Recent reviews by Starbound

Greatest thing: the atmosphere. The game has those very stunning atmospheric moments throughout. Combined with the many mysterios of it all the concept of wyrdness, it all leads to a very cool world.
Combat: fine, good enough for me. I play soulslikes for combat, I played this for the world and its setting and wasn't dissapointed.
Story: act1 and act2 are good, fairly complex and present multiple narrative choices with immediate and long term effects. Act3 felt undercooked. Not only had the map felt smaller, the tribes felt incomplete. The tribe members, most of the time, do not react to life changing events. Their dialogues hold very little quite often and the questlines feel like rough/initial drafts that they did not have time to expand on. That being said, it doesn't mean there's not things to like about act3, it's more of a feeling of "man this questline could've been so good if presented with X choice that should be obvious, man the tribesmen would feel more alive if they would actually react, I really could do without the fetch X(3) things quests". My greatest dissapointment is your lack of impact on the moot gathering, I had really hoped there would be actual talks that would result in different endings for the moot and for the tribes.
If I were to summarize my act 3 experience, it would be: "Man I wish they took more time drawing out this quest, it had such great potential". Those critiques being said, the story felt quite good to me, the ending was good though I do wish there were more endings with some more wyrdness intricacies.
Performance/Bugs: I've started playing far later than any others and as of my playthrough, most bugs/performance issues seem to be fixed.

Worth the money, I would've paid a 60 price tag too. Even if you are to ignore the story completely(which you shouldn't, it's good), the atmosphere and the world alone is worth the price. Can't wait to see what more this studio can bring out in the future.

Shooting is so tight, it alone makes the game worth every penny
All weapons are fun and usable, especially when fully upgraded. Upgrades are also pretty cool and not just "more damage"
Arcana system has variety but I feel it could use some more wild additions
Stats system I don't really feel it
Maps have content, quite a lot of it, though I feel there could be more diverse content locked behind gnosis levels
can't wait to see what devs cook more

if Nioh the deadbeat alcoholic married Sekiro the diamond flower and had a child, it would be this. Lucky it came out more like the mother

Great game. Never could get into the first tbh so I only played this one. Great story, good gameplay. I'm not usually the kind to like "real world" premises and I am more into fantasy but this one kept me glued in all the way. The comedy actually made me laugh from time to time and that very rarely happens.

fun

aiyoo bomba game already, 24 hours in 2 days, can't wait for the next weekend to do it again.

EDIT: After playing for a lot more on a single character, there are still quite a few nails to hammer. mind you this is the best arpg currently out there still, however you get to a point in endgame where any upgrade is so far out of reach for the common non trader player it becomes a waste of time and quite boring to play.

When you're geared up and able to clear T15s properly, any further upgrade is usually a kidney and a half.

Dropping an item will not happen either, I can go through tens of T15s without an item that is worth anything, let alone an upgrade to my build, which never happened through item drops but through trading. The only thing that the game seems to love to drop is trash and the only worth thing it drops is currency. I have yet to get a worthwhile unique although I have gotten 100s of trash uniques.

Crafting is also a no-go for most players, including me. The cost of entry is so ridiculously high that all you will be doing is exalt any decent item you drop that has open mods and that's all. Omen costs are in tens of divines and you won't be seeing decent omens in rituals. Heck, you're not even seeing the trash omens(restore hp when low) in rituals.

From there my biggest gripe with the game currently is that the only end game mechanic that has a good entry point and feels worthwhile is Breach.

Simulacrum has a bad but acceptable entry point cost wise, however to clear a Simulacrum your character needs to be far stronger or at least far more resilient than it needs for clearing maxed out breaches and killing the breach boss maxed out. I've went max wave 10 out of 15 in the 4 simulacrum runs I was able to afford. The item drops are also horrid, you're betting on getting one of the expensive delirium essences.

Expeditions? Bruh. Could be a way of crafting and grinding items, however it is trash, even after recent buffs. Just run breaches. I have only halfway nodes in the tree but I also can't be bothered to run more expedition maps for what looks like nodes that provide nothing or are even detrimental(chests dissapear after 5 seconds, only one explosive ??)


Rituals are the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ worst, the cost of entry for the boss is currently 5 divines. Apparently if you have the tree maxed out it starts becoming worthwhile. Without a point in the tree, I can say that I haven't gotten ANYTHING worthwile from rituals, which i've done probably around 70-80 of? The one time I bought an entry to the boss, I died to the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ labyrinth mechanic and that was that, poof 6 divines. NOBODY LIKES TRAPS IN ARPGS.

One more side note is the ghost freezing white mobs. Please remove them from the game? Or remove one of the two mechanics they have? Getting frozen by a rare shade that I'm unable to hit and then dying during that freeze is not fun.

Daggered Chronos once, see ya when the early access ends

I dislike the C part of CRPGs.
I hate party control games.
And yet, I love Baldur's Gate 3.

I was extremely reluctant to buy and play it despite the great praise and many recommendations.
As soon as I did, I played it for 14 hours straight only stopping because I had to start work..

Act 1 - Peak
Act 2 - ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ above the peak
Act 3 - Pretty good, performance bad tho

Can't wait to make another playthrough a few months later, ideally when they patch act 3 more.

Good, but be warned, there's some performance issues. Gotta run DLSS and if you're like me, an RTX 2070 on 1440p you'll struggle to get 60 on medium with DLSS. Might wanna wait till the devs do some more performance patches.

If I had to select one, I'd still select the first. In the first it felt like you were building up to something through efforts and risk. It felt like everything had stakes. This one feels like more like mindless prettier fun. It is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pretty tho and the atmopshere is still as good if not better.