The game definitely feels fresh. Roaming through the first open area, fighting bandits, completing quests, managing your funds, stealing from merchants, burying your fallen companions - it al feels great, but... You'll notice that after moving on to another are you're met with exactly the same quest structure. You have two factions, do five quests for them, choose your side for the final battle and on to another open area. I've played for around 30 hours in total and managed to reach lvl 6 on my strongest characters. At that point the game becomes a grinding chore. The combat is enjoyable - reminds me of Wasteland or X-com, but the experience gain is so slow, it makes me want to stop playing altogether. I'll give this game a go in couple of months. Maybe there will be some meaningful updates down the road. At it's current state I'd give it 3.5/5. A solid foundation, but flawed execution
The story in this game is absolutely stunning. Make sure to listen in to NPC conversations and read diary entires. There is some great lore bits hidden around. Even if you don't like horror/FPS games, play this. Put it on easiest difficulty and enjoy. It's much less scary than the previous games. Metro 2033 made me shiver - a hardcore horror. Exodus on the other hand focuses more on human element rather than mutants. You get plenty of those and there are scary sections in the game, but it's more approachable by those who don't like horrors very much - me included. Shooting is satisfying. There is plenty of variety in weapons, so everyone can find something for themselves. AI is often stupid and makes sneaking rather easy. If you want to be a good guy and avoid killing, be preapared for a waiting game. Luckily the game doesn't force you to be stealthy and you can go guns blazing. Your companions will take notice of your actions though. Weapons get dirty far too often and you have to clean them all the time. Fortunatelly there are plenty of workbenches around maps to do that. Levels look stunning, but often lack a good game designer touch. I can't count how many times I got lost and had to look up for answers in the internet. Everything is basically the same colour and it's difficult to find that one lever or switch to pull. Negatives aside, I still recommend to buy the game. Make sure to get the DLCs as well - they are great.
5 months of radio silence about CP2077 updates and we get this thing. Someone needs to get fired in CDPR.
I used to play this game back on the original Playstation when I was a kid. To play it again now is a wonderful treat. Yeah, the port is bad, but the game is still worth getting (especially for ~$5) This is in my opinion the best officially licensed video game ever released.
Some very nice world building. The amount of minor details and environmental storytelling is staggering and it makes the Night City a great place to explore. The only thing missing in it is the feeling of scale. When I stand in citi centre in London I see that it's huge. Lots of people walking around, cars, noises - everything is alive. That feelinf is absent in Night City. Main characters are well made, but lack the screen time to get the player to really know them. I had a feeling that every time I was close to connecting to a side character the game pushed them to the side and never spoken of them again. Shooting and general combat is pretty satisfying. It allowed me to follow my favourite route of pistol weilding gunslinger and still be able to kill most enemies without many issues. The biggest flaw was the lack of ammo. I had to buy new clips almost before every quest. Enemies are unfortunately bullet sponges. I expect a headshot to kill my target in one shot - two if they have a helmet, but in this game I needed to empty a whole magazine to kill them. Story has a terrible pacing. The intro is based on your chosen backstory and it literally takes 20-40 minutes to complete. After that every character meets in the same main storyline and follow it to the end. The only extra thing you get from you backstory is an occasional dialogue option, but it doesn't benefit you in any way. The biggest problem is the story finale. It comes out of nowhere. Just as I was getting into the story, the game shoved a third act at me and the game ended. I finished the whole thing in 30 hours and that was with me following many side quests in between the main story. Really disappointing. Driving is absolutely terrible. Just use fast-travel or download mods which tweak the handling of vehicles. Overall a 3/5. The game had a potential, but was clearly rushed at the end.
I've played all the games in the Expeditions series and I consider myself a fan. I like the Rome setting and lore behind it. Gameplay is the same tactical turn-based combat with free map exploration in-between. There is plenty of room for role-playing, even when some of dialogue options seem weird. The normal party combat is the same as in the rest of the series. You can experiment a lot with lineups and balance out your party abilities. I like it. The new big feature is the ability to control an army. You can capture outposts by pitching battles. The battle system is unintuitive and weird at best. After winning a couple of them I simply selected random cards and skipped the chore. As long as you have greater numbers, your army should win. This army system is also my main turn-off from the game. Every now and then the enemy army will attack on of the outposts you've captured and that means that you have to stop your advance and go back to defend. No matter if you win or not, you will lose a lot of soldiers, which will force you to wait until your numbers replenish before attacking another enemy outpost. I was stuck in a loop because of that. I couldn't replenish enough troops for an attack, because I was constantly attacked at other outposts. Extremely infuriating mechanic. Supporting characters are boring and generally uninteresting. Unfortunately it clashes with your ability to role-play. I hate flat characters with weak motivations, especially in a text based RPG. Overall, a decent game, but it's a pass for me. I couldn't finish it because of the constant frustrations with the army system and weak supporting characters. Maybe I'll return to it in a month or two. Expeditions Viking will remain as the best one in the series for me.
A great story in the Wither world. The game's happening during one of the books and that means you can meet a bunch of well know characters. Gammeplay is solid. Just a standard online Gwent, but you are limited in terms of which units you can use. Some great story elements for lore hunters! There is around 30 hours of content to play through. With that being said, the game has a big flaw. Most of the fights should be easy to win with any deck you can create, but the last battle is simply ridiculous. You need to follow tutorials if you even want to think about winning that. I personally gave up.
If this would be a free demo, I would give it a higher rating. As of now, there is next to nothing to do in the game. All character appear to have exactly the same attack combinations, but with different animations, the physics system is rather unpredictable, which makes the fighting frustrating. I don't feel that there is a room for honing my skills and improving in the game (like in Mordhau). It's a good demo, but not worth the price tag attached to it (as of 20th February 2021). I recommend waiting a couple of months to see what improves. For now I will ask for a refund.
