I never played Xcom: Enemy Unknown but didn't need to in order to play and love this game. Thankfully I played the base Xcom2 game through before buying the War of the Chosen pack, which made it harder but also more fun. It is a game that stands the test of time. It sticks with me, and I come back and play it frequently. The game does have some highly annoying RNG, but it is only devastating in Ironman mode. Just yesterday I missed a shot with a 99% chance of success, but I wasn't playing Ironman, so I just reloaded my save. I recommend playing through the game normally in increasing difficulty before trying ironman. Just avoid legendary for your own sanity. The story is good, the weapons and other upgrades are cool and satisfying, and I love the slow motion overwatch shots. However, though the game doesn't tell you anywhere, I learned online that overwatch shots have an additional penalty to aim, especially if the target is running, which doesn't show up when checking the shot percentage on a stationary target. I wish I had known that early on, for it would have saved me a great deal of frustration, especially in ironman. Overall I highly recommend the game. It is easy to learn and so much fun to master.
This game is the Hollow Knight equivalent of the Metroid Impossible mod. I logged over 500 hours of play in Hollow Knight with 95% achievements, including steel soul and steel heart. The only things I never managed were the path of pain and beating Absolute Radiance. It is one of my all-time favorite games, so I went into Silksong with high expectations and was bitterly disappointed. This is my updated review after 32 hours of play, which was a total slog, and I was forced to quit, delete, and get a refund. I fully believe that shills and bots are responsible for the game's overwhelming 5-star review count. The others come from diehard HK fans who gave it 5-star reviews 5 minutes after it released, certain it would be the greatest of all time, so those reviews are not real. The only reason the game launch is such a financial success is due to the anticipation of the fan base. We all bought it the instant it came out, but many players have buyer's remorse and sought refunds or wished they could. I anticipated and really wanted to love this game but I can't. It is a beautiful game, has good music and ambience, and since I unlocked the reaper crest early on, I didn't have to deal with the angled dive combat and pogo problems as much, which helped a lot. But it wasn't enough. The game is so brutal and unforgiving that it feels as if Team Cherry made it only for the top 1% of masochistic players who could beat the pantheon of Hallownest with all bindings at the same time without taking a single mask of damage. It was an absolute chore to play the game and rarely resulted in any enjoyment. I hated playing but hated the idea of giving up, so I kept trying. The slight enjoyment that came through getting new gear or an upgrade were overshadowed by the fact that the upgrades do not keep pace with the increasing difficulty. You start with 5 masks of health, but it is actually 3 for all bosses and many common enemies, so finally getting that 6th mask is pointless. You still die in 3 hits. I was thrilled when I finally managed to upgrade my needle, expecting enemies to die twice as fast. They didn't. The common enemies that took 3 hits still took 3 hits. Enemies that took 18 or so hits previously now only took 15. What a joke. Also, the brief thrill of discovery in exploration far too often ended in disappointment when the reward was nothing more than a slight amount of currency that I could farm elsewhere. Other players have already noted how difficult the game is, but I want to underscore that fact, especially when it comes to flying enemies. Many are chaotic, can hit you from long range, and you have little hope of dealing with them while also dealing with a melee opponent or a swarm of enemies, and that is never more true than when locked into forced combat rooms with successive waves of enemies, which happens far too often. RNG plays far more role than skill in such encounters, which is never fun. There is even such a room with lava and disintegrating floor where every enemy is a flying enemy, and if by some miracle you beat the enemies, you then have to parkour escape the rapidly rising lava while being attacked by other flying enemies. I died every time and gave up. It felt like punishment for daring to play their game. Many bosses are also ludicrous. I tried massive beastfly dozens of times before giving up. It has a million hit points, spawns infinite adds, many of them fliers, tracks your elevation when flying across the room, and enrages early rather than when it is half dead. I won't go into detail on all the bosses I faced, but most of them kill you so fast that you can't even begin to see if they have a pattern. It takes numerous deaths and run backs to even get a hint of how the fight goes, which is not fun. If they want to have such nasty bosses, at least place a bench right outside the boss room. Many other players have underscored the frustration of bench placement, difficult and annoying boss run backs, having to pay to save, and ridiculously hard parkour areas. I didn't mind farming currency to unlock maps or benches, as I expect some farming requirements in most games, but Silksong goes to extreme effort to make the player's life miserable. Nothing is worse than the parkour in this game, which is what eventually forced me to quit. I needed the equivalent of the monarch wings for double jump to advance any farther in the game, so I found myself trying to climb Mount Fey. I made the mistake of starting the climb without first watching a video of someone doing it. It is the most impossible for casual, average, and even good players parkour nonsense that I have ever seen and have since heard other players state that it is far more difficult than the path of pain. The biome is freezing cold, so you die just by being in it when outside of widely spaced warm spots, so you can't take your time. There is no ability to heal along the way. There are sections with freezing water below, and falling into it is certain death. It requires perfect control, precise placement, and the reaction time of a striking cobra all with zero mistakes. I gave up and came back again and again over two days, and through sheer stubbornness I finally managed to reach what I thought was a halfway point bench. The next sections were even more difficult, and I finally looked up a video, whereupon I discovered that I was merely at a bench a third of the way through and that the rest of the climb was well outside of my gaming skill set. The parkour climb is well over a dozen sections long, and I was screwed. I had saved and couldn't get out again, as it was designed for one way travel and was even harder the other direction. I had to delete the game, and as the overall experience of Silksong was one of torturous work and punishment rather than enjoyment, I will never play it again unless Team Cherry patches it to fix their numerous mistakes. Another failing is the spell mechanic. Since the game is so brutally hard I rarely had the silk to cast a spell because I almost always needed to heal instead. The few times I did cast spells they made no difference in the combat, unlike HK, so it was a complete waste of silk, and then I died because I later needed a heal and couldn't. Currency is another failing. You need two types. They only should have one and should have made the tools regenerate for free when saving at a bench. The game is hard enough already, and after failing boss fights a few times they get even harder because you have no more tools for future fights, making the game even more tedious and punishing. My initial review was 1-star, but occasionally as I played more I would experience a bit of enjoyment here or there and think the game had more promise, so I would increase my star rating, but in the end it fell back down to 1. I also read many reviews, seeking out those of players who made it farther than I did before quitting, and all of them said that it only gets worse. The bosses get even harder, the parkour even longer and more ridiculous, and none of the upgrades improve quality of life. One player even said that it felt as if every 'upgrade' was actually a punishment, because after each one the game became much harder. So no thanks, Team Cherry. I want to play and love your game. I want to explore the full extent of the world you created, but I can't. Fix the game or lose the majority of your fan base. We won't be duped again. I will certainly never buy another one from you unless you listen to the reviews of actual players and make appropriate course corrections. My overall recommendation: RUN AWAY! Save yourself from frustration and disappointment. Wait and see if they apologize for inflicting this nightmare on their fans and patch the game before spending your money.
Many reviewers already noted how awful the controls are, and I couldn't agree more. Even trying to remap the controls didn't help. It always felt wonky and unresponsive, and while the game looked fun, like classic Castlevania, it doesn't play like it. It is slow and unwieldy, and navigation with rings was a nightmare, and while the game said I could press D to block certain attacks, it wasn't true. There was no block that I could find with any key. The same was true for a move called the hanging dash grab. The game told me to press a certain key to execute such a move, and nothing happened when I did. The entire experience was frustrating and a total waste of my time. In feedback threads the designers kept saying that the character was supposed to feel unresponsive and junky until later in the game. News flash, game designers, if the game and gameplay is this bad at the start, there is no later in the game. People won't play your game. I'm just thankful that GOG has a refund policy.
Lands of Lore Guardians of Destiny stands the test of time. I played it when it first came out, and it stuck with me. The storyline is fantastic as is the adventure, humor, and many of the cutscenes considering its age. I kept coming back to replay it until newer PCs weren't compatible, but it was the desire to play it again many years later that led me to discover GoG.com, and they reunited me with this treasured classic. I highly recommend it, especially to those who played in the earlier days of fantasy adventure gaming and are looking for a nostalgic experience.
