It's pretty decent open world hack&slash, no spongy enemies to speak of that bore me, some weird storytelling, some geometry glitching that I can't get over an ankle high brick without jumping, and there's unfortunately many crashes. Worst part however, is the blue boy constantly telling me to mark shit on my map or the like, repeatedly, even though they said it like a second ago, seven times.
Vaguely inspired by the original game. Only superficially similar, so if you were looking for a remake, this is not it. This is more of a re-imagining of some of the high concepts. I wanted something closer to the original, so I did not like this as much as it probably deserves, but since they went with using the name of the original for the second time, I can not forgive that (I didn't forgive them for the last time they re-used the original's title, but that was a fun game back when I played it). Worst part is that the guns feel weak for the amount of shooting you need to do and ammo you get. So if you keep missing like I do, you'll be reloading a lot. Melee feels decent, but your weapon usually breaks after killing one enemy, maybe two if you're lucky. For how frequent the fighting gets after a bit, this makes the game quite literally suck. Puzzles are good, though some a bit obscure in what they want. Some puzzles are super simple tho. Playing as the different characters also gives altered story, so that's neat. Although gameplay seems in my limited exposure to second character identical except for differently powered and behaving pistol.
Unfortunately buggy remake, but still playable. The enemy AI stops working occasionally, this has some features removed the original had though has some new quality of life ones added, characters keep sinking into the ground like in quicksand, performance is pretty bad (the original ran perfectly on Duron 350 and no GPU, they haven't increased the fidelity That much), etc. I don't remember if the swimming sounds in the original were this bad, but they're horrible. Worst part is that some dialogs keep hanging with people staring at each other for like half a minute before it decides to just cancel it. Otherwise, it's about as good as the original? I'll probably play the original after I finish with this one just to see how much my memories have gilded it.
It's just great. Go play it!
It's actually surprisingly good. I put it off because I thought it'd be janky as hell, but now that I've been playing it, I've been pleasantly surprised. The mixing of french in the dialogs is neat and weirdly smooth which I've not seen before. All other similar cases have been "I'm French-desu" style, but not this, this is doing it Well. The story is interesting and doesn't feel like it witholds crucial info too long. All the enemies being robots (automats as they're called in-game) is kinda meh, but there's nice variety to them. There's some non-critical bugs with dialogs (camera not following speaker), some side-quests seem to not progress fully (hollow cannonball one for me just ended abruptly before conclusion). But no issues with the main quest. The citizen stories side-side quests are pretty much impossible to complete without a guide tho (thus I haven't bothered). Countering is hard, I don't know if the timing is just super tight, or if it's bugged. I'm not good with that kind of gameplay in most games, so I'm poor judge of it. Overall, I have liked it so far and I believe I am nearing finishing with the game. (gog really wanted me to write this with the constant pestering for it)
I don't know what the reviews that give this game barely any points are on about. The combat is slower paced than Heretic or the like (it's not a boomer shooter), sure, but that doesn't mean it's bad. It's more complex than old games (not by much, but I feel it), there's actual story, you aren't running million miles per hour, etc. I've enjoyed it greatly so far.
It's decent. Haven't played through yet, but after several missions, I can say the following at least. Good: - Gunplay is much improved, greatly so. - Levels look prettier - Controls are more straightforward Eh: - Armor is simplified, which is sad, but not too bad. - Some levels have their gear changed, which is odd, but not good or bad. - Voice acting is re-used, so it's as bad as in the original. - Aiming down sights has been added. I don't care, but I do like the extra accuracy. Worst: - Very, very blurry visuals - The game steals your weapons after every level instead of preserving them. Original game stole your weapons only when it made sense, this one steals them with everything. - Re-used cinematics from the original look hideous, and the intro sequence in the remake is just weird with the framing movie scene, so it makes no sense.
Got over 120 hours if playtime on first playthrough, and I enjoyed it. Sure there were bugs, but nothing as bad as I had heard or seen others experiencing.
Short and sweet: player needs pixel perfect jumping and tolerance for BS, if you have those, this might be for you (I hate pixel perfect jumping myself, and have limited tolerance for BS). SPOILER WARNING Basic gameplay is great, but... ... then you enter these sudden pixel perfect jumping sequences (e.g. the game requires you getting maximum height from jump-airjump-walljump-airdash-walljump sequence several times), unfair fights with bosses that deal third of your health in one hit in 3 hit combo (yes, that's instakill), jumping sequences where you can't see where your next platform is before you're already in air, really inaccurate aiming with analog stick while still demanding almost pinpoint accuracy (bubbles), buggy wall edges that behave inconsistently (I'm as likely to fall off them as jump up as I am to get my double jump off to get as high as the game wants me to). I am also not fan of the elemental matching where you either need to memorize the elements, or keep an item on you that reveals them. Spoilers incoming.... Major FUs in the game: - The wall ledges you need to climb, they just are broken, you succeed at using them by luck. - Royal Scorpion - The steam room fight. - Lava chase Currently I've given up on the the game because of the lava chase, the jumping is just too finicky for me to deal with and my thumb started bruising from the shit the game's been requiring of me. I can forgive the game for the piglet usage, I keep missing them, but that's just me not being observant enough. They're neat, and fortunately not overused. Part of the problem may be that I have old x360 gamepad, but this works great in all other games I've played, so I can't really fault it. I really can't recommend it, and I really doubt these will be changed in patches, so... go as you will.
The basic gameplay is better than the XCOM reboot, tho I still prefer the original X-COM over this, and Hard West is underappreciated with the quality of life things it brought the genre. Biggest flaws with Phoenix Point are pretty much game balance, especially later on with super powerful enemy units, and weird feeling of segregation the factions prompt. I love the manual aim thing (tho it's a bit weird version of targeting limbs), and I love how bullets actually hit where they look like they hit like they did in the original X-COM (and unlike how they do in the XCOM reboot). I also somehow feel some of the world building is somehow... hollow? I'm not sure how to describe it. It feels like it lacks the stuff inbetween, you have your aliens there, Jericho there, Anu there, etc. but there's no overlap that one would expect, or "normal people". The game is also extremely brutal in terms of losing soldiers. Once they go down, they go down. There's no bleedout, no emergency medical, they're Dead. But I am sort of fine with this. It was startling to find out originally, but that was assumption brought over from XCOM, this is not that game. I also kind of felt that I wanted to have more different actions to perform with my soldiers, meaningful actions. And more things to do in geoscape. I also wish there was just some kind of cheap cannon fodder enemies, some of them almost are that, but are far too tough for it. It's hard to say what I like about the game specifically tho. It's just... kinda overall improvement over the XCOM reboot. I also do not like what the dev did with EGS, but I honestly can't care too much about that.
