulty down because despite memorizing the spawns, I still wasn't able to destroy them fast enough to stop the car from being destroyed.
In one of the main story missions where you first fly the VTOL, the heightened damage numbers caused enemies to accidentally destroy the VTOLs before I could even see them.
In hardcore there are so many enemies with high health pools that when you don't have many upgrades unlocked, the ideal path is to just avoid even fighting them and just run straight through to reach objectives since your guns are as effective as a wet fart and you were born with glass bones and paper skin.
The human shield mechanic is effectively pointless as they get instantly eviscerated by the high damage so the play style you adopt to kill things is mag dumping around corners since you can shoot enemies while they can't shoot you.

The pitiful damage you do on all difficulties with bodyshots makes the ideal way to play to just headshot everything with the aggressive aim assist. Saints row 4 improved a lot on this with making all of the weapons feel viable to use.
Not having Gat in this game kind of sucked, but the writing was nice. The three gangs you fight against have a lot of character and feel unique, and killbane being hyped up throughout the game and culminating in a climax where you fight him in a wrestling ring feels awesome, but it feels cheapened by "oh shaundi is gonna die or you can kill killbane" but why couldn't we have both? Why couldn't we have a fully satisfying ending where we both save Shaundi and kill killbane? Why even give us the choice when saving Shaundi is both the canon option, AND the less lame choice ("I need a hero" plays as you drive over to save her)
Many of the options in the game feel contrived with either an obvious choice (nyte blade as a homie or save three hours of district takeover gameplay) and was satirized in Saints Row 4 (as president, choose to stop world hunger or cure cancer)
I didn't like the permanent map changes, I wish that upon completion of the game you could bring the thermopylae or the aircraft carrier into the open world, or the zombie invasion on Arapice island could be toggled.

Despite being completely unserious and lacking in gritty themes like previous saints row games, it does its own thing and has quite a bit of charm.
All of the activities are things you can't find anywhere else. Despite being braindead easy (unlike saints row 4 where getting gold on all of the activities was moderately difficult), they are still extremely fun.
Tank mayhem is my favorite activity, and watching the combo meter go up as you aim for bundles of street clutter (fences, newspaper boxes, etc.) and then destroying something actually worth some proper cash to get combos in the millions feels orgasmic.
Insurance fraud is a lot of fun, propelling your ragdolled self into oncoming traffic with lowered gravity from adrenaline will never not be fun.
Professor Genki's Super Ethical Reality Climax is literally just an arena where health is granted from pickups instead of regenerating like the base game. It's a lot of fun racking up a combo, but the timer is a non-threat and the cash goal is met without even having to think about it.


Other than that, I have 100%'ed this game 3 times. It's really good, and addicting to go through and do everything. It has bugs and glitchiness, but it's a fun game with lots of charm and silliness. Saints row 4 definitely improved upon the formula, but I still go back to this from time to time.

I recommend playing vanilla for a bit then downloading mods after you get used to the game (Some mods are essential though, like "More descriptions for traits.")

as strange as it is, I love playing in apocalypse mode with minimal building, only ever using curtains or boarding up houses

I would love to have a book in-game (maybe in a survivor house?) that tells you how zombies work and common sense stuff like how being around corpses makes you sick
maybe it exists and I just haven't found it yet? idk

read this guide to get started
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2715088614

Ideally you should go in as blind as possible, but there's not much intuition to some mechanics and you won't find out until you look it up

some things that weren't intuitive for me:

• I had no idea how to find car keys and I assumed you would find it off of nearby zombies or in the nearby house but I didn't know you could find it in the glove box or around the car on the ground
  
• I didn't know that the only way to find out how to use a generator was to find the book labeled "how to use a generator"
  
• I didn't know how to board up houses or break down walls or disassemble things because you need specific tools
  
• I didn't know that you can craft with water/hot water/bleach by just being near it while it's in a container or on the ground
  
• I didn't know where to go because maps were extremely rare and almost tired myself to death trying to find where the other towns were (I was walking across the lumber mill without a car)
  
• I didn't know that zombies could respawn by default
  
• a lot of the skills were super vague and the way that some are named are just flat out wrong. Keen hearing doesn't actually affect audio, it just determines how well you can see behind you. Hard of hearing and deaf affect audio, but not perception radius. I wish that the more descriptions for traits mod was vanilla
  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2685168362&searchtext=

game is good, but reading a lot of the negative reviews they're complaining that build 42 is "never coming out" even though the developers give progress reports on it and they have never once said it was "around the corner" or given a concrete date

plus it's an overhaul to a huge chunk of the codebase and behind-the-scenes cleanup from what I can garner, with a huge amount of features being added

Normally I dislike open world survival crafting games, but this one is an exception. I didn't think I would like it because there's so much to keep track of, but it plays more like the sims with guns.

my thoughts

• the microtransaction shop prices are still too high ($70+ for one skin that can be put on multiple guns), and to unlock the rest of the classes it takes ~30 hours of playtime (or $7)
  
• the maps and skins look amazing but the default player models look awful
  
• none of the maps are good except for the laundromat (the others are all 90° corner peek fests)
  
• there is variety in these bad maps but doing so is so risky for so little in return (nobody is spending a full 30 seconds going to a marginally better angle) that it's not worth bothering with
  
• the game itself is fun if you spend more than 5 hours learning it, I love playing with spectres and it's a lot more fast paced than other comp shooters
  
• camping is an issue, but almost every class is designed in a way that flushes out campers with either the free utilities or the purchased ones

(I think that camping might be because of the fact that both sides get the same guns, and most maps are defender sided)

Playing solo is the worst of any comp shooter. if one player leaves or goes AFK that's basically two players gone. The game doesn't work well at all if you can't get the team to be on the same page...

I'd love a 1v1 mode with maybe an extra spectre or something (I'm not a game designer) since playing 3v3 with randoms is butt cheeks.