Recent reviews by House of Rahl

If you play games like this with a controller, look elsewhere. game has one glaring flaw when using a controller, even when turning off "gamepad aid snap" in the options the camera pan speed will massively slow down when your cursor is anywhere near an enemy making controlling the camera neigh impossible in crowded areas. the difference is around a 5x multiplier from when the game detects your aiming near an enemy to when you are not.

this issue has existed since the game released and dozens if not hundreds of posts and contact forums have been submitted to the devs with zero results.

if on the other hand you plan to play this with a mouse, rejoice because for mouse players it does not artificially adjust your mouse sensitivity on the fly like it does to the controllers joystick sensitivity. why the devs couldn't give controller users the same courtesy is beyond me. this is the only shooter game i own that doesn't actually let me turn off the kid gloves setting to help me with aim assist and instead demands i get that help because... reasons.

ps: i've also looked into trying to mod the game files or download mods to try to remove the aim assist but haven't found anything useful in my internet browsing or on nexus at least last i checked there. best wishes yall and if you want something similar maybe consider something like helldivers where your camera isn't hijacked by the game with no way to regain control, if you dare to use a controller with their game.





i could also go into the actually annoying game mechanics like just how many freaking times you'd have to run through an area KNOWING something was there to get all the items. having to restart the playthrough so many times to get a single item is just infuriating, worse when it involves a huge amount of luck in getting multiple specific areas in your latest campaign run across the main maps. but the reason i don't personally play it is because the game refuses to give me agency over where i get to look in combat, the main part of the game.

i've been a big proponent of helldivers since i learned of it's existence and have enjoyed a few hundred hours so far of high octane democracy spreading. but i don't intent to share more and more personal info either through their discord server now requiring you to hand out your personal phone number or singing up for a psn account when i don't even own a ps that's capable of playing hellivers. i wish yall the best regardless of which way this goes, but i wont support a product or dev that seems to predatorily go after my personal data. i just wanta buy the game and play it not have to worry about solicitation in my text, voice mailbox, and emails. dev's also shouldn't be demanding people basically dox themselves just to engage in discourse among the helldivers discord server. do with this info what you will.

when i bought this game it didn't have a secondary account verification sign in bs. this is frankly similar to the ubisoft stuff requiring us to sign into their junk on top of signing into steam. there's a reason i don't own any ubisoft games. any secondary sign in stuff is just them doing their damndest to collect intel on the user in the hopes of generating additional sales and having access to the contact info to solicit said sales. not interested.

~Rahl

ps: steam, not counting a review because i bought the game for cheaper on a cd key site is pathetic. if you don't want people selling the product for cheaper don't sell it in bulk to those sites and allow them to resell it to others.


6 may 2024 - whelp sony finally took the L. guess we can go back to killin bugs and stompin terminators.

I’ve played this game since shortly after its beta. I stopped playing around 2 years ago. I have no idea how many hours ive logged because I used the original tera launcher long before it came to steam.

A few years ago tera went full on pay to win. They released at that time the red and black dragons locked behind loot boxes. These dragons gave a huge damage buff to players. The lower tier dragons gave 1.5x crit damage, while the greater tier dragons gave 2x crit damage. The buffs lasted 5 seconds, with an internal cooldown of 40 seconds. They proc when attacking, and your character can have both tier dragons making crit stacking pretty incredible. At the time they were released they were only available via the loot boxes I mentioned above, there was no in game way to acquire them outside of selling them on the market or direct player trades.

After a while the dev’s finally included a way to acquire the red or black low tier dragon in game. This really helped to rebalance the game so that it wasn’t stupid crazy pay to win, but greater tier dragons were still off limits. The only way to acquire this tier of passive crit buff is to shell out crazy amounts of actual money on loot boxes, or purchase the mounts via the market for hundreds of millions, if not billions depending on your server. Unfortunately for me by the time they finally included that I and a large portion of the player base had already walked away. Think star wars battlefront 2 and you’ll have some understanding.

Bringing this up to present day the games player base doesn’t seem to have recovered. Ques for dungeons seem to take a while and most people just say you should try to find a guild and que privately with them to get some runs going. If you go by the in game player amounts the numbers are pretty decent. In the last year the game really started implementing a fishing system you can afk. In order to acquire highly desirable skill advancement xp for those snazzy skill upgrades, you must either fish, or kill bams. Most people afk fish and youll find thousands doing so, unfortunately you wont find even 1/10th those numbers running dungeons.

All in all the game was really fun back in the day. The combat is still fun and engaging. Bosses are really, REALLY recycled and overused in different dungeons, but the combat will keep you going for a time, assuming you can find some runs. The way the dungeons are devided up between item levels and the dungeon run limits it can be really difficult to find specific dungeons being run that you need to gather mats to advance and unlock yet more dungeons. I often get tired of the game and quit after a few days of seeing 2+ hour que’s without finding a match, even when im selecting 4-6 mid dungeons.

In the end its your call. It’s a fun getaway for a short time and it would really help if you have a few friends to help makeup a group to run now and then but even with one your likely to get bored of the repetitive bosses, and the forced fishing for skill advancement. I for one didn’t want this game to go so pay to win, or turn into a bass fishing sim but here we are.

good sandbox style game. wish the settlement defense was a bit more engaging, and that it wouldnt spawn units inside the settlements walls. still a good passtime.

beware attempting to play this with dual or triple graphics cards. this was one of the first games to full on give up on sli. it does work to a limited extend but it introduces a ton of graphical bugs during rending.

vaas is definitely one of the greatest villains of all time. hes just one of those iconic bad guys thats instantly dislikable, but in a way that is believable. while his character is definitely over the top it suits this crazy guy and it doesnt come off as a 2d caricature.

the weapons and combat are nice and fluid. weapon options are fairly wide spread though the automatic rifles tend to get you the most bang for your buck against humanoid enemies.

the upgrade and crafting system really makes gathering materials feel rewarding. it doesnt get old after the first 20 minutes, and instead i found myself hunting animals just to hunt them. because i was constantly hunting i was able to progress through the upgrades without issue and it didnt feel like a chore. crafting consumables does require more specific gathering, but as i dont tend to use consumables outside of healing, it didnt slow down the gameplay.

the story was just great. starting out as a pathetic child, to develop into some kinda modern warrior was amazing. the skill upgrades were hit or miss. some were really nice, while other were all but useless. even still the act of going around and completing quest and being recognized by the tribe, tattooed as proof, and acquiring new skills all in one go rolls together roleplay, skill progression, and unlocking various weapons/items/abilities.

unlike most other sandbox style games this one didnt feel totally immersion breaking when you just went off to explore. fall out 4 for example you could go do w/e but then you left your child. skyrim you could wander around but suposibly the world is being burnt around you by dragons if you do. this one you wander around and your still taking out pirates left and right just by traveling around the island. you could easily tell yourself you were searching for your friends in those areas and not be ripped out of the story line. this made for a great story telling experience which was frankly surprising from a sandbox style game.

this was a great remake. while it did tweak the story a bit, it at least kept most things the same and brought it into the modern day. good story pacing, weapon balance, and quantity of loot. as long as you stick to headshots, even at the highest difficulty you can kill everything as long as you arnt wasting dozens of rounds on mr. x.

mr. x's stomping around is terrifying. wish it was easier to tell if the sound was coming from above, bellow, or right outside the door though.this persistent enemy keeps you on your toes constantly looking and listening. he creates a great amount of suspense, especially on your first playthrough.

you can cut off zombie limbs to disable them, or shoot them in the head for that chance at decapitation. the zombies also persist after death giving a level of realism to the exploration rather than your average respawning mmo enemies.

the only negative i can think of is a range issue with the machine gun weapons. while pistols can reach out basically as far as you can aim them machine gun bullets just wink out of existence after around 2 dozen yards. at that same range you can snipe things with your pistol, but the machine gun just cant "reach". at first i thought it was hitting an invisible wall till i did some more testing and found i wasnt even able to hit the ground and leave a lil impact mark at that range. i raised the issue with capcom and they referred to it as a "balance choice" which seems ludicrous since you wont typically ever be able to engage a target at those ranged, and when you do there is no reason a handgun round should reach the target 50ft away, and the uzi/mp5's round just winks outa existence and hit nothing.

all in all an amazing game, unlike the re3 remake.

Halo, finally brought to pc. the remastered graphics are a nice touch.

great game. easily worth full price. reminiscent of the old castlevania symphony of the night.

I’m disappointed with this remake. My first run through I walked from point to point more than half the time, and spent an excessive amount of time just looking at the environment for nostalgic sake. It took me 5.5 hours. An average nonspeed run would be sub 4 hours, and prolly closer to 3 as you memorize the item and enemy positions. To get an S rank in assisted you need to clear it in 2.5, standard is 2, and hardcore 1.75 hours. There are no additional play modes. There are no alternate story lines, or alternate endings based on decisions. Several areas and “quest” where eliminated from the original game.

To compare this thing to its predecessor RE2, RE2 you needed between 2-3.5 hours for an S rank clear time. This isn’t that much more than RE3, but you also had two different characters with very different story lines to play. And each character had a secondary play through mode for a total of 4 total time lines you could enjoy.

The lack of major puzzles makes the game feel a lot like RE6. It’s all about just running around, shooting zombies, and progressing the story that ends all too quickly. There are several small issues that may or may not bother some users. Lip syncing for example is atrocious for a triple A title. RE2’s limb cutting was removed from RE3. That means head shots really are the only way to go, since body and limb shots will do less total damage and serve no function purpose as far as disabling the target. Downed zombies also will no longer be there an hour later as you explore the place. they will simply disappear within minutes leaving a pristinely clean area were you had a blood battle 3 minutes ago.

The character models when aiming a weapon are pretty bad. When Jill attempts to point her shotgun at a target 20 feet away or so it’s aimed so low it’s almost comical. The reticle is huge and will encompass the entire zombie torso at that range, yet if you look at the angle of the shotgun in her hands she’s aiming around the targets feet. For someone that owns and has used firearms for a long time it’s pretty immersive breaking to go to aim at a targets head and notice Jill’s gun is actually leveled at their waist or thigh. Its likes she’s too tired to hold the weapon fully upright and is just resigned to being zombie chow. Maybe this is Capcom’s way of trying to show Jill as a weak and defeated character… more likely it was just some animator that didn’t check their alignments and it somehow got blessed off by a less than spectacular quality control.

Oh I almost forgot pathfinding and zombie AI. So in RE2 zombies could follow you into almost any room (other than safe rooms). They would chase players and eventually lost track and then stand in place or mill about. In RE3 zombies are locked to specific areas. Most of the time if you open a door and see zombies inside a room they will be unable to leave that room. If you just stand in the doorway you can shoot them all without any fear of being attacked. Often when this happens the zombies won’t even react to being shot. They sometimes won’t even turn to look at you as you slowly pick away at their health from that doorway. If you enter the room and engage them only to find out you’re in danger of being swarmed, no problem! You can just casually walk back out the door and the majority of the time the zombies will completely lose agro the second you enter the doorway and will return to very specific default locations. Each zombie has its own “standing place” and anytime it loses agro it will automatically move to that location and stand immobile. The whole standing place is most noticeable in the hospital. It even works on several of the hunters. Of the two hunters in treatment, the one furthers from the door for example can never leave that room and will auto loose agro the second you walk through the door. The closer one can leave the room, but rarely will and you have to try pretty hard to bait it into going through the door.

Now for the good. Despite all its failings RE3 is still a fun game to play in terms of gameplay. Boss fights are fairly quick paced compared to RE2. One nice note was the number of zombies on screen at any given time has gone up to the point where it’s “almost” a zombie game. 1-3 zombies in a large room does not a threatening hoard make. That was a major failing in RE2, glad to see were getting more. That’s…. really about all I have for positives.



RE3 was my 2nd favorite resident evil. I had really high hopes for this and even pre-ordered it. I’d have a hard time recommending to anyone to spend $60 on a game that you can comfortably clear in 5 hours your first time with little to no replay value due to lack of content. All of the other: AI pathing, gun alignment when aiming, and lack of any core puzzles leaves the game feeling like a generic no named zombie games. About the only thing setting this one apart from all the $20 options is the texture quality, which is frankly pretty good. It ain’t worth $40 though.

Alright, I have over 1200 hours spent in this game so bear with me, this is going to take a moment. Long story short, its an amazing game. One of the best in my opinion if you want large unit style combat over the single unit styles of most rts games such as Starcraft.

Shogun 2 has a fairly simple unit structure where there are peasants (ashigaru), samurai, and monks. The peasants basically suck. The samurai are a general upgrade all round on the peasants, and the monks are slightly stronger than the samurai while having peasant level armor.

Its setup in a very simplistic rock-paper-scissors system. Swords beat infantry. Spears beat cavalry, and cavalry wrecks archers. Naginata are hybrid swords/spears so do relatively well in both applications. Naginata samurai also have the highest armor in the game making them nearly immune to missile troops. This versatility makes naginata likely the most over powered unit in the vanilla game.

Mods are great for the game. Ive probably written over a dozen for myself alone from diplomacy tweaks, to unit size and strength modifiers, or even changing the garrison composition of various stages of castles. As you get better you can ramp up the difficulty by modding the game to just about however you like.

As for cons…. This game does NOT use multi threads. Why the devs recommend a dual or quad core cpu is beyond me. The game will use a single thread to 100%, and will use 2 other threads at around 5% each. I assume the dual 5% usage is some background processes because the numbers never spike up. Often times in sieges unit sizes will grow to immense proportions 10,000+ units fielded. You might be expecting that you will suffer terrible frame rates or stuttering. While stuttering may happen if your gpu cant keep up, the bigger issue is the units becoming unresponsive. Unresponsive as in you give them an order to move from one spot to another, and it might take anywhere from 30 seconds to 3 minutes for the unit to start moving, and even longer to get all the men back in formation because part of the unit may stand in place and not move with the rest of their brothers in arms. The faster your cpu the less problems youll see from this. I went from a base 3.8ghz to a 4.3 overclock and noticed that the units were still responsive at larger fielded sizes than before, but anything over 6k fielded still result in some delay of response even at those speeds. I personally didn’t mind it up to around 10k where units just straight became so unresponsive, that they had better be where I want them to be the whole fight, because they aint freakin moving for me. If your rocking a 3-3.5ghz 10+ thread…. Well your probably going to struggle to even play with 4-5k men fielded because it wont leverage all those wonderful threads. Avg army sizes for non modded games are around 2-2.5k per army. You can field a max of 2 full armies at a time, and the enemy can attack with up to 4 armies but only 2 fielded max per clan. So if two clans attack your castle and each have 2 army stacks they can field all 4 armies at once. Youd better have your defenders set where you want them because they aint guna respond to commands even at vanilla unit sizes. If you mod unit sizes to increase them like I do…. Well fps will again depend on ur gpu(s) but units will still become unresponsive because of how little it can leverage your cpu.

In conclusion, this is likely my favorit total war game, and favorit strategy game to date. I love the unit style battles. The unit composition and city development is simple and intuitive, but God do I ever wish this game would leverage more of my system so its not so bogged down during those massive epic battles that I love so much. Ill just hope when they finally get around to releasing shogun 3 that it will make full use of all the core and then I can really ramp up the unit sizes to field 40 or even 50k troops in a battle (assuming my gpus don’t explode in a puff of smoke trying to render all that)!