Recent reviews by Sambhaid

a Great product but does not run very well, requires a good PC but is worth grinding through! Im aware that the great DraQu is not a fan but that is probably because the guy has been confused by Eternal and expects similar gameplay. This is different experience than DOOM...

Im unusual gamer in the sense that I dislike Eternal. I purchased this title from sale and then shortly after ended up refunding the product... I assumed it is a great shooter but actually ammo is heavily limited, maximum ammo capacity for one gun is less than similar guns have in a single magazine in other games (example: LMG boasts max 60 ammo). There is ammo pickups and chainsaw that restore ammo but it is necessary to do far too often and gameplay devolves into just running away from enemies and looking for zombie pinatas to chainsaw for ammo.

Not recommending for folk who want to shoot ♥♥♥♥, this title restricts that a lot even though its a DOOM game, worse than DOOM 2016 imo.

This title offers grind for those who are lookin' for grind, a good alternative to Grindframe after grindin' that title for aeons. This title has loads of content to explore and basically never gets old unless you end up ragequitting because of some of the annoyances like trading or insta-deaths... Would still recommend as a title to grind in between shorter games to maintain a constant routine of gaming!

So, this is bigger of the two Witcher 3 expansions and it took around 28 hours for me to finish, which is really impressive length for an expansion but it does also cost more than Hearts of Stone but not considerably. I can already say at this point that this expansion is worth the price asked, even when its not on sale but can go around 40% off on sale at the moment. Another good thing to know is that the expansion pass can also go 40% off and as both of the DLCs are excellent, it is worth buying them both and if you dont own Witcher 3 then the GOTY edition is the best choice.

Now as for the content itself, Blood and Wine (BaW) adds a whole new zone to the game called Toussaint for which they have assumedly taken inspiration from French architecture and landscape, and it did remind me quite a bit of southern Europe. Toussaint is overall brighter than areas in main game and I did enjoy strolling around it enough to feel a desire to return as soon as I blasted through the story. The expansion also adds new witcher gear sets, armor dyes and numerous different monsters to fight against that require adapting new fighting styles to propely beat without taking loads of damage. Some of the new monsters I did actually find quite annoying as the fights can take really long and sometimes consist of waiting and having to constantly trot from place to place as the enemies switch positions.

In addition, Blood and Wine adds a whole new skill progression system called mutations that unlocks different kind of fairly massive bonuses but only one can be active at a time from the selection of 12 mutations. By unlocking mutations you can also unlock new skill slots (max 4) that can be used for standard skills but limited by the color (blue, red, green) of the mutation but thankfully there are multicolored mutations. Most of the mutation upgrades are cool but I found that I didnt actually have much use for them as they cost lots of ability points to unlock and I could barely unlock half of them before the story already ended. But then again I did not play all filler content but only the quests that I found interesting...

And speaking of that, the expansion has lots of side content in addition to the story out of which most is really good but there is also quite a bit of boring side quests sadly. By boring I mean such as where you just pretty much run from bandit camp or monster nest to another and to top it off they are almost as far away from each other as possible. I could name at least 3 quests that I completed which were like this out of the top of my head, they were rather time consuming and I experienced a bit of boredom doing them but the end result was still worthwhile despite a lame journey.

The main story itself was fairly interesting and introduces some interesting characters but it was not as good as Hearts of Stone in my opinion but still good enough to call it a must-to-experience for all W3 fans. Where BaW shines is the combination of the main story and the interesting side quests that can both have different outcomes depending on your choices.


Im going to settle for a 9/10 for this one as there was some content that felt like filler and can be a pain for a completionist to chew through.

Hearts of Stone (HoS) was one of the most positive surprises I have experienced with purchases as I did not expect much from a relatively cheap expansion but turns out a full-blown well-crafted story is contained within. This is the smaller of the two DLCs for Witcher 3 and it took around 11 hours for me to complete with almost all side content completed, which is a very good amount of content for an expansion.

I could almost say that this blows many full games out of the water both in terms of depth and in amount of content. Several new characters are introduced out of which one is now one of my favorite characters in the Witcher series and you can try to guess which by playing through this. HoS does not however add any new zone in the game but it does expand the existing area of Velen quite a bit to north-east adding some new places and an area of which design I personally liked with its lush green forests.

The expansion also adds a new enchanting system for gear that allows you to enchant swords and chest armor with different types of effects. I didnt find this very useful though as most of the enchantments are not very good and sometimes come with downsides that negate their upsides, resulting in the item actually becoming worse than without the enchantment. There were some that were good but whether they are worth it or not is still debatable as they require an item with 3 rune/glyph slots and you cant have both an enchantment and runes in the same sword for instance.

Now the story is quite something, its fascinating and very magical to say the least, and just like with most of Witcher 3 quests, it can have multiple different outcomes. Most of this DLC is centered around the main story and there is much less side content than in the main game, which is actually something I like as it gets that nice flow going. I didnt feel bored for a single moment when playing through this expansion, it had only a very minor amount of boring filler content.


Going to have to pop a 10/10 for this one, its relatively short in Witcher 3 scale but makes up for it in quality.

This is one of those games I could almost call amaze-balls, all awards it has received are well deserved. I have played Witcher 3 twice, on normal difficulty once and on hard difficulty again.

The Game

Witcher 3 is a massive open world RPG that tells the third part of the story of Geralt of Rivia, the ultimate witcher who hunts monsters for his living and has now set out to rescue a certain person. In the lore of Witcher his main source of income is solving monster problems but I found that in the game the most effective way to make money was scavenging all kinds of junk and selling it.

Story and Content

Story aspects are where Witcher 3 shines the most, it has one of the best storytelling of any RPG I have played and your choices make a difference in how the story unfolds. The main story is well crafted and paced, and even most of side quests are incredible but there is also a lot of boring content just like in pretty much every open world RPG. Best way to approach this game is to not go full 100% completionist but instead do only the interesting content, that way it never grows stale and provides around 50-100 hours (not counting DLCs) of entertainment depending on how much content you grind. I would personally recommend disabling the undiscovered locations (?-marks) in the map after the first area.

Visuals

Graphics and animations are on their own level and quite an achievement back in 2015 and even today in 2017 no game quite compares to this one in this department. The world is incredibly detailed with a lot of attention to detail, there is lots of small detail most people pay no attention on but it fills the world and makes it feel alive. The cities feel like actual cities with hundreds of NPCs walking around and to top it off they are not disconnected from the world with loading screens like usually in older RPGs such as Skyrim. Facial animations in dialogue and overall animation quality is top notch and unmatched by any other game I have played.

Combat

Combat is quite skill-based and the game can provide true challenge at least at first but once you obtain good gear and skills difficulty kind of fades off even if playing on the hardest difficulty. I havent played Dark Souls but the combat has been compared to it by other people, it is based around dodging and use of abilties, spells and potions. Using the right combination of potions and abilties against specific enemies makes fights considerably easier and studying the enemies from in-game journal plays important role especially on hard difficulty. There are also some aspects of combat I personally find annoying at times, such as stagger and knockdowns caused by enemies which disable player control but these get much less annoying once getting a hang of the combat system.

Looting and Gear

Just like other RPGs this one also has looting and gear collecting but it is quite a bit different in the sense that gear plays a rather secondary role in the game. I found that most of the items I find in the world were not really excting at all and only really the witcher gear acquired from quests was worth using in the end, this led to XP being the most interesting reward from quests and exploring the world for gear wasnt really worth it. Of course there was other things to collect like potion recipes, crafting materials etc but those were something you kind of just get along the way without paying much attention on. I would have hoped more from the game in this area, it could have definitely had more interesting looting going on.

My main gripe

Lastly I need to mention one of which I would consider possibly the biggest flaw of Witcher 3, which is the movement system. Movement is based around momentum and Geralt has weight in his movements like a real person would but in a game this creates rather clumsy controls. There is alternative movement system now in the game but even it does not entirely fix the problems, navigating through narrow doorways will still take time to get used to. Combat movement is also its own problem as when entering combat you will slow down into snails pace for some reason and cannot jump but u can dodge roll, dodge and sprint. Sprinting usually isnt wise as it consumes stamina that is also needed for use of spells, so best way to move is to spam dodges which is not at all practical and I would rather just jog like out of combat.



Still, overall I would give this title a round 10/10, a must play for everyone

Note: I do not recommend this game but it can go on very steep discount (like 99% on third party resellers), it may be worth checking out in that case just to see if u might like it

Lichdom: Battlemage is a wizard shooter with unique spell crafting system that offers lots of variety with playstyles and the game also has great visuals. Levels are linear but they have impressive scenery and a lot of effort was put into building the levels, visual effects, sound effects and just about everything. I played the game only for 5 hours before growing bored of it but it can take up to 30 hours to complete, so there is a lot of content.

But despite great production value the game in my opinion falls flat in design, mainly combat, which is like 90% of the game. You can sprint, dash (short teleport) and throw different types of spells at enemies (missile/bomb/beam, area of effect attacks and charged teleports that also does AoE) but the combat is still tedious, slow and annoying. Casting spells takes a while as they have to be charged fully to do decent enough damage or u will have to spam a lot of them. The enemies can get really annoying as the game has numerous crowd control status effects that can affect the player as well, sometimes u get slowed down to 20% movement speed with sprint and dashes disabled. When I said the levels are linear, they really are exactly that with very limited playble area and no jumping.

Note: recommended only on sale, not really worth buying at full price because it can go 90% off on sale

Hard Reset is a modern old-school style shooter set in cyberpunk environment

Pros:
+ world is impressive, lot of detail in background scenes, cyberpunk setting indeed well realised
+ graphics overall look good
+ voice acting and soundtrack are good
+ 10 different weapon modes, each is like its own weapon and with an alternative fire
+ upgrades for both weapons and character, potentially many different playstyles
+ combat can be fun, especially on easier difficulties
+ levels have secrets

Cons:
- combat is less fun on harder difficulties because enemies get spongy
- story is kind of hard to follow
- no manual saving, only checkpoints
- levels have lots of invisible barriers, can be hard to figure where u can jump when searching for secrets
- searching secrets also hindered by constant points of no return
- lots of clutter on the screen in combat
- not a fan of the regenerating armor/shield system, mostly just causes sudden deaths when it runs out without noticing, from 50hp to 0 instantly can happen on normal difficulty

Verdict:
6/10, above average
worth checking out for fans of this kind of games

I call this title Grind (short for Grindframe) and to me this is not just a game, but part of my identity. I started my grind all the way back in 2015 and the game has been part of me ever since. I dont always play it but am guaranteed to return even from long breaks eventually. The last time I quit I actually thought I was done for good but nope, Im now back. Somehow this game always manages to drag me back in even after growing bored of it. The updates the title receives are simply amaze-balls and all free too, no need to buy a new dlc every time to experience the new grind. I have come to accept the reality that Grind will always be with me and theres simply no way to separate from it.

Once Tenno. Forever Tenno.