The strongest part of this game is the presentation. A man-made fantasy world apocalypse in the end stages with a desperate struggle against the odds, presented with good visuals and an amazing soundtrack. Interesting world setting, colorful characters, hard to learn but decent combat with standard action RPG progression mechanics. Exactly what I look for in my action RPGs: a solid B-title with heart and soul. What brings the experience down by a lot is the small size - not the length, mind you. The game will take you about 20 hours to complete, but in that time you'll be retreading the same environments over and over again, and even those environments are pieces put together by (thankfully quick) transition zones - the game was clearly optimised for consoles. The enemy variety also feels fairly low as every zone will have the exact same enemies throughout, so they wear out pretty quickly. The difficulty might also be a turn-off for some players as the combat system is demanding and unforgiving to mistakes. Personally, I found the medium difficulty (Hawk) just shy of being unfair - you really need to pay attention to each random fight or it'll be over in seconds and the bosses are no joke. So don't be ashamed to play on easy if your coordination and reflexes aren't great, otherwise the game is just going to be an exercise in frustration. Oh, I nearly forgot the decissions. There are only few real ones, but some of them carry serious consequences. I'll leave it up to you to walk face-first into a gut-wrenching one. All part of surviving in a dying world. To sum it up: Definitely not a game for everyone, but absolutely one for me. I want more of this type of game. And I'm quite willing to put up with the flaws for the overall experience.
Played it for the first time in 2025, so no nostalgia involved. A must-play for any FPS RPG fan. Cons: - Dialogue often starts when combat starts. Really annoying. - LOUD music. Even if it's awesome. - Story drags on a bit towards the end. - A bit buggy, even with community patch. - Some crashing. - Worst ladders I have ever encountered in my almost 40 years of gaming. Pros: - Basically everything else. - Deep, satisfying RPG elements are the star of the show. - Multiple ways of getting the job done. - Interesting setting, shady characters. - Tons of hidden stuff to find. - Decent combat, satisfying stealth kills. - Good level recycling that doesn't feel tedious. - Interesting locales. - Decent weapon variety and feedback. - Decent balancing. - Ham and cheese voiceacting. Definitely coming back to this for a replay in a few years.
You know, when I started this game, I was confused by the hate it got. Sure, it's dumbed down from the previous installment, but then so was Skyrim and that one ended up being a fan favourite. It starts out promising: the setting is interesting, the game doesn't take too long until it throws you into action, the first hub area is decently laid out. All in all a good start. When you come to the second hub area the fun goes down the drain. - RPG progression comes to a near halt. - Mission sequences are easily broken. - Challenge goes right out the window as the game always offers you an easy solution for every problem. - The loading screens become ridiculous in numbers (clearly a console game problem). - Faction lines blur. Matter of fact, the previously moderately unsympathetic factions turn into a complete shitshow, each trying to outdo the other in being insufferable and cartoonishly evil. At some point I got so annoyed, I started kiling all the critical faction NPCs just to shut them up. But there's always more of them. The game is equal parts competent gameplay and utterly incoherrent game design. I'm so glad I'm done with this, it definitely overstayed its welcome.
Don't let the positive reviews fool you. This game is pure fan-bait and nothing else. If you're not a StarWars fan, hands off. First off the positives: - Great banter from the teammates and the NPCs. - Intuitive and easy to use squad commands. - Great soundtrack. Shame that it only has two tracks for seemingly the entire game. As for the rest of the game: - Miserable weapon variety. Five guns. - The pistol is nearly useless aside from the start of the game. - The assault rifle isn't much better and might as well shoot actual peas. - The sniper rifle can only be shot accurately while zoomed in. - The alien weapon takes half an hour to shoot. - The grenade launcher is servicable. - All of the weapons lack any semblance of feedback and feel like wet blankets. - Switching weapons takes forever since most are "switched" by de-assembling half your gun and re-assembling with another loadout. Stylish, but extremely impractical. - The max ammo limitation on every weapon is a joke. - The enemies either swarm like crazy from all sides since half of them can fly and leap erratically; or are tanks with single-hit kill attacks. - In most engagements the enemies respawn endlessly until you progress and in the other half they respawn near endlessly but need to be killed before moving on, leaving you to wonder which one you're currently in. - Squad mates are more a hindrance than a help as they constantly walk into your line of fire (including grenades) and shield the enemy from your attacks while getting injured by you. - Many environments simulate earthquakes by violently shaking your mouse, making aiming more of a timing puzzle than an actual FPS. - Teammates often ignore orders, instead standing around twiddling their thumbs while being obliterated by the enemy swarms. - Teammates often run ahead alone, getting themselves shot down and stranded in the middle of an enemy horde. - Semi-Regular game crashes. - Getting up from a revival takes half an eternity.
And I'm not talking about cheese, so put the staff down Sheo. FINALLY managed to complete a single damn run of this game after 146 hours! Always ended up abandoning my runs halfway through, becuase the game gets mindboggingly boring after a while and the early to mid game is the most interesting, as you can watch the numbers go up and your equipment visibly improving. - The quests are mostly flavour text. You will be doing pretty much the exact same copule of things for every faction, including the main quest and the artifact quests. - The world is gigantic, but compltely devoid of anything worthwhile. Other than a minimal visual variety, there is nothing to see (let alone do) in Daggerfall's world. - Quests, including the main questline, are sometimes simply broken. Start the game over - or, better, learn the very basic console commands. - Quest design itself is a sad joke. - All in all this is an extraordinarily bland and boring game, carried entirely by its very satisfying RPG mechanics. If you're obsessed with numbers like me or enjoy roleplaying in a big sandbox and making your own fun, you will still get your time's worth with this hot mess. Sane people should probaby give this one a pass. It's very much a product of its time. If you are going to give this a shot (and why not, it's free), I suggest you go for the Unity version. Unless you REALLY like pixels, the Unity version is better in every way. Shame that GOG took down its version due to the whole modding controversy, but I understand that they just didn't want the heat anymore. The regular unity version is still out there and free, so go nab it. I'm sure I'll be back for another half-assed run in a couple of years when I want to switch off my brain and just slay some monsters while listening to videos in the background, but for now I'm glad that I can finally mark this game as completed.
As far as janky old shooters go, this is one of the better ones. Decent setting, decent gunplay, stable performance, no crashes. Balancing is a bit off as you die in seconds, but if you play tactically and quicksave often, the sudden deaths don't reach annoying levels. The game has a bullet time mechanic. And a bullet time dive mechanic. Don't even bother remembering any of that, you won't use them. Why? Because it slows the action down to a complete crawl. And the dive is too hard to control to be useful, it'll just leave you out in the open as a sitting duck. One thing that actually annoyed me a bit was that ithe game seems to have some sort of anti-aim-assist, where the crosshairs will sometimes "stick" in place and refuse to move in very small increments when close to an enemy, focing you to jerk around the mouse a bit in order to get the crosshair on the actual enemy rather than the scenery around him.
It runs like a paraplegic with asthma. The balancing is that of a toppled brick wall. Control scheme was clearly designed for tentacles rather than human hands. Inventory capacity is equal to that of women's clothing. All 8 main missions are the exact same. All artefact quests are a copy of the main missions. Sidequests are a complete waste of time with laughable rewards. Graphics are fit for the blind. Sound is fit for the deaf. Gameplay is obtuse like your mother in law. Soooo.... why am I still playing this hot mess after almost 40 hours? It's not nostalgia, never played this before. 2025 is my first run. Not my OCD, got that one in check ages ago. Not a lack of options, got a ton of other games on my pile of shame. Dear lord, I'm having FUN with this game. I don't know WHY or HOW I'm having fun with this clusterf***, but the fact is undeniable. It's free, it's easy to install, give it a go. You might just be a weirdo like me and actually enjoy this madness.
First off: what are the shortcomings? I've encountered some bugged quest markers and even one broken minor sidequest. The movement can be a bit awkward and takes a bit to get used to. The movement in zero gravity is very awkward even once you get used to it. The main issue though was the lack in weapon variety. You absolutely should make use of the typhon powers to make up for it, the game doesn't punish you for your curiosity, merely curbs your overconfidence here and there. Everything else was fantastic. The gameplay, the exploration, the non-obtrusive and organic sidequests, the immersive and oppressive atmosphere. And the story. Good lord, you just don't see it coming, though it doesn't hit you completely out of the blue. All in all an amazing experience and a must-have for any fan of atmospheric shooters. Any and all flaws are forgiven in my book.
Even with the 2.0 update almost a full three years after release the game is still full of bugs like ripperdocs or shop vendors suddenly becoming non-interactible after a conversation for no apparent reason or NPC AI just messing its pants or weapon comparison comparing pistols to the shotgun instead of the equipped pistol. Driving and movement overall still feel awkward and non-intuitive. And so are the menus, trying to find anything in this game's menus is a chore. Shooting is decent, but still feels inherently a little janky. This is the Fallout 4 school of shooters. Loot has thankfully been toned down, but still feels like a little too much trashloot is being presented instead of just cash rewards. The overhauled armor mechanic helps a lot to reduce that inventory clutter and thank God for that. The game is carried by its visuals, mood and storytelling. Except the storytelling makes no sense for an open world game. The whole point is that you want to explore this new and interesting world and generally go at your own pace, yet the game constantly hounds you with this need to hurry on for plot reasons. It really shows that the devs didn't really know what they were doing and just slapped together as many different things as they could in hopes of enough stuff sticking to make this game worthwhile. A masterful example of the game director not doing their job. I bought this game 2 years after release, then decided to wait almost another year for the promised update after my initial trial-run, because the game was still too half-baked at that point. So, I went in with fairly low expectations and I still feel disappointed. Buy this if you have nothing better to play, I'm sure you'll be able to kill a lot of time with this, even have a bit of fun, but don't expect this to be the promised next banger. This is yet another middling open world AAA timewaster with a very pretty coat of paint.
The game really shines with it's setting and storytelling, but the experience is marred by several unnecessary issues. The automatic cover-mechanic is innovative, but doesn't work anywhere near as well as just letting you crouch down and pop out from cover manually. All it really does is make cover more of a hindrance as your character will spazz out trying to figure out what you want to do and it makes overall movement awkward and choppy as the character model is trying to interpret movement as cover-seeking on EVERYTHING. Imagine Assassin's Creed's free-running and jumping in FPS and you get the idea. The game even has some minor plattforming, which is just as awkward. The duel mechanic is interesting at first, but also ends up being mostly just a massive pain in the ass before long. The game rewards some exploration, but the NPCs will constantly hound you for actually doing it. All in all, it's a very solid FPS in a great setting and a captivating story that is strongly hamstrung by trying too hard to be different. Still worth a playthrough for FPS and Wild West fans.
