Recent reviews by Hunam

The best game I've ever hated.

Excellent game for the current sale price. Well written characters and fun dungeon crawling. Can get a bit samey and the game shows it's budget, but still a good time if you want JRPG combat.

A bit slow to start but a really fun adventure. Great acting and writing with lovable characters.

There is an issue with the game that causes microstuttering that is hard to fix, or impossible in some cases.

Poor PC port, avoid.

A lot more than it looks. Exploring and delivering cargo is more compelling than I expected. There is a lot of challenge in the game but in unexpected ways, revolving around you approach to the environment and building tools to conquer it.

Story is fun, but falls apart at the end, which is the only negative comment I can make about this game.

Stunning environment, gorgeous art and characters and an incredible atmosphere through out.

I'm really struggling to find any enjoyment with this game. I adore the original, but the developers seem to be offended with how we played the game. The enemies in XCOM 2 are stronger, more disruptive and will be spammed into missions over and over. Many will now one hit kill your team using the new melee system unless you already know where they are and have set a plan to deal with them. The game does encourage you to set plans and ambushes with the new concealment system, but undermines that at every turn with prohibitive countdown timers that will either fail the mission or just remove your entire squad.

The campaign map can't stand you taking time to do anything, and will constantly barrage you with new things to do, even before you finish the last thing you did. If you ever decide to ignore any missions, the game will come back a minute later and sternly warn you that you have to stop doing what it told you to do the other thing it told you.

To sum up, this game is made by developers who have nothing but disdain for the player. The design was not about giving you interesting challenges to overcome, but instead with how much they could frustrate you. Either play the original or Chimera Squad.

Excellent tactical sim with an engaging story and excellent battle system. Offers a good challenge throughout, but watch out towards the end of the game where some of the side missions become unfair.

It's a flailin' good time!

If I was to sum up Dreamfall Chapters in one word it would be inconsistent. Everything from writing, to acting to graphics and performance has an inconsistency to it.

Coming into the game I knew there would be some areas that I wouldn't understand as I stopped playing both The Longest Journey and Dreamfall when getting to Marcuria, this didn't really hurt the experience until right at the end where I had to read other peoples opinions to understand the closing scene of the game.

Zoe is a joy to play in this game. She is well realised and is blessed with great writing and acting. A couple of plot points in Book 3 feel sluggish for her but in Book 4 she has almost all of the best moments of the game. Book 5 struggles to round all of her story up and feels like a missed opportunity.

Kian has the majority of the weakest moments in the game, with weaker writing and acting, a lack of consistent characterisation and too much tedious hidden object fetching. The supporting cast of Arcadia suffer from poor acting and writing, and Arcadia itself struggles with being a realised setting with too much anachronistic humour to undermine to plot it wants to host.

Saga is a good character looking for a good story. A fantastically built character that never fits into the story of the game, and then clumsily interjected into the deeper story of TLJ. The rest of the supporting cast are wooden with a few exceptions (Bip, Nela, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥), with the bad guys suffering from poor acting and nonsensical motivations, with a cringe worthy Anthony and Cleopatra situation becoming laughable in the final book.

Outside of the story the character models can vary from outstanding (Zoe, Saga (and family), Crow, Witches) to poor (Reza, Anna and most of the human Arcadia cast, anything to do with The Eye, Baruti). Animation suffers throughout the game, with cutscenes frequently showing characters rotating on the spot and puppet like lip movements. A few moments shine through in Book 4 but animation holds this game back in a big way. Sound design is expressive and has a musical score that is well placed, fitting and emotional.

Performance is another huge problem. I've played the game on a good rig (i7 2600K, GTX 680) with constant frame rate issues even on the lower settings. I eventually had to play the game on medium and was around 40ish frames, but having to deal with a lot of tearing. I also have access to a more powerful machine (i7 4820K, GTX 980) which struggled to keep 60 frames on high, let alone ultra. The game is not bad looking, but it doesn't feel like it should tax systems anywhere near as heavily as it does, especially when it comes to lighting which causes huge framerate drops.

I wouldn't recommend the game unless you want to wrap up TLJ saga, but the final Book is disappointing and the ending not satisfying. The animation and graphics performance problems also detract from the storytelling, but the weakest aspect is the poor and sometimes unnecessary light puzzle elements the game has. If you have not played Life is Strange, consider playing that instead.

Honestly one of the most interesting and emotionally involving games ever made. I absolutely adore this game.