Recent reviews by Saevvyth

I was very excited for this game after Frostpunk proved to be an atmosphere AND decision-making masterpiece.

Frostpunk 2 has no atmosphere. I am playing completely zoomed in and I can't see any people anywhere. The game systems make it also best played while zoomed out. You are looking at icons, stats and graphs, not the actual consequences of your actions. You can't see anyone to feel sorry for, to feel pressed for, to feel like your decisions matter.

Instead of seeing people and juggling individual workers around to make ends meet, you just manage a generic 'Workforce' statistic. You don't see them, you don't feel the consequences of anything, it is just a number going up or down.

Everything feels meaningless. Districts can be miles away from the Generator and be fine, somehow. There is no emergent gameplay to manage your heat other than the statistic that is Heat. There is no nifty logic to it like in the first game.

I just don't find myself caring for anything in this game, and then the tutorial does a very bad job of explaining how the game works. When I figured it out, I realized I was just looking at numbers. Spreadsheets, basically. It's like messing with Excel.

This lacks the atmosphere, charm and empathy-invoking experience of Frostpunk. If you are into gameplay systems, this might be fun. If you want an experience like the first game, no, this isn't it.

The best thing I can say about this game is that, if you have no nostalgia for it whatsoever, this game is still one of the better games you will have played in your life.

The gameplay is just that good, and now the visuals have been brought up to today's standard as well. I don't think anyone can fully explain why the gameplay feels so good. It is very simplistic in theory, but it is just plain fun. It totally works.

I highly recommend you play on Standard difficulty. It feels like you have to put in effort, and yet you won't die that much at all. You will never get stuck on anything, even bosses. But it still feels like you're putting in the work.

Minor nitpick: the game doesn't really tell you all that clearly to go for Headshots or Legshots so that you can get enemies to stagger or fall down which enables a powerful melee strike. Use it!

But this feels like you are sort of John Wick with your assortment of guns, importance of reload speed and accuracy, some minor gun (and knife) porn in here. Flashy cutscenes, fantastic boss battles. Especially 'you know the one'.

Just a super fun game.

Yes, even for you, guy who hasn't ever played the original and feels like this is just fans appreciating fan-service. No, it really is one of the best games you, too, will play.

When I started playing, the feel, look and promise of gameplay systems hooked me in and I was convinced this could be the best Final Fantasy game I had ever played.

After about 10 hours, this feeling started to diminish. By hour 30, I was no longer thinking the game was even good.

The main problem is that the game feels like anime filler for literally most of it. And I am not talking about side-quest bloat, travel times or things like that. They pad it with smalltalk cutscenes, walking, cutscenes, walking, cutscenes, then walk some more for another cutscene; with no reasonable combat in between.

And if you're thinking you like cutscenes, you are not getting the right impression of what I am referring to. You can be near an elevator that you want to use and a cutscene will play showing the characters looking at each other for 10 seconds. Then say: 'Call it'. Then the camera pans to someone's face close up and after 5 seconds they go: 'Right'. Then they press the button, the elevator doors open, and then there is a pause with: '... Let's go'. Then the camera pans to everyone else and they say: 'Yeah'. Then they get in the elevator. Then they all stand there and Cloud says: 'Tifa, let's go'. The camera then zooms in on Tifa and she says: 'Right'. Then she presses the button so the elevator doors slowly close and you go up.

And people, I didn't even explain half of this scene. It's just fluff and the game is completely full of it.

If you condensed the actual good parts of the game, you'd have about 10 hours of game, I'd say. I played it for nearly 60. The rest is all filler.

If you insist on playing this game because you want to play the full trilogy, then I totally understand that. But let me just warn you that you will only ever play this game once, and you will be glad when it is finally over so you can stop playing it, and focus on the much better Rebirth.

SPOILER FREE!

This is the best DLC I have played in my life, to one of the best games I have ever played in my life. I go completely blind in these games (unsub from the Reddit, close YouTube no trailers, no information, no wiki's) for my first run. The experience can only be had once, and oh boy is it fantastic with this DLC.

It has some of the best bosses across the whole base game, jampacked into this thing. There is only one boss I disliked, because it felt designed around cooperation in mind (the NPC brawl). But otherwise all bosses felt great. My favorites were 'the dragon' and 'the final boss'. They were hard fights, but I felt awesome the entire time.

After having beaten the game, I look up what I missed and it was surprisingly little. The game world is well crafted; it rewards exploration but it also intuitive to explore. As evidenced by the fact I managed to find almost everything on my own. I did miss out on the whole backlash that I am reading about now, and what prompted this review.

'Too hard?' People, this happens every single time. I have been playing these games since Demon's Souls, and with each installment you all say THIS ONE is too hard now, unlike the one that came before it. Every time, I swear this is what happens. Look up threads and posts that match the release week of new Souls content. DS2, DS3, Bloodborne, heck... you all said it about base game Elden Ring too. And what happens? 2-3 weeks later you are all SLAYING the content, because you need some time to figure it out (and some of you want to believe you are good at figuring out the game, while really, what you needed was guides to tell you what to do. That's OK, but just know who you are and stop being frustrated with a lie you told yourself).

The game difficulty is exactly like all Souls content that came before it. DLC has ALWAYS been a bit harder than the base games. Always. This isn't new (Artorias and Manus can't be touched by any boss in base Dark Souls, don't forget). Nothing in this DLC is as hard as Kos was, and that boss was arguably too hard, depending on who you ask.

The difficulty is fine, people. It falls in line with the usual. Can you all please stop falling in line with the usual outrage? Those of you who were killing bosses without armor on because you didn't need it, will soon be able to do that again due to experience. The fact you were getting slashed in the first week doesn't mean the game isn't balanced right, it means new content came out that you didn't figure out yet.

That's really it. Just accept you need some time to get good. As usual. The game is great.

Crashes constantly.

Specs: 12700KF 5.0GHz 12 Core // RTX 3080 GDDR6x 10GB // 32GB 4800 MHz DDR5 RAM

I clear the recommended specs very easily. Changing settings does not seem to matter. Drivers are up to date.

Crashes every 10-20 minutes. Absolutely horrible product. Shameful they released it like this.

I know Iron Galaxy did it and not Naughty Dog, but they chose to let them handle this even while they have a crap track record. It shows a genuine disinterest in a proper launch. Even if this is fixed a month from now (if that), this is an inexcusable move.

Anyone sour enough to defend it can just take a hike.

Fun exploration, good looting, improved parkour and combat, and fun new mechanics. Apparently the following goes only for myself, but I really enjoyed the story as well, apart from the conclusion. Not that the conclusion is bad story-wise, I'd argue the opposite. But it's poorly worked out in-game. As if they ran out of time to do it properly.

Everyone else seems to dislike the story though, so take my opinion for what it is: the minority who actually loved all the characters, thought the voice acting was great, and the narrative pretty interesting to follow through. With a conclusion that would have been done well and left me with a difficult choice, but failed to meet the rest of the game's standards.

'Just one more mission.'

DO NOT BUY ENDURANCE MODE. READ BELOW.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is better at everything Tomb Raider (2013) did, which was a pretty good game. Rise is as good of an action adventure game of this type I've played. If you're into these types of games, this is one of the best ones, plain and simple.

Some minor complaints are that it starts to narrow to an action oriented game only in the last couple of hours. Throughout the game there is a healthy medium between exploring and combat. The last couple of area's of the game look very cool but basically cannot be explored at all. First of all, there is nothing noteworthy to find in them and secondly you're 'forced' into combat constantly. It's not that the main game lets you avoid combat, but you can engage with it when you are ready for the most part. In the final hours it's all: 'nope, more combat, go!'

It makes sense narratively, but I'd rather they would've come up with a way for it to make sense to still explore and be stealthy if you choose.

The very final hours are combat overload and keep spawning guys against you. It's not the greatest, but unlike most other games, it doesn't feel ridiculous. You are plenty powerful at that point and even playing on the highest difficulty setting I had no problem disposing of everyone. And the combat is fun. So it was still a fun section, just not as good as the rest of the game.

Now as for DLC...

DO NOT ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ BUY ENDURANCE MODE. It is a shell of a game mode. Survival? Nope. Here's the thing, it has a Hunger Meter and a Warmth meter. Kind of like Don't Starve. Shoot one deer, loot it, whoop! Hunger is full again. No food preperation, no setting up camp, nothing. There is also no crafting or camp creation. It's just a bunch of fires spread around the map and you can light them for 5 wood. Clothing has zero influence on all of it. You can wear a tanktop if you want. Stand near the fire, it's full again.

All meaningless survival stats. Start the game up, 2 minutes in you have a bunch of wood for fires and you shot a couple deer. Congratiolations! You've beaten Endurance Mode!

Yeah... it's bad. There is nothing to do to actually make survival matter. I was expecting skinning bears for better clothing or having to craft camp fires and build a shelter. Nope, none of that.

Don't. Buy. Endurance. Mode.

It's a waste of 10 bucks.