It's a nice mindless linear dungeon crawler. Explore everything and move to another floor, repeat about 60 times. Not many plot surprises, only few reasons to revisit previous floors. One thing that bothered me - app energy management. The game has breakable walls. It LOVES them. Some levels are nothing but breakable walls. But you only start each dive with 100 energy (each wall break costs 6 until post-game upgrades). And the game is stingy with energy recharge items and recharge points in dungeon. It would be nice feature, IF THEY STAYED BROKEN between dives. I'm all for gradually unlocking things, having more options when I return later... They don't. Getting app charge is maybe the only reason to revisit previous floors regularly. With how random many encounters the game has, this feels like a chore. Also, they make autonavigation very limited. No real reason to grind before post-game. Just exploring everything gives enough materials and XP to go on. No real reason to grind for post-game dungeon either. Just upgrade your fairies regularly as you get materials. By level 200, you can reach stat cap with just one maxed fairy - and you can equip 5 of them and level up to 999. Postgame feel really underwhelming. It's as if they realized too late where the power creep from fairies leads and decided to take the easy way out by capping you way too early. There is ng+ (called new loop), but I don't think it does anything different. Doesn't break the stat cap. Not even monster levels are adjusted. Compared to Mary Skelter games, this is a poor cousin. I did finish it almost to 100% trophies, so it's not bad enough to give 3 stars. Closer to 4, but only by a small margin.
Stable, solid controls. No bugs - as much as you can have no bugs in a game about underground bug kindgom. Difficulty - good but not insane (so far - 3h and 1 real boss). Edit: I take that difficulty bit back. Bossed are... let's say "reasonable". There is dying of course, but their movesets can be learned. But the challenge rooms where game pits you against several waves of enemies with no respite in small arena - most of them are pure hell. And I'm still just trying to work my way through act1...
Starting with the bad^Wweird. Few instances of the most insane un-logic I ever saw in a game. "Hi, it's me, your pal you saved from going to prison. This time I'm in a prison for a murder. That I know nothing about. And despite that (and being in prison), I have the murder weapon on me. If you were so kind to get rid of it... Bury it somewhere nearby, they'll never think of looking so close." All that while the guard is watching us from few meters away... *facepalm* Sometimes the game is openly mocking you. "Oh, you unlocked your last environment skill, you can now open those red chests you were seeing from start of the game. IF you remember where they are." This is almost direct quote from your blue companion. *table flip* Bit more serious issue, the game has a lot of movement freedom. So much, that sometimes when authors wanted to prevent you from going somewhere too early, they had to resort to underhanded things like invisible walls or slippery surfaces. So, bad game? Not at all. Apart from the few mentioned warts, the story a bit weak but still good enough to keep you going. The main attraction are the fights with sand wraiths, and watching yourself improve over time. Timing parries correctly is critical to success. Not TOO hard by itself, but you also have to pay attention to the small fry that is summoned in regular intervals. The game also has some combo system, which I didn't bother to learn. Ground slam with dual hammers + whip for aerial combat got me from start through final boss. Good fun for about 50h of singleplayer completionist run. After the final boss, I even went back to collect the few missing achievements. That doesn't happen too often for me. Don't expect Witcher 3 or God of war story and you'll be good. I got my money's worth. 4.5 stars. Controller recommended.
To counter the DRM-free crowd: the complaint is probably valid (my galaxy works and I'm not opposed to using it, so I can't test it). And equally likely it's not intentional behavior, just lack of testing. I'd wait for first patch before review bombing, reviews are easy to post and almost impossible to change later. But whatever. The game itself is fine. Some changes in 2.0 are questionable, mainly the level scaling. I'm firm opponent of it, it usually breaks any sense of progression. Now every level means you have to catch up to opponents instead of getting stronger... But CP implementation is far from the worst I've seen (looking at you, Morrowind/Oblivion). It's not too hard to keep up with enemies, it just gets little bland after a while. Loads of new weapons, and tons of iconic. So many that everything feels watered down. There is no real reason to look at anything other than iconic, and between them, there is also no real reason to choose one over another of the same category. Other changes feel neutral or good. The story on the other hand is excellent. Especially the last real main quest mission (Cynosure path, I have yet to try the other one). Excellent mechanics, and really heart wrenching to decide what should happen at the end. Technical state: there ARE bugs. Quest follow-up directs me to a guy selling hotdogs in garage to receive my reward, but the garage remains closed. There is achievement for getting max wanted level in Dogtown - but no matter who I attack, I can't get even single wanted star. Not to mention bugs remaining from base game (shooting grenade in air with revolver - I have shot down maybe 50 grenades without unlocking anything. Maybe I have to use new char instead of the one that remembers 1.0). All of them minor, main quest worked for me fine. Not the most polished release ever, but good enough to have many hours of fun. Looking forward for 2.01
I never finished this back in the day. Probably combination of struggling with english, the game being tough in later levels, and maybe something else I don't remember anymore. I intend to finish it this time (if all fails, cluebook is included as extra). Docking one star for one pretty annoying mechanic. Everything is limited in some way. Weapons and armor break in mid-fight, and I found no indicator that they are close to breaking. Arrows are moderately rare. Fired arrows can be collected, unless you fire them into the wall by accident (which is incredibly easy to do), then they have good chance of disappearing. Magic items have limited "charge". Found amulet of +1 str (which does very little in terms of gameplay)? You can wear it for about two minutes, then it disappears. No chance to recharge, or indicator how much charge is left. "Too-precious-to-use" syndrome at it's finest. Mana for healing or offense is probably the only inexhaustible resource (kinda slow recharge though, and items that boost regen disappear after a while too). Give yourself the +1/+2 bonus with save editor, and save other magic items until situation really calls for them. Then it's fine nostalgia-fueled dungeon crawler.
