Recent reviews by Adwen

Honestly, the sound design pretty bad. The UI is an inconsistent mess. Animations for abilities on your character and allies are extremely under-baked and often go completely unnoticed. I rarely have been so quickly put off from a game.

Its absolutely catering to the classic wow players who don't want to grind or play a private server, and basically those folk exclusively. I genuinely could not find any enjoyment playing this game.

If you're not one of those people who thoroughly enjoys the extremely derivative wow aesthetic, tab targetting combat, and classic MMO camera clunkiness then this game really isn't for you- and I'm just not one of those people anymore.

I'm sure that pretty narrow slice of people who really want this will find a lot of fun in it, but for most people- nah, this ain't it.

How did this studio manage to take none of what they learned from payday 2's troubled launch and early life, and its complete redemption arc?
How did this studio manage to remove all of the best parts of the previous title, for its successor?
How did this studio manage to completely screw up what could have been a runaway success if all they did was migrate to a modern engine, add more skills, more guns, and a host of new maps while keeping the core gameplay and progression system of the previous title?

Its that simple. At least, it could have been. They wouldn't have had to take any risks. Just bring the previous game up to a modern level of detail and support. Add new content, without removing what made the previous title successful, and allow the community to migrate to the new title.

But no.
This game has no meaningful progression.
This game has no diverse, or impactful character builds.
This game has little player/weapon customization, which I can guarantee will be "remedied" by countless microtransactions
This game has at current time no RNG map rotations for objectives. Meaning 0 replayability, unless you yourself change something in how YOU play.
This game has pitifully few maps and heists as is.

As it is I've played about 5 hours and have done everything I have any interest in. I've completed every map, on the difficulties I wanted to, full stealthed vHard+, and there's nothing left for me to do besides grind meaningless levels with meaningless rewards to get meaningless skills that have little to no impact on gameplay.

Needless to say, I don't recommend this game. I don't recommend it at 100$, at 60$, at 40$, at 20$, Hell I don't recommend it at 5$.

Do what the rest of the community has done. If you want to play Payday, go play Payday 2, or wait for Den of Wolves.

Honestly, performance is bad, graphics aren't great, eclectic mashup of genre gameplay mechanics, it feels like a truly soulless clone of Monhun trying to stand apart by mechanic bashing. Not to mention perpetual and constant crashes on my system. If you're a fan of stamina climbing, fortnite building, and a real die hard monhun fan you might be able to manage, but if you're not... Move on, its not worth the install space.

Overall its a 6-7/10

The gameplay is completely let down by the incredibly preachy and bad writing. The gameplay is good, the writing/story/characters are terrible.

Should you buy it? Only on 50% or more discount.

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actual breakdown
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Gunplay 8/10, classic borderlands, very good gunplay.

Sound 7/10, sound effects for weapons and abilities are varied and satisfying

Campaign 6/10, its a borderlands game, it goes where you expect it, no surprises but not disappointing

Writing 3/10, the game goes from 10/10 jokes to weird, 1/10 sections that are nothing but preachy... it legitimately ruins sections of the game.

Characters 2/10, Prepare to be preached to by the Congregation of Progressivism. Its shoved down your throat at every turn and opportunity. It honestly gets really hard to ignore the constant and inane dribble of progressive ideology that just seeps from every character and quest in this game. None of the characters feel like they were written to be good characters, or have good personalities, each and every single time it feels like they were written exclusively to check boxes and it ruins the game. The torgue questline and character perfectly accentuates this, going from 'eh' worth a chuckle, to wow this is actually so unfunny im legitimately contemplating quitting the game right here, to the funniest scene in the game.

Endgame 5/10, it has one, unlike other borderlands games, not bad, not great, it at least has a endgame.

Pros
- Expansive ability variety with satisfying effects and skills
- solid 8/10 graphics
- Solid 7.5/10 story
- Great turn-based combat
- large modding community for more varied replay value
- Co-op support for up to 4 people
- DND style dungeon master gamemode for custom DND with friends
- Very solid combat mechanics
- Long main story if you're not playing on easy or rushing everything

Cons
- Many easily exploitable skill and ability combinations that can make combat a joke if you exploit them
- Load times with lots of mods can get absurd even on an NVME SSD
- AI can be anywhere from 500-5 IQ

Overall a very respectable 8/10 without mods and a 9/10 with mods.
The relatively few cons in the game do little to impact it. complete loads are few and far between, AI for the most part acts competently, and the exploitable combat mechanics and skill interactions can be easily avoided in a play through. While I personally find the gameplay and map progression a bit too linear I dont want my subjective preference to impact the score for what most people will probably find as an open ended RPG with relatively open worlds.

Its Just genuinely good. If you like base builders, production optimization, or exterminating native inhabitants then you'll love it.

With mods to vary additional playthroughs after a first run the game remains interesting. Theres always a way to optimize production lines. To challenge yourself further. To push scale of production even further.
At the time of review I have 950hrs on record, and I've only done maybe 5 or 6 runs of the game. Now, I do play it with friends exclusively, but thats still more than 100 hours per run on average, and its genuinely just enjoyable the whole time. A very laid back and casual base-builder once you get past the early game, with enough difficulty thanks to mods, to push it into being quite seriously hard if you enjoy a challenge.

N O S T A L G I A

I spent my first 200 hours learning that sometimes farming isn't the most important thing...
I spent my next 400 hours learning the ins and outs of every single hero and item...
I spent my last 2634+ hours yelling at minorities in all chat and spamming voice emotes...
I hated every second of it...
I loved every second of it...

9/10 Def recommend. Best MOBA. Kuroky Best Rubick EU.

Honestly one of the best looter shooters out there. Seriously seriously recommended, however having the season pass and being caught up on DLC is practically a must.
In depth review below

-Excellent gun-play, Absolutely perfect, should be a role-model for all devs moving forward for how to do guns right.
-Sound work and profiling is absolutely fantastic. Literally one of the best soundtracks in gaming.
-Top notch movement system with each class having extremely varied and satisfying jump mechanics
-Content for 'all skill levels' out the back end, whether you're ready to invest 7 hours a week, or 70
-Great story and lore if you take the time to find it

-Money-money-money Season pass and DLC/expansions are simply put, a must. They lock you out of very important content
-Grinding. Its a looter shooter, you know its gonna be a grind. Some people like it, some people dont.
-Gated & limited raid Matchmaking. This is a step that makes sense from a couple points of view, but the hassle of having to leave the game and search forums and third-party communities to try and find a group willing to take you and/or a few other people or friends is just way, way too much. Raids reward some of the most powerful gear and items in the game, and only a paltry 11% of the PC community has ever completed a raid before. Thats frankly an issue that bungie doesnt seem to want to address. MM in raids might lead to some new players making raids difficult, but it also opens a pathway for solo players to find raid parties without having to leave game, which frankly is the largest part of why people simply dont run raids. Traditional MMOs dont use matchmaking for raids because there are hubs located in game that offer people a chance to find groups to run them with. Destiny has no such thing, the tower is either filled with people minding their own business, people with chat disabled, or people from foreign countries who dont speak the same language as you. We NEED a dedicated way in-game to find and team up with other people who want to run raids, that is an absolute must.
-PvP... The pvp in this game is well, well its just not good. You have a substantial amount of the player base using "aides" in game to buff their "skill", and the radar system is so broken for people who get good at it that its been removed from competitive all together, yet they wont remove it from other game modes where it is heavily abused. Not to mention the insane meta that some builds have become with particular pulse and smg builds capable of melting down guardians in a super in a second or so tops from a considerable distance. The PVP in this game is honestly its greatest downfall imo. any amount of strategy or depth is entirely made void by people with radars who can see you coming from 360 degrees and half a nautical mile away, and builds capable of TTK in the .23s range, and top that off with a server delay long enough that you'll find yourself rounding corners and a full half second later dying to that random spray of bullets that missed you. If you're used to playing CoD you'll fit right in here, oh well but, even CoD has longer TTK. Its honestly hard to imagine the same studio which balanced halo PvP, balanced the PvP in this game.

Despite those very... long winded cons in my opinion the game is still great. I still recommend it. Yes those things are annoying and they can completely ruin a night or a session, but you'll still find yourself having fun. The satisfaction finally getting that perfect piece of gear with the stat rolls you need after hours of farming. The overwhelming feeling of superiority after utterly dominating a team that taunted you in the gambit pre-game. It just, it is honestly a great game, an 8/10, it just has some painful scars left over from their first game that they need to shake off or resculpt.

I was speed running a new build through cathedral of the deep when I was invaded by a man in priest robes, who proceeded to hunt me down and examine my rearward assets with binoculars.
I hate it.
9/10 Would recommend.