Recent reviews by Jackazor

Paid IdleOn pet that you need to spend hours clicking to unlock.
Not fun, barely incremental, not idle.

Have I enjoyed the game? - Yes
Will I play more? - Yes
Will I return for a DLC? - Yes
Do I recommend this game? - Absolutely not.
Main reason for that is that if you are one of the people that will enjoy this game - you don't need anyone's recommendation, you know that you will like it and just buy it. If you are checking reviews or on a fence due to something - then most probably this game is not for you.

Basically every system in this game is either doesn't work as intended or just a letdown.
Combat, equipment, inventory, puzzles, dialogs, wagon driving are not working as needed and will constantly require save-loading to fix (if that will fix it of course)
Quests, storytelling, "companions", camp building - borderline empty systems with no substance.

World is enormously big - and basically devoid of content.
It's filled with "bandit camps" - few tents in the wilds with few bandits that you clean in a matter of seconds (assuming you can clean it as sometimes there are less enemies spawned than you need to kill to liberate the camp leading to camp being red for a few more ingame weeks until game gives enough of a damn to repopulate the area)
Also there are "treasure chests" - and it's fine when it's consumables or some more generic Items or weapons. Problem is when it's a piece of armor. Without guides it will take you dozens of hours to get other pieces as they are most probably placed in other side of the world in a different POI type.
And that's it. Outside of that you just fly from quests to quests and between bigger fights.

World also feels devoid of life. Guards bravely walk by bandits beating merchants. (But never past you without calling you a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥). There is a whole race integrated into daily life that has nowhere to live.

There is no enemy variety (which is baffling as BDO has a huge enemy pool) and no repeatable activities - no random escort or fetch quests (despite all fetch quests being built in randomizer)
The only thing you can repeat is re-liberating old areas (which by itself is quite fun, the problem being that it breaks your mission dispatch and it's pain in the ass to restore everything to how it was before) and drive trade wagon - problem being that it will help camp money, not yours and camp money are easy enough to get passively or by hedgehog farming which is while boring at least not extremely bugged compared to wagon driving.

Where the game shines though - its Pearl Abyss team - they built awesome engine with huge draw distance and things in the distance do not look like a paper prop.
They really listen to community and frequently release patches adding things player ask for (mainly QoL, pets, further reducing companions uniqueness, etc). Tho for the last patches they stopped releasing hotfixes to fix what they broken but it is what it is. Bethesda-style community patch incoming...

And main thing - they don't have [No Fun Allowed] button. They just don't. No nerfs due to "balance" no such ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. If players broke the game and have fun with it - than it's a feature and that's that.

I'm glad they didn't call it Mafia 4

I can't quite put my finger on what is "wrong" with this game but I guess it a little bit of betraying expectations in every part of the game.

Story is alright here - it all what you expect from Mafia game but they pushed believability a bit too much for my taste.
MC is rising through ranks due to his lucky streak of survival through combat moments and this made him even more stupid and naive than he was. At some point at each cutscene start I thought "yeah this ain't gonna end well". Ending, while expected, is so stupid that I was on the verge of giving this game a thumb down.

World is beautiful - extremely nice to look into distance, and great details everywhere. But it is so big and empty that you can't quite understand why it was even built. I never skipped a drive in Mafia 1 and 2 but here I was using it constantly.

Which leads to character control - vehicles feel strange - I might be wrong but I don't think that cars in 1905 had enough power to spinout from acceleration. Driving "pedestrian's" cars feels fine but racing ones is just drift fest which I didn't quite enjoy. Horse is more of a car than a horse - you don't feel that it is some alive creature. I once stopped too close to doorway and horse wouldn't bulge from parking position - I needed to drive it away to proceed.
Character itself is kinda slow and unresponsive with weird need to walk slow when under heavy fire.
Stealth is very awkward due to mentioned issues but game love stealth sections. At some point I decided to ditch it and just go guns blazing everywhere. Which is also problematic due to extremely small size of character's ammo pouches and lack of preplaced ammo in stealth designated encounters.

Game absolutely hate you and your preferences - your chosen weapons are constantly switched, grenades and bandages confiscated.

But overall it is still a pretty solid game with everything almost nailed down but this almost can be enough to kill your enjoyment if you expected a more standard Mafia game.

Finally a good one.

At last story of TDPA game has all necessary structural parts. It has choices with non-immediate consequences. Characters are more likeable due to much more logical decisions they make. Game finally stopped the merry-go-round of switching character control between multiplayer partners which lead to growing into the characters and ability to roleplay a little.

While I'm very happy with the story, technical state of the game is not so bright and, in fact, worse than previous entries.

Game's story takes place in 2003 and graphics mostly look the part. Thankfully not everything and not everywhere but faces sure lack polygons and lighting.
All interactables are very hard to interact with and even when successful character requires few seconds to start action. Also they changed how books work so for the first part of the game I was not aware that they are openable.
All old problems with "aim and shoot" QTE persist here as well (they really need to get rid of it).

But story is good, understandable and comprehensive. I even have a slight urge to replay to see other choices.

Same-same but different

Driving force of the story is the same as in first game but this time it said straight to our faces in first or second act. Character's dialogs and decisions appears to be absolute mess but it is all explained in the end. Tho explanation is so cheap that I will not add extra points for it.

QTE problems are more severe this time as this game uses QTE where you are given a crosshair and must guess where you should put it in time. We lost 2 characters on this QTE despite not failing any other ones (well, outside of few jumpscare QTEs that actually had no consequences)

But if you are able to get this on 90% discount - not the worst time to spend 4 hours (if CD key problem will not stop you from doing that of course)

Boring cinema

Story begins on one note, follow up with another and finish as a nothing burger.

All choices in game divides into two parts - ones that kill one of a characters and ones that do nothing.

Game is riddled with bugs - some are in cutscenes, some are in gameplay, all just add to overall annoyance due to in-game camera. We were forced to restart once as I was stuck in "book reading" mode

Also many of same type interactables have different controls - one book need you to move mouse to change page, another has dedicated buttons for it... Same with dialogs - some you need to press, another just hold mouse in selected location, others have decreased timer...

QTE are more of a jumpscare than QTE - you just watch 5min cutscene then suddenly have QTE and then watch another 5 min cutscene.

But still alright timewaster if on 90% sale

I love wacky zombie coop games, but this is too much even for me

This game suffers severe identity crisis - it tries to be b4b, wwz, days gone, hero shooter and snow runner in one questionably executed title.

Game looks beautiful while it is peaceful but in action... it's like you are playing as a zoomed in blood-lightning mage. Everything is flashy. Even eyes if a zombies for some reason...

There is a sound for full stamina recharge. And it is one of the most annoying sounds I ever heard and it's like 0.5s long.

Mission we got to play is open world with secondary locations that have loot that can help you with main objectives. Which just made game a driving simulator instead of action packed shooter.
Also as main loot in the game should be picked up by every character you cannot even split up in coop to speed up map clearing.

Items you pick up have no description so you can be stuck with something unusable (I picked up "stimulant" instead of grenade thinking it will be hp/stamina/speed boost but it was defibrillator - something I learned only back in the hub)

Jokes are half decent at least...

Awesome AA scrolls-like

Game starts with you as a prisoner and quickly expands into beautiful world full of interesting quests and characters.
And as you start to think that this is a 10/10 game first act ends. Now you live in a swamp for the next 15-20 hours. And size of the team starts to show its downsides. Map is too big for the amount of content, quests start to be more repetitive. And then you go into 3rd act where it all just falls apart. You are welcomed by the guy who says "hey - here is a road to finale OR... you can do 15 side quests before that for... something" (I literally forgot what was the benefit)

Despite that I enjoyed this game for the most part. Combat is alright - parries and dodges add feeling of smoothness to combat and game has a lot of gear that can change your playstyle quite a bit.
Main story and chained side quests do wonderful job of exploring the lore. Despite part of quests being meh it was really interesting to learn about this mutation of King Arthur's tale.

My main gameplay problem (outside of too large acts 2 and 3) is lack of ability to place custom markers on map. In each act there are places you need to revisit after finishing main quest line and you just need to google where to go.

Overall game is 6.5/10 but if you like scrolls-like gameplay - this game is sure worth your time (at least first act)

Great game with interesting story (well if this is your first Larian game, otherwise it's the same story)

But where it shines is combat. Sheer amount of possibilities and combinations allowed in this game is enough to complete a game and never have a combat that feels same as other one.

Was not sure to recommend or not but current reviews rate is too high IMO so here we go.

Up to 4 drunkards found themselves at the end of roadtrip and decides to go home on their RV that doubles as a submarine. So one of players take a driving wheel and others... struggle with finding things to entertain themselves. Main source of entertainment we found is to annoy another player and obstruct drivers view. WHEEEE -_-

My (and my teammates) main beef with the game that it overstays it's welcome by a large margin. This gameplay is fun for 4 hours top, not over 8. Also it kinda obvious that devs ran out of ideas and literally out of map for the later parts of the game.

Ending was a breath of fresh air tho - there was at least some action and we finally had something to do.

But half of "something to do" was literally fighting bugs and bad level design (I found a hole in the ground and fell there)

Overall game would be worth it if you could skip latter half of the game straight to ending.

Also come on can't you add at least one achievement for finishing the game?!