Nothing truly terrible to say, but nothing great either,
I really like a lot of things about this game from the world feeling amazing to traverse, the gunplay is good enough (but you will notice that you aren't as good of a shot as you think since the game gives you free kills as long as you're in the general direction of the enemy), the story is intriguing and keeps you wanting to get to the end, the HORDES are where this game shines. No other game has this level of zombie badassdome that Days Gone has and it just feels so good to mow down hordes and hordes of zombies. Sometimes just cruising along and the next thing you know you weren't paying attention and you make a turn and there are literally hundreds of zombies now chasing you down. It's a nailbiter sometimes because it just feels so good in the moment. The characters are pretty good and they do a good job of making you like and dislike people (just like real life). Some people I dislike and later come to enjoy and others I thought were cool at the start and I really came to dislike them later on. Overall, the game has a lot of great aspects that make for a good time. The issue that I have with this game is the Playstation aspect. I've quickly come to learn that I don't like how Playstation games play from Horizon Zero Dawn to Days Gone. They just have too much... railroad gameplay. You're traversing the world doing a quest and trying to get to a destination. The game decides you will go this direction that just takes you literally 5-10 minutes of driving needlessly instead of just letting you get to the destination. The game does this in another fashion where you're "controlling" the character, but all you are literally doing is holding the W-key. There's a part in the story that stands out where you literally just hold the W-key for 5 minutes and you don't even have to adjust camera angle- game does it for you. The game is riddled with things like this and I never realized how much I dislike it until this. It's a Playstation design and I don't like it.
The game over the years has improved GREATLY from when it released. I love the feel of the city and the look of everything is phenomenal. The gunplay is snappy and the various gun types will allow you to play in various styles so that's a plus. The swordplay is pretty fun and it makes for some interesting kills. Overall, the story is pretty interesting and the bits of lore and side stories you will encounter will be memorable. Several missions made me sit and think about what I just did/saw and that's fantastic (never skip the Sinnerman questline). So the city looks beautiful, graphics are nice, gameplay feels crisp and the story keeps you going. We're onto a good start. Now we get onto the problems. The first thing I noticed that I disliked and after hundreds of hours I still hate it: driving. The driving in this game just feels atrocious. The cars have so much torque and zero handling so you try to make a simple turn and you do a 180. You want to be able to drive without feeling like you're sliding on ice? Go very slowly. I actually prefer a truck I got (hate the look), but it just seems to drive and handle better. For a game where exploring the world should be insanely good fun (just driving around the city finding baddies to down), but the terrible driving really cuts that short for me so I try to drive as little as possible in the game. I like upgrading my character because some of the skills are so incredibly fun to use, but there are so many that just feel absolutely lackluster. Spend 3 skill points to get +6% damage with rifles and SMGs from behind cover? Really? Or spend 5 skill points to get +10% grenade damage (and a separate skill that gives all grenades +10 damage (enemies have thousands of HP so....) So some of the skills just feel utterly tedious and not even worth looking at. Story decisions.... SO MANY DECISIONS in this game ARE MADE FOR YOU. It's such a bummer that you cannot deviate from their chosen outcome and it makes for such a disappointment
Pros: The story is intriguing, but nothing too out of this world. It's a refreshing take on mankind destroying itself in its striving for greater and greater things. I was actually really drawn in by the idea of machines made to help us eventually turning against us. Yes, it's been done before, but it has its own flavor with instead of having Terminators walking around, we instead have unpiloted Zoids. It's a nice change of pace. The story has you following quite literally the entire life of the protagonist so it's another pleasant change of pace. You can connect with the characters around you better and immerse yourself in the story and the world building more effectively because you've "lived" their entire life. I wish more games did this because I love it. I started my first playthrough on hard difficulty and so I can say that at level 10, you can still get 2-tapped by the weakest of Zoids you will encounter wandering about if you aren't careful. I started off having issues in the start taking on more than one zoids in the beginning, but after hours of playing, I now feel comfortable in taking on 2 Sawtooths at a time without much difficulty. It felt good achieving that. I am lucky to not have encountered a single crash or glitch, but I have found myself getting stuck inbetween ramps and walls here and there. Cons: Console ports, STOP MAKING ME USE ITEM WHEELS ON PC. I HAVE DOZENS OF BUTTONS SO LET ME USE THEM. Holding buttons SHOULD be a mappable key binding. The game tries to hide the idea that women are best at all, but you can still see it. So far the men in charge are monstrous or stupid and the women are mostly saints and nearly perfect. When a man takes a position previously held by a woman, he's terrible and not as good in every way. I've always disliked areas that have level requirements. It gives me the impression of required grinding that's solely there to pat the playtime. The skill tree feels tacked on and only a few choices feel impactful in-game.
I played this game for a bit. It was actually an interesting combat system so I was enjoying that aspect. I didn't like the Psyionic ability wheel on PC. The default keybinding for it was very weird and it had an obvious controller design to it. The world looks nice and I had a blast in the character creator. The whole narrator thing is odd (I've never played a game with this kind of dialog before so it was an intriguing concept to me to try out for a first time). While everyone keeps reviewing this saying that everyone keeps saying random garbage, they aren't explaining the dialog properly. The random, quirky words used in various conversations are the robot-bug translating the conversation. As people know, sometimes it's hard to find the proper word/phrase to translate into another language so they wind up saying it the lost literal sense and it comes out sounding all, "What the heck does that even mean," to the other person you're translating to. Once I understood that it made a lot more sense and I actually really liked that aspect. It was a little touch that I don't think I've ever seen someone do in a game before so... lost in translation is front and center sometimes. Now the game is very simplistic and holds your hand WAY too much, even for a kids game. Oh my gosh, let me play the game. We're not talking training wheels level of handholding. We're talking being over 5 hours in the game and still being dripfed tutorials in case you couldn't figure out every single thing of every single aspect of every single system they have in the game. It's highly irritating and so not necessary.
I've currently put over 70 hours into the game (still not finished with the story) and I will admit right out of the stables that it isn't the best (RPG) game ever made. The combat is fine, but simplistic once you figure out how it works. Spells from enemies do far more damage than yours do, but I prefer melee and bombs so it's not a big deal to me personally. Where the game fails is that while it is open world, it's got a more linear path throughout it. I was playing Greedfall between Witcher 3 replays and I noticed the stark contrast between the open world and quests. Greedfall quests weren't as plentiful or intriguing, but they weren't endless fetch quests either so it had versatility in quest design and how you wanted to complete them which was nice. It's open world was closer to Witcher 2, but far more open than Mass Effect 3. The world is open in the sense that you have a large open space to traverse, but once you have fleshed it out you can start finding where it became more linear. NOW! Where the game shines is that it handles really well. I play it on PC and I don't have a beast of a machine anymore, but I can easily handle high-ultra settings and not have a single issue (outside of 3 dialogue scenes where the face was showing the geometric design and it wasn't "flesh"). Greedfall's story is pretty interesting. It's a new take and it allows you to craft how you want the story to pan out however you wish. You can side with the tree huggers, the Deus Vult bros, the towlies, everyone or simply piss everyone off. It's a nice feel. Aggravating/pleasing factions loses/provides you gear. The armor customization is nice in that deciding how you want to upgrade armor changes how the armor piece looks depending upon what you choose. It's a nice touch. Is it really simplistic? Yes. Good? Yes. Enemy placement in the open world makes sense. You don't have humans just running out at you randomly. They'll be found around camps or along paths and the same with animals.
I love this game. I originally bought it on Steam because I didn't know about the GOG site at the time. Now I bought it here because it was worth it. The fighting mechanics were a massive improvement from the previous game and I loved the talent system. The alchemy tree felt like it was worth using and it was an amazing improvement from the previous games. Swordplay felt great and the new killing strokes seemed to flow nicely into the combat. Graphics? They speak for themselves without any need for additional comment. Story? It got me running numerous playthroughs because I wanted to experience it again and again and try out various scenarios. It's not Anthem-level story, but it holds its own and will for many years to come. This is a game that people will talk about decades from now. Does the game have choices? Psh. More than you could possibly choose in a handful of playthroughs. I recommend playing the game entirely untouched on your first playthrough. Then after that the modding community should be given a hat tip to. They made some amazing content for the game that took the already amazing game and added even more content to further alter your playthrough (I personally loved the random monster encounter mod because it added an extra excitement to the game. It's also fun to be able to run around with Triss as your ever faithful companion). Now the DLC. I typically never buy DLC because it's always basic content that should have been added into the game from the beginning and now they're making you pay more so you can own the entirety of the game. Heart of Stone and Blood and Wine DLC throw that out the window. You have a complete game and these two DLC just add to the already incredible game. Heart of Stone is an amazing story that will give you whiplash. Blood and Wine not only gives you a great story, but it opens up and entirely new area and provides you with a home. These DLC should be industry standard, but sadly it appears that CD Project Red is special.
