Recent reviews by Deathtopia

My first impressions after messing around in the tutorial are that the gameplay is fun, but the game is not very polished. Some bugs and shortcomings I noticed immediately:

BGM randomly switching tracks while exploring the map.
Audio cutting out and resuming randomly after defeating a wave of enemies.
Framerate of enemy animations plummets when many of them are visible simultaneously.
Voice lines cutting out mid dialogue.
There is no ultrawide support (dealbreaker).
The keyboard controls are terrible, so I recommend to play with controller.

I would probably enjoy this game if these bugs were ironed out, because the character designs and early world building really appealed to me. I enjoyed the combat which felt like it had a good balance of speed and complexity. At the moment I wouldn't recommend getting the game, because you launch straight into bug city (pun intended). I'll pick up the game again when they fix this stuff and add ultrawide support, because at the moment this doesn't feel like a £55 experience.

I can't praise this expansion enough. It's almost perfect, and it feels more like an entirely new game than a DLC.

So far, I've been loving all the new weapons, they have fun and varied movesets with my favourite being the light greatsword. I only wish that the new weapons were better distributed amongst the new weapon "categories", as some received several new weapons while others consist of only a single new weapon. Thankfully, there are many new Ashes of War to compensate for this.

The game is difficult, but refreshingly so. The scaling difficulty mechanic is fun as it prompts exploration in order to power up, mirroring the lessons learned in the base game (but which 40% of initial Steam reviewers seemingly forgot).

Something I have been convinced of upon playing this expansion is that the creative staff at FromSoftware must be some sort of gaming wizards with how much expertise they are pouring into the level design, despite Elden Ring being their first and only open world game project to date. Exploration in Shadow of the Erdtree feels much more rewarding than in the base game, which was already set at a high bar. There are secrets and sneaky paths hidden in every corner of the map, and the layout of the world prompts genuine curiosity as you constantly spot interesting landmarks in the distance, while navigating the three distinct layers of the map. The level design in the legacy dungeons is phenomenal, and it really reminded me of some of the more memorable locations in Dark Souls 3. Amazingly, they also managed to sneak in some unexpected Dark Souls 3 fanservice (IYKYK). In spite of all this praise, some regions are (still) unfortunately underpopulated, a weakness carried over from the base game. I can certainly appreciate stunning art direction and beautiful vistas, but it feels a bit wasteful to invest so many resources in creating something which is all but empty from a gameplay perspective (Cerulean Coast I am looking at you).

The bosses in this expansion have been amazing, because they've had unique and challenging attack patterns which forced me to change my approach and develop new, original strategies from my own experimentation in order to beat them. It feels cathartic when you defeat a boss by relying solely and entirely on your own skill and wisdom. Messmer, and especially the Final Boss, are DEFINITELY my new favourite bosses in the series, even surpassing Gael from Dark Souls 3. The Final Boss fight was just so phenomenal on so many levels, perfectly balancing difficulty, spectacle, and sound track to deliver an unforgettable climax to this incredible expansion.

In summary: game is harder than expected, map is way bigger than we were promised, loads of cool bosses, combat is vastly expanded through new weapons and skills, fun and mysterious main adventure, feels like playing a brand new game again.

In its entirety, Elden Ring is hands down the best game I have ever played in my life.

even though its mostly rng, its fun to play strategically and find funny ways to screw over your opponents :D

Tekken 8 is really fun, even for a noob like me. Lots of innovative features to help new players improve and have fun. Over the top animations are insane, and make every fight cinematic af + soundtrack goes hard. Pretty much improved from Tekken 7 in every aspect I care about. Battle passes and FOMO are always stupid additions to games, but it doesn't bother me because it's out of the way and mostly just worthless cosmetics. However, I don't agree with having to pay to lab against DLC characters.

Fun and addictive. Great with friends. I only wish that Gearbox would update the game more often with new survivors, as I feel this would prevent the gameplay loop from getting stale too quickly.

Really fun and well made observation game, with a good level of difficulty that was not tedious. The anomalies are very creative and it was fun to find all of them. The mouse and keyboard controls did not work well for me, but it was fine playing on controller. The graphics and sound are very immersive. For what you're getting at this low price I would recommend this game to everyone.

I don't even play this game any more but removing trading is stupid. The game will die overnight.

AC6 is a unique and fun mech action shooter made by my favourite game developer. It has one of the best soundtracks and some of the best set pieces of any game I've ever played, which combined lead to some genuinely euphoric moments. The boss fights are fast paced and memorable, but they don't give me the same thrill as when I almost (or successfully) defeat a boss hitless in Elden Ring or Dark Souls.

The weapon balance feels a bit all over the place but ultimately this depends on your playstyle. I wish there were more weapons that I found fun to use. The difficulty felt very fair and similar to other FromSoftware games.

The English voice acting could have been better in my opinion, which is a shame because it's the only way I can realistically understand all the conversations during intense moments where it's hard to focus on the subtitles. The Japanese voice acting felt much more emphatic and nuanced. Between this and the significantly larger Japanese VA cast, you can tell that more effort was put into this version.

The short, objective-based missions lead to a world that relies a lot more on its visual identity to make itself memorable, which unfortunately is not this game's strong suit. In Elden Ring, Sekiro, and Dark Souls, I found it easier to memorise the layouts of all the areas due to how much more time I spent in them. It helped that I often revisited the same areas across playthroughs in order to collect important items like weapons and upgrade materials. In AC6, you are (usually) rewarded with more money and a higher mission rank the faster you complete a given mission, and this is not tied to how you physically navigate a particular mission stage. Only a handful of missions contain hidden items, but these serve as a one-off and often underwhelming reward for exploration, as subsequent visits to the same location yield absolutely nothing.

Overall, a truly excellent game with an amazing gameplay loop but which also has plenty of room for improvement. FromSoftware is committed to releasing sequels for this rebooted franchise, which I look forward to.

I hate horror games. I don't like scary stuff, and I get frightened easily. This game is definitely scary when you play alone, but the more you learn about the game the less you have to fear. I quickly realised that this is more of a puzzle/strategy game, and while it does have jumpscares, this game uses an extremely stereotypical definition of horror which means that there is actually very little explicit horror content. When playing with friends, it stops being scary and just turns into a hilarious wild goose chase. I hope they add some much needed UX improvements with the upcoming progression update, but aside from this I have no other complaints. The mechanics are extremely complex and well implemented. Well worth the price.

This is probably one of the best games on Steam. It puts to shame the unfinished disasters that AAA studios continue to push out in their pursuit for profit. For a game developed by a small indie studio, it is brimming with character, polished mechanics, and beautiful environments. The gameplay loop is excellent, and the four classes are balanced in a way that truly encourages teamwork and co-operation in a way that I have not seen many other games achieve. I came back to DRG after a hiatus to discover a plethora of new content that completely transformed the game and made it more engaging than ever.