On paper its a very good game. Good/decent music, story, loot sytem. progression, graphics etc. Almost everything is above avarage. Buut.. i just could never get into this one. Started countless times to play but i always got distracted by other games. A few times lost saves due to dying computers, when i could recover my saves i felt lost and had to start over. After 10+ years i managed to finish the main game.. haven't started DLCs yet but looking at my track record it would require at least five more years so here i'm writing a rewiew. Why i could never get into this game? Fist of all i managed to identify the biggest reason this last playtrough: I don't care about the characters at all! They don't feel alive , their motivations doesn't interest me. I care about victor vran only as far as "mow all demons" way . Because there is no char costomization i'm just not that invested in him. Level design plays a big role too. its fragmanted where you can play any opened stage whenever you want. You can complete challenges, find secrets and later do bounties or stuff.. its just too many things to do. i care most about the secrets but after a while i noticed i'm just trying to find secrets and not interested in any other content at all. Cohesion between different parts of game suffers a lot. Another paragraph just for the crafting.. the weekest part probably. To get highest tier items you have to use a load of resources and end up probably something useless to you. Its an above avarage game overall but the hooks to keep you invested keep missing the mark for me. Its a constant list of things to do on a checklist where you decide which one to do fist. After a while it feels more like a chore list. Controller is iffy as well while in combat i don't need to break barrels thank you game devs. Better games out there , worse games out there.
I'm a bit torn on this one. When i first bought it on sale i was very happy. It had everything i wanted a farm to grow stuff, fish, places to explore. So i gave it five stars in my mind. I kind of rushed to finish the main content since some stuff started to bug me. Cooking for the crew took too much time for any visible benefits, farm got so big it started to actually be a chore, had to go long distances to find the things i needed etc.. so the score dropped to four in my mind. After finishing the game i came back to see if i can get the achivements. i wish i had left the game on a good note instead. It became a slugfest and very boring fast. Its still worth buying if the tags interest you but don't expect anything grand. Its not bad but after a time stops being fun.
Even with all achivement hunting , game finishes around 5-6 hours. Half of it is making money and other half looking for collectibles (and some of them are very well hidden indeed) . You may be wondering i didn't leave any time for story like but if you had unlimited resources you could actually finish the game in 10 minutes. Despite everything maybe its because its a short game you get an accomplished feeling when you complete goals without boring you too much. PS: You can hunt for achievements after you finish the game so don't be stressed if you can't find that last barrel or egg. Just finish the game and come back later with fresh eyes.
Decent card game for the price. For what it is there are no glaring issues. Good for playing casually but also good for tactical thinking if you want to dive deep. Learning what does what can sometimes take time since its an easy to play but hard to master and game meckanics are explained bare bones. Still trying to find what to do with alchemical recipes for example.. mainly because i prefer not looking up guides but yeah no explanation i can find in game at all.. tooltip says about how to delete it but not how to use it... still good for the price.
