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Recent reviews by ●ColdBolt

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23 people found this review helpful
1 person found this review funny
0.8 hrs on record
>Server verification
>No heckin' "hate" speech and bigotry allowed (Anything I don't like is bigotry and "hate" speech ok????)
>Yuo MUST have insufferable powertripping jannies on your servers 24/7 ok???
>No MvM mode

Coal from the depths of preddithell
Posted 22 March. Last edited 22 March.
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1.5 hrs on record
Great sequel.
Posted 26 November, 2025.
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84.6 hrs on record (82.0 hrs at review time)
Early Access Review
I'm currently at about 600k net worth, It's quite promising, but currently I wouldn't really recommend it either.
You should pirate it or at least play the demo to get the idea.

I'm mostly mixed about it but leaning towards positive, hence the positive review.

The early game is VERY addicting, especially as you progress to new properties, equipment, regions, drugs, etc. It's quite fun.
But overall, for the amount of content in the game I wouldn't say its currently worth its nearly 20$ price. With the hopefully upcoming future updates? sure.

I like this simple, cartoon-ish graphics/art-style of the game, especially how kind of goofy the characters look. Humor is good (drug effects, graffiti, some few dialogue's). The soundtrack, which seems to be mostly original, is surprisingly amazing and most tracks fit the game very well; A recently added jukebox almost feels like a requirement to all your properties, lol.
Some things in the game are quite clever and/or surprisingly interactive such as breakable vending/bank machines, trash burning machines, trash grabber (very handy in early game), pick-pocketing mechanic, etc.

My main problems/suggestions with the game besides the price are:
1. Launching the game can randomly be such a pain in the ass, freezes/crashing during start up, freezes/crashing during save loading, it's very weird, I can't even pinpoint what exactly causes this issue, alternate version probably helps with this but I don't want to risk ruining my existing save file (I've heard this game can frequently mess up your save files but it hasn't happened to me) or FPS.

2. For a game about manufacturing and dealing drugs, the cops really aren't a serious threat at all but mostly a slight nuisance. They do a few patrols during the morning & evening but mostly just stand at these obnoxious car checkpoints which make the cars kind of useless during the day. They are also obsessed with standing near taco-ticklers for the whole night. Getting away from a chase is quite easy (especially with a non-♥♥♥♥♥♥ skateboard) and even beating them up is not that problematic either. Like I said, mostly just a nuisance, but it'll likely change in a cop update in the future, I hope.

3. There's no real competition to the player either, but like with the cops, a cartel update should fix this issue.

4. Mixing. It's very... monetarily unrewarding? It has very strong diminishing returns for the ingredient cost and the amount of work required (to get the ingr., delivering it, and putting it through mixing) and most effects have VERY minimal cost impact on the drug. The effects themselves can be quite fun to figure out and funny to see in action though.

5. The quality (premium, heavenly, etc.) of the drugs don't seem to impact the cost of the drug at all, which is quite lame.

6. IMO, money laundering amount, from basically any business, is a bit too low. Businesses should also generate some cash for the player, but none of them do.

7. By the time you get to cocaine, finding out all effects, buying all businesses/properties, hiring employees, the game just kind of becomes a boring shelf-restocking simulator. There really isn't much to do by the time you get to suburbia region tbh.

8. All of the customers seem to have set daily budgets, IMO they are insanely low for most of them. They also seem to have preference to specific type of drugs but figuring them out is boring & annoying without a guide (same with figuring out their specific max budgets). Maybe if you raise their addiction & relationship to max they also get increased daily budgets? They really need to be raised in some way.

9. Why doesn't Salvador (cocaine seeds guy) have a store in the delivery app? All other suppliers have one, even Oscar, ffs.

10. The amounts of things a single employee can work on seems quite low, especially for cleaners and handlers. You're seriously telling me a cleaner can only work on 3 trash bins? Why not at least make it an even 4? ffs. Same with the handlers only being able to work on 3 stations. This wouldn't really be a problem if properties didn't have such relatively low employee limits.

11. Product app is severely disorganized, especially if you did like over 50-100 drug mixes, you should be able to hide or remove drugs from the product app or something.

12. Weed leaves sometimes get stuck inside the pots. The only way to remove them is by moving the whole pot, which also erases any soil inside of it.

13. Making meth doesn't seem to be that profitable (costs, time to make, and effort), the "suggested" price of basic unmixed meth should be increased by at least 10-25$.

14. Addicted customers who come to you in person act as if you're the one offering them an unprompted deal, with them using the crappy low "suggested" price base for acceptance %, which makes them extremely annoying especially since some of them ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ attack you after THEY'RE THE ONES WHO DIDN'T ACCEPT THE DEAL THEY CAME TO ME FOR, and if you fight back they lose some of their reputation with you, seriously? lol. You really need to rework that in some way.

15. Customers should be haggling with the player more, instead of just straight up accepting or especially declining a deal with you for the entire day.

16. It feels odd that your employees always just stand outside when not working, they should probably be standing near their assigned locker/bed instead IMO.

17. I kind of understand why guns are deliberately made so awful to use, but then whats the point of adding them at all? Can you at least make it so that ammo clips can be stacked together? Or that you can "train"/upgrade your character to handle firearms better? Or something else like that?

18. Cops can detect you on a very fixed system; unless you are out of range, in a bush? (Doesn't seem to work all the time), or in front of some object, they can always detect you. Even if you're in the shadows slightly peeking around the corner of a building from like 30 miles away, they'll still see you. (Stealth mechanics kind of suck in the game is what I'm saying)

I also have a few nitpicks & minor bugs which are not worth getting into and hopefully will get patched out in QoL updates.

This game has very great potential, but at its current state it's not all that remarkable, i'd say it's slightly over hyped.
Posted 11 June, 2025. Last edited 11 June, 2025.
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8 people found this review helpful
1 person found this review funny
1
51.5 hrs on record (46.4 hrs at review time)
Note: I'll update this review later on when I'll get one of the endings

So far, i'm quite mixed on it.
For the most part its kind of boring, with not much to actually do. Progressing is fun (even though its so nauseatingly slow at the very beginning), placing/building things is fun, and customizing your cult at the begging is sorta fun. The humor in the game is kinda mid and most of the time it comes with negative impacts to your cult (negative cultist thoughts, newspapers, leader demands, failing mission actions, and such) which just sours it even further.
But the most annoying thing by far are these ridiculous leader demands which start popping up around day 40? 50? I don't remember, there doesn't seem to be a damn limit to how many of them can appear and some of them are so bullsh1t that they require you to rebuild/change so much sh1t at an unreasonable rate, except you have such limited space and it would literally cost thousands and make your cultists unproductive. They are also quite contradictory to each other, such as needing a bathroom to have a single toilet, but then another demand will ask you to have ALL of your rooms have a minimum of 7 prestige, seriously?, otherwise your cultist will be ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about it and have insane negative mood debuff for HOURS. How am i supposed to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ restructure my bathroom to do both? What if I had no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ space left around the bathroom to expand it to fit both of those? Why the hell are they permanent and can't be removed at all? What type of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cult leader starts demanding so much sh1t from a cult which only started at a few thousand $ like a 100 days ago?

The room prestige, especially when appealing to higher grade cultists, is also quite a garbage system not fit for the game, there's simply not enough space, and if you do find space to fit these giant rooms, your cultists are always so damn slow they're going to waste like an entire in-game hour just getting to the place. Lmao. The fact that the size of the room doesn't really impact the prestige is ridiculous, the fact that getting even a prestige 5 items is such a nuisance is ridiculous. It's just getting annoying at this point.

The game, in general, doesn't even really feel like running specifically a cult, its more like running some "mafia"/crime organization, but mostly like a 2D mall/store simulator, there's not much actual cult stuff going on.
Posted 14 March, 2025. Last edited 14 March, 2025.
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160.4 hrs on record (112.4 hrs at review time)
It's... very good. Quite great at times.

Done 4 playthroughs. All on mastermind except for 1.
1st as a sort of "trickster" class with Ice Prison, Shadow Swap, and Charm.
2nd as a black kid with Brutalist/Martial Artist powers (for the token achievement).
3rd basically the same as 1st but with Diabolic difficulty.
4th as a girl with Cyborg & Gadgeteer powers.
Also beaten all of the 2 playable DLCs on all 4. I've enjoyed every single of these playthroughs, despite not much actually changing between them. I highly recommend you play only on mastermind, because the game really isn't that difficult and I'd imagine it being quite boring otherwise, especially on replays.

I've never played the Stick of Truth (I did watch a playthrough of it a long time ago, don't even remember when), but visually it's quite amazing and definitely looks like SouthPark. The audio is quite good as well, especially these goofy background store songs and the stereotypical, dramatic superhero music that plays when exploring the map or fighting and such, the "8-bit" like remix of Blame Canada - "Welcome To Canada" might be my personal favorite in the game, shame there's not much to do in that area of the map. Exploring in the game is quite fun and is mostly rewarded quite well. The humor is funny at times, mid at most, but never really boring either, just feels like the writers held back a bit tbh, especially compared with how insane the Stick of Truth was. Even if you don't watch any SouthPark (kind of like me tbh), you'd still enjoy the references, characters, and story to some extent. As for collectibles, I think I've only had to search up how to get 1 selfie and last the memberberry location, mostly because I never used consumables (Moses) and memberberry because if you go to that spot BEFORE the mission where you enter Dr.Mephesto's lab, they are literally just not there, they only spawn AFTER you do that mission, which is basically the end of the game already, that was complete BS. Besides that I had no issues finding anything. Also, some of those "yaoi" drawings are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nasty, lol. I suppose collecting them is optional, but the rewards you get for collecting them is weirdly high and uncomparable with any other collectibles, gathering cash in this game is quite difficult in general, especially if you're not going to explore anything.

As for the gameplay itself, it's quite satisfying for the most part and the difficulty is balanced fairly well. I'd imagine it being much more boring if it was the same as Stick of Truth (especially with no tile-based movement). I really liked the many "strategic" aspects of it. It was quite annoying to forget that enemies can move/attack through each other, but its mostly a skill issue on my part, I guess.

The 2 DLCs (Crunch and Casa Bonita) were surprisingly amazing, I didn't expect much, especially with how uninteresting danger deck or any other DLC is, but these 2 are a must have. The 2 DLC allies don't seem that great at first but are actually quite OP if used correctly. My only complaints with these DLCs is that they seem to be very poorly balanced around Diabolic difficulty and that fighting most of vampire enemies just isn't fun, all of them do busted amounts of damage, have insane reviving or support abilities, health leeching AND range. It was kinda aids to fight them, especially on boss battles with telegraphed attacks.

Now, it isn't exactly perfect either.

1. The difficulty in the game is basically just "enemies do more damage and you do less" on 4 different scales, I don't even think the enemy AI is really affected by it, at least not in much of a significant way (though I did only play on mastermind or diabolic so idk).
2. Why is there NOT A SINGLE fast travel point in the area around police station, city hall, and lower left residences? There are 2 basically next to each other at City wok and Peppermint hippo but not a single one in that whole area? or between Raisins and Tokens house? This was very annoying, especially after the first playthrough.
3. I've noticed that confused/charmed enemies do very reduced damage than if they attacked you, which is more noticeable on Diabolic, idk if its intentional or a bug but its quite BS in my opinion because if my allies get charmed/confused they still do a ♥♥♥♥ ton of damage.
4. About 90% of consumables in the game are absolute trash. I really don't see the point of most of them except things like revives since ALMOST ALL of them also spend your turn when using them, which most of the times is not worth it at all, on each of my playthroughs I've only really used antidotes to clear insanely damaging status effects (like gross or charm) and a few revives, everything else is basically useless and doesn't do much damage or support.
5. There really isn't much variation between being a black or female character, there barely seems to be any differences in story/dialogue/gameplay, at least from what I've noticed. You get like 1 special artifact if you are black or female or a few minor dialogue changes, but thats really it, which is kinda lame. "Every other aspect of your whole life" my ass, barely anything changes, if anything its easier being black than any other skin tone because of the unique artifact & the fact you can't fight freeman, lol.
6. The "buddy" mechanic is quite good in theory, a good way to block off certain places/items without invisible walls or such, but the way its implemented SUCKS. It just so slow for no real reason and its quite excruciatingly boring after the first playthrough, even during the first playthrough.
7. Kyle's cousin is so damn annoying, but more stupidly is that when he decides to randomly appear in a battle, he can END YOUR TURN. Wtf? It didn't happen all the time but I swear his appearance definitely ended one of my turns a few different times. Ridiculous.
8. There really should've been a way to replay ANY story battle, there just isn't much to actually do after completing the story, which is very lame. The length of the main campaign/story also feels somewhat short, which feels even more short without DLCs, speaking of which...
9. Basically any other DLC besides Crunch or Casa are useless and don't really add much to the game, definitely not worth buying them on their own (If you didn't get gold edition) besides those 2. Danger Deck definitely is challenging but the rewards are garbage for the effort or power/class changes you have to make in these ridiculous battles. Every other DLC is basically just cosmetics or artifacts which make the early to mid game easier, which combined with the fact the game just isn't really difficult like 95% of the time, making these DLCs actively hurt your experience, unless you are a total complete casual playing for the story/humor, I guess.
10. The game should tell you or give hints that there are going to be more "waves" of enemies or that the enemy is going to have more than a few turns later on, its quite BS how they spontaneously can just pull out what is basically a "Double Edge" for speedster without any penalties. (Like in Kyle's mom battle or Drunk Randy battle)
11. Clothes/Outfit customization is great, but color options in some clothes are weird.

There are a few more minor issues like the game getting stuck on black screen when you leave the school, battle the rednecks, and go in the direction of church (happened to me on a few playthroughs, it's weird), or how your mouse (cursor) is stuck when you go in inspection mode, so you have to waste more time having to click first so you can finally move the cursor. But I'd say those 11 are what turned this game from a legimitate GOTY-tier game to just a generally good game.

Wouldn't say it's worth a full 30$/50$ in 2025, especially with the pricey DLCs, but you should buy it at a discount, which seems to be quite frequent and as low as 80%. You'll definitely get at least about 24 hours of enjoyment even without exploration/side quests/DLCs.
Posted 12 March, 2025. Last edited 12 March, 2025.
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1 person found this review helpful
35.0 hrs on record
The most mid experience I've ever had. At times it was even horribly boring and obnoxious.

Driving in the game is kind of cancer (except if you're driving some specific 2 or 3 cars out of like 40 cars in the game, on simulation mode at least), that race mission is cancer, shooting is kinda boring & those aim crosshairs (or gun accuracy over like 5 meters) are cancer. Enemies can be quite bullet spongy and barely react to getting bodyshot.
Replaying chapters is quite boring and buggy, I was chasing Sergio when he randomly turned the car around and literally crashed into me, lmao. Then on another try some NPC drivers almost crashed into me, causing me to once again start that boring chase sequence from the very beginning on that sh1tty motorcycle than can barely turn corners unless you're driving at speed of like 20-30, and this wasn't the only ridiculous bug that happened in my chapter replays.
Checkpoints respawn you with like half the health, almost every single mission where you have to protect/escort/whatever some truck is impossible without restarting checkpoints (at least on harder difficulties) because the vehicle gets destroyed in like 9 hits, this is especially noticeable in the "trip to the country" mission.
And there are like a gorillion useless collectibles in the game. "Free ride" or whatever you want to call it basically exists just to collect the gorillion collectibles and do a few missions, all of which seem to involve driving (wow how fun, considering driving is quite annoying in this game).
The police response on simulation mode becomes more of a nuisance than an interesting mechanic. I also don't get why you can't disable these phantom signs which show you the way to current objective, there's a literal minimap path already, it's kind of annoying too. One of the boxes needed to collect a fox (in downtown area) just straight up doesn't spawn, causing me to need to literally glitch through the wall to get it, lmao. Free roam also has a tendency to either crash on the loading screen or randomly when using the steam overlay.
The game just seems to be optimized quite poorly, I've had way too many stutters, fps drops, and outright freezes despite running on mid graphic settings (mostly in free roam though). Not even GTA V or RDR2 ran this bad for me majority of the time.

In free roam if you piss off the cops enough for like 2 or 3 stars, it just magically spawns like 2 or even more cop cars/motorcycles near your exact location, sometimes within literal seconds, great "realism" there. It's like the devs don't actually want players to have any fun in the game, it's wild. You can however start 3 or 5 "extreme" race laps, for any racing troglodytes who actually enjoy driving in this wannabe "game". Or do one of like 12 missions where you drive a sh1tty vehicle... like a literal bus, for like 5 whole minutes at certain speed or it explodes, damn must have taken a lot of brain power to come up with this unfun pile of sh1t.

I don't think there is a SINGLE thing that you can do in free roam that actually has anything explicitly to do with being a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mafioso. No robberies/heists, no shooting rival gang members, territory control, extortion, collecting protection cash, etc. NONE. Just collectibles and driving missions, genuinely insane. Nor does the store page advertise the game as being primarily a driving/racing simulator, I bought this game expecting to do Mafia stuff, not a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 1930s car driving simulator.

Also, for some reason the buttons don't really get rebinded, I changed my run button to Q and every time I tap Q Tommy also does a melee attack, or when I press C to sneak Tommy will always also pullout any melee he is carrying, because I guess the original melee weapon button is C? idk. That is even more annoying than driving in the game.

Sure as ♥♥♥♥ not worth the 40$, 6$~ at most. I wouldn't even bother pirating it. This "game" is more of a short movie than a game. It looks good but plays boring or outright annoying. The story itself is alright. Songs/Music/Audio in general is good (though the radio seems to have very little track variation, I constantly keep hearing the same like 5-7 songs/music typically).
Overall, quite an overrated game. Just watch some playthrough on youtube tbh.
Posted 3 January, 2025. Last edited 24 January, 2025.
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2 people found this review helpful
1
44.7 hrs on record
I'm only about 15% done with the game so far, I'll prob update this review later on once I'll get to 100%.

So far, this god-awful interrogation system is actual AIDS.
It literally feels like RNG gambling to choose the right option, and there is no real way to restart the interrogation, except restarting the whole case or constantly quitting back to main menu (you will likely have to collect clues all over again though).

"Doubt" ESPECIALLY is such a ♥♥♥♥♥♥, unclear option. I am aware that these options were all called something else before being released on PC, but either way there is no clear way to know if you're supposed to either select a doubt or lie (& evidence). I am good at realizing if something is a lie (despite the fact that the face of whoever you're interviewing always looks just constipated and/or weird most of the time), but deciding what the absurd, specific evidence is supposed to be the "right" one also makes no real sense at times. This game is like 45% interrogations and they made this part of the gameplay such an un-enjoyable, illogical, gamble of what the right option should be.

Also, why does this require rockstar launcher? does a singleplayer game REALLY need it? lol. (I had no issues with the launcher itself though)

Maybe buy it at an astronomical discount, because there is no way this ancient game is still really worth a whole 20$.

Edit:
I've played through a few more cases, and it's just awful, snoozefest of an experience.
The "action", especially shooting is quite boring and way too repetitive. Street Crimes are mostly un-creative "shoot goons" which tends to just throw you off the case you're doing.

The interrogation system was just as awful as it was in the first few cases. Intuition points are almost impossible to come by after like Rank 8-10, and why the ♥♥♥♥ are they capped at 5? Either way, the only good option is the "ask the community", removing an answer is almost always useless (In my experience it would always just remove "lie", which seems to be the most rare correct out of truth or doubt anyway).
This whole "faces tell you if they're lying or not" is also absolutely unreliable ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. In the "Red Lipstick Murder" Case, when you interview bar owner, on the last third question, he makes a completely neutral looking face, and his statement seemed correct, but oh no, I was apparently supposed to choose "doubt" there, yeah ok.
Another example would be "Golden Butterfly" Case when interviewing the daughter, on the second question she made a completely neutral face, her statement seemed true, but no it was also apparently doubt, yeah ok. How the ♥♥♥♥ do you ♥♥♥♥ up the most integral game mechanic? Nope, I'm done with dealing with this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

The achievements are boring and like 1/3 of them are just "collect 10 gorillion of this" and 95 WHOLE VEHICLES, most of which look the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ same.

Character/partner dialogue is almost non-existent and if you have to pay attention to the road you'll probably miss a good bit of it anyway.

Maybe back then this game would be considered fun and "revolutionary" due to the face animations or something, but it has aged like a loaf of bread, it's quite an awful and boring experience. Can't even refund this anymore. Thank ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ god I bought it a discount. Quite an overhyped game.

Edit 2:
Completed 100%. I'll have to cut this review edit much shorter due to word limit.
After completely flopping the golden butterfly case because interrogations don't make much ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sense, I've just been using a steam guide to double check my option before actually pressing it. Which I personally recommend you do too (unless you do not care about achievements).
- Interrogations still sucked throughout the whole game, without a guide I'd only get about slightly over half of them correct on average (so I would always only get 4 stars despite doing none or minimal damage when driving or finding over 90% of clues). The faces were still very inconsistent & unreliable, sometimes they make the most goofy blatant faces when they lie, but then they'd say some half-truth ♥♥♥♥ or something that you literally cannot verify with anything and make a completely normal neutral looking face, but no it wasn't actually a "truth" statement, which is still complete bs. I now kinda see why the intuition points are capped at 5 (because past rank 20 you just get 5 points on every case), but with how bad the system you should be allowed to use up to like 10. Another reason why this truth, doubt, and lie system is bad is because you can't actually tell what Cole himself is thinking or is going to say once you actually press those options (besides lie, which you can back out of, unlike with the latter). You either should be allowed a second chance to ask the same question OR let those options be more descriptive of what Cole is actually going to say. It also sucks how you have to rely only on the face, instead of the whole body language, like them fidgeting with hands when they lie, etc. Some evidence which should prove a lie don't apparently prove a lie, can't recall any specific examples since I stopped bothering with the system past that homicide case.
- Bringing completely new game mechanics out of nowhere past early game, with straight up death (fail) if you don't do them right. Such as balancing on objects and especially the very weird balancing mechanic when walking on planks and such. The collapsing platforms when walking in the tar pit were also a bit annoying.
- Janky, Clunky inspection of objects (evidence), especially when inspecting (usually dead) bodies. Sometimes it asks you for a really weird hyper-specific angle which you could barely hold before it finally zooms into some detail on an object, which was a mildly annoying.
- Speaking of evidence, those little brief descriptions of evidence you find in the notebook are quite bad, especially for any large paper documents or letters you find. There should've been an option to inspect those more closer in detail without having to constantly return to them. It sometimes felt like those little descriptions would also leave out important parts of that evidence.
- Why add 95 whole different vehicles (even though most really just look the same and have near identical stats with exception of bonus cars) with this huge of a map with so many roads, and not put garage's or something around the map to actually use those vehicles you collect? Very odd. Devs practically already have the system with the vehicle room showcase in the menu to use for that.
- Newspaper collectibles. Why would you assign so much story/lore to missable collectibles? But then make the other like 100 collectibles (landmarks, 50 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ gold film reels, police badges) have completely no rewards or anything besides a few achievements? Also quite questionable.
- Pedestrian NPCs would sometimes just run into your car instead of evading it or VERY slowly walk across the road despite you blaring the siren. Same with the driver NPCs just spontaneously turning right into your path or stopping right in front of you (with siren on), happened a bit too many times to be ignored. Quite annoying.
- Roy's car sucks so much. Acceleration, turning, general handling, etc. is much poorer than the car of any other 3 partners you get.
- Why even add a flamethrower? You literally only get to use it to kill like 4 dudes at the worst possible scenario. It was so hilariously bad how you had to waddle with it in water while being shot at and then try to kill them in such open areas with how ♥♥♥♥♥♥ the range of it is.
-Chasing is often so scripted even in street crimes.

The map itself (not graphics) is good. Radio music & audio in general is great. Story is quite good (ending mid at best). Cars look good but too similar & too many.
Posted 24 December, 2024. Last edited 2 January, 2025.
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16 people found this review helpful
1
8.1 hrs on record (2.5 hrs at review time)
Slow-burning, genre-defining, keyed, coal-destroying, GEMERALD that billions vill play.

The Steam has been saved.
Posted 24 October, 2024. Last edited 24 October, 2024.
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1 person found this review helpful
11.1 hrs on record (7.4 hrs at review time)
Early Access Review
So far, it's a relatively great game. I loved episode 1. Completed it all on the hardest difficulty.

The art style is quite unique & great and the soundtrack (especially the loading level screens and the pause menu) are absolutely great & are very immersive. My most favorite lvl from chapter 1 is definitely the "House of Cards" (Waltz mansion), despite it being short, it was the most interesting and atmospheric level to me personally. In general, there's a decent amount of replayability, with it being potentially infinite when map workshop gets added. The story so far is also quite good and mysterious.

I just wish the game had a bit more/better stealth mechanics. (I tried playing the game as stealthy as possible the entire time)

I do however have some issues with the game and also some suggestions which hopefully will be added. Such as;
1. Money being almost useless (which will be resolved according to devs in episode 2)
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2. Very limited inventory space, which I can sorta get why it's so limited, but then why do bullets take up an entire inventory slot? Especially considering how tiny a single clip is in majority of the guns? It just kinda forces you to run back and forwards and back over and over to resupply. (also supposedly will be resolved according to devs in episode 2)
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3. There is no way to zoom into something in the game, besides using the scoped repeater, which isn't ideal & takes up a whole inventory slot. Maybe you could buy binoculars as one of the gadgets perhaps? or just add a "zoom in" button?
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4. Mike sometimes doesn't grab onto ledges when he can, this was especially noticeable in lvl 2 when you try to climb the drawbridge, had to reload quicksave like 3 times because he sometimes just wouldn't grab the ledge for some reason.
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5. There aren't any different stealth knockout animations depending on the type of weapon you're currently holding, it's always the karate chop, which is kinda lame. But not necessary I guess.
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6. Weapon durability is used up when you hit walls and non-breakable objects, which is kinda annoying.
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7. The current hardest difficulty is STILL not really all that hard, but that is mostly resolved with custom difficulty.
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8. The AI isn't really that great. Kind of annoying how if you lure an enemy with any noise or if they almost fully spot you, they just walk a bit closer to the noise/you, look in that/yours general direction, and go back. For example, you could throw a bottle around a corner, and enemy will just sorta walk a few steps in the direction of the corner, glance a bit in that direction, and then just go back. They don't really properly investigate any noise or disturbance. Another annoying thing with AI is how they just suicide rush you no matter what, you could be shooting at a group of enemies with a tommy gun, they'll even react to you specifically holding guns (They'll outloud say something like "watch out, he's packing!") and then just rush at you anyway, lol. I'm not sure how this can be solved but maybe enemies should take cover more? zigzag to you instead of running in a straight line to you? some enemies might decide to just throw stuff at you from distance if there are some enemies already charging at you? Idk.
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9. A good bit of the dark places which should be making you partially or fully hidden don't actually make you hidden at all, its most noticeable in lvl 2 and 4, you could go to a clearly dark shadow-y place and it doesn't even partially hide you, like you (the player) literally need to pull out your lighter to see anything in that dark spot but apparently you're still not hidden? Lol.
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10. This is mostly a suggestion, but there should be a reusable gadget to lure enemies or decrease player detection, maybe literally just a few stackable small stones you can buy and pick up after throwing, which could be purchased later on as a "gadget" for stealth. For "decreasing player detection" part, maybe give Mike some black coat that he can buy.
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11. Some of the "secrets" in levels are ridiculous to find and don't reward the player much. Such as how in lvl 3 a small pile of cash (like 20$) behind a bench in metro is somehow considered a "secret", but unlocking a whole safe with a gold bar and a pistol inside in that exact same lvl is apparently not a secret. Secrets don't really matter, I know, but some of them are just quite bs to find. There should be at least some money is most of the secrets.
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12. For some reason, randomly, in the middle of those comic cutscenes, the whole game can sort of just freeze, as if it's going to crash, but it just goes back to normal but the cutscene apparently just kept playing, which means I missed some of that cutscene because of that weird lag.
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13. Suggestion: I think that destroyed vending machines (for cola & cigs) and the cash registers you can find in many of the levels should also drop some money, the same way destroying the parking meters drops some coins. Preferably more coins than parking meters since you are permanently destroying a whole vending machine or cash register
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14. There maybe should be an upgrade which would give you some increased chance to make enemies drop their weapons not in a broken state when you kill/knock them out while they're alerted. I get why it's like this (to reward stealth & just game balance in general), but it's annoying that you could perfectly headshot some enemy and they still drop a broken down version of their weapon because they spotted you for a few second.
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15. And lastly, set up traps should explode when they are shot.

Other than these issues I have listed, the game overall is great and seems quite promising. I'll be waiting for the episode 2 & level editor. It's worth it's current price. (especially since you will get the next chapters for free if you buy it now)
Posted 6 July, 2024. Last edited 9 July, 2024.
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1 person found this review helpful
221.7 hrs on record (220.8 hrs at review time)
It's a great game. Not saying it's perfect, but with more work and some changes it could have legitimately been the GOTY.
The soundtrack (cult songs & battle themes to be more specific, the rest is just good) might be quite literally the greatest original soundtrack I've ever heard in a video game, still listen to some of it to this day, lol.

BUT the main issue with the game is that the autosave (which happens VERY often) can randomly just completely kill your fps to like under 15 or even 10 frames for solid 4-6 seconds. You can't even disable autosave. It doesn't happen all the time, but it's frequent enough to annoy the ♥♥♥♥ out of you. I think it may have happened after some certain patch, but idk. It's even more noticeable when skinning an animal you just killed with a bunch of arrows, or just when looting stuff in general (It is apparently a known issue and ubi$lop hasn't and likely won't do anything to solve this issue).
Not being able to skip the random NPC dialogue (such as when getting locations to stashes, outposts, and missions) also gets very annoying, especially after your first or second playthrough. Friendly NPCs just get spooked way too easily in general, and it takes them way too long to go back to their normal (non-combat) state.

There's also a plethora of other nuisances/bugs/questionable game decisions which sour the experience even further. I won't go into detail about all of them as they're usually not that game-breaking or rage-inducing as the autosave lag or not being able to skip NPC dialogue.

I recommend you only buy it on a VERY high discount. Maybe pirate it to see if you have the same issue (auto save lag), otherwise don't even bother. It's quite old anyway and therefore won't ever get any new content. Arcade alone isn't worth it, it gets quite boring after a while, especially if you're playing singleplayer. T̶h̶e̶r̶e̶'s̶ a̶l̶s̶o̶ n̶o̶ a̶c̶h̶i̶e̶v̶e̶m̶e̶n̶t̶s̶ o̶n̶ s̶t̶e̶a̶m̶, f̶o̶r̶ s̶o̶m̶e̶ r̶e̶a̶s̶o̶n̶. Nvm, they spontaneously decided to add them. Same for FC3, lol.

+The DLCs are mostly trash, with the exception of the Vietnam one, that one was quite fun. (Though I might be biased because I love and always prefer the stealth in Far Cry series). The mars one is very mid (repetitive and most of enemies are very annoying to fight). And zombies one is just very repetitive garbage with not much of a real story, that grindy "kill 5,000 zombies" achievement is just sh1t upon already a large pile of sh1t.
Posted 31 May, 2024. Last edited 24 January, 2025.
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