Recent reviews by zbee

This is the most I have enjoyed battle content at difficulties below Savage since I first learned the game, amazingly well done

super fun game, easy to dump a huge amount of time into with friends

It's one of the best PVE co-op games I've had the pleasure of playing in a long time, and at a time where live service games like this are incredibly expensive as a player: Arrow Head steps up and provides insane value in a manner where you don't have to even spend anything, just play.
It feels rewarding to dive, and even moreso to do it with your friends. Very quickly you can get to the point of looking sweet and fighting with weapons that feel amazing and all in one of the mos well done "brutal" and "hellish" environments - things can get out of hand and terrifying looking so quickly, and I'm all for it, it absolutely makes me feel like I'm 1 versus 1,000,000 in a savage war.

--

My only qualms with this title are the "balance" issues. Item nerfing is treated as if the game is a MOBA or competitive shooter, urgent and constant, but item fixing is treated like fixes in a modern Halo game: too little way too late, or not at all. I'm fortunate in some ways to have not jumped into this game right away, but at the same time the lock on for the Spear still basically doesn't work at all, 3 months post release; reportedly being fixed in the next week or so though.

It's fine if they want to attempt to balance all of their many different weapons, but it is rather disappointing to see balance patch after balance patch when there are crashes, fire that insta-kills, and weapons that almost don't work at all such as the Spear.

As I said, they do fix these things, and in a more timely manner than some franchises, but it's clearly a lower priority than balancing which seems very silly to me in a PvE game - of course balancing is easier to mess around with than fixing a deep issue ... but then they release optionally-paid pass after pass with totally new guns and stratagems before fixing things too: when fire was insta-killing we got the explosive pass came out before it was fixed, the spear hasn't worked this whole time, and 4 passes now have released.

---

Roast bugs, liberate robots, and nuke snoy.
Thankfully the account-requirement bait-n-switch debacle did not go through, and I still get to play this game with my friends instead of having to hope for a refund, and as such can fully recommend this game (though, personally, no more multiplayer or possibly even singleplayer snoy games for me).

This game is how I personally wanted Hades, RoR, etc to feel: highly customizeable with builds. You have gear that is permanent, and a Sign to choose that is specific to the character and gives a buff for the run, and the Blessings you receive in runs have a lot of synergy.
This is absolutely my favorite roguelike right now.

My only complaint is that there are no alternate appearances for characters - maybe in the future that would be a great DLC option: keep the game price low, but let those of us who play a lot pay more if we want some variety.

More amazing time in Horizon.

The combat does feel somewhat worse if you enjoyed only doing archery at all times, but everything else is a big improvement - particularly gear and the massive, beautiful map.

It's a fun game, especially once you find a party you like.

It needs more refinement in the difficulty over the course of the game, and definitely in the UI, but it's well worth the price

The "Emotions" category has 2 emotions in it ("Drunk"?), and the Hobbies category is half things used in hobbies and the other half mundane tasks ("Unpacking"? "Gas"?), and otherwise just random words or things you do or things you become. It is not a user-submitted category.

All the user-submitted categories are typo-ridden things submitted by 11-year olds that are too abstract or only applicable for their friends.

A fun drunk game if you only select the built in categories (except "Emotions" and "Hobbies")

TL;DR: I only bought for the campaign, campaign is cool, it's too buggy to play and 343i doesn't care - Halo is no longer worth buying for the campaign.

I can't recommend this game despite enjoying the story. I have enjoyed it a lot actually, but its cons far outweigh its pros.

I bought it for co-op campaign after *numerous* delays, and bugs are way too common such as things blocking progression until we die and re-do a fight, performance is not amazing in co-op (despite preforming perfectly in single player for both of us), crashes are even more common than bugs, and the biggest of all: there STILL seem to be issues with saving progress in campaign (co-op and solo) despite such issues being common a year ago, there's not even work-around "solutions" like allowing manual saving or showing an error when saving is not working currently.

The campaign's great, I like the Assassin's Creed-esque busy work to do, it manages to be much more interesting, and the story is incredible as always. I love marines actually being marginally useful, the ammo fills are very nice, the new enemies are interesting and challenging, the bosses are just awesome. The weapons are a blast too, the variety is nice, and a lot more feel viable and useful than some other titles in the franchise - especially nice since eventually you are forced to swap up your weapons over the course of some of the longer missions.

I haven't touched multiplayer at all, probably won't. Playlists for game modes is just ridiculous, the 'progression' is a joke, just not even worth my time.
It handily beat COD -the old argument- for a long time in my opinion, and then it shot itself in the face. Repeatedly. Particularly this entry.

---

The fact that **SAVING PROGRESS** doesn't work in a pseudo-open world game I managed to put 26 hours into trying to explore and do side objectives before even reaching 50% completion is utterly absurd. Saving has worked in games for 37 years, but I guess fixing a game-shattering campaign bug that's seemingly been an issue in one form or another for the entire release of the game ranks lower than "Text on loading screens will no longer change size when the UNSC emblem appears in the bottom left corner of the screen" (a bug fix in the most recent patch notes).
Not to mention that they clearly don't care about the issue, it seems there has not even been a response to saving issues despite it being so prevalent that in the support ticketing system "Stat or completion tracking issue" is a category - seemingly they just put that there to know which tickets they don't have to reply to. "Stat or completion tracking issue" being one of a company's bug tracking system's very few canned options (versus being immediately and wholly addressed in very high priority) should be a pretty clear indicator of 343i's stance on campaigns going forward.

I'll just stick to the books and cutscene-compilation videos from now on.

I have loved where 343i has brought the story, I have loved Halo since I was a child, but where they've brought the franchise games is not worth money anymore; Just another title shamelessly heaped onto the "AAA" money-at-any-cost cursed development cycle pile of garbage.

---

Edit: they replied to my ticket about saving issues, after some back and forth clarifying the issue, "We currently do not have a workaround for this issue but the report has been logged with the development team to help with the investigation." They have no solution for this issue that's been in since release, took more than a week for them to even reply in the first place, didn't even apologize for the issue, nothing.

I don't understand the complaints with the invasion, my friend and I love the challenge - it's very interesting, and adds a lot of difficulty to the missions the NPCs can't really.
Edit: Nix that. Dying to camping has happened for the first time. That is really f****** stupid. Everything else about it is fine and interesting, even as the invader - really cool; but no camping ... That's half of what a sniper does, are you kidding me?

Overall, the game is very similar to SE4 though the maps are way, way bigger and more engaging.

The addition of full campaign co-op instead of set parts of it or specific missions is awesome.

The gun customization doesn't feel a lot more impactful than before, but at least there are more options - can't say I really care for any of the weapon skins currently in the game though, and presently the total selection of rifles is fairly disappointing.

Especially if you're a fan of the franchise: it's a buy.

This has been the most involved I have ever been with an MMO with the greatest amount of respect from the developers for the community. There just truly is no competitor.