Recent reviews by Operator Phoenix

Game isn't worth the price tag.

It's fantasy Outerworlds but somehow with less things going for it.

Obsidian stans will disagree, but ultimately I regret buying it. And I'm an obsidian stan who played Alpha Protocol multiple times before the Raycevik video,

Eora feels lesser for including this game.

Avowed isn't immersive, so if you want that? Nope. It's arcade. it's supposed to be some sort of FPS Fantasy Swords and Sorcery action game. But that just amounts to "hold heavy attack" or "cast a spell" while stuffed full of food for every buff in the game. You get orange level gear that does cool stuff, but they had to nerf the upgrading mechanic so you could try new things, because you really couldn't before.

At some point, Obsidian just forgot how to do itemization. Outerworlds was bad, so is Avowed, but in a new weird way they had to patch because is was overly punishing. To be clear, I'm not referring to the aforementioned upgrade mechanic. Originally, if your gear was not an appropriate tier (color +number) to an enemies required gearscore (yup) you dealt no damage, and they ragdolled you. They still ragdoll you, but you can damage them now, I guess.

Story feels like an on rails FPS, not what I play an RPG or an Obsidian game for. Not what I would want to go to Eora for.
Probably a product of the "Fantasy Destiny clone" it was supposed to originally be.

This is obsidian's Anthem, but they swerved at the last moment, so now it's a mediocre game, rather than a game people will point at to mark the downfall, incorrectly in both cases.

I think a lot of what you can gleam from the "mechanics" of the game can be found in status effects.

Bleed is a DoT.

Poison is a DoT.

Fire is a DoT.

Lightning is a DoT that chains.

Freeze stuns and opens them up for an explosive combo reminiscent of Mass effect 3.

So they got through 1 and a half fun combat mechanics and then just said ♥♥♥♥ it. DoTs.

That's Avowed. 1 and a half mechanics, ♥♥♥♥ it, send it.

I'm sad now.

Exotic class item requires mic and a co-op partner. Bingo ♥♥♥♥♥ solo players again.

First things first. I LIKE Starfield. I'm a Bethesda shill.

So why am I not recommending the game?

I'm gonna go into a bit of an in-depth review, so if you want a TL;DR it'll be at the bottom.

Starfield is essentially Fallout 4 in space with a sprinkle of Elite Dangerous, No Man's Sky, and Skyrim shouts.

Fallout in space was basically what I wanted, so for the most part I was happy.


Starfield has some really good quest chains, such as the Colony sidequests, and I've spend hours just designing ships. The combat is fun, too. The leveling system, if stingy, is more improved over Fallout 4's. Some areas are really unique and exciting.


The main problem is Starfield feels like a game where half-baked ideas were put in the oven, but the oven was never turned on. They just moved on to the next idea, put that in the oven ad nauseam.

Exploring space gets repetitive. There are only so many actually interesting locations and interactions and that number is far fewer than you would hope. Some planets are interesting, and if they are, more often than not, are tied to a specific quest. Which is fine. The issue is that a vast majority of planets are barren review fodder, think of Mass Effect 1, this includes EARTH. It's there just to check a box.

Every companion is a boyscout. They seem to react to everything very similarly.

The story is just kind of bad. It feels like there was no direction at all. It doesn't even end. You just go perpetually into New Game Plus, to make your dragon shouts stronger? Maybe see some variations to the sequence of events. But it never ends.

New Game Plus is a gimmick, and terribly implemented. You loose your items, get a bad starting ship and maintain your plot knowledge. Which would be okay, but not as an infinite loop in a game that is already puddle thin.

I can only imagine if they made this a more focused game instead of a grab bag of raw ideas. Exploring XXXX number of planets isn't fun, especially if they're mostly barren. I don't care if that's how real life is. This is a game, It's supposed to be entertaining.

TL;DR: Starfield is Fallout 4 in space, mixed with Elite Dangerous with a dash of Skyrim shouts. The content is unfocused and the story doesn't actually end. If you play BGS games looking to explore, voyage to other options. If you play them to make your own story then go for it. The game sure won't.

It's an amazing reimagining of RE4 with the spice of John Wick style animations peppered on top.

Bungie continues to prove they have no idea why this game is popular.

The story is bad, this expansion is just a filler arc to get strand.

The "increased difficulty" is bad:
1. Strikes are just longer now, people wanted higher enemy density, Nope. "Updated" strikes now have Forced health gates, added on escort the payloads.
2. Bungie continues to have us face bosses that will just yeet you off the map if they attack you while you're jumping.


Strand comes after the campaign. Just like Beyond Light. You need a currency to buy fragments that is slow to grind out. Fragments locked behind raid, again.

Strand isn't even that good, it has no surviability tools.

They also gutted the mod system, hope you like worse Firepower or worse Heavy handed builds because that's all you got.

Chase an orb, get a buff to a weapon type and refresh your grenade or melee a little faster.

Not to mention the ever increasing monetization of this game, skip this expansion for now. I regret buying this annual pass.

If you're a HP fan, this game is probably worth it. There are a lot of little details that I wouldn't have expected to be included.

If you are NOT an HP fan, things get difficult.

I'd say this is a 6-7/10 game for a non-fan, and a 8-9/10 for a fan.

The combat is fun, the world is beautiful, and there are many things to do.

The problem is most of those things are collectibles.

That said let me elaborate there are a *LOT* of collectibles. Too much, imo. A lot of the sidequests are just introducing a collectible. You level up by essentially completing collectibles (the game counts quests as collectibles, worth 180-260 XP but other standard collectibles are worth 50-80). The game warns you that your field guide (collection index + journal) is the only way to get experience, but combat challenges give XP per kill so it's not that big of a deal.

The classes are almost non-existent and it's my main gripe. Only the first class for each subject is unique. Everything after that (which is few and far between) is a canned animation.

This is more of an open world action game than a traditional RPG.

So you will be exploring for collectibles and doing cool spell combat.

If you want to be immersed as a student, with a slow roll out of the story like the books. This isn't that.

Deer turns into a 5/5 bus with trample when it dies.

GOTY/10

Dad of Boy is a heart warming tale of an absentee illiterate father slowly reconnecting with his estranged son after the death of the Boy's mother. A lovely tale of a father begrudgingly teaching his son to hunt as they travel atop the mountain to spread the mother's ashes. Listen as the Boy reads his Dad stories of the world and the Dad tells dubious moral stories from his own experience.

Dad of Boy gets 5 boys out of 5 and one dead frog on the bottom of the sea with an equally dead scorpion on its back due to poor decisions.

Solasta: Crown of the Magister is the best game at emulating Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition. It's only downside is it's beholden to strictly SRD instead of the full 5e library due to Hasbro not wanting it to compete with Baldur's Gate 3.

If you're a fan of 5e and want a game based on those rules, Solasta is what you want.

Persona 4 is an amazing game and you SHOULD play it.

That being said this port is problematic and Atlus's support is dubious at best, nonexistent at worst.

It took me 5 hours of game time to troubleshoot the game crashing every 20 minutes and i still get occasional crashes.

Here's hoping p5r runs better when it gets ported.