Recent reviews by Lofen

I though this would be like Pokemon, but an additional 20 years of game design experience. Well, that's not really what you get with this game. This is more like a soulless clone than a shiny successor. Everything about this game feels extremely generic - the creature names, their design, the graphics, the narrative, the battle pass. Everything is so streamlined; Pokemon shoved into a cookie cutter bland MMO template. Simply uninspiring. But I've only played 1.5h.

Similar to games like Stick Fight: The Game and ROUNDS. But honestly, I like this game the best.

Even though I would not call this game great, I still enjoyed the Witcher 3 quite a bit. The main story is okay, but what really makes the game stick is the interesting characters and the sidequests. The music and atmosphere. It's a world you can easily get lost in. There is a lot of fun content in this game, but most of the systems that support it is just okay. After some time, you start to notice a lot of small things that begin to annoy you. I still consider playing this game an overall pleasant experience, I just wish some aspects of it were better.

Geralt feels rather bad to control. Roach likewise. Either its not making sharp enough turns or not stopping in time. When you sometimes need to make subtle moments to interact with something or to scale the terrain, this is detrimental. You will also take heavy fall damage and your progress will reset every so often after falling down cliffs or in random holes. And, if like me, you lack a sense of direction, you will constantly need to look at the minimap, which pulls you out of the immersion this game so desperately depends upon. The horse racing requires zero skills, you just need a good saddle and to keep a constant eye on the minimap so you don't ride of course. The combat is also fine, but again, there is nothing special here.

A lot of the more Witcher specific things here are also lacking. Alchemy and the bestiary you are supposed to use to prepare for battle is completely unnecessary. Even though they help, the game is often easy enough to complete without them. Its a missed opportunity because it gets introduced as early as the Devil by the Well guest, which you will struggle with unless you read the bestiary. Not so much for any other monster in the game. Such a shame. Negotiating Witcher contracts is fun at first, but the reward you get is hardly worth the effort. Letting Geralt do all the detective work using his Witcher senses was novel at first, but it quickly gets tiring. You as the player simply have to look for the red glowing things - which even that gets annoying sometimes since it does not always render even though its right in front of you - and Geralt does the rest. You get to do the least enjoyable part.

Gwent was fun side hustle though. Collecting cards, upgrading your deck and earning some money while doing it. The balance is a bit off though since you will seriously struggle at first but as you gain more cards the game will get easier and easier. Maybe I should have turned up the difficulty. I felt like I pretty quickly made a good deck. Getting an extra faction in Toussaint was also a treat, but I feel like I needed more incentive to use it. I just stuck with my (already great) deck for the most part.

I was one of those players that wanted a set of Grandmaster Witcher gear, which I even colored. The entire process wasn't always that pleasant though. You had to grind a bit to get the money and materials necessary, and using the crafting menu is a pain. Scrolling up and down to see what you needed for a specific recipe, what those materials needed and so on. You could buy a merchants material directly from the desired recipe, I wish you could also craft it the same. Often when doing quests you would find another quest on the way and start doing that instead. After you completed said quest, it would return the quest at the top of the quest list, instead of the previous quest you were on. The process of going back and finding the quest you just side tracked got tiring, and it could so easily have been fixed.

Overall a game I would definitely recommend. Most of it ends of feeling very much the same, but if you like it you're in for a treat. Were it not a good enough game I would not have spent so many hours on it.

Interesting. Engaging with the story is the game. Sometimes the exact solution can be quite annoying to formulate, even though you knew exactly what happened. Works fine on Steam Deck.

Although the language part of the puzzles could have gone a lot further, I feel that this game manages to tell a fine story coupled with relevant puzzles. Just the right amount of challenge for me that is not heavy into puzzle games to begin with.

A mindless game for a mindless player. Me like.

You play a level for the first time and feel the flow; you got this. On the second attempt, you earn the gold medal. "Damn, it feels good. I can surely get an ace medal as well." After a few more attempts you succeed. Feels great. "Lets see how I did!" One of your friends has a time that is 2 seconds faster. "I wonder what he did? Oh, I see. Maybe if..." After a few more attempts you beat him by a few hundreds of a second. "Nice, I'm kinda good at this!" You notice that there also is a global leaderboard now. "Lets check it out!" You are slightly above average, and araound 40k people worldwide has a faster time than you. Well, maybe I can find something else to be good at.

The setup had me expecting something else, maybe more sinister or darker. Instead there wasn't that much to it, but I welcome that as well. You get home and the rest of your family is myseriously missing, so you get to explore their living space. Alone. You get to follow their stories and understand how their lives played out, in your absence. You even get a glimpse of their limited perception of you. A quiet, calming, and thoughtful game.

Quite alright. Its a the type of game where you turn your brain off, get some cool upgrades and chill. It was actually enjoyable most of the time. The story is quite unremarkable. I disliked how the game gave me a grade when I finished it, like your playthrough was only worth silver. Hello, wdym!? But I can definitely see how this would encourage someone else to replay it in an attempt to improve their rating.

Great mood.