Recent reviews by RandomTurtle

The main issues with this DLC are that they offer very little in terms of content. But to be honest all the small DLCs have but those were free so the expectations were low.

However a secondary issue is that this DLC contains staff and recipes that are both very powerful, and a new crop which is by extension powerful. This shouldn't matter in a single player game as you don't compete against anyone but I look at it this way. Why are some of the most powerful dishes/staff in the game behind a limited time offer that you have to pay to get?

If you want to play this game for a seriously long time you can, even if you beat the story and side content there are still dishes to level up that can easily take several hundred hours. Granted only ~0.01% of players will try that, but a good portion of people might really stick around into the endgame, but when this DLC is no longer on sale there will be no way to get the staff or dishes. The dishes do have a few base game dishes that are better than them but not many. But the staff do have some of the best stat lines with good abilities even to the extent I use 2 out of 3 of them in my final staff set up. One of them is the best branch manager in the game. The other great for dining area and has cleaning/cocktail ability. There is also a good argument to be made that the 3rd staff could also be put in the dining area of the branch. This also frees up 3 more employees for dispatch so more ingredients come in too.

Effectively the dishes are solid money makers and the staff are some of the best in the game. Really great content to have if you're going to play this game for a long time but unfortunately this is a paid DLC you can only get in a limited time window.

So where I want to say that this DLC is bad for the reasons of it's limited availaility. From a practical standpoint, if Dave The Diver is a game you really enjoy the gameplay of and plan to play a lot in the post game, this DLC does contain some stuff that will change the game slightly and is most likely good to have, but it is quite a steep price to pay for just some staff and dishes after 2 side missions so it's only really worth it if you will be playing the base game long enough to see the payoff. Therefore I have given it a recommended, as if you are the kind of player I was at this game, then this is content you'd want to have.

Edit: There has been an extension of the DLC availability until the end of 2026, the review stays positive and as it is because it doesn't change anything from my perspective. However I will say that the DLC (and the free Godzilla DLC) being available until the end of 2026 is interesting as by then I doubt there will be content updates being made for Dave the Diver in late 2026 (could very easily be wrong though) so although it is true that in years this content will be unavailable but there has been more time given to allow for people to get this content.

Was an alright game. However as time progressed he developers got more and more greedy despite the company already making a ton of money as it was. Not only is this a full priced game, and not only does it have £200+ worth of DLC, it also has micro-transactions on top of that.

It used to be not as bad as players were rewarded for playing the game with small amounts of the premium currency as a thank you for playing daily and keeping the servers full. With this you could access whatever skins you want provided you played the game enough. However recently most of the ways to get said currency was removed, effectively you have to pay to collect the content for the game. In a game that already has you paying to play it.

Furthermore the DLC was a fine source of income before, plenty of players would purchase every pack, with a new pack being released every 2-4 weeks, there was even a collectors edition bundle to create an incentive to purchase, however that has since been removed too, probably because it offered a big discount.

I'll probably have a bunch of bootlickers who will give this review Jester awards with the common arguments such as "Skins don't add content" or that "It's okay for whales to pay the cost", neither of which are true, as collecting skins is part of the content especially if you see yourself as a collector, and having the majority of income coming from a few players is exploitative. But that's neither here nor there.

On top of that the same server issues that have existed for years still exist, so it's clear they aren't re-investing the money they make back into improving the issues of the game that I see many players complaining about.

Overall I can't recommend this game in good faith as it's been made clear by the higher-ups they don't really care about the playerbase or the game, they just want your money.

I'll start by saying, I loved this game and the gameplay it had provided. It has definitely provided me with many hours of entertainment, and to say I got my moneys worth is an understatement. However that said, I can't recommend this game in good faith to anyone.

A recent update was akin to taking a beloved family pet out back and shooting it when it wasn't looking. They completely crippled the matchmaking and abandoned Linux support, all so they can make the game free on Epic games and implement crossplay with them (removing crossplay with Linux). Sure there are more Epic games users than Linux users, but there was always the option to buy this for less than £1 in a Steam sale, an extremely low barrier to entry.

However the main disappointing thing is trust in the developers is gone. For years players have voiced their concerns to the development team in the forums that they wouldn't want the upcoming game Payday 3 to have anything to do with Epic Games. As the largest Steam community group it makes sense that at least some people have this kind of launcher loyalty. However it was clear years in advance that the community didn't want something like what recently happened to happen. That said the developers decided to do it anyway.

I'm not sure if this was a result of them having to accept a publisher agreement with anyone who came along due to the financial struggles, or if they had agency to choose to turn it down, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter, the game is still worse off because of it.

This game will still be superior to the upcoming release Payday 3, which looks absolutely horrendous mechanically, however that's a low bar.

Gameplay wise last I checked several heists (missions/levels) straight up don't work. Connection to other players is borked, especially in multi-day heists. There are more cheaters and pirates than ever. And they kept adding weapons as paid DLC but no inventory room to hold said weapons. Games are still peer to peer but the matchmaking having changed makes the game was more unstable.

Overall the game is in a sad state, it was willingly made into what it is now just months away from retirement. Despite concerns being voiced for years about this exact kind of thing. It's almost funny how wrong the developers got it. Almost, in reality it's just sad.

As someone who picked this up before playing the game I would say it's worthwhile IF you're planning to 100% complete the game. But that said looking at the price it can appear a bit steep, and really is looked at as more of a way to give the developers a bit extra.

The extra in game content is in a locked shed (this is the key for the lock). It gives a charm that counts as a 1 slot fishing rod, and a 1 slot engine. These two items if collected at the beginning of the game will speed up your playthrough by a significant amount, in both short term and long term.

In the short term you have a 1 slot engine that can be installed alongside your default engine, thus allowing you to travel a decent bit faster from the get go. As such it takes less time to get between fishing spots and docks. Meaning you can effectively have a larger range that you can fish in and make it back at the beginning. Eventually the engine will be outclassed by the top end engines that you can research in the game. So eventually you'll be able to sell this item or keep it in storage with other similar looking items.

In the long term you have the 1 slot fishing charm that can be installed alongside your fishing equipment. From what I've read this give a +5% chance of getting the special "aberrations" of fishes. Although it doesn't seem like much the default rate is 1-3% so boosting it to a 6-8% is significant. That said there are times where you'll see spots that offer a 100% aberration. However those only have a given chance of spawning on the fish spot you want. The majority of aberrations you'll catch will come from one of these 100% spots, however not all. Furthermore 1 fish in particular can only be caught in an Oceanic Trawl net (no fishing spot) and it has an aberration, so at the very least this will likely decrease the time you'd have to spend trawling the open ocean.

However that said it's not all positives with this DLC.

Firstly this DLC is of a diminishing return. What I mean by that is the longer you play without it, the less valuable it would be when you get it. As in, if you've already made substantial progress on upgrading your engines depending on how far along you are you'll either get very little use from the engine it gives you or even none if you've already done all engine research. On top of that if you've already been fishing and captured a good chunk of the aberrations, then the charm that helps find aberrations will get less use, purely because you have less spots left to visit. Also a spot where you'd still need an aberration could have given it to you earlier as you wouldn't need to be as lucky to get the aberration.

Secondly if you judge games on how much money you spent on it vs how much time you spent in game then this DLC is definitely not for you. As by that logic this increases the cost and decrease time played which is normally the reverse of what people judging games by this metric want. Not everyone will use this metric to judge games, however if you do judge by that metric you should skip this DLC and have a longer start of game and a longer grind for aberrations.

Overall I would definitely recommend this if you haven't played the game much but would want to.
It would be pretty hit or miss if you're halfway through the game, depends on how you feel.
And if you're at the end of the game you probably won't get use out of this and should avoid it unless you just want it for collection.

This game does what it wants to do really well.

This is a fishing game with horror elements to it. The game does a really good job of building the atmosphere for it. The story is a subtle but great one. The story is not in your face if you're mainly focusing, coincidentally, the main story itself, however if you do want to find the full story of what's going on it's really easy to do that too as notes and characters are near enough the places you'll be that you'll be picking them up anyway.

Mechanically the game is fun (at least to me), it mainly involves travelling around on your boat catching fish and dredging objects. It has a nice upgrade system to it. You have a lot of freedom to the order you do things in as well. You're rewarded for exploring as there is a lot of side content to find and get into.

This game is on the short side if you're aiming to complete everything the game has to offer. However that shouldn't be a bad thing as to me it just means it doesn't timegate stuff from you, you can just do it. There is a bit of grind on some fronts. My completion time isn't accurate for base game (No DLC) as I had the Blackstone Key from the beginning the benefits of which I will explain in my review of that DLC. But in short, having the Blackstone Key from the very beginning will speed up your progress significantly in both short term and long term.

Overall though the game was a pleasure to play through. Start to end I was enjoying my time. Although I did make sure to break up the most grindy part of the game (completing fish encyclopedia) into smaller bursts (filling out 1 area completely before going to the next area to continue the main quests). I imagine my review would be slightly different if it was the last thing I did and had to spend hours travelling to different areas hoping to get lucky and get the fishes I want. As that kind of mop up doesn't sound too interesting or engaging. However even if I did it at the end I'd still give this game a positive review.

This is one of the better Dynasty Warriors games in my opinion. I have been playing this series since DW3. I personally felt like 3, 4 and 5 were when the series was at it's best and DW8XL feels more like it took inspiration from those. Than of DW6 and DW7 which in my opinion had major issues. DW8 had fixed what I would consider the issues I had.

In this game there are 83 playable officers, each with their own weapon, 3 Musou attacks and 2 Ex attacks (double strong attack after chaining a given amount of light attacks). Each character feels unique in their own moveset and each character has 2 special challenges they can complete on the hard difficulty or higher to unlock even more powerful versions of their weapons.

This game also has a 3rd mode, Ambition mode. Regardless of how you feel about it, this area is a significant area of the game as you get to build a camp. With enough upgrades to your camp you can enhance weapons and characters greatly. If you wanted to you could even go as far as to create Best in Slot weapons for any character and raise any character to maximum stats, a cool feature, however does require a considerable amount of playing to achieve.

The story mode is great, there are a lot of stages to play across 45 different locations. Each kingdom has it's own story mode, with 4 main kingdom stories, A Lu Bu faction story, and, Other officer stages. Each stage will highlight different characters, as you see new characters you can unlock them.

The free mode allows for any stage to be played with any character provided you have unlocked these things.

Overall I feel like this is one of the better Dynasty Warriors experiences.

Although earlier I had a negative review of the game. This has changed since the time of writing through updates. This game is regularly upgraded in it's early stages and the developers hard work really does show.

My earlier issue with the game is that the lowest levels of progression were very harsh on completion time. Although the tracks are still hard and the higher up medal like silver, gold and above are still at times designed to challenge people to really do better at a track.

Overall this game can get real challenging, but it definitely feels like one of those games you have to get a feel for to master. I haven't tried the level editor but the fact that a level editor exists is a huge win automatically.

I'm still not sure if this product is for me though, but it is definitely enjoyable and interesting.

Overview:

This game is old but gold. the game is relatively straight forward, pick-up and drop of passengers before time runs out.

Information:

This game has 2 maps and a set of challenges called "The Crazy Box". Although this doesn't sound like much, this being a old style arcade game (as in this was literally built for arcade machines) getting a new Highscore is King.

The maps can be played for a fixed 3, 5 or 10 minute time or you can "Play by Arcade Rules" where the Arcade rules are:
- You start with a set amount of time (related to time difficulty)
- Each customer will give you additional time when you pick them up (related to time difficulty)
- Try to get the customer to their destination as fast as possible. If you are fast you get an additional 5 seconds after dropping a customer.
- Repeat with many customers, you can preform stunts when driving to gain extra tips (score)

The two maps are the Arcade map which is a giant loop, and the original map which is more of a town area. A few of the locations have been renamed from the brands to generic names. One location is missing entirely in this version that being a shoe shop, so there are slight balance issues there, but nothing too noticeable. This version also has changed the music from the original as well. However the music can easily be modded back in if desired.

The Crazy Box has 16 challenges, some very easy, others very hard, however players who can stick it out gain access to "The Crazy Rickshaw" for use in the Arcade or Original map. As well as the satisfaction that you cleared the Crazy Box.

Recommended Guides:

If you're looking to improve at the game type "Crazy Taxi Techniques" into your search engine, a website called crazytaxi has all the information you need; advanced driving techniques that will help you go faster, a comparison between the cars and how they behave, and a super advanced guide on the customers of the arcade map. What the game doesn't explain this website will.

Overall Opinion:

I'm probably bias as I loved this game at a very young age, however this is a really awesome game to mess around with, a fun arcade game, it's simple and fun but there can be super high end strategy as well. Also relatively cheap standalone or bundled with some other games from the Dreamcast as an alternative sale option. However if you can look past the changes from the original Dreamcast and don't want to spend time figuring out how to get that version, this port is for you.

A very good game in it's genre, I remember getting the three gifts way back so my gameplay experience is a bit skewed however progress in this game always seems achieveable, I would recommend G00F's Not a Wiki if you're stuck.

To say this soundtrack is good is an understatement, it is amazing. The music in it is very good music, it fits the theme and atmosphere of the game very well, sure. But even if you ignore the game entirely the music is still fantastic. Strongly would recommend.