Recent reviews by huffadopolis

Is good.

Crafting is valuable and easy/accessible. Though I personally am still in the old-school mindset of "hoard all crafting materials until endgame". This is not correct for Last Epoch but I can't help myself.

Loot is what you'd expect from a modern ARPG, a bajillion things drop and you can set loot filters. "Hoarding/selling" is discouraged as items aren't worth that much, so it's worth it to setup a loot filter to only show items that would potentially upgrade you.

Mob density feels just right, small packs of enemies followed by a brief break then another small group of enemies.

You get a lot of skill and character upgrade points in an interval that feels like you are always progressing. Feels good.

Loot, loot everywhere, I'm a huge fan of loot and you get a ton of it. Mostly stuff I don't even pick up but I love seeing it all drop knowing that any one of those random loot drops could be the next upgrade for me even if they weren't at the time.

I'm not at endgame yet, as of this review I'm level 66 as my highest character. But different options for playing the game have opened up (monoliths) which is a smaller side-progression which adds things to your character while allowing you to slay masses of enemies to level up.

I hate to slag on other games but this is what I hoped Diablo IV would have been. Haven't touched that game since near-release because it just strayed too far from the path of fun.

This game isn't a live-service game, the fully offline play mode is entirely an option.

Really enjoying myself when I play this game, just wish I had more time available to do so!

Where did the last 4.5 hours go?

Game is good, reminds me a lot of Oxygen Not Included in all the good ways, without the suffocation.

Wasn’t expecting the turn based combat parts once I unlocked it but was pleasantly surprised by it.

I like how part of the core gameplay loop is recruiting and then either retaining or getting rid of characters so you aren’t necessarily stuck with anyone you don’t like, you basically turn them into materials needed for research and recruiting more folks.

For early access I’m really digging it so far and haven’t experienced any bugs except for one of possibly my own making where building some stuff trapped one of my characters until I moved some of it to free them. Not sure if this was a bug or a user skill issue though.

At the point of writing this review I'm 15 hours in and have only gotten through the first small populated area. I'm really enjoying the game/combat/dialog/voiceacting this game is highly polished and it really feels like I'm playing a game of D&D with a dungeon master that understands and allows for outside of the box thinking.

Yes a lot of the mechanics feel "Diviinity Original Sin 2"-ish and I'm 100% ok with that. If you didn't like that game or how it plays you may not like this game either and that's ok everybody has personal preferences.

But if you want a good D&D experience where just about anything you try has been accomodated for in the engine to allow you to try it, you will really enjoy the game.

I can't say good enough things about the voice-acting in this game. Very very well done, good job Larian.

I was one of those people that wanted to buy it 2 years ago during it's early access phase but knew that I'd be better served waiting for full release for the final version polished playthrough experience. About once a month I was debating whether or not to buy it in early access, so I'm not surprised at all to see the success it has had once version 1.0 was released. I imagine a lot of people in my situation knew that Larian makes good games and wanted to wait for the full/final package.

i'm really looking forward to the probably 100+ hours that I have ahead of me in this game. Playing at my own pace, exploring/looting/talking to everyone is a real joy.

Finally, an FPS where being a scrub is an asset.

This is a very fun roguelite with extremely tight controls, a soundtrack that you don't notice is awesome until the fighting ends because it completely fits every time.

There are a few things that stand out the most to me after playing it for 6 hours:

a) Controls are superb, you are NEVER fighting the controls and they do exactly what you want when you want them to

b) There is very little downtime, I feel like the game respects my time and packs so much into a run that time sorta slows down. I feel like I've played 20 hours of this game but my playtime is only 6 hours. Because I didn't have to spend 14 hours backtracking or pixel hunting for treasure or whatever.

c) every single room has a meaningful reward and the type of reward is relayed to you in advance, I very often find myself seriously torn between which room to go to next because there are almost no bad choices presented to you

d) there is no camera adjustment that you have to do, and the camera absolutely does not get in the way of anything; you're never obscured behind something so you can't see what you are doing, and there are never things hidden behind where you can't see them

e) you get a handful of weapons to start with, each has a little different playstyle but none of them are decidedly weaker, as through each run you get many upgrades to the base abilities/damage of the weapon you choose; very fun as there are many combinations of skill upgrades and all of them are good so you'll be sitting there flipping a coin sometimes on which upgrade to choose because they're all so good

f) I never lose track of where my character is or what it is doing; I was a little worried as I get older here that a hectic-looking game like this would be "too much" visually to keep track of but I seriously not once in 6 hours did I lose track of what was going on on-screen. I don't know how this magic was achieved but I'm very impressed and should have probably made this point a) instead of last

The story is told through/during gameplay or very short dialogs in your "home base" which also usually lead to some sort of upgrade possibility for your next run.

The power curve is great, I've almost always gotten a little bit further than the last run each time because of the gradual but consistent upgrades you earn each run that permanently upgrade you or the possibilities in a future run.

100% worth buying if you got this far.

Time played last two weeks: 95 hours

Satisfactory is basically 3D Factorio in mechanics but is not a blatant copy.

I'd say that's a good value for your money but maybe not for your sleep schedule

I have encountered no bugs or issues beyond a small memory footprint increase after several hours of gameplay; reloading the game fixed that and it did not affect me negatively just something I noticed.

This is one heck of an RPG, and is totally couchable they did a great job with the control scheme. Well-done voice acting for I think every line in the game, at least so far (I suggest getting the Pet Pal talent for the voice acting alone).

The turn-based combat can be quite strategic with the involvement of elemental effects. You end up with a lot of items and spells that allow you get pretty creative in combat as well.

Think stuff like poisoning an enemy, then lighting the poison pool under them on fire. Or sending some ice spears down on an enemy, then using a fireball to melt the ice and turn it into steam, then electrifying the steam cloud. Or using a teleport spell to dump the enemy mage from a great height into a puddle of oil then lighting it on fire, slowing/damaging/burning them. All these effects can be found on arrows and weapons too so your melee/ranged characters can join in the shenanigans.

Fair warning though, the NPCs can also get creative on YOU.

This game is a RPG but your battles are conversations. I can't explain it any better than that. Your choices matter and player agency isn't just a passing thought it seems to define the gameplay.

I'm only 2 hours in and I can already say that the writing and gameplay style are amazing and something that no other game has captured that I've played before. You truly can be a complete failure of a human being if you want to.

Inspecting a vehicle led me down a 15 minute conversation rabbithole that I was not expecting at all. This is a great thing.

Do not buy this game if you do not like to read or make choices. If you like RPGs and dialog, definitely give this game a second look, but watch a 5 minute gameplay video or something as I am finding "what this game is" to be difficult to put into words and do it proper justice.

Welcome to Destiny 2 where you will get almost no ingame direction at what to do, with a billion different systems built up over the years of various grindy things TO do. New player or returning player, expect to feel overwhelmed and paralyzed by choice.

Team colors are red and blue. Blood is also colored red. Every team is red after about 10 seconds of battle. Friendly fire simulator 2019.