Recent reviews by AverageJez

As much as I want to recommend the game, I can't at this point.
I will say that it did make me feel like I was playing Runescape again for the first time, albeit it is its own game and has its own quirks, the paywall gets introduced far too early. You only have access to the first two zones, and then you have to pay for premium to get into the third zone and beyond, to continue the main story.

I get that it's there to help develop the game, and I respect that. It just should've been done in a way where it doesn't gate you from doing the main story entirely. Let alone, it kind of hypes you up that you will be able to make your own weapons in the third area, but never tells you until you're ready to get there, that you can't unless you put up money first.

The gameplay loop is very reminiscent of Runescape where you can buy certain items from shops, but you can also gather them to a certain extent. There are some things you can only get from shops, like tools, bait, and specific ingredients.
The money system feels kind of inflated, as well. It takes 1,000 copper to make one silver, instead of the standard 100:1.

Once you get any given skill to 20, it unlocks the ability to be able to set your character up to skill while you're logged out, which is nice if you're trying to skill up a single skill in the meantime. Depending on which it is, you could also get items out of it, but you always tend to gain money and XP while logged out, without fear of dying and interrupting it, if you're doing a combat skill as well. I don't have any complaints with that system because it feels well enough balanced that it doesn't auto-play the whole skill, or set you up to make lots of cash while you're offline.

Overall, it's a fun game if you don't mind being severely confined in what you can do, even though skills go up to level 500, you only have access to what appears to be half the game at this point, without having to pay monthly.
And the naming function of if you're f2p vs p2p is kind of ridiculous. If you're f2p, your name will always have a # behind it. Like it's a subtle way to shame you into getting membership? So everyone else can see that you're free to play, unless you set privacy so you can't interact with anyone, and they can't even see your name.


edit: I think I put my finger on it. Brighter Shores is basically Runescape, if all of the self sustainability of being able to advance wholly on your own, were taken out.
You can't make anything for your own use, other than potions at this stage. You have to pay premium to get to the third area and beyond, which has weapon crafting in at least the third zone, I'm led to believe. You can't do anything for yourself, other than to raise other skills and the end result is *only* XP and money, to continue skilling through buying ingredients or tools from shops.

Well worth it. It feels closer to a 1.0/released game, than it does early access. Definitely recommend, even at full price.

That said, ranger trees have a lot to be desired. A lot of the main bow builds have a lot to do with an arrow type you don't have access to until you get to the last area of early access, so you have to supplement elsewhere. The multi-shot skill tree node uses arrows based on how many were fired, too. I'd like to see multi-shot cost a single arrow, but still shoot multiple. It chews through a lot of arrows, and with the cost to make arrows, it's asinine to *have* to make, let alone carry 1k+ arrows for an hour of exploration, if you're killing everything.

Combining build playstyles is fun and doable to some degree. Playing as a healer main on a server isn't going to outright nerf your damage, but you're also not going to be one-shotting everything. Both healing and magic damage are dependent on intelligence. Doing a skyrim sneak/range build is fun, but you may have to pick up a couple skill nodes you'll never benefit from, to get something that adds to your build.
And regardless the build, there are also things you'd want to get, like more shroud timer and better stamina management, or just endurance for a larger stamina pool. Maybe even double jump and/or updraft for some extra verticality.

Playing through the whole of early access, there were few bugs or glitches found that haven't been acknowledged or steps taken to fix, thus far. There are some areas where the ground isn't sculpted to the POIs(Point of Interest) and sometimes you have to dig through to get where you want or might get confused why bugs are spawning and nowhere to be seen, but it was mainly in the last portion of early access, and very rarely in the first 4 level flame areas, where it wasn't on purpose(ie: fungal growth).
Posting with 240 hours played, and only just got the final achievements from early access. The map is massive, with plenty to do in 80%+ of it. Some of it is just running from point A to point B, or from POI to POI, but even then there are static enemies sprinkled about as well as random fel enemies during nighttime, roaming in non-shrouded areas.

As someone that could not stand the souls series, Elden Ring polishes it into a digestible form for those looking to enter the series. It's not amazing, but it's also not glitch-ridden like previous games and remasters.

It's new player friendly with the ability to summon ashes to help you in combat in a lot of cases, as well as summoning NPCs for specific bosses.
There is no quest tracking, so I would suggest looking them up on a wiki so you don't miss out, but also, part of the experience is making mistakes.

Review posted with 421 hours played, and I still haven't beaten it because I wanted to make a build that complimented my play style. There aren't a *lot* of options in builds, but there are at the same time. They typically surround a handful of weapons, as well as knowledge of where those weapons(or earlier versions) are, so you can rush to get them and start out strong. Just as I'd suggest looking at quests, I'd suggest looking at potential builds to get a feel for what you want to do, but again, part of the experience is making mistakes.
Once you beat a certain boss, fairly early in the game, you can exchange a semi-rare item to reset your skill points and place them again, so if you don't want to play the entire game with one build, you can go to this NPC and completely rework your character to fit another build.

For those looking at avoiding pvp like myself, you *can* play offline and avoid all invasions, but this also means you won't be able to summon friends willing to help. This includes not being able to see phantoms of other players, and online messages, which is both a blessing and a curse, since some phantoms and messages are helpful, while others will troll or give advice that will end up killing you.

Overall, wonderful experience, even through all of the frustration of the learning curve, to understand how certain enemies attack.

Long story short: get it, but get it on sale. It's good, but with a lot of missed marks.
**Review posted 5 days after release, so take it with a grain of salt. I hope feedback will allow them to improve upon the game because it has a lot of potential, providing it gets shaped well.**

The biggest glaring negative is that it tries to be multiple games, and misses the mark on each.
Its challenge sections attempt to be Celeste, with poor mechanics that aren't predictable, so doing the same thing in some cases, results in different outcomes, and doing different things results in the same. It's fun at times, and infuriating at others.
The mood and feel of the game attempts to emulate NieR: Automata if it were a side-scroller; run long enough and you sprint, but there's no button to sprint. Half-assed complex sword combos that feel clunky, and in most cases, leave you open after it's fully completed. Air combos that fall flat and leave you open when you land. Also, upgrading the sword felt inconsequential. When you upgraded the sword and went to the next area, it was like there wasn't any change, other than the number next to the health bar was higher.
It tries to be a metroidvania, but without the backtracking, so it just ends up being overly linear with exploration not really being rewarded, other than getting another random skin that you most likely won't use.
Some of the skins are really good/funny references. Some are just cheeky jokes. (see: camo)

The map leaves a lot to be desired. In terms of where NPCs are that you've encountered, it's usually a coloured box with a name. There's no easy way to tell if there's a room you missed, whether it's hidden or not. You also can't tell if you left something in the room because of frustration of not completing the room. There are markers for the map. There is a way to look at the trace of where you've been, which would help if it wasn't just overlapped. (think Hero's Path from Breath of the Wild, but no animation)

There's no obvious tell in which items you shouldn't sell because of importance while you're in the shop's sell UI. Everything has "can be sold for scrap" on it. Even quest items. Also, there are few save points, and far between, so if you're stuck on a room and can't get through, you'll have to turn around to go back to a save point 7+ rooms back. And good luck if you got through a difficult room because the return paths are sometimes worse than the forward ones. There is no autosave; only soft checkpoint saves for when you die to spikes or pits. And that's usually at the entrance to the room, bar some large rooms that had multiple soft checkpoints.

As far as positives? When it works, it's a lot of fun. Traversal feels fluid at times and is fun to do the early puzzles(without spikes and moving platforms).
Although there's no autosave, one thing I did like is that the game sensed a crash and kept that soft save so I didn't have to load at a save point, to get back to where I was. It also gave *very clear and obvious* text boxes of what it did and if you chose not to use the soft save, it would be deleted, so you could load from a hard save.
The "dodge" mechanic is clunky, but when it works, it felt like a good cheese for some mobs.
Fishing felt mediocre? But I mean, it's fishing. Still fun.

Absolutely nails the balance between open world exploration and story progression. The only irritants I can state are one story-based quest, the ability to finish it is difficult because of RNG(no spoilers), and upgrading speed/coin capacity needs a rework so it's not one level at a time with dialog in between. I spent at least half an hour in that dialog leveling those up.
The levels in cyber space are well done and well laid out, the challenges feel natural to complete, and the story is chunky(positive) without feeling forced. Well worth full price, even with a first play only taking ~22 hours to complete, including completionist things like fishing and collecting side story dialog.

Absolutely loved it. Played on gamepad, and it was fully accessible. The only issue I had was with picking things up, it would constantly double the action I was doing, so it would have me running after things nearby, which isn't bad until one of those things is a creature running after me. There were a few hits I could've avoided because of this.
Story-wise, it was brilliantly done with little trouble of figuring out puzzles.
I did have it crash a few times and lost a bit of progress(auto-save between zones), so be wary of that. Turning anti-aliasing off seemed to fix that, so that might be an option for you.

I'll start off with simply, this is not a game for me. Recommended because it is done well for people whose interest it is in multiple character control(via d-pad). Definitely try the demo before purchase to see what I mean. I didn't, and that's my fault. It looked like the characters stayed next to each other via AI, not because you are controlling all of them simultaneously through another mechanic. That did not cross my mind.

Combat felt like it was trying to be a brawler in a sense, but missed the mark by a margin. I didn't like how the combos felt, but they were smooth. I also didn't see any tutorial advising Y as a dodge in any portion.
Also not a fan of the lack of ranged(specifically arrows) availability. I didn't like that some enemies couldn't be attacked with melee, unless you wanted to chase them for a majority of the interaction and potentially run into other packs of mobs, so with the lack of arrows, a greater majority of the time you were forced to run after them, hit them a time or two and have to run after them again because they teleported away.

Overall, decent in gameplay. Can't say anything about story because I couldn't make it that far. I played through the first 3 map areas after the epilogue, to try and get a rhythm, but couldn't.
I reiterate, try the demo before purchase to see if it's for you.

I enjoyed the game, but not as a whole. I hoped there would be more out of the story, but it's literally just..go and kill them, and become the prominent tribe. The Udam "boss" was challenging, but still easy. The Sun Walker "boss" was a joke.
After that, it's just a collectable game.
Not worth full price; catch on sale, or ignore entirely.

A year ago, this game was nothing more than a glorified tech demo.

Now that it's gotten an update to the content and mechanics, it's finally looking like a game. It has a tiered progression system, it's not easy to grind to endgame in terms of easy "exploits" to net better and better ships or units to upgrade your exosuit easily, and you actually have to do some of the content to get the initial blueprints to progress deeper into the game, such as other weapon modes for your multitool and weapons for your starship.
It has finally gotten good and is worth the money. Maybe still not $60 at this point, but catch it on a sale and have fun with it.

Absolutely brilliant. So many throwbacks and easter eggs, while keeping a great story.