Recent reviews by AttyFox

I really enjoyed this game at the beginning, being a casual strategy gamer that has had a cursory enjoyment in games like Civ before and always been intimidated by the overcomplex nature of Total War-like games. The game started out perfectly in the middle of those 2 in having far more interesting combat than Civ with hero mechanics without needing to have an actual battle strategy knowledge like TW.

HOWEVER. The game rapidly lost appeal to me when the battles went from about even to suddenly watching my supposed hero doing less damage than enemy elite units and getting 1 shot by enemy basic units. The Doomwraiths and corruption mechanic feel like you're just supposed to suffer their debuffs on your cities until late game when you have enough damage to kill them in an arbitrary 8 turn limit (which applies to every battle).

I also enjoyed the quest mechanics up until the point they started to spawn completely stuck behind AI nation territories which the moment you step into the AI throws a hissy and their armies drop everything else to stop you from interacting with a core mechanic.

Might give the game a go again another time, but right now my opinion of the game went from an upward trend to falling off a cliff.

TL;DR Wait for some bug fixes, but overall just a few additions to JWE2. Was hoping for a bit more, but still good.

Currently I'm advising against buying the game because - assuming you're looking to just play some sandbox and not bother with what is a bland campaign spent more listening to the same dialogue we've heard in the last two games than playing the game - I am being constantly hampered with bugs.

Consistently I'm finding when placing two buildings close together it will flash between saying I can place it and not, even when both buildings are not within the illustrated boundaries.

Maintenance teams on patrols every other task will get randomly stuck in a loop of not being able to get to their next task and the icon will flicker repeatedly while the unit sits there doing nothing. There's also no prioritisation system in the maintenance team AI as they'll wander past a broken fence to go repair a hotel and then 3 other menial tasks, guaranteeing your dinos get out.

I also got caught with a bug that after a storm it marked my Gallimimus as threats, despite the fact the fence around them was fully repaired and the storm long gone. I also even had another fence that the maintenance teams couldn't be assigned to repair, couldn't repair through direct control and the only solution was to demolish and rebuild it.

If these issues are addressed soon, I'll update my review, but I'm so far disappointed by the current state of the game.

Aside from some frustrating weapon balance and asymmetrical maps like Liberation Peak that give an advantage to one team, the game takes me right back to the Xbox Live days with my pals on BF3 and 4. Hoping for a patch to iron out some of these issues but DICE have definitely won back some - only some - of my faith after the disaster of 2042.

Also the battle pass is £8.99 you clowns.

I really really wanted to leave a good review on this game because I love the concept, the customisation and all the cool weapon types you can equip your mechs with on top of the interesting overworld design and gameplay. Feels like a blend of XCOM with (pick a mecha anime) and with some cool time travel/prediction shenanigans.

However. Every playthrough I've attempted on this game is screwed by the same thing - missile launchers. I feel like I remember the devs saying back around release time they were reducing the frequency they would show up and that either didn't happen or I'm misremembering. Regardless, they show up far too often, are absolutely devastating - can nearly 100-0 any mech you have - and if the missiles are still in the air between turns, you lose their prediction status and when you're tracking so many different things between different mechs and enemies, you can have a turn planned out and then watch your crucial mech eat it from a barrage of missiles that were still midair between turns.

Until missile launchers are hard-nerfed, removed or a mod to remove them comes out, the game is unfortunately not worth my disk space.

Edit: Came back and spent the time to finish this DLC. My opinion still stands. IMO, Agency Headquarters and Villain's Yacht are the worst levels added to the game with too many puzzles that just lack a cohesive feel that ties the clues to the solutions - the example I'll use is the clock in the Villain's Yacht and its associated clue object which gets lost with all the other random objects around. Someone else put it better than me - once I worked them out, my response to the puzzles wasn't, "Ah!", it was, "How was I supposed to find that without a hint?"

To give the other side of the coin, I did love the last level - Underwater Base. Really fun, the hints actually linked together really well and led me pretty solidly through the level with a good few head scratchers that took me long enough to feel challenged but not unbearably frustrated like the other levels.

Revised opinion is that there is some good in here, but still overall a bad DLC. And I've gained a new opinion of how awful the community is against any opinion that is negative.

I love this game, but this is another DLC I'm going to recommend against - so far I've quit twice due to some puzzle either just making 0 sense or expecting you to bring together two bits of information that there is no logical connection between, even after spending time thinking about it.

Frustrating in the worst way. Do better.

So with 342.5 hours in Monster Hunter World as a first time for my interaction with the Monster Hunter series, I loved World. I played the following instalment - Monster Hunter Rise - and had a middling experience. Something about Rise didn't hit the right vibe.

I think Wilds was a fantastic return to form as a PC player of Monster Hunter. I personally didn't have any performance issues outside of accidentally installing the High Resolution Texture Pack, for which I do not have 16GB of VRAM as it lists as a requirement (honestly this is probably what most people are doing wrong when complaining about the performance).

While I think the roster of monsters feels a little short and the pacing of their difficulty makes the game feel quite quick to reach the endgame, it's still a superbly solid game. The weapons I've used (Sword and Shield, Gunlance, Switch Axe and Light Bowgun) all feel super smooth and their new moves added since World feel like great additions that slot in effortlessly. I also think the Focus Strikes mechanics could have been a boring gimmick that didn't have a place but has become an integral part of my repertoire to keep bullying the monsters.

I'd like to see (more monsters obviously but I know that's coming) a housing/room mechanic like we had in World as I think without that capturing Endemic Life and fishing is kinda pointless.

Overall though, I love the game, am ecstatic to see what's coming in April and excited to continue my grind for a full S+S collection!

One of those moments where I wish Steam had a neutral review option.

Starting with the positive, I've never played Talos Principle, but the combinations of shapes and materials was a cool concept that has made me a little more interested. Of course the design of the level overall is very pretty to look at and clean. It's also a free DLC, which is always going to be a good thing.

For the negative, the statuette puzzle was far too abstract and frustrating, mostly because it involved a lot of guesswork as to what represented what. I also feel like the room was really small and short? If I had paid money I would be quite upset, but because its free I can let it slide a bit more, but I don't think it excuses it entirely.

Again which there was a neutral review option as I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it. I'll still give positive as my support for the devs, because their paid DLCs are fantastic and I'm looking forward to the next.

I've played plenty through Early Access and it genuinely feels like the game just got better and better and better.

1.0 has reached the pinnacle of the game with the additions of Mercer Sphere and Sommersloop mechanics that just provide incredible quality of life improvements when you get them researched.

82+ hours into my newest save, I've reached the furthest I've gotten and actually started production on Phase 4 parts and still have the drive to go further. Phase 5 here I come.

Genuinely don't understand the hate for the story or Wuk Lamat. People complain about the story being weak, and I'll say the first half of the story probably is, but everyone seems to paint the whole thing with a wide brush just because of the early story.

The late story, of what I have seen so far, has fascinating implications and further pushes story threads we knew were possible which is massively intriguing and pulls you along for the ride.

As for Wuk Lamat, I really really don't get the hate. She's a funny character that is there to have rapid character growth and development. Could it have been better if it was done over the course of X expansions? Obviously. But I see her journey over the story in some ways as a reflection of the WoL's journey. The point is to see her grow and if they had split it up over multiple expansions, yall would be crybabying saying the story wasn't finished.

We stan Wuk Lamat in this house.

TL;DR- First hours are great and adds some great new boss fights, but FromSoft saved the worst for last with the boss design of the final bosses.

I really really enjoyed my first hours into the DLC and I desperately wanted to give this a positive review. To start, the intro had me totally enthralled with the same gorgeous opening view of the new area as we got when we first started the base game, and the starting plot hooks (as a lore nerd) had me chomping at the bit for even an inkling of answers.

The first bosses I encountered were difficult while I wandered around and went out to found my first sets of Scadutree Fragments, but with enough perseverance, they were doable with a great feeling of achievement. However. Having gone from the absolute high that is the Messmer fight with it's incredible visuals and feeling of satisfaction working out how to dodge some of his moves, there is a RAPID decline in boss quality that only hits rock bottom at the supposed climax.

Romina was alright, though she causes some frame drops with some of her moves (this is not just relevant for her either.), and some weird hitboxes. And then there's the Leda fight which was utterly abysmal. A gank invader fight in a tiny arena where all of them want up in your business and don't give you the opportunity to split them up, with no option to play passive or you get smacked with a Scarlet Rot pot and no option to play aggressive or you get stunlocked by the group is just further proof that FromSoft still have yet to gain the ability to execute a good gank fight and they need to stop trying.

After the teeth-pulling experience of that fight, I was excited for the lore revelations and such for what I could feel was the climax of the DLC. The Radahn fight starts...fine. Phase 1 is doable with some decent moves that you can work out after a few tries, but is hampered by some bizarre moves that catch you with a 2nd hit that comes faster than you can dodge a second time and lack of time to punish the boss.

Phase 2 is bad for a variety of reasons: The phase transition move starts by tanking your frames down all the way to 30, the boss also has an invisible hitbox on the floor while he floats up too which means trying to play aggro and running forward catches you on the air. The lack of time to punish goes up to 11 during this phase with insanely long combos and AoE splashes after the attacks that mean the time you previously could have punished is gone as you've had to dodge another time. The boss has clone based attacks which is cool visually, but ends up making the actual boss' final slash in the combo impossible to see behind the clone attacks, let alone the massive amount of extra fluff on the boss design.

Overall, I really think this DLC could have been a smash hit but got totally ruined by story-required bosses hitting a complete low right when the game should have been reaching it's peak.