Recent reviews by Beviah

As if Gearbox couldn't keep making worse decisions, here we go again with the updated EULA and TOS. Making it bannable to mod your game is one of the most disconnected decisions a publishing and development studio can make. On top of that, the content being produced is substandard and nowhere comparable to Hopoo's total ownership of the game. This game WAS produced with love and care, but NOW is managed by a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ company whose only goal is to suck and drain the community out of every nickle and dime of a once beloved game series.

What a fall from grace Risk of Rain has become. ♥♥♥♥ Gearbox.

This game deserves more recognition. It's being updated almost every day, with constant bug fixes, QOL and other issues being resolved. The team listens to their community, and is encouraging more mods to be made for this game. (Add Workshop support please so I stop having to use Overwolf)

Giving a thumbs up to help encourage more content to be added to the game, and new systems to be put in place to help the game further. Reminds me of so many different aspects of old WoW, Everquest, and Runescape.

I've put thousands of hours into Smite 1, and it was my favorite MOBA to date, and while Smite 2 innovates on many pre-existing MOBA mechanics to make it feel closer and more true to the genre, there are some fundamental problems that Smite 2 has, and there are many of them, but I'll stick to one focal point.


Blink got nerfed and reverted back into Smite 1 blink. Whilst many argue that this is a good change, it fundamentally has crippled the competitive nature of the game. HiRez tends to do a very bad job at listening to the wrong parties and not formulating their own stance.

Combat Blink made for many interesting interactions you can do with abilities that you wouldn't otherwise be able to do in Smite 1, so the combat of each fight felt better. Predominantly, you could blink while channeling abilities, so it made combat very snappy and felt very unique because that isn't something you could do on Smite 1. I'm not sure if it's technical limitations, spaghetti code or a combination of the two, but nonetheless Smite 2 combat felt infinitely better. With only having one relic to work with, unless you're dedicating an item slot to another defensive, I think that there are less frustrating use cases for relic usage than in Smite 1. Personally, having higher skill combat is more valuable to me than a few frustrating interactions like "he got away when he shouldn't have".

With the nerf of Combat Blink it now turns back into a niche initiator or even more niche escape tool, and that leads us closer to a heads/aegis meta which is significantly more boring to play against. The vocal minority has hurt this game in Smite 1 and it's hurting Smite 2 as well. Since the Blink nerf was announced, I've no interest in playing. At this point it's just playing a worse version of Smite 1. It's under baked, it doesn't have an identity, it's competing with itself, it has no competitive presence whatsoever, all the professional players are dropping like flies because there is no competitive presence, the balance decisions are questionable at best, HiRez hasn't made any significant effort to try and get new players involved into that game apart from the same old casual slop game modes that quite frankly don't matter.

I want Smite 2 to succeed, but HiRez needs to take a firm stance if this is supposed to be a competitive game or a casual game, and right now they're trying to do both and not succeeding in either.

Updated Review for 2025

As if Gearbox couldn't keep making worse decisions, here we go again with the updated EULA and TOS. Making it bannable to mod your game is one of the most disconnected decisions a publishing and development studio can make. On top of that, the content being produced is substandard and nowhere comparable to Hopoo's total ownership of the game. This game WAS produced with love and care, but NOW is managed by a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ company whose only goal is to suck and drain the community out of every nickle and dime of a once beloved game series.

What a fall from grace Risk of Rain has become. ♥♥♥♥ Gearbox.

buy hard game
complain when not hard
dev sell dlc
dev make hard
complain when hard

git gud

Doing my due diligence to tell you to heed the warnings and tell you to stay far away from Raid and farther away from anything Plarium related.

Raid on paper could be a really good gacha game, the problem is met with Plarium's greed. In other gacha games, sure, greens, blues or epics sometimes are viable, in Raid? Not at all. It's very cut and dry. Mythics > Legos > some Epics. Unless you are prepared to pull out the wallet and swipe, this game is genuinely not worth your time. The ceiling to play the end game gets higher and higher as more time passes. More factions are added, with new rarities, it creates a disparity for new players that aren't willing to drop hundreds of dollars on the game.

Now before I get any thoughts of "Well, it's a gacha game, how do you expect it to survive?" - you clearly have never played Raid before. There is ALWAYS a new fusion. There is ALWAYS a new unit being released. There is ALWAYS a new Mythic unit being brought into the game. They make PLENTY of money, and people are so brainwashed into giving Plarium money to make their accounts stronger and stronger to be viable for PvP, that they don't think about what game they're talking about.

Then there are so many subtle marketing tactics that they use, such as randomizing the names of the free packs so when you aren't paying attention, you have to thumb through the packs to prey on you and hope you purchase one because "Wow, that's a good deal!". Then the predatory popups that you are barraged with after you exit any menu that leads you to the "home", and the other FOMO "deals" that if you click off of it, they're gone "forever". The only purchases that are "worth" in Raid, are materials contributed towards fusions, which even then have become harder and harder to complete without spending money, even with MONTHS of saving.

Finally, the actual combat is so gimmicky without certain champs, and some Doom Tower stages REQUIRE certain champs, some Faction Trials REQUIRE certain champs. As you continue to progress deeper in the game, you need specific units to break certain hurdles, and if you don't have it? Too bad. Spend money or pray that you can get them through either a banner up or swipe.

Play literally any other gacha game and it'll be worth more of your time and money if you choose to do that. Do not listen to the people who huff the copium that Raid is a good game.

Edit: To expand further on what I had said, I'll dive a bit deeper into the problems that Raid has comparatively to other gacha games.

Starting with paid QOL. Many other good gacha games have free unequip persistently compared to Raid. In Raid, it's an event, and an irregular one at that. There is no farmable silver missions/hunts/boss. In order to farm silver, you need to farm a specific stage because it drops shields, which sells for the most individually comparatively to other gear, which most new players won't know, so right away, the main currency used to interface with the game has created friction with your players immediately.

Next, farming potion materials to promote your units stats isn't persistent. You need to wait for specific days of the week to open up that stage, unless you are willing to pay money to open it up early for you. So unless you are proactively farming potions on top of managing progression, getting anything actually done in the game has become increasingly more difficult without spending money.

From here, the shard events are horrible. With each passing update, they require more resources because Plarium has decided it's too easy for F2P players to obtain. Now, should Raid's entire game design be balanced around someone not giving them money? Not necessarily, Raid needs money to survive like any other game, and for a F2P game, monetization is important. However, when your players have to save for months on end to even have a chance at completing a shard event, there is a massive problem. I have an account hitting UNM and end-game content, yet it's still a struggle to save properly for shard events without spending. This includes doing my daily missions, collecting a fully upgraded Gem Mine, and not pulling until a fusion starts. Doing the absolute bare minimum to conserve energy. The list continues. Raid is not welcoming to new players, and it's only getting worse. We've gone from 12 Sacred shards being enough to complete a summon event for one part of the shard fusion to now being almost double that. Think about how many Sacreds you get on a daily basis, now think about how quickly you're going to blow through all of those pulls for a fusion. That's assuming you're even hitting UNM or NM, which most players aren't.

Not to mention, there are so many external tools and resources required to play at a reasonable level. Speed tuning in Raid is very finicky, and you need to hit certain break points to properly do certain content, including Clan Boss and Arena, which is the "premiere" content of Raid. That means that this has made the new player experience even more difficult to interface with because by the time your average player makes it to this point, they have either quit the game or they feel too invested to quit.

It goes without saying that Plarium is actively pushing out their playerbase, whales included. If you haven't started Raid by this point, don't. You will be perpetually behind. Too many limited one-time units have been released that are essential to play as F2P. Fusions are virtually unobtainable at this point without at least 70k+ Energy banked and anywhere from 50-60 Sacreds or equivalent ready to go. Gearing is becoming more difficult.

The only people recommending Raid are trolling or are paid bot accounts by the devs. Raid has been receiving more criticism and backlash as time has gone on, it's subjected to a lot of meme content which shouldn't be a surprise at this point.

Let the game die from letting the already dwindling player-base down over and over again. Play anything else, it will respect your time investment far more than Raid ever will.

made my first fortress, made a workshop, some rooms for the boys right out of the tutorial

immediately get invaded by the resurrected corpses of neighboring elves, starting with my dog getting ripped in half and my last dwarf cowering in the corner of his room he just finished building

best game ive played in years

V Rising is an open-world survival RPG where you're presumably invading a human controlled territory. Obviously, as a vampire - you have a lot of people trying to hunt you and kill you. Personally, I think this game absolutely nailed the threatening open-world aspect to the gaming genre that is tending to be lacking from the survival genre especially.

A few things worth noting:
• This game is very time-consuming. You need a ton of resources that require a lot of time to produce and craft new resources. This will inadvertently force you to create more stations to expedite this process.
• The world is not randomly generated, which can be a negative or a positive depending on your personal taste. I personally enjoy a bit of randomness to keep the world fresh, but this was never advertised and it's early access.
• Your vampire is very customizable. Between V Blood abilities and weapon abilities, your build can be very unique in this game. Whilst I'm sure there's a meta on the PvP servers, it makes it very entertaining.
• The V Blood encounters feel progressively more dangerous as you encounter them. Plus they are incredibly rewarding to fight. The fights are generally very well thought out and well-designed.
• The survival elements can feel tedious, with different types of blood and qualities of it, especially if you're a PvPer, I can see why this would be a major turnoff for some. Although I do not think it's bad at all, and is personally not a negative for me, this is a critical, if not a selling point mechanic for the game.
• The day and night cycle feels great. It's very interesting to be "safe" at night but be in danger during the day, and with the sun burning you, and the attention to detail with shadows shielding you from the sun burning you is a phenomenal touch.
• Base building is great as well. A very nice touch, especially with it's given aesthetic.
• The optional DLC is completely cosmetic and offers no advantage whatsoever, and is purely intended to support the devs.

V Rising is early on in development, but this game could potentially contend with some of the best survival games on the market. It provides a very unique niche to the genre and brings a lot of unique things to the table. I strongly recommend this game, especially if it continues in this direction.

After beating the game for the first time, I have to say, this is easily the best FromSoftware title on the market, and it's not even close.

All of the bosses have something about them, whether it be encounter design itself, move set, ranging to aesthetic, Elden Ring truly hit the nail on the head with every single aspect of the game. While this may not be the most difficult title FromSoftware has introduced to the soulsborne trilogy, it surely lends itself to being in the contender for it if nothing else.

Between the open-world take on the genre to the sheer amount of bosses and content is absolutely criminal for the price tag, and to be quite frank, well worth the amount you are paying for this game. Even if you are not familiar with the soulsborne universe, this game is still very forgiving for new players, as you have many options to farm levels and make this game as easy, or as difficult as you choose to.

The rewards from Remembrances, build variety with Ashes of War, dungeon loot, is absolutely phenomenal, and it should not be underestimated that the amount of different builds and unique things that you can do this game is completely unrivaled to any other Dark Souls game prior to this.

Nothing compares to beating Malenia for the first time. She is bar none the most difficult boss introduced into the Dark Souls series. What a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥ show of a boss that was. Never in my time playing this series have I come across a boss even remotely close to her difficulty, and I thought (pre-nerf) Radahn was going to be a high bar to meet, but man does Malenia make every boss in the series like a baby-back ♥♥♥♥♥.

If you're not sure about buying the game, this game is worth it off-sale. FromSoftware is not a small company by any means, but they really nailed everything I could've asked for from a future Dark Souls game, and the open world aspect of it was truly one of the most unexpected aspects of the game that really has added a completely new dimension to the game that I hope that is a new trend implemented in the game going forward. They deserve every penny made off this game.

Elden Ring is Game of the Year 2022.

I understand the MTX removal has been a fiscal challenge for Jagex, but forcing us to pay the difference is not the move to build customer loyalty and only serves to come at our expense, after arguably one of the best updates this game has ever seen. Truly a shame. If we get better customer service alongside multiple character slots, I'll resub, but costing as much as WoW is wild, even for Jagex.