This review will not include the modding community, as that's an entire different story.

First of all, I've been following and playing Ravenfield for well over two years, I must say that my experience with the community has not been the best, but I'm here to review the base game and dive into what I think should be improved.

The base game is fun for the first hours, there's not much content to it and the gameplay is very clunky. The weapons feel like toy guns, the recoil system is all over the place and it's crystal clear to me that they need a huge sound rework. The weapons look great, and I must say that SteelRaven7 did a great work on modeling them. The vehicles aren't something to blow your mind either, they need a visual rework since some of them have been carried over since the Beta stages.

Now, onto one of the most important apects of the game: The Artificial Intelligence (AI). I must mention that their ability to react to their surroundings is abysmal, the game relies on the bots, but their intelligence is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lacking. I bet I could drive better than them (and I don't have a license), since they collide into everything they can and ignore the collisions, other vehicles and pathfinding. The bots will never take cover, they just mindlessly run from point to point, without even stopping, and they will open fire at anything they catch a glance of. Their reaction time is horrible at close distances, they often walk through eachother without even awknowledging the enemy AI's presence. There's much to say about the AI, and I don't want it to be a main topic of the review, since I have other things to talk about. (Feel free to ask me in the comments for a better insight)

The maps, they aren't fun . The best maps that come to my mind are just Island and Temple, the rest suffer from the previously mentioned game issues, making them a very unforgiving experience. In most open maps, the AI will just instantly lock on you and fire, this means that you can encounter AI firing upon you with a pistol, 300m away, while you can't even fire back because of the recoil and spray pattern. Graphics-wise they aren't much, the same textures are used in each and every map which just makes them all look like the other, we could have some variety.

This bugs me quite a lot, the performance. Ravenfield doesn't run on any system. Don't let the low-poly graphics fool you. The base game gets a pass, even if the performance could be vastly improved, but the community-made content (Which Steel has no control over), often fails in delivering maps, vehicles and weapons which the average computer can run. (I do know that my oldest mods fall into this category, but performance is simply a concept that most modders don't have time to dedicate hours to. I'm not blaming them, I'm just informing the user about this problem, as many of the popular mods are high poly, which doesn't stick with the game and only causes huge framedrops, which ends up in people blaming Steel for it. He has no control over that)

To finish off my review, I'd like to talk about the workshop.
I have no doubt, the only reason why this game is successful is because of it, players can find a lot of new and fantastic content (even if it's quite rare), this makes the game have an almost limitless amount of content without the developer having to do anything about it, if this game didn't come out with mod support it wouldn't have made it this far. The developer gave us some tools, and we did the best we could do with 'em, which sometimes even ends up with content that is wat better than whatever the base game can offer us. I think this is one of the main selling points of the game, and possibly, the one that Steel gives less love to, even if modders quite keep his game alive.

In conclusion, this game isn't for everyone, it has its fair share of issues. If you are looking for a complete, well made game with good maps, fantastic AI and great mechanics this isn't for you. I'd say Ravenfield is just a platform where you can download all of the fantastic projects, mods and experiences that the community offers.

[h1]DISCLAIMER:[/h1] This review will not include the modding community, as that's an entire different story. First of all, I've been following and playing Ravenfield for well over two years, I must say that my experience with the community has not been the best, but I'm here to review the base game and dive into what I think should be improved. The base game is fun for the first hours, there's not much content to it and the gameplay is very clunky. The weapons feel like toy guns, the recoil system is all over the place and it's crystal clear to me that they need a huge sound rework. The weapons look great, and I must say that SteelRaven7 did a great work on modeling them. The vehicles aren't something to blow your mind either, they need a visual rework since some of them have been carried over since the Beta stages. Now, onto one of the most important apects of the game: The Artificial Intelligence (AI). I must mention that their ability to react to their surroundings is abysmal, the game relies on the bots, but their intelligence is fucking lacking. I bet I could drive better than them (and I don't have a license), since they collide into everything they can and ignore the collisions, other vehicles and pathfinding. The bots will never take cover, they just mindlessly run from point to point, without even stopping, and they will open fire at anything they catch a glance of. Their reaction time is horrible at close distances, they often walk through eachother without even awknowledging the enemy AI's presence. There's much to say about the AI, and I don't want it to be a main topic of the review, since I have other things to talk about. (Feel free to ask me in the comments for a better insight) The maps, they aren't [b] fun [/b]. The best maps that come to my mind are just Island and Temple, the rest suffer from the previously mentioned game issues, making them a very unforgiving experience. In most open maps, the AI will just instantly lock on you and fire, this means that you can encounter AI firing upon you with a pistol, 300m away, while you can't even fire back because of the recoil and spray pattern. Graphics-wise they aren't much, the same textures are used in each and every map which just makes them all look like the other, we could have some variety. This bugs me quite a lot, the performance. Ravenfield doesn't run on any system. Don't let the low-poly graphics fool you. The base game gets a pass, even if the performance could be vastly improved, but the community-made content (Which Steel has no control over), often fails in delivering maps, vehicles and weapons which the average computer can run. (I do know that my oldest mods fall into this category, but performance is simply a concept that most modders don't have time to dedicate hours to. I'm not blaming them, I'm just informing the user about this problem, as many of the popular mods are high poly, which doesn't stick with the game and only causes huge framedrops, which ends up in people blaming Steel for it. He has no control over that) To finish off my review, I'd like to talk about the workshop. I have no doubt, the only reason why this game is successful is because of it, players can find a lot of new and fantastic content (even if it's quite rare), this makes the game have an almost limitless amount of content without the developer having to do anything about it, if this game didn't come out with mod support it wouldn't have made it this far. The developer gave us some tools, and we did the best we could do with 'em, which sometimes even ends up with content that is wat better than whatever the base game can offer us. I think this is one of the main selling points of the game, and possibly, the one that Steel gives less love to, even if modders quite keep his game alive. In conclusion, this game isn't for everyone, it has its fair share of issues. If you are looking for a complete, well made game with good maps, fantastic AI and great mechanics this isn't for you. I'd say Ravenfield is just a platform where you can download all of the fantastic projects, mods and experiences that the community offers.