Breath of the Wild

I suppose that wraps it up for the base game. As much as I'd love to shit all over the game there are some aspects of it I ended up liking, unfortunately. But the cons still outweigh the pros and oh boy do I not have a lot to complain here

( + ) Lets get the positives out of the way first, the open world is competently designed, although quite generic at times it still holds up very well compared to the deluge of uninspiring and linear open world titles with no sense of creativity whatsoever. The fact that the main quests never really get in the way of exploration really adds to the sense of the adventure which is pretty much the entire selling point of the game and it does somewhat deliver on that front. The physics engine coupled with the rune abilities also pave the way of tackling problems and traversing through tricky terrains in various different ways. Lastly, there's the cell-shaded artstyle, which really helps to mask the overall age of the game when it comes to the visuals and still manage to look fantastic even by today's standards

( - ) This game can be absurdly tedious at times and I mean ABSURDLY TEDIOUS. Simply traversing through it can aid to more frustration over entertainment after the honeymoon phase is over because of the game doing absolutely nothing to give the players a more convenient way of exploring the massive open world. To rub salt into the wound they tie down sprinting in empty terrains to the stamina bar. Like, I understand the need for stamina while climbing mountains as it can gatekeep more difficult areas if you haven't made enough progress. But, there's absolutely no reason to deplete the stamina bar when the only method of faster travel is on a horse that controls like crap and surfing on shields that break within mere seconds, as it does nothing but waste time and in turn bore the players.
The game also suffers from being just all around repetitive in its structure. The 4 main quests leading up to the final encounter all basically play out the same and the side quests are just a bunch of random fetch quests that boil down to doing the same errands just for a different NPC. The shrines sprinkled throughout the open world also suffer from being incredibly samey. After reaching the halfway point I ended up mostly just using them as checkpoints instead of checking out whatever puzzle or combat encounters await inside as they're all roughly the same, especially the combat shrines.
The absolute worst aspect of the game would be its horrid combat and the laughably bad enemy/boss encounters. But you might say "Fa, it's totally normal for an open world game to have lackluster combat since the focus is put on the exploration instead." To that I'd say you're completely wrong since the combat is just as integral as exploration is when it comes down to these types of games because most of the times your objectives are centered around combat which is arguably more significant than the exploration part itself. And crafting a decent combat system doesn't really take all that effort so I can't really see the logic in these arguments so I just dismiss them as cop-out defense to shield any cohesive criticisms. Digressions and tangents aside, BoTW's combat being on the lackluster side could've been easily remedied by pinning link up against enemies with well thought out movesets or by having proper variety in the enemy department, since the combat revolves around pattern memorization it'd only make sense for the enemies to actually be somewhat capable of putting up a fight. But as it turns out the enemies/bosses in this game are COMPLETELY inept, most of the time the fight basically just boils down to finding out their gimmick and just abusing it throughout the whole fight to win. The only exception to this rule would be the Lynels, which are somehow more engaging than the major bosses despite being literal mobs. Mechanically weak encounters with more emphasis put on dumb gimmicks outright ruined any potentials of the game even having a half decent combat
As for the story, I couldn't bring myself to care about any of it. It's just a bunch of nothing with the core characters being no personality having losers that only exist to guide you towards your next destination or annoy you during the main dungeons or be a damsel in distress

the open world is pretty ok everything else tho not so much

bullet hell segments need some major polish, the stupid cinematic walks in between bosses need to be shortened or outright cut, movements feel extremely clunky and when you combine it with the absolutely horrid controls on mouse+kb shit becomes frustrating to play at times but I still managed to beat it, none of the bosses really stood out to me because of their samey nature except for maybe the edge, the delivery of the dialogues in English dub is absolutely terrible so I had to switch to Japanese 70% into the game which fixed the issue for me

music is good tho plus i kind of liked the close ranged action segments

It turned out exactly as I expected. A boring cookie cutter action game with an overemphasis on "Immersion" to the point it made the actual gameplay feel like an afterthought. It's literally just an interactive movie (more on this later) trying to constantly hammer some idiot story down your throat.


There's absolutely no pros so I'll only list down the cons

1. Story

The writing is downright lazy, the characters are all dull (sometimes super obnoxious) and their development is the most forced thing in the universe. Despite being a narrative-driven title the game doesn't even try to tell something even slightly interesting. Which is funny because I thought at least the plot would carry me through the painfully bad combat segments that feel like of tertiary importance.

2. Combat

From the FOV alone I could tell it was gonna be bad and voilà I was right. But it has parrying and parrying should be fun, right? No, it's not. Parrying is rendered pretty much useless because of the restrictive field of view and the fact that you fight nothing but hordes of mobs that comes at you from directions that you can't even see. So, dodging is all you ever rely on to avoid incoming attacks. The stupid cinematic fov exists to ruin a combat system that is already quite dry. Another aspect of the game that really bothered me is how every single enemy is a literal sponge which makes the combat tedious as hell. For example, even the very basic bitch mobs take up to 15-20 slashes to kill.

3. Bosses

You fight the same boss reskinned 8 times and the last boss is also the very first boss you fight with virtually the same moveset but this time he does more damage. Do I gotta say more?

4. RPG leveling system

This only exists to make an already baby game even easier. You can completely ignore this and feel barely any difference even against late game enemies, and this is coming from someone who beat it on hard and normal on and off

5. Side content/Puzzles

Tried doing them for the first 3-4 hours but soon got sick of them and gave up all together since it's just the same crap recycled over and over again. As for the mandatory puzzles they are all braindead. Like are these made for people with down syndrome or what? I personally wouldn't even classify these as puzzles but the game insists they are soooo

6. Overemphasis on presentation

It becomes tiring when the game constantly shoves pretty looking areas and models on your face telling you to look at them. I kind of stopped caring after a while, pretty presentation alone can't save a dry game that has nothing fun to offer.

7. Literally an interactive cinema

Platforming? Press the interact button. Climbing? Press the interact button and watch the character climb. Like pretty much 80% of the action your character takes goes like this. Press the "E" button to do this and do that. Also the sheer amount of QTE segments in this game almost made me consider dropping it all together halfway through.


I spent around roughly 25 hours playing this game and I consider every single one of those hour wasted time

0/5

My opinion is quite mixed as I really liked a lot of what it had to offer yet at the same time I despised the questionable design choices for a good chunk of the bosses and levels. I'll keep the review brief as I don't really have all that much to say about it given how short the game is

What I liked:
Most of the bosses were very well designed with incredibly multifaceted movesets that make the challenge of learning/mastering them not only worthwhile but insanely entertaining at the same time. Though, this is more applicable towards the airplane bosses as they turned out to be far more polished than most of the regular ones. My favorites being; Cala Maria, Dr. Kahl's Robot, Wally Warbles and of course, Phantom Express

What I didn't like:
I straight out despise how RNG heavy a good chunk of the bosses are. It's like they were hell bent on ruining perfectly fine bosses with miserable design choices which lead me to restarting a lot of the bosses even after clearing them just because I got it too easy and the boss didn't even do half of their more deadlier attacks. And that leads to a lot of the victories not being quite earned.
The final stretch of the game was just disappointing to say the least and I don't like the Run & Gun Levels either, they're just not fun.

Despite how polarized I'm about this game I'll still check out the DLC that drops within a month

Wrapped up the base game so here are my thoughts on it atm (might change drastically since I've yet to get my hands on Iceborne, which adds like 70% more content)

Going in I was ready to be bored out of my mind (co-op lol) and the early stretch of the game being an absolute snorefest didn't help with it either but as I reached the halfway point of the game everything started clicking and I found myself actually enjoying the game despite the tedium game throws at your way occasionally. Co-op also turned out to be a far more enjoyable experience compared to Solo because of how the fights are designed, it doesn't diminish the challenge plus actually requires team effort and communication between the players to take down the more tougher monsters in the late game. It's also a lot of fun learning movesets of a boss with a friend or two when you're playing and then finally overcoming it together. Combat is also super solid with actual variety between the weapons as they drastically switch how everything works, which adds to the overall replayability of the game. I've tried out Longsword, Charged Blade and Switch Axe so far, Switch Axe being my favorite

I really don't like the pointless exploration they force you to do in between the quests, quite literally only exists to ruin the flow of the game. The hub area is also needlessly big which forces you to run around from one place to another and wasting a lot of time in the process. All of it could've been fixed by simply making the hub area a tad bit more compact but I hear Iceborne fixes that though it won't bring back hours of confusion and headache it gave me when starting out the game. Also, the cutscenes not being skippable is somewhat of a slight annoyance

tl;dr other than the tedious shit you gotta do in between the game is fun to play with friends

Going in I absolutely had 0 expectations, wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that I was expecting to hate it given how much of a cheap bloodborne knock off the game looked at first glance but the game proved me wrong with its combat system, which is far closer to Sekiro (if you don't play like a braindead idiot, that is) than BB with a spin of their own on the posture system which is the green health bar, it adds a well needed layer of depth to the overall combat, keeping the player constantly switching between different attacks to dwindle down the enemy's health, while also demanding an aggressive playstyle since the enemies tend to regenerate if they aren't being pushed with the green health remaining. Basically it's the almost the exact same thing as the posture meter but it works on vitality damage as well since this game isn't streamlined for parrying which is a missed opportunity since I believe it'd have been better off if it discouraged dodging and focused more on parrying since the combat clearly built around the idea of parrying, the bosses make it obvious. The RPG elements were totally redundant and only exists for the sake of following age old souls tradition, that's also something the game would be better off without.

Thymesia is quite lacking in the level design and visuals department but the combat kept me hooked throughout its measly playtime of 6 hours with some very well-designed humanoid bosses, the non-humanoid ones are just tedium incarnate though

If you get rid of the nostalgia tinted glasses you'll see that this is nothing more than a cheap licensed 3D platformer made in less than half a year with lots of issues and downright embarrassing glitches

To start off, the platforming is a floaty and janky mess which isn't even fun most of the time and that's pretty offensive for a literal platformer with little else to offer in any other department. The levels do offer some variety in the beginning stretch but soon turns into a repetitive braindead exercise of just getting a golden spatula with some clunky racing segments thrown in here and there. At the end of some levels you're put up against a boss which is just a waiting game of the boss to finish their turn so you can get your hit in when it's your turn. Seriously, is this my reward for torturing myself of putting up with an hour or two of looking for golden spatulas? As for the glitches, my character glitched out at least 20 times during my playthrough getting stuck in between platforms unable to move, which usually ended with me just quitting out of the game.

tl;dr
nostalgia bait with a severe lack of polish

Outer Wilds is the perfect example of why you should always approach games that are considered "All time classics"/"Masterpieces" with a shit load of skepticism because despite all of the praises I hear about this game I can't for the love of god even bring myself to say anything remotely positive about it

First off, who thought putting a time restriction in an exploration focused game was a good idea? The amount of backtracking you need to do because of the supernova that triggers every 20 minutes coupled with the amount of annoying unforeseeable traps that also lead to your death is absolutely ridiculous, which was also the main motivator behind killing my intrigue to explore somewhat of a cohesive world with neat ideas and puzzles.
Now onto the elephant in the room, the controls are fucking abysmal which makes simply moving around quite annoying and they had the gall to design multiple segments that revolve solely around controlling your spaceship, which I can only describe as janky. Most of the deaths in this game either happen due to poor controls, random traps that you cant see coming & of course the stupid supernova which is basically the game's way of saying "Uh oh you couldn't explore everything within the measly 20 minutes we gave you? Time to send you back to the very beginning of the game with no way to fast travel" And I have a massive bone to pick with incompetent game devs that don't respect the player's time.
The story here is also quite non-existent and the people who insist otherwise are just plain out wrong because gathering wiki articles and putting them together does not make up for a very cohesive narrative that suck you into the experience, it's jarring if anything. I also don't see the appeal of the tracks here either, they don't fit the tone of the game at all but honestly speaking they're simply just lame.

Whoever thinks Outer Wilds is a masterpiece or a timeless classic, stop lying to yourself
This game sucks

The Forgotten City

Had a lot of fun playing through this one almost to the point I did it in only two sittings. The game does an immaculate job at instantly drawing you into itself with its premise and the setting. But the sense of progression it constantly rewards you for lateral thinking is what makes the game for me. There's no dumb arbitrary puzzles here that most people can't possibly solve without looking up a guide, which is something most other games of this genre suffer from, I'm talking to you Outer Wilds. Everything here is presented to you in the character dialogues, things like l loopholes in logic, inconsistencies in arguments, hypocrisies and even the characters' emotional attachments that you can exploit to achieve your goals. Which wouldn't really work if the characters themselves weren't interesting, but they are all (most) incredibly rich with personality, which is quite impressive given just how short the game is. I also want to mention just how much this game respects your time to the point they even turned it into a major plot point, talk about creative!
While I did like this game quite a lot I have some gripes with it that somewhat bogged down the experience, the main culprit being the Skyrim combat segments. They serve absolutely no purpose other than just simply paying a tribute to its origins and being an annoyance. While I like most of the interactions with the characters, there are quite few that are just plain out boring, so their dialogues can feel a little bit expository at times, as if you're conducting an interview of sorts.

Despite the minor flaws I can still say with the utmost confidence that the game is undoubtedly a masterpiece of its kind, so even if this kind of game isn't your thing go play it, you're missing out

what a bunch of absolute fucking nothing lmfao

stop making artsy games with little to no gameplay, video games that emphasizes itself on being art will always be shit
if you like not playing games and watching long stretches of boring pretentious cutscenes while holding down 'W', this is your game
the only good thing about it is that you dont need to sit through this any longer than an hour and a half

Not only is this expansion objectively bad in every single aspect but it also made me re-evaluate my opinion on the game as a whole which is overall quite negative. If you don't want to read paragraphs after paragraphs of me going over all the flaws and the bafflingly stupid design choices Capcom took with this one just know that
𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐨𝐭 𝐦𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝟏𝟎% 𝐨𝐟 𝐢𝐭 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐚 𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐢𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮'𝐫𝐞 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮'𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐠𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚 𝐝𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐟 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝟏 𝐨𝐫 𝟐 𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐬/𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐢𝐧 + 𝐚𝐧 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐲 𝐠𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐲 𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐚 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞

I usually go into games with a negative preconceived notion but this time around it was the exact opposite. In fact, I was excited for all the additional content which is somehow even longer than base game only to be hammered with disappointment after disappointment after the end of every single co-op session with a friend. My distaste stems from the accumulation of plethora of different reasons and I'll try to go somewhat in depth as to why I think MHW+Iceborne was the worst gaming experience I've had in recent times

-Recycled Fights/Content-
Right off the bat after hunting like 2 new monsters you're back to fighting the same things you've already killed a gazillion times in base game but now its their "subspecies" variant, which is really just a glorified word for reskins with little to no new addition to their movesets. This game has a serious reskin problem, to the point it can downright kill the motivation required to actually make progress. This is one of the main contributing factor as to why I called the game artificially bloated since even the newer monsters get recycled at one point or another. Also for a massive expansion all we got was only one new area which didn't even get properly utilized with another area which is just so bafflingly lazy to me, it's literally all the previous areas you fought the monsters in but now mashed into one. Like it's so obvious that Capcom became complacent to the point they can just reuse not just the monsters but even the areas and the troglodyte fandom will just eat it all up and praise it like it's a masterpiece which I can assure you it's not

-Weapon Tree System-
The way the weapon tree system works is straight up incompetent, like there's no justifying as to why I should have to go and farm base game monsters again for materials to get the specific weapon I want. Doesn't that like defeat the whole purpose of the defender weapons the base game introduced to get most people to speed up their progress? At least in the base game you could stick to one tree and progressively get weapons with somewhat better stats but in Iceborne if the tree you worked towards in the base game didn't reward you with a decent enough weapon in iceborne you'll have to go do another entire tree which is unbelievably tedious to do everytime you want to switch to a different build. The whole system is at such a disconnect with the idea of fun it feels like I'm borderline working a 9-5 job I hate

-Lengthy Hunts-
Due to the introduction of new mechanics like the clutch claw and wall bangs the monsters have super inflated hp which makes the fights incredibly long. I was never a fan of how long the fights lasted in the base game anyway but in Iceborne they take it to a whole another level, it's straight up endurance torture. The fact that a single monster fight can last up to 30-40 minutes long in and of itself is horrible by design. I know you can shorten the time by optimizing the damage with the most meta build and by constantly abusing the clutch claw but the hunts will always last gruesomely long on your first time hunting a monster with no prior knowledge about their moveset. The Barioth and the Shrieking Legiana fights are prime examples of that

-Endgame is way too grindy-
The entire gimmick behind Guiding Lands only exists to further inflate an already artificially bloated game to the point it becomes genuinely frustrating to play. Whoever came up with the idea of gating new monsters behind region levels should be fired from the development team immediately. This quite literally almost killed my interest to continue the game any further for almost an entire month but I decided to just skip the Guiding Lands all together with a very handy tool called cheat engine, there's no way I'm going to waste hundreds of hours of my life grinding away the same monsters in reused areas from the base game just because I want a slightly better set or a better weapon. Monster Hunter fans might cope for it but I'm not stooping so low to the point I'd waste away my whole life grinding in a lazy game mode which was basically just scrapped together from recycling everything

-Borderline gacha game/terrible droprates-
It ties in with the previous point quite flawlessly. In the endgame you're forced to grind materials that have ridiculously low droprates and to compensate for the low droprates the devs added in a mode which literally makes you play a gacha for items and upgrade materials that aren't easy to come by. And the rare materials aren't something you can just ignore, oh no they're mandatory if you want your weapon to do decent enough damage otherwise you can enjoy your 50 minutes long hunts

These were all Iceborne specific gripes but now I'll talk about some that applies for World and the series as a whole
1. Combat is a janky mess and this is coming from someone who solo'd some of the toughest fights in Iceborne's endgame like Alatreon and Fatalis with clocking in almost 200 hours into the game, never once I thought the combat was decent or even okay at best. It's an unresponsive mess which makes Souls combat seem like a work of art in comparison
2. Majority of the fights are terribly designed with little to no thought put into how they'd fair against the game's core combat which is clunky as hell + Capcom's idea of making a fight harder is by giving the monsters a bunch of annoying status effects which artificially amps up the "difficulty", I put difficulty in quotation because nothing in this game is truly difficult, literally anything and everything can be trivialized if you just get a build that counters the specific status effects
3. Chasing a monster around a horribly designed map for 10 minutes when they run away is a complete utter waste of time, so is gathering tracks for them to even show up. It's okay like the first 3-5 times but you have to do this tedious crap every single time you start a quest and that is not fun in the slightest
4. Even the cutscenes are always the same. Like they ALWAYS follow the same pattern, first we're shown a monster we've already hunted and then a new one pops up and beats the ever living shit out of it as if it's supposed to be intimidating or something. Please try and be creative in the way you introduce a monster for once
5. Switch-Axe is quite literally the only weapon I fancy out of the plethora of different choices you have here, everything else puts me to sleep

I went into Monster Hunter World with the expectation of fighting monsters with the weapons of my choice and having fun in the process but what I got was a literal grindfest that doesn't seem to want the players to extract any enjoyment out of itself. MHW+Iceborne is downright the worst game I've played this entire year

If this game had a ubisoft logo slapped on instead of Insomniac literally everyone would hate it

Braindead open-world design coupled with pointless side activities + unnecessarily tedious stealth segments (mandatory btw) that make you wish you were back to the extremely subpar combat bits that pin you up against same 3-4 mobs every single mission, boss fights are literally just massive excuses to shove in as many QTEs as possible, story is obnoxious and tone deaf with dialogues so cringe that can make devil may cry blush
literally nothing about this game is good

More of a 2D sidescroller than a metroidvania tbh

I did like the combat at first but the time-slow shtick got really tedious near the end, especially during the platforming segments when you have to wait like 15 seconds for your time slow meter to fill up, calling it a slight annoyance would be a huge understatement. Also your regular attack being tied to a gauge that can deplete with no way to defend yourself other than relying on special attacks is a pretty idiotic design choice on the devs part since it encourages braindead playstyle where you just spam time slow and special attacks. The bosses were serviceable at least, some of the mechanics I complained about worked fine in boss fights.

I really feel like this game could've been way better off being a pure boss rush instead of posing to be a sidescroller or a metroidvania or whatever
Anyway, game is below subpar, wouldn't recommend