Recent reviews by Pyrocide

EDIT: I'll be revisiting this once I'm done with Spider-Man 2

I'll preface saying I have played many a soulsborne game, love a GOOD challenge including player created challenge runs (dumb builds e.t.c.).

Pros:
Great environment
Combat feels meaty
Interesting death mechanic, basically a free revive and timed dash to resurface.

Cons:
Combat isn't fluid big lag time between animations lead to free hits
Very steep difficulty curve, from enemies dying a few hits to one enemy taking a couple minutes each and worse when surrounded by a horde of the weaker enemies.
Combat animations, most of them make you step forward by a HUGE amount, this makes any cliff edge a death trap for completely unintended drops. Several occasions has a heavy attack made me take a huge dash to enemies and then straight past and off the edge I would totally say skill issue but not when the animation and lock on makes me lunge forward 5 meters like a lunatic.
A lot of cheap shots creating artificial difficulty.

A lot of people have performance issues with this game, it runs pretty smooth for me, when it does drop frames resting at a vestige fixes the issue for me.

Obviously with this kind of game, I could be going in the "wrong" direction and unintentionally creating more of a challenge which is fine, but I haven't found another path to take.
I find the combat animations while they look smooth and fluid, I find them clunky there's far too much lag between inputs.
Again, this is my experience and yours may differ, my combat/input issues could purely be performance issues and if I see an improvement, I'll re-evaluate.
Until such a time, the cheap shots are just plain annoying.

I can't say I'm all that happy with the current state of this game.

To iterate my issue with it I'll state teh recommended specs and the specs of my PC and what is wrong.

Recommended:
OS: Windows 8.1 64 Bit, Windows 8 64 Bit, Windows 7 64 Bit Service Pack 1
Processor: Intel Core i5 3470 @ 3.2GHz (4 CPUs) / AMD X8 FX-8350 @ 4GHz (8 CPUs)
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 660 2GB / AMD HD 7870 2GB

My PC Specs:
OS Windows 8.1 64 Bit.
Processor: Intel Core i5 3570k @ 4.0GHz (4CPUs) and boost to 4.2GHz.
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 760 Windforce 3 4GB Overclocked

As you can see the specs of my PC are definitely ABOVE the recommended specs.
So what's the issue(s)?

I have 2 issues currently which I cannot solve. I have tried EVERY SETTING UNDER THE SUN.

Issue 1:
CPU usage, GTA V is using 60% minimum of my CPU at any one time and yes it maxes out my CPU.
I have tried setting every single graphics option to the lowest setting including populations and car density and distance scaling. It doesn't matter what settings I use the results are the same at MAX settings and MINIMUM settings.
I don't know why this is happening but I want it fixed. It only happens with this game.

Issue 2:
Memory Leak, GTA V has a huge memory leak. It's affecting a tonne of people yet there isn't a solid fix anywhere.

Appart from this for the 15 minutes I get to play the game runs beautifully on any setting.

Unfortunately since I only get to play 15 minutes (the length of the mission I have to do) and then crashes due to maxing my memory out losing all progress I cannot in good consience recommend this game until these issues have been fixed.

TLDR;
CPU usage is too high on minimum settings and there is a massive memory leak.
If and when these issues are fixed I will re-evaluate my review.