Recent reviews by Hyokkuda

@PlayStation - via X/Twitter

"Helldivers fans -- we’ve heard your feedback on the Helldivers 2 account linking update. The May 6 update, which would have required Steam and PlayStation Network account linking for new players and for current players beginning May 30, will not be moving forward.

We’re still learning what is best for PC players and your feedback has been invaluable. Thanks again for your continued support of Helldivers 2 and we’ll keep you updated on future plans."

When I first played this game, I was welcomed by awesome and friendly players, and I had a blast playing through many missions. But then the game started to become too popular too quickly, flooding the servers and rendering accessibility to play the game utterly impossible and frustrating at times. After about a week or so, they eventually increased their server capacity so more people could play, and eventually, more people got interested in playing this game.

Unfortunately, with crossplay, I often met up with immature kids or trolls from the console community when joining random sessions. Often, they do not understand how the game works or complain and kill their teammates just to grab loot that is equally shared with the squad. At one point, I carried an entire team of level 10 - 20; we didn't die once; I did all the lifting, and in the end, I got killed by my own teammate right as the Pelican arrived. The guy took my samples and then kicked me out of the game. That was a 36-ish-minute mission, wasted. I gained nothing from that session. When I looked into recent players, they all had the PlayStation icon.

Furthermore, I suggest turning off crossplay to avoid such immature players. And I also recommend doing the same for voice chat, as most console gamers can't even tell when the built-in mic from their controller is blasting sounds from their TV out loud into the voice chat, ear-raping the entire squad.

Here's an example.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3182286298
Playing with friends was fun but was often complicated. Crashes to desktops were still very frequent after the game was out for over a month, or even two months or more. Trying to join friends was always unsuccessful and very frustrating. Sometimes, I couldn't see anyone online on my in-game list, but they were online and playing on Steam.

If that wasn't enough, the developers often tried to balance things out. Nerfing things here and there, but in the end, often ruining the fun for everyone. Like making certain weapons not do as much damage, removing armor-piercing features, or making burn damage instantly kill a player, heavy armor being completely useless because you cannot outrun anything, and the damage taken is almost the same as a medium armor with armor plating on it. Most weapons are useless, with the exception of the shotguns that everybody uses or the same energy weapons that a lot of people are actually pissed about because you have to buy the premium pack or whatever. I admit, I bought everything, and I didn't notice we had to pay for them to get them. Credit and other currency can still be earned by playing the game normally, and there are no season passes or anything like that. So everything will rotate and come back so you can purchase whatever you have missed if you didn't have the credits or medal at the time. You can still spend real money if you are not patient enough and just want something right away.

Armors and weapons aren't really pay-to-win. You can find something from the superstore that will be pretty useless or has the same stats and perks as something you already have from the Warbond menu. But energy weapons that has unlimited ammo as long as you carefully manage your shots can give you an edge early on if you decide to throw money right away instead of grinding your way to it.

The developers seem to be bringing back most of the things people remember from Helldivers 1, which is pretty good. Sometimes, new things end up with bugs like the famous one that used to get mech players killed while turning to one side or another while shooting inside the Exo Suit/Mech. So there are always going to be things like that, but it seems the CEO is listening to feedback, which is great.

So, the game can be a lot of fun but also very addicting and stressful. It's been a while since I had a game that made me feel drained and tired to the point where I had to lie down after 40 minutes of intense chaos. So I doubt this is a game for everyone, and I know for a fact that most of my friends, including myself, cannot sit through this game for more than 2 hours. It is seriously draining, which is not a bad thing, actually! This is really testing my focus and morale, which not a lot of games manage to do. This is really not a laid-back and relaxed game here. lol

Well, that will be all for now. If I missed anything, just ask me, and I will do my best to answer you!

I have been a big fan of the anime since its release. My first Sword Art Online game was Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet, then Sword Art Online: Integral Factor. Both were pretty good and followed similar stories from the main story of SAO. This game does about the same thing.

Some pieces will have scenes and characters from the anime, while others will be made up to make the game more "interesting." However, this one is by far the worst compared to both games I previously played. I played a bit of Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization, which was amazing. But this one, my gosh. Why did I pay $100 for the Deluxe Edition? Why would anyone pay even $60 for the base game? I hate to be harsh, but I feel like I have been playing a novel-type game for over 30 hours even thought it's only been 7 hours. On and on with dialogues for hours, either with a handful of well-known characters from SAO, or with some newly introduced characters. A lot of the time it's with characters we can't even see who have generic names like "Snobby Schoolboy" or "Evil-looking Knight," only showing the background during dialogues. This game has less and less animations.

And the combat and exploration both so slow-paced before and after reaching the central cathedral that I feel like I hit over 8 hours of nothing but weak dialogues. Combat is not that great, either. I cannot say that previous titles I played were better, but gosh.. they could get away by following what Bandai's actual team did with Tales of Arise, for instance, because the combat in that game is pure gold. I am not kidding, try it if you haven't!

The graphics aren't that great either, the more I look at them. Understandably, the game was released in 2020, but Bandai already acquired the rights to use the Unreal Engine. Why not let other branches like AQURIA use it? Also, what happened? They were going in the right direction with Hollow Realization! I don't understand companies sometimes.

Sword Art Online: Lost Song by Artdink was also going in the right direction with the open world despite the graphics and gameplay looking pretty dull, even for a PlayStation 3 game. Hell, .hack.GU from PlayStation 2 almost looked better. But anyway...

I cannot recommend this game even to a die-hard fan of the show like me. This is the first time I have had to drop the game without finishing it because it felt like a chore. I had to skip so many dialogues—not because they are Japanese with subtitles, but because the dialogues felt like fillers—nothing interesting to them. It truly is painful to deal with.

So, unless you enjoy novel games like Nekopara, you may like this one. Because even fighting enemies and monsters is not really exciting. :/

I completely forgot that this upgrade gave some items to tell you how well it blends things. Unlike most games with premium items stored somewhere super obvious that screams, "Here are your pre-ordered/premium items." Although the constellation skin pack is not an item but rather an aesthetic thing, as far as I can tell -unless what Sarah Morgan gives me at the beginning of the game is part of that, then it was on point when I received the Constellation booster pack, the spacesuit, and helmet right after accepting to join Constellation.

However, nobody knows if Shattered Space Story Expansion will be worth it or not at the moment. But if the DLC is worth the money, then this upgrade should be worth it; otherwise, if it was just the skins, then no. Because the Equinox Laser Rifle is one of the weakest weapons that cannot have a higher tier level like "Advanced" or "Superior," the base damage for it will become ridiculously inferior once the player reaches level 30 and above, making this weapon one of the most useless in the game, unfortunately. That is unless the player wants to convert the rifle into an EM weapon to stun creatures and people. That is pretty much the only thing worth on this weapon, regardless of the weapon tier.

So again, if the future DLC is worth it, then this upgrade is worth it, but in the meantime... not really. The Starfield Digital Artbook & Original Soundtrack are okay, but I got bored of it after a day already.

When I first played this game on my iPhone 5s back in 2017, it was the next best thing for mobile gaming. I was addicted. The amount of stuff the game had to offer and for free was just impressive. Although, my poor little phone was getting a little toasty after an hour of gaming. But I kept on going. That was until Apple decide to force an update that downclock the iPhone in performance to "preserve the battery life". The game was rendered unplayable. Getting massive stuttering, freeze, you name it. So, I decided to go ahead and try it out on PC via various Android emulators such as BlueStacks, NOX, and a few more. I was then one of the few people in this game to play in 60 FPS while playing with a controller, in full HD with the best reaction time, no silly buttons squished all over the screen. Good times!

The game eventually released more and more floors every months or so, along with special events, rewards, free in-game currency, materials to enhance gears and skills. Despite the Gacha system being a bit unfair, some basic skills were still good. But around 2020, the game became a big Gacha fest where certain skills from events were required in order to have an edge against certain bosses or through certain floors using debuffs that only those skills had. Luckily, I was one of them. But others were quick to give up because of that. The game was getting much slower around floor 20-ish where materials became much more rare to obtain. Some were locked behind certain dungeons that absolutely require a big party. Communication never was the best thing in this game due to the aggressive profanity filter that cannot let you say a few words or letters together like for instance "he b" I believe was banned and other nonesense combo letters like that, so I constantly had to re-type a few sentences, trying to figure out which part of my sentence was filtered out and it's very frustrating!

Overall, I decided to give this game another try in 2023 and wow, it is dead, dead, DEAD. There is barely anyone online. I could be going around, floor to floor and not see a single soul for hours or be lucky enough to see so many people, that trying to complete a quest to defeat 20 enemies is almost impossible just because of how many people are in one spot.

Overall, the game can be fun until you reach floor 30 where gears are no longer craftable due to new type of materials, and so the player who is level 90 or above will be stuck with items level 70 or 80 and have to figure out where to go next. I could not, to be honest. The game started to get boring. Also because I have been a long time players so that could also explain why.

In-game purchases through the cash shop does not seems to be working. I have bought some of the currency for it since I had money to throw away and I was curious, but it never let me actually buy whatever items I was trying to buy. Some old banners did work however, so I am guessing that some events are broken. And speaking of events, if you are a new player, then nothing will bother you, but if you are someone who is familiar with the game since 2017 and up, the events are the same as you remember. I stopped playing around 2020 and I have not seen anything new. All the costumes are the same, all the cards/skills are the same. Heck, the New Year event with Candy Asuna, Candy Yuuki, etc... is still there and I believe this is permanent too, or they really have nothing else to slap on the cash shop. But that event used to be very rare since a lot of skills are good and useful. I still recommend this game because it is definitely fun if you have nothing better to do and if you are a fan of Sword Art Online. But do not expect to be hooked to this game for long. Most people will give up around floor 15 or so, most of my friends and strangers did anyway.

This is still the best mobile game if you want a good game on your phone! Because this game helpled me get through weeks of boredom when my PC was broken at some point. I hope this review was helpful to you!

Dear readers,
Back in 2020, when this game was first released, I had a crack at the game with a mediocre system running the game on a GTX 1070. (I do not remember the processor, unfortunately. I am sorry about that) I was able to run games like Grand Theft Auto V just fine, so that should tell you as much. The game was poorly optimized, and it was running very badly. So I never got far into the game, but I did not want to write a review at the time because my PC specs were still pretty close to those recommended specs, and I knew that my PC was starting to become old for certain games, so I preferred to wait until I have a better PC.

Today (in 2023), I have decided to have another crack at it, running the game on a pretty beefy system with an Intel® Core i9-10900K @ 3.7 GHz [OC: 4.9 GHz] & an ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 3090. To my surprise, the game looked worse than before. Every texture was blurry and washed, flat with no details, as if I watched the LowSpecGamer YouTube channel and decided to convert Skyrim Ultra Low Graphics Mod into Mafia III. Seriously, it was THIS bad.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3022775946

Lincoln had no eyeballs, and his face looked like it was made of plastic, along with everything else around him. The grass and trees were all in 2D. It was a complete disaster. So I decided to look into the graphic options again since it was a prompted option before launching the game. Everything was set to ultra. I then decided to toggle Bloom and Motion blur off, and the game suddenly looked better. But then another issue hit me, the camera sensitivity. It was ridiculously high, uncontrollable even. So I went into the controls settings and tried to reduce the joystick sensitivity since I was using a controller, but the option was already pretty low. No matter, I will lower it further but no difference... I then decided to move the camera around with my mouse, and it was the same crazy sensitivity, so I decided to try with the mouse sensitivity. To my surprise, the joystick sensitivity was affected as well. So another thing is broken, man... how old is this game. 3 years old? What the hell have they been doing? I am surprised this sort of thing is still not fixed. But anyway!

After about 5 minutes of gameplay, I was driving to my next destination when something distracted me. The sky... I was unsure what it was, so I decided to stare at it while driving, and believe it or not, it was like the sky suddenly skipped 200 frames within a minute. And I decided to stare at it again, and I was glad to know I was not going crazy. The sky, which is supposed to have a day and night cycle, cannot transition smoothly like some of the oldest games I have played, such as Grand Theft Auto III, a game released in 2001, guys...

So I tried to ignore this issue and keep driving to my objective until I felt like something was not smooth. The game felt heavy and skippy as if I was running the game somewhere around 30 FPS. But my PC can run the game at 200 FPS according to the FPS indicator from the Steam overlay, so why does it feel so unstable? And so, I decided to set the FPS limiter to 60, but the framerate still felt pretty bad.

And so I decided that I had enough and tabbed out of the game to write this review. And as I was about done with the review, I went back into the game to close it, and well... the game gave me a black screen. The game was in full screen, so like many games from 2005 and below, the transition when tabbing in and out is not enjoyable. After about a minute, my screen was still black, but I could still hear the sounds from the game. I tried to tab out, but nothing and I tried to get task manager open, but it would not let me. And I tried Alt+F4, and I heard the pop-up, probably telling me if I wanted to quit the game without saving, but I do not know what the option look like. I tried pressing enter and the arrow keys to close the game that way, but nothing. And so, I was forced to choke my PC by holding the power button for a few seconds and re-write this entire review!

So yeah, this game is complete garbage. I do not like it and will not waste more time trying to fix it with mods and tweaks. This is not worth my time. I received that game for free years ago, and unfortunately, I cannot request a refund, not even for the person who gifted it to me, and this is quite sad, even today. Because back then, I told my friend that I would be getting a new PC in the future and try it again. And here we are... Quite the disappointment, to be honest.

Well, I hope that this review was helpful to you!
If not, I sincerely apologize for wasting your time with this wall of texts!

Well! I have nothing to say besides that it is one way to milk extra money from the fans, EA. It is cheap, but come on, guys, some were in Need for Speed: Payback and Need for Speed: Heat for free. And now these and the BMW M3 GTR from Need for Speed: Most Wanted 2005 are all locked behind a paywall. Not cool, really not cool.

But I get it. I saw that coming a mile away, after all. The way EA locked the BMW from Most Wanted behind some silly subscription told me that much, and I told myself; "Someday, they will bring the iconic cars back as DLC to pretend they are still supporting the game and to milk some extra money from the fans." And guess what?! There it is! And yes... People should move on at this point. This was the Black Box era, and now this is Criterion Games. But we are all addicted here, and we need our drugs! (These awesome cars)

I did not want to recommend this downloadable content, but I am sure nobody can pass on a few iconic vehicles. So here I am... thank gosh, it was cheap.

If Blizzard was smart and wanted even more money, they could do what 343 Industries did with Halo Infinite and allow players to go back to old seasons of battle passes by purchasing them with real money. Locking cool skins AT THE END of a battle pass is not cool! If you do not complete that battle pass in time for whatever reason, then the rewards that were on that pass are gone, reduced to atoms.

Overall, the game is still great -if you can ignore the massive micro-transaction and super tempting cosmetic stuff, that is. The campaign that was promised years ago is sadly not what we have now. This is more like what the campaign used to be in Overwatch 1 during special events if you ever played the first game. Bummer. They are still great but very short-lived unless you want some challenge on a harder difficulty. On normal, for instance, most missions can be completed in about 20 minutes. Some have cutscenes but very short ones, while others can have longer ones.

The addition of a scoreboard was a terrible decision. Back in Overwatch 1, only you could see what you did until the match ended. The highest gold medal for most kills, most heals, most blocked, etc, would show as a card without revealing anything else. Not to teammates and neither to the enemies. Now, people can be toxic just by looking at their teammates' death counts, how little they are healing, or how little damage or kills they do. Fortunately, you can permanently mute the team chat and avoid voice chats via the options menu, and pretend that this is a PlayStation 2 online experience all over again or something. Everyone can have a bad day and an awful play-style from time to time... No need for people to add salt to their wounds.

I am recommending the game because IT IS quite addicting. But, if you cannot control the urge to get cosmetic, you should stay away from this game unless you have deep pockets, a thick wallet, or 15 hours of free time daily.

When I first got my hands on this game, the first thing to strike me was the amazing graphic quality and the impressive performance. Seriously, I do not think I have seen a game this pretty in years, and I have played plenty of next-gen titles that do not compare in graphic quality. Sometimes I felt like I was playing inside a Pixar movie or something. The amazing colors and the ridiculous amount of particles while still keeping my FPS above 60. (PC specs on my profile)

When playing the game, I quickly felt attached to the new playable character introduced to the game. I felt no hate towards it at all. This new appearance felt right at home. So if one day, Ratchet and Clank were to disappear and be replaced by new voice actors and models altogether, I would be okay with it.

As a long-time fan of the Ratchet & Clank series since PlayStation 2, I would say this game has the best story out of every other title I have played. Although the only one I never touched because I could not get my hands on it was Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction. I heard that one was great. So, some people might very well say that Tools of Destruction was the best. And the question that a lot of people might ask is; "Do I have to play the other Ratchet & Clank games to play this one?" And the answer is; "No, but if you want to know the story behind each character, then it would be best, but it's not required" There's a gallery in the menu that can tell you a bit about the backstory of each character. Still, there's nothing better than going back and playing the originals. Spoiler: There's even a mention of an old character who was featured in Ratchet & Clank (2): Going Commando.

I think the game is not too bad in terms of gameplay, but it's definitely not the best. Even today, I would say that Ratchet & Clank (2): Going Commando, Ratchet & Clank (3): Up Your Arsenal, and Ratchet (4) Deadlocked (Gladiator) still hold the candle for having the best game content available today. I didn't include Ratchet & Clank (2002) because that was Insomniac's very first one, and the controls were awful, the weapons were all sorts of weird and pretty underwhelming, but the story was great along with their large selection of gadgets to choose from.

While playing the game, I could feel some nostalgia which is a good thing for me because most developers today will change things too much to please new audiences. This game has a lot of weapons, possibly more than every other Ratchet & Clank title. Still, I found myself using the same handful of weapons a lot as most of the weapons were quite useless to me or just too weak or underwhelming, including one that's supposedly the best weapon type (the RYNO) in the entire Ratchet series. The game features a character level that will increase the character's health by +10 each time the player level up by defeating enemies, including weapons with a level cap of 5 on a first playthrough. I honestly didn't feel like leveling up my weapons was such a great deal other than for increasing my ammo capacity. Doing a second playthrough, however, would allow me to buy a second version of each weapon I own and increase them up to level 10, which was still underwhelming. The health could also be increased past 100, which was okay. The hardest game difficulty showed its colors if I was under-geared, under-leveled, or unprepared, which was great, in my opinion. So focusing on getting all the weapons maxed out and health maxed out is worth it.

The exploration was okay, but I felt like the gadget I unlocked mid-game, called the Map-O-Matic like in every other Ratchet title, which is now used to reveal hidden rifts and treasure, is cheating. Unlike old titles where an entire section of the map would be highlighted in green to tell the player that a collectible is hidden in that area, this one can give a precise whereabouts by clicking on crystals, rifts, golden bolts, or infobots on the map, giving the player a floating icon on the screen. Of course, the player doesn't have to do this, but the icons are still visible on the map, which sucks, in my opinion. A circle showing where a hidden treasure is located would've been better.

Collectibles such as the golden bolts always gave the player fancy rewards such as cheat codes or new disguises. But this time, they decided to expand its reward by allowing the player to access various customization options through them, such as a new filter for the screen like Noir, Horror, etc... unlock soundtracks which you can choose while playing the game, new skins for your ship, your melee weapon and even replace that melee weapon with other melee weapons like a sword, a key blade (like in Kingdom Hearts), a fish, a hammer, and more. And the following one has a spoiler; Finding them all will allow you to have unlimited ammo and health, making the new playthrough underwhelming and non-challenging if you decide to toggle those on. Dying from a fall with invincibility on will crash the game. And accessing the vendor for weapons or refill ammo will also crash the game if unlimited ammo is toggled. This might get fixed in the future. Furthermore, finding all infobots will let you get the RYNO for free. That was a real bummer for me since normally, this weapon cost between 1M to 5M bolts. The omega version does cost 3M, however.

I have another spoiler that some people might not mind. In comparison to the old titles, this game only features 9 planets. I believe this is quite underwhelming since all previous games had about 20 planets/stations or moons to explore. But some were just boring puzzles, and I would be fine with those gone.

Gadgets in this game are automatically equipped this time around, which I find useful. But there are some that we do not see anymore, such as the Hydro-Pack from Ratchet & Clank 2, used to make us swim faster. We have an area that leads us underwater, but we are restricted by a specific walk path that we can only access using Magneboots to stick the player to metal surfaces. The ability to swim is still present in this game, but normally we get eaten by a shark-type enemy because we are not supposed to be there... Each title has a hacking tool, sometimes 2 and even 3, and they were all different puzzles that we had to complete to access a new area. This time around, we have an anomaly filled with puzzling path-like-maze. We have a copy of our little partner running in a straight line to their death, and we have to find a way to prevent that by activating various paths, pulling away some dangerous traps in their way, and figuring out a good position to keep certain paths open. Another one is a hacking mini-level with virus-type enemies that we have to shoot and find pressure plates to deactivate some shields that protect some nests that try to kill us, forcing the player to stand still for at least 2 seconds and proceed to kill everything to complete the mini-game. That one was okay.

This game, like every other title, has a battle arena but only features 15 challenges, and they are very short-lived. Back then, a challenge could take 30 minutes to beat or more, depending on your progression through the game, including a new playthrough. Now, they do not really feel as fun.

As for my wish, Ratchet Deadlocked was the first and only title to feature a coop mode. That was a ton of fun with friends, and I would really love to see another one of its kind just like this one in the future. Maybe one day, we'll see all the previous PS2 titles on PC. Who knows!

Well, that will be all, and I hope that my review was helpful to you! ♥

The graphic quality quickly stunned me when I first played this game. Bandai knew what they were doing when they picked Unreal Engine 4 for their following line of video games. When playing the game, I quickly felt attached to the main protagonist & pretty much every new character joining the group. This game might be the first Tales game where I have no hate for a character. Their look, their personality, their voice, everything fits so well. This game starts with the character being a Dahnan slave, trying to liberate everyone from the Renans & survive through it all, & straight away, the story feels pretty dark. And this dark intensity keeps growing the further the player goes through the story. Then there is the mystery to it which I enjoy a lot, but the mystery also keeps going until the end of the game, constantly surprising me. I never felt this emotionally touched by a Tales game up until now. To be annoyed & angry by an antagonist is not every game that can make me feel that way, & that's a good thing.

The combat system is slightly different than in previous Tales games, it is satisfying & simple to understand & somewhat intense occasionally. One thing that could confuse veteran players is the new CP (Cure Points) feature. Artes with healing & support effects consume CP in addition to AG. CP is shared across the party & can be restored with items or by staying at an inn or campground. It can be raised by leveling up or finding specific items. If the party runs out of CP, you won't be able to cast healing or support artes.

AG (Artes Gauge) is a new mechanic commonly known as TP (Technical Points) in previous Tales games, also known as EP, SP, & MP in various RPG games. Artes are special actions or skills performed by spending part of the AG. The stronger the Artes, the more AG is required to perform them (average of 4 AG max). The AG will gradually restore automatically while standing still or by using normal attacks. A max of 10 AG can be earned by unlocking new titles throughout the games. As you fulfill certain requirements for each of your characters, you'll earn titles for them, which unlock 5 artes & skills that they can then learn, making fights easier. Then when you learn all of the artes & skills associated with a given title, you'll earn a completion bonus in the form of a stat boost.

BG (Boost-Attacks Gauge) is also something I believe is new to the game. (I stopped at Vesperia, I didn't play enough of the previous one) BG is a feature that can be abused quite often when appropriately used. Every character on your team will have special abilities for their BG, allowing you to deal with an enemy quickly. If an enemy moves too much, you can immobilize it with one of your allies' BG. If enemies cannot be staggered, you can break their defense. If an enemy is about to cast an arte, you can interrupt it, etc. BG also costs nothing, so they can be abused often.

The rest is about the same as in every previous Tales for the most part, like enhancing Artes. Once you've used an arte a certain number of times, a ★ will light up, & it'll become stronger. Follow the required artes count, for example, 137/1000, & the character might learn a new arte during combat.

Surprisingly, I noticed how generous Bandai Namco was with the modding community. Modding has never been this easy in a game. If you are like me & all you care about is installing mods rather than creating them, then all you have to do is go where the game is installed, then head to the following folders; Arise 🡆 Content 🡆 Paks, then create a new folder & call it "~mods" (without quotes) & drop any .pak files that you have downloaded online & that is all there is to it. Nothing is more straightforward than that!

Cons:
Now, for the negative part of the game. At times, characters will engage in optional chats called "skits" that offer insight into them & the story. To view them, the player will have to press Ctrl or RB when the icon appears in the bottom right corner of the screen. Luckily, you can watch or rewatch skits you have missed or skipped along with cutscenes. Unfortunately, the nature of those skits will become very long & repetitive near the end of the game. I have to admit, I have been skipping a few near the end of the game because it was all about "Renans this, Dahnans that" all over again, on & on like a broken record, with some of the group members pointing fingers again.

The enemies encountered through the game have been the most tedious enemies I have ever seen. The lack of variety is unreal, & I'm not talking about the game's engine. Most of the enemies I had to fight have been nothing more than reskins. From level 6, up to level 99, the enemies have been the same. But of course, some with a slight difference, such as being able to dodge or counter attacks. And that's about it. The same goes for weapons & outfits. Unless you plan on buying the DLCs, weapons & outfits that are unlocked by progressing through the game are nothing but reskins. And that is a big disappointment for me. It feels lazy.

The ally AI can be pretty dumb during combat. I have been playing the entire game with the strategy set to "Fight with moderation" which by default use healing & support artes when fighting & restore HP with items when low on CP. And on multiple occasions, the allies were standing there when a slow special attack was being thrown at them, without dodging or protecting themselves with a barrier arte to avoid it, & dying right in front of me like the brainless AI they are. Sometimes the character I'm controlling dies, so I expect my allies to revive it without me having to do anything, & yet I find myself having to go to the artes menu to do it myself rather often. So my advice is to not rely on AI too much.

And lastly, the New Game+. I have completed the game at 100% with nothing left under the Play Records menu & earned all 47 achievements for this game, with every artifact owned, which serve as bonuses that can be enjoyed after clearing the game. So I figured, why not start a New Game+, & oh boy! I have never been so disappointed with that mode in a game before.

Depending on the artifacts found in the cleared save data, you will be prompted with the option to carry whatever you want over. In my case, I was level 100, wearing the craziest piece of gear the game could possibly offer. With the game difficulty set to Unknown, which is the highest difficulty in the game, I quickly found out that the enemy I was facing early on was still level 6 rather than something matching my level, with all of them dying from a single swing of my sword without even using any artes at all. That was honestly pretty lame. This new game+ serves no purpose to me whatsoever other than reviving the story. I really enjoyed the story, but I don't think I'll be going through the whole thing again when there's nothing to gain from it. But maybe someone who is a die-hard fan of the Tales series or this particular title will. I'm not judging.

Oh yeah. I almost forgot! There's something weird going on with the aspect of this game. First is the random objects popping up nearby when running around, as if this game was made in 2005, with texture briefly re-rendering in certain areas too. Luckily my PC is a beast, but it was still bothering me slightly. But the worst of it all was the ridiculous amount of loadings I had to face. You would think that Bandai knew how to hide them more gracefully, but no. A lot of the time, I enter a door just to be greeted by a very short corridor that leads me to another door not even 5 steps away, greeting me with another loading screen. Surely the game is not THAT performance hungry. Like every Bandai game, this one is also filled with typos.

Well, I believe that was it for this game. I hope that my review was helpful to you, & I sincerely apologize for making you read this wall of text! I hope it was worth it in the end.

Take care, & keep being awesome.

Too long; didn't read: If anyone reading this feel like getting a more immersive experience, I suggest you go with Ghost Recon: Wildlands instead. You can really feel the chaos and violence through the entire gameplay as some areas around the map will display dismembered bodies, or corpses hanging from poles, on crosses or even bridges, anything to strike fear on the country. Poor civilians getting executed on the side of the road as you drive by, vehicles and executed corpses on fire. It shows how bad everything has gotten and who is in charge and why the Ghost team is here. But in Breakpoint, the purpose of my mission didn't have the same impact at all. And bugs were popping left and right and center too often, solo or with friends. The same friend who got stuck inside the terrain at least 4 times in his very first playthrough. Or unable to aim his weapon or locked in a standing stance, unable to crouch or prone until he pauses the game or enters a vehicle. Sliding down a mountain and hitting an invisible wall. Or getting disconnected without getting kicked out of the game and then realizing too late that one of us not actually sitting together in the vehicle. Trying to reanimate a fallen ally who's actually downed 50 ft away from their actual body. The list goes on. It's pretty bad but those bugs are not too frequent. Maybe once every... hour or so, depending on your playstyle, I guess...

When I first played this game in 2020 on Uplay (due to Ubisoft leaving Steam), I found out after only 75 hours of gameplay that this game was pretty bland or barren and lacking flavor and life. I came from Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildland, hoping for upgrades and positive vibes when in fact, it was quite the opposite. First, let me explain all the cons I have about this game.

A online connectivity is required. Now, some of you who are reading this (with a crazy network speed and a low ping) might think that this is not such a big deal. We are in 2023, and by now, pretty much everyone on this darn forsaken planet has the Internet, right? Well, sadly for Ubisoft, their server is not exactly stable (especially on Tuesdays). And unlike Wildlands, Breakpoint does not use P2P (Peer to Peer) connectivity. So for anyone who wishes to play the game solo, just remember that if Ubisoft servers are crapping the bed, you will not be able to get past the main menu. But hey! At least there's a nice little message that will tell you about it ahead of time, so you won't waste your time waiting at the loading screen!

As for the gameplay and game mechanics, let's just say that some things have been improved compared to Wildlands, while other things have been heavily downgraded, in my honest opinion. The player will start on an island, a pretty tech-savvy-and-militarized island, and your goal is to stop someone from starting up some kind of drone invasion! Skynet and stuff- if you watched The Terminator movie. Just kidding! I try not to spoil, well half the truth... In Wildlands, players were greeted with featured movie content, a foe from a movie that some of you may know called The Predator. This enemy could be hunted down by players as a nice challenge and a small story to it right in the middle of a dense forest. Sadly, this foe was removed in December 2020. Breakpoint is featuring something similar, which, you probably guessed it, is The Terminator. The T-800 models can be found somewhere on the island as a part of the mission and rewarded with two or three weapons to go along with the mission tasked to complete.

Now for the bad part, the missions are actually great. You can have a great time if you follow along with the missions and side missions. But if you are simply wandering aimlessly and trying to find new attachments, weapons, and gear along the way, you will probably be disappointed. I know I was. The problem I have with the game is how barren or lifeless the island is. If you ignore the drones for a moment and focus on actual human enemies, they are pretty hard to find. Outside of obvious-looking military bases and sites, I always struggle to find a handful of baddies to kill. Because unlike Wildlands, this game allows you to go everywhere unless it's a steep mountain stopping you and that's where the problem is. In Wildlands, there were so many trees and rocks and uneven terrain that traveling by vehicle or even on foot out in the field was pretty hard, forcing the player to use the road and other obvious paths that are frequently being used by the enemy as well and that's honestly what I think makes Wildlands a much more difficult game. Breakpoint does have its share of difficult challenges, with its spongy drones and armored troops wandering around with rocket launchers and gatling guns or even its Behemoth drone that are basically tanks just guarding a tower containing a sweet piece of equipment like armors or weapons. Unfortunately, I feel like a lot of the areas are copied and pasted. The towers being watched by Behemoths or modern houses and bases or sites scattered around the island will begin to feel quite familiar to some after a few hours or days of gameplay. That is something I started to hate very quickly.

The weapon choices and attachments are nice. A lot of customization options for everything just like in the previous game. Vehicles do feel quite sensitive and unrealistic. Unfortunately, they all feel super weightless, which is another downgrade from Wildlands. Microtransaction is something that was extremely heavy at launch apparently, and I am glad that I missed it all, but unfortunately, they are still very alive and everywhere even today. I could say that about 60% of the equipment and weapons are locked behind a paywall with no way of unlocking them. At least Wildland let players complete daily and weekly Prestige challenges to earn crates and unlock items from the online store. That was quite generous, and I honestly didn't hate that. The immersive mode can sort of change things a bit. The game will become more of a survival game where you need to drink to replenish your stamina and eat rations to become more effective during combat. Resupply yourself at a bivouac or apply EXP% for kills and other buffs, and switch weapons because now you can't switch weapons on the fly. You can have limited or unlimited items to heal yourself when injured or badly injured, depending on the gameplay experience options that you choose. Darker nights too, and you can have AI teammates if you prefer to play single-player rather than with friends or strangers. The new tactics or class system is a nice touch too. Challenges for leveling that class can be a pain sometimes. But it's definitely worth it and rewarding in the end.

And this one might be a personal preference, but I feel like the enemies are dumb, like really-really flippin' dumb. And they are very repetitive too! I don't speak nor understand Spanish other than common words, but I swear in Breakpoint the enemy seems to be repeating the same English lines more frequently, which drives me nuts! In Wildlands, the rebels were the ones repeating the same lines, but luckily the player never had to hang around them for too long.

And to end with, did I finish the story? To be honest, no. There are multiple missions and side missions and some free-downloadable content or updates which was very generous of Ubisoft to do so. I did complete some, but the ending was spoiled long ago, so I never felt like pushing forward to finish the game.

Well, that will be all for now. I may edit my review in the future depending on new events like The Terminator being removed from the game just like The Predator in the previous game for instance. That could be a possibility.

I hope that this review was helpful to you! But if not, I am sincerely sorry for that wall of text and for wasting your time!