Recent reviews by ⎛⎛Lord Sithaniel⎞⎞

This game randomly appeared in my game library. I don’t really remember when I picked it up. Gameplay wise its like one of those flash games where you solve laser and key puzzles. There are about two chapters and an extra one. Taking up gameplay time for a short evening.
The gameplay is super simple, but made very tedious through the very weird hitboxes. You are often forced to stand behind boxes that are just about as tall as you, yet your hitbox slightly extends beyond them. This means you often have to pinpoint your position making it not only less of a puzzle game but mostly about reaction time and pixel perfect position.
Then there is the achievement issue. If there is a game I usually tend to try to get all of them. In this game you have 5000, which literally just unlock ongoing. Not only that, but the game will lag your whole steam. As soon as you click on the game on your library, at some point it will cause your steam to slow down and crash, like someone used your PC for mining.
Avoid.

So we have now a Directors, Designer etc cut. Really they try to milk the playerbase dry with low effort content. It feels like content just cut from the game solely to sell it here. The main game is already totally uninspired and empty, adding a few droplets to the already almost empty glass wont make you much more hydrated.

Bad microtransaction the game does not need. The only interestening part is the toy gun. Nobody needs more fortnite looking skins in a game.

-Bad Cosmetic Microtransaction. What the game does not need is another out of place cosmetic skin you pay for.

Bad Microtransaction. Avoid. Nobody needs this.

Instead of a straight boring tutorial (or nothing) we get this very small game that shows off some of the features of the steam deck and includes them into a smaller story in the portal universe. It includes various features of the steam deck itself. Mostly aiming with the gyros. While this is the main focus here, I never used gyro aiming in any game.
The game itself has absolutely no challenge and is taking you less than half an hour. Even so it concludes into an unexpected ending that made it quite memorable.
All in all, I wouldn’t say its a perfect tutorial that people have to play. Although it gets really close to it because it conveys a tutorial in a way that is actually fun to play through.

There is luckily a free demo out there that lets you play the base game until level 60 which gave me playtime of around 100-400 hours.
This is more of a review from a perspective of someone that does not really play or did like mmos.

Gameplay
During character creation the only thing that matters in any way is the race and starting class. Which in turn barely matter at all. Your race has bonuses but those are so tiny. Later on the classes can be changed at any time, aslong as you apply for it and do the questline. At a certain point your class evolves into another one. The game does not feature many “classical” starter classes but rather your character starts as a gladiator for example and later on evolves into warrior. All classes have storylines INCLUDING gathering/crafting jobs. You can switch at any second to another class which means you could level up all classes on one character to maximum or switch around without having to redo all the same quests again.

You gain stones and those classes evolve into another form. Which is a pointless feature as you never want to keep the old one and there is only a single class that has two divergent paths. Although sadly you cannot distribute skill points and specialize your character in any way.

There are a lot of common features from other mmo´s, like daily quests, dungeons, raids, guilds. Basically, it has everything. There is never something where you feel like you do tedious tasks aside when you redo dungeons a lot or do daily quests. You can even go into the casino and gamble/play minigames to buy and gain prizes. There are people who solely play mahjong all day! Although most of the content is optional if you only want to play the main story this is possible due to the games very low difficulty.

Even when comparing to modern mmo´s this one is probably one of the easiest to pickup on the markets. It doesn’t mean that there are is never any challenge as understanding some of the bosses’ mechanics and your own class abilities is useful but rarely a necessity to perform these things perfect except you do optional extreme boss runs.

Gameplay wise it can be completely enjoyed as a single player RPG due to most main story content even being able to just play with bots although I found the community really fun and nice but that is due to the side effect that people can get banned easily.
The worst feature is as any other mmo an item shop. Why a subscription-based game locks content behind microtransactions is behind me. Especially retainers.

One of the best aspects as a newcomer is that old content is never irrelevant or gone. If you would start world of warcraft now you are drowned with new systems that replaced the old ones. This one can be always picked up by any player and and paused anytime you feel like taking a break.

Story
There is a main storyline and obviously the mentioned smaller ones in the classes. I played through all of them and some of the class storylines are really good some are just a snoozefest. Therefore, hit or miss. The main story itself is not really that great either. Its the biggest compilation of tropes you can imagine. Although I heard it gets a lot better in future expansions. Its based on the world of the previous FF14 MMO (which is completely scrapped and you cant even play it if you wanted to) aside the background lore which is to some certain extent pretty decent but nothing that special.

I don’t think the story is necessarily really bad, as it establishes an enemy and a mystery that keeps you wanting to see where the story is going. Its just bloated with a lot of pointless dialogue banter in between, especially quests that are only there to establish things you already know or discovered. There are things that makes it still stand out and what final fantasy is and always was famous for: the presentation.

Sound
This starts with the epic soundtrack every single instalment had. I don’t know how they keep the consistency of having such a high-quality OST for EVERY game. On top of that the game is full of songs and things from other final fantasy games culminating in a huge OST that is always evolving and adding new original or borrowed tracks into the palette.

Graphics
Also, the presentation of the boss fights, especially non optional main story ones coupled with the soundtrack look for an MMO utterly fantastic. Due to being originally programmed to be also played on the PS3 this game has its downside which I personally feel like has also a positive feature. The game is not complete open world like world of warcraft, you have more big areas that are connected with exits. This makes a main city hub have two loading screens. On the other hand, this causes less lag and makes for really great and beautiful looking overworlds.

Conclusion/TL;DR
Its hard for me to recommend any mmo as I am way too inexperienced between distinguishing a good and a bad one and neither will I ever do as I don’t really like the genre. Despite this I really like this game mostly due to being so simple yet fun due to the amount of content available which rarely feel tedious. The low amount of complexity makes it easy to come back at any time again and having higher tiered boss battles gives players who seek a challenge also something for their money. I had so much fun with this game that I felt the subscription and initial price of the game is well worth it.

This one is infamous on how disappointing it was. I never could put my finger on it why. Or why people specifically hated it. I have now played through it and can put out 2-3 specific reasons why this game is not only worse than the previous game but also just generally subpar or average at best.

Gameplay
If you know the previous games gameplay you feel familiar yet not. The game is more “open” in the sense that levels tend to have not a single linear path all the time but also just being space wise bigger. This causes no problem during exploring but as soon as you are chased its easy to get away but annoying to do so as you have to keep running back and try to figure out where you can find item x and go to place y. This never used to be the problem in the previous one as the levels either are linear or provide a fork at tops. This means you get a very small area to figure out where to go and hide which is easily done. Here in this sequel not so much.

Then new features. There are new ideas. You can look at your belt to see how many batteries for your camera you have and bandages. Now you need to heal. Good addition! Bad is the new note system. Instead of directly getting a transcript you have to grab a paper, hold it then go back to your camera menu and hit the notes section. The recordings are even worse at it forces you to stand still and hold the camera on a specific location and then see the same recording in your camera...except with voiced commentary your character didn’t say during gameplay.
There are 1-2 very intense and incredibly fun chase scenes, the others werent as fun or interestening. But overall, I can’t find much more praise in this game. Due to a complete idiotic pacing error in the gameplay.

Story
One of the worst things you can do in a story is to sidetrack off the path but not in an optional way but in a forceful and integral way. Especially when the main story is already confusing and weak enough. During your gameplay, in a story where you play as a reporter trying to find his partner interest in a forest you encounter a weird fanatic cult basing their belief on Christianity. They have a really weird belief which i did not understand. I had to look up what the story was about. Even the ending of the game added more questions than answers unlike the first game.

In turn this makes the whole main story already confusing, boring and disappointing. Ontop of that you are suddenly teleported to a school which has an incredibly confusing layout. Your character hallucinates nightmares of his time during catholic school. I resorted to guides or endlessly being stuck there.
This happens especially during very intense moments and feels like those TV scenes where they cut off the episode or commercials during a very interesting scene...in a videogame. And the reasoning behind this is nothing more than a filler story from the protagonists childhood. Seeing this once is okay, but you will keep come back into the school and try to find the correct way and get stuck a lot for about 4-6 times.

Sound
There is a new feature in your camera where you can enhance the sound of a direction. I used it exactly once and never bothered again except in a mandatory dream sequence. Overall its the same OST basically, playing a loud SFX when discovered or being mostly quiet unless a chase is coming.

Graphics
General improvement over the base game except when you look at it from a gameplay perspective. While the darkness was prevalent there where only those scenes outside the asylum that where really so dark that navigation wasn’t fun and annoying. Imagine this except almost the entire game is like that, aside a few scenes where there are more huts or barnyards around.

Conclusion/TL;DR
The original outlast was never a masterpiece but made the horror walking simulator into an actual fun game for me. Outlast 2 had barely any new ideas and completely made the gameplay/chase sequences objectively worse, wrote a confusing and absolutely senseless story with additionally awful pacing issues and ruined the horror aspect by making the game just frustrating to play.

Bad horror game due to worsening basically all aspects the previous game made good.

Singularity is one of those games that went down as a neat game but did not really get much recognition. Its one of those average shooters except standing out by its setting and a unique gameplay twist. I recently finished the game and I must say that the game definitely stands out but is not really that great either.

Gameplay
The game features a standard modern military shooter moveset. The closest you can compare it is the gameplay reminds me of call of duty or resistance. You even see friendlies names highlighted in green right next to them and you follow almost half of the game another person around. Those are the games weakest points, which include door breaches with slow mo and standing and waiting until your comrade walks to the point where they trigger the next script.
This Is just boring. But not the whole game is like that. You start being stranded on the games island, seeing remnant of some sort of old, run down sowjet city, being able to interact with various items like projectors, speakers and so on.

At some point you get your first weapon and it plays more like a horror shooter at first. The first few moments really got me and the atmosphere was something I could get lost in easily. Until you meet the first companion and later on fight sowjet troops.

The main gripe of the game is a glove you acquire where you can have your standard few superpowers, like pushing enemies away. But generally, its used more for puzzles or clearing roadblocks which change up the pace a lot in a good way. The puzzles are creative in using the glove as it can work either to grab items or to age them or make them revert in time. Which creates or collapses bridges or crates for example.

On your way you grab also loot that you can use to upgrade or heal yourself. There is a two main weapon limit where I also want to talk about the gameplay. You either fight monsters or soldiers, sometimes both and one or two rare bosses. You can upgrade your weapon, but there is no point in taking any other weapon than focusing on the main assault rifle as the ammo is plentiful and the damage decent. There are some experimental weapons I never found any use for. I played most of the game solely with the fully upgraded assault rifle. If you have a weapon limit it makes no sense to switch your upgraded weapon for another one if the ammo is so plentiful.
This makes me think that the design was initially more a horror game but it copied mostly games like call of duty and then ended up in a rather mediocre game that stands out by its surreal setting and time powers.

Story
Initially its all about the sowjet union finding a mineral that can be used for a lot of things, like time travel or creating monsters or new weapons. The Island was quickly abandoned due to infighting and accidents. Later on, you accidently change the timeline making it a successful ordeal and your goal is to reset the timeline. Its nothing highly intelligent as there are a lot of potholes. But I found the story immersive, especially with some details in notes like that they fed children the mineral to create monsters.

Sound
There is quite an atmospheric soundtrack coupled with neat sfx and a decent score that sometimes switches to generic action music.

Graphics
If you like the colour of rust, you feel at home. Due to its setting the game is full of rundown objects, highly detailed broken-down homes, structures and objects. There are so many objects and propaganda around its one of the very immersive games due to its very highly detailed levels.

Conclusion/TL;DR
A flawed gem is how to describe this game. It plays and feels like a run of the mill linear action shooter. It sets itself apart by its story, setting and time travel features but has mediocre combat and switches from great slower paced “horror” moments to fighting dozens of soldiers while waiting for the AI to lift a crane. With a better focus on the atmospheric horror setting it could have been an absolute gem but as it stands for me its just slightly entertaining and slightly above mediocre.

The benefit of DLC is that there is less risk in trying out new things. And if those don’t work you can scrap them. Most people tend to buy the DLC´s in a new packaged gold or complete version only anyways. Unless they are literally skins/microtransaction I respect a bad DLC if it atleast tried something interestening. And they tried and failed. Miserably.

Gameplay
Aside the new mercenary maps/content and the third person mode the main gripe with this one is a main story expansion. And now you play as rose as the name suggests, therefore expecting you to have played the main game.
The whole game is set in a dream like world giving for surreal surroundings. Its a weak version of the main gameplay, offering only two weapons and barely any items to craft.

The only new feature is being able to use Roses mold superpowers which you slowly upgrade. This acts mostly as a door opener or sometimes as a way to slow down enemies. It has three acts, one that introduces everything, one that focuses on stealth gameplay and the latter being a short chapter with a final boss fight that reminds me more of a classic anime fight where the protagonist powers up in a last final push.

The biggest negative point in this DLC is that its rather short with almost 2 hours playtime but considering its 20€ pricetag it also reuses completely locations and assets from the main game. Therefore, you will be visiting the same places like the castle, dollhouse and village outskirts.

Story
Writing a story about a child or teenager is always risky. Either you tend to write a character that is completely flawed and uninterestening and thus a character that no one can relates to. Neither teenagers nor adults. And an adult writer trying to write the main protagonist as a teen is just incredibly hard to do. Adult people are pretty far away from depicting a teenager and i think as someone who is long time ago past my coming of age i still interact with teenagers from time to time. And in thruth they are more likely more down to earth than people make them to be but also cringe from our perspective. Therefore depicting a teenager that appeals for one will kill the audience for the other and writing a character pleasing both age groups pleases no one. But where to i want to go with this? Its the protagonists writing. Just the stereotypical annoying, cringe and idiotic teenager.

I almost got forspokens vibes from this game. The main gist is that Rose is for one part mourning a lot the main protagonist despite never having met him. Additionally, she suffers from bullying as she sweats...white? Thats so far, the only negative. She wants to lose her powers because she gets bullied and wants to collect a cristal that removes these powers by connecting her mind to a mold cell. This all is absolutely surreal, introducing a hivemind and some sort of afterlife for everyone affected by the mold. Which already sounds risky just to get the side effect away from sweating white.

My suspension of disbelief is at its bottom and it never increased. I do hope that they will never introduce her again or rework her personality. Its mostly 1 hour of filler coupled with a final over the top anime esque boss fight.

Sound
Nothing noteworthy or much change compared to the main game

Graphics
Instead of a realistic approach the whole game is set in a more surreal environment due to its fungi hivemind setting.

Conclusion/TL;DR
The thematic and setting, storyline and gameplay are just completely subpar and do not fit into the overall story thematic of the other games. The only reason to play this is for its story as the gameplay mechanics all have not only introduced barely anything new but rather dumbed down the main campaign’s gameplay. And then ontop of that the story is uninteresting and the heroine is just an obnoxious teen. Avoid.