Recent reviews by Mr. September

Positives

+ The combat is more of the same, but they really blended their past games' mechanics together, and it's better than the sum of its parts. Mobility and combat will never be the same in future soulslikes, since any game that lacks the core mechanics of Elden Ring will forever be overshadowed and inferior.
+ There are loads of variety in gear, magic and Ashes of Wars. Sure, you can be a one-trick pony and spam the same spell or AoW to win, but the game has vast variety, especially with the DLC content.
+ Stealth is surprisingly viable, and certain spells and Ashes of War make it even better. Similarly, horseback combat actually doesn't suck either. In fact, it's pretty viable, just like stealth. Especially for sorcerers.
+ Religious themes are woven into the world and lore in a way that’s not only immersive, but also cohesive. There aren't many weird design choices that clash with each other, and the environments alone tell a lot about the current situation and past events.
+ Character customization is more of the same, but better. You can make absolutely gorgeous characters if you put some effort into creating one (or if you just check a character preset video, lol).
+ Even though most of them end grimly, side quests are generally interesting and fun.
+ Apart from a few "mandatory" teleport gates and teleporting to the Roundtable Hold, almost all maps are fully connected. You can go from one end of the entire map to the other on foot, if that's what you want to do. Sure, you can't walk all the way to Crumbling Farum Azula, but we have to have some exceptions, I guess.
+ Visual design is top-notch. The game is full of beautiful vistas. Certain underground sections are particularly jaw-dropping, especially since how they are slowly presented when you first descend.

Neutral/Informative

+/- The lore is incredibly rich, but it requires almost too much effort to fully decipher. You'll have to carefully analyze environmental design and sift through item descriptions if you want to understand the entire thing.
+/- Enemies often delay their attacks to catch you off-guard. While this is a massive negative at a glance, it's a necessary measure to prevent the player from spamming rolls to avoid all attacks without putting in any effort. Now, you have to time your jumps and rolls to actually avoid hits. However, the delays sometimes make combat feel a bit too far-fetched.
+/- You can get all achievements related to the endings in one playthrough if you savescum.
+/- While the bosses are unique for the most part, some of them are repeated for no real reason other than to fill in the ranks. Like how we have two Astels and you fight Godfrey's projection before you fight him properly later on.
+/- An average playthrough will last longer than a hundred hours as long as you are taking your time, and it's almost impossible to see everything in one run, so you will likely want to play more.

Negatives

- Level design is often absolutely nonsensical, like having bottomless pits right under massive structures. Newsflash, FromSoft. It's acceptable to NOT have bottomless pits under almost every single elevator. You can have flat ground or just a maintenance room of sorts down there instead of being cheap about design and adding pits everywhere. The fact that the only entrance to one of the castles is via a single elevator is already extremely bizarre, to begin with. Level design is somewhat mediocre, once you start paying attention to certain details.

- Four out of six endings are essentially the same, just with a slightly different flavor. No matter how you repair the Elden Ring, they all boil down to "Be Elden Lord and things will still keep getting worse because the underlying cause of stagnation and rot never got solved, lmao" sort of crap. Even the achievements reflect this, since the four "Become Elden Lord" endings share one achievement. Considering the DLC exists without any ties to the base game, they really should've worked better on the endings. I mean, I get it. The lore is hidden in item descriptions and other text, but maybe stop being so bloody vague at the ass end of the game? Can't we have at least one extra sentence that wraps things up properly? There is nothing in terms of post-game, either. No progress, no changes, and no one addresses what you achieved or what you've become even if you quite literally burn it all to ashes.

- Certain enemy types are infinitely more annoying than challenging. A lot of random corners and rooms have ambushes tied to a "trigger zone" rather than enemy line of sight, so you can't even run in to grab something in peace or run past enemies without at least a few of them lunging at you when you enter a new room. All enemies should've worked on a line of sight basis, even for ambushes.

- Certain graphical effects like vignette and chromatic aberration can’t be disabled without mods. You also can't unlock the FPS unless you edit the .exe with a hex editor or use a mod for it (with both of them preventing online play). Unlocking the FPS has no noticeable effect on gameplay. Certain other things also can't be disabled or adjusted without mods, such as automatic camera centering, and changing FOV.

- Spirit Ashes have abysmal pathfinding and mobility. They also can't use elevators and sometimes fall off of edges. Even the flying ones struggle with mobility because they still technically "walk" despite being airborne, and can get stuck just like any other Ash.

- Mild DEI influence, but only for character creation. Sex is regarded as "body type" and are numbered "1" and "2". Other than this, I did not detect any "message"s in this game, so the rest of it must be fine.

- Altering armor mostly just removes a hood or cape from an armor piece, and sometimes it’s nonsensical, like not being able to remove the mask of Seluvis' hat. There's no transmog unless you use a mod.

- According to the videos I watched and discussion posts I saw, the latency is pretty jarring if you are playing online with others. Seamless coop doesn't have this issue, since it uses P2P through Steam, which is vastly more stable. I can't personally confirm it, but it's still worth noting.

- Most dungeons use the same tilesets, and they rarely have something unique in them that would make them memorable. The one that had knights fighting each other perpetually in spirit form was the only one I actually fully remember. Out of, like, I don't know. A dozen? More?

- Some weapons and mechanics will probably never be balanced properly, especially for multiplayer (since multiplayer is an afterthought anyway).

- It's extremely tedious if not borderline impossible to keep track of all the NPC quests at the same time unless you check a wiki or use a mod that at least records a summary of NPC interactions. If you somehow finish an NPC quest fully without looking anything up, you either already knew how to do it or just got lucky.

Seamless Coop (Nexus)[www.nexusmods.com]
RTX 3060 Ti, Ryzen 7 5800X and 32 GB RAM.

Most settings are set to high, and the game usually runs at 100+ FPS unless the open world has too much going on. The DLC particularly runs worse, somehow, with the FPS dropping to 50-60 on busy open air areas sometimes.

Positives
+ The overall atmosphere in general and the music really conveys the desolation and hopelessness well. The music changes depending on the situation, as well. The art direction is on-point.
+ Game actually looks pretty decent even though I had to set almost everything to low to get it to an acceptable performance.
+ Devs actually have a good vision and they built something impressive. Games of this kind are really scarce. No wonder people pressured them into releasing it. It's not an inherently bad game.
+ Gun customization is actually pretty decent.

Neutral/Informative
+/- This game is a stealth shooter where looting active warzones is your way of life. You have to collect attachments, water, weapons and other precious stuff for money and gear. You then sell the vendor trash, use the attachments to make custom weapons and can use the consumables while on the field for healing or other effects.
+/- There is no setting you can change to play in first person mode. The game is always in third person unless you are aiming down sights.

Negatives
- The water mechanic is a worthless FOMO mechanic that was basically lifted from some MMO or gacha game. It still drains even if you are offline, and running out will wipe your stash. A lot of people hated it and the devs were (somehow) pretty adamant on not changing it at the time of me writing this. They'll probably have to remove it, otherwise the player count will drain like the water does.
- The game’s performance is abysmal, even for an "Early Access" title. They should've waited instead of caving in and releasing it. Yes, I know it's pre-alpha, and they shouldn't have released it in EA.
- This is a P2P coop stealth "shooter" game and it has Epic Online Services. The game also won't launch if you are offline. Fortunately, EOS uninstalls themselves once you uninstall the game.
- Enemies can and will often spawn or despawn in plain sight. I saw a tank despawn right in front of my eyes once, and saw an infantry guy also despawn when I was waiting for him to move or get killed.
- The AI is janky across the board. Enemies will get stuck or have issues targeting each other. Similarly, the Scav Mules you can bring along for more inventory space will also get stuck in terrain or straight up wander off and disappear.

- There’s a bug where clicking on the empty Scav Mule inventory box can accidentally cause your weapon to discharge. Fortunately, I wasn't detected even though I shot the ground twice. With a shotgun, no less.
- Vaulting and climbing are both very clunky. Ledge detection is also questionable. Getting stuck on tiny objects on a relatively flat terrain is also common.
- Avoid timed extraction at all costs. The timer is a whole minute and enemies swarm you after the initial 20 seconds. I barely made it out thanks to the Scav Mules tanking all the damage. Fortunately, they were all empty.
- Scav Mules can get detected and be killed by enemies. While there's nothing inherently wrong with this, the AI will often make the mule walk past enemy line of sight and trigger them. I still wish it was "invisible" as long as you weren't being actively searched.
- Movement is so painful to interact with. Sprinting requires you to wind it up to get to top speed. You can't turn via movement keys when sprinting.

3060 Ti, Ryzen 7 5800X, 32 GB RAM

Game runs at 40-70 FPS depending on the situation, but the Innards (base area) always sits between 45-50 FPS, no matter what. I mean, they could have at least optimized that properly. Almost all options were at Low.

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It’s not easy to fully judge the game in just two hours, but it doesn’t take that long to see how poorly it runs or plays. I have seen enough questionable design choices in my life so far, so I can pick them up really easily now. I’ll have to refund the game and let it "cook" for a year or maybe longer. I only bought it to review, anyway. Oh, and I doubt the review score will improve any time soon. Heh.

Apparently, players pressured the devs into releasing it in a pre-Alpha state, and they fell for it, completely botching the launch. You only get one release, and if you mess that up, good luck recovering.

I didn't have to deal with Hunter Killers personally. I don't know if that was fortunate or not. I also didn't meet the "keypad stuck" bug.

Positives
+ The art is, simply put, stellar. You can tell how much love, effort and time was spent on it even at a glance. It's all hand-drawn, including the backgrounds. The backgrounds are not half-assed, either, and are 3D objects in some cases. The comics/manga style events that happen when more important dialogue is happening are also drawn well. The mixing of traditional/old design with high-tech aspects is also pretty good. The very few cutscenes are animated and drawn nicely, as well.
+ Certain sceneries implement 3D objects or backgrounds, and not only do they look great, they also don't feel out of place. The visual cohesion between 2D and 3D is top-notch. Some enemies also have 3D attacks or effects.
+ The music fits the atmosphere perfectly at all times. The sound effects are crunchy and satisfying, especially for combat.
+ The interactions of the NPCs that end up in the "hub" with each other is sincere and plausible. The NPCs themselves are also interesting, funny and memorable.
+ Combat is satisfying and flows freely once you get used to it. Parrying and punishing the enemies is exceptionally fun. However, it takes a lot of practice to master some of the fights.
+ The story is actually pretty engaging. The lore bits are concise and worth the read. English localization is pretty good. I didn't notice any typos or strange wording.
+ The Jade system (basically trinkets) expands or changes mechanics in various ways and adds decent variety.
+ The boss fights are all visual and mechanical spectacles.
+ You can return after finishing the game to clear out missed stuff, and you can actually play both endings without having to play the entire thing more than once if you collected all the required items.

Neutral/Informative
+/- The combat heavily focuses on well-timed parries and punishes. Some people might struggle with the timings. The game is absolutely brutal when you are learning the parry timings of certain enemies and bosses. You'll get killed over and over again until you start landing those damn parries. At least, some enemies are the "demo" versions of other, harder enemies. Once you learn one of them, it's easier to deal with certain others.
+/- The game doesn't seem to contain any mechanics or logic that is directly tied to framerate. I was playing the entire thing at 144 FPS and never had wonky mechanics or other issues.
+/- Some scenes and events may make some people uncomfortable. Notable examples include how serpentine sea monsters used as transportation have boats on their backs to be pulled by shooting harpoons at their backs. Another would be how one of the main Sol boss' legs get cut off (quite literally mangled, actually) when she's defeated, with a lot of blood shown. She also coughs up blood after the fight. Her soldiers also have their guts hang out after they are defeated. Things don't stop there, however, because she gets to wear one of the brain-scrambling necklaces she used on her "sons" to control and make them into perfect (undead) soldiers. Also, she eats eye-shaped "fruits" during the boss fight when you are busy dealing with her augmented undead soldiers. Other examples include plants with wriggling eyes, corn (?) with fish heads and other freaks of nature like spinal cord "trees". If "cysts with elongated pig snouts" was on your bingo card, you are in luck.

Negatives
- Sprinting could have been a tiny bit faster. Maybe around 10% faster and it would've been perfect.
- You sometimes have to run a bunch if you die at a boss fight, and you have to manually grab your money from your death spot inside the boss room. However, grabbing your money from your death spot does return more than just your money (health and bow uses), so it can be used strategically.
- Loading screens are too common and feel (or are?) a bit "too long" just for being simple area transitions. They take 2 to 5 seconds each, roughly speaking. Considering the game was on my M2 SSD, I was expecting near-instant loading times for a game of this type. I'm pretty sure the game could've loaded an entire region without any issues.
- Some Jades are a bit vague about their function, due to not containing numbers for their bonuses. There are also a few inconsistencies, such as money being called "Jin" or "gold" depending on the Jade.
- Some enemies and bosses can pretty much kill you instantly in one combo due to their attack timings and your lack of iframes after getting hit. Getting ganked by different varieties of enemies is also a death sentence, unless you use the bow to thin their numbers or kill them one by one.
- Fast travel (to places other than the hub) unlocks around 6 to 8 hours in, and you can't teleport between nodes directly. You have to teleport to the Pavillion first. You also can't check the detailed map of a region when choosing it for teleportation.
- Boss intros partially repeat every time you enter a boss room, but they are usually short. Still a waste of time, however.
- The map doesn't show "doorways" that lead to somewhere else on the same area.
- Certain segments feel almost experimental and cause pacing issues. Fortunately, there are only a very small handful of them. The "walking down the corridor as camera slowly scrolls and as enemies spawn" section after talking to Eigong was cringe as hell, for example.

Sundered: Eldritch Edition.
ENDER LILIES: Quietus of the Knights
GRIME
Blasphemous
Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Will of the Wisps
Dust: An Elysian Tail

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There are some pretty solid reasons on why this game has only 500-ish negative reviews while it has over 10.000 positive ones (at the time of me writing this). It's pretty understandable, honestly, especially once you get to play it yourself. I've been following this game since its first ever announcement, and it's safe to say I'm not disappointed after all this time. It was worth the wait and money I spent, for sure.

I think some situations could've been more dynamic and built better. Such as bringing a requested item to Chiyou as he asks for it, saying "I already got that" not being a thing. Also, no one comments on Yi's immortality/regeneration except one or maybe two bosses, and they don't further comment on it after you return multiple times for a rematch. It's obvious that Yi regenerates instead of rewinding time, so it would have been more fitting if his persistent revival would attract more attention; especially anger and frustration. Not even the last boss acknowledges this. Honestly, I'd get pretty pissed off if my opponent was functionally immortal and had time to adapt to my strategies.

Positives

+ Hardcore semi-voxel survival game with an extremely linear progression system.
+ Immersive atmosphere due to aesthetics, sound design and environments. The lore/setting also does a lot of the carrying. The weather sound effects carry the game a lot, too. Especially during storms.
+ The building system is great (when it works properly). In fact, it's so good that I think it's wasted on this game. I hope it gets 1:1 copied by a better game of the same vein in the future.
+ Tree physics is one of the very few genuinely fun things in this game. Seeing massive logs roll down and break/kill stuff never gets old.
+ Crafting stations and how you "upgrade" them is cool.

Neutral/Informative

+/- The meal system is interesting. Basically, it lets you have 3 different meal buffs at the same time, and meals have different bonuses to max Health and max Stamina.
+/- Parrying is relatively easy. All you have to do is to block before an attack lands, and you don't have to be very precise. Some attacks are almost instantaneous, though.
+/- You can parry enemy projectiles, and the shooter/caster will get staggered from afar in some cases.
+/- There is no "randomized" loot. Every single mob drops their specific loot in specific amounts.
+/- There are no Steam Achievements or Points Shop items. For people who care about at least one of those things, that's actually a negative.
+/- Procedurally generated world and dungeons.
+/- The UI might not be everyone's cup of tea.

Negatives

- Your character never inherently gets stronger. Forsaken powers are underwhelming as hell.
- Game is borderline unplayable without mods due to multiple key QoL mechanics missing. Notable examples include: Craft X amount, mass planting, filling smelters fast, destroying items, auto-repair gear in bag when you interact with forge/workshop. On top of that, each item takes 2 seconds to craft. Metals take 25 to 30 seconds per bar, and fermenting something takes a whopping 40 minutes in real time. A plant or mushroom takes FOUR real time hours to grow.
- Dropping everything on you upon death and losing 5% of your total skill levels (by default) is not punishing in the good way. The game is far too tedious by design for all that to be a "reasonable" setback. Travelling back to where you died is already a big punishment.
- Devs practically did no work since launch in terms of performance, playability or QoL as far as I can tell (I did acquire a copy at launch). More than three years of Early Access and millions upon millions of money, and the game is still in a highly questionable state.
- Equipped gear stays in your bag, and will still occupy space. That's at least 4 to 5 slots occupied by default for absolutely no good reason. You also have no way of increasing bag slot count. You can't recycle useless/old gear. You can't even destroy items. You can only drop them, and they will take several ingame days to despawn, like every other loose item you left all over the place while exploring. A lot of items are worthless McGuffins with exactly one use.

- You can't dig tunnels. If you attempt to dig sideways after digging straight down, the entire terrain above you gets dug to your level.
- NPC AI might as well not exist. Enemies have major pathfinding issues even on FLAT GROUND, and move about without attacking or getting close to you (to waste your time).
- It's basically impossible to find the two merchants in your world in a reasonable time frame without using the online map viewer. Even if you do, one of them sells garbage anyway.
- There is no reward for exploration, unless the reward you are looking for is the next biome and the boss location. There are no interesting structures or loot to find. There are no abandoned Portals, either.

- Whoever decided to add flying enemies into a game where there's no vertical melee targeting deserves to be exiled from the gaming industry for the rest of their miserable lives.
- Dungeons are a hassle to navigate due to the camera not being cool with cramped spaces. They also never reset apart from the vegetation inside. That means, they are one-use quick "dungeons" which are forgotten after you strip them of the non-renewable resources inside. The dungeon generation is also inconsistent, with long corridors leading to absolutely nothing in rare cases (and no loot).
- No way of checking what a material is used for without sifting through recipes or checking the wiki.
- Almost every piece of equipable gear has varying amounts of movement speed reduction on it, weapons, shields and tools included.
- The spawn rates are too high, even in "easy" biomes. Gathering something instantly starts triggering invisible spawners nearby. Sometimes, enemies spawn a few meters behind you out of nowhere. The spawn rates get cranked up to eleven in Mistlands and Ashlands.

- Traversal is a chore. A regular slope a normal person can climb in real life is an oiled-up slide in this game. You have to constantly spam-jump to "climb" up mountains.
- Stamina regen speed is disgustingly slow by default. Dodge rolling is worthless because it takes several business days to execute. You either stay at range to use your bow, overwhelm enemies with sheer force or parry the crap out of them.
- Performance could have been better. Especially considering the visuals. The game also stutters often for no apparent reason, even on high-end PCs.
- Enemies have a very large aggro range. Once they detect you, prepare to wipe them all out or die in the process.
- Your "map draw" range is ridiculously small, even if your draw distance is maxed out or if you are on a ship and can see far.

- You can't use weapons while swimming, but enemies can still attack you when they are submerged. On top of this, enemies may rarely spawn inside mineable terrain. If they are ranged, they can still shoot at you in some cases. Ranged enemies can shoot in water.
- Major visibility issues in most biomes to the point of making the game illegible (low lighting, constant fog, smoke or mist).
- The enemy star system is half-baked, and not all enemies that can have "stars" have distinct visuals. Losing 75% of your HP in a single blow to a 2-star enemy because they look exactly the same as 0-star enemies is really fun.
- Rolling doesn't decrease Burning duration.
- Bosses have way too much health, but have very limited movesets.

- There is no enemy friendly fire among different mobs, even if an enemy deploys literal meteors or slams the ground to create a massive shockwave.
- Swimming is basic as hell. Armor and inventory weight are irrelevant. You swim at the speed of a starfish, and use stupid amounts of stamina at all times.
- You quite literally have to load the Arbalest every single time you pull it out, even if you don't shoot it.

Vintage Story (voxel-based realistic wilderness survival game with Lovecraftian lore)
Terraria (at least the progression has some RNG to it, so it's not always the same song and dance)
Minecraft

It's alright. I couldn't feel the same charm I used to feel from DDDA, but I probably need more than 2 hours to have an accurate judgement anyway.

It will be a blast to play this at 144 FPS in a decade once I build a PC that vastly outmatches the "requirements". Until then, I wait.

I'll keep it short. Don't bother with this game. Just buy and play Journey instead.

If you want more details, you can see this and this review instead. Those folks explained everything before I even had to bother suffering through the game.

+ The movesets are one to one copies of certain bosses from Sekiro. The reason why this is a positive is because you can both practice against them for the real game and it's fun.
+ Controls are on-point, and countering feels as satisfying as it is in Sekiro
+ Graphics are decent. There are some details like the bosses flinching, closing their eyes or opening their mouths in awe when you perfect-parry them
+ Game's literally free
+ Music is neat

+/- Blocking is very slightly unresponsive at times, but not enough to consider it a negative
+/- Despite what the Steam page says, the game does have a language option for English
+/- There is no nudity or sexual content in the game unless you count seeing some panties once in a while. During combat, if I might add. I don't think you will have time to stare while trying to perfect-parry 6 attacks in a row. No idea why the game is marked as such, since it reduces visibility on Steam
+/- Sound design is a little flat, partly due to lack of feedback for landing hits, and how some effects sound flat themselves
+/- You usually end up at the edge of an arena regardless of who is pushing who. This may get distracting for some folks

- Horrendous optimization. I didn't have significant performance issues personally, but for what the game is and how it looks like, it sure runs way worse than it should've
- Had some black screen issues. It feels like there's a 10% chance to get stuck during a transition, even if it's at the very start of the game; right after the menu. Pretty frustrating when you are learning boss patterns and you have to restart the entire game because you froze while resetting the fight

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
The video that probably got this game popular
RTX 3060 Ti
Ryzen 7 5800X at 4.40 GHz
32 GB DDR4 RAM at 3200 MHz
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ᴴᵉˢᶦᵗᵃᵗᶦᵒⁿ ᶦˢ ᵈᵉᶠᵉᵃᵗ, ᵒⁿᶦᶦ ᶜʰᵃⁿ~

If you actually did well in this game and never played Sekiro, you will probably have a better time playing the real deal. If you did play some Sekiro before, it's good practice since the timings and feeling are both pretty accurate. However, if you already finished it before, you probably won't be challenged a whole lot. The bosses here have more or less the same movesets as some Sekiro bosses, after all. You won't see anything new if you played the entire thing multiple times before.

Refunded after hearing about the always-online requirement. I don't care what their excuse is. A singleplayer-only game shouldn't require a constant connection to some distant server for no apparent reason. Best part is, this is NOT mentioned on the game's Steam page. Due to my principles, I can't recommend this game in good conscience.

Apart from the ridiculous always-online requirement, the game feels like a standard roguelite with floaty controls and dated graphics. It's mediocre, but it was fun from time to time.

One of the things that stung was how you retain NONE of your resources until you start upgrading a passive that lets you do that. Instead of this, they could have just reduced the drop rate of everything (everything drops like candy) and let you keep everything. It's a bit of a waste of time. At least you can return mid-run when you reach certain places to keep everything, so it's not as bad as I made it sound.

+ Compelling meta-story that gets an unexpected twist and an ending in the DLC
+ The flying sword mechanic and how each different class/subclass gets different mechanics is particularly well-designed and feels amazing to play with
+ Combat is smooth, fast and responsive. Not much else to say here
+ Wide variety of weapons and relics. There are 50 relics, 51 swords and 7 classes (14 different subclasses) to mess around with. Some swords are subclass-specific swords that massively boost your passives, as a bonus. Many weapons also synergize with one or more relics. Relics have different effects depending on which 4 slots you put them into
+ Meta progression is satisfying and adds new mechanics over time

+/- Higher difficulties practically let you have two orange-grade relics right from the start of a run, which makes it easier to get your build going sooner than later
+/- Free DLC that adds a new game mode with unique Nightmare mechanic. It also adds skins for the NPCs that make them add a bonus effect to their services
+/- You can not turn off the vignette effect. You also can not turn off the "slow motion" effect that occurs in multiple instances
+/- Will take around 30~ hours to get everything including achievements, depending on your luck and how skilled you are. Might take a bit longer if you want the endless mode skins for the 7 classes, however
+/- There are some instant-kill moves, but they are very easy to avoid once you learn about them
+/- You can customize the death message, which is a neat detail

- Different difficulty levels don't add anything other than a massive stat inflation. There are no new mechanics or moves that change how you play the game or fight the bosses. Also, the game is too easy once you figure out what relic combinations work best, regardless of difficulty setting
- Severe localization issues which make a lot of the text illegible. Sometimes they are too long and don't fit where they are supposed to fit, as a bonus. Both of these issues also makes some lore entries impossible to understand. Even a fan would have done a better job when it comes to translating this game, if you ask me. There are also occasional typos here and there. Subtitles (when they exist at all) also are not synced with the voice-over. There is no English voice option, either
- Some classes/subclasses are comparatively weaker while some are absolutely broken even if you don't get lucky with your build
- The skill tree still opens up after every "game over" even if you maxed out everything. I mean, the lady is pretty, but you are wasting my time, game
- Takes time to collect some stuff if you are unlucky. There could have been more "anti bad luck" mechanics overall
- Some transitions and cutscenes can't be skipped, no matter how many times you saw them before
- Some relics feel absolutely worthless, even if they are relevant for some builds (due to better options). Also, most of them synergize with themselves, so you end up getting two of the same relic in some cases
- Difficulty setting doesn't apply to the DLC game mode. This means you can still get lower grade weapons and relics
- You can sometimes get stuck on tiny objects that probably didn't need a collision box to begin with. Looking at you, Nightmare mode torches


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The ending in the DLC explains everything and ties in the loose ends, including some of the core gameplay mechanics, like the roguelite aspect. You see, in reality, you are trapped in a nightmare by someone. To prevent your escape, they are keeping you busy by making you repeatedly fight the same cycle over and over again. The warm snow event and the giant lotus were both in your head. However, someone from the real world starts contacting and helping you (in the DLC), and you get a chance to get out of the nightmare. The nightmare world twists and melts, with new enemies appearing and old ones starting to spawn in mixed varieties. To escape for good, you must NOT give in to temptation and defeat 5 "Teller of Untruths". The ending shows you (the player) getting out of a gate, and the text "To Be Continued" appears. A bit of a sequel-bait, but I can't complain. The ending is fitting, and knowing it will eventually continue makes me slightly hyped.

+ The combat is top-notch once you get used to some of the clunky aspects. This applies especially to vocations that use “magick”, since casting times are very long for the strong spells, but they are devastating when you match elemental weaknesses. Wiping an entire room out with one spell or one-shotting a monster with a well-placed sword strike is a common thing if you know what you’re doing. Magic classes like Sorcerer and Magick Archer are designed, play and feel fantastic in particular
+ Sound design is utterly unmatched, despite the game being more than a decade old. I have never played a game where sound design included every single little detail to a meticulous degree. General ambience and sound layering are outright done in flawless fashion
+ Hard Mode actually rewards you for the suffering it causes. However, you might get absolutely wrecked by any random hit if you play a physically weak class (like Sorcerer)
+ The Pawn system in its entirety is masterfully designed. Pawns can learn about quests, enemies and locations and give you and other people who hired them information on aforementioned things. They can learn about things and return with knowledge when they are being used by other players, as well
+ The story cranks up to 11 and then 12 past certain points and the endings are satisfying and fit to the setting
+ You can climb on enemies to strike at their weak points. It’s a little janky, but it’s a lot of fun once you get the hang of it
+ Decent enemy variety. You need a different approach, element or strategy for every single large enemy in the game. For example, golems are completely immune to magic and very resistant to physical attacks but die instantly if you destroy all the “plates” they have on them
+ While there is no direct tutorial, the Pawns you have alongside you teach you how to deal with enemies, hazards and quests. The way the game teaches you how to play is organic thanks to the way the Pawn system is designed
+ Day and night cycle actually matters instead of being a simple visual change. Lanterns are mandatory in dark places and in the night. Different enemies spawn in the night and some quests have to be done at night or day
+ If you don’t like something in the game (like the oppressively limited weight capacity or the jump height), you can use mods to make it more fun or accessible

+/- The only online aspect is the Pawn system, but it’s done in a way that not only makes sense but is fun to deal with. You pay more Rift Crystals if you want to hire a high-level Pawn, but if you are friends with someone, you pay nothing. Your Pawn data is uploaded to the server every time you sleep at an inn
+/- You can send an item as a gift or swap out hired Pawn gear to give most gear and items to another player, which basically qualifies as “trading” despite the game being a single-player in its core
+/- Your character’s height, weight and bulk all affect their capabilities. Smaller characters can carry less, but can fit through some small and otherwise hard-to-access places in some maps and also be carried easier. Tall characters hang their lanterns higher (since their waists are higher) which prevent the lantern form going out when you get into waist-deep water
+/- Voice acting is pretty decent, even though it can get immersion-breaking if you find a pawn that has an oddly-pitched voice
+/- The map isn’t very large for an open-world, but the contents are packed densely
+/- Some animations are great, while some are either stiff or nonexistent. For example, combat animations are great but lip-sync animations are bad/nonexistent

- Unfortunately, close to 60% of the game was cut during development due to time and budget concerns. Even though the game is great as is, one can only wish they didn’t have to cut more than two thirds of the entire thing to ship it. Despite its strengths, the game is still practically incomplete.
- The save system is abysmal, and is a fully valid reason for a lot of people to not recommend the game. You only have ONE save slot, no easy way to manually save and arbitrary autosaves. This means you are pretty much required to back your save up manually if you value your time and progress. Additionally, if your game crashes during a zone transition or mid-save, your save file can be permanently corrupted
- Your Pawn data is uploaded to the server every time you sleep at an inn. However, according to my experience, I rarely could sleep just once to upload it, because it fails at least once or twice every time I tried despite my stable connection
- The infinite consumables and the abundance of money in Hard Mode makes you borderline unkillable unless you are very fragile or made a stupid mistake mid-combat. Even worse, most items are used instantly without any animations or other downsides
- You can deal devastating damage if you use a stackable item that multiplies your damage. While this isn’t an issue by itself, it can make many encounters trivial when used at the right time
- Pawn AI sometimes sucks big time, and they quite literally are incapable of dealing with some enemies even at max knowledge (like how they don’t or can’t dodge Death’s attacks in Blackback Isle)
- You can fail some quests or make them unavailable for the playthrough after certain points, and some of them are not indicated well enough
- Due to the game being a console port, it has some egregious design choices like menu transitions being too long, or having too many menus. Some other things like buying items in mass amounts, forcing you to hold a button also doesn’t help. You even have to go through TWO menus that prevent you from spamming, just to start the damn game (which takes like 10 seconds every time, but feels like 30)
- Stat system makes min-maxing far too tedious. Basically, you get different stat increases per level when you level up as a specific vocation. This means you can make yourself absurdly strong as one vocation while another would be handicapped if you switched over, due to your stats. You can compensate with gear for the most part, but you can’t respec and play as another vocation without using a save editor
- The Pawn Inclination system is too tedious due to you not being able to filter hirable pawns by inclination or forcing your Pawn to stay in one inclination. You can use potions to affect the inclination points, but you can never stop them from changing gradually
- Most items have identical/reused/recolored icons. Instead of 10 different variations of the same item, maybe they could have made them more unique both in function and looks?
- Item descriptions are extremely vague 90% of the time. This includes key items that are necessary for quests or passive bonuses obtained from some unequippable items
- Some voice lines repeat too many times. A notable example is shops (or any important NPC that lets you choose more than one option per dialogue attempt) repeating their lines every single time when they show up


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THEY ARE MASTERWORKS ALL, YOU CAN’T GO WRONG!

You can play this game for thousands of hours, and it’s not even an online game. I think I heard of people who had absurd numbers like 20000 hours played.