Seneste anmeldelser af Vivian

Even at such an early stage and with limited amount of content, Path of Exile 2 is probably the best action rpg since Diablo 2. Highly recommended.

Lies of P combines the ideas and mechanics of all the From Software games (Dark Souls trilogy, Bloodborne, Elden Ring and Sekiro) and actually does it really well. While not really offering any fundamentally new, it is a very fun game to play.

However, its combat system heavily relies of perfect parries, so if you are not a fan of searching for that perfect parry window, the game might seem a bit too challenging.

The first Dark Souls has always been a very special game for me. I was among the people who signed the petition to release a PC port. I spent hundreds of hours in Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition back in 2013, especially in PvP. And even after all the following games of From Software, I kept loving the first DS the most.

The DLC for Elden Ring was kind of a disappointment for me though. I still haven’t managed to complete it. I kept doing everything I could to avoid playing it. And eventually it brought me to Dark Souls Remastered. This was my first walkthough in a decade, which allowed me to look into the game from a different point of view. And the game is still great!

First Dark Souls has the most impressive world design in the series. It’s not a set of independent levels but an interconnected world, which unfolds while you progress through the game. I can’t even describe that joy I felt during my first playthrough, when I found that elevator leading to the Firelink Shrine from the Undead Church. And DS1 is full of such valuable shortcuts and passages to the previously visited locations.

The locations, their surroundings, enemies and items are very consistent with the game’s lore, which, for instance, DS2 lacks.

Later From Software games allow us to teleport to any bonfire from the very beginning. But DS1 gives the limited teleportation options only in the second half of the game. And now I understand this approach better due to all that interconnectedness of the world and shortcuts. This approach also makes the world exploration more consistent, since your learn all the locations by heart. Like I said, I hadn’t played DS1 for almost a decade, but I still remembered the geography of the world, and locations of the most valuable items and enemies. On the other hand, DS1 is full of backtracking, especially because some important NPCs are based in different and not always easily accessible places, so you have to run a lot.

DS1 combat system is less reliant on some magical attacks and special moves but rather on slow and tactical approach and studying the wide moveset of every weapon. You can find some of the best weapons, such as Zweihander or Claymore, in the first 20 minutes of playthrough. Also, the armor is, perhaps, the best in the series. Havel set, for instance, allows you to easily tank some of the bosses, which is unimaginable for the later games.

During my first playthrough, I had suffered from almost every single boss. I spent several hours on runbacks to Taurus demon. Kapra was burning my butt. Ornstein and Smough came to me in my nightmares. I remember shouting and running around my room when I first killed Artorias. With extensive experience with future From Software games, I can tell that DS1 is actually quite easy. Almost all the bosses are very slow, with predictable attacks and can be easily cheesed, if you know the tactics and their weaknesses. Even the Bed of Chaos can be easily cheesed.

The Estus upgrade mechanics, as well as the Humanity parameter, are unique for the series.

The Estus is kinda dubious though. An experienced player can get the Rite of Kindling in the first 20 minutes of the game. In a casual playthrough though, you will get it only in the second part of the game. And kindling the bonfires requires spending the humanity, which is a limited consumable through the game, and farming it consistently becomes possible only at the later stages of the game. Also, you need to spend several humanities for a single bonfire, which means that you need to carefully choose which ones to invest in. And this, in turn, means that you will be running with 5-10 Estuses throughout most of the game. The Estus shards mechanic from the later game is much better, IMO.

The Humanity itself is cool, since it implements kind of an additional high risk – high reward mechanics. Humanity increases your defense, resistances, item discovery and damage from the chaos weapons. You loose it with death but you have a chance to pick it up once, as well as your souls.

What if often criticized about DS1 is the second part of the game. While the trip to Anor Londo is very exciting and actually leaves an impression of a long road behind, the locations from the second part of the game are dull and poorly designed. In my opinion, there are good and bad locations through the whole game. I love the Undead Parish, Anor Londo and Duke’s Archieves as much as I hate the Depths, Blighttown, Tombs the Giants and Izalith.

Another aspect of the first Dark Souls is that it is not the most technologically advanced game from PS3 and Xbox 360. And even the Remastered version looks like an old and sometimes ugly game. It does not scare me, but it might scare new players, who came from Elden Ring.

About the game itself:

Beyond Good & Evil is one of my favorite games ever made. It's still a great adventure with a magical atmosphere, exciting story, memorable characters, and great music. Still worth playing even today. So if you want to play it for the first time or re-play it, The Anniversary Edition is the best option to do it.

On the other hand, it's gameplay is outdated. If you play for the first time in 2024, you shouldn't expect depth of game mechanics from BG&E, because it is, for the most part, a children's game. But game design has come a long way over the years. All the elements of BG&E (battles, stealth, travel, puzzles) seem extremely primitive and basic. The game does not offer interesting mechanics, there is almost no challenge in it. It is clear that this game is from the 6th generation consoles (PS2, Xbox, Gamecube) with low memory, but compared to modern open-world games, BG&E seems very cramped and short (it takes like 8-10 hours to complete). Moreover, in fact, this is not an open world game - it consists of a set of locations with infuriating loading times between them. And there’s not a lot of additional content in the game.

About the release:
In fact, it is absolutely the same game as 20 years ago. Yes, the graphics and models have been improved, the soundtrack has been re-recorded, but I've played the game countless times and I don't feel like I'm playing a new product. Let's just say that without watching a comparison of the two versions on YouTube, it would be difficult for me to explain the difference between the original and the remaster.

And now about the real problems of this release:
- Mandatory connection to Ubisoft Connect when purchasing on Steam. In addition, there is Denuvo and, for some reason, anti-cheat (in a single-player game, yeah).
- The game runs with a stable 60 fps, but the game is locked at 60 fps, and at the same time there is a feeling of some kind of stuttering, as if vertical synchronization is turned on on a monitor with a high hz rate.
- There are no achievements on Steam. They are in Ubisoft Connect, but they work poorly: when you open Ubisoft Overlay, the achievements received are not reflected, but if you click on notifications, they are taken into account in another menu.
- Autosaving has been added to the game, but it works at absolutely random moments. To manually save, you still need to look for terminals and insert a disk into them (with a fairly long animation), and now you can save the game only in one slot.
- Few settings options. For example, you can only select 1080p, 1440p, 4K resolutions.
- The soundtrack has been re-recorded, but the voices are still compressed and sound very shallow.
- The new story mission is done rather lazily. And for me personally it left a feeling of a broken canon.

Even though I haven't played any classic dungeon crawlers, like Eye of the Beholder or Dungeon Master, one of the most notable games of my childhood was Might & Magic 8. So the idea of party-based first person role playing game is generally familiar to me. The reason why I decided to try Legends of Grimrock 2 was exactly the nostalgia for this type of gameplay. 
 
And it turned out, that Legends of Grimrock 2 is exactly what I was looking for and even more, because it utilizes the mechanics that I love. 
 
First, this game utilizes the idea of progressively unfolding open world, which reminds me of the first Dark Souls, where locations eventually connect with each other. 
 
Secondly, the game has an extremely well-crafted party building and character progression system. There is a strategic approach, where you need to carefully plan your further game already at the character creation screen, as resources, experience for character progression and equipment in the game are limited. A viable party needs be very diversified. The slow progression in character level makes every skill/stat point very valuable and rewarding, especially in the early game. 
 
And, perhaps, I have not seen any other game, where careful exploration is as rewarding as here. There is no random loot generation, and item placement is relatively smart, supporting the stages of progression. Which also means that an experienced player can also rush to quickly get some of the items in the early game. Like I said above, the resources, equipment and enemies (which grant experience points) are limited, thus you are eager to look up every corner and spend time solving puzzles. Also, I really enjoy the golden keys system: the most valuable pieces of equipment are hidden in the vaults unlocked by the golden keys. But there are more vaults than keys, and keys are extremely hard to find, so you need to carefully choose, which items do you need and at which stage of the game. 
 
On the other hand, taking all the above into consideration, even at the Easy difficulty the game is extremely hardcore. A poorly assembled party will quickly become incapable. The lack of attention will leave valuable items behind. And further you proceed through the game, the more challenging in becomes. The development team surely does not have any mercy. There is a misconception that Dark Souls and other From Software games are hard. No. Try Legend of Grimrock instead. 
 
 There a few things that I do not like:
• A lot of backtracking while having almost no quick travel options. This again reminds of Dark Souls 1, where we got limited teleportation options in the second half of the game. And even with it, you still need to run a lot by foot. 
• Real time gameplay with turn-based mechanics. Well, it's controversial. It makes the game kind of unique, and allows "dancing" around the enemies not to get any damage. But the combat itself is still rather turn-based, with extremely long cooldowns, which is still not very dynamic. 
• While all the damage dealing skills are more or less viable, Firearms look extremely undeveloped: the damage does not scale with increasing of the skill level, and ammo is extremely limited with no way to farm or craft it. 


To summarize, this is a unique game in the modern gaming industry, a representative of the oldschool genre, which caters to sophisticated players, who are tired of the modern AAA industry.

I believe this game is underrated only because it does not offer anything fundamentally new compared to Arkham City and was not developed by Rocksteady. Overall, it's still a very solid Batman: Arkham series game with an interesting story line, notable boss fights and cool Christmas/winter atmosphere.

However, the open world activities are kinda dull.

Anyway, in my opinion any Batman: Arkham fan should still pay attention to this game.

This is the true Robocop 3.

Hogwarts Legacy is an extremely controversial game.

While obviously being a perfect gift for Harry Potter fans, from the gameplay point of view it's a fairly generic open world action/adventure with role-play elements, pretty much inspired by the similar projects, such as Ubisoft games.

Overall, Hogwarts Legacy is an extremely well-crafted product. Its large budget has been applied competently. Special awards go to the atmosphere and fanservice. It feels that developers are well-familiar with the Wizarding World and love it. This dive into the favorite universe initially enraptured me so much, that I was not able to see the actual problems this game has.

But if we slice the aspects of the game into pieces, most of them are relatively primitive or even poorly designed. The plot and the characters are unamusing, open world activities are repetitive and with dubious awards, as game, for some reason, adopted the Diablo-like randomly dropping loot system. Tiny inventory and inconvenient menus together with the above-mention loot system slow down the tempo of the game a lot.

There are 2 aspects that actually made me leave a positive review:
1. Combat and puzzle solving based on spell combinations. While combat is designed better, there are some puzzles in the game, which actually require some brain activity. But battles are extremely pleasant and entertaining. I haven't got tired of it.
2. Exploring. Hogwarts and the surroundings are full of secrets and one needs to spend quite a while to reveal them all. If you enjoy exploration and Metroidvania elements, you would definitely like this game.

Overall, I had a lot of fun. But I am a fan of Harry Potter since childhood. And if we take away the setting, it's a pretty average game with a lot of aspect to improve.

Deeply stupid and primitive, but deep, fun and super addictive.

Sekiro is not a bad game. I would it even say that it is a magnificent piece of art with outstanding game design. Every true video game fan should give it a chance.

My personal problem with this game is that it is just too different compared to other From Software games (Demon's Souls, Dark Souls trilogy, Bloodborne and Elden Ring). Sekiro shares a lot of common elements with the above-mentioned games, while flipping upside down some other crucial ones. Hundreds of hours in other From Software games do not help but make my experience with Sekiro more painful.