Recent reviews by Da Vinci

The devs clearly try to make this work. And to do that they actively listen and make changes. This alone is enough for me to say there's more good than bad and hence I'd rather recommend for others to check it out rather than avoid it.


Pyromaniac killed my enjoyment of this game.

If it wasn't for that boss I'd very much say this game's mixed ratings are very much what you can expect. There's good stuff in here, great even. As someone with an unfortunately high amount of hours in Warframe there're several things I found that I rather missed immediately after having also checked TFD out. The semi-open instances where you can run into people doing some form of content is rather refreshing, but unlike it was in Tower of Fantasy where I personally encountered this concept first, in this game it feels both smoother and more engaging. To give a good example, I was farming some intermediate items, and right when I was about done someone showed up who wanted to do the same. As I already was there with a character who can get more rewards out of this little mission I just asked if he wants me to stay a bit longer. So I did and it was fun randomly running into someone you can help like that.

Now, as a Korean game there's grind to be expected. And one of the primary methods of grinding can very easily be compared to Relics from WF. There are Amorphous Materials that all contain a chance to get certain items. While it actually does tell you the numbers unlike WF, from what I gather they are way lower than they are in WF. On the bright side, all of these actually have a specific way to get them, so if there is one Relic you need you can specifically farm it without having to get a lot of other random Relics you may not want or need occupy the exact same chance and place. On the other side though, most of these Relics require additional resources you must farm to open on top of that. Some can be opened via killing specific bosses, but those seem a lot more rare. So while there is a bit of QOL compared to WF, it's a grind upon a grind upon a grind. And if you're unlucky like me you get the rare 3% reward thrice without ever getting the 6% reward you actually need once. But that's just RNG in the end.


Ultimately there is fun to be had in this game. I'll dip into it more and try every now and then to best my chances, just like in WF. And I am sure I will eventually get past this brick wall that completely blocks my progression that is the Pyromaniac; either solo or with the generous help of others. But ultimately I still am in the camp where I believe that to a slight majority of people there's not gonna be much (or rather enough) fun to be had. Unfortunately we only can give a binary answer in Yes or No, so a 49% recommendation still tallies up to a No.

You couldn't just sit back and earn a bit of money while passionate community members bring back some life into an ancient entry in your long-running series, could you Activision?

There's a decent amount of fun to be had; I spent an entire morning farming up points and beating the challenges to unlock everything and I wouldn't really consider those hours wasted.

However, there are unfortunately quite a lot of aspects that show a lack of polish, particularly in regards of the UI. Beyond that there're quite a lot of questionable design decisions - such as several items and spells that are practically useless - to poor balance and bugs. A good example for that are several ways that increase a summon's attack speed: While the noted ATS value does increase, they don't actually attack any faster. An Archer with 20 ATS attacks exactly as fast as one with 50. Another notable bug is that the healing calculation for the priest seems quite off: Without an item they don't heal all that much, but with a single sword which increases their attack by 10% and hence increase the healing amount by 10% as well as they use their own ATK value to heal, it instead seems like they are healing about 500% more, turning their small heal into fully topping up even a heavily wounded soldier.

So ultimately I'd say it's a great little game to play for a couple hours.

As one might expect, I am a Battletech fan. However despite technically my first contact with the setting has been Mechwarrior 2 as a child, back then I was too young to figure out how to even get the game to run, so beyond having distinct memories of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥' Betty reading out the names of certain 'mechs for me which back then sounded really strange and funny to me, my big interest only has developed in recent years. So while this technically is not my first Mechwarrior game .. in practice it pretty much is.

In terms of story and flair between missions there isn't all that much, unfortunately. Your crew and lancemates might as well not exist outside of missions, and the story is neither groundbreaking nor presented to you in a grand way. For the most part it's just conversations happening in front of you with writing that may quickly sound like something no one would naturally say in such a situation. During missions there is some radio chatter here and there, but there, too, the story usually gets more told to you than shown. The DLCs have gotten better at it, both with more meaningful stories and more engaging presentations of them. A majority of story missions play out like regular missions with perhaps an extra step here and there, properly crafted missions that feel like the terrain has an actual purpose are more rare (but more common in the DLCs).As a whole, replayability has been pushed to the fore-front at the cost of meaningful content.

The answer to the question "is it fun to stomp through buildings and punch a tank with your 3-stories tall 100 ton heavy 'mech?" is obviously yes. And that is a stellar point of Mechwarrior 5. No matter if you try to skillfully shoot the cockpit to watch the enemy topple over lifelessly, if you literally disarm them by blowing off their arms, or chew through their centre torso to destroy the engine and watch the whole thing blow up, this game successfully makes it fun to fight in, with, and against battlemechs. Various mission types favour different types of gameplay, at times also offering alternative approaches. Unfortunately however the general tendency is heavier is better as on higher levels the amount of infinitely spawning heavy and assault lances of the enemy meaning you may need a lot more firepower and armour to get through it all. The only way around that is either gimping yourself for added challenge, aiming for combat zones that are of lower difficulty..or mods.

Personally I have played this game vanilla for quite some time, before buying my first DLC (Heroes of the Inner Sphere). The game stands well enough on its own without mods and is perfectly playable without community patches or similar mods, unlike certain other games. Ultimately however mods absolutely enhance your experience, may it be purely visual stuff like shaders, unlocked camos, something a bit less vanilla but mostly on brand like adding a couple mechs (shoutout to Classic Mech Collection which is pretty much always installed for me), or going a bit more deeper and influencing core mechanics.
And this is where Yet Another Mechlab or YAML comes into play.

YAML is a double-edged sword. On the one hand the added freedom by giving MW5 a mechlab that is more closer to MWO and..what you'd generally just expect and want, but it also heavily blurs the lines between mechs. Some minor quirks and a difference of 5 tons aside, with YAML a Rifleman and Jagermech for example can turn out extremely similar, resulting in some mechs basically just being the same one as others, just with different looks. So while this does enable you to make a mech more your own thing and even turn pretty bad mechs like the Cicada which by default uses so much tonnage on its engine that you cannot even fully max its armour without running out of spare tonnage into fun and usable machines, a lot of flair of variants and chassis may get easily lost. A great example for a mod that is technically awesome to have but that may easily decrease how much fun you end up having. Hence why most people tend to recommend doing a playthrough without YAML first and then checking it out.

Coyote's is another notable mod. While it does have some quirks that may not be to your liking, ultimately the increased variety in potential mission types adds a lot of fun. Stronghold Defense being my personal favourite added by the mod.

Overall there are a lot I could go through, and perhaps I will do so in the future in a guide or something. But the ultimate takeaway is that the game itself is fine without mods, but adding them definitely may improve your experience.

As a whole, the base game itself is serviceable. But the DLC do add various things that you may want or feel are missing from it. Legend of the Kestrel Lancers, Rise of Rasalhague, and Dragon's Gambit all add some mechs and a standalone storyline, each definitely more well crafted and presented than anything in base game. The priority and ranking of which of these is better than the others is absolutely up to personal taste, so if you had to choose only one of the three it can be tough to recommend one over the other. Heroes of the Inner Sphere adds a career more which is a more sandbox-y freeplay variant along with some other stuff. Overall people seem to agree that if you only buy one DLC, it likely ought to be this. Call to Arms is by far the weakest DLC which does little more than expanding on the then newly introduced melee system with some weapons and mech (variants). It can be nice to have, but you won't really miss out by skipping it either.

If you ever see Mechwarrior 5 on sale it is likely to be worth your money. Especially if you intend to pick up any DLCs as they do add up in cost.

My own point of view on this game is likely not that of the average player for two primary reasons: I am exclusively a PvE player and primarily play aircraft carriers. The former means there is a lot about competitive balance that simply doesn't apply to me and which hence means I am utterly unfamiliar and unqualified to talk about. The latter means that there is a notable difference in how I play the game compared to an average player, PvE or not. So you must take my thoughts with a grain of salt.

This is a slow and methodical game. Decisions you may have made 30 seconds ago could turn out to get you killed. Figuring out what is going on isn't always straight forward, but for the most part I would chalk Warships up as a game that is easy to learn but tough to master. Luckily (for me) even with a good enough understanding it's pretty fun to do a couple matches. Positioning matters greatly, especially the slower and clumsier your ship is.
Novices and fellow casuals can quickly get a feeling for how to lead your main batteries by eyeballing the distance, but learning how to properly aim and predict your shots will naturally yield much greater success and more citadel hits, etc.

As stated above, I am primarily a PvE player. Occasionally vs AI with low-tier ships, but my primary game mode is Operations which has become a major draw for me ever since they updated it to allow more ship tiers and random operations rather than a single specific one for the entire week. There are several scenarios that have several objectives that you and your team need to complete together, along with typically 4 optional objectives that offer better rewards but won't fail the mission if you don't do them. While there is some randomness in terms of spawns and what scenario you end up playing, for the most part they are generally straight forward and if you have done them once you know what to expect. The enemy ships scale with your team's average tier which also adds to two matches of the same operation back to back feeling not identical either. The good thing is that this lets you enjoy more ships with more variety. The bad thing is that certain ships may suffer greatly from facing enemies that are now higher tier than you, meaning you may have trouble pulling your weight. To me T7 ships feel like they are overall in a good spot where you're not necessarily an underdog but also can't steamroll everything thoughtlessly. Plus you maybe don't end up giving your own teammates a harder time by accident.
For the most part it may feel a bit boring when you see that you randomly got the same operation you just did twice before already a third time, but the overall package as a whole does feel worth it to me, making it a pretty great game mode to focus on; no matter if you just want to do a single run with a ship to get that +50% XP bonus or if you do one after the other, swapping between what ever feels fun or you may want to level up a bit.

As one might expect for a F2P game, this is where some of the money is made and how it's padded out to give it more longevity. The first couple of tiers are relatively quick to get through, but the higher you go the more the time required to earn enough XP or credits increases dramatically. The highest tech tree ship I have unlocked is the T8 CV Shoukaku. I could probably consider making the jump from the T7 Gneisenau to T8 Bismarck, but I am mostly happy enough with her. Beyond that there are a lot of T6 ships. Focusing on a single nation and a single ship type can help a lot to work through the tech tree, but that also means experiencing just a fraction of gameplay styles and not getting a lot of variety. Naturally this is where premium ships for real money come into play that offer several advantages: Their advancements are all included. From equipment to hull and battery upgrades, they come right out of the box as good as they can get, captain excluded. So they save you a lot of time to to reach those tiers and getting a non-gimped version of your ship. Also quite notable is the fact that these have permanent camos that increase their economic impact, and on higher tiers that can easily make the difference between making a loss due to fielding costs and actually earning some credits. The first couple of times I tried to learn how to use my then new Shoukaku for example I kept having to spend so many credits on repairing her afterwards that I actually got broke from it (and from having to buy her in the first place). In terms of actual gameplay however it seems that ignoring some outliers most paid ships seem to perform roughly on par with properly upgraded tech tier ships of the same tier, although it is notable that they may offer some more unique or special play styles. Buying a ship for gameplay hence definitely is not worth the money; only do it if the ship itself is something you have an interest in due to history or otherwise.
The other elephant in the room is premium time which for the most part is just "pay to grind faster." If you get a couple days for free or treat it as a little bonus you buy yourself for a week or so when you know you want to play this game a lot this is probably the best way to support the game monetarily if you so desire.

For the record, I have not purchased premium time myself so far, however I bought 4 premium ships: A T4 Japanese battleship that was part of a promotional offer for starting out, the T6 aircraft carrier Ark Royal as I am fond of her history, and finally roughly 2 years after having started playing this occasionally I bought myself the T8 ships Kaga and Graf Zeppelin as a birthday present with a coupon the devs hand out if you list your BD. That means in terms of pricing this more or less has added up to roughly what you'd expect paying for your average game.

From the rather pretty models of every ship to the mostly fun and engaging gameplay, I overall recommend this game. Beware the notable drawbacks that may hold the experience back for new players especially, but chances are if you like WW1/WW2-era warships and/or are a fan of more methodical gameplay, this ought to be worth giving a shot.

I'll make sure to always have a fire wyvern called Thick44 from now on.

This game has a rough history for me personally, but thanks to the magic that is called an SSD and realizing you don't actually need to download all of the DLC maps but rather just the ones you want to play on, ARK's gone up for me. My friends and I like survival games a lot and they've been playing ARK for a very long time before I joined. While there are some mods I personally simply cannot function without (such as Awesome Spyglass), the game itself is pretty quirky and entertaining.
Just like with all survival games however..adjust the rates to what works for you, folks!

Usually there would be a lot to say and talk about here, and were it not for recent events I would likely end up mostly recommending it after adding a couple disclaimers.

Now during this 2nd year anniversary however I feel the need to actually chip in by adding just one more upset voice to all the other ones:
The update accompanying this anniversary is likely one of the biggest insults to a player base I have seen in quite a while, and it all boils down to a single word (or two if you want to be fancy): Paywall.
Previously, new characters always have been released first as a money-only package, but soon after as a standalone character you can purchase with a currency you more or less gain by just playing the game. Now, however, they released Annerose, a character who not only was massively popular in recent votes and hence highly anticipated..but also the first character who is absolutely only unlockable via money.
Add in a couple other spats in the face - some more minor, some more personal as someone who has waited for Saika for what feels years now - and there is absolutely no way around this:
At the current state, this game (which otherwise has potential) cannot be recommended.

Here's a super brief revision of my old review:

Give it a try. There's more good than bad to it. I've wasted way too much time on this game and I guess ultimately it wasn't too bad of an experience doing so.

Sometimes it's fun, most of the time there's something going on that ranges from being mildly annoying to infuriatingly ridiculous.
At first I exclusively played PvE, and it was fun enough for a while. Didn't feel bad or unfair overall. But that rather changed once I got my hands on a rental premium weapon via login rewards. Suddenly everything else felt like a handicap to use. So that hurt my enjoyment of the game.
The game also can feel rather unresponsive at times, especially when it comes to switching weapons or trying to slide. Who ever thought F to slide is a good idea really needs to get hit over the head.

At some point I gave PvP a try. It wasn't too bad at first, at least in terms of balance. It was quite rare for me to run into a situation where I felt the only reason I died was because my enemy has some kind of golden premium gun. The major issue was the absolutely atrocious servers that cause a massive amount of rubberbanding. When ever there's a ledge or a little obstacle in the way..prepare to randomly get teleported back right in front of it. A lot.
But then I reached lvl 20, and then the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ started. Suddenly everything felt like garbage, partially due to the connection, but mostly thanks to people who invested 20 bucks and more to gain a permanent premium weapon with which they just casually one-hit anything with a headshot while sliding past you. Add armour that adds a rather big advantage and your firefights turn into a highly inconsistent mess.

Another issue that almost killed the game for me in itself is the unlocks. The system itself isn't all that bad, having a big pool of various rarities that you unlock in a semi-random manner is quite neat. What's not neat is the massive grind involved. Lower rarities can get unlocked with less than 5 matches played, some even just require a single one. But that rapidly changes; 3 matches for an unlock turn into 20+, likely even more later on when you have to grind through the ultra rare items.

Bottom line, I hardly can recommend this game to anyone. It's infuriating and quickly stops feeling rewarding.
I'll probably play it every now and then anyway, but truth be told, it's mostly due to the lack of motivation to play something that's actually good and worth my time.
It's weird how that works, isn't it.

I absolutely hate this game. Can't stand it to the core. So many things I find bothersome, so many things that drain all the fun for me when playing it. But to be fair, I never really liked fighting games, so it's not really a surprise that I don't like this one either.

Why do I recommend it anyway? Because I can see past all the aspects that made this a horrible experience for me, making me able to acknowledge that it's just my own preferences and not necessarily the game itself that is garbage.

To give an example for this: The style. It's a title oozing with it, giving everyone quite a lot of personality by design and looks alone. But for me there is a massive abundance of it which makes the gameplay needlessly more difficult because of it. After all, I want to be able to read and predict what is going on, but because of the style with so many things happening, it often is extremely hard to see where some projectiles are being shot or when they will hit. I'm sure with enough time and practice this will get easier, but I'm just a casual, I tend to spend more time on playing a game than trying to improve in it.
There is one thing I have a pretty legitimate critique about though: And that's the story. To be fair, I did not make it through many of the stories before I gave up on the game, but the ones I have seen were only servicable to pretty bad. They are too short to build up any kind of interest in what is going on, and they most of the time seem to do a pretty bad job at even explaining what's happening. And the worst offender of them all is one having literally no story to it whatsoever, just giving a brief intro picture of the character sleeping, meaning that the story is all just a dream. But then there is nothing going on, just one battle after the other without any context. That felt almost insulting. Maybe the good stories are hidden in the other ones, maybe you need to finish all of them to actually get any sort of sense out of them, but if what I have experienced is the essence of the entire story mode, then I am honestly surprised why so many people seem to praise this game so highly.
It may seem a bit like this game is not as good as the almost perfect reveiws make it look like. But even while I can't stand it and find no joy in this, I can't deny that it has some appealing substance to it. Just not appealing for me.