Recent reviews by BristleHawk

In 43 hours I found one bug that was so minor, I doubt anyone would ever find it. Performance is clean, I mean super clean. No stutters. No lag. Pure 4k 120 fps. Now, it's not exactly pushing the hardware either, but it does look really nice. If you're a Digimon fan, just go for it. It's a solid entry that won't disappoint you.

Good bye, old friend. You made my PS4 shine. Revisiting you on the PC was a treat. MH Wilds is in 2 days!!!! LET'S FRIGGIN GO!!!!!

Dunno if I can justify a remaster of this game over so many others more deserving. But, it's a decent enough game. The story is presented very well. The entire sci-fi premise is pretty cool. Combat is fun so long as you know you can't just melee whack everything. That being said, the melee feels lacking. Ranged attacks aren't especially impressive either. But the range of tools for taking down enemies is where it shines. Many options, and you're expected to utilize them all to have the advantage. Much like a hunter in the wild, rather than a combat veteran with a bunch of combo skills. Will it be your cup o tea? Who knows. But I'm enjoying it.

To everyone getting frustrated with the loading screen hard crashes where you have to physically use the power button on your PC, CHECK OUT THIS EASY FIX!!!!

Google Project Lasso, Install, run app.

Project Lasso is a free app that manages power performance profiles for you on the fly, but sooooo much more. I highly recommend reading up on all it's features and utilities because it's a god tier app for gamers or anyone wanting more automated on-the-fly performance for their games and applications.

Once it's open, you're going to want to set a CPU Limiter rule for Path of Exile 2. You can do this while PoE2 is running, or whenever by manually adding the rule. I'll show you the manual way where you don't need PoE2 running.

Options (up at the top drop down menus)
CPU -> CPU Limiter...

Under New CPU Limit Rule, fill in the following fields as such:

Process match: pathofexilesteam.exe
When CPU use is: 90%
For a period of: 0 seconds
Reduce by this many CPU cores: 2
For a period of: 10 seconds

This worked 100% for me, and I'll explain why below.

I too suffered the random, inconsistent hard PC freeze/lock up during loading screens. I'd push my power button, hard shut down, and power back up my PC, and try again. It was inconsistent, and did not happen often. Well, sometimes it did, but most of the time it didn't.

It was then that I got to Act 2, and had to go through The Traitor's Passage to get to the "back way" into the Halani Gates map. Upon reaching the map transition point for the Halani Gates, loading screen ensued, and so did the hard PC freeze. I sighed, power cycled my PC, and tried again. Only this time to be met with CONSISTENT hard PC freezes upon selecting my character at login and at THAT loading screen!!! I was like, "well wtf..." Now I say consistent because I tried multiple times to no avail. I was essentially locked out of my character. On the last attempt, the game even hard froze upon the initial loading screen BEFORE character selection.

Now I had read up on what people have been reporting to be the sympton that causes the freezing lock up. 100% CPU usage and Hyperthreading. I didn't want to go disable Hyperthreading in my bios, or any other options where I'd have other games affected as well. I also didn't want to disable in-game settings every time I wanted to go to another map.

I remembered, "Oh wait, I already have Project Lasso. It probably has something that can help." I had already been using Project Lasso for a year now and it's been a great tool for me. But I had never needed any of it's more advanced features until now. So I started looking at all it's options. I first saw the disable hyperthreading for the individual process. Okay, cool, so there's that. And that did work. But then I found the CPU Limiter, set a rule, re-enabled hyperthreading for PoE2, and viola. An entire solid day of no crashes since I've done this.

I hope this works for you!

As for my review of this game.... 100% Worth the buy, if you enjoy aRPG games that don't hold your hand, and want a bit of challenge from hour 1. The game is not exactly Souls-like, but it is not diablo either. You will not be wooshing across the screen like a Super Saiya-jin, demolishing every mob in less than .005 seconds. This game requires you to be a bit more tactical in positioning and when to attack and when to dodge or defend.

It is also still very much a work in progress. This is EARLY ACCESS. A Beta. They are still crafting this masterpiece. And we are here for the ride!

Simple, nostalgic, fan appealing. Grew up playing the old games. Played the remake of Secret of Mana 2 (SD3) on Switch. This game nails it. Sure it's by other devs, but they hit it. It'll make you feel like a kid again. I'll say that this game should have been on the PS2 or early PS3/4, but that's really the only negative thing I can say about it. But it's the fact that it has that classic PS2/3 classic game feel to it is what really makes it come alive to me.
And it really does feel like a Mana game to me. I'm enjoying every bit of it! So happy to have a new adventure in the series to sink my teeth into!

Nobody will read this so I'll just say Praise the Message, O Praise the Message!

It's Nexon. I'm sure I don't need to tell anyone about the greedy micro/macro transactions. They are definitely there. But not needed here. The best one to buy would be the VIP packages for 1 month or 3 months. These equate to a monthly subscription and come with good perks that are a leg up for playing the game. But you are not crippled with out them.

But it's also Mabinogi. You'll not find another mmo/rpg quite like it. It's very unique. And honestly, I'm surprised that none other has tried to duplicate it's unique skill-centric leveling system. Featuring rebirths where your character level is reset to level 1. But all of the progress in skills, titles, traits, and other things that give stat bonuses are retained and stack. So your rebirthed level 1 character is now way stronger than the last time. And then the cycle repeats.
Cumulative levels increase as you rebirth over n over and are the real character level and power indicator. You're not really done leveling till you've maxed out all skills.
Ranking up life skills will give you better stats, and is the actual pursuit in character growth. As these skills progress, you'll unlock titles and trait titles. So pursuing skills outside your immediate game play interest does have it's merits as leveling the Cooking skill will give stats that also help in combat. Combat skills and their stat gains will also help in non combat gameplay skills. So in this sense, you can have many goals to pursue in this game.
You can literally do as much or as little as you like.

If you're a new player, just follow Blaanid's quest line. It'll get you up to speed, or at least introduce you to virtually everything. As well as give you a fast track in power leveling, and give you the ability points needed to rank up those skills.

Don't let the negative reviews keep you from missing out.
This game is great. Could some parts be better? Sure. But the main thing keeping me hooked on this game is the literal fact that you can go out and explore. It FEELS like an adventure. Other games make you want to fast travel. And SOME times in this game you do. But, -mostly-, I want to get out and run there and see what I'll run into or find what I missed before.
The world/map in this game will probably still be getting discovered for a long time. Unless you go data mine it, you'll spend countless hours adventuring and exploring and discovering.
I've already gone back to areas I thought were all dug up and still found something new.
My only nitpik with this game is sometimes the quests don't hold your hand. Like... at all. Saint of the Slums is one such quest. I was at a loss till the internet told me I had to literally grab the lady to restrain her.
If only we could use "grab" to scale up cliffs like we do dragons and cyclops... then this game would be a 10/10.

It's a solid EA survival game. A whole lot to do already despite being incomplete. A few things I don't like, such as magic requiring ammunition in the form of spell charges and it still requires Mana Points. I hope that gets a redo eventually. Just get rid of spell charges and give us a wizard to learn spells from. Mana Points is well enough.

Other than that, I've been loving it. The building system is pretty solid. Though this game is more like Survival-Lite. You won't starve or die from hot/cold. Food rather buffs you which makes life much easier. And the shroud is the only environmental element out to kill you. Good luck!

I don't really need to say anything so I'll just say that my cat said his uncle's brother's girlfriend's roommate's mom said this game needs more guns.