Miasma Chronicles

Mutant Year Zero was a tough game, but it was fun. The dialogues between Dux and Bormin (and between the ghouls) were hilarious and I played it a couple of times with different teams to get the most out of it. Miasma Chronicles is MYZ reimagined. It's bigger its 'badder', but it isn't necessarily better. Take the fighting duo. Robot Diggs is stereotyped as a loud-mouthed black person, what was funny half a century ago. White hero boy Elvis doesn't resemble Bormin, nor Dux, but rather the pretty boring Magnus. From the first moment in the game I found he had no charisma at all and it doesn't get better after some missions. The story is thematically the same as in MYZ, but darker, much darker. Something has happened to the world, a global catastrophe I presume, and instead of mutated ghouls we now have mutated frogs, who like to kill people for an unknown reason. Just like the ghouls in MYZ worshipped the Ancients, the frogs worship the Miasma. The third person who joins the team is Selma, I mean Jade, who has a bad character and a secret she refuses to tell. This means a lot of bickering. Fighting is a lot harder in Miasma and that is not always a good thing. While there was a steady stream of new weapons and new add-ons in MYZ, this seems not to be the case in Miasma. While the inventory in MYZ was simple and easy is has been made more complex in Miasma. The buttons on my gamepad do not always respond like they should do and often open the wrong menu. It's something I haven't seen before on other games and pretty annoying. Some weapon features take a long time to cool down what makes the battles even harder. There seems to be something wrong with the overall balance, an upgrade has been rumoured to be in the making. Let's hope so. Something I like very much are the dialogues in the village centre while you walk past the villagers. These are so good that I often stop walking by to eavesdrop for a bit.

the only way to play this game is Alpha Editor, otherwise you would be sniping down most of your enemies before the battle starts by save scumming critical shots also i have to mention that the game is so heavily inspired by Horizon Zero Dawn it's feels like a tribute to it but i did enjoy the unique mechanics of the game, great tactical experience and really nice graphics i would only recommend it at a sale price

Definitely a weaker game overall compared to Mutant. Progression is extremely linear even if you backtrack there is rarely a reason to do so. A cleared area is cleared unless there is a side-quest there. The side quests are so-so and the rewards are somewhat lacking. You do get a good chunk of experience from them though. The characters comes with 4 sets of skills/passives that are preset so your build choices are limited. You can freely place and remove spent points however so trying various things out is great. The Stealth gameplay was a good feature. Stealth is extremely powerful making it possible to have really small or no real encounters on a map. Stealthy weapons on the other hand are extremely limited. I found 1 besides the one that one of the party members comes equipped with. Weapons are customizable with scope and magazine modifiers adding stuff like extra range, crit-chance and even buffing damage. Also freely swapable whenever. The story is fairly predictable overall. It has a decent premise and takes some twists and turns but generally pretty bland. Get it on a deep sale if you like a little sci-fi tactical gaming.

- Combat: The combat was done pretty well. Quite fun and challenging, especially early on- Only having 2-3 heroes was an interesting feature that made it so you'd often have to take risks in order to win. - Balancing and bugs: If you activated a story item from the wrong side, enemies would spawn on top of your chars, kill them in their first turn and cause game to freeze (probably because char was scripted to say something) The game also had similar issues with getting stuck on your hero's turn if he was downed by damage at the start of his turn. I generally like "Iron man" mode in games but, due to bugs, It would have been literally impossible for me with this one. The worst bug I ran into (and the reason I'm giving this 2 instead of 3 stars) was in the arena, where you have to play 5 encounters without being able to save. After every round the game had like a 30% chance to simply freeze up and not take controller input anymore, meaning I would have to load up a save and redo all 5 rounds of combat (rounds taking about 5-20 minutes each). I probably spent about 5 hours just hoping the game wouldn't freeze on round 4, again. Needless to say I nearly quit the game then and there. - Plot and writing: The writing generally is on a VERY YA-novel-level. Flat, clichéd charaters in a generic dystopian world. All of them trying to be the darkest, broodiest and edgies of them all. Well, except for Diggs. - Diggs An amalgam of every bad 90s era action movie trope of the sassy black sidekick. You know, the one who says "Shiiiiet" a lot. In an allstar cast of unlikable assholes, somehow DIggs took the cake and easily wins most annoying (and maybe, kinda, probably racist) playable character. I'm sure the developers didn't intend the character to be this way though. The tone of the rest of the game is actually pretty good about racist stereotypes. But somehow the writers who were going for lovable extroverted sidekick-vibes ended up with the abomination called Diggs.

Haven't had so much fun and been so deep into the story since witcher 3 I think. I remember the YEAR ZERO, and it was ok, but MIASMA... Oh boy, it's two levels over the last title of Bearded Ladies. First and foremost - the environments! Oh my god, it's a visual orgy! I loved what they did to the world, the colours, the movement of miasma. I was taking a break very often from the story to be able to view the world and camera mechanism made it easy. The writing is awesome, I stopped at every NPC conversation to listen in on their opinions/jokes/problems. Voice acting is great. What I had a problem with was: 1. Balance of the difficulty leverl. Normal is a breeze and extreme is, well... too extreme. I know one has to sue stealth but the beginning was an ordeal to go through with only one silent weapon and no money ;). 2. MAX level cap at 25. I like to develop my characters to be OP. Here I was not able to enjoy Elvis's powers for more than one final fight. 3. Bugs like the team joining up after canceling an ambush, weapons reloading for free when I switch them, crashes. 4. Saving game. What I mean by it is that you have 50 slots and deleting some of them is a chore. Stick to like 5 or 6 and overwrite them. 5. Skills can be switched willy nilly to fit a fight. I would prefer less time preparing for a fight and have a constant skillset for my party. It was obligatory to win and tedious. 6. Not enough of side quests. They run out half way through. Overall I had a blast playing this game throughout my weekend and 80%/4 is a perfect score. Bearded ladies, don't stop! I will buy your next game.