Recent reviews by Eight18

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Unknown Battle is my favourite game, as a long time fan of the series and a fan of Nikolai Patrakov's titles, I feel like it's my duty as a player to give my honest opinion on Unknown Battle. That being said, I'll try to be as unbiased as possible because it'll be real easy for me to dive right into this and just say "The game's amazing."

First off, the story. Nikolai Patrakov's releases in general recieve a lot of flack for lackluster and uninspired storywriting. I can safely say this has been true for the most part in a lot of Patrakov's titles. This is not to say the story is "bad" per se, but rather the way it's been presented hasn't been the most, clear, or thorough. Whilst a lot of people also have this view on Unknown Battle, I can say this is not the case. Unknown Battle's storytelling whilst not perfect, is a vast improvement on Patrakov's previous titles. It feels concrete, thought out and the individual characters which are part of the story feel real, with realistic emotions, decisions and outlooks. Whilst on the contrary in Bloodbath Kavkaz for example, some character's felt like they were simply there as scenery and held no real association with the story. In Unknown Battle it feels like every character has something interesting to say with their own stories to tell.

Gameplay:
I'm going to use Bloodbath Kavkaz as a reference point here because there's a lot to be said on how Unknown Battle differs from it. The gameplay, in my opinion is Uknown Battle's finest feature is has to offer. If we go back in time 7 years to release of Kavkaz and compare the two in terms of gunplay for example, we'll have two completely opposing scenes, so vastly different that it's staggering to imagine the games were made by the same company. Kavkaz, whilst I hold the game dear to my heart, had some of the worst gunplay imaginable. It was clunky, mouse sensitivity was an issue, there were no iron sights and VATS was almost needed just to do anything. Now fast forward to Unknown Battle and we have a robust, very up-to-date and all around fun combat system. There are dozens of options to choose from, combat wise, a very detailed and intricate weapon modding system and to top it off, the aiming is smooth and VATS is no longer a necessity, but rather, an option. Kavkaz also didn't have the vast majority of features that Unknown Battle does today. One obvious big difference is the addition of base building, something Kavkaz never had. The base building is not perfect and there are recommendations everyone could make to improve it but regardless, it is still very fun, intuitive and an absolute blast to build your first settlement and look upon it thinking "I did that."

Without rambling too much, or ruining some of the game's features for those that haven't played it yet, or are wondering whether they should get it I'll move on to one last controversial topic before I round this off.

Speech/Dialogue options.
In previous games, speech was vastly different to how it is now. For those who don't know or haven't played other titles, your protagonist wasn't voiced, but there were a lot more detailed speech options and usually delineated what you wanted to say accurately. However in Unknown Battle many have argued that the new speech system doesn't hold up the same standard it did before in other games. The speech options are vague at times and often don't portray what you want to fully say; This take's away from the RPG element of the game as a whole and whilst this is not game breaking or ruining in any sense, it is my only minor complaint about the game that could be tweaked.

To top this review off, I'm going to say what I've wanted to say throughout this entire wall of text. Unknown Battle is fantastic. Simple as that. If you're a big as fan as me, then you'll agree with me when I say this game was worth the wait and then some. Unknown Battle, to me, feels like home and gives me this inexplicable sensation whenever I play it. The same feeling I had playing Kavkaz all those years ago, wandering through the wastes and being absolutely dazzled by the vastness of everything and the immersion it gave me. I have no doubt in my mind that given the success of Uknown Battle, Patrakov will continue to make games for years to come. But there will never be another game like this. There will never be another Unknown Battle game that lives up to the hype, and wonder that Unknown Battle has lived up to.