Recent reviews by Ashandre

I shot bugs. Lots of bugs.

It's just boring and too much copy paste even for bethesda. It's also ugly. I don't get it how do their games get better tech and somehow get uglier every release in some new uncanny way?

This game ran like absolute garbage on multiple high end systems for the first year and a half.
Few months prior to release of the expansion it finally ran actually decent just took a 4090 to get a non jittery mess. I got the expansion but eh, can't really be bothered to play it. Game is great, From Soft please do better on your PC releases optimization at *LAUNCH*.

If it runs for you, great game. If not, send FromSoft angry letters..?

Doesn't work with either of my wheels. Doesn't work with Ps4 or Ps5 controller. Runs like ass. 0/0 quality from ubisoft as usual.

Want to experience one of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ PC ports of the year? Sign right up. Bugs, crashes, poor performance this game has it all. Arthur getting stuck in animation loops causing you to reload your game? You got it. Out of memory errors on a 32gb system? Yup! Choppy performance on a high end system? Of course, 1080 Ti step aside, 2080 Ti only if you don't want frame drops at 1080 or 1440p.

Over-all the games boring to play, frustrating to trouble shoot and really has no fixes for all it's issues yet. Hope for a community patch because this is bethesda levels of broken.

I'm not quite sure how to review this one. I had fun but there's a lot of things I really can't over look in this game as being just glaringly bad game design. It's sad, this had potential to be amazing instead of just... okay. I can't give this a thumbs up at it's current price.

The good

Character creation gives a ton of options and detail in making your char, though I can't say I'm a huge fan of how their creation mixes with the blood veil system. More on that later.

Visually looks great and runs smooth for the most part. I've had a few hitches on high end systems. Ultrawide is not supported by default but is an easy fix to add on, over-all great performance for me on a 5930k + 1080 ti as well as another build 2700x + 1080 ti.

Combat is fun in that it is designed well. A few things hold it back from really shining. The variety of skills and blood codes which act as sort of 'classes' you can equip at any time keep things feeling fresh if you swap builds around. Feels as if the game gives you plenty of resources to keep a couple builds up to date on upgrades so no reason not to try new things out. You will never really NEED to change out of a build if you find one you like though, most any build seems capable enough to play solo.

The bad

Enemy Variety & Difficulty
The game just feels repetitive and under-tuned or not tuned at all really? While the combat skills, attack animations all make for a fluid snappy and enjoyable action game... The enemies you're fighting well, to be honest they just suck? They're either stupidly easy or a complete cheese spam mob with little to no variation from that the entire game. Oh and how many AI patterns do we have in the game? Like 10-15 total? Maybe? Very little time was spent on these key components of a game that is extremely combat focused.

Level Design & Mob Placement
This is the elephant in the room. You can tell there's a lot of hard work and talent in the game and then a couple key aspects of it just s*** the bed ruining the whole thing. Lots of hallways. Lots of big round rooms. The same hallways. The same big round rooms. Copy pasted and scaled to different sizes 20 or so times and called a level with what, 3 or 4 enemy types slapped around it? How long did the actual level design take? An hour? Seriously guys, wtf? As for enemy placement it's just so freakin' predictable and the same every time. The examples I could list are countless. The levels just don't feel good to play thru, they're boring, predictable and mostly the same just a different theme as far as you the player are concerned as for what tactics you'll use.

Story / Writing
As it would be very spoiler heavy, lets just say if you're paying attention to the memories you watch in the game you're going to notice a very considerable amount of plot holes. If you can ignore a glaring amount of inconsistencies it's okay, the characters are enjoyable enough.

One patch I'm running 1440 @ a solid 70~80fps the next the game is crashing the patch after that it stops crashing but we're back down to FPS hitches in the 20 range, then suddenly everyone is glorious again.

This games patches are a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ rollercoaster I don't understand how or why but.. The games so good the ports so bad what do I say? Do I condone bad dev habits due to a very fun game? I don't think I can.

Yup. Buy it. Plenty of content and build variety. Runs great on higher end systems, ports of decent quality (Could be better...). Do not expect to play 4k60fps. Not even a 1080 Ti maintains that.

This was actually one of my favorite games of 2017. Played mostly solo did some co-op with friends. Over-all great gameplay, visuals, music was.. okay. The JP VA cast is excellent (Especially Rie as Healix). The story is all-ages fantasy JRPG so don't expect it to keep you on the edge of your seat but it's enjoyable enough with fun characters.

>Gameplay
This is what shines - Plenty of variety and the right direction for musou in my opinion. More depth than your average musou while keeping that fast paced action and impactful feel on the tide of battle.

>Co-Op
Japanese devs are always a hit or miss with co-op. This one really clunks up the experience but if you and your friends have some patience the co-op post-game missions are definitely worth doing. Even at 99 with most of the best in slot gear we couldn't 3man the harder dragon lord fights. 1 man down is just too much! Last few fights in Co-Op post game content require you bring your A-game in heavily scripted multi-phase, multi-1shot mechanic boss fights with no room for error. Didn't expect to find that in this kind of game, very pleased it was there.

>Visuals, performance & port quality
Looks great runs butter smooth on a wide range of higher end systems I tried it on. Very few crashes and maintained good performance across the board at 1080p except for a few odd quirks....
-FPS in ultis is locked to 30 which causes massive frame timing issues for a moment as the game switches from cutscene to real time.
-Controller must be connected before launching - controller will not be detected if disconnected during play. Relaunch required to reconnect controller
-Atrocious KB/M support
-Terrible performance at 4k60fps on 6700k/5930k + 1080 Ti


Over-all fun game, good open world design to explore / fight your way thru. Would definitely suggest picking this up if you're into musou/ARPGs and want some silly DQ style fun.

-Co-Op DOES NOT WORK
Seriously stop recommending this until they at least fix what is advertised as the core feature of this entry to the series.