After playing for almost 70 hours, since launch, the game feels like a classic case of a premature release. I'll start with the good parts: - A high quality story backed up by great characters, The main quests and the side ones related to it are top notch. CDPR has again proven to have the best writing team in contemporary AAA gaming. - The game is absolutely gorgeous. I am not able to play it at ultra but even so, it looks top notch. Everything looks absolutely amazing, the atmosphere and design set a new mark. I haven't been so impressed by a game's visuals since Metro Exodus. - Incredible sound design and music. They made up an entire punk rock band just for this game. - Beautiful range of cars and bikes. It's like having dozens of "Roaches" to choose from when riding around town. - A large replayability potential thanks to the intelligent quest design and the many build possibilities. The skill tree is acomodating enough to handle many play styles and the build variety is bigger than Witcher 3's. The bad parts - Technical glitches and bugs are still present as of 1.05. The game is fully playable but they still have some ways to go - The police system is absolutely attrocious. Needs a complete overhaul. - There are practically no activities outside of the questing zones. You can't perform random activities and this breaks immersion - The general AI is poor both for random NPCs as well as traffic - Car handling is poor. Subjective: Don't go into this game expecting GTA 6. It is NOT a sandbox, it is NOT a TES title with guns. It doesn't have the sheer open endedness of those titles. I think this will hurt it in the long run and CDPR should do a better job of explaining their design goals. I think it was an over-ambitious project. Nevertheless, I am hopeful that they will turn this around. This is not Fallout 76 or Rome 2 TW at release. Under the bugs and the questionable state of some mechanics lies a fantastic game.
The game is a very pretty walking simulator with time gating puzzles and some cookie cutter combat tacked on. The overall difficulty is very easy. The story and main character, Senua, are the principle marketing pieces and Ninja Theory mostly succeded in their design, especially considering the size of the team, but don't expect some masterpiece. Objectively, the best part of the game is the tech (graphics, motion capture) and the environmental design. You're gonna spend the vast majority of the time walking around, backtracking and watching countless in-game cinematics, so you might as well enjoy the polish of the Unreal Engine. The worst part of the game is the slow movement speed, even while running and the constant backtracking interrupted by poor combat mechanics that demands very little skill from the player. That being said, you won't miss much by grabbing some popcorn and just watching a Youtube playthrough. The game is 100% linear, there are no branching story paths and has almost no replay value. Worth it on sale since if you want a more relaxing game but at full price, there are far better options.
