Recent reviews by Talio

TL;DR If you have a friend group that you can play with consistently, it's good and I would recommend it. If you either don't have a consistent group you can play with, or just want a game you can play solo during lunch breaks or the like, just play the first game instead until this one gets more balancing and tuning work done.
I've not had this much trouble with the RNG and over-reliance on hyper specific cards/relics/whatever in literally any other deckbuilder I've played, including the first Slay the Spire.



Really really good if you play the Multiplayer... Partly because you can help cover each other when someone gets shafted in the RNG for their cards/relics or bad card draw order during a particular fight, and partly because it's just fun to make it a social and cooperative experience.

That said, it only allows you to maintain a single run per save slot for Multiplayer. So unless you have a group that is very consistent in their availability... Or can reliably finish a whole run in one go... You have to wipe your last run to make room for a new run with a different lineup of people, or juggle who is maintaining the saves for which lineup. And even in the Multiplayer experience, it's often the case you'll struggle to get a good build going depending on your luck with the RNG and just rely on one of your friends to carry you, so from an individual point of view it can be pretty inconsistent.

However... When it comes to Solo play... This is where it falls really short.

My subjective experience is that solo play is absolutely miserable if you want to play anything other than the Silent or Necrobinder. A lot of enemies are simply overtuned for solo play and require you to get some incredibly lucky RNG to beat. So far, the Silent and Necrobinder seem to be relatively consistent in getting at least an OK build going, but the other 3 options are... Excessively reliant on really lucky, really specific cards/relics coming up, 19/20 times you end up with a build that either has 0 synergy, though in the case of the Silent or Necrobinder even their 0 synergy decks seem to be good enough that you can at least muddle your way through it, or you end up with a build that is so reliant on a single gimmick that getting top or bottom decked on specific cards will screw you over, and even if you try to force a specific build by refusing to take cards that don't match the build you're going for... 9/10 times you literally do not get enough of the card/relic options you need for the build you wanted and just fail in the 1st act.

I've made literally a couple dozen attempts at running The Ironclad, in particular, and have thus far never even reached the final boss, and only a couple times have I made it past the 2nd boss, while playing solo. Even when I get a solid build going because inevitably those builds rely on me not having my most important cards end up at the bottom of the draw pile and/or rely on me finding enough Draw cards to compensate for cards ending up buried. Or sometimes having ALL the cards I need getting drawn on the first turn, and not having enough Energy to play them all.

Granted, I have a bad habit of tackling as many Elites as I can, and a lot of Elite enemies and Bosses are designed to heavily counter specific build types. Problem is, if you get a boss that hard counters your build in Act 2 or 3, it's rarely the case you have time to fix your build before fighting the boss unless you get amazing luck with the RNG... And Elites are so random you can never predict when you'll encounter one that counters your build, so every time you fight an Elite it's a gamble with RNG if you run into one that counters you.

Some non-Elite fights are also overtuned to the point that it feels like fighting an Elite when you encounter them, though that is also at least partially tied to them countering you if you don't have the right build to deal with them.

Again though, this is my subjective experience, and I'm still learning the nuances and options available to each of the characters, so it's also possible that 3/5 of them just aren't "clicking" for me in terms of how I am playing them vs. how they are expected to be played. The inconsistency of getting what you need when you need it is also not unique to this game, but my subjective experience has been that it's notably more difficult to get a good build working compared to basically every other RNG deckbuilder I've played - Including the first Slay the Spire.


I will note that on paper at least, The Ironclad and The Defect both have some incredibly powerful synergies/infinites... But they require a lot of pieces to get going, and I have yet to luck out in the RNG enough to do so. I'm not as sure about the Regent, as I've only played them a few times, but one of the keys to the ridiculous infinites is a lot of passive things happening and/or a lot of energy and card draws happening, and The Regent seems to be more limited than others in terms of card draws and energy generation. Or maybe I just need to play them more to unlock more cards.

The gameplay has a decent enough X-com style core, though not without a number of rough edges. Nothing particularly exciting or interesting going on beyond that, though the mobile ship base is a neat gimmick. The english translations are rough at a lot of points and has some weird inflections and cadence.

The official statement is that only the character portraits and some UI elements are AI, but if the voices aren't AI then the only explanation is they hired non-native speakers to read lines also written/translated by a non-native speaker.

The weird assertion about "No fake RNG - only true ballistics and lethal tactics" in the description is also odd. It straight up has Hit % chances just like X-Com, and I've had my guys landing hits that shouldn't be possible if it were "true ballistics" rather than RNG deciding if you hit or not. If you're looking for an X-Com clone which actually does something along the lines of "true ballistics" instead of pure RNG hit/miss % then check out Pheonix Point.

More importantly, something is really odd about this. Look up a game called "Sparta 2035" for reference, though it was apparently removed from the store prior to this one coming up - Though there's still some sort of "Last Diamond" free/demo version around? It's literally the same game under a different name, with a different developer name and publisher, though the "Sparta 2035" game is all in Russian from the look of it and made/self-published by a Russian developer. Seems they are re-releasing the same game under a different name but with international language support/translations. I couldn't find any useful information on Everplay DMCC, seems to be some sort of holding company (registered in Dubai?) rather than an actual game studio.

Best guess is the publisher saw potential in this game and wanted to try delivering it to a global market while distancing it from Russia due to the current state of the real world and such.

Whatever the case, something I'd approach with caution until it actually releases and we get a better look at the state of the game and perhaps a better understanding of why they rebranded instead of just updating the existing project with expanded language support.

There's a good chance this will change to a Yes in the future if the game gets a lot more balancing and development work. As it currently stands, it has too many rough edges to recommend even at the 25% launch discount price tag of $30.

Starting with the Pros:
1. It's fun to mess around with different squad compositions and kits and tactics
2. A lot of the booms, bangs, and even general gunfighting are really well done and satisfying... With some notable exceptions I'll cover in the cons.
3. Lots of logical battlefield changes through the use of high explosives. Infantry can use craters for cover, you can destroy cover or blow up buildings to clear a sight line.
4. Good variety for enemy types and each faction feels distinct. Some tools work well against all opponents, but there are a lot of tools and weapons which are more or less effective depending on which faction you are fighting.
5. Lots of cool toys! A wide variety of combat accessories, special weapons, guns, explosives, etc... But see also the Cons about this one...


And as many Cons as the character limit allows:
1. Lots of cool toys! Except... you can't afford to actually use most of them. The cost of a lot of the Special weapons, better quality primary weapons, and higher tier armors are prohibitively expensive and their cost often does not feel worth the value they bring over just bringing more of the lower tier versions. The better versions of Primary weapons in particular cost so much more than their basic versions while adding so little extra value in comparison.

2. Your acquisition of equipment for certain specialists and functions is heavily reliant on RNG. Case in point, I have heard mention of a fabled accessory which adds Camouflage to an infantry unit... But after completing over a dozen operations, I have never once seen this accessory come up in the shop. It also took easily half a dozen operations before I spotted Smoke grenades in the shop.

3. Tripod weapons are largely terrible. None of them are worth taking outside of defensive missions, and even then... They not only cost more than the non-tripod weapons which fill the same functions, but the bonuses from having your weapon on a tripod are so incredibly minimal that it doesn't really justify the movement speed and extra setup time penalties IMO.

4. Some weapons and tools simply straight up underperform for their cost. The MG's seem a little lacking against anything besides Human enemies. Mortars, in particular, are the most egregious example of underperforming gear though. Mortars work OK for the AI only because they get a lot more troops on the field than you do, but with the budgeting constraints, mortars simply do not bring enough value for their cost to the player. They do what an LMG does, but worse in literally every possible way besides the safety of the squad using it while costing more to bring and significantly slowing down the squad carrying it. Even the 120mm mortar you have to mount in the Heavy slot of a vehicle was beyond useless as anything but a massively overpriced smoke launcher, the HE rounds were laughably weak even in the extremely rare case you land a direct hit. Theoretically they become a lot more useful if you use Radar to spot and fire at enemies through the fog of war... But at that point you're sinking even more of your limited resource allocation into what is still an underperforming weapon type whos primary value is unreliable/inaccurate suppression while being dramatically less cost effective than any other suppression weapon type.

5. The [REDACTED] faction is the dumbest to fight. I mean that literally, as in that the most effective tactics I've found against them are the most braindead ones. Mass dogpile tactics and as many anti-tank weapons as you can bring are the order of the day, all other specialist roles need not apply because they are useless against this enemy type. All those cool toys and MG's and sniper rifles are less useful than just having an extra One Star quality squad of dudes carrying nothing but standard rifles. More importantly, basically all of the [REDACTED] units inflict a disgusting amount of Suppression, so having a large number of squads and multiple vehicles is basically mandatory to avoid getting your entire fighting force pinned down.

6. The AI is really weird sometimes. Like you shoot a bug and he can't see you? Sometimes he comes looking for you, but sometimes this triggers them and all their friends to run away until they are all bunched up in a far corner of the map, which sucks when you get an objective that requires you to kill a certain % of enemies or to kill a specific enemy within a time limit and you spend all of that time just chasing them down because they won't stop running until they hit the edge of the map.

7. Speaking of the RNG forcing you to fail sub-objectives... Beware of "Defense" missions where you start at the edge of the map and have to run to the center to stop the enemy from taking it. These missions are almost always harder than other mission types because even if you rush to the point at the same time the enemy gets there, if too many of them arrived before you can engage them, they will capture it before you have time to kill them. It's not even a matter of tactics or you as the player making a mistake, it's literally RNG not giving you enough time to actually get in position to do anything about it before they capture the point. I had to save scum one mission in particular 5 times until the RNG worked out that the AI defenders held their ground just barely long enough for me to get there before the capture point was flooded with half a dozen enemies.

8. Even without RNG enemies being dumb as a factor, the RNG layout of maps can make the turn limit sub-objectives it gives you impossible because you simply do not have enough time to get to all the objectives before the timers run out. And if you split your forces to try doing multiple objectives within the time limit, they take too long to kill the enemies they encounter, in addition to having a much greater risk involved. It's exceedingly rare I get lucky enough with RNG to complete all of the objectives when turn limit objectives are involved.

9. A number of mechanics and such need better explanation. For example, do AP, Hollowpoint and Rend rounds only apply to your primary firearm or do they also apply to Special weapons like machineguns and sniper rifles? Also, if you add a Heavy weapon to the APC it loses its ability to transport troops, which is not explained anywhere. The exact damage/armor pen/shred stats on accessory weapons like handguns and grenades should be displayed the same way they are for primary and special weapons, but they aren't. Vehicles don't seem to mention anywhere that I've noticed what weapon slots they have when you are just looking at them in the shop. And so on.

10. The game can be a bit repetitive after the initial novelty wears off. The fun comes from trying different combinations of tactics and weaponry, but so far it seems like the 3rd enemy faction has so much armor and immunity to various effects that just braindead human wave tactics and anti-armor weapons are the only viable options... But we'll see if that changes as I continue to play against them and acquire new gear from the fickle RNG black market.

11. Loot from missions is really, really random. Sometimes I get a bunch, sometimes I get basically nothing.

12. Upgrading your higher tier SL's makes them notably more expensive, even when you're adding the same exact perks as lower tier SL's... Such a weird, backwards approach which makes upgrading your "best" SL's actually reduce their relative value compared to your "worst" SL's. Individual perks should have an associated cost, just like accessories and other equipment, and you can stack more "expensive" perk options onto the higher star SL's if you want to differentiate them as being more skilled/valuable.

This game had a period of time when I would have wholeheartedly recommended it. It is no longer that game, and hasn't been for awhile now.

There was a time I loved this game as a fun way to kill time with friends. During the Alpha 16-20 era we would start a new run of it with every major update, and it was fun, though the beginnings of the downward trend started to rear its ugly head as we progressed through those alpha versions. I might be misremembering, but Alpha 21 seems to be when we started really not enjoying the game much anymore.

Since then, we have still dropped in from time to time to check it out after updates... But the game has actively become simply worse and worse with every release. Where in the past we might play the game for a few weeks after a new version dropped, now we play for a few days at best before losing interest, if we play a new version at all to begin with. Part of that is fatigue from playing the game so much in the past already, sure, but it's also because every major update seems to be taking away more of the things we enjoyed and replacing them with things we never wanted or asked for. Systems that straight up make no sense, or make the game fundamentally something far removed from the survival crafting origins that we bought into in the earlier days of the game.

There are mods that make the game better... Most often by re-implementing mechanics from previous versions of the game, such as the "learn by doing" system and/or alternatives to the objectively anti-fun mechanic of farming RNG magazine drops to learn how to do/craft basic things, letting you actually re-use your glass bottles, and so on... But those mods often come in the form of overhauls that include bigger changes that you may or may not want.

Even during the versions of the game I considered to be "on the right track", I will say this game has always suffered from really bad optimization and performance issues though, so that's not new. Horde nights in particular have always been a lagfest, which was a constant pain point.

The price hike when they dropped the 1.0 version also puts this game at a price point where I would definitely not consider buying it, even if they weren't actively making the game worse with every update. It has always, even during the better times, had a level of jank that puts it more in the $20-$30 range.

I will likely revisit this title again in a year or two, and update my review at that time. My current review is based on the current state of the game at the end of 2024.

My current stance is that the game simply needs more time in the oven, so I can't truly recommend it in its current state unless you have disposable income and a desire to fund the potential future of the game.

It has all the bones in place to be a really good sandbox tactical RPG. If the developer continues working on it for another year or maybe two depending on how active they are, I have every reason to believe it'll become something really good that you can sink a ton of hours into if you enjoy games like Battle Brothers, Wartales, Iron Oath, or to a much lesser extent games like Kenshi or Mount & Blade.

The combat system is currently pretty straightforward and the "combos" such as they are mostly amount to applying a debuff that makes the enemy take more damage or morale loss and then dumping damage or morale attacks on them until the debuff expires or they die/surrender, rinse and repeat. There are some minor considerations for using Root, Stun, or Push/Pull abilities, though these currently just function as straightforward CC effects without any real combination or environmental effects to consider that I've seen so far.

Game is good. Getting punished because of technical problems on the side of the developers is not. I get disconnected at least once every 3 games during the loading screen. I've never had this sort of thing happen with any other online game, even other games from the same company, so it's fair to say this issue is very much specific to this game and however it is handling connections.
I've found a bizarre solution now thanks to a random thread on this issue, which is to use a VPN. It makes absolutely no sense. I can connect to a VPN hub in the exact same town I live in and it completely stops the random disconnects during game launch. But playing games over a VPN is not ideal, and I don't always remember to connect to a VPN before I run into a disconnect since I don't have to do so for literally any other game.

It always successfully reconnects on the first try when my slot is still open as well... And usually I can load in before the game is really under way... But it's a 50/50 if I even get the option to reconnect before it backfills my slot and then gives me a strike for disconnecting. If it knows I disconnected long enough for it to try backfilling, then why the heck I'm sitting at a loading screen for a full minute before it gives me the option to reconnect... I have no idea.

Punishing players who get disconnected before the game has even started when there is no pregame lobby and no way to know who you're matching with/against before the disconnect happens is also really dumb to begin with unless they never even attempt to reconnect, considering 99/100 times it's because of a technical issue outside of their control, not because the player was trying to be disruptive or because they were rage quitting. Doubly so when I immediately try to reconnect after I'm given the option, but can't because it already put another player in my slot, meaning I was replaced with another player before the match even started.

With patches or the release of their modding toolkit and more time for the modders to make it into a great game, this will likely switch to a recommend from me later in time.

In its current state, the game has some really big issues which killed the experience for me and forced me to seek out mods for the game on the first day of playing it. Most notably, how incredibly bullet spongy the mutants in the game are. There's already at least 4+ mods available just addressing the overtuned mutant HP.

The overtuned/bullet sponge mutants are likely a poorly thought out attempt to make the encounters more difficult since the AI and pathfinding on the mutants is... Not great.

Your character is also apparently an asthmatic who has to chug energy drinks every 20 feet if you want to move fast, for those who might find this to be a pain point. (Slight exaggeration here, the sprint duration is not completely terrible, but it does take a long time to recover stamina if you don't use consumables) There's mods to help with that too.

I haven't run into any major performance issues, but there are also a handful of mods to help with that for people who do.

The controls and UI (Looking at you, radial menu...) are probably fine if you're a console player, or play with a controller, but it's a little clunky for mouse and keyboard. This is a minor issue though, overall the controls are serviceable even on M&K.

The weapon balance is also a bit odd. 9mm pistol calibre MP5 clone having the same performance/damage as a 5.45x39mm intermediate cartridge, for example. There's also a debate to be had about the 9x18mm Makarov (basically a slightly underpowered 9mm) doing more damage than .45 ACP.

Edit to expand on the sketchy economy: At least in the early game, you're 100% reliant on finding things because buying ammo and consumables costs too much for how much you're making. Consumables are abundant so that's not an issue at least.
If you want to actually fight things that attack you during your outings... Good luck. If you fight mutants, you're just wasting money since you're just spending bullets and durability and consumables on fights that provide no loot at all. If you fight bandits or military or the like, it's a gamble if you'll actually break even or just lose money fighting them. Maybe you'll get lucky and find enough ammo on their bodies to make up for the bullets spent on shooting them... Maybe you'll find a couple weapons in good enough condition to sell to cover the cost of weapon/armor repairs... Or maybe you'll find a pitiful handful of bullets in a calibre you aren't using and nothing but Red durability guns that you can't sell.

In a world where fighting is often quite literally not worth the cost in bullets, and in fact results in a deficit, how do the bandits as a faction even exist? Aside from the anarchists who just want to be there to be free of rules and society, why would most STALKERs even waste their time and risk their lives when the end result is pay so meager that you might actually find yourself paying to do your incredibly dangerous "job"?

But these issues aren't really new to STALKER 2 either. Even in the older games, if you rub two brain cells together considering the economy of the game, it doesn't make sense. It's purely game logic for the sake of restricting your advancement rate, and creating a sense of scarcity for resources.

First and foremost, yes, you can still enjoy this game as a social activity with friends. Just like literally any activity can be entertaining with friends. Having a friend to sing and dance with while drinking, or singing mining songs together while digging can be amusing, but that's one of only two highlights the game has going for it. It also only lets you sing while mining to get the mining buff, and you can't sing again until the buff wears off, for shame.

The second highlight is that the game does have some interesting and pretty environments to explore.

The rest of the game is made up of a bunch of familiar mechanics and systems, but pretty much all of them feel undercooked. It's certainly not the worst game in the genre I've encountered, but it's not particularly great either.


Building mechanics: It has them. They are serviceable. You can make some neat looking things. But it's painful to work with due to the snap points being dodgy to connect with for walls and floors and such, and snap points/grids for decorations, furniture and crafting stations are non-existent, so lots of free form placement on that front. If you like having things lined up neatly, this will drive you crazy before long. I also ran into some issues with building roofing, and having it spontaneously collapse later while I was away from my base for no discernible reason even if I had supports going in a straight line from the ground to the section of the roof that collapsed.



Survival mechanics: It has a hunger bar, cooking, and a really basic farming mechanic (just put a plant/seed in a plot and wait for it to finish growing, no further interaction needed) but that's about it on this front. I will give props at least for them implementing a neat gimmick I haven't seen in other games in the form of each meal you make being assigned to be either a Breakfast, Lunch or Dinner type of meal, and eating it at the appropriate time of day will give you a temporary buff.

It also has random horde and base siege events where you have to fight off swarms of enemies, but this isn't a fun horde mechanic like L4D/Vermintide/Darktide, this is that kind of horde event that feels like an aggravating chore and a slog because of the combat mechanics.



Combat: This is is the lowest point of the game, and is the primary thing dragging it down to a non-recommend from me, since you have to fight a lot. The combat feels floaty and non-impactful (Enemies barely react to getting hit most of the time until you chain hits into them enough to stumble them), the animations are really not great for most enemies, and a lot of enemies have surprisingly fast attack animations with a very small windup that is hard to even recognize as the beginning of an attack animation until you see it a few times.

Most enemies are excessive HP sponges while being able to kill you in just a few good hits, as well. Even when you have level appropriate gear. There's also no passive health regen, even out of combat, so you have to progress the game a bit and then grind out a bunch of portable food items that provide healing to heal up without needing to set up a camp and sleep.

Enemies you aggro will also aggressively continue to follow you for long distances, so the only way to get away from fights is to climb or otherwise get them stuck on terrain. Though that's not exceptionally difficult. But it still ends up being impossible to really avoid them if you want to actually progress, because they borrowed the Deep Rock Galactic approach of putting dirt in the way of paths to new areas, meaning you have to get past the enemies and spend time digging your way through.

To make things worse, you're also undergeared at all times by design when entering new areas, and consequently, you'll find yourself spending obscene quantities of time just alternating between stabbing and blocking/dodgerolling to whittle enemies down. Again, this ends up feeling more like a chore than a fun or "epic" fight. This is at least partly because of the way this game approaches progression, but even with level appropriate gear, enemies still hit too hard while being too spongy.

And that's on Normal difficulty. I can only imagine the harder difficulties must be a combat experience like fighting really shoddily made Souls bosses every time you run into a run-of-the-mill Goblin. I don't need a 20 minute fight every time I run into a single patrol of orcs and goblins, personally.



Progression/Crafting: You learn some new recipes from finding new materials, some from crafting things you've learned to make, others you learn by repairing broken statues which give partial fragments of a weapon or armor recipe, finding mcguffins and delivering them to a sculpture collection or finding a ranger book that's missing pages and adding the missing pages that you've hopefully found along the way. The method of learning new things is a bit scattered all over the place, in short.
The grind to find gear materials and recipes in new areas is made worse by the fact that the gear required to effectively fight enemies in each new/more difficult area have to be acquired in the very same area where you encounter them. So advancing through the game is a slog during the combat sequences, because your character will complain every time that they need a better weapon... Which you can't make yet, either due to lack of materials or because you've not found and repaired all of the statues that give the multiple fragments of the recipe yet.

There's also no XP/Leveling mechanics, and enemies seldom drop anything genuinely worthwhile. They mostly just drop metal fragments(used mostly for repairing gear) or gold coins(used to make gold piles in your base for funsies), but they don't seem to drop the metals or other materials you need to create gear to fight them, which would logically beg the question of how they're still overcoming your fancy steel armor while using the same scrap weapons they've had since the beginning of the game...

And then you go to the next area, and you're back to square one. This progression mechanic makes it feel like you're just treading in place in a mud pile, you never feel like you're actually getting stronger unless you backtrack to a previous area and moving forward is just an incredible slog during the combat sequences because you have to tickle everything to death and barely get touched in return to survive.

But for what it's worth, you do find new materials to create fancier looking structures and furniture along the way, so you progress the swag of your base on a noticeable way as you progress.






All in all... I can say it's an OK game to kill some time with if you have a friend or three to play it with, but even then it's hard to say if everyone will find the $20 price tag worth it given the current state of the game. If you're looking for something to play solo, it'd be hard for me to recommend it even at a lower price point unless you just really, really like the idea of being a Dwarf running around singing and dancing by himself to stay sane, or if you have a fascination with spelunking into pretty caves.

If the combat mechanics were better, it'd be an easy recommend at $20 even with the other issues the game has, but it'd require a pretty major rework to get the combat system into a good/fun state, so I don't expect that to change even with future patches.

Updating my review after taking the time to research/look into the chatter and information about the Privacy Policy and such, much of which seems to be overblown if not outright incorrect.

The vast majority of the data collected that people might be concerned about (such as government ID, your real name and DOB, or your social media and instant messenger information) are optional voluntary data points and/or data that is required by law to be given in certain countries. I.E. the potentially concerning data collection is all information that, unless proven otherwise, is only collected when you make the choice to give them that information or your country mandates it by law to gain access this game and others like it.

Everything else in their terms and policies are pretty much what you're going to get from basically every other live service game on the market right now.

That out of the way, the game is decent enough. The base building is nice, and there's a lot of good QOL elements to the inventory management and crafting, such as having materials pulled from storage containers in your base when crafting, and having options for auto-stacking materials.

I haven't tried the PvP servers yet and can't speak to that experience, but my biggest issue so far is that the PVE needs work. There are some pretty cool enemies and such in the game, but every combat encounter is ruined by the same thing: Really, really basic and stupid AI.

And of course, it is also still a FTP game at the end of the day. Meaning it's got battlepasses and microtransactions, uses crappy things like gacha mechanics to acquire some things, and has an annoying number of different currencies. Not to mention pushing the usual FOMO nonsense by gating certain things into seasonal content. Annoying and sometimes unethical, but it's pretty stock standard for a current FTP game these days.

Even without spending any real world cash though, it's easily a game you can waste some time on for a week or so and get some kicks out of, especially if you have a couple friends to run around with. Tentatively I'll put this as a recommend purely as a game to mess around in with friends for a bit.

There are still some rough edges, and some of the Warbonds objectively do not offer the same value despite having the same price tag, but I'm changing my review to a recommend since there have been a good number of patches working towards making more gear viable.
There are still a good number of downright garbage weapon and strategem options, but they've made enough good changes and buffs to restore my faith a bit after the abysmal state of the game in patch 01.000.100, so we can look forward to a good game getting better instead of worse.

Also, Sony appears to have backed off of their hard third party PSN requirement, which is nice. We'll see if they try to pull any other stunts in the future, though.