Posted on: April 11, 2022
ZeedleBloT
Verified ownerGames: 286 Reviews: 4
Worth playing for the side stories alone
I loved my time with this game. I bought it at release. In the first month, I played through the main quest and Panam side quest, opting to take her and the Aldecaldos into the final battle. It was a very emotional ride, and I grew very attached to some of the characters. I think it took me about 95 hours to see the credits rolling. After getting the Aldecaldos ending, I put the game down a bit, and returned around the time of patch 1.2 to play the standard endings and a few more side activities, putting in another 10 hours. Then I returned again after patch 1.5, which I found to make the game a whole lot more fun. Performance on lower-spec hardware was improved a lot, without making it look butt ugly. I played on a Radeon RX 570, locked at 30fps with RivaTuner, using a controller. It was a fairly good experience, although higher frame rates without severe graphical compromises would've been better. I have now finished most of the side quests and fixer gigs, and I've clocked 170 hours. I feel like this is probably a good place to leave the game for now, until I have better hardware and there's more story DLC. I found the main quest to be at odds with the open world design of the game. There's a constant urgency that detracts from just experiencing the world on your own time. However, there were plenty of wonderful highlights, with the Japantown carnival being one of my favourites. But it's in the side quests that the game really shines. The stories told are incredible and deeply engrossing, and sometimes also very chilling, not too dissimilar to an episode of Black Mirror. I'd say that the game is definitely worth playing, and highly enjoyable, especially after patch 1.5. Just ignore the hype and the broken promises from before the launch, and go in with zero expectations. It's mediocre as an RPG, but damn, the stories make up for it. If you've been on the fence, just buy it on sale for 50% off. You'll enjoy it twice as much for half the price.
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