Recent reviews by GG | GotGud

Graphics & Performance – Pure Eye Candy!
First things first: Stellar Blade looks absolutely gorgeous. Seriously, the visuals blew me away right from the start, proving just how far modern graphics have come. What’s even better is the outstanding optimization—my beefy rig (RTX 4090, Intel i7 13700K, 32 GB DDR5 RAM) handled it effortlessly, delivering a silky-smooth 120 FPS at 4K without even needing DLSS. Kudos to the devs for this technical achievement!

Story & Atmosphere – More Than Meets the Eye
Initially, I was worried this was just another run-of-the-mill “robots gone rogue” scenario, reminiscent of “iRobot.” Thankfully, I couldn’t have been more wrong. After diving deeper, the narrative unfolded beautifully, revealing layers of depth, heartfelt storytelling, and some genuinely surprising plot twists. Stellar Blade quickly transformed from predictable sci-fi into something much more engaging.

Gameplay & Features – Fashion and Fan Service
Let’s talk outfits—because who doesn’t love customization? EVE’s diverse wardrobe kept things fresh and stylish throughout my playthrough. Additionally, the numerous nods and subtle homages (especially to games like “Nier”) really showed the developer’s passion, something fellow fans will undoubtedly appreciate.

However, the overwhelming abundance of collectibles felt excessive. Hunting down countless documents, memory sticks, and database entries became monotonous quickly, especially when I decided to actually read everything. Honestly, it felt like reading a novel at times, breaking the flow of the otherwise intense and action-packed gameplay. Audiologs playing in the background would’ve been a nice touch to keep things dynamic.

Characters & Side Quests – Hits and Misses
Some side characters truly captured my attention—Enya and Diggr had genuinely interesting stories that I loved exploring. On the flip side, others like the hairdresser felt somewhat neglected, leaving me wishing for more substance.

Final Thoughts – Highly Recommended (with a pinch of irony!)
In the end, Stellar Blade is a fantastic experience crafted with evident care and attention to detail. And for those complaining about the protagonist’s appearance being “sexist”: seriously, when was the last time we saw an overweight male hero saving the day? Usually, it’s all about muscular, hyper-fit dudes. Isn’t that also sexist? Just some food for thought! ;)

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is overall an amazing game. The web-swinging mechanics through the city are incredibly well done and super fun. The story is engaging and keeps you hooked from start to finish. On a technical level, the game is very well optimized—I had absolutely no issues on my system, and the graphics look fantastic. However, there are a few drawbacks: the achievement system once again requires you to replay the entire game on a specific difficulty level, which can be a bit frustrating, and there are a lot of collectibles that, while not bad in themselves, do become a bit repetitive over time.

Lies of P is a thrilling Souls-Like Game, that lets you dive into a lovely detailed world full of puppets.
I am writing this review after having played the game for two hours and to make a long story short, for those of you, who do not want to read the entire review: I am totally amazed :) Thumbs up.

UPDATE AFTER HAVIN PLAYED: 8 hrs: Still great. The story really hooks me up. The wapons you can craft to fit your playing style, the characters, the setting itself :D

So let's start with the technical aspects of the game:

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I clearly want to state, that I'm playing on a high-end machine including: RTX 4090, I7 13700K, 32 GB RAM, and RAID 0 NVMes so I can not talk about the performance of low to mid-range PCs. But so far I can tell, that the game works perfectly fine! Some Details are listed below:

• Game Settings entirely maxed out
  
• 120 FPS in 4K without DLSS or AMD Fidelity FX super Resolution 2 (I capped it at 120)
  
• My GPU Load was around 76-80 percent, so playing natively in 4K I still would have had some room for more fps.
  
• I had no crashes, no issues, no stuttering, and smooth gameplay the entire time.
  [* The game looks great and offers a lot of settings you can adjust.
  
• I really like the details placed by the devs on the map (posters, pictures, boards, the street, the entire flair, ...)
  
• I could not find a single bug.

With that said, I would give from a technical point of view a clear 10 / 10. And I want to remind people here: Although I have such a good machine, this does not imply that the performance is always really smooth. I played games at the release date, where I had: frame drops, bugs, bad collision detection, glitches, and so forth. A game that runs that smoothly already PRE-Release is not released that often.

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You will really like this game, if you like Dark Souls, Sekiro, or any other Souls-like game. Like in Dark Souls, you have StarGazer (Bonfire) which will save your game, refill life and "potions", but revive all the enemies.

There is a small detail I would like to share with you which I really enjoyed:
The puppet (main character) you are playing can level up in the hotel when talking to Sophia. But before you come to the Hotel, you already have a Boss fight which is not that easy to beat (it took me something like 5 tries, but my skill level is mäah :D), so in the first levels, you can level up by interacting with the StarGazer. As I wanted to somehow compensate for my skill issue, I simply killed the small enemies a dozen times to get enough resources to level up enough to make the fight easier. This works for some levels, but after you reach a certain level, you can not level up anymore until you reach the hotel --> On a certain point the game wants you to learn the mechanics of the enemy and to develop some skills. I like the balance here very much because the fight is not too easy (although leveled up) but not too hard that you want to quit the game. It feels kind of rewarding for me.
I really like such small details.

What I also would like to add at this point: This game is not blindly a Dark Souls copy (which the first hour on some points felt a bit like that), it brings different mechanics and tries to give the player a unique touch, charm, and gameplay style. What do I mean precisely here:

• At the beginning you can choose between three fighting styles: Belanced, Swift, and an "aggressive" style.
  
• Your weapon consists of two parts: a handle and a blade. Both parts bring a unique special attack you can use during your fight. Those parts are later on also customizable regarding the skill points you distributed during level-up. So you can enhance a weapon by using your base stats (strength, ...) as a modifier for the weapon.
  
• Those weapon parts use a different amount of fable (a resource for special attacks).
  
• And you have a Sekiro Style left hand which can be upgraded with a so-called Legion (Special Weapon).
  
• Both, the legion and your standard weapon can not be used infinitely, they must be ground/repaired to make them work properly again.

A lot is of course also similar to Dark Souls, like the already mentioned StarGazers, enemies that become alive again after using them, a more linear way of gameplay, the difficulty, and the atmosphere, but it's not simply another skin on top of that. It is a very good game on its own.


I don't know too much so I can not really spoil you here, so don't worry, but I really like the Pinocchio vibes here. It made me laugh sometimes and reminds me a bit of my childhood. I really like the theme: A bit of IRobot (a movie with Will Smith), but with puppets that slay humans. From Lore's point of view, the puppets are built like that they can not Lie, but YOU can. Because YOU are a special puppet, searching for your "crafter", Geppetto :D Holy Moly, I'm already entirely hooked by that :D


Shut up and take my money!

After playing this game nearly 3 hours, I would like to toss in my 2 Cents for those people who are still thinking about to buy the game or not. I will update the review once i finished playing the complete game in order to give more details about things like: How long to beat the game, feelings after playthrough and stuff like this :)

Before I go into the details, I would like to cut to the chase and answer the most important question to you:

When should you definitly buy this game?

• If you love cats and would like to cat like a cat.
  
• If you like exploration games and you like to discover lovely details spread over the entire game.
  
• If you are able to enjoy the ambient, the visuals, the music and the complete "flair" of the game.
  
• If you do not expect high end graphics like in Cyberpunk 2077 and are completely fine with it.
  
• If you have cats yourself and would like to see if your cat too goes nuts (mine did so xD) when it sees multiple cats walking around on the screen.
  
• If you want to play a calm and relaxing game with no pressure and a lot of love for details.

My personal Conclusion

As owner of three cats I was hyped from the very beginning when I heard that this game is about to come. I did not know much about the game despite of that you are able to play a cat wandering around in a cyberpunk flavored city and I didn't want to spoil myself to much, therefore I did not really research about gameplay or other stuff, so I was like a blank canvas.
What I can say, is, that I was pleasently surprised on how good this game is.
I mean it is one thing that you can play a cat, behave like a cat (scratch objects, throw down objects, drink water from a puddle, fool around with other cats, literally having an own button for meowing, ...), it's more the complete atmosphere of the game which catches you. The visuals are really great when you think of the game budget, the price it costs and the size of the studio which developed it. The combination of visuals and sound effects + music is making the whole atmosphere so vibrant and vivid. It literally invites to take your time and look around and dive a bit deeper into the misterious city the story is set.
Most games today feel very hectic in my point of view, but this game really makes you consciously slow down a bit and dive in into the city, it's citizens and the little furry friend you are playing.

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Gameplay

I don't want to spoil to much, but of course the game has a story, which I need to say is not the main attraction of the game.
In a nutshell: You lost your other furry friends through an accident which happened to you and you try to make your way back to them.

But what is it what you actually can do as the little cute fluff ball you are?

You can walk or run around, jump from different locations to others, you can collect Memory Fragments and other objects like music sheets, energy drinks and so forth in order to offer them to differet NPCs which will show you their appreciation by handing you over other objects you can use and interact with. This means you can interact with the NPCs, talk to them, and so forth.

To be honest: The gameplay is very simple from my point of view, but I think this is exactly the strength of the game: Making a game that fun to play although it only contains basic mechanics.

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Technical aspects

As already mentioned: Thinking about the games budget, the size of the team which developed it and that this is their first game released, I need to say that the game is marvelous. Simply great. Of course you will see by looking very close some unclean textures and minor visual issues, but this is absolutely okay regarding the above mentioned points.

I had no issues while playing. No crash, no strange behaviour inside of the game. There are some minor (logical) issues from my point of view, like: When you are sitting in a bucket and some (i guess they are called zurks) attack you, they do not damage you, although it's clearly visible that they should hit you.
You have three rrefresh rate options to chose from: unlimited, 30 or 60. I configured 60 fps and had no issues. I mean I have an RTX 3080 and the card is not even nearly struggling playing on a 4K TV, Regarding this aspect I think the performance it great and the game should be easily playable for the most common setups.
With unlimited fps setting i get around 100 fps.
Although I need to say, that I think some additional graphics options would be nice, because the settings of the game offered are very basic and there are only a few.

I play the game using an Xbox Controller and so far I did not have any Issues. I can't tell how it is to play using a keyboard and a mouse, but I can recommend to play such games like this one with a controller. Here it doesn't really matter if you choose a Xbox or Playstation Controller. :)

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The atmosphere

I think this is really the selling point of the game. It offers you the possibility to dive deeper into the game which makes the game a lot of fun to play. The city, the cyberpunk setting, the music, the characters are making the game really great. It simply makes you want to do more (explore around, look into the different corners, search for single details and so forth.)
It's great from my point of view.

After playing this game nearly 10 hours, I would like to share some thoughts with you, for those who are still asking themselve, if they should buy this game or not.

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First of all I need to say, that I was very hyped for this game and couldn't wait for it to be released and to play it. The game has a lot of potential and very interesting concepts.

When should you buy this game?

• If you like Japan and are interested in japanese culture
  
• If you like very good visuals in a game making your graphics card go brbrr
  
• If you like exploring and taking your time in checking each corner of the map
  
• If you like petting dogs and feeding them
  
• If you like not very skill demanding games
  
• If you are the story game type of player
  
• If you like simple and straight forward skill trees and mechanics
  
• If you like having a lot of side quests (some of them a bit repetitive)

Cons

• The game feels to easy
  
• Repetitive tasks
  
• Not much to do if you leave away the collection of spirits (which takes most of your time)
  
• Collecting spirits to level up becomes annoying after some time.
  
• Combat is too easy and feels too basic. No enhanced mechanics.

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COMBAT

What disappoints me, is, that the combat system has a lot of potential which is unused and the fights are far tooo easy. I would say the game makes it a challenge to die. Basically, the combat system works like this: Press: hit, hit, hit, defend, hit, extract soul , hit, hit, hit, defend, hit, extract soul and so on. You have basically 3 to 4 elements you can change (wind, water, fire, ...) and I have the feeling that between water and wind there is nearly no difference (except maybe that striking with you water ability has a shorter range but is able to hit more targets at once) and the fire element makes most damage but you do not have a lot of munition for that one.
You also get a bow, which is basically never needed (Only when you are seperated from KK because the story forces you to be and therefore you have no supernatural skills until you get him back ). You could litterally stand there without moving a cm when fighting against some enemies untill you killed them).
You have no possibility to dash or something like that. Spamming the "attack" button does totally the trick here.
I had already a boss fight and I need to say, that it was far too easy to win.

GAMEPLAY

The city is beautiful and I can tell you: if you have the hardware you can enjoy a lot of small details, like the puddles on the floor where parts of buildings and lights are reflected in a beautiful manner. The details of the city are impressive: Buildings, objects etc. I mean the furr of the animals could have a bit more details, but I think the game is already demanding a lot of performance.
Exploring is very nice because you can find a lot of loot in different corners. You can also use so called Tengus to "catapult" yourself on roof tops in order to float then from roof to roof for collecting spirits and finding stuff.

If you are not simply rushing through the story, than you will spend the most time in collecting spirits. Collecting spirits allows you to level up in order to become better skills and additional abilities. Most of them are sort of: Increase attack speed, damage, increase floating time in the air, increase movement speed when crouching, increase number of arrows you can carry with you, etc. I'm Currently level 16 ( in the beginning of chapter 3) and I spent most of the time in doing side quests and collecting spirits (currently I have nearly 33.000 spirits (out of something like 250.000). In order to make it easier for you to spot them you have an ability which works like a radar so you can see their silhouette in the vicinity (until 30 m away, can be upgraded to 50).

The entire city is shrouded in a fog that damages you as soon as you touch it. Therefore, so-called tori gates have to be cleaned so that the fog in the area disappears. In order to roam freely around, you need to find those gates and clean them.

There are a lot of Yokais which ask you to find and collect different items for them which can be found in the city, appartements etc. Collecting a certain number of those will grant you items, emotes or even outfits.
I mean, it is nice that you can change your outfit, but you will only see it in cutscenes, as you are playing in a first person view.

TECHNICAL ASPECTS
I play the game on a 120 Hz 4k OLED screen using a RTX 3080 and an Intel I7 11700K and without DLSS and RayTracing enabled, the game would not be really playable from frame perspective. Using DLSS Balanced mode i get 45-80 fps which is a high fluctuation from my point of view. Of course it depends on the scene, the number of reflections displayed etc.
Without DLSS I get something like 25 fps (Ray Tracing ON).
Until now I couldn't experience any bugs (beside one crash of the entire game).

Conclusion
I like the game very much although the combat is far too easy and there are a lot of repetitive tasks, because I like the aesthetic of the entire city, the light effects, simply the whole visuals of the game. I simply enjoy the story, farming a lot, enjoying the beauty of Tokyo.

From my point of view, this is not a game where I think paying the full price is worth it and representing the buyers interests I would recommend waiting for a sale or something like this, because the game has nothing really outstanding (for those people who are not fully into japan, it's culture etc.), although it's a really good game.
Yes, the city is beautiful, yes the details are lovely and dude: You can pet dogs and cats, but: All those things are not that mindblowing that I would say: Shut up and take my money (after knowing it better playing it nearly 15 hours).

Normally i do not write reviews on games , but as I see that this game is getting bad reviews which are for my point of view missleading, I decided to write a review on my own.
To be honest: in the beginning I was a bit sceptical. A lot of pages writing reviews claim that the game is bad. So before you already start playing the game you get a bad feeling and lets you prejudice although you did not play a single minute...but let's cut to the chase:

Story: I played now for 4 hours and I can say that I'm really interested in how the story evolves. You have a lot of decisions you can make already in the first hours: which tribe do I want to assist? Am I good or evil or maybe something in between? I really like the options I have. So you can decide do I want to assist to destroy the tree of life or do I want to try reunite the different tribes and save the tree.

Combat & weapons: there are a lot of weapons . you can craft your weapons by assembling different parts together and after 4 hours gameplay I really START getting the hang out of it. The weapons have different attributes as: State, rarity, Type and so on. You can destroy the parts to gain materials to craft new parts.
I read some reviews that you are dealing not a lot of demage in close combat. I can say that I can truly understand this and this can not be criticised if your close combat attribute is very low at beginning and you need a lot of level ups to increase the power. It also depends how you spend your DNA in the beginning . Which race are you playing etc. I think reviews saying after 2 hours of gameplay that you deal not a lot of damage is untrustable, because of course you deal less damage with low attributes. But therefore you have different types of combat. Close combat, ranged, mutations etc.
To be honest I must say I still didn't find my fight style as I'm trying out different things. But I think this is a good point instead knowing from the first moment what you gonna do.

Graphics: I play at 4k on a 120 Hz Monitor at maximum Settings and I need to say that the graphics is stunning. I love the details and simply to watch the different corners and angles of the world. Beautiful! People wrote that the camera is too close, but when they would look into the settings instead of focussing on the bad things of the game, they could see that you can adapt your field of view in the camera settings . you have a lot of adaptions you can make in order to adapt to your play style.

Narration: Yes, there is a narrator. That's it. The characters In game talk in a fantasy language. must this be immediately bad? No! Its simply a different type of telling a story. There are also different types of books which use different techniques to tell a story (metaphor). I like the idea. Its something different and not like each other game you play nowadays .

I need to say that although the developer studio is small in comparison to others (which a lot of people forget), they did a really great job and then game is stunning, interesting and I didn't want to stop playing it. For the size of the team they did a lot of work and crafted a game which brings a bit of a twist into your steam library.
All in all I can only say: forget what people are telling you about the game. I think in lots of cases people simply tried to find out I'm 2 hours if they will refund it or not in order that they get their money back. This is definitely not possible in this short amount of time.
Try it on your own and give the game a realistic chance.

Hi,
als Yakuza Fan habe ich mir natürlich püntklich zum Release das neue Yakuza Spiel geholt. Ehrlich gestanden war ich anfangs etwas enttäuscht, als ich gemerkt hatte dass sich durch das neue Kampfsystem das Spiel zu einem JRPG gewandelt hat :O Leider hatte ich mich zu wenig vorher informiert, welche Änderungen der neue Titel mit sich bringt. Die Umstellung auf das neue Kampfsystem war für mich sehr gewöhnungsbedürftig zuerst. Jedoch bin ich eigentlich froh, dass ich mich nicht informiert habe, denn vl hätte ich es dann gar nicht gekauft und wäre niemals drauf gekommen, wie toll das Spiel ist. Die Details sind einfach Liebenswert umgesetzt. Die Story ist wirklich fesselnd und die Einarbeitung vom Thema "Videospiele" ist einfach Klasse. Ich spiele es wahnsinnig gern, der neue Hauptcharakter ist ein echter Wahnsinn und das Kampfsystem gefällt mir immer mehr, je länger ich es Spiele. Ich wüsste nicht, ob das Spiel etwas an charme verlieren würde wenn ich mir vorstelle, dass das Kampfsystem 1:1 wie bei Yakuza 0-6 wäre.
Ich kann nur sagen: Echte Kaufempfehlung! Lasst euch bitte nicht durch das neue Kampfsystem verunsichern und gebt dem Spiel die Chance, die es wirklich verdient hat :)

Nach 46 Stunden Spielzeit kann ich immer noch nur sagen: einfach genial :D