Severance - Blade of Darkness was one of THE defining gaming experiences of my life. I have played this game countless times, and to this very day, there isn't a single game that can deliver the same ingenious conbat system. Granted, graphics are dated (and weren't the best to begin with), and controls are kinda clunky (they were back then already). But the level design is fantastic, and the way they combined a 3D action adventure with a fighting game is still amazing today. Dark Souls has a good combat system, with blocks, and counter attacks, etc. But only BoD allows you to actually execute key combos for flashy special attacks.
Where to start? I would love to just tell what an amazing Cyberpung 2077 is. And yes, it really is. Fantastic storytelling, deeply immersive gameplay, rock-solid shooter elements (very enjoyable even for an rpg-and-stealth-player like me); stealth gameplay a 1:1 copy of Dishonored (line of sight stealth, not skill based as in Skyrim). Deus Ex meets Half-Life 2 meets Dishonored. But, after all the initial hype, we're seeing an all too common pattern: a more (consoles) or less (PC) buggy release, some very loud and angry complaints, Youtubers bashing the game for clickbait, and all of a sudden, there's an incredibly hysterical debate going on. In this state, some people will blame the game for any and all issues they encounter, without even trying to fix things on their end, or even take a look at the settings menu. Let's try to get things a little straight: the console release really seems to be a mess. From what I've seen, base PS4 / XBO versions are unplayable (but what can you realistically expect from 8 years underpowered old consoles!?). GoG is a PC platform though, so let's focus on the PC release here. Which is actually way more polished than all the heated criticism might suggest. True, there are some bugs. I encountered a handful, all extremely minor though: a random NPC walking through a massive wall; a blurred texture on a lamp post in an alleyway; an intermediate quest goal not being ticked off ("search guard" - which was automatically fixed by simply proceeding into the elevator). But, and I want to emphasize this, NO crash whatsoever, after more than 15 hours into the game. I'm playing on a midrange laptop (i7 9750H, GTX 1660 Ti, 16 GB of RAM, SSD), and I'm getting close to 60 fps on optimized medium/high settings. You can tweak lots of graphics settings. You can rebind all keyboard commands. You can turn off mouse acceleration (in the setting menu!), it's all there. Just do yourself a favor, and take the time to configure the game properly.
First off: despite all its flaws, I gave the originally released Standard Edition a positive review. because I was intrigued by the gameplay, art style, and music. Sadly, you can't edit GoG reviews. 🤷♂️ Problem is that as soon as I left Skara Brae, perfomance (which was never good to start with) became so bad, I had to stop playing (5 fps, not kidding). So, when I realized that I had received the improved Director's Cut version for free, I figured now might be the time to give it another shot. Tweaks and improvements were made, so now it should run better, right? Turns out that was further from the truth than I could've ever imagined. You see, these "optimizations" are so poor, the game still runs like crap. But to make things worse, while the graphics had been kinda pretty, yet overall mediocre at best even in the standard release, inXile have ruined them completely now. The DC version looks like a game from 2001 (and I'm not exaggerating!)! Half-Life 2 for example has far superior facial and character animations, prettier textures, yet >10x as many fps while playing. Seriously, performance is still atrocious, but now the whole game also looks terrible even when you take a screenshot. It's plain ugly, and I feel absolutely zero inclined to continue playing. How is that supposed to be an improvement!? I am aware that my laptop is below the minimum specs (i5 8250U, Geforce MX150), but for comparison: Even at its low 1366x768 resolution, BT4 degenerates to a slideshow (5-20 fps on low/medium settings). On the other hand, I can run Witcher 3 at 45 fps (medium(high settings), Star Wars Fallen Order at 35-40 fps (medium/high settings), and even a PvP-game like Fortnite at 50-60 fps (medium/high settings). I'm using both Jedi FO and Fortnite as reference here, because they're built on the same engine as BT4 (Unreal Engine 4). So the graphics engine is no excuse, on the contrary. What a shame. Never again will I touch this "game", thank you very much, inXile. 💩
This needs more attention, why isn't it in the GoG charts!?
