Recent reviews by Dr. Dastardly, Ph.D

Heck of a good time. For democracy!

Honestly, after almost 90 hours with this game, I think I have GGG all figured out.

This is a developer team motivated entirely by contempt for their players.

Absolutely none of this game is fun. "But you have 90 hours!" Yep, and now I'm fully qualified to say there is very little of value here. Every single potentially redeeming thing (Skill trees and synergy, WADS twin stick controls) is absolutely drowned by baffling, horrible, infuriating game design decisions.

You died? The entire zone is completely repopulated: ♥♥♥♥ you.

You died in endgame? Whatever you were doing is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ gone, and so are any bonuses that used to be associated with that map, and so is any experience you got in that map, and so is all of the experience from the next several maps: ♥♥♥♥ you.

You literally didn't even die in the Sekhema trials? You ran out of honor: ♥♥♥♥ you.

Whoa, you found a unique on the ground? It's useless: ♥♥♥♥ you.

Any way to craft decent gear without relying entirely on RNG? No: ♥♥♥♥ you.

Hey, you sorta created a problem by having the maps be physical inventory items, didn't you? Isn't that sort of unnecessary? Buy the solution in the shop for real money and ♥♥♥♥ you.

Are you picking up what I'm laying down? It gets worse.

Path of Exile 2 has extreme readability issues in combat. Lethal attacks are often accompanied by absolutely no sound effect or warning; you just die instantly. Arrow projectiles are completely invisible and silent, but they will fire them so fast you will be absolutely stun locked in place and die and have no idea why. It's very often not clear where you can walk, or why you can walk here but not there. Enemies and environments blend together in low-contrast, same color smears, while dangerous ground effects, that are lethal in moments, are completely obscured beneath foliage and layers upon layers of unnecessary particle effects.

Every important audio queue is drowned out by the huge, booming sound effects of my own attacks, and many incredibly dangerous and noteworthy enemies and hazard make absolutely no noise to announce their presence. The audio engineering in this game is genuinely "Baby's first video game". Absolutely embarrassing levels and mixing. Really, really bad.

Enemy variety is very bad, and easily boiled into a few archetypes. Most enemies can be safely ignored, mere cannon fodder, and then you have the sun priests who can just stick a ♥♥♥♥-laser directly into your eye and hold it there with pinpoint accuracy as you run around on fire, or the bog witches who summon perfectly silent, OHKO bombs that appear directly under your feet. They're either zero or 100, making for extremely uneven combat and many abrupt, unfair deaths that you can do nothing about, nor even see coming.

And speaking of all those unfair deaths you couldn't see coming, or were intentionally engineered to screw you over, you are also losing several hours of progress per death. All of that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ you tolerated to achieve those 2 bars, wiped out in an instant because GGG doesn't know how to mix audio.

Absolutely not worth your time; do not bother. They spent 100 years developing PoE1, experimenting, iterating, only to pump out this impossible piece of garbage. GGG is clearly incapable of learning, and you are a fool if you expect this game to improve.

Just play Diablo 3 instead; it's the best ARPG ever made because it was designed from first principles and not as a shameless clone of Diablo 2.

Genuinely unfun.

Uniformly embiggens the game. Worth the cost of entry. Dig the frogs and the coastal biome, but I especially love my little pine topiary decoration I got as a reward for a deed.

I am a huge Bethesda fan and I am shocked by how quickly the illusion was shattered with this game. As I wandered around the bewilderingly empty New Atlantis "city" of 13 NPC's sitting behind counters, the game started to feel fake. I shot my follower several times. No one noticed, not even my follower. I jumped off a cliff. Gravity did not notice, and I was unharmed. I realized that there is no way, none at all, to pull out your bare fists, for instance if you wanted to take advantage of the fist fighting perk, listed topmost and leftmost in the perk window. I guess in the tens of thousands of man hours spent testing the game, nobody selected literally the very first perk in the list and tried to use it? Was everyone just too terrified of Todd to speak up?

Honest to god, after those first 4 hours, I genuinely have no interest in seeing the rest of this game. What a complete waste of my money.

I haven't had a lot of luck enjoying games that I've purchased lately. More and more, games just make me angry. They're frustrating, for a variety of reasons and to an occasionally bewildering degree. I've started to wonder if video games just aren't for me anymore. Then along comes Against the Storm.

What an absolute pleasure this game is. Pound for pound, I've enjoyed my time with it far more than I've enjoyed my time spent with Baldur's Gate 3, or Resident Evil 4 Remake, or Elden Ring, to name a few. I play on a low difficulty, and I experience joy. Can you imagine? Joy! Not anger, not frustration, not weariness. The gears in my brain turn, and the villagers do the things, and it feels good.

Yes. Yes I do very much recommend Against the Storm. It is a gem, and nothing less.

Comically tedious and unfun.

Decided to throw $10 on the fire to see what this was about; ultimately, I don't think it's worth your money.

I crave a sexy, horny game that's not just porn. To date, the only game to scratch this itch is Skyrim of all things. While this game definitely attempts to be horny and sexy, it falls short in a variety ways, and disappoints in a variety more.

First, the character customization. While "okay" at best, it falls short of what modders have done for Skyrim (for free, as a labor of love). For instance, the breasts alone have more slider options than the entire body combined, and the face sliders make you wonder why more options don't exist. Hair color is chosen from an extremely limited palette (8 options? 10?), just like eye color, eye shadow, blush, and other makeup. No tattoo options exist. All other extant options feel like the bare minimum, and left me feeling like my character was incomplete.

Second, the gameplay loop is a big problem. A quick assessment of the content leads you to the conclusion that the dev team has spent most of their time playing mobile games. Progression consists of tapping locations on a world map, taking you primarily to one (1) of exactly one (1) maps to fight monsters that pop in before your eyes. Combat consists of dodging, blocking, or mashing left click to make things dead. Several toothless spells exist, but why? Loot is vaguely Diablo-esque, but the tooltips don't adequately describe their power, relative or otherwise. Encounters award gold, which drops from monsters and can be acquired by selling loot, and "Crystals", which are the obvious stand-in for a freemium mobile game currency from a marketplace that doesn't exist. The grind is real, there are no payed options to escape it, and there is no reward awaiting you at the end. It's bad.

Third, you play as a succubus who never has sex. This is like playing a game starring a dog who never wags their tail. While it's easy to say "Wow, can't wait for the 'Hardcore Sex' update!", there is literally no chance something like this will ever happen. Get real.

A lot of work can be done to improve this title, but none of it will happen: A combat overhaul. Sex. A loot overhaul. A progression overhaul. An exploration overhaul. A robust photo mode. Any kind of story whatsoever. It's just too much, and you're being unreasonable if you expect otherwise.

This game is a tech demo for a vastly superior title that we'll never see. There are better places to see virtual tits and vagina. This game is not worth your investment. Buy a hamburger instead.

Would i recommend this game to other players? Yes. Yes I would.

For anyone considering buying this game in order to circumvent having Origin on their system, don't bother. This title requires the Origin launcher to be installed and must be linked to an active Origin account. Origin launcher must continue running the entire time the game is open and closing origin mid-session will kill the game immediately.

I should have expected this. I've requested a refund immediately, and I recommend you save your money.