While I'll start this by warning you how little "game" there's to be played. I assure you the story is worth it all the way. The characters are believable and are full of life; the dialogues, the voice acting, the overall plot is so very good! You can see how bonds are built and broken between the characters you encounter. There's this feeling of reality throughout the whole game, even with all the the silly magic, alchemy and crafting you get inmerse in this world. Gameplay wise, the progression of skills and artifacts feels very organic and cohesive. There's this one aspect I didn't quite like. You are playing as a teenager who's forced to kill people as part of the storyline (there's no "peaceful" option for a couple of enemies). When I first started playing the game, I accidentally killed a guard in the first town cause I didn't know a little rock in a sling would kill him and there was this very horrible reaction from the main character (again, a teenage girl). It caught me off-guard how bad her reaction was when she realized she killed a man. That I loved. I decided to restart the mision and go full pacifist. At the first boss I realized that wasn't an option but, when I beat him Amicia's reaction wasn't as impactful (note that I had restarted the mision). Later in the game there was this section that got me frustrated so I started killing everyone just to get it done and, eventhough side character call you out and get scared everytime you kill somebody, I came to realize that only that very first was impactful... Of course Amicia gets emotional everytime you kill a main baddie, but every other enemy is inconsequential to the game as a whole. Killing enemies on your way becomes more of a shore to ease your journey and you may even get some good loot out of it. So I played the game in the hardest difficulty and forced myself to not kill anyone passed the 4th lvl and loved the game, even if I took every exploit I manage to find besides killing.
People is review bombing this game over it's performance in console and I find it really unfair to the game itself. I've been playing in it on an RTX 2060 at mid/high settings with RTX on and I've had little to no glitches. I've enjoyed the story, the characters, the music and the gameplay. I liked how I started out with everything and I had to start all over. I fell in love with how well writte side characters are. The action music is awesome (V's and Johnny's theme are just perfect). And Ive had tons of fun trying very hard not to kill people by beating enemies with my fists and blunt objects while playing in the highest difficulty. Now, don't be mislead, I do have some problems with the graphics, my PC can handle max settings as far I was lead to believe, however I had to customize the configs cause I get huge dips in frames during the fights (which to be honest don't happen often due to my play style). I've got stuck a couple of times trying to cheese some barriers by jumping over boxes to get into some buildings and the AI is plain bad sometimes (I've walked in front of enemies who wouldn't detect me cause I was crouching, while other times I dropped some boxes or a bottle and they went full agro). Also, I find it pretty dumb that the game won't let me fully customize my keys on PC and I'm forced to use F for everything. I'd also like to have some way of knowing if the enemies died or are just unconcious. Sometimes dialogues show very tamed texts but you picked them and V turns into a huge asshole and iI feel like the developers are forcing me to play the way the want me to be instead of playing my way (though being an asshole could be tied to my corpo storyline) And the driving feels off when using the keyboard while, somehow, using a controller is very smooth. But these are all little details. If you've enjoyed games like Deus Ex HR or MD and the Witcher, you are sure to love this. They just released a new patch that made the game smoother. Try it out.
Honestly, I liked it a lot just by the nature of the subjects it touches on. Sadly, none of it's fully realized and ends up feeling rushed. The difficulty settings feel wrong in both normal and hard options, specially with an end game that feels easier than the first couple of levels. Story is pretty inconsistent, although quite interesting. The main protagonist fall flat and may as well be silent the whole game. The "quantum messages" in the walls are a great touch that amount to almost nothing at all. The gauntlet is by far the biggest dissapointment since all you do is age and de-age boxes most of the game. It may overall seem like a bad game. However, never have I tried so hard to find secrets, easter eggs and scrapped so hard to find collectibles or anything that could help me understand better a game... Sadly I found out a couple months later the history behind the game and its developer. I can only enjoy what we've got while wondering what could've been. This is an awesome game that didn't get to shine.
My honest review starts with a little background about me: I don't really like RTSs, I've never played turned based games before and table top games are too boring for me. I have never in my life gotten into anything more complicated than Rise of Nations in terms of "strategy". I wasn't even into 40k when I first bought this game. I bought this based purely on the trailer (which is one of the best I've ever seen for a videogame) After playing this I can say that I'm very pleased with my purchase. I love this game. I enjoyed every mision. Every little detail. Graphics are nice. Color paletet is surprisingly rich and the sceneries just pop. Sound design is superb. The soundtrack is very peculiar but also very good. Story is awesome and inspired. Character with an actual personality that you can understand and take into account during your decision making (because you'll have to take some decisions). I liked this game so much that it got me hook into the W40k universe. I bought a book on the Adeptus Mechanicus origins. I read it in a weekend and bought some more books. I bought a couple more games... And the a couple more. Simply put. This is just a great game. I really encourage you to try it out if you have any affinity for the W40K universe. I can only wish you luck and have high hopes that you'll love it at least half as much as I did. Cause it really is a great game this one. Praise the Omnissiah!
