Recent reviews by lml-mike

My favourite medieval RPG FPS to date.

Context: Never played the first one, I'm an active worker, who worked in the video game industry, now in tech and who plays solo games after work to take my mind off, but very picky with my 25+ years gaming experience (former competitive player too). This is a solo game meant to be invested in without being distracted by other games around. I suggest to play it with only 1 or 2 other games simultaneously max.

The game is long. I finished the main story after all side quests while taking all my time and this is my hours count above. Paying it full price was one of the RAREST instance which to me qualified as "worth it". I never, ever pay for full price games despite my 700+ game count, but I've been told it would match my difficult tastes. TL;DR: it did.

The game is beautiful. You sometimes surprise yourself stopping to look around with a beautiful sunrise or sunset in the horizon. The soundtrack bring TV show-like story moments, and the subtle quirk humor gives a pinch of personality to the franchise which is so adorable to see. I strongly suggest to play this game with English voice, subtitled in your language, as the English voice acting was amazingly supervised.

The writing is incredible. It's well put, attaching, and very human. The characters with their own objectives make sense in their decisions, and I am extremely impressed by the VERY secret routes you can take in order to change the outcome. Without them, the good ending is very satisfying. The game takes its time, and gives you this feeling of completing something well done.

Game-wise, the mechanics are satisfying but not perfect. The combat can feel a bit clanky at times, knowing your sword aim goes a bit different to what you're expecting in the heat of the action. Some early & late RPG progression comes with doing more of that action and not a simple XP system, which is a great value, alas sometimes superficial (like +5% something). Therefore, some perks really affect the gameplay which makes it satisfying to reach a certain point, we just would have liked more of them. I'll go a step further even : I would have liked maxing certain perks would open different story paths route, side or main, to give a motivation to specialize in something every time.

Clipping and NPC bugs happen, but it's not very frequent. Nothing to ruin your experience within the game.

Some gameplay features are good and varied, which provides a real novelty effect early to late-early game (until around 20-30 hours, yeah lol I know) but are lacking mid to end-game content, like dice play, contests, races or smithing. The economy is also coming from mid-late game more as a grind reflex than a real interest to accumulate riches, which kind of bore you to loot rather than excites you, as it's missing very expensive experiences to buy. Also, some gameplay styles reward you far more than others, which kinda pulls you to take that route, specially with perks which makes you much better at it. The biggest problem is the lack of real high-risk/high reward system. It could be solved, for example, to make you loose credibility if people like you as a thief, rather than just give you a hard time which will all be forgotten in a couple of days. A fluctuation balancing positive/negative action can be worked a bit better with some additional game design, but I'm being difficult at this point...

I will wait for the first reviews of the next DLC content before considering paying for the season pass. I'm looking forward to see if Warhorse studios will give a good bang for your buck, or just use their title's reputation for some cashgrabs. I hope they have good producers lol.

I'll finish with a couple of early tips if you want to take the game after reading this :
- early game, your potions make a MASSIVE difference, with stats but especially with saving. Try to keep a lot of saving potions to try mechanics in the game. You might miss on something obvious you can do and never tried fearing consequences
- Town Merchants are the only ones buying every kind of item you have. The best economy boost early game if you think time/benefits is by killing/looting bandits out of town, and then selling all their wares. The rest is just a lot of time to spend.
- Consider your horse as your moving chest for items in your weight management. All the beds you buy permanently have shared chest too.
- Finally, steal & pickpocketing are very rewarding if you plan not to visit the town back anytime soon. Remember that every groschen you give to someone (for learning skills, even if you get caught by a guard and pay him lol) can be pickpocketted back.

I highly recommend this game. It's polished, very enjoyable in co-op and the multiplayer allows you to join randomers with a pleasant experience.

i just need to mention a few things : The Roguelite components are very mild;you won't feel a massive improvement in the gameplay by evolving in levels, which not only can make runs quite a bit repetitive, but also underwhelm also the other players by your added value. I'd monitor the future updates to check if the devs make a progression system more rewarding & impacting.

For context, I never, EVER give a bad review. But this DLC has long time, unsolved, softlocks which ends up with object & money losses, as well as items disappearing on the floor in the new maps, with linear patterns and objects always identical sitting in the same places at every iteration, removing any potential fun. In good conscience, you can't support something which creates more negative experiences than good ones. I can't recommend this DLC, even on sale :/

I recommend this game and would qualify the car you're driving as a mobile secondary base linked to a main base with a constant upgrade systems and survival elements through procedurally generated levels.
You basically travel from your base to procedurally generated levels where you either loot to improve your base/car, or progress through the story, or both at the same time if you have the mental capacity to multi-task.

+ Punishing difficulty, without being overly difficult
+ Satisfying upgrade mechanics (Absolutely love to solve the weird things your car sometimes makes)
+ The voice-overs are of good quality and the French translation is solid
+ I like the fact that if you spend too much time taking your time looting it can play against you (for genuine mistakes or game design/spoiler-free reasons)
+ Massive game progression features.

- Looting is not tedious, but can be repetitive (Use the T shortcut to take everything, and remaining stacks with space)
- The damaged features of your car will affect your driving so much you need to think of everything, including the kits to carry for your repairs
- The ratio time/exploration can be stressful in some levels
- The RNG before leaving an area can punish your whole run

+/- For the reasons above, Playing this game for several hours can be physically and mentally exhausting after 1 to 3 hours of playing. I haven't had this feeling since Fallout 4 in Survival mode. I don't know yet if I like this feeling or not.

Overall, it's a solid, original & well designed game and will please medium/hard&Expert solo survivalists. Highly recommend

This is something you can either laugh with your friends, or just join random people and laugh with them. The context makes it extremely funny, specially if people are scared easily :) Definitely worth the price!

15 hours for the current early access version for me. The experience until the end of the last chapter was solid. It's a proper open world survival craft (planet crafter, Subnautica, Raft etc.) with an emphasis on exploration and an ambition to make it co-op with full-on story driven experience. If you feel the price is worth 10-20 hours of your time and don't mind to wait with more in the future while giving support to the devs, don't hesitate.

Also, I had a small bug which I posted on Steam forums and got good, fast support from the community and a dev. Finally, the last patch got really positive feedback from the community in the comments. As a result, I'd confidently recommend the game to buy as of now :)

to take only when on deal. While the ability to remote craft things can be useful at times, it's not something you do naturally and the bonus it gives from early gravestones you unlock is ludicrously high. I didn't feel the same complementarity to the main storyline as the other 2 DLCs.

Take it if you don't have to make a trade-off money-wise. Otherwise, prefer the other 2 together when buying the main game to get some fun with the main story (Except if 10 bucks is not that big of a deal for you, then take it for the additional things it brings).

The content is a very nice addition to the base game as you progress, and a really useful way to make extra food that you can use without spending too much time in your kitchen making your own. The story is okay, but the ability to build "happiness" early on is very important to achieve and be on top of the camp building if you want to benefit from its effect (and very frustrating early on ngl).

If you leave the camp be during your main storyline, you'll have the frustration to discover the camp could have made you save some time on cooking food. The best way I recommend to play this DLC on top of the main storyline, is to build the base camp early on until you start getting food, and then to work on the updates by teleporting with your tp stone every time you need to fill up on food while working on the last update.

The content is a very nice addition to the base game as you progress, and a really useful way to make extra needed money. On top of that, the story is long and completes very well the main story. It's a good recommendation for me to take if you want to throw extra bucks to the main game for good additional content.

I am a regular gamer. Not hardcore, but not casual either. Playing the game with a controller. As someone who took the leap of playing Tales of Zestiria before Berseria without any prior knowledge of the titles, I recommend playing it before for many reasons.

Pros:
- The hard difficulty is fair and the sense of progression feels satisfying,
- The combat system is deep. You can't bash buttons, and your understanding of the mechanics will make you stronger than the items themselves,
- The game design is clever, and there's a lot of management than can make a difference, without it being mandatory to progress.
- A few optional challenges will make you enjoy some gaming sessions of a few hours just to beat the monster you decided to focus on.
- The characters aren't dumb, and their story choices making sense is satisfying.
- Some cut-scenes are jaw-dropping...No joke.

Cons:
- The introduction of the mechanics are a quite intimidating at first. AND it takes you a while to understand what they mean,
- It feels sometimes that the story drags a lot in certain moments of its development.
- there are a very few areas with very punitive mechanics which will make you re-do paths, which can be frustrating,
- Save system is fair, but manual,
- Some quests are very vague. Talk to your companion to get directions, took me a while to realize it.

Overall, it's worth playing it. It's a very good game, and I can't wait to finish my last area and the last boss to start berseria after. You can safely go!