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I was super hyped for this game being not-Arkane folks and even initially pre-ordered it on Steam before refunding it to play it for FREE* on game pass. The first ~4 hours were really good, had a blast, and showed a lot of promise, but then halfway into second vignette I was getting really sick of it and by the last two vignettes I was just beelining between the main areas. Bounties never amounted to anything, Your Choices Matter did not seem to do much other than occasionally some NPCs would turn up as bounties and you could capture and turn them in but never seemed to do much other than 'oh hey that person'. Reputation was a big lol fart; hell I have no idea why it was even in the game. Money seems bonkers broken and was annoying having to scrounge up to rebuy the horse to pickup your inventory of Good poo poo that you had to leave on it before packing in the end of a vignette and other than that it never mattered. Combat was probably overall most disappointing aspect and devolved into backpedal+spam M1/dodge-slowmo and with only three enemies it lost it's luster really fast. It's otherwise just too chaotic to do much else and that strategy works well enough. I think if this was actually a TBS/tactical game it would have been a lot better because as it is I never could bother using grenades or consumables or trying to setup elaborate barrel traps. the overworld was really barren and felt like it was the exact same town, farm, underground, and mine template pasted a dozen times without any real change. Once you've seen a level once, you've pretty much seen it for the next three dozen times it comes back up with a different name. Loot tended to be pretty bad and messy, especially with really only 1-2 weapon types that are more or less about the same, and best way just being to loot the weapon store to get them anyways. I'm not even sure why there had to be color-coded Tiered loot when it's so poorly integrated with the game. Abilities seemed really negligible overall except silent rifle and the supposed unique class abilities weren't all that great or even needed. I wasn't really thrilled with how they handled six different vignettes which all ended up playing the same way. I think if they had leaned into each vignette playing a certain way with a different shakeup (bow guy, werewolf guy, etc) it might have been more interesting. The way things transfer* (or don't) between vignettes felt pretty lame and kinda ruined a good portion of exploration (not that there's much to find that you didn't find in the first hour). Writing-wise I'd say it's decently above-average: I did enjoy the Heathen Witch interactions, brothel, a couple ghost side quests, and a few others like the plantation owner. But the way quests and writing interfaced with the overarching game structure really put a damper on most of the writing and limited actual NPCs and sidequests that never matter. Most of the lore books you can find is like a half-broken sentence at most and never amounted to much interesting though. At least I feel it nailed a pretty satisfying conclusion to the story, which is more than you can say for most games out there, so props to not-arkane for that. Although its their first game, I would also expect a bunch of arkane vets to have done a better job, especially since it was delayed a good 9 months since it's initial date. I wish I could say another 9 months in the oven might have helped it, but I'm not certain it would have. Mostly my own fault for getting a little overhyped for it, it's Fine, and for playing it for FREE* I can't complain too much.
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Apr 11, 2022 07:01
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| # ¿ May 18, 2024 14:15 |
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