Recent reviews by Gangly Dangler

The game's pretty damn good.
Combat wise the game knows exactly how to make attacks have some serious impact, and the burst executions are visceral.
The music is really good.
The characters aren't quite as memorable besides maybe Jack, but you can take the piss out of the game for how un-serious it takes itself. Of course up til the very end that is; where it pivots into a really good ending.

I would not reccomend playing on HARD difficulty while playing solo. Primarily because this game's balancing is pretty lazy actually. And once you get into the dlc, you'll have to go to harder difficulties beyond Hard to keep progressing. This game becomes incredibly grind-heavy. And it's one of those RPG's that have all those numerous micro-stats and 5 different things to level at once. The game's difficulty isn't necessarily just "hard" like how dark souls may punish you for overstepping with dps greed.

No this game's actually straight up unfair. And it expects you to break the game over your knee just to progress after a certain point. If you want to just play to the first ending? go for it I highly reccomend it.
But endgame grinding from 200 to 999 would require a mythril heart and the patience to sift through micro-stats to make a legendary build. There is not very many guides on this game either.

This game's a bit less fine-tuned than its older sibling Nioh 2, but that's okay because they can coexist.

I reccomend giving this game a try. And it's okay to take breaks, ask for help, or give up if you feel like you're hitting a wall at some point. I do recommend you wait for it to go on sale however. Because the game starts to feel like the devs gave up and got lazy on the second chunk of the game after main story.

Surprisingly the motion sickness was very minimal, probably due to the familiarity of the velocity of movement the game already has.
I thought I'd have trouble hitting my enemies, but due to the laser sight feature, I found aiming weapons incredibly easy. Reloading weapons is a bit more complicated as you still gotta do the full motions but there's an option for simple reloading, in some cases reloading manually can be faster, but in many situations it also provides you several situations where you need to micromanage your loaded magazines and swap weapons mid-combat to avoid being caught without ammo.

I really enjoy how they handled the Crowbar. I wish HLVR:A had that.
They reuse the weapon selection of Half Life Alyx and since there's so many weapons; you may find yourself struggling to switch weapons on the fly, But if you stick your arm out further before you open the selection you can make it easier to pick the weapon you actually mean to use.

Every weapon is impressively integrated into a VR space, the revolver strangely lacks a connected hand but it's a minor issue, The crossbow's scope is zoomed in too much and makes it difficult to line any shots with it I found myself using it only at peak distances because its less disorienting to use, and I'm less likely to get repeatedly shot while lining the rebar bolt up.

Having the jump button being on the right analog stick for Oculus I found to be difficult to make consistent. Especially if you have any analog input drift. I would hope for officially integrated alternatives of button mapping without conflicting with other actions. Also Tying the sprint to a toggle on the left analog stick seems to conflict with the car you get because once you activate the boost it keeps boosting, forcing me to leave the vehicle soon after to avoid the vehicle from running off the chosen path.

Throwing grenades lacks the same manual momentum that Half Life Alyx had, so I appreciate a button being able to be held to launch them instead. But I hope there's something that can be done to increase the velocity at which you can manually throw things without harming your wrist. Taking out combine snipers practically necessitates using the button instead.

I would argue that the VR pov should be slightly pulled back so it doesn't feel so suffocating.

But I have to say. This game translated really well into VR!

Edit: Something I'd love to have changed is adding an extra grip-point for the pistol, revolver, rocket launcher, and gravity gun. Adding visible hands on the revolver, and Assault Rifle, and adjusting the scope of the crossbow so it's easier to aim with. Lastly maybe an adjustment to how you hold the mounted turret guns so that you can more easily adjust with them, or at the very least a visible crosshair for them.

Hope to see episode 1 and 2 for this in the future!

I've played the original back in 2007 nonstop, it was challenging, decently diverse, and the item management was fun.
There's so much bloat in this version with achievements, awards, special quests that essentially have you roleplay a different character, and all with the difficulty chopped down to an 8th of its original difficulty, The game pretty much plays itself. Do yourself a favor and purchase a physical copy from a third party source so you can play that version instead.