Recent reviews by Vulture

Probably one of the better, if not best, hack-n-slash/beat-em-up/action games within recent history.
Its primary flaws are sadly its strengths though. This game is not accessible in the slightest, it relies on quick reflexes, good timing, and good combat know-how if you want to do well. It becomes even more structured the later into the game you go.

Combat-wise, the game 110% revolves around the premise that is a stance system. Think of any Devil May Cry game where Dante has more than one fighting style. That is exactly how this works, except learning how to fluidly roll between Low/Mid/High stance makes your game astonishingly good. If you can manage to recognize when to be in each stance you will pass most challenges with flying colors.

In this game, your target is not the enemy's health bar; it is the enemy's KI BAR. As difficulty progresses, you will find that more and more your goal is to hit enemies with elements they are weak to, exploit strong techniques, and counter-attack at the correct point to unleash an absolute mess of whoop-ass on an enemy once their stamina runs dry. Always consider that your goal first and foremost. Going a little bit harder on the aggressive side (in a smart way) also allows you to Ki-Break opponents faster leading to openings for criticals and even Zero-Ki punishes.

Build availability is exceptional with almost every single form of build viable and almost every single form of build you can imagine. Do you want to be a dextrous shinobi with the whole utility belt? This is the only game that has a flippin KUSARIGAMA. Do you wanna be just shy of a bandit warlord? Say hello to Axe and laugh as nothing can guard against you. Do you want to be a monk? Fist weapons are absurdly strong. Do you want to be the OG Samurai? The game would love if you did that. Do you want to be a marksman, carefully shooting out opponents one by one and exploiting the creation of gunpowder? You can basically be a ninja-gunslinger (I'm not even kidding, just be mindful the shots aren't rapid fire). Do you want to be a anime magic priest? Onmyo magic. The list is basically unending.

The reason that builds are also so complex is because later in difficulty you'll 100% need to exploit status effects on enemies. If you ever find yourself not doing enough damage, start looking for a status to specialize in. Lots of weapons and items have abilities which increase base attack % (by a good margin) when an enemy is inflicted with certain status. This pairs well when combining status effects as it causes the "confusion" debuff which is basically an enemy death sentence.

This game is Demon Slayer before Demon Slayer was frontpage on Crunchyroll.

**EDIT**
This game is getting _heavily_ review-bombed by extremely salty Hawken veterans of the past. Take some reviews with a spoonful of sugar, try out the core gameplay loop and see if it's your deal. As it sits now, the game has a similar feel to Warframe and Destiny. It's a striking disparity from the original PvP game it used to be. Mechanics are different, gameplay is utterly different. Different doesn't inherently mean anything negative, it just means different. Still, base your judgement on the fact that this is an Alpha.

I'll just go over the Good/Bad/Ugly and let folk decide for themselves.

Good
Movement looks and feels fluid and responsive; I've even made improvised maneuvers so far.
Challenge is where it needs to be; Enough to make you think, not too little to be boring.
Good variety for an open Alpha; Got a little bit of everything in terms of weapon design and mechs.
Maps are large; Got a good amount of environment going on, sets the stage well for tone.
Customization is there; Game wants you to carve out a playstyle and match weaponry and proves it with the upgrade systems.

Bad
Maps are LARGE; The game has to use random encounters to keep things flowing.
Resources are scarce; Basically to keep you playing through alpha and give you something to do between updates.
Online maybe? I haven't seen any online coop or random drops onto maps like Destiny does. Unsure if I have a setting that isn't enabling this or if it simply isn't enabled yet.
Graphics could use a little improvement; Basic effects have room to work on.
Infantry are small targets; At least they do minimal damage.
HUD is based around controller; Appears to not understand I'm on KBM with some obscure issues with selecting items in menu (need to use arrow keys?) can easily be patched.

Ugly
No PvP; OG Hawken fans will need to bite the bullet for a little bit...be patient I guess...
Shield mechanics; I'm just not a fan honestly. I always loved the risk/reward management of the original repair drones but that's because I'm a weirdo.
No cosmetics yet; Let me play dress-up with robots pls.
Server stability is fresh; can be fixed but I know this will be a sore spot for folk. The good news is the game makes you invul if it detects some server oops.

Pretty basic as to be expected with an alpha release. Game feels polished enough to at least enjoy as a time consumer. I want to see what else they have planned and hope that if I put some work/effort/time in now that will be reflected once a more finished release hits. I do recommend it simply on the merits of it's movement system and the fact that I just wanna see it succeed.

This Battletech game is very true to tabletop. I have not played tabletop myself, but after doing some reading online, it looks _incredibly_ similar. This means, YES, the game does include dice rolls and percentages. If such a thing deters you from playing games this game will not impress. This isn't Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries in other words, the focus is utterly on strategy, careful planning, and resource management.

What this game does offer is a challenging campaign that will push you, especially if you're not having the best run with salvage. I think the game almost unanimously favors larger tonnage over lighter tonnage, which is a slight bit upsetting for me and my mobility-focused mindset. Long Range Missiles (LRMs) dominate this game pretty heavily due to there being a noticeable lack of Anti-Missile System (AMS) support items. In one mission, I kited a much more powerful kill-team in circles while pelting them with LRMs granted sight at all times thanks to a scout's Sensor Lock. By the time I actually engaged the enemy, they were utterly crippled with barely any frontal armor, and a few alpha strikes blew apart components like flinging rocks at a wet paper towel. This is why I love Griffins.

The battle animations take some time but honestly, I kinda like it. The one thing I had to fix was removing the constant dynamic zoom effects.

Overall, solid 8/10 in my book. Definitely worth picking up even just for the most popular mod, RogueTech.

Barely a game, more of an artistic piece. I'm only downvoting because it is not really a game. Instead of going for what would have been a much better approach of a "puzzle adventure" style game, the devs didn't really seem to know what to do with the medium at hand and just clumsily tied a combat system in as well. It is heavily evident that this clunky combat system was added later as more of an afterthought. The "melee" weapon is set to be more of a gun, per say, in a sense that it attacks using hitscan rather than having a hitbox.

Good:
Atmospherically mesmerizing, artistic direction took a fantastic approach.
Excellent soundtrack, I will be using this dark ambient to sleep later.
This game is what Non-Euclidean Geometry actually looks like.
A good source of environmental storytelling, you can pick up on hints of the culture of...whatever the hell these people are.

The Bad:
Exceptionally short
Basic enemy attacks feel more like heat-seeking missiles than globular projectiles.

The Ugly:
The game is designed to take up more than 2 hours to avoid the steam refund system and that's about it.
The puzzles have certain needless levels of complexity that feel like they're designed to waste time.
You can, and will, get actually save-screwed. You'll have to make the decision to trudge through with low HP, an absolutely horrible melee weapon, with no ammo and try to get lucky or DO THE ENTIRE ACT ALL OVER FROM THE START.
Once again...it feels more like the developers were pushing a time budget to prevent refunds and I really, really hate that feeling.

Should have been longer, should have felt more like a puzzle game. Combat should have been scrapped to make way for more thinking strategies.

Monster Hunter: World with QOL improvements.

I feel like that's honestly all I need to say.

This game sincerely deserves more love. If you like fighting games even a little bit this game is for you. The combat design is fluid and living, fully customizable to match virtually any playstyle. It's incredibly intuitive with the game design that honestly just feels familiar if you're any sort of martial artist or have had that history. I highly recommend this game to anyone willing to take a shot. I reviewed this game after purchasing it for <$10 and it's more than paid it's worth back.

This jumbled mess of a MMORPG doesn't know what it wants to be and doesn't cater to either. It wants the casual PvE crowd but was built as a PvP game. It wants the PvPers but doesn't know how to keep them entertained. This game will ultimately be remembered as how to not launch an MMO as well as how to not build an MMO for any future attempts.

Never let knee-jerk reactions decide your fate or you'll end up like New World.
Good grief.

This is a surprisingly fun game.

It may not be the best ARPG but it does a good job with character customization. Class specifics feel like they can be fine tuned really well and there are a lot of creative elements to the gear items of the game. Healing items, for example, can be turned into a a damaging buff item instead if your character has self-healing or lots of range. It also has a system similar to runes from D2.

It's not without it's flaws though, there are numerous graphical bugs mostly with things like bloodstains during cutscenes. It's not that noticeable during gameplay. Older computers may suffer horribly with this game as some of the graphics look and feel unoptimized.

The difficulty might be a touch too easy. Either that, or the Tech Adept is strong. I'll make another review with more hours played but so far it's a good 7.5~8/10 of a game.

===Future Edit===
After completing more main missions I'll confirm that this is still a surprisingly fun game. My concerns of difficulty are less now that I understand how the challenge system through Tarot cards works. The core game almost feels intentionally easy just to provide incentive to add extra challenges for specific drop rates and loot.

Overall, my complaints with ARPG games is fairly straightforward, the grind has to be fun. With the Tech Adept, this can definitely be the case. You can basically build that character any way you want just so long as you have the right summons. Tanky melee? Drop the defense and health regen constructs and you're a Leman Russ. Swarm king? Try one of the many infinite vivisector builds. Defense and point hold? Tarantula turrets and support constructs. General fightin? Kastelan, combustors, or kataphrons. The amount of mix and match you can do, mixed with the varying degree of construct weapon selections and individual upgrades themselves, basically means a near infinite level of combinations and builds.

Currently reviewing this game after purchasing from a steam sale, I have all the DLC for basically a fraction of what it would be off sale. It looks like an almost gross amount of content that I hope weighs good.

Before Mechanicus: Guess I'll give it a spin.

After Mechanicus: 01010000 01110010 01100001 01101001 01110011 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01001111 01101101 01101110 01101001 01110011 01110011 01101001 01100001 01101000

It's literally heartbreaking the sequel will fade into obscurity simply because it's being released on Epic games.