Recent reviews by Sofa

I've been a fan of Digimon for a long time, yet I haven't played a Digimon game since Digimon World Dawn on the Nintendo DS! Getting back into it was an absolute blast as a fan, but I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys turn by turn combat with great complexity and a heavy focus on a compelling story. This was a 10/10 experience for me, so much so that after clearing the game, I want to continue playing!

This is a quality game, mostly know for it's anime take on Dark Souls. The game is fundamentally similar to it's souls-like counterparts while also developping a unique type of mechanic that allows everyone's creativity to shine. It's easy to access as a near-casual experience and can be made more challenging with just a single tick of a box. And like most FromSoft games, Code Vein is a game where you get better the more you play.

PROS
-Fantastic Story
-Waifus and Husbandos (if you care about that)
-Incredible Character customization
-Tight game mechanics and controls
-Deep and extensive skills arsenal to choose from
-Nearly no bugs (none that I know of)
-New game + for extra difficulty and alternate endings

CONS
-Most you will do after clearing once is repeat everything you've already done
-Extra content is extra repetitive
-One of the most sufferable Co-op experience

Despite the few negatives I can give it, this is a solid 9.5/10 for me.

I've played Tera back in 2018 and left until I got back in last month on a completely new account. From my experience, most of the playerbase is currently in the endgame, meaning most of the leveling has to be done solo. At the time of writing this, steam analytics displays an average of 450 players online at the same time everyday from a general active pool of about 900 and decreasing. You could say the game is currently in a slowly dying state, but you can very much play it in the state it is right now. Leveling is made very easy as a solo player by following the red quests and the interface is presented to the player in a very intuitive way. I've seen some complains of players wanting to level together who couldn't because quests are "Solo content", but if you had a group of 3 players leveling at the same time, they could join leveling dungeons together and get the full experience which is currently tough to get due to low activity.

As for endgame content, most complains come from it being repetitive grinding and recycled content. However, I would personally say that the determining factor of liking the game or not is not about grinding, but rather about the gameplay mechanics themselves. If someone loves Tera's combat, they will enjoy the grind because that's what the game is all about, combat. So long as the player will enjoy the combat, they will enjoy Tera's endgame. There's also some other "world quests" called Vanguard missions which cycles through a set amount of quests, some of which have unique gameplay mechanics meant for flying mounts. While those are designed to scale in difficulty with the amount of players joining them, the low population usually means you'll do them solo, but I do see some other players occasionally, even with such a low population.

Some people are worried about the money aspect of the game; the pay to win. To be honest, there is no such thing. Yes, technically, a player can use their money to sell TERA shop items for gold and speed up their progression, but you'll end up at the top of the ladder like everyone else. There is no variety in terms of lategame gear and thus, paying won't bring the cash player beyond other players. That said, I believe the cash shop is still a worthy element in the game and while I do believe some items are rather pricy, the shop has deals which changes monthly, both lootbox and non-rng based micro transactions and features TERA club membership which you could pretty much call "the monthly subscription cost" of the game if it wasn't free to play. Specifically on the TERA club membership, this one costs around 25$ if I recall correctly, which is quite expensive imo, but it is very worth it and most players are willing to pay tons of gold to buy it from cashers as it pays for itself.

The playerbase is quite diverse in term of dedication. Guilds for hardcore min-maxing players to the more casual and laid back ones and even Erotic roleplay focused guilds, for those who care about it, are all part of this small community.

I believe Tera has a lot of potential as a casual game to play for as long as one enjoys it, but like I said at the beginning of this essay of a youtube comment, it all comes down to enjoying the combat. If you try the game and love the combat mechanics, you'll love Tera, if not, maybe try a different class or another game.

Cheers!

Warframe is a game where the grind is what brings you fun. It is fairly complicated to get into at start as you have to learn several things at once, but once you are into it, the game lets you do what you want, when you want it. The game has an excellent variety in its gameplay mechanics, customizables and lore for those who enjoy massive stories and universe to explore.

Once you get in, you're in for a lot of fun.