Recent reviews by Cat Milkshake

kind of wish i could have a middle review for this game as it has some REALLY good parts and some awful parts. overall, i WOULD recommend this game until you get to the endgame.
for the good stuff:
-main story quests and areas (hagga basin, arrakeen, harko village) are awesome. i love the story, the characters, the suspense you feel at the end and the excitement and shock of new discoveries and information. all of it is great and intriguing, i was so sad when i got to the cliffhanger of the main story. i am extremely excited for the new story content that will come. i also enjoyed the side quests for the most part, some felt just like generic fetch quests but a lot of games have those, it's whatever and doesn't ruin the experience. they make sense for their individual story lines anyhow.
-crafting and farming is fulfilling for the most part up until tier 5 (there's 6 tiers of materials for right now). it feels very rewarding when you get to first craft an ornithopter and how game changing that and the buggy is for the game is pretty great, nothing i built felt like wasted materials and every new station i made felt like it helped me progress! farming SOME of the resources were pretty grindy, most aren't in my experience, but some of them are just far too difficult to farm because there will be a single place you can get them and it's in negligible amounts, then you have to wait ~45 min to an hr for the chests to respawn.
- combat is pretty fun for the most part. melee is most viable in my experience, ranged seems like there's just too many downsides (mostly because you can't use your holtzman shield) so i stick with a melee build. enemies are kind of repetitive and it caaaan be to get yourself stunlocked if you let several sword guys bumrush you or corner yourself, but that's mostly a skill issue. overall, enemy AI and difficulty isn't hard at all in hagga basin. there's like, 3 types of enemies: rushers (melee), ranged (snipers and assault rifles), and heavies (machine guns or flamethrowers). they generally have the exact same attack pattern, so it can just turn into muscle memory.

for the bad things:
-endgame sucks. period. deep desert is pretty unfulfilling, especially solo and even duo (which is what i did for 95% of my gameplay experience). DD seems to only really be fun with a full group or at least a trio. after you finish the main story and all of your side quests, there really isn't anything to do other than farm blueprints and resources for tier 6 stuff (which is only available in DD) and the landsraad. the game encourages you to hoard stuff, weirdly enough, so you just stockpile resources to dump into the landsraad and gain the win for your faction. besides this, there literally isn't anything to do. it's just farming and MAYBE pvp.
speaking of PVP, it's pretty disappointing, too. people tend to only target solos and gank them or simply grief them (most of the time it's groups of two to three doing this). PVP tends to be relatively unfulfilling in general, nobody likes to do ground combat and stick to their rocket thopters which is repetitive and boring. ground PVP is a lot of fun, you get to use your array of skills and weapons: awesome! but nobody ever wants to. PVP is also relatively nonexistent in my DD anyways, mostly has been since day 1 and most people are very nice and friendly which is a PLUS in my opinion. there's only the occasional ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ who wants to go bother people, but that's the risk of pvp (which, again, in my dd is pretty negligible).
the landsraad sucks (continuation of endgame rant). those who hoard mountains of resources can instapop the capture. capture points in DD are fine, in all of my hours i've never encountered another person there and have fought with them which is what they're there for, but on my server, harkonnen just let atreides take them and never fight back. atreides has only won on my server since launch. right now, in october, harkonnen has like, 2 real contributors at best for most the week whilst atreides just demolishes the landsraad. the rewards for the landsraad have little variability. i hate that the armor swatches for the different houses are locked to certain types of armor, it makes 0 sense since they're literally just colors. overall, the landsraad sucks and encourages hoarding, making 0 actual competition amongst the factions.
a lot of skills in the skill trees are whatever. the only necessities are the planetologist skills, you really HAVE to get them for farming because it increases your yield exponentially and you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot if you don't get them. like i said earlier, melee feels like the only true viable combat build. ranged is fun, don't get me wrong, but the holtzman shield is pretty much a necessity in combat when you're being shot and stabbed.

for my overall consensus: early and mid game is awesome. super great. amazing story and characters, gameplay is fun, farming and crafting is relatively fun.
endgame sucks. but that's the general consensus of the fanbase, so i'm not special in that regard. i don't blame those who pack up their bases and fly to arrakeen or harko and log out permanently until there's REAL content that's released for those who have been at endgame for months now (i have played since launch day and got to endgame maybe week six or seven, but i took it pretty slowly to enjoy my time, plus work).

absolutely beautiful game. it's strangely meaningful to see the southern folktales i grew up hearing be in a video game and in such a beautiful way, too. the music is fantastic, especially the boss songs. environment is so dynamic and immersive, i love the small background things with the animals. dialogue was a bit iffy in the beginning, but it turns so much deeper and better as the story progresses and it makes sense because hazel is learning and maturing.
combat can be slightly repetitive, but kept my attention enough with the spells you can perform. almost wish there were more enemy types, but honestly, i'm satisfied with what they gave since they pretty much cover the bases of variety with how each one behaves.
overall, AMAZING game. absolutely adore it to pieces, such a beautiful story. would have to say 9/10

story is good, i like the interactions you can have with the companions and npcs. makes you actually kinda care about them which can be rare in rp games, but this one does it well. combat is a bit boring if you're solely melee, but i can deal w/ that. overall, super fun and nice game that holds up after so many years and still having patches in the big year of 2025. 8.5/10 would recommend this game to people who enjoy isometric rpgs

i had a stockpile of phones i'd stolen when humans didn't take a picture of me

stray has ended up being in my top 5 favorite games of all time. i absolutely love cats, although the main orange kitty looks just like my late childhood cat peachy (except for he had one eye lol) and it made me want to play it even more. it made me think of peachy throughout the game, imagining he went on this adventure and met all of these robots, helping them in the process and making history in this little game. i cried at the end like a baby, the story was so touching and sweet. the characters, even with what little time you may spend with some and every single NPC has so much depth to them, they're all so lovable. everyone you interact with makes the story sweeter and truly impact you whether you see it or not. all in all, i absolutely love this game and i even did all of the achievements for it with blood, sweat, and tears lol. 10/10 game, would meow 100 times, scratch every rug, and rub against every robot's leg again. <3 <3 <3

10/10 i love alistair