Recent reviews by Justin

This is slowly becoming one of my favourite rogue likes I have played.

I keep saying "one more run" over and over. The loot is addictive and the game hits all the positives for me when talking about a rogue like.

Only negative for me is content. I wish there was more realms and bosses added in. Will keep coming back as they add content.

This is by far one of the best soulslikes I have played. Every boss was a challenge to overcome without summons(Easy Mode).

This is a base building game where your base actually goes where you go. It is not just some base you return to from time to time. You spend a majority of the time on your base. The better your base is, the easier it is to survive. You start the game on a plank of wood and over time, it becomes a full on battleship with engines and a greenhouse/farm and a control bridge. It is the base building/survival game I always wanted.

Going through the story gets you more and more upgrades for your raft, and improved items for the raft.

I was unsure in the beginning, but over time as the raft expanded, I became more and more hooked. Top tier game.

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Hollow Knight follows the player/the Knight, as they explore the ruined kingdom of Hallownest. 0ne of the first things that will grab your attention is the art direction and style. The characters and environments of Hallownest have this beautiful, hand drawn look to them almost cell shaded.

To begin this off, this is 2D dark souls. The entire game is built upon the dark souls formula.

• Challenging Combat that has depth
  
• Interconnected levels
  
• Re-spawning enemies
  
• Vague characters with odd questlines
  
• Benches that replace bonfires
  
• Losing your currency on death, and needing to retrieve it or you lose it all.
  
• Unconventiual narrative told through character dialogue and world building.

If you do not like dark souls at all and prefer the more conventional style of game, then you might not enjoy this. The best way to describe this is take everything dark souls, all the best elements and build a 2D world around it. The game heavily utilizes the dark souls formula. But, it takes this formula and crafts the best possible game you can from it.

Enviroment

There are many unique environments to discover in Hallowsnest. Each feeling very distinct and unique. You also start to realize that each of these environments serve a very specific purpose and have a reason for being there. For example, early on in the game, you discover the city of Tears after venturing through the fungal wastes to arrive there. The fungal wastes environment being right next to the city on the map. This is by design. The disgusting and putrid/acidic area of the map. It then becomes apparent that the wastes from the city have seeped into the ground and caused the environment to become like that because the wastes of the city are being dumped there. This is just one of many examples of extreme attention to detail. The world is designed like a painting. The level design is intricate. Hidden walls and shortcuts connecting each place. It is a master class in level design.

The game wants you to feel lost, at no point in time did it feel like I had a clue where I needed to go. I just progressed each section as I went and went somewhere else once a wall was hit. Another amazing aspect of the world and level design is how much it opens up as you receive new mechanics. New mechanics open up new areas and allow for faster traversal of the environments and make revisiting old areas a must. (Minor Spoiler: Skip to Combat) Another brilliant example of great world design is once you have reached the city, you will notice it is raining all the time. This may be odd at first since most of the game takes place underground in a bug's world. But, later you discover a large blue lake underground. Once you inspect the map you realise the lake is directly above the city. Hence, all the rain coming through the soil causing it to rain in the city. Master class in world building. That is one of many examples.

Combat

Each boss prepares you for the next in a sense. You can easily hit a wall if you have not accrued the correct skills for each encounter. The game teaches you how to improve on it the more you progress. Once you hit a wall, the game gives you the option on simply exploring another section of the game world till you have improved to then return and face the challenge.

The combat also has depth. You have a charm system which adds unique variety to the gameplay. Increasing your attack speed or reducing the cost to use special abilities. You can build your character around range or being aggressive depending on your preferred play-style.

Audio

Christopher Larkin composed the music for Hollow Knight, and did an incredible job of it. The music really adds so much emotion to the experience. Each environment you venture through has a unique sound to it. When your in the Deeper Hallownest filled with creepy crawlers and spiders, the music turns ominous and terror filled and when venturing through City of tears it becomes relaxing and the sound of rain to add to the atmosphere. The boss encounters then turn into fast intense swelling music that add tension to each moment. The sound of Hollow Knight is truly outstanding.

The dialogue is not voiced in English, but the characters makes awkward but very charming and cute noises. The Audio in all aspects just oozes personality. If you were blindfolded and somebody played audio from the game, you would know that only 1 game on the planet would have this and that's Hollow Knight.

Story

Mentioning anything story related here can be a spoiler, so I prefer to leave that up to you to discover. All I can say is that you are a knight venturing from lands far away to come and seek the riches of Hallownest. But the world is darker now and something has gone wrong in the Kingdom of Hallownest. The once lively world is now dead and your journey will lead you to figuring this out.

Final Thoughts

I was never much a fan of 2D platformers. But once I was made aware that it is 2D dark souls, I had to give it a try and I do not regret doing so. The game is amazing TOP 10 material. But, it is very difficult and not for a casual player. You will need to invest time in this world to understand it's combat and themes.

Nearing the end it also becomes quite difficult. Spending long periods of time trying to defeat bosses where a wall is hit. But, this adds so much to the experience if you are willing to put in the work needed to beat it. The game will live on as one of the greats in Platformers. If you do not like platformers at all, but you like dark souls, then I recommend you give this a try. Outstanding Game

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A once in a lifetime experience that may have a few small issues here and then with some iffy combat sometimes, but does not reduce the experience in the slightest.

• Gameplay/Combat 9/10 (Hollow Knight: Prepare to Die Edition)
  
• Story 10/10 (No idea what the hell is going on)
  
• Audio 10/10 (Emotional and Charming)
  
• Environment/World 10/10 (Would get lost again)

Cutie the elephent scene scarred me for life and I needed to go to therapy. The scene practically ruined my life.

10/10 would recommend.

As a new fan of the series only coming in at RE7, I am extremely happy with the direction that capcom has taken Resident Evil to. This gritty 1st person approach to survival horror is a welcomed addition to the franchise and I am hoping that they expand the new horror approach with RE9.


I will break this review down into Story, Game play and Endgame content. The story section will spoil the plot line so avoid that section if you have not played RE8 yet from start to finish.


Story

The story expands upon the ending of resident evil 7, Ethan is now living quietly somewhere with Mia and their child and we learn that they have been relocated their by Chris Redfield. Ethan has been receiving combat training as well so he is more of a killer in this game than in RE7.

The story goes much bigger in this entry with new multiple large locations instead of the small baker's house from RE7. One of the things I quite liked about RE7 was the ability to condense and entire game into the 1 house area. It had some charm to it that RE8 lacks, but nonetheless, still great in the location department. Chris then breaks through the front door, killing Mia and is taken by Chris.

This is what kicks the events of the game into action. Ethan wakes after the transport van crashes and stumbles into the new area of RE8. A little while on, Ethan is introduced to the lords of the village. Each of the lords has their own distinct back stories and lore and throughout the game, it was a joy to learn about each one of them. Ethan is then tasked with finding and killing the four lords, each in their own areas to gather the parts of of his daughter (it’s complicated). He proceeds to hunt all of them down 1 by one before facing Miranda.

Summarized

This aspect of the game can be weak at times and the game can take quite a long time to pick up pace in the story department until the very end where almost every single question gets answered very quickly as well as a great twist to pull the events of both games nicely together and answering some longing fan questions. The ending alone is worth the price of admission

Gameplay

Game play is a mix between the survival horror of RE7 and the action of RE4 blending these two together into a hybrid. The game has way more action sections than horror sections with big set pieces for some great moments. You have a wider arsenal of weapons available as well as a large collection of new enemies to face. Weather throwing grenades planting mines or mowing enemies down with a semi-automatic rifle, it’s clear that the game lies more on the action end of the spectrum. With that being said, the game still has sections of fear and tension and these sections are a welcomed break of pace from the more action sections of the game.

The puzzle solving is back but this is quite a weak part of it and the puzzles require little to no thinking to solve and this aspect should hopefully be improved in RE9.
There are tons of secrets and collectibles to be found similar to RE2 and Re7. Item management and secrets are still stellar in the series and RE8 is no different. Finding an item in a late game area which gives you access to something you found right at the start of the game is always cool and great when it gets pulled off in this fashion. Weapons sound fantastic, and the meaty pop of shot gunning something in the face is always very satisfying.

End Game

This area of the game is very strong. Upon completion of the game, you unlock Village of Shadows difficulty and this is a whole new way to play. Meaner enemies and new placements as well as unlocking some new weapons to play with adds some extra depth and is very welcomed.

You gain access to challenges which reward you with completion points which can be used to buy special items, new weapons as well as unlocks mods for the weapons.

On top of all of that you also get access to a new mode called mercenaries which tasks you with killing a certain number of enemies in a specific time frame. Chaining enemy kills together increased your timer and you can find money and abilities to use through each stage. You only have access to a specific set of weapons each stage so planning which weapons to take into the stage and weather to upgrade it or use the case for another weapon is all strong question which keep the game play interesting and varied. But this is just an extra on top of everything

Final Thoughts
The game is not as strong has RE7 and does not have the same charm but is still an incredible game worth the admission fee and a great entry for old and new resident evil fans.

Pros
-Still a resident evil game to it’s core
-Varied location and enviroments
-Great end game content
-Very good ending, one of the best in a RE game.

Cons
-Slow to get moving in the story department.
-Can sometime be too action orientated and moves to much away from survival horror.
-Some framerate problems in the castle area with the daughters and flies.
-Some weak boss battles
-Ethans dialogue at time can be slightly goofy.

8.5/10

Scary game but good fun. Does get old and repetitive quick though.

Before I begin this review, I would like to mention that there will be spoilers, but I will inform you when I am going to spoil some story aspects of the game.

I am an old school Assassins Creed fan way back to playing the original Assassins Creed 1 and 2 In the early PS3 days. I am probably one of the very few who still really likes and enjoy the modern-day stuff from the Desmond glory days. I do not like the direction the series is headed in with more focus on the time period stuff and less focus on the animus, Templars and Assassins.

With that being said, I really do enjoy AC Odyssey. I do not enjoy this game as an Assassins creed game, but more as an open world RPG.



At times this game can look insanely great, especially if you have a great system. Mid to high end systems should see about 60-80 FPS outside major cities and in major cities about
40-60 . I do feel though the during daylight, mountains and trees at a distance can look quite ugly and the render distance for trees and detail even at max settings can look quite lackluster. During the evenings, sunrises and sunsets however the game looks fantastic and extremely lively. I still think the Witcher did it better but it still looks great nonetheless.


Gameplay is very similar to AC Origins but with some improvements to movement overall. You run around more fluidly and it feels quite like an assassins creed game with Alexios and Kassandra vaulting over walls and rooftops with ease.The only downside for me is constantly running up walls and objects when I do not intend to do so. Trying to talk to an npc and before you know it you have scaled up a wall then onto a poll before jumping onto a rooftop all unintentionally. I am nitpicking at this point, but overall, it feels great to play the game. Combat at times is a hit and miss for me, it feels great when fighting only 1 or 2 opponents, but when you are up against a few then hitboxes and hit detection can feel wonky. . It is a traditional RPG so leveling up, boosting stats and acquiring legendary gear feels great and can be an addictive gameplay loop. The downside to this is when you start racking up a ton of legendary items, then blue and purples feel useless and the only reason to hoard them is to scrap for materials or to sell and that becomes their only use.

The world at times can be too big for its own good. It feels as if they created 10 different forts, outposts and camps and then seeded them all over the world and after like 15 -30 hours it basically just feels the same over and over, doing the same forts camps and outpost for the ultimate goal of clearing location objectives.

I think one small things that would make the game feel a lot better for completionists is adding a way to view or see how much of a region you have completed and maybe adding a tone of color or a bar showing that you have completed all location objectives for that region and there is nothing left to do there.
Also having an achievement for 100% the game and completing all objectives, locations items would be cool to showcase on your profile and give you more of a reason to grind.



There will be some spoilers in this section so skip this part if you do not want plot points spoiled.

Story for me is the biggest downfall. I feel like things do not feel completely cohesive and splitting up the 3 paths, was not a good direction to move in.

-Your Odyssey
-Cult Of Cosmos
-Fate of Atlantis
The whole cult of cosmos story arc feels lazy and basically just busy work. The reward for all of this is basically just a nice quick cutscene that hits the nostalgic point for old AC fans, but it does not tie into the story in any meaningful way whatsoever.

The whole odyssey part feels lackluster to me and I miss the days of Assassins creed when it felt like there was an epic conclusion to something and an ending having you excited and guessing for what’s next in the story. Having the modern-day stuff helped give this sense of cohesion between the games and the story reaching a pinnacle point, for example, in AC 3. The ending of the main odyssey (Spoilers) Is basically just a little cutscene of where the game started with you talking to Deimos and making choices to get the best ending. It all feels very lackluster to me and lazy and I hope that in future installments they put more emphasis on the story of the game and the ending they want to ultimately achieve.

The Atlantis questline is probably the most interesting part of the game and takes you to fighting mythical beasts and eventually to Atlantis itself. This was actually more interesting to me than the main plot of the game which is quite a letdown.

The inclusion of mythical creatures is for me one of the highlights of the game. Fighting Medusa, Cerberus and the others is really cool and quite far from assassins creed but fun nonetheless.

For the naval combat I feel they also could have included more here like they did in black flag. Maybe adding 3 level 50 level 70 and level 99 retrospectively god tier ships which you can only fight when you have skills and max upgraded ship and patience, sort of like a dark souls boss and defeating these 3 ships grant legendary loot and maybe and special achievement for beating them.

That is just an example but again just something more for the naval end game content etc.


The game itself also tends to have this feeling of them taking the best parts of other game systems and mashing it into their own.

The world and quest structure of The Witcher, even some of the scores for quest completion and leveling up sound almost exactly the same as the scores from the Witcher.

The Mercenary system feels like they took the nemesis system from Shadow or Mordor and Shadow of War.

Gear feels like Borderlands, farming for better gear and equipment.

Naval combat feels like they took a page out of their success with black flag and copy pasted it into odyssey.

I feel they missed out on a very cool opportunity to actually upgrade and be able to go inside your ship, below decks and have the opportunity to upgrade inside as well.

For example, at the start of the game, it is Barron empty and lackluster and throughout the game you can find trophies, and buy cooler and cooler items for your ship below deck. They say your ship is your home base, but all you can do is run around the deck and it feels lackluster and they could do more to make it feel more like your “home base”


If you want a traditional Assassins creed game, then this is not for you. If you love open world games and RPGs and you want a game to sink your teeth into then you will love the game. I feel there is a ton of things they could have added and changed to the game,and if all the things I mentioned were fixed and implemented then this would almost be a 10/10 Witcher level game but the game starts leaning to much towards the quantity and not quality side for me and holds it back overall.

Final Score

8/10

So, I have played enough of this game to leave my feedback on it.

I will start with the pros.

Pros
-Fun with friends
-Creates a really sociable environment no matter who you are playing with.
-Easy to learn, only take a game or 2 to get the mechanic down.
-Being the imposter is the most fun role.


Cons
-There are not enough maps, and the main one on the ship becomes the one everyone queues over and over.
-Task are tedious and not very interesting.
-The gameplay mechanics should be expanded slightly


Recommendations

-Include an in game talk option to only talk to the other imposter so you can collaborate on double kills and strategies.
-Include more warning tasks that split groups up more.

Apart from the few cons I mentioned, the game is a ton of fun with the right people and its an 8/10 for me. Just add more map variety and more interesting tasks.

At first glance, this game seems like the generic survival game. You do survival game stuff. Craft items to survive, collect items and ultimately build a base. Then, as you explore the game world you start to realize that this game has personality and begins to distinguish itself in a very big way. The hand crafted world is a great change from the usual generic auto generated worlds of other games.
The tension building that the game manages to fill you with by catering to man's deepest fears is excellent. Not knowing what's below you at any moment is a terrifying yet enjoyable experience that I will not forget any time soon.