I have to say, despite all the comparisons to Dead Cells I see for this game, it reminds me much more of Sundered than that. Which is a good thing, in my book. I liked Dead Cells, but Sundered was much more my style, and this is closer to it than Dead Cells. Smooth gameplay, lots of abilities and modifiers for them, steady increase in power as you lose anhd come back for more. Played a few runs, on the base game, and came back to add Yamat from the DLC. I will say the cutscenes are laggy and stuttery for me, but that doesn;t extend to the game itself, so only a minor annoyance and not a mark against it. Voice acting is pretty decent, though can get repetitive for the in-game voiced parts outside of cutscenes. Think that applies to any and all games, though. Play it long enough and there's always at least one line you *never* want to hear again.
The continued support, feature additions, and regular "Expeditions" make this one of the better value games I've purchased. Despite the rocky start Hello Games didn't abandon No Man's Sky and took the time to support and expand until it's one of the best games I own. The only issue I have is with GOG, not with the game itself, this store has a policy of testing the patches before rolling them out so the game version seems to *always* be one patch behind Steam. They are never *not* released, but they are somewhat delayed, so if you run into a game-breaking bug on a limited time Expedition playing via GOG may force you to fail.
I have to say that the stuff dropped from this is *undoubtedly* a fair trade for WB never patching Denuvo out of the Steam version. This is the same thing they did with Max Max. Their inability to actually patch broken server-dependent DRM out of their games on Steam means I will *never* buy from them again there. I'll wait, and get the game on GOG when it shows up. This one, sadly, is *not* worth buying again. If you have *not* got it on Steam, go ahead and get it here... On sale. This is vastly inferior to Shadow of Mordor, it's a tedious mess that can be fun but gets old fast and I honestly don't care if my Steam copy dies when WB Denuvo servers go down, or that I have issues playing it offline. It was worth playing, but not worth replaying, I have found going back to Shadow of Mordor to be an infinietly more rewarding use of my time than playing this again. Still, if you don't have this, the GOG version is the one to get, but it had better be at least 66% off to even bother. If you haven't played either game go look at Shadow of Mordor, it's a much better game, and worth preserving with a GOG copy even if you already own it on Steam.
It's a dystopic story where the heroes had failed and you get the chance to fight back or give in to the attempted brainwashing and control of the population. You can do a 100% "pure" run, and even get your girlfriend back if you play it right, or you can sink into depreavity and let them win. There's even a dialog option in the meeting after you find her again (not saying why it happens, as that would be spoilers) that lets you show some determination, or just give up in depressed frustration. Good place to make a second save, by the way, keep your "pure" run separate from a corruption based one as giving up pretty much fast tracks you to all the "bad ends" you can have. Almost all the H scenes are in the corruption path so, if you're just looking for hentai, Sweliz isn't far off, but the game doesn't have to turn out that way and there's achievements for staying true and fighting to win. Amazingly enough the gameplay ins't that bad, a bit of adcventure mixed with some VN elements and a strategy combat system. I've played the version on Itch.io, so I'm a little behind, but I assume this copy is the same as the Steam release that gives you the full current version of the game with the extra scenes unlocked. None of which have, so far, been relevant to a pue run but that's to be expected since all the paid content is hentai scenes and gallery unlocks.
I enjoyed it. Interesting world and story, but mediocre controlls and frustrating camera. Seems like they were learning how to make a game, but had a good story in mind, and a well developed world to play in. They did learn, and improved by the second game... That you can't get on GoG. When I asked about a GoG release the developer said he submittied it, but GoG wouldn't list the game. Curation, hard at work, giving you only the worst a series has to offer. May as well just buy it on Steam (never thought I'd say that...) and get them with a bundle discount since the better of the two games is only available there.
Game played great, had a good story, looked amazing... Then comes 2.0 and Phantom Liberty. Loving the story of the DLC, but I absolutely *loathe* the removal of the crafting system to add "upgrades" to everything. Even without the save update eating a chunk of my cyberware, and deleting the massive library of clothing mods I had held on to. Driving and vehicle combat *is* improved, that's a major bonus. Perks, though... They're very disjointed and some things seem like they are places they don't belong. The extra attribute points are nice, taking me to *three* maxed stats and enough dumped in the remaining two to not be completely worthless. The biggest issue, though... I could play, smoothly, on very high graphics settings and only turned it down to reduce the power draw of my GPU, and could still do medium if I enabled ray tracing. After the 2.0 patch my game stutters and has lag spikes on low with a 30 FPS cap. The system requirements went up, but not *that* much, I should be able to play on medium still by the listed specs but I have to drop everything to the minimum and even then sometimes I have to just pull out the monowhip and slap "attack" in the general direction of enemies because the game has slowed to a slideshow. I have *not* had any crashes, as some people are reporting, but I have had the recurring lag spikes and stuttering, plus some bugs where enemies pop in outside of the mission area but stay in place not moving toward you so I need to leave the zone to hunt them down in order to finish the mission when entering the actual area again.
Then they added a TON of fine control and various other mechanics that manage to make it both incredibly deep and obnoxiously frustrating at the same time. Yes, I recommend it, if you're willing to put in the time to learn the game and play with people rather than against the AI that seems to shift between sucking so bad as to be ridiculous and sweeping through so hard and fast you've lost before you realize what happens. That may have something to do with me being a consolidator in games like this though, building up a small section before moving out, which is why I don't have that "First to a Factory" trophy yet. I tend to end up being invincible or getting totally thrashed with no in between.
This may be a bit heavy on the anime tropes as far as characters go, but it's a good game with a good story, even if you will probably see the twist coming a mile away. Plays well, with all the settings cranked up to 11, on a four year old laptop. While it's not the Trails in the Sky level of "It'll play on a potato, and not even a very fresh one at that" this game will probably run fine for you on just about anything you would even consider gaming on. The relationship/bonding system is a bit weak, which is sad considering it has some pretty interesting characters that you want to get to know a little better but the personal stories seem like they take a back seat to the MC and his general infalable likability. That is actually where it loses a star, the bonding scenes you have a limited number of chances to experience are what flesh out the game, and needing to choose a set number on each "free day" takes away from the game in my opinion. Honestly, I like Trails in the Sky (and some if the Ys series, better than ToCS1&2, but they're both still great games and totally worth it despite not being the strongest entry in a long running well written series. From playing the whole series it kinda feels like this was an attempt to make a more generic story, have it be more relatable to the general public rather than having a few big fans and a others wondering why we love it so much, but it kinda feels like they couldn't quite pull it off without sacrificing the character development that made the other games so great. Here's to hoping NIS does as good a job (seeing Durante's name is a good sign though) with their port of ToCS3 as XSEED did here, from what I've seen (while trying to avoid spoilers) it seems like the story has really been improved in the newest entry and I'm really looking forward to playing it.
I picked this up through the Humble Bundle so I've played on Steam rather than GOG and, I have to say, if you're playing this with someone else it is an excellent game and you'll most likely absolutely love it. The problem comes with the single-player mode, which is how I generally play all my games, when you're controlling both of the characters and trying to rush the time limit before a wave hits the game goes from incredibly fun to incredibly tedious and annoying. So, my rating falls at 3-Stars, averaged between the 5-Star co-op play and the 1-Star single-player. If you're buying this for co-op read this as a five star review, and grab it without hesitation. If you want to play by yourself read this as a one star review and stay far away.
