mr__sampson
There's nothing really bad here, especially not in terms of gameplay, which is generally fantastic. The fluidity of motion across the city is still so good that I only fast-traveled once, something I would never do in a normal 7 hour course of gaming.
But the characters and writing just leave something to be desired. The way pretty much everyone is written, Miles himself, Prowler, Phin and Krieger is just missing a little something to round them out. They're too one-dimensional, and in a way almost cartoonishly short-sighted? I know we're dealing with comic book characters, but I think you can still write comic book stories that respect the intelligence of the characters and audience. Someone lies, someone manipulates, people try to save their friends/family by doing ridiculous things, it's just all very well worn and tired. There's nothing wrong with well-trod stories, but if you're going to do it, the performance and presentation better absolutely knock my socks off. And it didn't here. It's a mid story with a mid presentation.
The "You ARE Spider-Man" and "Be Yourself" aspect of the story in particular really struggles because it's been done better with Miles in the recent Spider-Verse stories. And considering this game has way more time to ruminate on the theme (I beelined the story in 6.5 hours), it doesn't even remotely use that time to develop a story and character arc that is half as compelling as two movies with a combined run-time that's only about 4.3 hours.
I played this with very fond memories of the original base game and thinking it was prep for the sequel. I ended it wondering if I wouldn't love the original game as much if I revisited it now, and wondering if I'll actually spend $70 to play the sequel.
But the characters and writing just leave something to be desired. The way pretty much everyone is written, Miles himself, Prowler, Phin and Krieger is just missing a little something to round them out. They're too one-dimensional, and in a way almost cartoonishly short-sighted? I know we're dealing with comic book characters, but I think you can still write comic book stories that respect the intelligence of the characters and audience. Someone lies, someone manipulates, people try to save their friends/family by doing ridiculous things, it's just all very well worn and tired. There's nothing wrong with well-trod stories, but if you're going to do it, the performance and presentation better absolutely knock my socks off. And it didn't here. It's a mid story with a mid presentation.
The "You ARE Spider-Man" and "Be Yourself" aspect of the story in particular really struggles because it's been done better with Miles in the recent Spider-Verse stories. And considering this game has way more time to ruminate on the theme (I beelined the story in 6.5 hours), it doesn't even remotely use that time to develop a story and character arc that is half as compelling as two movies with a combined run-time that's only about 4.3 hours.
I played this with very fond memories of the original base game and thinking it was prep for the sequel. I ended it wondering if I wouldn't love the original game as much if I revisited it now, and wondering if I'll actually spend $70 to play the sequel.
2023
Surprisingly solid life sim with some nice work at baking in combat, relationship sim, multiple endings and an overarching world plot (that you scratch the surface of in your first playthrough).
If you've played Princess Maker, Long Live the Queen, Growing Up or Chinese Parents, you know what to expect here. The sheer number of endings and achievements makes this seem like a great game to replay again and again.
The game is good enough that I can look past the really mediocre translation and crashing, but not quite enough that I can give it the 8-9 that I would like to. Crashing isn't the hugest deal, but without mid-day saves, having to redo a whole 10-15 minute day you already did is super annoying. The translation also isn't unreadable, you can always parse out what it's trying to say, but it's just distracting enough that I found it taking me out of the game a number of times.
I'm going to come back in a month or two to replay it and see what the state of the grammar/translation and save system are like, maybe I'll be able to bump the score then.
If you've played Princess Maker, Long Live the Queen, Growing Up or Chinese Parents, you know what to expect here. The sheer number of endings and achievements makes this seem like a great game to replay again and again.
The game is good enough that I can look past the really mediocre translation and crashing, but not quite enough that I can give it the 8-9 that I would like to. Crashing isn't the hugest deal, but without mid-day saves, having to redo a whole 10-15 minute day you already did is super annoying. The translation also isn't unreadable, you can always parse out what it's trying to say, but it's just distracting enough that I found it taking me out of the game a number of times.
I'm going to come back in a month or two to replay it and see what the state of the grammar/translation and save system are like, maybe I'll be able to bump the score then.
2023
This game feels like a development team from 2014 finished watching the first four seasons of Game of Thrones, developed a game, fell into hibernation, woke up in 2023, ported their game to a next-gen engine and dumped it out onto the market.
2014 called, it wants your QTEs, hallway dungeons and bad sidequests back.
On the pacing and story side, when the story is clicking along, the game is solid (and sometimes even great!). Every time it grinds to a halt so they can pad the game length with earning another annoying Boy Scout badge to prove you are Not a Bad Guy to the local town, it's awful.
On the design side, the dungeons feel like they're almost wholesale ripped from XIV in terms of layout: straight hallways to trash mobs -> miniboss -> trash mobs again -> miniboss -> repeat until you get to the end-boss. I think that design is getting pretty tired in XIV, but it works even less here in XVI since XIV at least comes with real-life human party members you can talk to.
On a writing side, there's a perfectly competent "grounded" political story to be found until about 45-50% of the ways through the game, at which point it gets thrown out for one of the worst tropes in JRPGs, weird pseudo-Jungian pontificating from mega-villains.
From a mechanics side, the Eikon battles are beyond sick, but the number of QTEs really started to kill me after the halfway mark. I literally said out loud to the game at least three times in the final third of the game, "You're taking control away from me again?"
And the biggest problem I have with the game is not that "this isn't a Final Fantasy game" or whatever variant of dweeb argument the internet is going to have about this game for the next decade. Final Fantasy games run the gamut from MMO (XI/XIV), Action RPG (Stranger of Paradise/Type-0), TRPGs (Tactics), fighting (Dissidia), rhythm (Theatrhythm) and even shooter (Dirge of Cerberus).
The problem I have is that this is being marketed (by SE themselves) as an Action RPG, and it simply is not. At most you could call this a Character Action game with RPG-lite elements. There isn't anything wrong with Character Action games (although they're not my favorite genre admittedly), but be honest about what your game is so I can have correct expectations.
Given that SE's own marketing literally calls this game "the first fully fledged Action RPG in the mainline Final Fantasy series," that's the expectation I went in with, and that is the bar by which I am going to judge it.
There is zero-roleplaying to be done here.
Here are five example elements I'd consider to be solid, basic building blocks of an ARPG:
• Visual customization: Some kind of options for changing components of your outfit. Allowing adjustments of hair/beard is a nice bonus that many modern games include.
• Playstyle customization: Options for different playstyles, e.g. allowing for someone to choose to build a two-handed weapon wielder, a sword and shield user, a ranged user or to take a stealth approach.
• Weapon customization: Something of a subset to the above point but a little different. Especially if a game can't allow for a wide range of styles from stealth to ranged to melee, then allowing for a variety of weapons with different status effects, bonuses, etc is an interesting way to allow player creativity.
• Controllable party: Controlling your party members, their leveling path and potentially therefore their job/class/skills is another way to increase player role-playing.
• Story input: Allowing for input on the final outcome of the main narrative isn't necessary (although nice), but if that can't be done, meaningful choice on sidequests is a good compromise.
Does every ARPG have all five of these? No. But having 2-4 of them is a heck of a lot better than FFXVI having literally none of them!
I can't believe I live in a world where Ubisoft is making ARPG Assassin's Creed games that are more ARPGs than Final Fantasy ARPGs.
2014 called, it wants your QTEs, hallway dungeons and bad sidequests back.
On the pacing and story side, when the story is clicking along, the game is solid (and sometimes even great!). Every time it grinds to a halt so they can pad the game length with earning another annoying Boy Scout badge to prove you are Not a Bad Guy to the local town, it's awful.
On the design side, the dungeons feel like they're almost wholesale ripped from XIV in terms of layout: straight hallways to trash mobs -> miniboss -> trash mobs again -> miniboss -> repeat until you get to the end-boss. I think that design is getting pretty tired in XIV, but it works even less here in XVI since XIV at least comes with real-life human party members you can talk to.
On a writing side, there's a perfectly competent "grounded" political story to be found until about 45-50% of the ways through the game, at which point it gets thrown out for one of the worst tropes in JRPGs, weird pseudo-Jungian pontificating from mega-villains.
From a mechanics side, the Eikon battles are beyond sick, but the number of QTEs really started to kill me after the halfway mark. I literally said out loud to the game at least three times in the final third of the game, "You're taking control away from me again?"
And the biggest problem I have with the game is not that "this isn't a Final Fantasy game" or whatever variant of dweeb argument the internet is going to have about this game for the next decade. Final Fantasy games run the gamut from MMO (XI/XIV), Action RPG (Stranger of Paradise/Type-0), TRPGs (Tactics), fighting (Dissidia), rhythm (Theatrhythm) and even shooter (Dirge of Cerberus).
The problem I have is that this is being marketed (by SE themselves) as an Action RPG, and it simply is not. At most you could call this a Character Action game with RPG-lite elements. There isn't anything wrong with Character Action games (although they're not my favorite genre admittedly), but be honest about what your game is so I can have correct expectations.
Given that SE's own marketing literally calls this game "the first fully fledged Action RPG in the mainline Final Fantasy series," that's the expectation I went in with, and that is the bar by which I am going to judge it.
There is zero-roleplaying to be done here.
Here are five example elements I'd consider to be solid, basic building blocks of an ARPG:
• Visual customization: Some kind of options for changing components of your outfit. Allowing adjustments of hair/beard is a nice bonus that many modern games include.
• Playstyle customization: Options for different playstyles, e.g. allowing for someone to choose to build a two-handed weapon wielder, a sword and shield user, a ranged user or to take a stealth approach.
• Weapon customization: Something of a subset to the above point but a little different. Especially if a game can't allow for a wide range of styles from stealth to ranged to melee, then allowing for a variety of weapons with different status effects, bonuses, etc is an interesting way to allow player creativity.
• Controllable party: Controlling your party members, their leveling path and potentially therefore their job/class/skills is another way to increase player role-playing.
• Story input: Allowing for input on the final outcome of the main narrative isn't necessary (although nice), but if that can't be done, meaningful choice on sidequests is a good compromise.
Does every ARPG have all five of these? No. But having 2-4 of them is a heck of a lot better than FFXVI having literally none of them!
I can't believe I live in a world where Ubisoft is making ARPG Assassin's Creed games that are more ARPGs than Final Fantasy ARPGs.
2020
I'm an outlier here, but I think this was kind of mid in a lot of ways. It looks and sounds great, the main story is solid enough (if not rehashing a lot of better pre-existing samurai films), the companion side-quests range between okay to pretty good, the combat works well enough, but it's yet another game with a gigantic map filled with too much to do and not enough good stuff to do in it.
In Infamous Second Son for example, Sucker Punch got around the inherent open world problem by giving the player one of the most fun traversal systems ever. Here, like in so many open world games, it's kind of a chore still. Yes the wind thing is neat, but what I'm going to, some Fox Den or Duel or 5 minute side quest...just isn't that great!
There's a reason this took me almost a full year to finish, and when I finally finished it this June, there's a reason I beelined to the story (and companion quests) and stuck with that.
I'd like to see another game from Sucker Punch, either a direct Tsushima 2 or a game set somewhere else in Japan (maybe somewhere else in the Nagasaki Prefecture) and see what they can do with it. I think they built a great foundation here visually and mechanically, and a sequel could be a real step up.
In Infamous Second Son for example, Sucker Punch got around the inherent open world problem by giving the player one of the most fun traversal systems ever. Here, like in so many open world games, it's kind of a chore still. Yes the wind thing is neat, but what I'm going to, some Fox Den or Duel or 5 minute side quest...just isn't that great!
There's a reason this took me almost a full year to finish, and when I finally finished it this June, there's a reason I beelined to the story (and companion quests) and stuck with that.
I'd like to see another game from Sucker Punch, either a direct Tsushima 2 or a game set somewhere else in Japan (maybe somewhere else in the Nagasaki Prefecture) and see what they can do with it. I think they built a great foundation here visually and mechanically, and a sequel could be a real step up.
This game is a weird one where to some extent it feels like it's less than the sum of its parts. Platforming? Solid. Combat? Good. Map design? Good. Music? Good. Story? Intriguing. Visuals? Lovely.
But when you combine it all together, there's something that's very slightly annoying about playing it that I can't quite put my finger on. The game is definitely better than the original, but about 2/3rds of the way through, just like in the original, I found myself annoyed so I simply bumped the difficulty all the way down to see the story through.
I suppose if I had to really tease it out, it's that the flow of the various components can slam into each other and interrupt each other. Sometimes I would be in a really good flow enjoying exploring, doing the little puzzles and platforming, only to have to chew through consecutive areas of really annoying fodder enemies. And on the flip side, sometimes I would be in a good flow of feeling the combat system, and then I'd have to completely take myself out of the zone to backtrack halfway across a map I just crossed.
Back to the topic of the story however, it is probably the best Star Wars story I've seen since Disney acquired Lucasfilm (caveat: I've only seen the five movies and no TV shows). I liked what they did with all of the original crew members, and I thought the new characters were mostly solid, with the exception of the villain introduction being a little too fast and silly for me. Koboh is a great hub world and a huge shout-out to the devs for improving the character customization by the way, I loved the variety of outfits, hairstyles and materials that Cal got access to this time!
In spite of the fact that this is mostly a negative review (primarily because I don't want to bother writing a spoiler review for the story that I loved), I think this deserves the high score I gave, especially after it's been patched up to a better state.
I'll also add that I know the PC port was a mess, but since I played on my AMD build after some patches came out, I had a steady 60FPS at 1440p and only a single time that I suddenly dropped into single digit FPS that required a reboot. I know many people would like more performance than that, but it was acceptable enough to me!
But when you combine it all together, there's something that's very slightly annoying about playing it that I can't quite put my finger on. The game is definitely better than the original, but about 2/3rds of the way through, just like in the original, I found myself annoyed so I simply bumped the difficulty all the way down to see the story through.
I suppose if I had to really tease it out, it's that the flow of the various components can slam into each other and interrupt each other. Sometimes I would be in a really good flow enjoying exploring, doing the little puzzles and platforming, only to have to chew through consecutive areas of really annoying fodder enemies. And on the flip side, sometimes I would be in a good flow of feeling the combat system, and then I'd have to completely take myself out of the zone to backtrack halfway across a map I just crossed.
Back to the topic of the story however, it is probably the best Star Wars story I've seen since Disney acquired Lucasfilm (caveat: I've only seen the five movies and no TV shows). I liked what they did with all of the original crew members, and I thought the new characters were mostly solid, with the exception of the villain introduction being a little too fast and silly for me. Koboh is a great hub world and a huge shout-out to the devs for improving the character customization by the way, I loved the variety of outfits, hairstyles and materials that Cal got access to this time!
In spite of the fact that this is mostly a negative review (primarily because I don't want to bother writing a spoiler review for the story that I loved), I think this deserves the high score I gave, especially after it's been patched up to a better state.
I'll also add that I know the PC port was a mess, but since I played on my AMD build after some patches came out, I had a steady 60FPS at 1440p and only a single time that I suddenly dropped into single digit FPS that required a reboot. I know many people would like more performance than that, but it was acceptable enough to me!
This review contains spoilers
After finally finishing the Crimson Flower route last month, I wasn't too hot on the game, but I decided to give it another shot and try the Azure Moon route. I'm pretty glad I did! This route felt a bit meatier and I generally enjoyed the Blue Lion class more as a cohesive group (although I of course used some of my favorites from the DLC and other houses).
And while I liked this playthrough enough to bump my score up a tick, it's worth saying that the game could easily be a 9 or 10 if it wasn't so bloated with social stuff that could (and should) easily be more streamlined.
A really easy example: I'm playing Azure Moon on a NG+ file. I "figured out" almost everyone's favorite gift items in my CF run. I should not need to scroll a list of twenty gift items to hunt and peck the items while also perusing a wiki to remind myself which items are right. Just highlight them, do something to make it easier at this point! There's nothing added by trying to make me memorize their favorite items, their favorite teas, or "puzzling out" their lost items.
Anyways, whatever, the monastery is fun to wander around the first few times, but it's ultimately too large and spread out, so I hope they never go back to this kind of setup. Streamline it and don't waste my time.
(Also don't add a weird postscript to my S support epilogue saying we took care of the behind-the-scenes enemy sometime years later, that's dumb).
And while I liked this playthrough enough to bump my score up a tick, it's worth saying that the game could easily be a 9 or 10 if it wasn't so bloated with social stuff that could (and should) easily be more streamlined.
A really easy example: I'm playing Azure Moon on a NG+ file. I "figured out" almost everyone's favorite gift items in my CF run. I should not need to scroll a list of twenty gift items to hunt and peck the items while also perusing a wiki to remind myself which items are right. Just highlight them, do something to make it easier at this point! There's nothing added by trying to make me memorize their favorite items, their favorite teas, or "puzzling out" their lost items.
Anyways, whatever, the monastery is fun to wander around the first few times, but it's ultimately too large and spread out, so I hope they never go back to this kind of setup. Streamline it and don't waste my time.
(Also don't add a weird postscript to my S support epilogue saying we took care of the behind-the-scenes enemy sometime years later, that's dumb).
2021
I'm here to re-review this as half a star higher than I said it was at launch.
At launch I said:
"But here's what's going to happen. They're going to spend the next two years fixing BF2042. They'll fix some things perfectly, the suits will make them add some awful things a few times. Sometimes the backlash will force them to remove the new things, sometimes they'll leave them too long and piss people off. But in about a year to a year and a half, people will agree that BF2042 is actually pretty solid now! But then one day soon after, we'll wake up to the news BF2042 will be sunsetted, the content stream will die up and the next Battlefield is going to be announced. And then when the next one comes out, guess what happens? They'll remove all the improvements that they worked so hard on in BF2042 and start all over again."
And if you've been playing, you can see that's exactly what's happening. They've fixed most of the major respawning/revive/death glitches, guns are better tuned (but far from perfect), maps are slowly being repaired so that they actually resemble something people would want to play on...
But they still can't help but shoot themselves in the foot. Easiest example, they introduce the stealth copter and allow it to run rampant in the game for like two months, just driving people insane as they get farmed for YT compilations for 150+ kills a round. The Wildcat is still tuned insanely wrong. I literally just ended a match where I joined at the end of a round, hopped in someone's Wildcat and got 32 kills by spamming the grenade pod vaguely towards where I knew a spawn-point to be on a Breakthrough map.
The only thing that has kept me coming back over the course of this first season pass was Portal. If Portal didn't exist to allow the playerbase to actually test new things that DICE is too slow to do, I'd be bored out of my mind.
As it is, 200 hours later, I'm pretty done with the game. I'm going to come back in Season 2 to see what the new map looks like, but I think I've had my fill of Battlefield for a long time to come.
At launch I said:
"But here's what's going to happen. They're going to spend the next two years fixing BF2042. They'll fix some things perfectly, the suits will make them add some awful things a few times. Sometimes the backlash will force them to remove the new things, sometimes they'll leave them too long and piss people off. But in about a year to a year and a half, people will agree that BF2042 is actually pretty solid now! But then one day soon after, we'll wake up to the news BF2042 will be sunsetted, the content stream will die up and the next Battlefield is going to be announced. And then when the next one comes out, guess what happens? They'll remove all the improvements that they worked so hard on in BF2042 and start all over again."
And if you've been playing, you can see that's exactly what's happening. They've fixed most of the major respawning/revive/death glitches, guns are better tuned (but far from perfect), maps are slowly being repaired so that they actually resemble something people would want to play on...
But they still can't help but shoot themselves in the foot. Easiest example, they introduce the stealth copter and allow it to run rampant in the game for like two months, just driving people insane as they get farmed for YT compilations for 150+ kills a round. The Wildcat is still tuned insanely wrong. I literally just ended a match where I joined at the end of a round, hopped in someone's Wildcat and got 32 kills by spamming the grenade pod vaguely towards where I knew a spawn-point to be on a Breakthrough map.
The only thing that has kept me coming back over the course of this first season pass was Portal. If Portal didn't exist to allow the playerbase to actually test new things that DICE is too slow to do, I'd be bored out of my mind.
As it is, 200 hours later, I'm pretty done with the game. I'm going to come back in Season 2 to see what the new map looks like, but I think I've had my fill of Battlefield for a long time to come.
This review contains spoilers
I'll try to keep it vague, but literal end of the game spoilers ahead:
I finished this last night, and right before the last major battle in the game, you have a scene with the classic "All Your Allies Gather" trope.
If you're thinking of any examples of this, one of the first examples of the trope that might come to mind is ME2's Suicide Mission. Other examples exist (especially if we think about movies/TV/books as well), but we'll just use that as a basic starting point for discussion.
Generally when you have the All Your Allies Gather trope, if the game was written reasonably well, you might get a little lump in your throat at seeing all these characters that you love gathered together to join you heading into the breach.
And then, assuming this is a game with choices like ME2 (and that you didn't cheat and read a guide), you might have a character that you really love die during that final battle. And again, assuming that the game was written reasonably well, you should feel something about them dying.
When my allies gathered in Valhalla, I literally couldn't remember who two of them were, a bunch I didn't care about, and there was only one pair of characters that I was particularly glad to see.
And then when several of my allies fell in battle...I felt nothing except for one of them who was from the aforementioned pair because the grief of the other character left behind was very touching.
All of this was a very long-winded way to say: this game just has too much stuff in it.
The reason why I couldn't remember two characters, the reason I didn't care about most of the rest, and the reason the deaths didn't hit me hard all really stem from that same thing.
When you're just shuffled from region to region to region, there's simply no time to actually develop real affection or connections with most of these characters. They remain paper thin, hard to simply remember, even harder to care about.
And that's what most of the "content" in this game is: paper thin and hard to care about.
And while I will grant that part of this likely comes from my fatigue with Viking and Viking-era England stuff (Vinland Saga, The Last Kingdom, Vikings), I'm disappointed. It felt like Ubi really took a step forward with Odyssey, but this just did very little for me. Eivor is a much less enjoyable protagonist to me than Alexios or Kassandra were. And holy cow Kassandra's brief appearance in this game really drove home how much more fun of a character she (and her brother) was.
I had a reasonable amount of fun playing, but man am I glad that I got this "free" through the revamped PS Plus. I wouldn't want to pay a single red cent for this.
I finished this last night, and right before the last major battle in the game, you have a scene with the classic "All Your Allies Gather" trope.
If you're thinking of any examples of this, one of the first examples of the trope that might come to mind is ME2's Suicide Mission. Other examples exist (especially if we think about movies/TV/books as well), but we'll just use that as a basic starting point for discussion.
Generally when you have the All Your Allies Gather trope, if the game was written reasonably well, you might get a little lump in your throat at seeing all these characters that you love gathered together to join you heading into the breach.
And then, assuming this is a game with choices like ME2 (and that you didn't cheat and read a guide), you might have a character that you really love die during that final battle. And again, assuming that the game was written reasonably well, you should feel something about them dying.
When my allies gathered in Valhalla, I literally couldn't remember who two of them were, a bunch I didn't care about, and there was only one pair of characters that I was particularly glad to see.
And then when several of my allies fell in battle...I felt nothing except for one of them who was from the aforementioned pair because the grief of the other character left behind was very touching.
All of this was a very long-winded way to say: this game just has too much stuff in it.
The reason why I couldn't remember two characters, the reason I didn't care about most of the rest, and the reason the deaths didn't hit me hard all really stem from that same thing.
When you're just shuffled from region to region to region, there's simply no time to actually develop real affection or connections with most of these characters. They remain paper thin, hard to simply remember, even harder to care about.
And that's what most of the "content" in this game is: paper thin and hard to care about.
And while I will grant that part of this likely comes from my fatigue with Viking and Viking-era England stuff (Vinland Saga, The Last Kingdom, Vikings), I'm disappointed. It felt like Ubi really took a step forward with Odyssey, but this just did very little for me. Eivor is a much less enjoyable protagonist to me than Alexios or Kassandra were. And holy cow Kassandra's brief appearance in this game really drove home how much more fun of a character she (and her brother) was.
I had a reasonable amount of fun playing, but man am I glad that I got this "free" through the revamped PS Plus. I wouldn't want to pay a single red cent for this.
2021
A nice enough game with very cute visuals.
The basic premise of photography as the mechanical focal point is kind of cool, but I do think about 3/4 through it already starts to run thin. I might return to it one day to 100% the last few achievements, but I honestly don't think I'll remember to do it.
Cute but mostly forgettable to me.
The basic premise of photography as the mechanical focal point is kind of cool, but I do think about 3/4 through it already starts to run thin. I might return to it one day to 100% the last few achievements, but I honestly don't think I'll remember to do it.
Cute but mostly forgettable to me.
This game got dumped on at reveal and launch and I think it's not that bad. In fact I think it's a little more than not bad, it's pretty solid.
There's this special feeling when you go into a round and you get two squad mates who are locked in, and you complete a round flawlessly. It feels...professional?
I'm not sure how else to describe it really. It's just this slick feeling when you can do a multi-pronged area clear and know that your squadmates can handle themselves and have your back.
The flip side to this of course is that having bad squadmates is hideously annoying because they can make you actually lose XP. And while the highs of playing with a professional group of randoms is super cool, playing with no mics and no friends is kind of a snooze after your first 3-4 Level 10 operators. If you have two or more people that you can rotate playing this with, I think you'll have more fun with it.
It's also interesting because the gun/equipment mechanics of R6 Siege feel very different here. In that game, you're doing relatively slow, tac shooting, but in this game you can quickly face a horde of enemies charging you. Which puts a pretty new, fun spin on the implementation of R6's gunplay.
I get why people have problems with the game, but I think it deserves better reception than it has gotten, and I hope Ubisoft gives it (like R6S before it) enough time to get its feet under it!
There's this special feeling when you go into a round and you get two squad mates who are locked in, and you complete a round flawlessly. It feels...professional?
I'm not sure how else to describe it really. It's just this slick feeling when you can do a multi-pronged area clear and know that your squadmates can handle themselves and have your back.
The flip side to this of course is that having bad squadmates is hideously annoying because they can make you actually lose XP. And while the highs of playing with a professional group of randoms is super cool, playing with no mics and no friends is kind of a snooze after your first 3-4 Level 10 operators. If you have two or more people that you can rotate playing this with, I think you'll have more fun with it.
It's also interesting because the gun/equipment mechanics of R6 Siege feel very different here. In that game, you're doing relatively slow, tac shooting, but in this game you can quickly face a horde of enemies charging you. Which puts a pretty new, fun spin on the implementation of R6's gunplay.
I get why people have problems with the game, but I think it deserves better reception than it has gotten, and I hope Ubisoft gives it (like R6S before it) enough time to get its feet under it!
2022
I always like to note when games suck me in, so I think it's worth noting that I played this from around midnight local time until the early morning hours.
That said, I think some of the effusive praise likening this to Disco Elysium or other CRPG games like that to be a bit over the top. It's a stretch to even call this an RPG in my opinion, it's much more akin to a plain Choose-Your-Own-Adventure with some very light resource management.
I also think it's worth noting that since it's a CYOA, the resource/time management that's built into the game becomes pretty easy around two hours into the game. The first hour or so where you're scraping by to survive is very cool, but after that it begins to drop off precipitously in importance. I think that would be fine, but I feel like they should have traded the centrality of resource management for more focus on time management (which is also super easy to handle) and put more focus on not being able to do everything with every character in one playthrough.
And in that regard it's worth mentioning that I'm fairly certain I saw every character's story through to the end in a single playthrough. Nice for people who don't like replaying games (me), but it also means there's low replay value here. I do think it's funny that the game autosaves and doesn't allow for manual save(scumming) because the devs want to presumably encourage replays...but then they also allow you to see almost everything in a single playthrough other than the text specific to each ending you didn't choose.
Those caveats aside, I think as a CYOA game, it's pretty great.
The story is generally well written; the story/writing doesn't get preachy, which is a pretty common issue for sci-fi writing in my opinion; the character art is done in a style that I really love; and the characters themselves are largely interesting enough that you'll want to hear most of them to their conclusion.
In particular, there's one side-storyline that I really loved, and the ending I chose based off that side-story was genuinely touching. I won't spoil what it was, but after reading that ending I can say I'm very satisfied with my $20 spent.
That said, I think some of the effusive praise likening this to Disco Elysium or other CRPG games like that to be a bit over the top. It's a stretch to even call this an RPG in my opinion, it's much more akin to a plain Choose-Your-Own-Adventure with some very light resource management.
I also think it's worth noting that since it's a CYOA, the resource/time management that's built into the game becomes pretty easy around two hours into the game. The first hour or so where you're scraping by to survive is very cool, but after that it begins to drop off precipitously in importance. I think that would be fine, but I feel like they should have traded the centrality of resource management for more focus on time management (which is also super easy to handle) and put more focus on not being able to do everything with every character in one playthrough.
And in that regard it's worth mentioning that I'm fairly certain I saw every character's story through to the end in a single playthrough. Nice for people who don't like replaying games (me), but it also means there's low replay value here. I do think it's funny that the game autosaves and doesn't allow for manual save(scumming) because the devs want to presumably encourage replays...but then they also allow you to see almost everything in a single playthrough other than the text specific to each ending you didn't choose.
Those caveats aside, I think as a CYOA game, it's pretty great.
The story is generally well written; the story/writing doesn't get preachy, which is a pretty common issue for sci-fi writing in my opinion; the character art is done in a style that I really love; and the characters themselves are largely interesting enough that you'll want to hear most of them to their conclusion.
In particular, there's one side-storyline that I really loved, and the ending I chose based off that side-story was genuinely touching. I won't spoil what it was, but after reading that ending I can say I'm very satisfied with my $20 spent.
2019
This review contains spoilers
Large spoilers below.
I'm a big complainer, so let's talk about the bad first:
The first two camps in this game are dumb. I get that they're trying to set up how hard life is (particularly outside of Lost Lake), and they're trying to set up some interesting world building but being forced to work for a slaver and a political truther is not a great introduction to a game.
Also related to the game's start, I'm not principally against the concept of upgrading the motorcycle, but it goes so slow at the beginning. Watching Deacon putter up hills during the first 10 or so hours is infuriating. I would have liked to get the speed/traction stuff quicker and leave the rest of the game for more gameplay-style "choices," like adding carrying capacity for extra traps or an extra gun I could swap to or whatever. But making your main mode of transport feel genuinely awful to ride around is not a good design choice.
Next, even after the many patches that had been deployed by the time I bought the game, there are some serious texture and level loading qualities. In one case, I went through a cave for a story mission and then the boss literally didn't load in, forcing me to restart my PS4. In another case, at the end of the game during the final cutscenes, textures on clothes and objects just weren't loading, so multiple characters looked really horrible. Not a deal-breaker exactly, but considering it was the ending, you'd want everything to run as smoothly as possible.
Speaking of the ending, the final battle has a death fake-out that's just horrible.
Okay, the bad stuff is out of the way, so now for a small defense of the game:
The first time you see a horde pouring out of some building that you accidentally awakened is genuinely horrifying. This is probably the first and only game to nail that World War Z-esque, bodies piling and falling-over-themselves-to-get-to-you feeling.
I get that Deacon fits into the boring "gruff white dude" stereotype that was really prevalent in like 2010, but he's actually fairly unique. The guy is an actual biker with some questionable past history, and even during the game he displays some questionable morals. It's cool to have a protagonist that's actually kind of an ass. Not an edgelord ass like a lot of games for, but just kind of a genuine ass that I might expect to meet in every day life. A guy with some really annoying flaws, but also a guy who will sweetly go to visit the grave of his dead wife and talk to her to update her about what's going on (this is a cool, optional side-thing in the game that doesn't feel nearly as cliche and hackneyed as it should) in his life.
Similarly, the game actually makes an effort to address the typical ludonarrative dissonance of Deacon murdering hundreds of humans and killing thousands of zombies by having people he meets be disturbed by the choices he makes. Which I thought was pretty cool, even if they don't necessarily nail the landing totally.
Speaking of story writing, I think Deacon's relationship with his wife is legitimately well crafted, particularly in the latter stages of the game, where I think it really nails what a reunion between two long separated people might look like. Instead of being Hollywood-ish with an immediately happy reunion, there's some genuine tension, hurt and processing going on. Again, it might not totally land the concept here, but I love that they tried something different.
At this point it's hard for me to remember the exact reason I liked each specific characters, but basically all of the major supporting cast, Boozer, Iron Mike, Skizzo, Rikki, Kouri, etc are great.
All in all, I really do think this game is pretty solid now that it's been patched up and is running more smoothly. I think this is also one of those cases where price point and pre-game expectations will color your experience. If I paid $60 at release, I probably wouldn't be as steadfast in defending it. If I even paid the current $40 list-price on PSN I might not be happy. But if you can get it during one of the frequent $20 sales it has multiple times every year? I think you'll have some solid fun for that amount of money.
I'm a big complainer, so let's talk about the bad first:
The first two camps in this game are dumb. I get that they're trying to set up how hard life is (particularly outside of Lost Lake), and they're trying to set up some interesting world building but being forced to work for a slaver and a political truther is not a great introduction to a game.
Also related to the game's start, I'm not principally against the concept of upgrading the motorcycle, but it goes so slow at the beginning. Watching Deacon putter up hills during the first 10 or so hours is infuriating. I would have liked to get the speed/traction stuff quicker and leave the rest of the game for more gameplay-style "choices," like adding carrying capacity for extra traps or an extra gun I could swap to or whatever. But making your main mode of transport feel genuinely awful to ride around is not a good design choice.
Next, even after the many patches that had been deployed by the time I bought the game, there are some serious texture and level loading qualities. In one case, I went through a cave for a story mission and then the boss literally didn't load in, forcing me to restart my PS4. In another case, at the end of the game during the final cutscenes, textures on clothes and objects just weren't loading, so multiple characters looked really horrible. Not a deal-breaker exactly, but considering it was the ending, you'd want everything to run as smoothly as possible.
Speaking of the ending, the final battle has a death fake-out that's just horrible.
Okay, the bad stuff is out of the way, so now for a small defense of the game:
The first time you see a horde pouring out of some building that you accidentally awakened is genuinely horrifying. This is probably the first and only game to nail that World War Z-esque, bodies piling and falling-over-themselves-to-get-to-you feeling.
I get that Deacon fits into the boring "gruff white dude" stereotype that was really prevalent in like 2010, but he's actually fairly unique. The guy is an actual biker with some questionable past history, and even during the game he displays some questionable morals. It's cool to have a protagonist that's actually kind of an ass. Not an edgelord ass like a lot of games for, but just kind of a genuine ass that I might expect to meet in every day life. A guy with some really annoying flaws, but also a guy who will sweetly go to visit the grave of his dead wife and talk to her to update her about what's going on (this is a cool, optional side-thing in the game that doesn't feel nearly as cliche and hackneyed as it should) in his life.
Similarly, the game actually makes an effort to address the typical ludonarrative dissonance of Deacon murdering hundreds of humans and killing thousands of zombies by having people he meets be disturbed by the choices he makes. Which I thought was pretty cool, even if they don't necessarily nail the landing totally.
Speaking of story writing, I think Deacon's relationship with his wife is legitimately well crafted, particularly in the latter stages of the game, where I think it really nails what a reunion between two long separated people might look like. Instead of being Hollywood-ish with an immediately happy reunion, there's some genuine tension, hurt and processing going on. Again, it might not totally land the concept here, but I love that they tried something different.
At this point it's hard for me to remember the exact reason I liked each specific characters, but basically all of the major supporting cast, Boozer, Iron Mike, Skizzo, Rikki, Kouri, etc are great.
All in all, I really do think this game is pretty solid now that it's been patched up and is running more smoothly. I think this is also one of those cases where price point and pre-game expectations will color your experience. If I paid $60 at release, I probably wouldn't be as steadfast in defending it. If I even paid the current $40 list-price on PSN I might not be happy. But if you can get it during one of the frequent $20 sales it has multiple times every year? I think you'll have some solid fun for that amount of money.
Beating this marks the first time I've ever actually finished an AC game, although I own AC1 through Black Flag. It actually might even be the first time I've thoroughly beaten a modern Ubisoft game.
I get why people criticize Ubisoft games, and Odyssey certainly has plenty of the oft-mentioned stuff. The most common complaint is true here: the open world is just beyond bloated. There's so much copy-pasted, repetitive side content that just doesn't need to exist. You could easily cut like half of this stuff and make the map actually more interesting to explore and stumble across unique content rather than repetitive stuff every 30 seconds that seems designed to simply keep ADHD players hooked before they lose attention while riding for a mile. I did a lot of this side junk en route to the platinum, and while there were a few standout quests, most were like early-2000s RPG filler.
With that in mind, it's a shame there's so much junk content because the world being this huge is sincerely amazing, and it is genuinely cool to see the way they designed the physical map, and I really enjoyed just riding around the map finding stuff for the first several hours of the game. However, all that said, I do think the junk content's impact on the game is overstated. Yes, there's a lot of junk, but you can ignore (i.e. literally ride past) most of it. And the map bloat complaints also seem a little silly to me to some extent. Turn on explorer mode and move on with your life. Yes, it's annoying we have to do that, but the option is available.
On the story side, it's kind of a mixed bag at times. There's a lot of goofy and cliche aspects, and the alt-history/timeline/genetic memory stuff I still think is pretty dumb. But it's never super boring or dragging (a common issue in open world stories), and the story payoff basically seems earned.
My favorite part though is the cultural backdrop to the game. It's incredibly enjoyable and plain neat to play a game that feels this well researched and authentic. I know some people preferred Melissanthi Mahut's voice work to Michael Antonakos, but honestly both of them sound like Greeks that I've grown up knowing my whole life. Although I would prefer more games about Greece that don't feel compelled to delve into mythology, there's such an authentic feeling of Greekness in the game that I really appreciate.
I get why people criticize Ubisoft games, and Odyssey certainly has plenty of the oft-mentioned stuff. The most common complaint is true here: the open world is just beyond bloated. There's so much copy-pasted, repetitive side content that just doesn't need to exist. You could easily cut like half of this stuff and make the map actually more interesting to explore and stumble across unique content rather than repetitive stuff every 30 seconds that seems designed to simply keep ADHD players hooked before they lose attention while riding for a mile. I did a lot of this side junk en route to the platinum, and while there were a few standout quests, most were like early-2000s RPG filler.
With that in mind, it's a shame there's so much junk content because the world being this huge is sincerely amazing, and it is genuinely cool to see the way they designed the physical map, and I really enjoyed just riding around the map finding stuff for the first several hours of the game. However, all that said, I do think the junk content's impact on the game is overstated. Yes, there's a lot of junk, but you can ignore (i.e. literally ride past) most of it. And the map bloat complaints also seem a little silly to me to some extent. Turn on explorer mode and move on with your life. Yes, it's annoying we have to do that, but the option is available.
On the story side, it's kind of a mixed bag at times. There's a lot of goofy and cliche aspects, and the alt-history/timeline/genetic memory stuff I still think is pretty dumb. But it's never super boring or dragging (a common issue in open world stories), and the story payoff basically seems earned.
My favorite part though is the cultural backdrop to the game. It's incredibly enjoyable and plain neat to play a game that feels this well researched and authentic. I know some people preferred Melissanthi Mahut's voice work to Michael Antonakos, but honestly both of them sound like Greeks that I've grown up knowing my whole life. Although I would prefer more games about Greece that don't feel compelled to delve into mythology, there's such an authentic feeling of Greekness in the game that I really appreciate.
Let's get this out of the way, when there was a lot of darkness in the world at the start of the pandemic, this brought me a wonderful way to distract myself.
With that said, as much as I appreciate what the game accomplished at a meta-societal level, I'm not super in love with the way they upped some of the gamey systems here.
Crafting in particular stands out as a key example of a "gamey" system that was added to the AC formula without really understanding how to implement crafting. Which seems like a pretty classic Nintendo problem, taking a modern concept/mechanic and implementing it how I would expect it to have been done in 2013.
Not being able to craft multiple items at once, having to spam through repeat character dialogue, being unable to eat stacks of fruit instead of one by one, being unable to craft directly from storage...these are things that have been "solved" quality-of-life issues for years in most games. And honestly, on their own, none of these things are more than minor annoyances. But in concert with one another, these things add up quick.
And maybe I'm being unfair to Nintendo's technical prowess and they're not so backwards and they are aware that these QoL things exist elsewhere. Which actually leaves us with a funnier option: all of this is intentional! Presumably, if that's true, they think this stuff is part of the charm of the village experience.
No, I'm sorry, it's not charming to have to spam past Blathers dialog constantly (haha get it, he "blathers" on about stuff because it's his name, so clever!), it's not charming that the Twins won't let me buy larger multiples of items from the shop (like flowers). It's just irritating.
And all of this makes me feel like there's a great game here...but it's buried under some really annoying design decisions.
With that said, as much as I appreciate what the game accomplished at a meta-societal level, I'm not super in love with the way they upped some of the gamey systems here.
Crafting in particular stands out as a key example of a "gamey" system that was added to the AC formula without really understanding how to implement crafting. Which seems like a pretty classic Nintendo problem, taking a modern concept/mechanic and implementing it how I would expect it to have been done in 2013.
Not being able to craft multiple items at once, having to spam through repeat character dialogue, being unable to eat stacks of fruit instead of one by one, being unable to craft directly from storage...these are things that have been "solved" quality-of-life issues for years in most games. And honestly, on their own, none of these things are more than minor annoyances. But in concert with one another, these things add up quick.
And maybe I'm being unfair to Nintendo's technical prowess and they're not so backwards and they are aware that these QoL things exist elsewhere. Which actually leaves us with a funnier option: all of this is intentional! Presumably, if that's true, they think this stuff is part of the charm of the village experience.
No, I'm sorry, it's not charming to have to spam past Blathers dialog constantly (haha get it, he "blathers" on about stuff because it's his name, so clever!), it's not charming that the Twins won't let me buy larger multiples of items from the shop (like flowers). It's just irritating.
And all of this makes me feel like there's a great game here...but it's buried under some really annoying design decisions.
2018
So on the one hand, I love strategy games and city builders, and this is easily one of my favorite aesthetic settings for a strategy game ever. I would love to read more books or see more movies/TV shows set in post-apocalyptic
On the other hand, this feels like a pretty linear affair to me. It's not something I really feel like I need to return to, even if I did enjoy my time with it. And honestly, I'm not the hugest fan of the "hard choices" that 11 bit studios has tried with their games. I definitely didn't buy into them in This War of Mine, and I don't really buy into them here. Some of the options feel cartoonishly stupid or wrong, but maybe I just need to play on a higher difficulty so it's actually more of a struggle to decide.
On the other hand, this feels like a pretty linear affair to me. It's not something I really feel like I need to return to, even if I did enjoy my time with it. And honestly, I'm not the hugest fan of the "hard choices" that 11 bit studios has tried with their games. I definitely didn't buy into them in This War of Mine, and I don't really buy into them here. Some of the options feel cartoonishly stupid or wrong, but maybe I just need to play on a higher difficulty so it's actually more of a struggle to decide.