Recent reviews by NumenoDuo

Fun and chill co-op

The moment to moment gameplay is fun enough but the extra classes don't really bring much to the table (+10% increase crit chance from behind) and the balls are pretty limited in how they can scale up. I'd have liked to see more impact from character classes and a deeper skill levelling system to keep it interesting.

The ability to fuse balls and items is neat and enjoyable. I just wish it was explored in a lot more depth.

tldr: It's fun but I don't think the asking price matches what's on offer.

**Gameplay Spoilers Contained Within - No Story Spoilers**

I finished The Watcher with mixed feelings. On one hand, the new regions are some of the most detailed and beautiful we've seen. New creatures are fun, although lack a niche in the food chain compared to the base game. The sound design is once again top tier, the atmosphere and narrative are peak RW and the way the old zones are switched up was very cool.

On the other hand, the new zones are big and not interconnected, which is fine in theory but it can and will result in you running around for hours at a time with no sense of progression or purpose. There are far far too many death pits that are one, very hard to see, two don't make any sense to be where they are and it get's old very quickly.

The visual complexity of the new zones, again, whilst impressive, actually impose a hindrance when it comes to keeping track of the new scug, who is almost entirely black and can turn invisible. Seeing a black scug against a black background is hard, seeing an invisible scug's two beady white eyes when invisible against a white background is almost impossible.

I liked The Watcher, but I spent much of the first half wandering around for hours on end, slowly exploring every room in every region hoping for some sense of direction or purpose. With the removal of an interconnected world, portal hopping from region to region can leave you feeling like you're stuck in Groundhog day. Exploration is good. Looking around for upwards of 5 hours with no direction for the next thing you need to progress is... it's a lot to ask of any person, even someone who loves RW.

Overall there is a lot of good here and there are some flaws that are severe enough that they did hinder my enjoyment of the experience. I recommend it but I also hope they find a way to impove some of the worst pain points.

Performance is awful, content is lacking, combat has been neutered. Just play an older gen MH, don't waste your money.

Optimization is great. A big step up over the first game in terms of polish.

Challenging in all the right ways, feels smoother than POE1, visually very good. Too early to tell but as someone who was put off by how fast everything in POE1 was, this feels like a big step in the right direction.

The level design on display is some of the best in the industry. The level of intricacy is at times hard to believe and can feel daunting in the best possible way. Visually a lot of the open world, while retaining a number of the stunning vistas from the main game, can at times look a bit samey, however the legacy dungeons remain the games high points in both enemy encounters and visual design.

Side dungeons and optional tombs are vastly improves, each feeling more unique and interesting, even the catacombs manage to avoid feeling like budget chalice dungeons.

The main boss designs are exceptional, with a number of the new bosses being some of the best FromSoft have created. They are challenging, visually dramatic and very rewarding to learn.

Some NPC quests can be fairly cryptic but this is on point with the base game, the voice acting is excellent and the story telling on display is a big step up in terms of transparency.

However, there are a number of optional bosses that are simply re-skins of already over used, copy-pasted enemies from the main game and they feel as tiresome and lazy as they did 2 years ago.

The new weapon types are fun and mix up the combat and the new spells/incantations help with magic build variety.
The soundtrack has some beautiful tracks, especially the main boss themes.

It's a mammoth expansion in scope, it's also more Elden Ring. I do wish FromSoft had taken some creative risks and pushed the envelope with some of their themes and visual design because whilst the level of craftsmanship on display is undoubtedly high quality, it doesn't stray very far from foundations set out in the base game.

Having said that, within the constraints of Elden Ring, it's difficult to find much at fault here, it's highly polished, masterfully crafted and offers more of the same for those that enjoyed Elden Ring. For an expansion that could easily, very easily have been sold as a new game with the volume of content available, it's easy to recommend.

Incredibly well optimised with a good selection of settings to tweak based on your hardware.

Visually it's one of the best looking games available to date, with stellar facial animations and full mo-capped dialogue sequences. Landscapes and weather effects are wonderful, environments are varied and detailed, it's hard to fault the game both visually and technically.

Sound design too is superb, with great use of spacial audio and excellent mixing, machine (enemy) sounds are gritty and attack sfx help make abilities feel like there is weight behind them

There is a fairly engaging collectables mini game in the form of 'Machine Strike', think Chess but with more unit specific abilities and environmental tiles. It's up there with Gwent, although it lacks some feedback polish, collecting and adding to your unit roster is a nice side activity.

Combat is a big step up from the original title, the enemy roster is massively improved, larger and contains many more variants for each machine. Melee combat has been tweaked and overall feels tighter.

The terrible floaty feeling of ranged combat is gone, and the new bows feels far punchier.
The inclusion of weapon specific abilities and special attacks help round out the combat which all and all is a big step up from HZD.

There are some usual open world traits such as map collectables that I expect will start to feel like busy work after a while but so far each of these have been tied into narratives that keep them interesting enough.

There is machine strike, fighting arena's, hidden caves and dungeons, enemy bases, towers, puzzles etc. If you enjoy side activities you will have your hands full.

Voice acting is also very well done. Armour design, enemy design are all excellent.

The main story narrative has been enjoyable so far, impressive set pieces and surprisingly well written dialogues with interesting characters but as I have not completed the main quest I can't say how this holds up later on.

Overall this is a solid port, a really well done experience. Take note Capcom.

** Steam keeps asking me to update my Review - As of yet there hasn't been a single patch for the game so performance in cities is still bad. The game crashes on the vocation (skill) window due to the way it fails to cycle out memory properly. Along side memory related crashes there are driver timeout crashes on occasion.

The game is also fairly buggy, with quest bugs, characters getting stuck in the world, NPC's becoming hostile because you helped them fight off monsters (they don't like when you have drawn weapon).

It's clear this was pushed out before it was ready, on both consoles and PC and I would still not recommend paying anything close to the full asking price of this currently broken product.

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Technical issues are bad enough at the moment that I would advise against a purchase in it's current state (will update if this changes)

Faction quest lines are solid.
Some cool locations.
Comfy space exploration.

Excited for mods. A step up from F04/76.