Скорошни рецензии на witchcraft

This is a really hard Not Recommended. Soft 6/10.

I think that the story of Episode Aigis is best experienced by playing it oneself, not just passively watching some cutscenes online.

It's a shame because I really resonated with the story in this expansion even more. I think that it does add to the base game story of Persona 3 Reload in a positive way. Aigis went from a character I didn't really "get" to one of my favorite, most relatable characters ever.

The best part of this was further interacting with the SEES team, going into their pasts, and figuring out how they grieve and choose to live their life. Unfortunately? That's like 10% of the whole ~30 hours. The rest is Tartarus 2.0 sprinkled with new dungeon crawling dialogue between party members, some of which are throwaway lines.

Why am I *forced* to pay again for costume sets and battle music that I'm not going to use? If I want those from the other Persona games (Royal, Golden) then I'll, uhhh, just go play those instead? Am I missing something here?

Buy this on sale if you must. Preferably a steep sale. I don't know who was behind this decision making but there's no excuse for how this whole thing was handled. This should have been half the price and the force-fed battleground music and costumes I didn't use should've been sold separately, optional.

EDIT: I don't understand why it's saying I have no time in-game on this review. I just beat Episode Aigis last night.

7/10 tl;dr paragraph at very bottom

What can I say? The game is a lot of fun, and still holds up well despite coming out around 10 years ago.

There is a newer game, Shadow of War, that came out some time after. I have not played it, but I would encourage you to check that out (if you haven't already) before looking into this.

Compare prices and reviews. I have heard that Shadow of War improves upon many of the mechanics and systems in this game, including the Nemesis System.

Anyway, this game—Shadow of Mordor—has a decent enough story. I don't think it's considered canon in Tolkien's LotR universe, but in my opinion it treats the source material respectfully, unlike "Rings of Power" and some of the other hot garbage that has come out in recent years.

All of the various abilities and powers that you unlock keep the game fresh, and the Nemesis System is pretty great. Just the right amount of difficulty, and there's quite a bit of depth to it, but the game does a decent job of explaining all of the mechanics for the Nemesis System; it's pretty intuitive. Same goes for the controls (I played on a wireless Xbox360 controller).

Buy on sale. I got a full 60 hours of playtime out of this game, and unlocked all achievements. The combat is so much fun, very satisfying.

tl;dr I give it an 7/10 because again, the story is just OK, the movement isn't as fluid and responsive as I would like (a bit of jankiness when climbing / parkouring around led to a good amount of frustration), and I have heard *overall* that Shadow of War improves on the best parts of this game, such as the combat and Nemesis System. So I don't know if there's really a "reason" to buy this game instead of the newer game, unless you are restricted by your wallet or by what your computer hardware can handle... If you want to know Shadow of Mordor's story before you buy the new game, I'm sure all of the cutscenes can be found on YouTube, or you can find excellent breakdowns on the internet somewhere.

9/10 tl;dr at end (no spoilers in this review)

The world is gorgeous, particularly if you have a good rig. All of the different areas on Tsushima and Iki islands come with their distinct "character" so-to-speak, and (as a whole) everything meshes together very well. You really feel like you're in Japan during the Mongol invasion all those hundreds of years ago.

Traversing the world is like being in a dream sometimes. The way that Jin (the protagonist) uses the wind to literally guide the player to whatever they marked on the map is a refreshing way to explore in a video game. It looks cool, but it also lets you get deeply immersed in the experience rather than having a quarter of your screen taken up by an ugly, obtrusive minimap.

The movement feels accurate and responsive. I can count on one hand the amount of times that I accidentally jumped to my death in 80 hours of total gameplay. This is important, because you'll be doing a considerable amount of climbing up cliffs, mountains.

There was one incredibly annoying quest that has you climbing up a certain mountain, and you have to survive the harsh conditions by finding and lighting the next campfire while also killing enemies. The premise sounds cool, but it's the one and only time such a mechanic comes up in the game (and pretty far in the game), so the survival aspect feels more like a sudden gimmick that is never used again.

Overall though, the game looks fantastic. I found maybe three or four spots in the entire game that had a small texture issue, allowing you to see into the void under the world. Performance wise, I experienced a memory-leak issue for little over a week, but the devs resolved that via patch. And there was a side quest that, for some reason, would crash my game every time the first cutscene finished. But it's apparently a known problem, so I was able to find an easy fix with a little internet searching (temporarily changing the resolution to the lowest possible, then changing it back once the cutscene was finished playing). No big deal at all.

I don't know how accurate the locations are to their real-world counterparts. I am not a historian, so I cannot say whether or not the architecture, armor, or other such details are truly accurate to the period. All I can say is that the devs could've fooled me. In other words, I found all of it to be believable.

Of course, I know that they took a lot of creative liberties with the story. It's clearly 90% fictional, for sake of argument. I would also say that the story is probably where the game is weakest. The story and characters are serviceable, but I didn't feel particularly attached to some of them. There are a few that stand-out. Ultimately the story is not just about fighting off the invaders, but about Jin choosing who he wants to be, honorable or not. But the problem is the game forces you to make decisions according to the plot, and the way that you fight or play the game in the open world does not have any real impact on the outcome. This is not like Dishonored.

Sure, you often have a couple different dialogue options to pick from. But there is only one choice that really matters, and it comes pretty much at the end of the main story. You'll know it when you see it.

I have *not* played the online, so I cannot comment on that. I am skeptical of how safe it is to have any possible link between my Steam account and a PSN account, because Sony has very poor data security.

tl;dr Gameplay wise, it is incredible. The game runs well, almost no glitches (visual or game-breaking). It's consistently fun, you continue unlocking new abilities and new parts of the map which keeps gameplay fresh and also makes you feel like you're growing stronger and making progress at a satisfying rate. The devs put a lot of love into creating the world. Story wise, it's okay. Nothing special, but not bad either. Buy on sale, and expect to get around 60-70 hours of total playtime (unless you spend a lot of time riding around, exploring for fun, or collecting all the collectibles like I did). You should be long done with the main parts of the game before you start to experience any real fatigue with the gameplay loop. Have fun.

UPDATE: nominated P3R for Best Soundtrack, Best Game on Steam Deck, and Most Outstanding Story-Rich Game for 2024's Steam Awards.

9/10 game. No spoilers in this review.

This is one of those games where words really can't do it justice. It was like I didn't realize just how special of an experience this was until it was almost too late.

For context, I've only played Persona 5 Royal. I cannot speak for other Persona games, or previous releases of Persona 3, but this game reaches the same high bar Atlus set for themselves.

This game really snuck-up on me. The pacing and storytelling are different from P5R, but in a refreshing way. The characters grew on me overtime, for example, compared to P5R where I felt attached to many of them almost right away. The dungeon crawling aspect works quite different from P5R as well, but it's broken up as you progress with some really nice designs for the various areas (except one in particular that hurt my eyes). The introduction of new characters and new abilities also keeps the dungeon crawling fresh.

Do yourself a favor and spend time with your team members! Not just the ones with social links; there are other side activities and time-sensitive optional hangouts too. I think P5R does a better job of getting you to bond with the characters through the main story, but here I think you'll really miss out if you don't go out of your way to hangout with them.

I did miss a really important detail in the ending, so the full weight of what happened didn't occur to me until I found a comment online. At first, I thought that the ending was more open to interpretation. But boy was I wrong. Anyway, even if you miss it, Episode Aigis explains things (the DLC, I think also called "The Answer.")

I have not played the DLC yet, and I'll leave a separate review for that.

Altogether another 9/10. Besides what I said about spending time with the characters, do yourself a favor and just enjoy the main story. I'm a perfectionistic completionist, which I think ruined the experience a little bit for myself because I was looking certain things up and trying to optimize my playthrough. That's what ng+ is for. A hard way to learn, but despite all that I can recognize that this is a truly special game, one that will leave a lasting, positive impression on you.

No spoilers in this review. 9/10 game.

I just finished the game earlier today, and all I can say is that it was an amazing experience. I was honestly sad for it to end, and I even procrastinated on finishing it for MONTHS because I knew that I would feel a bit melancholic because the ending was very good. In fact, based on what I know, I think the ending in Royal is far superior to the vanilla version of P5 even though Royal's is very bittersweet. But that's a hot topic. The game also has different endings depending on your choices.

The game isn't perfect in spite of becoming one of my top 3 favorite games of all time. That said, the quality of the writing is incredible. The themes, philosophies, and messages in the game usually offer a lot to think about (some are more fleshed out or complex than others). And the choices you make throughout the game generally matter; for example, if you want to unlock the third semester (which is kind of the whole point of Royal...) there's a couple things you need to make absolutely sure you do before a certain point in the game. Choices also matter in terms of what confidant abilities you unlock and which sub-plots you get to experience. I'm sure it is possible to max all relationships in one run, but you'd probably need a guide—a blind playthrough will be way more enjoyable for most people, but do yourself a favor and just look up the two things you need to do to guarantee you unlock the third and final semester (just be careful to avoid spoilers when you look it up). I'm saving the social links I didn't get to fully explore for a future ng+ playthrough.

I've never played a game like this before, so the gameplay was very unique and engaging to me. I have heard that the developers learned a lot from their previous games which led to making many quality-of-life improvements in this one. The love and attention to detail that was poured into this game can be seen wherever you look. The style is impeccable. The world is immersive. The voice acting and characterization are great. I could go on.

It hurts a lot to be finished. I loved the characters. I loved this "second life" I was able to live for 150 hours. But good things come to an end, and I'm excited for the next game.

9/10 game. It's not perfect, my game crashed after beating the final boss and I had to do the whole thing over again, which was about 50 minutes... And I think they could've made your relationship-status with the other characters matter more in terms of the main story in the third semester (I won't go more into this because it'd be a spoiler). There was also a brief segment where the story kind of dragged and a couple characters were being annoying for the sake of plot. A couple bossfights were just frustrating but I was able to figure them out and persevere without a guide and get back to enjoying the rest of the game.

This game made me feel like a kid again. It's been years and years since I enjoyed a game this much. I finally experienced that spark again.

"Our Light intensifies." If you know, you know.

8/10

Update as of 12/14/2024

They finally added the Illuminate! It's nevertheless a tough recommend for reasons I will get into later, but I have changed my review.

The game is fun, especially with friends, and the community overall is pretty nice to play with, I rarely run into toxic randoms. The developers have gotten better about listening to community feedback, and also communicating their changes and design philosophy while still keeping content fresh and surprising. It's not perfect, but the game is very fun again—more or less fun like it was at launch! (which was a blast)

It still suffers from some performance issues. I don't see why my CPU should be hitting almost 85C... but I admit that they've improved performance a noticeable amount. There's always the fear when the devs release a big new patch or update that they'll break more than they fix. Let's hope that they can keep a better track record going forward. A few of the most recent updates have been way better about this.

Yet buyer beware of Sony. As far as I'm aware, the game is still not available to be purchased in regions that don't have PSN, yet they *claim* that PSN will not be required to play this game online. There was a huge stink about this months ago, I'm not going to explain it all here. Fact of the matter is, Sony could pretty much go back on their word whenever they want. The only thing stopping them is bad publicity. I'd be very surprised if they would lose a theoretical legal battle regarding this issue, because Sony have very deep pockets for the best lawyers, but I doubt it will ever come to that. Even if Sony did somehow lose, it would go through court for months if not years.

Sony have shown themselves to be incompetent at keeping the data of its users secure. I got the game on Steam because I want to play it on Steam. It might sound whiny, and maybe it is, but there's no good reason to need a dozen accounts on various services / platforms / launchers when I buy all of my games here ON STEAM for a reason. I don't give a damn about Epic, I don't want Ubishite, I don't want EA, and I don't want PSN. It's that simple. That's why majority of the community were outraged when Sony suddenly tried to make PSN a mandatory requirement months after the game came out.

Other gamers tolerate the ridiculous bloat and annoyance of logging into three services to play one game, and some people might clown on me for making such a big deal out of this, but I honestly don't care. I will die on this hill. If not for any other reason than I don't want my Steam account possibly being compromised in the future because of a security muck up on behalf of Sony.

For as much as the Japanese get right, like the Japanese voice-overs in this game (seriously, TRY IT, you can change the voice language in the in-game settings), Sony manages to get a lot wrong. All because of completely unnecessary greed.

Speaking of greed, do not give them full-price for this. If you really like the game, there's a chance you'll buy some of the in-game "battlepasses" called Warbonds for additional content like guns, armors, strategem abilities, skins, boosters, and other cosmetics. While you are technically able to earn the in-game Supercredits currency by just playing the game, it takes a lot longer now than it used to... the devs definitely patched certain farming methods and overall toned down the number of super credits you can legitimately find per mission.

To be fair, each battlepass comes with 300 super credits you can easily unlock, which technically means one full battlepass is discounted to more like 700 (~7ish USD) instead of 1000 (~10ish USD).

Still, buy it on sale only. Enjoy.

See you out on the battlefield Helldiver.

tl;dr 7/10, buy on sale

I had a lot of fun playing this game. This is the closest anything has ever come to being the Hogwarts video game I dreamed about as a kid. It's a single-player experience with an open world that's been crafted with a good amount of love and care. Unfortunately, that open world, and the RPG elements, lack a lot of meaningful depth.

A small but fitting example is the dialogue. Even after you've beat the main story and maxed out / nearly maxed your character's level, your character will say things like, "So and so won't believe I just defeated an Ashwinder" or something along those lines. Seriously? Even after we defeated dozens of them together, and we saved the whole damn world or whatever, this is still one of your like five or six default voice lines? It's ridiculous.

I know that sounds nitpicky, but a bigger issue than minor details that break the immersion is the story itself. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with the story... it's more about the lack of having any real choices. None of your choices matter except perhaps the very final one. Sure, your choices might matter in your HEAD CANON, but in terms of influencing the world or changing actual outcomes or the manner in which characters respond to you, they don't. This really detracts from any replayability and serious role-playing; when I was still new to the game, I couldn't wait to play it over again as another House. Although different Houses have slightly different quest lines, all roads lead to Rome here. It's window dressing. To me, this wasn't really made clear from the advertising.

Quidditch not being in the game is glaring. It's a massive part of the original Harry Potter stories, lore, and something that literally everyone would have loved to play. The fact that they've been quiet about possibilities of a DLC or a separate game is odd, and a mindboggling miss-step. I can imagine something like Rocket League in terms of controls and single-player / multiplayer experience. There's a big market to tap into here. I simply cannot understand the logic to, apparently, not have plans.

Honestly: I recommend this game ultimately because there's basically no better option, and it functions.

UPDATE - new standalone quidditch game announced. Score unchanged.

I was "too good" and got banned by forty year old children.

7.75/10. (tl;dr at bottom)

While that might not be exactly a breathtaking score, you will get 20-30 hours of gameplay out of this bad boy if you take your time and allow yourself to be immersed into the world, which I think makes it worth the price tag. When it first came out, everybody in the right mind knew that this was a good first step for Ubisoft's new IP. I owned the Platinum Edition of the game on Xbox 360 (which had fixed almost all the bugs and glitches) and I must say that it is easily one of my favorite single-player games of all time. Collected every flag, slayed every Templar, and unlocked every achievement. So to play it again on PC was nostalgic to say the least.

-Pros-

1. A rich and immersive story that has never been done before. That is, if you can look past the repetitive nature through which it is told (more on that later). You can see a lot of things being set-up, and with the help of the setting it takes place in, you might just find yourself doing what I did. Which was looking up stuff about the real life Hashashin and Templar Order, and researching the Crusades and places within the game, which they did a stunning job of recreating, especially for when the game came out. Their alternate take on history is crazy-cool, but the only way to truly do it justice is by playing it for yourself.

2. Stealth works quite well, although it is significantly improved upon in later editions of the series. Blending in with the masses or groups of scholars fits and is quite seamless. As things progress the city guards are on higher alert, and you'll notice more of them on the streets, and also that there are more elite guards on the look out for the infidel. They provide a fair challenge until you get a grip of the combat (which is fairly basic), and that's good because Altair is supposed to be a total badass anyway, and a master swordsman. This allows for three primary different playstyles: stealth, open combat, or a mixture of those two.

3. Another major thing to mention is the climbing works well. It is what gave that magical feel to this game when you play it for the first time. An open world where I can scale buildings and run through the streets of these beautifully crafted locales using parkour? Honestly made me want to go do it in real life. And some people did, just check YouTube! This is another mechanic that was trademark of the AC series, and only got better for the most part with each new installment. For its time though the system was awe inspiring, and fit the nature of the game perfectly, allowing you to truly bring out your inner assassin.

-Cons-

1. I won't spoil anything actually important, or something that would ruin the story. The story and lore is great. But the gameplay that tells it... repetitive. For me, a kid who played Mercenary: Playground of Destruction several times over, this wasn't much of a problem. It was easy to look past this and appreciate it from an artistic standpoint. Still, it must be mentioned, and if you ask anybody, this is probably one of the biggest gripes on Assassin's Creed I.

2. While the Director's Cut and Platinum editions fixed a lot of stuff, the game can still be buggy as hell. I *DO NOT*... repeat, do not recommend this game if it is not compatible with your PC. Like me, you'll run into occasional crashes (the game has a great autosave system though), outright unobtainable and missing flags or Templars if you want to 100% the game like I did on the 360, and simply hilarious! glitches with guards dead bodies and even Altair. Annoyingly, sometimes when performing a Leap of Faith, he'll go through the entire animation and everything only to oddly bounce off the haybale at the bottom, sometimes resulting in your death. A fix can be found on YouTube / with a Google search.

3. The game is not keyboard friendly at all. In fact, the controls aren't even described in-game for mouse and keyboard, saying things like "Press the Head button to use Eagle Vision" but you'll be screwing around for minutes trying to figure it out. I recommend a controller. However, this also has issues setting it up. Majority of people, including myself, had to do a quick internet search, download a patch to get the game to recognize the Xbox 360 PC controller properly. Even still, keyboard and mouse with the Assassin's Creed games just feels awkward and wrong. I recommend a controller, and spend the ~10-15 minutes fixing it if needed + learning the controls of the game. At least if you learn them now, you'll basically know how to play the rest of the series.

4. The graphics did not quite withstand the test of time, but you shouldn't go into this game expecting anything like that. They were awesome for 2007 as far as I'm concerned, and hopefully you can look past those kinds of vain things to appreciate what lies beneath the surface. They're not terrible or anything, but lacking by today's standards... although, again, don't know why you would bother with such unfair comparison.

---

tl;dr is if it is compatable with your PC, buy it. More than likely, your computer will be 'too good to play the game'. Of course, if you don't mind dealing with occasional glitches and bugs, most of which are humorous but might detract from the immersion, go for it anyway. Your call. The story is fantastic, and you should definitely pick it up if you want to play and understand the following installments. Worth the money with plenty of content and mild replayability, and a definite gem of 2007 despite its repetitious nature.

-UPDATE-

I do not recommend this game. Not as good as Tales of Valor.

3/10.