Recent reviews by Nephi

Reverting my review to a positive review now that the Steam Deck launch issues have been cleared up.

Rise is a great game, a faster paced and more arcade-like alternative to Monster Hunter World. Where World's approach is that of a methodical hunter, stalking the monster, learning it's habits and weaknesses before ultimately mastering it, Rise skips a lot of that, and focuses on the fights themselves.

The addition of the wirebugs makes for hectic combat, with monster speeds amped up to match the hunter's newfound agility.

My only complaint would be the spiritbirds - meant to simulate the "prep" phase of a hunt without requiring much in the way of thought, they eventually turn into a bit of a slog, a mandatory 2 minute phase of every hunt that's always the same.

Otherwise, a very strong entry in the series, and a great complimentary game to it's sibling of the fifth generation.

This is a game in which you find monsters living in their natural habitats, and beat the crap out of them.

Sometimes, they beat the crap out of you. When that happens, you go away and beat the crap out of other, slightly weaker monsters, unless you can wear their skin as a hat, which makes you strong enough to go back to the monster that beat the crap out of you, and beat the crap out of it.

Rinse and repeat for several hundred hours and that's basically Monster Hunter, and has been for the last 20 years. World is probably the strongest iteration of the game there is, so if you've ever tried any other game in the series and thought "hmm, maybe?", then World might be a good idea.

If you just like beating the crap out of things then obviously, also a good idea to play this.

Going against the grain on this one.

When playing D&D as a DM, it's often considered important to not remove player agency. They usually hate it when you do that.

BG3 has the removal of player agency as a central theme of the game, especially if you play the custom character path, The Dark Urge.

For a game that advertises player choice, I've come away miserable about the moments it chose to take that choice away from me.

TL;DR; Destiny 2 wants to be your "main game" and punishes you if it's not. Also player costs only keep rising.

I played the game on release, then took a break and played for two or three years around the time of Forsaken through to Beyond Light. My first break had no ill effects on my enjoyment of the game, as when I came back I simply replayed through the content I had "missed", but since then, the game has become a full on "live service", where if you miss something, it's gone. If you're the sort of person who never stops playing, or who just has the one game they play, this isn't a problem, but if you want to step away to play other things for a while, or if you're a new player who expects to be able to pick up the story from the start, you're better off looking elsewhere.

The actual gameplay is great though, so if you're not one for story, completionism, or cosmetic rewards, then screw it, play D2.

you don't have the right, O you don't have the right
by the way you don't have the right, O you don't have the right

Pretty broken on an ultrawide. Crashes a lot. Has no real objective, settings, or control scheme.

It has catgirls but that's not enough to win me over.

Looks great, but HOTAS support is severely compromised. They have deadzones of 20% on the X and Y axis, they do not autodetect your devices (by default it made my throttle the joystick and vice versa), and default configuration puts all the buttons, toggles and controls on the joystick controller.

Do not buy if you're looking for a game to play with your flight stick.