Recent reviews by MikeWazowski

This game has plenty of Wheeeeeeeees, and not a lot Whooooooos, in the end it all balances out and the result is an amazing game.

This game has a lot of issues, the level design, inventory, story, etc. etc. They're all kind of bad, I won't defend any of that because it's indefensible.

A lot of the criticism I've seen for this game is pretty accurate so don't disregard the negative reviews, but under all that pile of issues, there's a really fun game underneath.

The combat, the gunplay & the powers are all very fun and if you're a 40k fan, seeing the Underhive of Necromunda is super cool, That's probably my favorite part about this game, Necromunda in first person view is great.

So temper your expectations, but give it a chance if you see it on Sale.

I came into this game late mainly because I saw a lot of comments regarding how buggy it all was at launch, I got it this past autumn sale and I'm 90 hours in and so far it's been a pretty flawless experience. I'm still barely in Act 3, but there are very few games I've fallen in love with as much as I did with this one so I decided to write a review anyways.

If you are a fan of CRPGS like me, I feel like we've been spoiled the last couple of years, we've gotten lots of quality story rich games to keep you busy, but what makes this one stand out is that it's in the warhammer 40k universe.

Now plenty of games have dabbled into the WH40k universe, but very few have been able to convey how grim it actually is, in other games you're usually the cool space marine, or you only see the awesome sisters of battle, the inquisitors, you know, all the cool dudes.

Rogue Trader let's you take a peek into the life of the average dude, the nobles, the politics, the schemes, this game goes so much further into the lore than other games, it's phenomenal.

Now comparisons to BG3 are inevitable, specially if you've played it recently, the difference between these games is mostly in budget, BG3 has a level polish and production values very hard to achieve for smaller devs like Owlcat, I bring this up because I believe what Owlcat has achieved with this game is just as epic as what BG3 achieved even if it's not as pretty and polished, the enjoyment this game gave me was just on par, and if you love WH40k like me, you may love it even more than other crpgs.

This game was such a mixed bag that it's really hard to just straight up and recommend it, at the end of the day it's really just the individual player who will determine if the good outweighs the bad. In my personal experience, the good does outweigh the bad, I had a lot of fun despite it's flaws.

People criticized the new art direction, and I do understand it, theres a more cartoonish style that's now being used which might just not be your cup of tea, I think the game looked great if I'm honest, as someone who wasn't entirely sold on it in the beginning the style grew on me, and the vistas & biomes were some of the prettiest I've seen in a video game.

This game ran flawless, with how much devs lately don't give a ♥♥♥♥ about performance to the point I expect crashes in new games always, this was just amazing how incredible it ran, 0 issues, no crashes, butter smooth performance, and I'm running on a relatively old 5600x and a 4070.

Music was great and the main theme I think is memorable, but I can't say anything else stood out, like the quality was there but other than the main theme, it didn't feel particularly special, considering Hans Zimmer was involved I had higher expectations, again it's not bad or anything, but I won't be adding the OST to my spotify anytime soon.

Sound in general itself was very good, weapons and abilities have that oomph when you hit stuff, it feels visceral, there's impact to it and it's very satisfying, same as ambient sound, it was very spot on, can't think of anything negative tbh.

Movement felt slightly floaty to me in the beginning, but the longer I played the more I liked the movement, I read plenty of people hating combat or growing tired of it, I can see where they're coming from, at around level 20 you have pretty much a descent build which if you like, you can stick to till the end, the problem to me here is that there's just very few incentives to try different builds and skills, there's no build profiles or anything that would encourage build experimentation and quickly swap abilities, if you want to respect you gotta go point by point, that's just too much work, so you just end up sticking to 1 build.

In terms of fun, I really liked it, I played rogue duelist and timing my perfect defenses and dodges was a big part of what I enjoyed, that was very satisfying, duelist had combos that would activate buffs if done correctly so I felt it engaging enough to not bore me, but ymmv depending on what class & spec you pick.

Now I've been saying nothing but good things about the game, but writing here is just indefensible, there is some amazing stuff in this game, and there's so trash tier CW show quality writing, the quality feels kind of all over the place.

The main story arc was very good, very enjoyable, I think as a sendoff to the franchise this game's story left me satisfied. The problem is basically everything else, the companion interaction & dialogue quality varies from terrible to mid, some companions like Devrin & Emmerich had decent stories, but the others, specially Harding the delivery was just not good.
A lot of the interactions feel very safe, very PG, there's no conflict, feelings are being protected and the dialogue just reminds me those ♥♥♥♥♥♥ CW teen shows.

Then you get to Act 3, and wow this jumped from a 5 to a 9! So wtf? the writing feels incongruous, it feels to me like there was a main writer who probably wrote the main Solas plot and then delegated everything else to other people, which is fine, that's how writing works, but it feels like he basically did no oversight of their work and decided he would accept any crap these people made regardless of quality.

If you notice my review has probably more positive than negative points, writing being my only negative, story is a big chunk of this game, and even though the main plot I think was honestly excellent, its really a small part of that chunk.

I think the ending was so good that when I finished the game I though it was worth it in the end, but I won't lie, there was this lul around the 35 - 50h mark, where I had to force myself to play, because there was nothing interesting happening, every conversation just made me roll my eyes. The writing team was just really not up to par with the rest of the dev teams, to me it comes down to that, and in a Bioware game where Story is king, that's kind of tough pill to swallow.

I would recommend it still, because to me the good outweighs the bad, but this just might not be the case for you, which is why I suggest waiting for a sale.

One person's utopia is another's dystopia.

I'm not sure if I'd call frostpunk 2 a better game than the first, it's different, when before you were trying to build a city to survive, in this one you're building a whole new era of civilization, and you set the foundations to what that civilization will be, you have to decide between, equality or merit, progress or adaptation & reason or tradition, you build the future for humanity you envision when it's literally the end of the world and you're starting anew.

In FP1, whenever people started dying you felt a sense of urgency, like you're letting them down. In FP2, people are just a number in a spreadsheet, your concerns are grander, you can't worry about the little guy when it's the future of humanity you're concerned with. It was fun man, I was a bad dictator lmao.

I enjoyed this a lot, I highly recommend it.

TL;DR: This is Korean Warframe, it's honestly imo a very good game that has issues which I'll get into later, but it is overall very good.
I will make many comparisons with warframe since I have 800hrs in that game which is not as much as some WF veterans, but it's plenty to make comparisons with a very much similar game.

Full Review:

Let's get the big topic out of the way first, the MTX in this game is indeed very aggressive, and the way they handle paint for armor is egregious, having to buy paint per armor piece is very anti consumer and i hate this aspect very much, I think it hinders individuality for descendants as people will probably either not buy paint at all, or simply paint their skins once and maybe never again.

The game does give you a TON of free paint, from achievements and milestones and stuff, but the feature itself is just one of the greediest things I've seen in any game.

The ultimate descendant prices are ridiculous, I don't think the $100 price tag is the appropriate value, not making comparisons with Warframe is impossible here, DE sells their prime packs for a higher price, $140, but there is a higher perceived value because it includes platinum, 2 weapons, cosmetics for the prime, and two 90 day boosts for affinity and resources, I've bought several prime packs and the perceived value I get from Warframe is way higher despite it being a higher price, imo Nexon should include caliber in their ultimate packs and/or boosts, if those included 90 day boosts alone they would be way more enticing, as they are now they don't feel worth it. Luckily they're accessible in game, so they're not a necessary purchase, unless of course you want the cosmetics, those you can't get anywhere else.

Energy Activators, or the warframe equivalent of potatoes are too expensive, they're 1200 caliber or about $25USD, that's insane, again this hinders players unnecessarily, I understand nexon expects people to see how hard these are to farm and hope people will give up and buy them, but they heavily underestimate how ridiculously priced these are, in the long term this makes experimenting with builds on some of the most obscure guns impossible, people wont be motivated to do so. Also descendants bought from the store DONT include an energy activator, what? this makes no sense, again we go back to perceived value, buying descendants is just not worth it, and it's even worse because they don't include a potato, they would sell so much more if that was the case.

This also applies to Catalysts, or the warframe equivalent of forma, they're 300 caliber or about $6USD, again this is insane, considering fully building a gun or a descendant can go up to 6 catalysts per item, again this hinders player build creativity, when something becomes so precious that people don't want to waste it on experimenting, they simply wont. and catalysts are so easy to farm, that the price is baffling, just lower the prices, or make events to give them for free like WF does, the current price just doesn't make sense.

Having said all that, they still follow warframe's golden rule of never selling power, everything can be farmed, I myself have farmed about 30 catalysts and 3 energy activators, this with the 2 activators they give for free sets me up to not needing an energy activator for a very long time.

The more I play the more I realize farming for these very highly priced items is actually not bad, as long as you play the game you will eventually get more activators and catalysts, so why sell them for such ridiculous prices?

The game is beautiful, in more ways than one, I like their style direction, Korean games tend to be very beautiful games, with beautiful scenarios and beautiful characters, this one I think is no exception, I've noticed people saying the game looks like other UE5 games, this is true I won't deny it, but the creative bits are there where it matters when it comes to visuals.

They "borrow" heavily from some of their older brothers, Destiny & Warframe, but give it their unique twist.

This game runs incredibly well, there does seem to be some issues with RTX, the more I played with RTX on, I got these weird fps drops when changing between zones, and I had to restart the game, I decided to just turn if off, visually if I'm honest I didnt see much of a difference, and it became a hassle when it started happening, sounds like a memory leak somewhere.

But with that RTX exception, the game ran perfect, it runs on the steam deck ffs, I get some random disconnects on steam deck, no idea why, but performance wise it runs fine.

This you will either love or hate, I personally loved it, I thought the gunplay was snappy and fun, each descendant has their unique traits and abilities, they might feel very same-ish if you don't mod them, but as you do each will play very different specially when you unlock transcendant mods which change the play style of some descendants drastically.

The grapple hook is cool and allows for easy vertical travel, it's fun to zip around and was a great idea from the devs.

Enemies are bit more complicated, they feel same-ish, but I don't think it's a big deal, theres several factions and are more varied than destiny enemies that's for sure, lol.

The biggest negative for me is the overused ball mechanic on bosses, this is just bad design, the devs actually patched this to make less painful, but I wish there was more variety when it came to boss mechanics.

Combat is fun in general.

I have nothing good to say about the story, It's bad, It's nonsensical and completely irrelevant. Which is sad, cause I feel they tried to do something compelling there, Sci Fi is by far my favorite genre, which was one of the biggest pulls to this game for me, but if you told me this was an AI generated story I would believe you. Maybe something was lost in translation, I have no idea, but the story is just terrible.

The music is alright, I didn't think anything stood out, no real memorable music if I'm honest, but I got nothing bad to say about it either, it's just nothing special.

The game has it's issues, but I think they can be resolved, developers have made quick fixes and changes to the game that have already vastly improved the experience, like the boss ball mechanic which was just terrible before.

Some of the things that probably can't be improved are irrelevant to gameplay so I feel they're not a big deal, those being mainly the story.

Ultimately, this is a fun game, if you ignore these issues, if you like grindy games like warframe, which the grind is the same, nothing here compares to a hildryn/grendel/nechramech grind, some warframe players seem to forget some of the worst grinds in that game conveniently when speaking of TFD, but if you like this kind of grind, this provides lots of content.

I'll play for as long as I have fun, and the way I see it, that could very well be for a very long time.

Was fun, despite playing this till 2024, the industry evolves a lot in 4 years but this game has held up pretty well, it didn't really feel as revolutionary to me as it did for the folks who played this on release for sure, but it's still a very enjoyable experience.

This is one of those games that come by very rarely, the kind that'll leave a lasting impression on you long after you're done with them.

The game's visuals are something like 3d sprites, they remind me a lot of the old school ps one era graphics, but with modern techniques making the result this beautifully and equally scary af visuals.

Very few games I can honestly say can portray and communicate that absolute sense of dread through their visuals, but man signalis just knocks it out of the park, The enemies are scary, the main cast is cool, and LSTR our protagonist is so well designed, everything felt so superbly well crafted and delivered with so much care to the player. I love how this game looks.

Combat is pretty much like old school resident evil, there is however a precision mechanic, bullets do more damage if LSTR takes her time to aim, you do that by waiting for the little aiming box to get smaller which indicates the precision of the bullet. I really liked this, since I felt like economizing ammo was super important, ammo is a finite, precious and scarce resource, so you had to make every bullet count.

Reloading works similar to the old RE too, the slow reloads are definitely to help with that feeling of panic when fighting monsters.

Besides that it really follows the same formula as RE, except I can't put my finger on what it is that makes it feel better, it's just not clunky like those old games I guess.

I won't spoil anything, but the story leaves you with a lasting impression long after it's done.
The world building is superb, this game is a perfect example of show don't tell, they respect the player's intelligence and avoid long forced exposition.
You mostly get world building by little pieces of notes or diaries you find throughout the world, all placed where it makes sense for them to be, and you learn so much of this world that I was genuinely curious what this society looked like with replikas and gestalts on a good day when ♥♥♥♥ wasn't literally going to hell.

This game was a Masterpiece, I loved every minute of it. I'm now pretty much a fan boy of Rose Engine, I hope they make many more games.

TLDR: It's fun, it looks cool, get it.

This game is very pretty, I'm personally a huge fan of sci-fi, so aesthetically speaking I love this game, each biome looks distinct, the Overworld being my personal favorite.

Character design and enemy design is really cool, the main characters feel unique in their looks and personality, despite them being pretty much the same person and the bosses I think are the main highlight, they look amazing.

Combat looks great, guns, blades and abilities all look good, of course some are flashier than others but some abilities are very creative in their visuals.

I got nothing bad to say about the visuals, maybe that in conversations the npcs don't move their mouths, but that's pretty much nitpicking at this point, the game looks very good.

The star of the show is the combat, it's super engaging, reminds a ton of Dead Cells, but less chaotic, a lot cleaner if that makes sense.

At the start of every run you have 2 main skills, depending on the character it's blades and guns or blades and magic(ish) abilities, and you can later fusion with another of your mirror selves to combine your abilities, you can also pickup consumables and abilities that you can use on cooldown and you get upgrades like other rogue-likes and you get them very often which I really like

Enemies do have some strategy to them, not super complex mind you, but you need to watch out for their tells and approach the combat with caution.

It's fun, it's fast paced, and it looks super cool.

This is probably the weakest point of the game, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, I guess it's just the nature of the genre it makes hard to tell a story, you get it in bits and pieces from conversations and really small cutscenes.

The world building and lore itself is really great though, each universe is unique, and the whole thing with several universes is very interesting.

Edit: Ok, now that I've finished the story I liked it a lot more than I thought, I still hold to my previous statement that the genre makes it hard to tell a story,this game is no exception, but what's there is very enjoyable.

I actually felt the weight of Sendara's sacrifice at the end, I'm hoping we get dlc where we get her back.

It's a great game, this game is legitimately fun, if you're into roguevanias go ahead and get this, you'll love this one too.

Fun game, my only real gripes with the game were the lack of a map, and that by the time you get the containment units you don't really need them.