Recent reviews by The Cig Man

10/10, i think we found the game of the year guys, and let me point some stuff about it that might shape your opinion on this game, tho if you haven't played it, i think its fair to buy it and give it a try, IMHO the game worth the money.

pros-
combat system - good rhythm, fast, engaging. although has some issues here and there, i honestly enjoyed it
no annoying parries like sekiro or lies of p, instead its based on dodging which i like more. its not perfect but its does what it does fairly well.

graphics - its unreal engine 5 i think? so picture is amazing, tho i heard some had issues with performance, i didn't encounter any at all. 4070 and i7 11something and i'm running
60 fps easily.

character design - i love how each and every character you meet looks, enemies look cool as well, specially the bosses. the armor and weapons look Chinese lol. really well done on this one.

music - i actually like that sometimes you just wander around in silence, and sometimes there's a nice chill melody, and than you meet a headless Chinese metal-grandpa who shreds his Chinese banjo (dunno the name)
imo every place and moment has its nice sounds and music around to it, nothing too overwhelming. although there's is no epic radahn boss battle music, i think its suits it.

the souls-like part of it - there's no penalty to dying, and now some people might think this makes it way easier, and it is, i think it makes the game more focused on story and exploration,
unlike a dark souls game where if you die you will have to kill 1000 mobs again, cause you want that shiny in the corner of the map. also you're not stressed that you will lose
your souls if you die, instead you just have a lot of perks to unlock through the game. the game overall is kinda souls-like but more GoW like. i love it.

there's more pros although they are way more personal experience than the above.

neutral points-
map design - now yes, every location looks beautiful and has a lot of decorations going on and more and the areas are big and nice, but...
invisible walls, you cant know where they are and where they aren't. sometimes its not quite straight forward where to go, just cause it looks like you can go there but you cant. overall a 50-50 thing.

stances - while they do add some spice to the combat system, the stances themselves are quite bland and tbh? useless i think? could've been way better but its there, so at least something?

storytelling - now the story is good, and the story telling is also good, but it just feels like its lacking something? idk might be me, but i feel like it misses something.

bosses - there's a lot of bosses, i love it, some people might not, that's why a neutral point and not a pro or con.

cons-
first scene - i think everyone has that, the first cinematic scene is lagging, audio desynced, and feels like it was made very hastily. i wouldn't care if it was in the end of the game,
but since its literally what you see when you press start game, it really ruins the experience.

input lag (i think) - might be me, but feels like sometimes its takes monkee a few moments to realize what you asked him to do.

the potions -feels like except few poison bosses that poison you and you use the anti-poison potion to unpoison yourself, i didn't use any of the potions, neither i needed to use them.
idk, the extra hp potion for example was unnecessary cause bosses aren't really oneshotting you anyway so you just heal the dmg, which the bosses give you enough windows to do so.

that's the stuff that i think applies to most people, everyone has their own tastes tho, so if for me this is the game of the year, for someone this is unplayable trash.

ive recently started to use hand cream with coconut oil and it is really fking great, my skin feels great and it smells awesome, its smooth like a baby and id recommend it to every gamer... as for the game tho.... its kinda fked up but i liked it

its a good game for a free to play game. i would say its more fun than the last 4 assassins creed together cause at least i didnt fall asleep while drivin my drakkar.

also people complaining on monetization - its a free to play game. how they gonna earn money? from you taking screenshots? its completely your choice to spend money. all characters just like in warframe are obtainable in game through grind. the packs of 520 instead of 600 for a character is literally the ♥♥♥♥ they do in any free to play game, just like in apex, destiny and many others making you buy the bigger pack cause you miss those few coins, and if it didnt work they would stop using it. other items in the shop are purely cosmetics from what ive seen, and i wouldnt even say that there are too many skins for day one, ive seen like a maid costume for all girl characters and 1-2 basic ♥♥♥♥♥♥ ones and 2-3 premium ones... seems really basic for companies like nexon. also ive seen someone say they shove popup screens when you launch the game... hmmmm where did i see that? the last time i launced destiny 2 i had to close like 4-5 of those for every ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ expansion that they made, so yeaaa... whatever lol

i would also like to talk about optimization... i have a pc that is way above the recommended, and i even put graphics on medium but i still get consant freezes that are really annoying, loading screens take up to a minute, and the map after loading takes a few secs to "materialize"... but other than that i get 60 fps most of the time, just those freezes are annoying. i do have to say that the game is very pleasant to the eyes and not just because theres big butts everywhere, but locations are very detailed and nice, graphically its pleasing, every area so far is different and somewhat unique, although might be a little bit "content empty" cause most of the areas are "combat zones" but still its all looking great.

i also personally dont give a ♥♥♥♥ what info they give to who cause who gives a ♥♥♥♥... although i did read the PP and it didnt seem too shady, just basic nexon stuff, they have access to a lot of info but nothing that will ruin your life, no one is gonna steal your house, car, wife and kids. relax and play the damn game.

ive seen people say the combat is junky but i think that its actually quite enjoyable, running around as bunny is fun, spraying venom with freyna or freezing enemies asses, blowing them up etc. overall its nice but not unique or amazing. i quite enjoy just running around and shooting enemies.

on that note... the movement feels fast, nice and responsive but it does feel not polished enough, u sometimes get stuck on a corner or a barrel, and if youre surrounded by enemies youre basically dead. but like 90% it works just fine.
i think you need to get used to the fact that sprinting and sprinting faster is a toggle and not a hold, but either way you dont actually have to stop sprinting to shoot, you just press the fire button and the character will shoot, quite easy and nice.

and if were talking about shooting... enemies are not very smart but neither they are in warframe (at least from what i remember) or destiny or any other f2p game... cause its f2p who gives a ♥♥♥♥, its a grindfest game, not xcom. theres quite a few different types of enemies, they all usually just charge you (unless its a sniper or something like that) and try to hit you. thats what they do in left 4 dead as well, in warframe, in destiny. same behaviour, nothing new here at all, ranged will range, melee will melee. later in the game the enemies do become a bit dmg spongy but it didnt feel to bad for me as of atm. btw overall the game isnt too hard as long as your not stupid.

now lore and story - its not a masterpiece by far... but its not bad either, all story dialogues are voiced, but the voices arent great either. it feels like they tried to make all the talking sort of "family friendly" with little cool phrases and ♥♥♥♥ but the problem is that the game itself isnt family friendly (unless you consider asian women with big tits and arses family friendly) so it really feels off and a little cringe even at times. but again, its not too bad, and the story itself isnt that bad either. i feel like its a 5.5-6/10 at most.

i havent played free to play games like that for a good while but so far its just as i remember it... grindy, repetitive, most fun with a friend or two, a lot of microtransactions but that how f2p games live. dont expect anything from it, its a f2p game... but give it a try, its a good time dumpster, 21 hours in 2 days is a lot for me... and its way better than any chinese gacha games that are literally a scam but who cares cause weebs still protect ♥♥♥♥ like honkai or genshin or whatever... tbh i could say more stuff about it but its already too long sooo... i feel like if your afraid nexon will sell your info to someone and your life will be ruined just move on, if you dont give a ♥♥♥♥ than just give it a try you just might like it... and if not, its not like it costs money anyway

*edit: adding some stuff and making it nice*

i'll start with the original elden ring being imo not too hard, sometimes too forgiving but still difficult enough while keeping the fun part in it.
the lore had some real depth to it and it was quite easy to understand (compared to other Froms games, thanks martin). it was beautiful, the world was full of stuff and exploring it was a pleasure.

but... i really don't understand how people can defend this dlc while comparing it to other souls games dlcs...for example, ds3 dlcs imo weren't that hard at all, the only actual challenge was sister Friede, but it was way more packed, it felt fresh compared to even ds3 itself, it wasn't that big, but it was a fun dlc with its own challenges. Ringed city was a bit worse but still really good and challenging, and even tho it reused a lot of stuff, it wasn't annoying to fight those all over again. ds1 dlc is amazing, no question here. ds2 isn't ds.

they took fkin 2 years to make this dlc and what do you got for the not so low price?

1.you get a lot... most of them actually... of reused enemies from base game or other souls games with very few of them being actually new and fresh. now i don't say give me 50 new enemies, but cmon... like 70% of them are reused. I've already fought like 25-30 dragons in original game, you really gonna make me fight another 10~ish more of those? fallen star beast or whatever again? really? there are more examples for that ofc. but some of the new enemies feel... boring. like the huge fire giants that you need to ride near their legs dealing super low damage, and after 5 mins you stagger them, do about 45-50% hp dmg, and do that again for another 5 mins. its not fun, its long, its boring, and if you die by accident its really annoying to do that all over again.

2.locations are absolutely beautiful but... why do i have to search every cave and every rock to get to the next location? why do i need to figure out which statue i need to pose in front to get to another location? why not make it more straightforward and nicer, instead of being overly complicated... and be honest most of the map is empty, with a few big castles, 1 huge mountain peak, and a few empty fields with a few enemies here and there. for something that has been in the works for 2 years that's extremely... empty.

3.bosses - they are overall not fun. why? because they have a ♥♥♥♥ ton of hp and damage while being extremely fast and aggressive... depending on your build you either gonna have a walk in the park or you will suffer and sit on each boss for 5 hours. their design is nice, their move-sets aren't bad, but why do you need to make every boss extremely fat, fast, and have a huge ass aoe that is blocking your vision and toasts your GPU? why not mix up stuff a little bit, like in og elden ring, you had different bosses - godfrey, renala, maliketh, the three headed dragon (forgot the name) they are all different, fun and interesting. dlc bosses don't feel like they are even half way there. i'm not gonna say anything about individual bosses but there some bad choices here as well.

4. the way they decided to make you stronger with those tree shards is... stupid. a boss shouldn't be extremely hard just because you don't want to search all the map to get them all, i'm playing a souls game not fkin Pokemon. it just feels that they really tried to make people spend as much time as they could, not just with the exploration, searching for shards, and rather difficult bosses, but also because if you don't get all the shards you will have a way harder time which kinda forces you to go out there if you want to have higher chances.

also, in 150 hours of playing elden ring before the dlc, i have never had fps drops or any other performance issues, but in the dlc? wtf happened? its not like the graphics are better, its not like the effects are something out of this world, so how the fk my pc which is quite decent runs on around 45-50 fps on avg and on bosses even lower

there are more personal things that i liked more or less, but overall if i had to give it a score i would give it about a 6.5-7/10, for a dlc that has been worked on for 2 years, this is extremely underwhelming, empty and feels soulless (the irony). if you liked elden ring a lot and a big souls fun, grab it, you will have fun, you will die a lot, you will suffer. if you're not a big fan? don't play it, save your nerves and money.

i've played this game on xbox 360, ps3, ps4, xbox one, and 3 different editions on pc... still one of the best games out there and an example of how an rpg game should be made... also fok you todd give me back my money

shorter than the old games yea, but still good ol' kingdom, with a nice little story to it, isnt too expensive and the music is really pleasing to the ears and all the 80's theme is just really damn nice

90% of the maps are ♥♥♥♥, and the other 10% are just somewhat playable
abrams getting oneshot through the turret by a soviet t80 is another piece of joke of a game design when they are selling their game as realistic
soviets on top tiers are the only ones with proper AA and have absolute air control with just 2-3 of them, while german or american AA are about as useless as gaijin dev team
people who play on ultralow graphics will always see you better than those who play on the higher settings which means you either play on low too just to have equal chance of fighting them and burn your eyes with those 2003 graphics or you have to try hard every game just for a chance to spot them
the price for some items that gaijin asks for them is another absolute joke, they are making EA and Ubisoft look like the most saint companies out there, asking for a top tier tank or aircraft some 40$+ just to play on one vehicle is fking mental. you could buy Baldurs Gate and actually have FUN and VARIABILITY, something you will never get in this game because since 3.0-4.0 br, everyone just finds a spot they like to camp and they will go there every game every time, and only rarely will they go for something else.
also, Russian bias DOES exist (believe it or not) for the very simple reason that the russian tech tree got most of the modern stuff the russian army uses (shells, aa, aircraft and etc.)
while the americans use f16 from the 80's as their top tier aircraft, abrams using kits from the early 2000's and etc. you get the point, the devs (who are russian) like the russians a bit more then everyone else (im pretty sure they also have the most vehicles in the game than any other nation, cause they mostly add soviet and russian stuff to the game)
there's also really ♥♥♥♥♥♥ "hit-reg" or whatever you call than when i sometimes might shoot a t80 under the turret and the shell going through the loader mechanism with all the ammo, only slightly injures the commander and goes out of the tank without any dmg really, and stuff like that is so fkin common for a game like this its just sad... i mean just go on youtube and see for yourself.
it's a good game, ruined by greedy devs who only bend to the community when the community starts to review-bomb or ♥♥♥♥ on their game on any platform and they start losing money and players because of that, only then they change stuff back to normal
in the last few years they time after time tried to make the game more pay to win only for the community literally boycott gaijin for them to be able to keep playing it without spending money. anyway, dont play it, unless you REALLY like military stuff and want to keep it casual

so far so good, this game for its price offers quite a bit of interesting gameplay, chill, fun, interesting, time consuming and developers do a great job updating it, hope to see it grow even more in the future

so i was sitting in bush and wanted to silently kill an enemy, i saw the button that says "silent takedown" i press the thing and instead she just swings wildly... and this wont happen 1 time, it happens all the time, just like the stupid marking system and etc. overall the game is super boring gameplay-wise, just play any other ubisoft and you'll get the same nothing new here at all... only good thing i found about this game is the story, and maybe the graphics look nice for a game that was originally made for ps4 quite a few years ago

played it for a couple of hours, loved it until game became a bit weird, not fun anymore to play... last time i played the servers were absolute ♥♥♥♥, the amount of cheaters was frustrating and the new changes made the game look like im playing something between valorant and arma which just felt weird... the game still can be fun and i'd still recommend it, but for my old ass "old times were better"