Own the entire series on steam.. For some reason the developers of this game - which is NOT the same as the developer for the other arkham games but the same dev responsible for Gotham Knights (.... AWFUL!) - decided it would be a good idea to make it impossible to animation cancel attacks into "counter". As it turns out, trying to turn arkham style combat into Dark Souls is an unbelievably terrible idea because the games are nothing alike in every other aspect. Just complete and utter game design fail of epic proportions. HARD SKIP, absolutely unplayable!
I own the steam version of this particular title and.. Especially once you hit act and advanced archetype the game ABSOLUTELY FALLS INTO SHAMBLES. Absolutely NOTHING works after Act 1 and base archetypes - sometimes not even those. I genuinely have no idea what game the reviewers were playing but its not this one. Here is a very very very shortened list of bugs ive encountered: Grand strategist archetype - rectangular zones are completely broken. Placement depends on character position, you cant rotate them, when you reload mid combat the zone can change its rotation making half your party suddenly stand outside of it. The talent that gives -1AP to the first attack inside a certain zone doesnt work at all on the turn it is placed. Random things can happen when you reenter zones. Assassin: The acumen AP refund doesnt work on the elusive ability at all. Warrior: Endure doesnt give the correct amount of deflection Reloading in combat in general breaks everything. Ive used Once per combat abiltiies 3 times in 1 turn after reloading. ive seen AP just randomly disappear after reloading. Master Tactician: The damage buff from the base archetype feature doesnt disappear when used for navigator powers allowing it to stack perpetually and reach ridiculous numbers. Vanguard: Beacon stacks dont work properly whatsoever. Bounty Hunter: Ive seen melee enemies get hit by the immobilize trap and literally teleport to their target immediately afterwards AND SOO SOOO MANY MORE Its not limited to combat either. In Act 2 on Janus - immediately taking the governour under arrest completely breaks off a huge chunk of dialogue that is simply completely missing. The impenetrable darkness mini story on 1 world says it gives you a reward in dialogue but nothing shows up. Do yourself a huge favour and just skip this game for at least 1 year. It is soooo broken.
title
This game has lots and lots of things that are plain bad. I will explain one of them so you get the idea what it looks like when the design team has no idea how to be remotely coherent. Tool. Proficiencies.: This is a game that prides itself on being DnD. However unlike DnD there are almost no proficiencies related to a lot of rogue actions. Specifically there is no lockpicking/disarm trap proficiency. The only rogue-ish proficiencies are stealth and sleight of hand. Sleight of hand unironically does NOTHING in the main campaign (im not exaggerating, its just tacked on for DLC). So in order to pick locks you want the thieves tools. The thieves tools have a unique tool proficiency. This tool proficiency can ONLY be acquired from a background OR a class but NOT from picking a proficiency normally like all the non-tool and non-weapon proficiencies (e.g. perception). However you dont actually need a proficiency to use the thieves tools. It just gives a bonus. Lets look at a nother tool proficiency. Smithing tools. Based on what we just learned youd think anyone can use them right? WRONG! Smithing tools REQUIRE the smithing tools proficiency to use which you can ONLY get from backgrounds. What about some other toolkits like enchanting and herbalism? Well in those cases NEITHER OF THE ABOVE APPLY! These 2 have multiple REGULAR proficiencies they can use instead of the tool kit proficiency (e.g. arcana and medicine) and do not require the actual tool kit proficiency to use either. How do you fail at something SO BASIC? HOW? I dont understand.
This game has lots and lots of things that are plain bad. I will explain one of them so you get the idea what it looks like when the design team has no idea how to be remotely coherent. Tool. Proficiencies.: This is a game that prides itself on being DnD. However unlike DnD there are almost no proficiencies related to a lot of rogue actions. Specifically there is no lockpicking/disarm trap proficiency. The only rogue-ish proficiencies are stealth and sleight of hand. Sleight of hand unironically does NOTHING in the main campaign (im not exaggerating, its just tacked on for DLC). So in order to pick locks you want the thieves tools. The thieves tools have a unique tool proficiency. This tool proficiency can ONLY be acquired from a background OR a class but NOT from picking a proficiency normally like all the non-tool and non-weapon proficiencies (e.g. perception). However you dont actually need a proficiency to use the thieves tools. It just gives a bonus. Lets look at a nother tool proficiency. Smithing tools. Based on what we just learned youd think anyone can use them right? WRONG! Smithing tools REQUIRE the smithing tools proficiency to use which you can ONLY get from backgrounds. What about some other toolkits like enchanting and herbalism? Well in those cases NEITHER OF THE ABOVE APPLY! These 2 have multiple REGULAR proficiencies they can use instead of the tool kit proficiency (e.g. arcana and medicine) and do not require the actual tool kit proficiency to use either. How do you fail at something SO BASIC? HOW? I dont understand.
You should buy it. That is all. Buy a copy for a friend for multiplayer if you know someone. This is an incredible game and nothing i can write here could ever really do it justice. There is a huge story, incredible graphical and especially animation quality,, great audio. There is infiltration, intrigue, scary monsters, unique missions and quest solutions, powerful mobility tools like fly and misty step. The implementation of DnD is pretty accurate with a touch of fun focus and barrelmancy - the only major deviation is probably multiclassing which makes casting classes in particular even crazier than in the original. Items are powerful and have a major impact on how plan your character but you can always respec. Its a huge game, ive played 4 days straight and im barely in the middle. There are SOOOO many choices and paths to take. The replay value is absolutely crazy already. I have NBA dunked on enemies as an owlbear by jumping on them, blew myself up by accident by hitting kobolds who had too much firebrandy to drink with a fireweapon, solved invisible bridge puzzles, talked bosses into killing themselves with op skill checks. All the things and more. There are a ton of rare enemies and even rarer ones. The game has some hardmode encounters that youre supposerd to circumtvent but fighting is always an option if you really wanna see how strong your toons are. There is so much awesome stuff! So much dialogue! Idk what else to say This game is very very good.
My favourite frogwares game is still crime and punishment and if you havent played it - you should! One of the few modern adventure games aside from sam and max that i actually finnished. Especially with the sale going on theres no reason to not pick it up! It is pretty damn good! While im personally not particularly into the horror genre and the awakened might a bit too spooky for me personally im very happy to be given the opportunity to directly support a Ukrainian company that happens to make titles that i personally enjoy via GOG. All the best to all of you! PS: If i can make one wish - id want the voiceactor for sherlock holmes from crime and punishment back. That guy was amazing.
Those 7 minutes were a text crawl with backstory into an FMV with crappy anime music and nonsenical anime movie scenes into ANOTHER GODDAMN TEXTCRAWL at which point i asked for a refund ^all of this is unskippable
While the game is still enjoyable as a Sherlock homes narrative driven game with some detective work - a lot of the "features" that were added in this new title are poor. In particular those are.. Quick time events (a lot of them) and a variety of poorly stolen/implemented gameplay from other titles like precision running with poor controls while platforms around (and in front of) you keep disappearing, bland stealth observation, other imprecise environment interactions that lead to instand death, a kind of bowling/golf (boule) minigame with lmissing indicators for distance/power and a bunch more. The core game of deduction via clues is still here and still feels great but the fluff around is poor at best and theres just too much of it. A lot of it can be skipped but not all. Maybe this was an attempt of widening the target audience? If that is the case then attempting to please everyone left noone pleased as a result. Maybe some varied gameplay would improve the game overall but what was added here is of such poor quality and so poorly implemented that it just makes the game worse overall. I hope they studio will go back to focusing on the overall narrative and deduction/clues part of their game in the future. Those are the strengths and that is what sells the product in the end. I personally also felt that the voice actors for holmes/watson were worse than in the previous titles but not by so much that its not just a matter of personal preference.
Ill try to be brief, i find some of the reviews both on here and on YT and so on unfair and often times simply false. Narrative/Story 11/10 - The story, characters and overall narrative are exception. There are several "bloody baron" level sidequests and all of those are as good as the main quest. Atmosphere 9/10 - World feels incredibly real with an astonishing attention to details. Downside is that in less important areas feel a bit weak Markets feel alive, discos feel like discos, Erotic shops feel like erotic shops. Amazing, Graphics 8/10 - Its not RDR2 but especially the lighting, the highlights on pseudo reflective surfaces and the special effects like smoke/fog and explosions look exceptional for an AAA title. Performance - Ill just say this: For me with a gtx 1060 6gb and a i7 4930K (which is a like 10 years old CPU) the game runs @ high presets at 1080p, FOV 80 with a stable 60 fps. Performance is complicated since everyone always has games that run better/worse - this runs well for me Music 9/10 - The game knows when to use what music to create even better ambience. It does that exceptionally well. Some of the radio stations have a few weaker tunes but besides that its amazing Customization/RPGElements 8/10 - Ive seen people complain about %stat increases. These exist and they are the majority besides a few more interesting perks BUT: These same people forget that some of the huge customizaztion options come from cyberware and hacking software. Example for cyberware: Gorilla arms let you stun opponents and open doors that usually have body requirements, Mantis blades add special "pounce" interaction where you can jump on enemies from a distance and so on. Equipping hacks lets you blind opponents or set them on fire. Out of chars: short: Most negative: Very poor keyboard customization, quickitembar and dodgebutton would have made the gameplay MUCH better. 35 horus in and cant see the end but - replayvaluable might be weaker - very narrative focusd
