Recent reviews by Yz

Over 40 hours played (10 hours is missing on my steam page since i played with no internet for a weekend), all achievements completed and maxed out gear (or just powerful enough to do anything), here is my review.

Gotham knights is undoubtly not anywhere near the quality of the arkham series. Most people are saying that you shouldn't compare the two since they are made by different companies and such development, production etc are different, but it is hard for consumers to not draw similarities and try to compare the two since it is a batman game in the batman universe.

Anyways, in Gotham knights, you play as 4 side characters from the Batman universe. Red Hood, Nightwing, Batgirl and Robin. Together, they try to solve the last case Bruce was investigating. This leads into a secret society that is controlling the entire Gotham from below; The Court Of Owls. Now that is a super TLDR of the story, but that is the main hook of the game. The other part is the online co-op functionality. Now I have not even tried co-op in the slightest since none of my friends wanted to buy this shi**y game so i can't really say if it is good or not.

- Court of owls: If you've ever read the comics when you were a kid, you would have most likely remembered the infamous court of owls. The legendary illuminati of Gotham and in my opinion, the most badass villians Batman ever faced (Excluding Joker :)). Just facing them and hearing their verse in the game makes me feel like a kid again reading the new 52 by Scott snyder.

- Hot-swappable Characters: Another positive thing is the feature to swap characters without losing progress. Most games would require you to catch up by either grinding or other means when swapping characters, in this game, all you need to do is put in the skill points and craft a new weapon and unlocking knighthood (I'll come back to this). The rest are shared across the board. Really decreases the annoying grinding.

- Mobile crafting system: The crafting in this game is linear and very mobile like. It has the same format as green (ok) - purple (better) - legendary (much better). Only the legendary have effects from what i can remember and i personally never cared about them at all.

- Main and Side Stories: The story in this game is very predictable. After 2 chapters completed (main cases), you can guess the outcome of the story and how it is going to end up. This is usually nothing bad per say, but the dialogue, boring exposition and lack of character depth makes the story feel empty. The side story is nothing more than Exposition - bossfight - exposition - bossfight. Nothing seemed to motivate me to keep pushing forward in the storyline and uncover whatever the hell i was trying to uncover.

- The World: The world is Gotham, really cool seeing the world in action, but the graphics making the game look worse than freaking Arkham Knight (which came out in the bronze age) and the lack of density in the town makes the world seem too empty for an authentic immersive feeling. When you explore gotham, you will encounter numerous randomly generated crimes which is the games answer for grinding gear/xp. The worst part of this is that they are very copy-pasted across the entire world. I can't recall a single ever "unique" crime happening, usually the same thing happening with either the same or the other factions. Very lazy! Unlocking knighthood which is the unique part of every character (the way they move freely like Batgirls glider, nightwings cool robot glider etc) requires you to do 4 premeditated crimes, which are found on the map with a bigger red dot. They are nothing unique as well, just do them, kill elites and do training mission. Boom now you have it! I have no clue why this IS NOT globally shared across the characters. There are misc objectives in the world like time trials for gliding and driving (note: driving crashes the game 6/10 times from my experience), as well as collectibles around the world. But other than that, dead town.

- Combat: Combat in this game tries so hard to become like Arkham. It tries to do the same freeflow dance but ultimately fails. The game has light attack, light throw, heavy attack and heavy throw. Combining these makes the character move around cool but it is so annoying to target different enemies, just hope that you are going to hit the right target. The abilities you unlock are cool and some are "unique" but they feel like a lazy save for the combat since the rest are just momentum fillers (Momentum is the ability meter you need to fill in order to spend it on points). Doesn't really help when gear is involved and it makes the enemies feel like sponges. There are also no counter attacks, so you have to rely on evading...and god, some characters have really bad evading manouvers and just does not dodge how you want them to dodge. It is frustrating but doable. I don't hate the combat as much as you would think, but it is definetly poorly made.

I really wanted to like this game. I love the Batman universe and knowing that the Owls were going to be a main part of this game. I was so interested in it, but unfortunately: the game is a boring, repetitive mess with nothing unique that stands out. I don't recommend it! 3/10

Super super super TLDR: buy the arkham trilogy! Not this stupid game.

For real?

Likely dog/10

Hee-Ho!

I got a letter saying "You're a dumbass"

10/10

I am going to start of by saying this: At this current time the console port is horrible and even on PC you'll be able to gain 30-60fps depends on the area with everything maxed out (I rock a 3080 GPU & 9700K cpu). The bugs on PC that i have personally experienced are mostly minimal such as cigarettes floating, can't pick up loot that is next to an NPC, etc. There were never a quest-breaking bug for me thank god but beware that if you buy this game right now you might encounter it due to some people having issues with game breaking bugs.
With that being said here is my review after 70+ hours in the game and 90% done (still pushing for that 100%)

Yup. I highly believe Cyberpunk 2077 will become a timeless gem. I don't think I have been this invested into a game ever. I play singleplayer games almost all the time and i love getting invested in the narrative and starting to like the characters and watching them develop. It is truly an art and the developers at CDPR really crafted one of my favorite games ever.


The Story:
I come from the Yakuza franchise so the bar for beating that story is very hard since i believe the Yakuza games have the best narrative. But, I am happy to say that for me personally, Cyberpunk 2077 beat Yakuza when it comes to the narrative. The voice acting, The Writing, The Quests....they are what you call breathtaking. The narrative have personally touched my heartstrings because it brings up the question such as "How does one define themselves from human and robot" or "Does AI have feelings". It's truly remarkable.

The World:
Night City, the most beautiful map i have seen to date. I sometimes stand still and look around just to see the world because it is so freaking hard to not appreciate the graphics of this game. The world is filled with sidequest (i will return to sidequest soon), outposts, "world events" etc. The city is a living protagonist and will try to suck you in at every moment it gets.

The Combat:
This game is no Modern warfare 2019 gunplay. But it definitely not fallout 4 gunplay. I would say the gunplay is really good and better than i expected. The weapons really pack a punch and there are different varities of weapons that you can encounter such as "smart weapons" which lets you have aimbot or weapons that lets you shoot through cover. It's really fun but it's really not fun when you die while in cover :(
The melee is very hit-or-miss (metaphorically and literally) for a lot of people. I don't personally like melee since i play on max FOV so it looks very clunky. Still the most badass thing you can do is counter-attacking enemies.

The Sidequests:
Here is where the best part of the game really shines. You can really tell that the quest designers went ham on the sidequest and yes it shows and yes they are so freaking good. There are few different sidequest and i will point out the difference of them:
- Character Story Arcs: These are what i would say "mandatory" (not really) sidequest that will develop a character you've encountered with and a big big tip for you buying this game, when someone calls you asking for help, help them. You will not be disappointed. These sidequest can really change the ending for the better or maybe worse ;)
- Gigs: Gigs are super fast forward and more combat oriented (basically get in, take x, deposit x, finished)
- Sidequest: "Normal" sidequest as i like to call them are scattered over the world and they are really good and very very dark & depressing. Some of the sidequests are outright disturbing (in the good way if thats a thing)


The Bad Part
Even though i praise this game as it will become timeless and i will stand by it until CDPR goes the fallout 76 route and never fixes the game. The game has its flaws and it wouldn't be a rightful review if i didn't point them out. Here's a few things that i don't like personally when it comes to an "Open world-rpg-shooter":

- Wanted system: Basically non-existent. If you drive someone over or shoot a civilian, you will get a 1-2 star NCPD wanted mark and the cops will teleport right behind you and start blasting and in higher difficulty, they will most likely 2shot you. If you are in a car then you are in luck because the cops don't have a driving AI (EXCEPT THIS ONE SIDEQUEST WHERE I DONT UNDERSTAND WHY IT HAD DRIVING COPS THERE AND NOWHERE ELSE :)).

- The Driving: I really like the driving and the sound of the engines and the music stations are amazing. But it feels like you have your handbrake on 24/7. The drifting is insane and not in the good way. It's way too hard to control your car unless it is in a straight line.

- No transmog system: Really speaks for itself. I would like to see maybe a "hide-helmet" option since when you start the game and probably till the very end, you will look like a junkie from college who forgot to turn up for class because his sandals had holes in them :/

- There are ripperdocs but there are no barberdocs: I do like the hair i started with but please it is an open-world rpg, a barber should at least be accessible.

- No respec option: To clearify, there is a respec option in the game but it will cost you 100k eddies (main currency in the game) and yes even for high end that is A LOT of money, and it will respec the perks to my knowledge, not the "attributes" which you put into body, reflexes, tech, int or cool. This thing doesn't bother me since i somewhat knew from the start how i wanted to play but Its there and i feel like you should know.

- Romance: OK not the sex stuff that in my opinion is not good at all. The moaning is not on point and it looks awkward but i don't want to bore you all with my amazing porn directing. For real i am talking about relationship with the character(s) and V. There are points that can lead to romance and there is one character (more probably but one for me :() clearly that you can be together with but the game sort of hides that(?). What i mean by that is that if you play your cards right, one person will open an ending alternative which to leave a very cryptic mark i can say what tarot card it is for you all curious chooms: The Star but thats the only time you will know for sure that you have a loving relationship with this individual. Not once ever do they call you (they text you in the beginning and you can reply with funny comments etc) but after awhile you've sorta been forgotten. If you call this individual or any for that matter there are repeatetive options that has the same outcome every time. This could be improved so much and make it so you actually still care about X, Y or even Z if you are crazy by having calls now and then but maybe that is too ambitious i wouldn't know.
I don't know why i went on big on the romance part haha I am not sad over it PeepoSimp.

The Conclusion: :
So my conclusion: I will recommend this to everyone who loves story telling game, you love investing hours into characters and you live to explore the beautiful world to date. On that part you will not be disappointed and i will give you my word on that. But at this time (2020-12-18) there are numerous bugs and performance issues that if you are picky they might come out as "immersive breaking" and if thats the case i will recommend you buying this game after their second big update which was announced coming in february (first big patch comes in january).
It sucks that the top dogs of CDPR really pushed it out thanks to shareholders (cmon we all know that) and didn't give more time for the developer to completely polish the game. But the damage has been done and I really hope they go the no mans sky route and fix the game instead of the fo76 route who capitalize on the game that could be classified as "early access".

Super TL;DR: I was 13 when the teaser came out, I am now 20, I am not disappointed, I love the game :)

Amazing game and a breath of fresh air when it comes to the Yakuza franchise!
I highly recommend playing this even if It's your first Yakuza game, If you want to play through the complete order it goes like this:
- Yakuza 0 (Available on Steam)
- Yakuza Kiwami (Available on Steam)
- Yakuza Kiwami 2 (Available on Steam)
- Yakuza Remastered Collection (Which is 3, 4 & 5 remastered) (Available on Steam :D)
- Yakuza 6 The Song Of Life (Only available on Playstation)
- And last but not least Yakuza Like A Dragon

Enjoy the ride :)

Absolute masterpiece :)

I got scared a few times :)

Just finished the starting area :)