Recent reviews by Jericho

Edit: Connection Issues seem to be resolved. The game is good - builds off of the strong foundations set in 2k22. It's not perfect and there's a bit of jank, Faction Wars in MyFaction remains a silly game mode in which you have to take down all the AI team in order to get an uninterrupted pin/submssion.

Connection issues mean that anything online (CC, Vs, MyFaction) are unplayable. Avoid until there's a fix, or wait for a sale if you just want the offline parts of the game.

Submitting a ticket about server issues results in 'go and talk to your ISP'.

Prepare to be crap. Do some learning, some practice. Then be slightly less crap. Maybe.

Repeat.

Excellent.

I guess the TL;DR is: Clunky but sometimes truly epic survival game on a big map. Bring friends. Wait for a sale.

What a journey this game has been through.

I've spent 10 days of my life playing it and I do not regret a minute. Meeting up with friends in Novo and trying to turn the tower into a beacon of uneasy friendliness, wandering the coastal roads and meeting different people, getting shot for no reason, shooting people for no reason, the one time I though a grenade was a canteen and threw it into a room filled with my friends (I had an 11" monitor and bad glasses. It's my story and I'm sticking to it.). Mercy-killing injured friends on request who freak out and kill you first. The Jeffe incident. The game has given us tons of memorable stories and I'm genuinely grateful for that.

However - this game peaked years ago for me. The joy of discovery is long gone, the player base has dwindled and all the excellent improvements have come too late in the day. The devs have worked hard to try and improve the game and it’s clear that things have been changed (sometimes multiple times) but it still doesn’t feel quite there. It’s been a weird ride, the changing of dev teams, the promise/cancellations of features and possibly helping to popularise the Battle Royale genre – along with the PU Arma mod.

The framerate and the graphics have now reached a good spot - but still don't quite cut it in the 2019 market. The atmospherics that have been added (fog, rain... clouds?) really help create a slightly more 'real' world and in some cases help build tension.
The UI is far from intuitive even though it’s been through a few revisions. It’s miles better than it was, but still has miles to go. It can get a little funny about certain items, the contextual menu options are implemented in a clunky way and it lags at times too, which can be at best; annoying, at worst; fatal.

Loot is another system that has changed significantly. During past patches when items and spawn rates were being tweaked, the game was more fun – the beige piano house (whenever we approached one of those, we’d sing ‘Piano house, piano house’ to the tune of Elton John’s Saturday - #relevant #rocketmanmovie) was once a goldmine of guns, as was the little barred security hut thing. Today the loot system can be described as; sparse. Other reviews have noted how hard it is to get geared so I won’t go into much. Expect to stand in front of trees praying to the apple Gods quite a bit.

Zombies. Unfortunately these are still not fantastic. To be fair – in the early, dark days – they were far worse. The way they spotted players was either undertuned or waaaaay overtuned. Their ability to chase the player using past waypoints also meant they were super easy to deal with. They’re in a better spot now, with some variety – but it’s not the herds we dreamt of back in the early days.

The players. This one is not directly Bohemia’s fault, but as time has gone on the game has become less social. The sparsity of resources has basically turned the game into a long-winded battle royale. A player with gear has everything to lose from friendly encounters, whereas a freshly spawned bambi has nothing to lose. Shoot on sight has always been a part of the game that the community has been split on, but it’s become a much more common occurrence.

Player movement. I’m repeating myself here, but – they’ve worked hard on this. But it’s terrible. Slow, unresponsive and will see you walk off the edge of many, many buildings. On the bright side, you might get lucky and the game might forget about fall damage – which has happened a few times.

There’s still tons more. At one point we were told bases would be a thing – to be fair you can setup tents, farms and storage to create rudimentary bases, but nothing as in depth or meaningful as the kind of content that mods of the mod have had. Vehicles – glitchy, massive time investment but kind of cool? I drove a bus into a lake one time. When I got out underwater the game freaked right out.

DayZ is always going to be a great game to me. Not because of the game itself, but how it allowed my friends and I to engage and create stories. If you have a big group of friends and want to dive into a weird, sparse (loot and players) then go for it. But make you go for it on sale.

Before I get into this - if you're looking for a classic 'Dynasty Warriors Experience' - get DW8XL or Spirit of Sanada.

I guess Koei were caught between a rock and hard place. Either change nothing, get dumped on for being stale, or take a risk and change things up.

They opted to go for an open world, but it's a very stark, empty and largely dull map. You can do a few things in it, outside of heading (or quick travelling) to the next story fight.

1. Hunting.

It's terrible. The animals have awful ai, the bow controls on an Xbox controller are horrific and sometimes the animals teleport.

2. Gathering materials for crafting.

Needed for upgrading/crafting. The crafting system is pretty rudimentary, Spirit of Sanada did it better, though that wasn't great either to be fair. Also when creating higher tier weapons, it can be tricky to work out whose weapon you're making.

3. Taking minor bases.

Not massively exciting. They're all the same.

4. Sidequests.

You might think - Oh, maybe Cao Ren will ask me to help him defend a town? Or Gan Ning might want to go hunting? Or Ma Chao might want you to find all historical record of him to destroy it and replace it with heroic stories.

Nope. It's the same 4/5 quests given out by random shopkeeper NPCs. Kill 5 tigers. Kill an axe guy. Kill a sword guy. Wait until night time then kill an axe guy.

5. No climbing mountains.

You have a grappling hook. It makes sieges silly. But it's poorly implemented. I spent an hour trying to climb a mountain to today. It made me so angry. Sometimes it doesn't offer the 'hook' prompt. Sometimes it just pushes you down the mountain because why should you explore an open world?

6. Quick Travel.

Just do this instead.

This is really starting to shape up. It is by no means finished, but recent patches have started to shape this into the the multiplayer, multi-class an multi-race battleground it was born to be.

Before reading: I bought this for £32 while on sale.

Short write-up: This games sits between Civ and Total War. It's an odd spot to inhabit, but also a fairly unique one too. The kingdom management/overworld aspect has similarities to Civilisation, however dig a little deeper and the officer management and diplomacy options add a huge amount to differentiate this title from 2K's flagship.

Officers can oversee development of your settlements, (an essential task that can become a little tedious as your clan grows - but thankfully can be given to one of your trusted retainers to develop automatically.) they also lead units into battle, conduct diplomatic missions, sow disharmony in the hearts of that one enemy officer who isn't too keen on his current lord and much more.

Battle comes in two flavours: the first is very Civ-esque and happens on the overworld, but without the turn-based element (little detail that I liked: if you march near other territories, armies will form and watch you from the borders until you're safely out range then they'll go home). This approach works fine if you have a clear numbers advantage. However, if the number of soldiers and officers is a little close then you'll want to take direct control. If you choose to do this then you are presented with a map based on the current location on the overworld and your units will respond to your commands directly. You'll have to tentatively scout for your enemy and then do your best to flank them.

Each officer has a skill that can be triggered in battle to either buff their unit/allies or debuff or harm enemy units. Most units can also opt to charge - a tactic that leaves the target unit in a state of confusion, which in this battle system is a very, very bad state to be in. As the game progresses and muskets are introduced, charging becomes riskier for the attacker as any units armed with firearms can 'release', which effectively counters the charge. TL:DR - Battles are pretty fun when you take control.

The sheer number of characters is mind blowing - each with stats and skills that can be improved and added to the more you use them. Keeping your chaps and chapette's happy is pretty important - this can be done with gifts (Feudal Japan as it turns out, was apparently full of very shallow people) or by offering your disgruntled officer one of your offspring to marry. You can recruit in one of three ways - find a ronin and pay him a small stipend to join (then immediately shower them with gifts/women so they don't sod off straight away), by convincing another lord's officer that you are in fact better than he is - making the officer jump ship, and finally: employing officers you defeated in battle. This doesn't always work and even when it does, the officers you gain are often not your biggest fan. If that particular method seems like too much hassle you can just execute them all. Or not. Your call.

I've not had this game long, but it's a perfect mix of strategy and emergent storylines thanks to the wide variety of characters and the events that can occur. I've rambled a bit, but I wanted to describe the gameplay a little - I watched videos on YT before taking the plunge, but even those videos didn't quite capture how much addictive fun this can be. I personally have got invested in the future of my clan (I this particular case - the Azai. Nobunaga can do one.). I've come to terms with the fact in this run through I'm not going to unify Japan, but I will at least survive. I hope.

A thing that made me chuckle: I hired one bloke who told me 'Hang on. This is fine. But I have to sort myself out first.' A year later I forgot about him entirely - only to have him return on this bombshell - 'I'm all sorted out now.' Good. Get to work you scrub.

Disclaimer: Menus are a bit clunky but not 'uninstall' levels of clunk. Translation isn't always up to snuff - one guy started speaking in numbers at one point - I decided he was a robot trapped in the past trying to blend in for the sake of humanity.

Ok, let's get the bad out of the way - some of the writing and voice acting isn't great. Sometimes webswinging can get you disorientated.

Onwards to the good - fluid combat system (feels similar to Batman games now, much more refined than ASM), webswinging that makes sense - webs connect to buildings (this is cool, but sometimes the game seems to get slightly confused and doesn't 'see' the buildings to connect web to). Also the web-zip thing has been carried over from ASM and feels much slicker than it used to.

The graphics are lovely and the costume selection is fantastic.

I'm tired, so the quality of this review is a bit off, but the game is brilliant. We're close to the greatness of SM2. Close. Very close.

This game is too arcade-y to be considered a simulator. 10/10.

It's alright. The novelty wears off pretty quickly, and all that you're left with is remorse.