I have three runs, one at release and a couple after patches, of around 10 hours each before I hit a game halting bug. Settlements are broken with npcs just standing around staring into the water, if I dismiss a companion they're gone for good because they never go where their told and they'll never join my party again, each time I played I went if different directions and each time I'd eventually hit a quest breaking bug that halted my ability to keep playing on a variety of quests. No matter how far back I reloaded the quests would break again. There have been no patches since then. There was talk of a big patch and DLC, but from what I can see they've gone silent. This is truly a shame because so much of the game is brilliant. The world is amazing, the characters are almost all well done, the story is very interesting so far and I just love exploring it. If the level of quality was maintained throughout, this could have given New Vegas and Fallout 2 a run for the best Fallout game period, mod or not. Instead at this point it's just a frustrating broken mess. Before investing the time to go through this I'd really wait for the possible patch and DLC. Despite the high reviews this game was not ready for prime time.
I'd like to tell you if this game is good or not, but since it crashes every 10ish minutes, sometimes less, I'll tell you to wait. Despite what the creators have said, this isn't ready for prime time. There are technical issues galore, but there are other problems as well. The nights in this game are almost too dark to be playable and no that isn't realistic. I've been to the darkest spot in the lower 48 in Utah and the stars and moon absolutely light the night up. Without electicity in London, the nights would be bright, not pitch black. Then there are the levels which are what I would call overdesigned. No spoilers, but for an example early on you can go to an underground city through a back enterence. The quest line is literally go there, help someone, get some info. For that we get 3 maze like levels and a city that while full of people is little more than a quest giver and a couple merchants. There are other issues as well, my only companion so far is useless in a fight if he even actually engages, the torch you have throws about as much light as match that's about to go out and the voice acting is all over the place. So have I experienced anything good so far? Sure, the world itself seems well designed and much more realistic than a Bethesda game where it seems nothing was looted post war and so far we don't have those silly "I'm gonna write my life's story out on this piece of paper just before I die" kind of second rate environmental storytelling Bethesda keeps pouring out, but like I said this isn't ready. Wait for a few patches because right now the experience is just one in frustration from the technical and design sides. For those who are saying this proves modders and better than professional devs, their off their gourd. If anything this proves the opposite once and for all.
This is a great game and no, Sony is not stealing your bank account info. It's harmless data collection on your internet interests and they don't even know your name. If that bothers you, put down the X-Files DvD set and go touch some grass. If you don't want people to know what you do online that desperately then maybe what you're doing online is something you should reflect on a bit.
I don't normally do reviews but after playing this I decided to drop one, mainly because the one star reviews here are laughable. At least some of them were honest enough to admit they didn't play it more than a few minutes. It's their loss. Yes, this is a game about kids who go through a supernatural event and those kids talk like kids, go figure. The early parts are establishing their characters and relationships and why they do that is revealed as you play. The sci-fi mystery here is very interesting once it gets going and mixes sci-fi and horror pretty deftly. There are so many endings depending on the choices you make and how you deal with the situation and other characters. There's also a new game + that is very much worth playing. It isn't just playing the game again. If you're an older gamer like me this will remind you of the old Sierra and Lucasarts adventure games and in many ways is better than a good chunk of those which had far worse writing in many cases than this game's detractors claim. It's a few hours of fun and a challenge to manipulate the timelines into different endings depending on what you want the outcome to be. Like I said, these 1 star folks missed out, don't let a bunch of grumpy old men turn you away from what is a very good adventure.
The game is awful. They are trying to emulate a late 80's/early 90's gaming experience, and that's fine, but they do it in a way that doesn't even pay homage to those games. It's technically worse and that seems to be a misguided design decision. This game represents pure and peak nostalgia goggles and it's a complete failure for doing so. There is simply nothing good to say about this game. It looks rubbish, it plays rubbish, it's sad attempts to make money on tire spinners nostalgia fails, and the story has nothing to keep any attempt at momentum going. This is the worst game I've played in possibly three decades and I've been playing games since the Atari 2600 was hot new tech. Just an awful experience from start to a few hours finish because I couldn't take any more jank.
I pre-ordered this game on Steam. I listened to CDPR talk about how this was going to be the next level in open-world rpg's. I watched the videos and got excited. The finished product, while a really good rpg, is not what they showed and not what they hyped. Now they are saying that the trailer was not indicative of the final product. Then why not just show us the game the way it would turn out? Because they tuned it down for consoles, and despite all of their posturing otherwise, they went consoles first and made people who spent money on a good PC, the audience they have always claimed to cater to, get less of a product. On top of that, the hype machine is going full blast. Aside from graphics and characters, this game is not the Skyrim killer we were promised, and that they made plenty of jokes about at Bethesda's expense. The cheap shots about bugs are now laughable as there are plenty of immersion breaking bugs in my time with the game, now about 19 hours. The simulation of objects in the world has not changed since Witcher 1 and is no where near the type of environments we could interact with even in games like Ultima 7, let alone Morrowind. The open-world is only semi-open with more than a few areas walled off. We get Ubisoft like map checklists that go against everything they said they were about. This is all style over substance and everyone giving it perfect reviews is going against why they said they loved this franchise and this company in the first place. The positives are that, while the story is functional at best, the characters and side quests give a sense of character and place not seen yet in an rpg of this scope. The game systems only really work if you adjust the difficulty level accordingly as you go. The easy settings are beyond pointless as many of the game mechanics become useless and the higher difficulty levels don't add more challenge to encounters, just more time. There used to be 3 companies on my pre-order list. CDPR, Sega's Total War series, and Bethesda's flagship Fallout and Elder Scrolls series. Sega lost me after the still broken Rome 2, CDPR is now off the list for falsely advertising and hyping Witcher 3, and Bethesda is off just because I don't trust any of these companies anymore. Stop hyping things you cannot deliver. Just be honest and don't show anything until you know what the end product is going to be like. Id, and other companies, did this for years with the "when it's ready" slogan and it did not hurt them a bit. This is a decent rpg and an okay story, wrapped in a great, but hollow, presentation. Hopefully Cyberpunk and Witcher 4 will finally make CDPR's product equal their ambition and hype. I just hope this review is allowed to stay up amidst all of the lunacy of perfect scores. If you think this game is perfect and no aspect can be made better, then by all means give it a perfect score. I think it is being dishonest and it is a disservice to anyone that is thinking about the game.
I actually helped test and develop this game, and I really did enjoy the finished product. Although I thought the constant regenerating enemies and grinding combat got old really fast. It is a shame this version of the wizardry universe did not continue on as I thought it had a lot of depth and with today's technology could be a truly outstanding experience. Upon release I would have given it a four out of five despite being released with some nasty bugs, today I would give it a solid 3 and 1/2, but you should really play 6 and 7 first.
Many people do not like Phil Fish, to which I say, who gives a s%^t. Do you have any idea how many people in sports,entertainment, and your local McDonald's are a-holes? The game is clever, fun, and inventive. I enjoy it very much and I don't care if it's creator likes me. I'm not donating to the Fish charity, I'm buying a fun and clever game. I won't buy the new Sim City even if the creators are saints because they put out garbage. I will buy Phil's game, even if he is a jerk, because it is a good game. I wonder how many people here would be loved if their lives were held up to public scrutiny. Anyone want to go first?
