Recent reviews by Talien

This is one of those games that makes me wish there was a neutral option for reviews. There is nothing I would call bad, there just isn't nearly enough content to be worth the asking price. I would say definitely get it bundled or wait for a sale.

Gameplay itself is good, I didn't run into any bugs, glitches, or other such issues. The menus are functional and not clunky. It has a decent story, nothing spectacular but it isn't bad by any means, it's just very short and doesn't leave anything to the imagination. The game is very linear, there is nothing to really dig into or expand the story, there is nothing hidden to be discovered, and no secret areas. It is also very short, I 100% completed it in about 8.5 hours. There are sidequests but they usually just reward you with a few healing items, and don't actually add anything to the game, though some of the quests themselves are amusing.

The mechanics are actually fun at first and on the surface it looks like there are a lot of options...until you realize it's not actually making good use of them. There's what could be a really good weakness/resistance system set up with a limited number of skills you can equip at one time to make you think about what you want to do. Couple this with a really nice system where you can skip a turn to swap out one equipped skill for another during combat if you discover your current loadout is a bad fit, and a set of super attacks called "jack moves" that work similar to limit breaks from various final fantasy titles.

Unfortunately you will almost never need to do any of this because everything has an easily identifiable weakness and areas have a majority of enemies weak to one type of damage. All you will ever need to do is equip an AOE damage skill that hits the most prevalent weakness of that area, a heal skill, and maybe a resistance buffing skill of whatever type of damage the majority of enemies in an area use if you are for some reason underleveled. Jack moves are basically a free trash clear skill when the meter is charged, and an easy way of depleting most of a boss's HP if not outright OHKOing them. That is the entire combat system in a nutshell. Skills (including jack moves) level up by using them, and this only serves to pad playtime. That 8.5 hours it took me to 100% complete the game would have been more like 6.5 if I hadn't also maxed out most of the skills.

This pattern continues until the final boss. Mild spoilers ahead. During the whole game you almost never need to heal status effects because enemies, including bosses, do not frequently use them and you will probably forget that there even is a skill to clear them because it is much simpler to just use the cheap and readily available healing items. The final boss turns everything on it's head by stealing your jack moves and using them against you, while frequently using status effects that you have never seen before, so you will probably die repeatedly until you remember that there's a status clearing skill and resistance buffs/debuffs. Suddenly you actually have to make use of the skill switching mechanic because there are only 4 skill slots and now you are required to make use of 5 or 6 different skills (single target damage, heal, enemy buff clear, resistance buff, enemy resistance debuff to make it go a bit quicker, maybe status clear if you didn't stock up on items) that you will constantly need to swap in and out because the boss will also make use of a status clearing skill to remove whatever debuffs you place on it, and a buff clearing skill to remove your own buffs.....which is also something that has not been seen from any other enemy.

This wouldn't be a bad thing at all if the rest of the game wasn't basically "use one or two AOE skills per fight to clear trash, use jack move to kill boss, repeat in next area". Suddenly having an enemy that is more equal to you is jarring because the rest of the game has been very simple without needing to actually think about anything beyond whether you bought enough MP restore items.

Or you could just say "hell with it" and use the built-in kill enemies cheat and not have to worry about it. Yeah, the game has built in cheats. Make of that what you will.

Good game especially if you're a fan of the BT setting, or even just mecha combat in general. Lots of lore without diving too deep and having any effect on the setting as a whole, instead of following an existing faction HBS decided to create their own periphery state and run with it.....and actually did a good job. The intrigue, backstabbing, and betrayals are on point with the best (worst?) the inner sphere has to offer, and playing as a merc building a company from basically the ground up is satisfying. The character customization keeps things interesting, if you keep your mercs alive long enough they will eventually max out all stats, but only being able to choose one primary and one secondary specialization keeps them from getting overpowered while still giving the feeling of being veteran mechwarriors.

Gameplay is where it starts to get a bit iffy though. Vanilla is fine if a bit basic and you won't really notice too many issues, infact I would highly recommend playing through the story once without mods just to see how things were "meant to be played". When you start using the big mods like BTA3062 or Roguetech to really expand the game you will start noticing issues with slowdown, long load times, and memory leaks and it gets worse the longer you play. I had one save using BTA that took over 10 minutes to even load and would sometimes crash on starting a battle. If I needed to reload I had to completely exit the game and restart otherwise it would choke and die and I would have to restart the game anyway. It's an unfortunate limitation, and one that you will just have to live with if you play the game with those mods. Big mods also cause issues with mid battle saves so they are disabled, which means no save scumming to avoid missing shots or avoiding one of your mechs being headshot or something.

Still totally worth playing though, even considering all the issues with the large mods.

This is one of those games I wish there was a neutral option because it doesn't really deserve a negative review, but doesn't really deserve a positive one either. I have played almost every title in the series and from a purely gameplay aspect AC7 does not disappoint. The game runs smooth (I had no slowdowns or crashes), the controls are good, several missions have multiple ways to complete them (choose air or ground targets with an allied squadron taking care of whichever you did not) and the variety of aircraft is just what you'd expect from an Ace Combat game with many options for each type (fighter, multirole, ground attack), customizable parts to fine tune your aircraft to your own playstyle, and multiple camera options for replays. The DLC missions are very well done and enjoyable, to me they are easily the best missions in the game.

I can't comment on multiplayer PVP because I have no interest in it, I just wish there was a co-op mode. The DLC planes.....eh. They are OP, but they are supposed to be since you buy them with $$$.

Where this game really let me down was the story. The majority of briefings were terrible (especially the ones for "spare squadron") with some of the cutscenes not being any better, and many characters sound like idiots (again, especially in the "spare squadron" missions). I think back to the story and dialogue from the series before this and I just have to shake my head at most of this game. I have not played AC 6 so I can't comment on that one, but 1-5 were great and I thoroughly enjoyed replaying missions. Trying for a higher score was fun because the random radio chatter felt like it fit and wasn't forced or just there as filler like it seems to be in AC7, even Chopper in AC5 was at least funny while being an idiot but many of the AC7 characters just sound lame.

I'm glad I bought it on sale because for me it's definitely not worth full price. I've played for 15 hours and finished all missions including DLC, and have no real desire to replay any of them. I did not fully unlock everything in the aircraft tree, but again I have no real desire to do so because that is pointless if you don't want to replay missions to use them in.

I would rate this game 5/10. Good gameplay but bad writing and dialogue really holds it back.

Not sure why I expected anything different than the typical bethesda fare, but somehow I was still disappointed. Aside from glitches, crashes, and broken quests (if you log out and back in you can try again and maybe it'll work properly), there's the lack of text based chat, and the dumbed down game mechanics.

Speaking of mechanics being dumbed down it's similar to how skyrim is dumbed down from oblivion, which was dumbed down from morrowind, which was (arguably) dumbed down from daggerfall. The stat/skill/perk system in Fallout 3 was dumbed down from FO1/FO2 and FO4 was dumbed down from FO3. Somehow, FO76 manages to be even more weaksauce than FO4 with the "perk card" system.

I'm not really going to get into the whole microtransaction thing because after "creation club" anyone with a functional brain should have seen that coming. But really, bugfesta? Failout first? What a joke. The least you could have done would have been to have the storage upgrade as a one time purchase instead of part of the subscription.

I have played more since my initial review in order to finish the main story and....yeah. The story itself isn't terrible, but the game just gets in the way. The mechanics are lukewarm at best, there is no permanence to any build choices since you can use the "punch card" terminal to change your build at any time, and if you want more build slots just $$$ and like magic you can have unlimited builds. Change "perks" at any time with the "perk card" system, which is ludicrous because you can respec your entire build to fit whatever situation. Don't have enough of a stat to choose a dialogue choice during a quest? Just exit the conversation, run off to a punch card terminal, change your build, then go back to pick up the conversation where you left off. This is more weaksauce than watered down mayonnaise.

There are no real consequences for choices made during quests or dialogue except maybe gaining reputation with one faction instead of another. Some choices are bugged and don't actually work, I have had it happen more than once where I made one choice during a quest but the game went on as if I had made another. But hey, it's bethesda so what can anyone really expect? Only this time they can't rely on modders to fix their game for them so it is still a buggy mess, and will almost certainly remain so for the entirety of it's lifespan.

All in all I am done with this game. I am tired of having to repeat quests 2, 3, 4, sometimes more times because it glitched out and necessitated reloading the game to reset my quest progress to the last "checkpoint" so I could attempt the glitched section again.

I had high hopes for this game. I know several people who had nothing but good things to say about it, they raved about the gameplay, the parkour mechanics, the world, the quests, everything. It took a long time for me to finally get around to buying it, there was always something else I was getting instead but I finally did and dove in expecting greatness.

I loved the gameplay during the day, doing quests, running around exploring, leveling up. I loved the chases at night trying to avoid volatiles and hunters. I played through the following and had fun driving, and going through the questline. It was well done and enjoyable to play.

Then I started to notice the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Bombers staring you in the face as you open a door and exploding without you having a chance to even dodge backward. Volatiles spawning right behind you. Zombies spawning in an area you have just cleared. Volatiles spawning in an area you have just cleared. Bombers spawning in an area that you have just cleared. Bombers sitting in the middle of a road when you are driving, despite there being no bombers in the middle of roads if you are not driving. That is not fun. That is not challenging. That is irritating, and terrible design. But I could get past all that because the game was fun and I was looking forward to finishing the story and seeing what happens.

What I can't get past is the "fight" against the BBEG being a quicktime event. Through the game he taunts you, he tortures you, he tortures other people, he murders people, he turns people against you, he tries to kill you. The game does a REALLY good job of getting you to hate him. Then you finally confront him and don't even get to kick his ass because it's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ QTE. It's shallow, unfulfilling, and makes the rest of the game feel like a waste of time for leading up to it.

I wanted to not just like, but love this game. What it was originally advertised as was everything I was looking for in a Zombie apocalypse sandbox game. But after almost 10 years of development it's still very much in an alpha state, yet somehow there's less there than originally. Yeah, there are things like vehicles and more traps and other flashy stuff now, but what drew me to the game originally is gone.

Hardcore survival with needing to prepare for things like weather along with making sure you have enough food and water. Heatstroke if you don't prepare for going out during the day in high summer? Freezing to death if you don't prepare for going out in winter? Great, don't see things like that in many games.

Zombie survival. I mean, yeah, that's always a plus.

Crafting as an actual integral part of the game, at some point you WILL have to craft things for yourself because you can't just find everything you need laying around.

Actual differences in food, and having to make sure it's properly cooked to avoid getting sick.

Skills that improve by using them, which is great.

Not too bad performance even on systems that just meet the recommended specs, as long as you're willing to use lower settings.

But now after almost 10 years?

Weather effects have been all but completely removed. No more heatstroke, no more freezing. Why?

At least the Zombie threat is still real, but.....come on. Zombies breaking through hardened concrete and solid rock? I mean, they will literally tunnel their way through a freaking mountain to get at you. That is one thing I had hoped WOULD be changed.

Traders are everywhere now, no need to worry about crafting anymore because you can just buy everything you need, and do quests for them to get the good stuff.

Food is everywhere so you don't need to worry about it anymore. Find it, or get it from traders like everything else.

Skills no longer improve by using them, you just get levels and assign skillpoints. Yeah you did that before too but at least you could level by doing as well. Now the way that the skilltree is set up has been needlessly changed several times, and there are now many skills that are utterly useless as well as a few that are absolutely essential. Sure, there were some unbalanced skills before but it's even worse now.

Performance is absolutely awful, unless your PC greatly exceeds the recommended specs it will probably chug, stutter, and choke on blood moon nights unless you are using low settings, and if you make the mistake of going into a larger city area it's probably going to drop to single digit FPS or maybe just crash entirely.

Speaking of blood moon it has gotten so over the top that you now need to design a base specifically to deal with the bigger and bigger hordes, full of hallways with traps, and hope they go along those hallways instead of just busting through the walls to get you. Yes, you pretty much need to do tower defense.

This is not what was advertised. We were sold on a survival crafting Zombie experience, but what it has turned into is just another Zombie slayer with light survival, light crafting, and tower defense aspects.

I want to recommend this game because I like the story, which wasn't a surprise since I enjoyed Mars:War Logs. The quests are well written and they all have substance to them, especially the companion quests. But the combat system in this game is terrible in comparison even though there were many things added that you would think would be improvements, like multiple combat styles and "critical dodging" which gives your next attack a boost if you dodge an enemy at just the right time. Unfortunately these new mechanics are also usable by and heavily slanted in favor of enemies.

Add to that the player character is the weakest ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on Mars, 3-4 hits and he's dead, and even with max upgrades in con he's not much more durable. Meanwhile even trash enemies have 2-3x the HP. You do not gain HP from leveling up like your NPC companions do and only get more HP by putting stat points into con.....which will gimp you unless you decide to forego technomancy and ignore the power stat because con isn't actually a required stat for anything, even if you are playing guardian, because that needs str in order to use better equipment.

All human enemies can perfectly dodge even when unable to actually dodge because they are backed into a corner and are physically being hit by your attacks. If you are blocked in by anything and try to dodge you will be hit by any attacks that physically make contact. You will constantly be staggered/stunned/etc. by enemy attacks even with a hefty amount of disruption resistance, but even if you mod your weapons for max disruption enemies will frequently be unaffected. And this is all on normal difficulty, not even hard.

Further add to that many human enemies have guns regardless of what main weapon they are using (you can only use handguns with one combat style) so you don't know which ones are packing until they whip it out and start shooting. There are enemies with rifles who are easily identified, but they will rapid fire the unholy zombified ♥♥♥♥ out of you and make you die from one burst if you don't take them out first thing or manage to dodge most of the stream of death, and once you've started being hit by them you will be stunlocked and easy prey for any other enemy who decides to walk over and start kicking you around. There is an NPC companion who uses rifles and is quite effective, but you lose him as part of the story very early on and never get anyone to replace him. If multiple enemies decide to shoot at you at the same time, good ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ luck.

Many soldiers type enemies also carry grenades, which you will most likely be hit by as the time between them being thrown and blowing up is about 1/2 of a second. This means unless you are already dodging away from it the instant it hits the ground you're going to be eating that pineapple. You do not get grenades, you get explosive traps that you have to manually place on the ground and only work well when set before combat starts.....but most fights where you would want to use them you aren't able to set any beforehand, and they arm immediately so it's very easy to get blown up by your own traps if you try to set them mid fight with enemies running around. A Grenade, on the other hand, will not harm enemies even if one is standing ontop of it when it blows up.

Sure, you could always just play the game on easy and not have so many fights be an exercise in shoveling your way out from under massive piles of BS where enemies perfectly dodge your attacks, frequently resist your stuns, and hit you mid dodge, but easy is too easy even though enemies still have 2-5x your HP.

I wasn't going to leave a review because, while fun, the game just isn't as good as some other entries like III, IV, V, VI, VIII or IX.....but I just can't not leave one at this point.

XI S should have been an upgrade, not a completely different game. Yeah, I get it squeenix, you didn't load the game with a bunch of microtransaction or gacha crap so you have to make money somehow.....but seriously? NOTHING for people who bought this game early? No discount, no in game bonuses, no acknowledgement at all for people who had purchased the "beta version"?

Could have been good, the story and setting are really cool, but it was abandoned while still full of gamebreaking bugs. Disappearing NPCs, broken quests, entire areas that regularly glitch out.....it's a shame that it's yet another kickstarter/early access failure.

Atom is great, it's got clear nods to Fallout but it isn't Fallout and manages to be distinct in it's own right. If you're looking for a Fallout clone then keep looking because this isn't it, but if you enjoy post-apocalyptic RPGs with a good mix of dark/bleak (some of the quests are seriously dark) and lighthearted/humorous then this may be the game for you. It's set in Russia (which makes sense given the devs are Russian) and is loaded with communism/socialism references, though it doesn't always take itself seriously and sometimes borders on irreverent.

Like in Fallout you will have to take care of your companions since if they die that's it, they're gone for good. They do fight on their own but unlike Fallout you can give them orders each turn to avoid friendly fire, which is really nice.

Also like Fallout, how you complete quests will change how things play out, particularly in what type of ending each character and location gets. This includes one particular set of choices that can end up with you joining a death cult which turns pretty much everyone hostile to you, including most of your own companions. But unlike most games where this kind of thing is basically a game over you can fully complete the main storyline afterward, and infact this is the only way to recruit one particular companion.

Your character will import into the sequel keeping their level and any perks with a respec for stats/skills, though without any gear, and one of the companions is also imported into the sequel provided he survives to the end here.

All in all it's worthwhile for anyone who enjoys a post-apocalyptic setting that doesn't always take itself seriously.