Recent reviews by Dunhill

For those of you coming from the previous game; there's things this game does better and things it does worse. In the nature of my jovial, optimistic spirit, I'll start with what it does worse.

Performance:
Despite the marginal improvement in graphics, the thing runs much worse than the previous game, with stutters and frame drops being frequent and enough to make the game downright unplayable for some. Of course, a consoomer will make a point that any non-bankruptcy-tier piece of hardware is unusable garbage unfit of running anything, but the fact is that said garbage can run the first game with settings that make it graphically far surpass the second with equal or better performance.

The worlds:
I'm talking about N'rud and Yaesha. Half of N'rud is the most boring, monotonous wasteland, and a decent part of Yaesha is filled with the most annoying enemies. We have flying things that fly so high the game physically restricts you from aiming at them, oh, and they also come out of nowhere and stealth attack you half the time. Then we have those rolling bastards that come at you in hordes of 3 million strong from 3 directions, all while being hidden by the grass they roll through. And god forbid they actually reach you because there's so many they'll make you dodge until stamina is but a distant memory.

The grind:
Some of it is genuinely absurd, that being unlocking traits and building prisms. To unlock all traits, you have to level all the archetypes to max, which is like beating the campaign 5+ times or doing a stupid amount of boss rushes. Still, that can't hold a candle to the utter insanity that is building prisms. In general, a prism is good for one build and if you're not gonna farm specifically for that, you're looking at like 40 hours to fully build one.

Fall damage:
There were two fights that I can remember in the first game where it was an important mechanic, and even then I called it ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, but now it's a threat in half of Yaesha and a bunch of places in N'rud.

Final boss:
A fight hard to learn, and with the game's leveling, one you might be underleveled for. All in all, it makes for a massive difficulty spike that just wasn't fun to get through.


Lots of new ♥♥♥♥ (items):
Great if you wanna keep playing, sucks if you plan to beat it and leave it. Prisms are convoluted as hell and ultimately useless on your first run. There's a myriad of amulets and rings, but also weapons. More weapons sucks especially hard because, much like in the first game, experimenting is punished because it diverts resources from your main stuff to this side stuff that might get tried out once and then never see the light of day again. Works great if you plan on beating the game a million times and like experimenting

Aberrations:
The elite elites. Sometimes a nice way to spice things up, while sometimes utter ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with how absurd the combination of enemy and special modifiers can be. Some modifiers just suck all the time, such as displacer, which teleports you around.


Bosses:
The most obvious and significant improvement is that they've massively cut down on adds. They've figured out that you might want to fight a boss in a boss fight located inside a boss arena with boss loot as the reward. Who could have seen the appeal? Remember Shroud from the first game? He now goes by "Shrewd" because the Gunfire Games studio is very creative. You'll notice that the fight no longer sucks ass because the adds are nearly all gone, and what little of them remains compliments the fight by giving you a stage to heal or whatever.
With the focus being shifted away from adds, the bosses are now actually interesting. They're not an elite enemy with a health multiplier and adds galore, instead they have more ♥♥♥♥ going on with their attacks and stages. Even the bosses that look like beefed up elites, such as the Astropath, have entirely unique attack sets that aren't just dodge when big boss swings.

The Labyrinth:
It's now an actual place with actual ♥♥♥♥ to do. It's home to two of the most annoying elites, but whatever, it's still an overwhelming positive. It has a boss, has fights, has arenas and has tons of hidden locations and loot. Best of all, it's hand-crafted and not generated.

Earth:
Hand-crafted. What more is there to say?

Lots of new ♥♥♥♥ (events):
More actual gameplay is always good.

Boss rush:
That's a thing now. I'd like it a lot more if there wasn't a stage of regular enemies and an aberration between each boss, but it's something.

Overall, it can be pretty fun, especially towards the end, but it also has a LOT wrong with it. I rate it 4/10.

Visuals: 0/1
It's not a nice-looking game. It's not just the pixel graphics - there are genuinely beautiful pixel games. The background art looks bad, the GUI is atrocious, the bosses and enemies look awful. That could be forgiven if it didn't impact the gameplay, but it does. Altitude readings and coordinates should not be closer to the center of screen than the hotbar and health. Things that deal damage should not just blend into the screen.

Story: 0/1
You just kinda do your thing regardless of anything. The game never really makes you hear any story or lore. It's kinda like Hollow Knight in that regard, but there you're told at least a little about the setting, and the characters and the world design are just so good they invest you in it, or at least have you looking up the lore after you beat it. Terraria doesn't have any of that. I really do not care what made an eye grow a mouth and breathe fire out of it.

Gameplay: 4/8
It's really all the game offers, but it's a mixed bag. It has a grind and progression which can be very fun, but also very tedious. Zenith is a good example of that. It's the ultimate sword meant to represent the player's journey. It contains many other swords, including the humble copper short sword you have from the very beginning. Most of these swords are fun to obtain and use, but some are just miserable, senseless grind.

The sheer amount of items is absurd. It can be pretty fun finding out what they do and how they combine with other items. However, it does mean you'll definitely need to play with the Wiki on.

Everything is very zoomed out, and that's a big part of the reason why everything feels like such jank. Placing things down is chore, mining them is a chore and interacting with them is a chore because everything is so tiny and the controls are just strange. So many times I've accidentally thrown a glow stick or placed a torch instead of mining a block because the controls for all three are the same. You'll get stuck on random floaty blocks that blend into the background, you'll miss a swing because the player model does not turn where you click...

The bosses are meh at best. Most of them follow this formula of shooting random, low-damage projectiles that you dodge on accident because they make the screen such a cluster ♥♥♥♥ of visual effects that you can't see what's going on. Your weapons are massive, they produce huge waves, beams, traces, other projectiles and then some particles that linger around and light up the terrain around them. You have summons which shoot their own projectiles, and even your armor pollutes the screen. Bosses also have adds which fire their own projectiles, have their own health bars, and blow up and bleed when they die. Most fights suffer from this and they simply aren't fun.

Overall, pretty solid. It looks good for a pixel game, has next to no focus on the story, and has good enough gameplay. I rate it 6/10.

Visuals: 1.5/2
The art is genuinely pretty. There's biomes that are all visually distinct, have distinct terrain and structure generation and a very different feel and atmosphere. It does a lot better job than say Minecraft at its randomly generated structures and scenes both because they look more skillfully crafted and have their unique assets. It also plays with light quite well and that stuck out to me. Watching glowing sulfur buds ripple as reflections on the oily water surfaces of the Passage is really something. It's still got its little blemishes, such as eyesore armor and enemies that blend in with the environment.

Story: 0.5/1
The story consists of go south, kill this, go west, kill this. There's just barely enough to explain why you're here, and the game doesn't try much beyond that. That "not much" can be found as item descriptions. A bit of it is also environmental. There really isn't enough to make you want to find out more about the world.

Gameplay: 4/7
It's good enough. It has solid combat, which is most of the gameplay. The weapons feel good to use and it feels good to upgrade them. There's also building, farming, and fishing, all of which is meh but is at least workable.
The enemies are for the most part fun and the bosses are for the most fun interesting. There's unfortunately 4 of the same optional boss and 3 of the same end-game boss. To fully upgrade your gear, you'll need to slay what's essentially the same boss 27 times. Sure, it's optional, but it's still grindy and unfun.
A bigger issue is the overall balance. Certain builds are completely useless and some early game weapons rival end-game weapons.

If you love the Bethesda formula, then you'll at least by able to tolerate it. Anyway, if you've played FO4, there's lots of similarities so I'll only talk about the differences.

4's graphics were a few years behind when it released in 2014. 76 somehow manages to have even worse graphics despite having come out in 2020. I'm talking about awful shading that looks like Minecraft at full brightness inside a cave, disgusting trees, visual artifacts and small things like bullets no longer leaving holes.

A recurring theme here will be the new server thing they have going on. It's very likely the reason for the subpar graphics, but it's the gameplay where the biggest hits were taken.

The server format has its benefits, I won't lie. For the majority of players, that's trading, and for the most part, that's where the benefits end. There are events where you get to play with others, but the odds are the event is broken, there's no one willing to join so it's borderline impossible to complete, or it's filled to the brim with absurdly high-level players with absurdly powerful equipment, so there is very little to do. The server also, of course, requires internet connection, Bethesda login and they make you pay if you want a private experience as you did in every previous title. The servers, of course, shut down, go down for maintenance and so on. You'll also experience horrible connection, ping and lag.

Lots of people hated 4's settlement building system. You could make it good with mods, something you can't in 76 because it has a much weaker modding scene, and, what you wouldn't ever expect to be an upside, you got to build things only once. In 76, because it's a server, if someone builds their camp around yours when you're logged out, the game will fail to place it and you have to rebuild it. They tried to get around this with a blueprint function, but of course, it doesn't work. Needless to say, the building system is still incredibly janky, and if you don't wanna experience that jank every once in a while when the game decides to delete hours of work, you'll have to do some server hopping.

They brought back durability, but in the worst way they could. Before, you could genuinely make an argument that it's a reward for players who keep their weapons in good shape. After all, the weapons you'd find would be heavily damaged, and you could improve their stats by repairing them. Additionally, you could merge damaged weapons into ones with better durability, which would boost their price tremendously and was a genuinely good way of making caps. In 76, they just break and don't work until fixed with junk.

You now need to scrap a hundred weapons of the type you're using to unlock the upgrades for it. I really don't understand why. 4 used a minimal level requirement to prevent you from progressing too fast, and I don't see why this was changed. It's miserable wanting to get a receiver mod, but all you keep getting is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ barrel mods because there's so many.

There's lots of perks now, but don't be mistaken, they're not exactly new. There's three separate rifleman perks that do the same thing. Same with commando and so on. Many perks have just had their positive effects split into two separate perks. There's some genuinely cool new perks, but really, the number is a lie.

Ammo, stimpaks and so on now have weight and your camp has a weight cap, which just makes inventory management miserable. Also, the merchants share from the same cap pool, so you can get rid of items only so fast.

As for the story, 4's was laughable, so they took this path of having no story at all. There's a beginning, 5 middles and no end. And come on, players nuking each other every 10 minutes is as stupid story-wise as it is gameplay-wise.

The game wants you so bad to buy stuff from its store, and it's just annoying. They reel you in by giving you lots of currency at the start so you can become a good little cash cow. And some stuff in the store is genuinely pay 2 win and it ruins the experience. I got the baddest unique shotgun in the game at hour 10. They also have this separate seasonal currency and seasonal store. They give you lots of this currency. So much, in fact, that you literally can't spend it. In order for you to spend it, you need to buy Fallout 1st (the private server thing) or pay to unlock things to buy. You need to pay with the in-game currency so you can spend the other in-game currency. Of course, the easiest way to do that is to pay up with real money.

Also, it's weird how many characters are downright theatrical in their speech.



Still, there's improvements. Water pumps no longer give infinite caps, there's a "new" section in the inventory for things you've just picked up (it mostly works), and the protagonists is back to being silent. It does not outweigh the negatives, but it's still something.

A very solid game. It doesn't try anything revolutionary, but everything it has just works. Overall, a very solid 8/10.

Graphics and immersion:
The art style is lovely and so are the locations. They are distinct and you can always tell where you are. It's got a unique feeling to it, and the music works well to with it all. The sound design is also very solid. Pretty much everything makes its own distinct sound which is immensely helpful in combat. It gets a 2.5/3.

Story and lore:
There's not a lot to it, but it's solid. The story does little other than tell you why you're going somewhere and why you're fighting something. Still, there are collectables and a few readables to tell you more about the world and its past, which I found pretty intriguing. It gets a 1.5/2.

Gameplay:
As I said, it doesn't try a lot. It's simple, but that works in its favor. You won't be scratching your head trying to figure out what exactly "+17 toxicity armor" means, because it doesn't have any of that. All it has is a health and projectiles bar. You can chose weapons and projectiles, and it's pretty clear what they do. Most of them are viable and and do actually have a use. The game is short and has a very simple gameplay loop: you hit an enemy and get a projectile to shoot at them. The last projectile you get changes that, but unfortunately, you pretty much beat the game already by the time you get it. Overall, the game is challenging, but you won't be breaking any keyboards over it. I give it 4/5.

It's a short and very cutscene-heavy game. The gameplay consists of basic puzzles and combat.
Overall, I rate it 5.5/10

Story and lore:

Clearly a massive focus of the game. Cutscenes take up around 90 minutes, which for me was a quarter of the play time. There are audible lore tablets you can find throughout the world, and there are voices constantly whispering to you as you play. Still, even with such a massive focus on the story, it just ain't good. Senua is incredibly one-dimensional and downright boring. There is so much focus on her, yet she doesn't really develop in any way until the very end. There are a few things about her that are established in the beginning, and the game just keeps hammering it. As a result, I really didn't care about her or her goal. The lore is interesting; it's based on mythology. The world itself is a great story-teller. However, they messed up the lore tablets by giving them limited range, forcing you to either wait until you hear the story they have to tell or hear 60% of it because you're too far away to hear.

Because of that, I rate it: 2/5.

Gameplay:

Most of it is puzzles and there's also some combat. The puzzles can be really nice, but they can also be pretty repetitive. The game's shortness helps it with that, so it's not too bad. They are always simple, so you won't get stuck, but you also won't find any challenge in them. They're not your typical "push box on pressure plate", but instead play a lot with perspective.

The combat is pretty simple. There's not a lot of variety in attacks or enemies, but given the length of the game, it works. There are a few boss fights, and they're just as simple. I must say that I didn't like the obligatory target lock system, which is impossible to use at the end when there were a lot of enemies. The whispers, whenever they're not annoying you, do actually help in combat by telling you when you're about to get hit, which is pretty nice.

There's not a lot of it, but what's there is solid: 2/3.

Immersion and graphics:
The world can be beautiful when it wants to be and it always has a surreal feel. The monolithic structures look great, the enemies look great and it all really feels like it takes place on the edge of the world.

It's nice, but it's nothing magnificent: 1.5/2.

The game is absolutely beautiful, and I thought it's gonna play like Hollow Knight. The thing is, the controls are this weird combination of stiff, floaty and unresponsive, so when you get to platforming segments, which are disproportionately punishing, you'll die a lot to what feels like ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I can't recommend this game because of it.

I highly recommend this game. It's beautifully fast-paced, the controls are tight and responsive, and things are kept simple and elegant.

The graphics and looks:
It's got a unique look, and the 2D art is fantastic. The character design is remarkable and memorable. Some levels look really cool as well. It's got a nice art style that makes it stand out. The graphics themselves aren't something to write home about. You're not gonna gaze in awe at a beautiful light engine and highly detailed levels.
Overall, it's 1/1.5.

The story and dialogue:
This is really the weakest part of the game. The dialogue is so incredibly awkward and genuinely hard to read. It's just... cringe. I just skipped it all in my first playthrough, but if you force yourself to read it, there's a surprisingly solid plot under all that garbage dialogue. There's actual character development and something more than just obstacles to the goal apparent from the start.
Because of that, it's 0.5/1.

The gameplay:
This is really where the game shines. Everything it does, it does well, and it doesn't have anything that's simply bad. The gunplay is good. It's fast, you don't need to switch between 10 weapons, and the vast majority of the time, the game will put the right weapon in your hands whenever you need to use it. It's simple, it's reliable, and there's no silly gimmicks. Everything is built on movement, including the weapons. Each weapon can be discarded, which will activate some sort of movement and damage ability. They're intuitive, simple and easy to understand, but that doesn't mean they can't be used in creative ways. The game does an amazing job at giving you the right tool at the right time, allowing you to chain these fantastic sequences of moves and abilities that you want to perfect to finish the level as fast as possible. In addition to that, the levels are short, with no random stuff, to make you want to speedrun them even more. In every level, you can find shortcuts, skips big and small, that reward you for thinking and looking around the levels. Things only get better and better as you get more tools towards the end. Watch someone beat a level called Marathon to really see what I'm talking about.

There's also some side content, which is pretty fun. There's getting collectibles, with the challenge of getting some being in how you even reach them, and there's the less fun challenge of just finding some. The additional levels are pretty inconsistent in terms of what to expect. Some are fast and require a bit more precise timing than standard levels, which I loved, but some play more like puzzles, which are slow and I'm not a big fan of them.

There are a few instances where the level just doesn't feel overly well-made. Where your momentum is just kinda killed and you're forced to spend a lot of time walking/falling. Minefield would be an example of that. But things like that are rare.

Overall, the gameplay is 7/7.5. It's more than good enough to carry the game all by itself.


The total score is 8.5/10.

I thoroughly enjoy playing scout. When I play scout, I go fast. I reach places other dwarfs can only ever dream of. They ask for nitra, so I spread my cheeks, unclench, and deposit my gifts down onto the peasantry. As the team scout, I love my job. I love it when gunners look at me with contempt from their comically slow zip lines. I love it when engineers cry their eyes out as they're using up half the ammo from their cheese gun to improvise stairs when I can just fly. And I especially love it when drillers pop out the ground only to see me resting at the finish line. As a scout, you might walk in the skin of just a dwarf, but never forget that you are a higher being.

Repetitive by itself, plus it's a roguelike, exacerbating the issue