Recent reviews by 蛍Firefly

Evade and Sprint are not the same button.

Visually rough, mechanically sound. Lacks in content but has the bones needed for a great game. Scratches the "Where the hell is the SLAI successor?" itch, at least for a few hours.

If you like buildcrafting, you'll be in heaven. The game allows and actively encourages you to do silly synergies. Like "Allow shooting while overheating", "give shield when overheated", and "start cooling down on kill". Which, as long as you can deal with the half fire rate from the first perk, gives 1 shield per kill. Of course, this also means that it can get tougher or RNG heavy in the later difficulties.

It's hard to believe this game was made in 2023. It's very solid and quite fun, the difficulty is just right and the buildcrafting potential is impressive. My only complaints are some esoteric and cryptic puzzles that almost mandate a guide, and that ammo isn't shared in multiplayer, leading to using any build that doesn't circumvent ammo in some way annoying (pubs slurp up ammo like it's going out of style) or expensive (ammo restore item).

Man, let me tell you, this game makes me feel like gaming still has a future. It makes me feel like I'm good at video games again. All it needs now is more raw content, but when the raw, core gameplay is this good, it's going to be a breeze.

~~ 7/30/2022 ~~ Season 6 launch month ~~

Game has fallen into the dirt, again. CS has lost their balls they had on CBU launch and many months have gone by without major and needed balance adjustments. Despite a handful of nice updates like fast travel and dailies/weeklies for SP tickets, the meta is just awful and the community is somehow worse. No amount of convenience or generosity can fix a broken meta.

They do not care about the meta or their community, those fools are actually partnering with some no-name NFT group to organize a no-doubt rugpull version of this game for fat stacks, that they too, do not care about. Like our money, the people who actually play the game and want the best for it, wasn't good enough.

Stay away.

~~ 4/17/2021 ~~ Season 1 launch month ~~

It takes balls to nuke the game to scratch, to wipe out all the player data, all the thousands of dollars each whale has spent on it, to risk the ire of their income, all for the sake of balance and to bring in fresh blood. It's one of the biggest risks I've ever seen in an established game.

While it does need some work, the re-release has proven that the devs have at least some semblance of balance and generosity. Melees can no longer stunlock, Alpha Airs will have trouble sustaining damage, Buff Dev for RT and free Mediger means anyone can play the heal game, and ARTs are... uh, still ARTs.
For tuning, materials are given out like the Reichsmark, broken slots no longer happen, and everything has 3 slots. So anyone can make at least 3 fully tuned builds-- if you're into that sort of thing.

As far as PVE is concerned, it's identical (sad!), but the rewards are much better. Many previously gara-only bots can be obtained with sufficient grinding, like the ALE moebots, and practically every other Cosmic Commander bots.

The controls still suck, the lag is still there, melee still warps like mad, the vocal parts of the community are questionable (the bad parts have grown up), garapon is still overpriced (though with every roll being a bot it's not as bad), the bot selection is weak (of course, there's 10 years of content to rebalance), my waifu is still missing, and there are many people unhappy with the balance changes (IE, homogenized weapon range). Again, needs work.

CB has always been in it's own niche with very little competition, unless you want to learn Japanese and play C21, so it's good that CS is showing improvements. After all, I believe this is their last shop. If they screw this up too hard, then it's back to claw games for them.

Compared to DS1, they greatly sped up the combat, and greatly buffed the number and power of normal enemies and bosses. However, they didn't optimize the controls for such speed. You still roll on Button Up, meaning there'll always be a split second between pressing the button and releasing the button. This has killed me many times.
They also made the "Action Queuing" way, way more sensitive, and it's exasperated more with the faster combat. Fatfingering the attack button 1/3rd through a slow attack and you'll be forced to do a second again with no way to stop it or cancel it. This has killed me many times.
They also ruined the second most important defensive factor in DS1, Poise. I don't need to go into it as it's an observation everyone has made. Without Poise, armor is useless. This has killed me many times.
Finally, Partial Parries consume huge amounts of stamina compared to Partial Parries in DS1. In DS1, you had some amount of stamina and time to roll away. Not so in this game. You fail a parry, you're going to lose all your stamina AND get hit like a truck to an attack you cannot evade because you have no Stamina. Why bother practicing when failing is degrees worse than not trying. Ontop of that, once again, you can only parry certain moves, and only while close enough to a target, far too many factors lead to a heavily dangerous partial parry if you attempt to parry. This has killed me many times.
You know, Breath of the Wild had a good parry. You could parry anything and everything. But here, you're just supposed to know you can parry Iudex Gundyr but not Nameless King?
Don't even get me started on how I'm disappointed at the PvE multiplayer and despise the PvP multiplayer in this game-- except for Red Sign Soapstone and Hollow Arena.

As for improvements, we've got Charged R2s (but not charged R1s), Rolling R2s (can be charged), Running R2s (can be charged), you can roll in any direction while locking on, run in any direction while locking on, rotate yourself mid-fall to make Plunging Attacks easier, move while using consumables, got a first-person crosshair for crossbows (but crossbows have a lag between Fire Button to actually shooting), you can two-hand your left weapon by holding Two Hand Button, you can quick-swap to first consumable by holding Change Consumable, and there's a way, albeit limited, to respec.

Dunno how to feel about weapon arts.

Dark Souls is a Late-2011 game. Dark souls 3 is an Early-2016 game, with the most recent patch being Mid-2017. That's plenty of time to find and improve on issues in the first game. Especially considering this is the last game of it's series. Sure, all the improvements are good, and expected. But in a game as difficult and punishing as this, even minor changes or missed improves will ruin the experience entirely for me. Shame too, there's so many nice toys to try.

I'd recommend it on a heavy sale, and if you have more patience than me.

I feel like I'm missing something...
Right now, I'm at the point where the game desires me to capture 2 bases. You know, bases. The ones with at least 3 destroyers and 10 frigates guarding them when I don't even have access to destroyers myself or finances to amass a well thought out fleet (with the largest ships being frigates) to raid the base. Even with 10-some Hercules constantly trading, netting me several mil a cycle.

The game was fun and enjoyable-- up until the "capture an Outlander destroyer" mission, which was constant grinding and hunting for a frigate, and then soloing the destroyer, it's frigate wingman, and the 2 frigates(?) it calls as reinforcements. And you know how I did that? I kited the thing for half an hour spamming missiles outside it's range.
I want to enjoy the game, but it's far too difficult.

Please use the Spacebar and Ctrl key to ascend and decend, you'll dodge almost everything with smart use of A/D/Space/Ctrl. EZ.

It's all fun and games until you run into a tree at 150+km/h and instantly destroy your end-game 3000 HP tank.