Wish this game had auto-advanced dialogue in all cutscenes. Initially, you think it does, but after the first 2 hours, a lot of dialogue needs you to constantly press x to advance.

One thing I do like is that in the skill menu, you can tag 1 skill per character in your party and the game will notify you when you have enough skill points to purchase the skill.

Though, I'm not a fan of the game's lock-on mechanic. I played on manual. It uses an automatic hard lock-on that allows you to switch between targets except you can't turn off the lock-on and your character doesn't face the enemy that is locked on so it is very normal in this sense to attack and miss because your camera isn't always following the locked-on target as one would expect. However, it mostly works out because it's clear that the game doesn't want you to always move around during combat. In that case, doing combos and landing attacks works better because a lot of moves have gap closers. There is still the big annoyance of the fact that the camera doesn't follow the enemy that's locked on nor will it automatically change to the nearest enemy unless you press the lock-on button again.

Combos are handled in a manner where the game encourages you to not just spam the base three-hit combo nor should you spam the same power moves, aka artes. Instead, you want to mix them up because if you spam your base combo, your character stops moving for a full second after it ends and if you spam the artes within a four-combo string, they will do less damage to the enemy and have reduced stagger ability. On top of that, you have the burning sword which allows you to do special moves that deal more damage than a typical arte but at the cost of health instead of AG.

I was not a fan of the balseph boss. Readability is an issue due to the amount of bullshit effects that he does that obscures the screen.

Ganabelt is a tough boss, a very tough boss. I died 5 times back to back against him. The fight has the same issue as Balseph with too many effects happening on the screen at once. Ganabelt uses a lot of projectiles with particle effects and the game also specifically wants you to use boost attacks frequently to break his shield, this leads to a messy mirage of blue, red, & green lights all blocking the screen at once. Far too much visual noise in the game in general. It is disheartening in games like this where you can do 6 back-to-back super moves on a boss and you barely remove 1000 health in his 24000 health bar. This type of game design is not something that I like at all.

It's also from this point onward that I realized that every major humanoid boss will enter their super mode where they can't be stunned and they can spam astral artes once you reduce their health down to 50%, and many of them will typically take 10 - 15 seconds to charge their ultimate move in which they're stationary and you're allowed to do a bunch of free hits on them but you can't interrupt the ultimate move. Ultimate moves typically cover a large portion of the battlefield with a huge damage area of effect attack. The issue with this is that while you can't interrupt them, they can certainly interrupt you because these ultimate moves always play an unskippable cutscene. There are quite a few moves (boost strikes and mystic artes) in this game that have unskippable cutscenes mid-combat that have pros and cons. The big pro with them is that they typically do a good amount of damage, the bad news is that they interrupt whatever the party is doing and reposition the enemy. If you or an AI party member is doing a high damage attack, charging up an arte, trying to heal, or mid-combo, the cutscene will play and completely stop that, and once the cutscene is over, it will move the enemy away and reposition the camera too. The fortunate thing is that it also resets the enemy's movement so you can get breathing room if a group of enemies or a boss is kicking ass. It's shit though if you're doing really well and you have to be forced to stop because an AI party member did a mystic arte. Fortunately, you can disable those artes from AI usage like you can disable just about every other arte in the game. It's just typically beneficial to enable them because of damage and usefulness.

Most side quests are broken up into kill all enemies, fetch items, or heal people quests. They're not spectacular, however, I love the fact that you can complete some side quest objectives before you even meet the quest giver. So if a dragon is terrorizing an area and you encounter the dragon and kill it or if you went to an underground cavern and killed a powerful zeugel - then later on stumble on the quest giver and they ask you to kill a dragon in the field or kill a zeugel because merchants want to use an underground tunnel for quick travel, your party members will tell the quest giver that you already killed the dragon or zeugles in the underground area. Too bad main quests aren't like this, they're more linear and their quest items and objectives won't even appear until you progress in the story. For such a long game, there isn't much enemy variety. I understand this because each party members boost attack directly counters or interrupts a specific enemy type but you quickly realize that you're fighting the exact same enemy over and over and it eventually got annoying. It's not the worst implementation of low enemy variety but directly coming from Kingdom Hearts 1.5, it was a surprise.

Overall though, the game world design and quest structure are very linear - not in the shimmy through tight corners like FF7 remake linear - but in the quest objectives only have one way to complete them and only one area you can through. In the manner that even though the main plot of the game is to kill 5 Renan lords and liberate 5 realms of the Dahna homeworld - you will only do it in the exact order that is outlined in the game. Even within the main quests, you will be obstructed by invisible walls for areas that the game doesn't want you to go to yet.

However, I do like the progression systems in this game. They're divided into levels, skills, and arte proficiency.

You have levels that you progress through by gaining xp which increases your 6 stats. XP is only gained in battle.

Each party member has their skills divided into multiple skill trees. Most skill trees are unlocked by completing objectives like cooking x meals, saving x NPCs, finding x owls, creating x weapons, destroying armor with your arte x times, etc., and individual skills are unlocked by using skill points. Skill points (SP) are gained by winning in combat and completing quests. So they're separate from just leveling up. Then you have your arte proficiencies which is where you increase the efficiency of your activated skills by using them more in combat. The only downside is that you won't unlock certain skill trees till you progress deep into the main story because certain side quests, NPCs, recipes, owls, etc. aren't encountered until then and this is a very linear game.

Then after that, you have combat points and the battle chain bonus. After every combat encounter, you are graded based on how quickly you killed your enemy, what moves you used, whether your party was knocked out, etc. You gain XP and SP, then you get a multiplier bonus to XP & SP if you did well and you get none if you did bad such as winning but having all party members knocked out. What the battle chain bonus does is give you even more bonuses and a greater item drop chance on top of the previously mentioned bonus if you keep on doing well in many combat encounters within a short period. I'm surprised more JRPGs don't have this mechanic because it ridiculously alleviates how long one spends grinding if they choose to do so while also giving an even greater incentive to continue combat. It only sucks that the battle chain isn't unlocked as a mechanic until you reach the 3rd realm of the game. Overall, leveling up and upgrading skills is very slow in this game. You will still gain just enough XP & SP to be roughly the same level as the major boss of the main area/dungeon. Outside of that, even defeating 20+ enemies that are each 20 levels higher than your party won't net you 1 level up. All of this level pacing gets thrown off within the end game. Right about that point you'll unlock side quests that will give up to double XP. Those quests have some of the hardest boss fights in the end game and you'll likely lose them if you aren't on the same level as the boss and if you lack healing items. By that point, all that's left is to beat the game. When you get into the post-game content, however, this game has a good amount of it. You can now fight against all the previous major boss fights except this time they're all buffed to the max level of 99. There are 6 new dungeons in alternate worlds and four new real boss fights in this, the other two are rehashes of bosses in the base game. It is important that I point out that leveling went through the roof in post-game. Within 4 hours, I was able to get 30 levels in the post-game. That's more gains just in the post-game with no farming, just fighting through each area once and their boss. It's a bit ridiculous because this pacing would've been significantly more rewarding for the preceding 100 hours. On top of that, you unlock the "devil arms" for defeating each of the bosses of this area with one caveat. 5/6 of these weapons have worse stats than the next best weapons in the game, but devil arms can be upgraded to 9999 attack, elemental attack, & penetration. They increase in all these values for every enemy you kill. I didn't waste time doing this because by this point I had already beaten every boss in the game and had no interest in farming low-level enemies to increase damage. My only thought from there is, why not introduce devil arms at an early or midpoint of the game? From there, you'd have more incentive to try using a weapon that starts with lower stats but can eventually become one of the best weapons in the game, instead of getting it after you already beat the game. On top of that, there's a new game+ with many difficulty modes. I haven't tried the hardest difficulty mode, just hope it isn't BS with giving bullet sponge enemies even more health.

Even as a party-based action RPG they've been able to severely minimize how much micromanagement you have over your party by giving you a heap of options. You can play the game manually, semi-auto where you don't need to control your movement in combat, or auto where the game plays out combat for your main character and party without your inputs. You can switch to any of your party members mid-combat and take control of them or you can leave them to act on their own. The upside of not controlling your party members is that they have access to all their active skills/artes and can use them as they please, if you control them you only have access to six ground-activated artes and six activated air artes. The AI is good enough to control your other party members good enough to fight on their own if set to manual, however, when set to auto with AI controlling the entire party there are things that aren't good enough. For one, I realized that the AI won't use dodge counterattacks, counter edge, boost attacks, or a boost strike which is weird as fuck. I understand why you wouldn't want AI doing boost attacks because they're more situational and take a while to regenerate, but the player would always want to use a boost strike on normal enemies to instant kill them and always want to do counterattacks and counteredge due to the fact that they instantly cross the battlefield to the enemy and have huge invincibility frames.

They go even further by giving you a strategy menu where you can detail exactly how you want your computer-controlled party to fight with tactics such as "use the skill "steel" once when encountering an enemy that is at least 1 level higher" or "use an ailment removing arte on anyone affected with an ailment while having 25% or more CP". It's great and I'm surprised more of these non-turn-based party-based RPGs don't have this. Dragon Age: Origins did but I wished the FF7 remake had this.

However, the game starts to spoil itself later on after the fourth major region by having a lot of combat encounters back to back. The hitboxes and button presses in this game are imprecise at times, and once you lose Shionne you lose your best healer. Dohalim isn't as good of a healer as Shionne because the game's AI wants him to engage in combat more frequently than her, even if you set the strategy to focus on healing.

Even earlier than that, after the 3rd major region, the game massively inflates the health of every single enemy. Combat now becomes extremely tedious because you need to mash a large series of buttons constantly to take down enemies that don't necessarily require better tactics than what you had in the early portion. It makes combat incredibly tiring and especially annoying. Seriously, you'll fight bosses with 150,000 - 200,000 health where your regular attacks do 90 - 150 damage and they can do 1000 - 2000 damage to your meager 2800 health bar with one hit. Far too many damage sponges as the game progresses.

This is a good time to start discussing healing and the CP system. Healing through artes/spells/skills in this game is done with a shared pool called CP. CP is also consumed by non-combat optional things like breaking scripted boulders, ice, magic barriers, and/or healing people. The only way you can heal without using CP is either sleeping in an inn, or camp, using restorative items that you buy or find in the world - though there are a few of them, and healing in a magic light right before major boss fights. This sort of healing makes you have to constantly consider how much you want to heal because you have a limit to how many healing items you can hold at a specific time. It becomes significantly more punishing mid-game because of the lengthy dungeons with no camps/inns, very few healing item drops that aren't locked behind a CP-required interaction event, and the large number of damage sponge enemies you have to fight. While you can fast travel out of dungeons and fast travel into certain floors of dungeons, doing so will respawn every enemy. This creates a weird loop where you must be fairly prepared before going into one of the major dungeons, you'll kill many enemies and eventually fight 1 or 2 major bosses and a few minibosses, get good item loot, but you can't forge those better weapons and buy the better armor unless you leave mid-dungeon so you're strong enough to fight the bosses. Without doing so, those bosses are an annoying affair with huge hitboxes and massive health bars. So you're heavily incentivized to beat every major side monster boss because they will expand your CP.

As for money, I think the game does a fine job with the economy. You have things you should be buying because forging weapons costs gold, creating accessories costs gold, and buying items costs gold. You have to forge all the weapons in the game since there are no weapon drops. While there are few pieces of armor you can find in the world, most of the armor you wear has to be bought. Same for restorative items. If you don't farm, early - mid-game you'll have to somewhat spend time worrying about not having the absolute best gear because you likely don't have enough gold or you haven't encountered the enemies that drop the necessary crafting items for better weapons. Mid-late game, however, you'll typically have more than enough gold to buy all you need because the lengthy dungeons have huge stashes of gold and items to sell.

So far my biggest gripes with the overall story is how it treats its setting, side characters, and pacing. As I progressed, I realized that each subsequent realm in the game engages in some form of oppressive government between the renans and the Dhanans.

The first realm was a slave state where the renan lord was cruel and harsh and ruled over every dhanan with an iron fist and kept them in chains. The second realm was more of a police state with a Gestapo in which the Dhanans feared for their lives and snitched on their fellow countrymen for food and safety but the dictator restricted them from owning things and letting his Gestapo run the place arresting and torturing people. The third has a benevolent Renan ruler that liberated the dhanans from slavery and gave them equal treatment and position within his realm 7 years prior. Due to that, the Dhanans don't want to leave the realm nor do they want to support a major rebellion. The fourth realm's rebellion was led by a successful dictator who sacrificed his people to drive out their old lord, but he ruled with an iron fist. The big issue with all of this is that all these ideas aren't explored in-depth and just feel very surface-level because we don't spend too much time within all these areas - just about 5 or 6 hours total - and all the side quests are very simple as previously mentioned and don't aid in large scale worldbuilding or characterization. Each of these realms could be its own game or could be vastly longer, but by the time you follow the main quest and kill the lord of the realm, the only reason you need to go back is typically one side quest that's about the aftermath of liberating that specific realm because the story is urging you to move forward > kill lord > and immediately go to the next region. There should be more engaging side content revolving around the setting because the premise in itself is interesting to require that. Insofar as dialogue and character interactions are concerned, there are 300 skits in this game which are pretty much companion cutscenes where they discuss and comment on the other characters, events, locations, politics, and their feelings toward what's happening within the story. It's great because you get to know more about what your party thinks and it provides large amounts of exposition. Just think this sort of thing would be better if it was done in a side quest or in a more environmental manner from the other characters within the story than short stilted cutscenes from your party.

Ultimately, the game was vastly longer than I expected. I ended at a little over 100+ hours which I didn't expect. I am not a fan of the latter third of the story with all the alien, conspiracy, and friendship nonsense that the game devolved into. It was almost a very expected result according to the battle shonen I've played. I don't know why they didn't just spend more time giving the previous main plot of slavery, Dahna, and Rena depth instead of the whole great spirit manipulating aliens manipulating humans thing. By the end game the game dumps a lot of exposition through many cutscenes and hallway > loading screen dungeons while having a very lame villain in Vholran. I didn't talk about accessories because I don't think there's much to talk about. It's the only real way to build your party that doesn't always have one good choice. It will make you properly strong in the endgame once you start finding 5* ores to create accessories. I ended up enjoying my time with the game.

Took about 8 hours on normal. I bounced on and off at the beginning of this game but came back nearly a year later in Act 3 and the game clicked.

There is something within the dialogue, the bombastic characters, and the over-the-top manner in which weapons and kills occur that strongly clicked with me and I just played the game straight and beat it in a day after that point. It's in the same vein as Borderlands, broforce, gears of war, and a few other macho shooters except it isn't as silly as the former in terms of trying to be a comedy and it doesn't take itself as seriously as the latter.

It's called Bulletstorm because most of the fun in this game is based on all the "creative" ways you can kill enemies with your weapon + environment + leash combos. Its entire combat is predicated on this which is why it's a bit weak in the beginning when you only have the pistol + assault rifle which are the most boring weapons in the game. By Act 3 when you've unlocked most of the other weapons in the game you generally have many fun weapons that have different alternative firing modes that allow you to constantly pick off, crush, explode, and impale enemies with their type of ammo, or into the various environmental hazards. The names of the 130+ executions popping on the screen, the sound + visual effects, and the goofy & aggressiveness of the enemies lend themselves to me laughing through a lot of this game from that point on. The game has a cool sliding mechanic that allows you to slide at any point, it's a bit faster than sprinting and it kicks enemies into the air. The leash is the other central mechanic that allows you to pull enemies and certain objects toward the player and suspend them midair in slow motion.

However, there are a few things that nagged me. This is a linear FPS which was common in the 7th gen of gaming. That means you can't jump at all, and your protagonist has slower movement that ends up with him getting stuck into environments at times. You have permanent companions throughout the entire game, but they don't do as much damage as I expected. I hate this sort of thing in games where you have companions but they are less than useful.
The other thing that stuck out like a sore thumb was the fact that you have all these cool weapons yet you can only equip three at once, and when you go to the store and buy ammo for an unequipped weapon, it will unequip one of your current weapons and equips that weapon. It was odd, but this seemed to be a no-brainer for the devs because upon beating the game, you unlock overkill mode which allows you to equip all weapons at once and further allows you to have unlimited ammo for each weapon as long as you've completed all their skill shots. This is the preferred way to play the game for me, it's not a difficult game and it's not the type of game where I would enjoy losing a lot of health and constantly hiding to regenerate.

There's a cutscene bug at the beginning of Act 7 involving a story revelation that still isn't fixed.

Finally, the game ends on a surprise sequel bait cliffhanger, but the game never got a sequel and will likely never get one. Overall, it was a fun time. It is good shooting fun.

Classic difficulty, no scaling, turn-based mode, monk with no subclass. Regretting playing in turn-based mode in the early game, combat doesn't start becoming interesting till you have a part of 3 - 4 and you're level 4. Ideally, you should be able to flip-flop between RTwP & turn-based, even if the game has to reload because it only affects combat.

Monk class active abilities: Mortification of the soul, raised torment, stunning surge, swift fury, turning & iron wheel, skyward kick, the long pain, the dichotomous soul, launching kick, resonant touch, inner death & whispers of the wind. The most useful ones ended up being mortification of the soul, stunning surge, launching kick, skyward kick, resonant touch, & whispers of the wind.
The monk has two resources used for abilities, one that doesn't replenish in combat and another that fills as the monk takes damage. Mortification of the soul damages the monk and doing so fills the latter resource, but it costs 0 of the former resource. The damage it does is low enough that it's easily manageable, because of this, the monk can effectively use most of his active skills in combat without running out of resources. On top of that having resonant touch applies a passive bonus where the monk can activate resonance touch and every enemy that the monk has hit in combat takes a bunch of damage based on how many times they've been hit by the monk. Whispers of the wind is pretty much a flash move where the monk jumps from each enemy and hits all of them numerous times, in most combat encounters this means that the monk will clear the entire screen and damage everyone. You can easily spam this move each turn by just using mortification for a very small health loss for a big AOE move. For the enemies that don't die easily because they have huge health or armor, they're hit a lot which means they have a huge resonance score which means activating resonance touch leads to them taking huge damage.

In turn-based mode, knockdown & stun attacks are incredibly useful because they stack and make the enemy lose 1 or more turns. This is incredibly useful against enemies that can't be interrupted when they start casting a spell because they can still be knocked down. This is where launching kick and skyward kick are super useful, the former can cross the entire screen and will knock down all enemies in its path, and the latter can knock down any enemy I used it against that wasn't too high level.

By level 18 - max level, the monk is so OP that I can break through a lot of the game's combat fairly easily in turn-based mode. It was really fun and she was the big damage dealer and tank at the same time.


I wish the game allowed you to level up your party members when you're in the overworld, or when you're on your ship. It seems like a bizarre oversight. Would also be great to have auto-play for dialogue.

I do wish the game controlled better at times. I dislike the fact that they used the entire touchpad only for tutorials. This is a waste because tutorials only pop up whenever you encounter some new mechanic or system for the first time. Why not map the damn map or inventory to the touchpad? As it is now, you have to fucking go to the game wheel every time to bring either up.

Some good things out of the gate: There is a "fast" mode outside of combat that seems to double or triple game speed. There's a max of 1.8x game speed and a minimum of .5x speed choices in combat which means combat typically doesn't drag on with you watching slow animations. That's great.

I like the fact that you have an unlimited inventory and that you have area loot where you only have to click once to loot a pile of corpses. Though I wish there was an option to put loot within trash or favorite it.

Also, you can respec your skills & powers but can't respec attributes and class. It's good that you can do this in any tavern, it kind of sucks that the base traits can't be changed.

Most of the time your companion's skills can directly impact dialogue & scripted skill checks, or contribute to your skill stat for those skill checks. God, why don't more party RPGs do this? However, one baffling choice was the various scripted choices found on many of the islands where the game automatically uses your party member with the lowest attribute for that specific stat check. I don't think this is ever explicitly mentioned in the game, it's something I realized after save-scumming specific scripted encounters and noticed that the game constantly "failed" the stat check by checking the same companions even though I had others that had high enough attributes for the check.

On the bad side, the game still has many technical issues. 45 hours in, I had two crashes on PS5. Went up to 5 crashes 55 hours in. 40 crashes 100+ hours in. There are random freezes mid-game, though this is infrequent. There are times when the game will shuffle the order of save files so the latest save file isn't at the top. Many times you can't select any option in the menu wheel until you reload the game. When you enter sneak mode, and then leave, your character can't run anymore until you enter and leave sneak mode again. When you have too many buffs and debuffs on a character, it will block your options within the action bar during combat. There are areas in the game where enemies are invincible because they can't be targeted while they constantly attack the player. Outside of combat, when you switch to using the cursor, it locks onto a door and won't let you select the ground to move your party.
One huge issue in turn-based combat is the fog of war implementation. If combat is started in an area, all enemies are immediately aggroed, even those far outside the vicinity and those still in the fog of war. So what ends up happening is that the game will shuffle through every single enemy in the list and many times the enemies don't move, they're just invisible behind the fog of war and you end up waiting 30 seconds till their turn ends before you can do anything. I'd recommend playing the PC version because it likely has fewer technical issues than whatever this porting studio did.

In general, this game sits in a place where it really isn't too hardcore but not too simple either. You still have to rest to gain back many of your skills and heal your injuries, but you don't have too much restriction where your health automatically regens to max outside combat.

One thing that annoys me about certain isometric RPGs is when their mechanics don't consider the terrain or positioning. I'm in Engwithan Digsite and have a perfect opportunity to ambush a bunch of monsters while having the vantage point of being above them. The thing is that this game isn't one of those games where you can always attack enemies if you're a floor above or below them, many times you have to move to their level on the battlefield. It ruined my tactic of using Eder to just shoot the monsters with a bow and arrow because pressing attack forces him to move close to their position before he resumes the action. So it is fairly inconsistent in that manner.

Companion pathfinding still isn't great after. One of your companions can detect a trap yet the rest of them will still walk into the trap afterward. I swear there was a game that figured this out.

Turn-based combat again. A lot of times, the cursor will tell you that your party member can move in a certain direction, just for you to try moving there, then you can't because another party member is in your way, and all your movement points are wasted and your party member is forced to walk back to their original position.

As for the pirate motif, I quite enjoyed it. Not like there are many pirate/colonial period-based RPGs in the first place. There are a few ships you can purchase in the game, and they're all available for purchase after you get your ship. One of the more mixed things stated about this game is the text-based turn-based ship combat, it can seem complex because it has a different combat system than your typical party combat, however, I didn't think it was that bad. I do think it becomes too formulaic after a certain point. Once I learned that you just need to turn, fire cannons, and repeat this, ship combat became a bit braindead. It was smart that you could board ships from the get-go, intimidate, or flee with percentage chances but I think being able to just board a ship almost anytime when you're losing is a bit cheap because the enemies on ships tend to be weaker than what you typically encounter on the different islands and quests.
Combine this with the very large amount of bounty quests in this game, there are about two dozen, and you get a bit tired of "go here kill x person" quests.

The game has three major expansions, each focusing on a separate god and each has one of the sidekicks as a focus which is good on paper because the sidekicks are the companions with the least characterization, dialogue, and story presence in the base game. Beast of Winter focuses on rymrgand. Seeker, Slayer, Survivor focuses on Galawain. Forgotten Sanctum is based on Wael. Beast of Winter and Forgotten Sanctums are dungeon crawls while Seeker is mostly a series of repeatable combat arenas. I played all these when I reached the max level of 20 which was past the recommended level for each of them, but this didn't seem to be a big deal for Forgotten Sanctum because that expansion has the most difficult boss amongst the three expansions.
Beast of Winter felt like the story didn't go anywhere which was odd. We start with this weird cult of Rymrgand but most characters in there don't have much to say, only less than a handful have real dialogue and half of them are only focused on their small side quests. It just seems like the dialogue is inconsequential, the new godlike companion just reveals to us that he's a fraud who was never really in contact with his god and he fears the dragon that comes around killing their followers. They're a death cult waiting to die but this is less interesting by this point because there game has so many other gods that are more or less death cults in the form of Berath - who we work for - and Eothas - who is the main antagonist. After that, we fight a fairly easy dragon fight and then we're told by Rymrgand to kill the dragon because the dragon has found a way to make itself immortal and rymrgand can't kill it. The interesting content of this expansion comes after this when we enter the beyond and we experience three important parts of Pillars of Eternity lore with the death of Saint Waidwen, the partial fall of Ukaizo, and some of Engwith. You don't have to do this, but completing them allows you to bring in up to three spirit companions that can weaken the dragon boss. It's great content and not intensively combat-focused if you care about Pillars lore and by this point, I was interested in it. Afterward, it led to a boss fight with the dragon that was lackluster to me. The dragon has a big health bar but doesn't deal too much damage and gets knocked out easily against the monk's skyward kick. After beating we just go meet Rymrgand he doesn't thank nor reward us and tries to force us to join his covenant which doesn't have any real consequence throughout the game. I ended up fighting his avatar and winning but the consequences are still the same. Going back to the cult village all of them are still there and our godlike companion just tells them all to keep following their faith.

Seeker I have less to say. There are over a dozen combat arena fights but at this point, they were all far too easy and they rehash enemies we've fought throughout the base game. Seeker also abuses something quite terrible within turn-based mode and that's having numerous enemy waves that spawn mid-combat and ruin the turn order mid-turn. At least the final boss of the DLC was quite a challenge.

Forgotten Sanctum is a much bigger dungeon crawl than the rest and takes place in one underground hall. I quite liked all the Vistas, it has more involved quests than the other DLCs, and on top of that, this DLC is more intimately connected to the other characters and quests in the base game, specifically the archmages, and Eothas because it allows you to have a different major ending. In terms of combat, this one has the most difficult final boss of the three DLC. The other combat encounters are more annoying though.

As for the mega battles, I dislike their length. There are 5 of them, all optional though one is optional depending on the story choices you make since it is the final boss of the game. The other four have higher levels than the max player level of 20 and all have incredibly high armor & defense, but each will drop a mythic gem that can upgrade items past legendary. Since there are only 4 gems you can get at max then you can only upgrade 4 items past legendary. I ended up fighting three of them. The first one I beat was sigilmaster auranic.

This boss is overall designed poorly. She has a bit lower defenses than the others but her combat room has 5 obelisks. Every few turns she will activate one of the obelisks and they come with an effect that applies to your entire party regardless of where they are in the arena. My issue with this fight is that it bends many of the rules we come to expect throughout the game. I died against her once so I restarted the fight and rested prior with some high-level food. I ended up approaching the fight by cornering her and constantly using skyward kicks and mule kicks. This is important because both abilities knock her down which means she skips a turn which means she can't cast her spells nor activate the obelisk. I ended up beating her down to 0 health doing this, then the problem hit me. She doesn't die with 0 health, the game won't let her do so. So while she's knocked down with zero health, the game will make her stand up, activate all the obelisks at once, and then immediately kill her. What a crock of bullshit. You can't win this fight by defeating her using an intelligent tactic, the game will force you to do otherwise and force you to fight all the obelisks which spam unblockable moves that will hit all party members regardless of where they are in the arena.

Next was the crystal spider, like Aurania this is also an endurance fight that lasts over an hour. The spider has very high armor and defenses and 8 smaller spiders spawn frequently. Killing the smaller spiders reduces the defenses of the big crystal spider. Even at max level the crystal spider still has defenses that make it borderline impossible to land a hit. Just like the other mega bosses, it has attacks that do multiple hits to one character in a single turn which all the other enemies don't have. In any case, this one is easier because the small spiders do little damage and die easily. However, to bring down the defenses of the crystal spider to an appreciable point, you have to kill 80 - 120 small spiders. Yes, it's that tedious in the turn-based mode because the fight now becomes extremely long and boring.

The final mega-boss I fought was the guardian of Ukaizo. This one is more interesting because it exists within the story proper. The gods warn you that the guardian guards Ukaizo and will kill anyone who tries going there, and Ukaizo is the final location of the game. This fight was also long and the boss had numerous immunities. As it goes down from healthy > hurt > bloodied > near death, it will summon other tough enemies to aid it in combat. This one had the stronger minions of all the final bosses because of the titans and powerful mages it brought. It's also a three-headed mecha dragon which means its design is cooler than the other megabosses. Unfortunately, there is no good reward for fighting this boss in terms of loot. Eothas will mention that you defeated the guardian after the fact but that's just one sentence of dialogue. Due to that, this is the real final boss of the game, but apparently, I only fought it because I decided to go to Ukaizo without allying myself with either the Principi, Huana, Valian, or Rautai. It surprised me because I didn't expect this fight at this point.

I was disappointed with how little dialogue most companions and all sidekicks have throughout the entire game and also the flow of conversations when companions decide to say something. You can complete most companions' story quests by the early-mid portion of the game, afterward most don't have anything else to talk about if you initiate a conversation with them. This is even worse when exploring the world because most companions just don't say anything. I could tell that the developer's favorites were Eder, Ydwin, Xoti, and maybe Pallengina and Aloth. Two of these were in the first game so it makes sense. The former three have a large amount of dialogue but in conversation and exploring the world. Shockingly Ydwin is only a sidekick but she has a lot to say about the expansions and the base game. She ended up being one of my favorite companions.

So that's the finale of Pillars of Eternity 2 for me. It was an incredibly long and bumpy ride. I had a lot of complaints about the length of this game, which I think is likely alleviated by playing in real-time instead of turn-based mode, it's unfortunate you can't switch between both after starting a new game.
I had complaints about the easiness of this game, but it seems Obsidian tried alleviating this with one expansion and 5 optional mega-bosses. I think this would've been better if these mega bosses weren't pushed off to the very end of the game.
There are far too many technical issues with the console version.
The game has great-looking environments but the dungeon crawling and combat leaves much to be desired. The base mechanics make the former typically too easy, and turn base mode makes the latter too tedious. However, some of this can be alleviated due to the large amount of "difficulty" options that are available to the player. However, most of those difficulty options will only open up to the player after they've beaten the game. Will I replay the game on harder difficulty to try this anytime soon? No.
While the story is heavily focused on the divine, religion, colonization, & politics, the companions are incredibly dry in this game and many story threads end in an unsatisfying manner. The last point will matter more depending on how much you accept the futility of going against the gods.

Medium difficulty
19 hours
EA Play

First off, let's get the technical issues out of the way. There are big framerate drops in chapters 9 & 10. The game only crashed once and was in the final boss fight. There was one point where the EA servers had issues, due to this, I couldn't even start the game. It's really stupid that a single player only game is tied to an online server to even play it.

The game's UI lives up to the hype with the only issue typically being when how annoying it is to specify what you want to pick up when there are multiple pieces of loot close to each other.
Initially, I was disappointed by how weak the plasma cutter sounded, but the other guns sounded great, and playing the game with headphones kept me on edge because I could constantly hear the necromorphs climbing around and the ambient music. The game is quite great at knowing when to stop playing music while exploring the ship.

In terms of combat, Dead Space's biggest strength is its weapons and this is why I don't view it as a "survival horror" akin to the old Resident Evils. The game generally wants to or goes out of its way to put you in combat scenarios where you must kill every enemy because it is an action game. Every weapon generally starts out feeling great and only feels better as I upgrade them. The upgrade tree is fairly simple, but in an action game like this doing little things like expanding your magazine from 50 shots to 150 shots makes for a huge difference in combat. Due to this, the game wants you to swap through weapons during combat because all weapons are very effective at killing necromorphs.
In terms of enemy placements and level design, I believe there's a strong hint of randomization to the former while the latter tends to be divided into hallways, locked rooms, and open zero-g areas. necromorphs spawn from vents, shafts, air conditioners, or around corners. There are very few scenarios where Isaac ambushes necromorphs, it's typically the opposite.
The game will also spawn enemies in that manner within save rooms, with the only exception of save rooms that are very tiny halls with little space in them, I believe this was done because one can't jump in dead space. The other thing is that enemies can't open doors and except for the first few scripted hunter encounters, enemies can't follow you through different rooms.
In terms of enemy variety, there are about 8 enemy types in the game and there will never be more than 4 or 5 necromorphs on screen at once. Within hallways and long rooms, the game also loves spawning enemies behind Isaac and in front of him at the same time. This jump scare is utilized very frequently.

Knowing all of this, I started approaching much of combat using a few strategies. Once the music changed to something more sinister or tense, I would run to have the nearest door to my back since I knew an enemy couldn't spawn since a door was behind me and they couldn't open or go through it. Afterward, I just unload on as many enemies as possible. Since head shotting or shooting center mass typically won't kill most enemies, Dead Space ends up being unique by making you shoot at limbs. Shooting at weakpoints isn't new in shooters, but making it almost necessary for all enemies is what makes it stick out. The enemies I ended up disliking the most were the hunter and the huge titan that walked on all fours. I do not like the fact that an invincible enemy is just introduced halfway through the game that only returns intermittently. There's no real reason to engage the hunter, you just end up running away and the game will cheat a bit by making him climb through vents to then follow you but only within the first adjacent room you enter and it only happens sometimes. The other titan/brute, I disliked for being a huge bullet sponge in a game where you typically can kill enemies in a few shots. I didn't get this enemy, I rarely shot off limbs because it took too many shots and at times it was difficult to tell you were even doing damage because it wasn't losing limbs or much mass from being shot.

On the topic of survival horror. I think Dead Space makes a lot more sense as a horror shooter or action horror game than survival horror. The game is incredibly generous with ammunition, healing, & other supplies. There are 8 guns and all are found by the halfway point of the game. Every single enemy in the game will drop some form of random loot when killed in the form of credits, health packs, ammo, oxygen, or stasis packs. This makes sense in terms of the setting because all the necromorphs we fight are the citizens of the Ishimura. So while it's possible to run out of ammo for 1 or 2 guns, you have 6 more at any time to switch to and you are encouraged to kill more necromorphs because they will always drop something useful and there's a high chance it will be more ammo. This is what I mean when I say this game leans far more into action territory than anything. It can be quite scary but it wants me to actively engage and kill as many enemies as possible and regularly rewards me for doing so. This all works because the combat itself feels good due to being visceral, the atmosphere and sound design, and swaps through hallway, zero-g, and arenas fairly frequently to reduce monotony. For a game that almost entirely takes place in a ship, the ship itself is not just a shade of dull brown or gray.

The armor and weapon upgrades are the long-term rewards that typically come from exploration but this is gated by the plot. Except for chapters 9 & 12, all of Dead Space takes place in one contiguous location: The Ishimura spaceship. However, one can't go to all parts of the ship because there are locked doors and trains that block access to areas. The locked doors that gate the major section of the ship are only opened when you reach certain chapters and Isaac's allies give him access there, or when Isaac's allies give him security access to locked doors. Due to that, there isn't much voluntary non-linear exploration in Dead Space. There are a few side quests in the game and they give strong context to the characters that lived in this ship and how things got as bad on the Ishimura, how some coped with it, and what others did. I liked the side quests because they weren't fetch quests and they gave good characterization to the side characters we heard of that died right before the story began.

As for the ship, it's a great locale and it is a convincing location in terms of being a place where people lived and worked. The way it is designed makes sense from a non-videogame perspective with its use of various doors that just lead through the various sections of the ship without feeling like a fake maze. Elevators are in place because people would need them to get through various floors. There's a huge medical bay because a lot of doctors/scientists worked on this ship and they grew their food and took care of patients there. There's a big mining deck because the ship is a planet cracker and is used to extract minerals from planets. There's even a place of entertainment showing that the citizens of Ishimura played Zero gravity basketball as recreation. There's a big train system so the citizens could quickly get through the entirety of the ship in quick order, but even when I walked throughout the ship, it only took about an hour through most of it and each sector was connected in a manner that wasn't a winding maze that you typically find in many video games settings. That's on top of their fictional church, restaurants, etc.

27h to beat

Generally, it is one of the best third-person shooters ever and one of the best PS5 exclusives. Damn, it is challenging.

It is smoother arcadey bullet hell responsive fun with great level design. As a roguelike Returnal doesn't go far enough to have as many unique procedural items or equipment as the others but it makes up for it with very strong shooting and movement in combat. It's incredibly atmospheric due to how varied each biome is, the adaptive triggers of the PS5, and the great soundtrack.

Making your way upwards until you reach the top of the planet from Biome 1 - 3, then making your way downwards into the depths of the ocean in Biome 4 - 6 is one of those very satisfying feelings that I got in roguelite/roguelike.

On top of that, this game can be fully played in two-player co-op and it has the tower of Sisyphus which is more akin to what you expect in a more conventional roguelike/lite with quick rooms, in a floor that ends with a boss. The tower has unlimited rooms and more frequent rewards so it's even quicker at getting you into the action. There it forgoes the natural progression of enemy types that the typical biomes have so you will fight in smaller levels with more varied enemies.

Overall my issues are few. There are a few heavy framerate drops in this game if you push the projectiles to obscene levels. This is possible when playing in the co-op in the final biome, your guns at that point can shoot so many bullets and so can the enemies that it will cause a slowdown.

Two, for a roguelike/lite, it doesn't have enough varied artifacts and items. This is more noticeable the more I played, and was glaring in Tower of Sisyphus. You can enter a room that gives you a reward but you get the repeated choice of +10% weapon damage or +10% protection which isn't unique or exciting. Items typically give healing, removal of malfunctions, or shields for a short time. This isn't one of the roguelike/lites where you can choose to play as a myriad of characters or have varied "builds" that evolve as the run goes so it can reach a point where the randomization isn't satisfying. You keep fewer things on your character per run which makes it more like a roguelike.

On the matter of co-op, my biggest issue with it is that to some extent you can tell it wasn't fully made for co-op with the fact that it still has the annoying tethering system that will forcefully teleport you near your partner if you're too far away.

In any case, the story in itself is quite mysterious and ominous, told through a few cutscenes and many audio logs found throughout the levels. It fits the tone of the game and gives a feel of Alien or Metroid Prime/Dead Space but is far more frenetic, agile, and fun in gameplay.

32h 45m

I quite liked this game, a lot more than I remembered liking Far Cry 3.

Some of the flaws are within the implementation of co-op. For some reason, these games don't let you start co-op until you've passed a handful of the games opening missions which suck. On top of that, you can't do any main missions while in co-op which is an odd choice. It can't be for cinematic purposes since all cutscenes are in first person. Co-op is also client-hosted and has to reload the entire game whenever anyone joins or leaves. This was a big issue one time when I left the game in online mode in rest mode, and came back to it, it reloaded my game and deleted an hour of progress.

In any case, a lot of the game's side content is varied and the game can be quite dynamic in terms of how it changes up the same mission structure.

General combat is quite good and the game rewards the player in a manner that I quite like. You get more XP for killing enemies in different ways than just shooting. Generally, it goes takedowns > explosions > headshots > shooting the body for XP. However, the game is not as much of a "takedown" simulator as Far Cry 3.

The topography is also different from the recent FPS I've played just due to how mountainous the entire game is and how traversal always has you going up a hill either by driving or rock climbing. It could probably be more interesting if rock climbing didn't only rely on climbing equipment.

While you can't choose your faction, the game does all the typical faction-based nonsense that I expect a game of this sort to have. Liberated outposts can be attacked, your golden path members will fight Pagan Min's soldiers, they'll aid you in the final battle, and you can call one of them as mercenary. However, the biggest disappointment is that you can't call more of them to aid you at a time. The final mission assaulting Pagan's base is the epitome of what I expect a lot of the outposts and fortress liberations to be like. Chaotic warfare where your side keeps pouring in the further you progress within the base.

The side missions are varied in this game, especially coming from games like DQ11 where almost every single quest was a fetch quest or kill quest.

Overall, I think this game is far better than the first Insomniac Spider-man. It trims the fat of that game by reducing gadget use in combat, reducing MJ & miles stealth missions, and adding more fun albeit overpowered electric superpowers.

16 hours to complete 100%

183 hrs 16m

This game is really really easy. One thing I like is that there are many types of "statuses" however, I dislike how a few of them pretty much do the same thing. Being frozen, enthralled, paralyzed, confused, and put to sleep all have the exact same effect of removing a character from doing any action for 1 turn. They also have a fairly low chance to trigger. This resolves itself throughout the epilogue/post-game/act 3. By that point, combat is a bit more challenging and now somewhat engaging, at least to the point that you can't just win every encounter by putting on auto-attack. However, it begs the question of why combat is only somewhat engaging at certain points in the last 30 hours of a ~200h rpg.
Ideally, Acts 2 & 3 should've been combined and led to a shorter game. There are two optional trials that shake up combat encounters by adding restrictions that don't typically exist outside of them.

Act 3/Post-game has some challenging fights, it's also less linear and has more optional content for the players.

Fortunately crafting is actually pretty cool in this game since it has a fun minigame and allows you to purchase crafting parts directly from the menu if they can be bought. So you don't waste any extra time farming.
Late into Act 2, you end up with far more money than you could ever need. Early on in Act 3, there will be new weapons that can be purchased that are better than what you have but most of the good gear after that point is either crafted or companion specific through the storyline. This however has the added effect that since all the best gear is crafted, they all require very rare components that have to be farmed from rare enemies. There is so much farming within the post-game to maintain the best gear in comparison to the previous act, though it is possible to beat the game without the absolute best gear. Calasmos isn't a particularly difficult boss, but the optional bosses like Timewyrm, end of Time, and master pang will need it. Certain regular enemies are also tough if one isn't a high-level or has rare equipment.

Another odd mechanical thing I'm not fond of is the lack of information given to the player at times. Typically the agility, charm, and deftness stat are the wildcard stats because of how random they seem to be. The former determines turn order probability in combat, the latter is the luck stat that determines things like crit chance, and the middle is specific to only two companions because they have abilities that are scaled based on charm.
When combat begins it seems there is some background calculation to determine who has the biggest agility between the characters in the entire fight and that character has a higher chance to go first in a round. It is still only a chance which means it's more than possible that in round 1, character a is the 3rd person to get a turn but in round 3 character a is the 5th person to get a turn.
However, the game throws consistency in a loop by giving bosses and "strong" enemies advantages in the form of having multiple actions per turn. Bosses typically have two or three actions per turn, while members of your party will always only have one action per turn.

Fortunately, changing equipment doesn't count as an action so the player can do so as much as they want mid-combat. The player can also change the lineup of members mid-combat with the consequence of the swapped character missing their next turn. All characters not in the current lineup count as the "backup" party and they'll be immediately swapped into combat if the original lineup dies in combat. This means that swapping characters as necessary in the middle of a fight is a sound strategy.

It would go a long way if this game had an expanded inventory for each party member. As it is, each party member has their own separate limited inventory, and there's an equipment bag with unlimited inventory space. This is generally fine until you get into combat where you can't "use" items that are either in another party member's inventory or in the equipment bag.

The first 25 - 35 hours can feel aggressively linear. The game wants you to follow the main story in a specific order to the point that you can't interact with certain objects till you've progressed to a certain point with the quest then you now have to go back to that same area. It doesn't really open up till the hunt for the 6 orbs.

Also, lol, this game likes to give you dialogue choices of "yes" or "no", every time I choose no, they restart the dialogue to make me choose yes.

There are a few things in this game that rub me the wrong way. For one, it is far too long for its own good and the game requires the player to pretty much explore the entire world multiple times. Far too many side quests are fetch quests or kill x enemies quests.

When you start the game it has this flow of the player going to the different kingdoms and areas, then it further opens by giving the player a ship that can sail to the different islands. However, when you lose to Mordegon, the game "resets" the world and removes all your fast travel locations and ship. You now have to go through the entire world through every location again for the main quests while side quests lead back to all the islands you've previously visited, and you must acquire all your old companions again, etc. The primary benefit is to see the world in its apocalyptic state after Mordegon conquered it and spread evil. The thing is, once you defeat Mordegon and see the credits, you do all of this again with the involvement of time travel. The protagonist returns in time to the end of Act 1, our companions are lower-level, they're equipped with old gear, and all the skills we purchased since then are refunded and once again we have to explore the entire world and retread our steps.

Due to this, the game itself ends up feeling incredibly repetitive.

The other thing is the protagonist and his role in the story. The luminary is a very boring protagonist and much of it is due to being a mute protagonist with no dialogue choices that rarely reacts to anything. It becomes egregious in the post-game where the luminary is the only one that time travels to the past. He is aware of much of what will happen in the future and he doesn't say anything whenever his companions or allies inquire about their situation or the alternate timeline/future. He knows that the king of Heliodor is possessed by Mordegon, we see the flashback, and the king confronts the luminary and he doesn't say anything at all which leaves him vulnerable and allows Mordegon to almost steal his sword of light....again. When his companions see visions of the future, again, the luminary says nothing about it to confirm or deny what they're seeing.
Worst of all is that the luminary isn't even a blank state protagonist. He has a set gender, face, family, and origin. He's lacking a personality, and written/voiced dialogue which makes many scenes involving him feel very hollow. That's bad with a game that is so story and cutscene heavy as this. There are also far too many things such as: walking to this side of the town, watch a cutscene, walk back to the center of town, watch a cutscene, then walk back to that side of town and watch another cutscene. This happens frequently in Act 1. The one I remember very clearly is in Phnom Nonh.

Overall though, this is a very charming and beautiful game. I can't stress how so many environments are so varied with vibrant colors and art styles that are very pleasing to my eyes. It's based on Akira Toriyama's art style and has some slight cell shading around characters but still manages to fit in more grounded-looking environments without clashing with the rest of the character designs. Even though there's a large amount of combat in this game, the enemy designs are incredibly varied and each of them has memorable idle & combat animations that keep them from being annoying to see even when farming or in repeated fights.

It's an incredibly light-hearted game that has quite a generic "chosen one" story but it's a very nice change in terms of recent games I played. While there are lots of implied sexual jokes and costumes there isn't any overt sexual content. Violence is PG, with no blood or gore, extreme violence, corpses, etc. When villains and monsters are defeated, they disappear, when people are stabbed you won't see the wound.

Wanna beat this before PS Plus expires. There are lots of glitches in this game. 5 crashes by the time I beat it.

The zombie mission was terrible and there were so many enemies randomly spawning in my face I was driving on the highway. Lots of pop-ins. Still, co-op is good, albeit you can't join someone mid-mission/activity. However, it isn't as good as I remembered.

16 hours to beat.