Recent reviews by Al-Mothafar

OK, I'm buying Elden Ring! "From Software" studio should give this game studio some money, now I'm totally OK with the concept of keep repeating :)

With 630+ times of dying, yet, I continued playing and trying over and over, this game is so nice in unique way, I never got bored, and I finished the story, it is awesome, highly recommended.

Graphics, OSTs, Story ... all are nice.

PS: I see some people comments about issues of performance even with high-end rig, for me it was so smooth with around 300fps, so I'm not sure, it is maybe outdated issues.

People use this to spam Facebook and X with random content form whatever you do in this "game" ...

So far, so good, the game is in top in everything except maps, maps (when you open it using tab) is totally useless, confusing, and rubbish.

Bosses fights making me want to play Elder Ring now lol, I usually give up fast when I die a lot, but fights are kind of fun and challenging that boss in Containment/Panopticon sector, just insane and fun.

Still, didn't finish it, but so far so good.

For sure recommended: 8/10.

TL;DR: Recommended, as it awesome but ruined by devs so it is not worth full price! but there is a workaround.

This game is awesome, everything about it, yeah I got this game at the end of 2018 and only now at the end of 2025 played it, call me crazy because I'm lol, I wished I played it before, but after 7 years, yet, I don't see this game outdated by any mean, in fact this is still better than most of games these days, in all areas, Story, Graphics, Soundtrack and even Gameplay, it is good.

I would give this game 9.5/10 but I'm not, but I'll drop 2 scores, so it is like 7.5/10, even with awesome game idea, graphic, story, but my experience ruined by the amount of bugs I had to handle:

* Stuck on trees or objects
* Slow walking even if you are running, like she is walking on a treadmill sometimes (and this is so critical in 1 of chapters)
* Animation sometimes stopped, so you just slide!
* A lot of stuttering and micro stutters and unsmooth movements even with motion blur on or off, does not matter.

For context, I have 5080/14700/32GB.

So I had to spend a lot of time just to find "how solve this and that", in general the solution is to turn on VSync, but guess what, Vsync inside the game does not work.

So, if you need a less buggy games, you go to your GPU software settings, and force VSync and Limit Max FPS, at least I have NVidia, and this resolved most of issues.

You may say that's because this game kind of outdated? no, this game still demand high GPU and CPU power, and when I was searching about solution I found that it effect a lot of players even years back, the fact that less than 3rd of owners of this game finished it, tells something.

I got so upset because of bugs in a chapter called "Swamp Shared Trail", I have my difficulty in "Auto", I got a lot of battles, they were so hard, near dead many times, but never dead, until I reach Swamp Shared Trail, I failed about 10+ or near 20 times just on that level because of stupid bugs, I was so upset and killed the joy of this game, even if you try to find a "walkthrough" video, the issue is not about how to finish it, in fact it can be different from game to another, but if you have that bug fixed, you can finish it without issues.

Finally, do you want more stupid thing? even the game support a lot of languages, this game don't have language change, I played it in English, but guess what, this is the first time even I had to change language from outside the game too! which is simple, but stupid too! Right-click Hellblade, go to Properties > Language > Select your preferred language!!!

So, I still recommend it, just limit your FPS and Force VSync from out side the game not in game, with this quality of coding and common bugs that should be so easy to catch and fix, and changes that you have to do from OUTSIDE the game, I don't think they deserve full price for this game.

For the new game Hellblade II, I'll never buy and play it.

If you play it for campaign, forget about it, it's awful lag and stutter in scenes and story and audio issues make it impossible to enjoy the game, like a slide show or 0.5 fps, this is no way, just skip them all and play the game, the play is doing OK.

Here is my experience:
* Downloaded 36 GB (8 minutes)
* Started the game, EA need to download the client and doing stuff (10 minutes)
* Trying to log in where the code never reach SMS for (limitation) and in email took from me a few attempts and a lot of search to get the code (15 minutes)
* Going into game, the game started back screen (5 minutes)
* The game stutter and started to show logos for credits non stop (3 minutes)
* Spamming click to skip all that sht went me directly into Play Online
* Loading took 3 minutes
* Video stutter and lag and I have to kill the game and find what exactly happening
* Then started again with many issues and skipping scenes, and finally finished the first race somehow.
* A message appeared that the server going to shutdown and I have to save my progress.

I did a lot of search about lag and stutter issue, it seems most of players suffering from that, and without solutions.

OK, I know and I heard how awful EA is, but now, I feel it, will never touch anything EA again, unless it is 🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️.

For this game, I'll keep my son just messing around with it, not worth to do any progress or take it serious.

I read only a negative review from TheKarpuk, I said well, that's maybe a personal taste, who knows, maybe it is like an idea that is not for everyone, but, it is ended up even worse, from what his review mentioned.

Later after the game I also encourage you to read reviews of Eleanora and Epicje.

Game style, acting voice, art, puzzles everything is nice, even the story, at some point, it was going well, until the ending, is ridiculously stupid, it not like a twist, it is like someone trying to make a "plot twist" but ended up with something silly! like if you play to be good hero or captain in a Sc-Fi movie, the twist would be like you are the evil, as for example! in this game you just find your self a side evil character of wide west movie! as a plot twist! while you just started as Captain of a ship in Sc-Fi movie!

The ending is just shifting you to totally different game, the more stupid thing will not stop at the ending, epilogue is totally out of everything, in a bad way, it is awful joke, it is funny that epilogue is very short but the same time it is making the whole play time you play before it means nothing, I mean it is like cursing you for playing this game!

I still understand, some weirdos might like the story, OK, but it is not good in general!

So TL;DR:

If you are looking into puzzles and good voice and acting, this is good for you.
If you are looking into mysterious story, this is only good when you start, with awful nonsense ending.
Aaaand it is short, most of play time you just walk or some unskippable scenes, and if you want the rarest achievement you have to NOT use fast travel at all, that's where the most of the time will be.

I don't recommend it, even a 50% discount is too much for it (well at this date, the max discount was 30% off), sorry, I really don't want to give negative review, but I'm so upset of a game started promising ended up with this awful execution.

It is fun and challenging, it should be helpful for our governor to make his road engineers to play this game, so maybe they will get better logic resolving out endless traffic.

It is fun, but with friends much better, story is nice, there are a lot of potential DLCs for content can be added, you can be so creative with things, but I don't have that creativity.

I hope there are more character customization, and they resolve the annoying issue of settings and characters keep resting from time to time.

Recommended 8/10.

TL;DR: The game got some nice puzzles and sound, but ruined with some mechanisms, and who made some of these seems just trolling or trying to be unique, but in a bad way IMHO.

Don't get me wrong, I liked a lot of puzzles of this, started fun, but at last quarter, it is just so nonsense, a lot of puzzles like just made for blind and for who got really good ears, it is stupidly hard not like you try to resolve a puzzle, it is just a challenge of how to not die, and good luck with that, you die in this game for these "puzzles" more than the number you die for bosses in Elden Ring.

Add to that. some checkpoints are just far a part.

And if you hunt for achievements, hohohoooooo, good luck, I got 12/13, the last one should be a true troll one No Point in Dying , I don't imagine a sane person can actually pass that, there is no value for that, add to this some puzzles you have actually to try and fail to understand what is your next step, it is designed for that way! and the other rare achievement DING! is just a test for your senses without your eyes, and for that you need to collect all eggs and there is no alt ending .

And finally, a bug near the end will just freeze the game (not game itself, but your charcter will stuck in the air), to resolve that you need to force the Vertical Sync, which is not in the game, if you have Nvidia, use Control Panel and add the game and turn it on, and from the game settings turn off full screen (so it will be windowed mode).

Finally, story? ... meh.

Final score? 5/10.

Puzzle are so challenging and nice it is not boring or repetitive, it is like each area is unique and sometimes unexpected, that area of a dog chasing is kind of annoying but managed to pass it with a trick, the twist of that creature is mind blown, I didn't get the "alternative ending" but I'm playing it for that!

Recommended 100%, dark 8.5/10