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I have a soft spot for this game, I like everything about it and the DLC wouldn’t have to do much other than add to the experience to have the same impact for me. And I’m happy to say it did. It didn’t feel like a money grab, or something they put out only to keep the game alive. It felt like the same level of care and passion was put into this, adding more to the incredible atmosphere and soundtrack, memorable bosses, fun and unique weapons, great level design with an intuitive and rewarding exploration, and a story that might be better than the base game, although I’ll have to watch some videos to comprehend it fully. The performance left a lot to be desired, very choppy in the beginning, which I found a way to circumvent, but the frame drops were constant. Anyway, I’m happy that this was made, revisiting this world it’s always going to be special.
Incredible! This game is just incredible! Can’t really find the words to talk about it, I feel like keeping it very simple. I’ll compare this game with Lies of P for me personally, not because they are similar, they are not, but because as with Lies of P, I see the game being announced, all I can think is “I REALLY want to play this”. But with both games that were things I felt could prevent me from doing so. Lies of P was for being a Soulslike, a genre I never played other than the first couple of hours. And this game was turn base combat, a system I have never played in my life, not for a minute. And this, as with Lies of P, I’ll bee forever glad I stuck through it, saw it was not rocket science, and came out of it playing one of the best games of my life.
Before I cared a lot about stories in games, I thought it always needed strong stories, but lately, after a lot of games trying to be movies, I kind of change perspective. However, this does not mean that we can’t have phenomenal stories in games, quite the opposite. This game gives one of the best stories recently in any medium. Original, creative, unpredictable, emotional, and a group of characters that are incredible, and won’t be forgotten.
And what about the soundtrack? Phenomenal! Countless times I had to increase my volume just to enjoy it more. The game also thrives aesthetically. The world they built is fascinating. It feels amazing just to walk around, explore and see more of the world. And exploration is very rewarding, I maybe even overdid it. I was definitely overleveled for the last third of the game, it took me a long time to move on with the story because I was exploring and didn’t know when to stop.
The combat is great. For my first turn base, I really dig it. I heard the mechanic of parry and dodging is not very common in this type of game, but for me the whole system felt very natural. Combining skills, the weapons passives and pictos, everything is amazing to see it play out during combat. Really enjoyed this.
There’s no way this is not game of the year, even if the award doesn’t recognize it, I don’t care. This is GOTY, and I’ll have to take a look at recent games, cause this may be the best game since don’t know how long.
Wow, what a fascinating world Kojima has created here. This game is so different than most that I think it will take me a while to understand just how much I liked it. It was one of those memorable ones or simply a different, fun and flawed experience?
I honestly thought this game would be more frustrating than it was. Sure, it’s never going to be frustration free because it’s all part of the main experience, but it felt just the right amount of frustration. I guess it could’ve been less extensive, I can see it getting exhausting for some people, still for me it never felt boring, just a little lazy sometimes to do the walk. The challenges of the traversal for sure make it interesting. The decisions on how to take the cargo, if you’re going to risk adding a lot of weight because is close, if you’re going to get some of the new tools you have at your disposal, or if you’re risking mountains or slopes in order to avoid BT and MULEs etc.
About the progress, a lot of the things that could help with deliveries, like roads and zip-lines, they weren’t very impactful on the main story, because nothing could be used before connecting to the network, and you know, your main goal is connecting to the network. I was going to complain about the lack of something similar to a skill tree, like increasing stamina, however it wouldn’t make sense for the type a game this is. Since the main difficulty is planning your route going to point A to B, if you add a skill tree it could make things not so difficult.
The combat, I’ll be honest, is mid. The character is hefty in nature because it has to be, for all the traversal you do, but when it comes to combat, it makes everything clunky, especially hand to hand. Not a big fan of stealth, but it’s better than close combat. You don’t do a lot of combat so this is not really a problem, but this clunkiness does get in the way sometimes.
Now since the whole universe is really fascinating, the story couldn’t be behind. Sure, it’s confusing and all over the place, and as of right now I have more questions than answers, but I do think the game does a good job of laying the foundations, developing characters and make a pretty compelling story, albeit convoluted in some instances. It can even get emotional by the end, they do a very good job with the characters, making you care for most of them, and that’s halfway of doing a good story.
All in all it was a pleasure playing this game. As I said, in a few weeks I’ll understand how much I enjoyed, I also have to dig a little deeper in the story to make sense of it better, but overall it was a fascinating game to play, just very different than anything. There’s something peaceful about traversing this post-apocalyptic world, everything empty and occasionally a great song playing. Solid experience.