Recent reviews by Pottross

I never got around to playing the original LOTF (2014) because of its mediocre reviews. This time they also kept me from playing the 2023 version at first but I'm so glad I ignored them during winter sale. After finishing my first playthrough I can safely say that this game to me is as good as (if not even better than) DS3.

The most common complaints seem to be related to performance issues, crashes, enemy swarms, lack of enemy variety, recycling bosses as trashmobs, hack and slash gameplay instead of a slow(er) more deliberate approach to combat, and "game is dead". I'll list my experience with all of those.

- Performance: 1440p ultra, i7-14700, RTX 4080 = 1%lows 80fps mostly 120(capped) fps, no annoying stutters or anything.
- Crashes: none for me
- Enemy swarms: I have only started playing the game during winter sale 2023 and from what I read online this used to be worse than it is now. There are still places where you get swarmed/cornered (especially in Umbral), but those are always manageable when you use your options correctly. The worst have been Womb of Despair enemies which lay and hatch remnant eggs. If not dealt with swiftly those gals will certainly ruin your day.
- Lack of enemy variety: Not sure about this one. I guess the game could have a couple more enemy types in it for sure but right until the last areas of the game you will regularly encounter new foes.
- Recycling bosses as trash: I actually like that the game sometimes introduces you to new enemy types with a beefed up version of them in a miniboss fight. After the fight you will know their ins and outs and how to efficiently deal with them down the line. Imo this is very well done and this should be done more often in games.
- Hack'n'Slash vs. deliberate combat: Pretty much only in Umbral will you encounter so many of those little trash enemies that you could feel like playing a hack and slash game, but those moments are few and far between. There are still a lot of deliberate 1v1 encounters to be had in PvE and lots of times where you just have to pay attention to your surroundings to not walk straight into a trap.
- Dead game?: Currently only DS2 sees less active players than LOTF 2023. In all my time in the game, I was only successfully invaded once in the last area of the game. The one other time someone tried to invade I got blocked by fogwalls, but the person ultimately dropped/timed out or something during the attempt and nothing ended up happening. It's a bit sad to confirm this, but I guess, if you are looking to mainly PvP, this might not be the game to get your fix :( I only just finished the game and haven't tried to connect to someone else myself so far. Neither helping nor invading them. So I can't really judge this, but given the amount of active players on steam, I'd be surprised if matchmaking was quick.

The Bad:
- Difficulty: Maybe (except for the first and maybe second boss, before familiarizing with the game mechanics) a bit on the easy side. But that probably goes for all souls games/bosses with only select actual challenge with certain bosses. But I'd say going in blind into the Fromsoft games the bosses took longer to beat overall. Here it was like 2 tries on average per boss for me. Compared to the likes of Nameless King or Sister Friede the bosses in this game are Kindergarten level. But judging by my current overall souls experience, I would probably confidently walk into King and Friede and triumph on first or second try as well.

The Ugly:
- Quest design: It's as cryptic as with the Fromsoft games. It is oftentimes unclear what to do or WHEN exactly to do it. Unless you are looking things up you might get locked out of certain quests and their respective rewards.
- Where the f*** do I go moments: You can get lost in this game. It IS a huge world. There are times when you get certain key (often literally) items seemingly out of the blue. When you don't pay attention or directly check on the item in your inventory, or maybe you are currently pursuing a different goal altogether, you might miss entire (story relevant) portions of the game. In my playtrough specifically, I got handed the Fief key from an NPC and not knowing what it was for (and frankly not bothering at the time), I never visited that area until I was close to beating the game. This turned out to be a 100% mandatory area of the game that you cannot beat the game without :D But well, that could just have been me not paying enough attention.
- Ranged enemies and enemies that jump you out of nowhere: Stack of crates/boxes in the way? A tiny, dimly lit alcove to your right? Wooden planks blocking your view? You can be certain that, in 95% of cases, there will be an enemy behind, waiting to jump or push you. This sometimes reminded me of the Ringed City where enemies just lay in ambush to push you of the ledge. Going in blind, those instances will be as frustrating as they were in other souls games.

The Good:
- Overall Combat: Be it melee, ranged, spellcasting, blocking, parrying or riposting. It's all there and it's all phenomenal. Also all the enemies have very good movesets. The only thing I wish for would be more impactful sound effects with super heavy weight weapons. Especially the Grand Hammers should have a lot more THWOMP.
- Umbral + Axiom exploration: While not a new invention in gaming the idea of traversing two interconnected worlds was "A Link to the Past"-levels of sweet in my book.
- Lamp: Basically an always equipped off-hand item that is integral to the game. Just having it on your belt alerts you to things in Umbral and holding it reveals Umbral. You can then warp to Umbral, you can suck in things, you can plant checkpoints or rip the motherf***ing soul out of an enemy, or yank them off ledges. It's THAT awesome.
- Ranged options and mechanics: This might be one of the best things about the game. Ranged weapons are ALWAYS an option. No matter what build you are there will be a ranged option for you. Be it throwing axes, rocks, javelins or spells. You will be able to take out an archer from afar, effectively.
- Weapons scaling entirely with magic attributes: You're a mage and want a melee weapon except the Moonlight Greatsword? LOTF has got you covered with many more options than just one in the game. Plus, there are also viable melee weapons that don't require any non-caster stat investment to wield them.
- Graphics: I'm not a graphics guy but the game just looks gorgeous. The world is super nice to look at and the environments pull you in. Armors and weapons are also a joy to look at. Fashion Lords!
- Vestige seeds: Those can be used to spawn a checkpoint in certain areas at will. The number of actual checkpoints in the game is reduced because of this, but you will always find shortcuts back to the big checkpoint of the area. The vestige seeds come in clutch, when exploring new areas. Oftentimes it's possible to plant one right outside a boss arena to minimize runbacks, in case things go south. Overall this totally reduced frustration potential compared to Souls.
- Sockets, Runes and Eyes: Another modified mechanic in this game. Once you upgrade weapons/shields you will unlock up to three rune slots of certain types. Runes will drop from enemies or be rewarded as loot. Their effects are different between weapons and shields. Some give higher attribute scaling, higher status effect buildup, higher defense, or even add mana/health regeneration etc. Your Lamp can also be socketed with eyes that you find while exploring Umbral. Those can passively or actively alter your entire play style. This is extremely well done imo.

All in all this game ranks as follows for me: DS2 < Demons Souls < BB < Elden Ring < DS1 < DS3/LOTF.

Prepare to get outnumbered, prepare to get ganked, prepare to get shot, prepare to get roflstomped by insanely good players but also prepare to do all that to the opposing team as well. If you are like me and you get ANY enjoyment out of hitting faces with sharp or blunt objects, you will certainly like this game :)

PS: There is an ingame store (purely cosmetic - no P2W) that lets you buy things for earnable ingame currency (gold), if you have the necessary rank in the respective class/weapon class. You also have crowns (buyable for real money, some included with the special edition) which allows you to skip the rank requirement for any desired cosmetic, except a few.

Fun Game!

Wow... just wow! I love Puzzle and Point&Click Games and somehow this has eluded me for over 5 years. Finally, today it showed up in my recommendations and I picked it up for LESS than a dollar. So far I have spent 3 hours with it and cleared maybe 20 of the puzzles. There are different game modes and what feels like hundreds of puzzles in the base game to keep you occupied, plus workshop integration for an entire eternity after that. Some of the puzzles so far make really good use of physics and it's an overall nice and relaxing experience. So far there's no frustration involved. I'm always finding new and interesting ways to use the items at my disposal and it feels great finding a working solution. Also, pretty chill soundtrack!

SAD that I didn't pay full price. If you like puzzle games and you've got a dollar to spare within the next 24 hours, this is an easy 11/10.

gud

tl;dr: Stay away, even for free...

The controls in this game are atrocious. They are floaty, inaccurate, and half the time things as simple as picking up something don't work. On top of this the camera in this game is unbearable. Remember when games in the 80s and early 90s were so bad you could run faster than your screen could scroll so you got wrecked by sh!t you couldn't even see beforehand? Only way around this is to wait every couple seconds for the camera to catch up... Welcome to the same thing in the most awful 3D-manner imaginable feat. non-adjustable camera, hype! Great fun. On to Head Creation: This is basically a worse version of Mii Editor on the original Nintendo Wii, minus the fun background music.

Congrats on launching out of Early Access tho. /sarcasm

best enjoyed in short bursts

Obviously very early in development, so you can expect plenty weird animations/ragdolls/physics here and there. It is also quite hard to get into, but once you devote the time needed, it feels so rewarding to pull something off or even chain a couple of tricks together. Even if it's just some basic trick at a specific location that you've been trying to nail for an hour or so. When you finally get it, it was you who made the trick happen, not simply the tap of a button :)

I normally don't do any reviews, but it's the least I can do to help these devs.
This game offers a rich RPG experience, with an intriguing story line and a lot of exploration to be had. On top of all of that, you can enjoy this together with a friend in coop. My friend and I have been hesitant to try the game even though we were drooling all over it since it was first announced, because we read that only the host would save progress. While true, this is only the case for story/questline progression, inventory and character development is still possible clientside. There has also been a patch recently (beta branch) which expands on the already lengthy (120hrs in as of writing this and still exploring new stuff on a single save file) game a little bit. The beta branch offers more content than the base game and is more stable in my experience. There's literally no reason to not run it. Before the beta patch we ran into issues more frequently the deeper we progressed into the game. Things like items we wanted to trade falling through the floor, items despawning from my friend's inventory, crashes to desktop because the game struggled when having more than 15 autosave files could have been serious deal breakers but we still got a lot of enjoyment out of it. Also, these issues are a thing of the past since the release of the beta branch. One issue that still persists though is the lengthy/infinite "Loading Items" in coop. My friend has possibly kept a copy of every weapon in his homebase in Berg. His vast collection makes it impossible for me to load into his game if he sits in Berg.
Aside from that I would love to see this game develop over time. I will gladly buy addons featuring the the other regions of Aurai, that are already being mentioned during area transitions. This game has been a buggy mess at times (in the non-beta branch) but this is maybe the freshest breath of RPG-air I have taken in a while, reminiscent of the original Gothic but bigger, better, and playable with a friend :)

Labor of Love *cough*