Recent reviews by computerquip

I had this whole review typed up but it's honestly a hard game to review properly. If you like choices-matter narrative, base building, and resource management in a 3D environment, give it a go. It's a good game. It's pretty, has *really* good narrative writing (for the most part), and was fun. Fun enough that I might play it a second time (but will probably put it on the shelf for a few months first).

EDIT:
After getting a couple more endings and a second playthrough... I still recommend the game but...

The story makes less sense the more you look at it. I expected the first act to be "set in stone" so to speak but all the other acts? The end of Act 2 is actually an important one. Turns out, it's also "set in stone" that the Technician will always rebel... even if you completely isolate him so only he leaves. So... the narrative isn't quite as good as I initially thought it was after some introspection. Something I found odd is there is no "honest" ending where you can tell the rescue squad you have alters and see if they'll kill them or not... even if it ends up with them killed.

The alters are literally impossible to satisfy. I had all of them except the scientist (since he's the only one who can research) sit on the couch and watch movies all day for days at a time. They *still* complained, got depressed, became unmotivated, etc. So... I'm not really sure what's going on there to be honest. It seems sort of preordained that they become self-destructive. But you can control the "rebelling" factor for the most part through just making sure they aren't overworked and are entertained regularly. What I found to be especially bad is leaving rooms damaged for extended periods of time.

The game gave a good "illusion" of your choices mattering more than they do. They *do* matter to some extent but not quite as much as you think they do. There's a handful of decisions that actually branch and everything else sort of doesn't immediately matter.

That's as far as my criticism go though. The rest of the game, especially the first play through, is great. The overall narrative isn't bad either it's just... not quite as cohesive as it's made out to be for a second playthrough.

What really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pisses me off is the forums and other reviews. They don't talk about the flaws or greats of this game. No, they complain about mundane things that hardly have anything to do with gameplay or story.

1. The game is too hard!
No, it ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ isn't. If you think this game is too hard, you need to start playing children's games because this game is *wayyyy* too lenient. You can get everything, and I mean everything, done in days and then just have your alters sit on the couch watching movies. The hardest difficulty is about as hard as the pillow I sleep on. How in the *♥♥♥♥* is this even a complaint, especially when Story difficulty basically makes this game completable blindfolded.

2. Use of AI generated content!
I cannot stress how ridiculous this claim is. What they did is put placeholder text generated by ChatGPT on one of the background screens and then forgot about it. If you blink, you'll miss it. They forgot to take it out and replace it with something revised. That is the *entirety* of the whole dilemma. Not that it lowered quality, not that they used AI for visual assets, not that they replaced writers with AI... it's that one of the *writers* that people claim is unethical to replace, used a placeholder until they wrote something complete.

3. The game is bad!
Please, for ♥♥♥♥ sake, use your words that you learned in elementary school. What makes the game bad?

4. Game is bad because my alters keep rebelling!
There is literally a help menu explaining how to "diagnose" your alters' problems. If you go to the tab that says "Alters" and look at the mad alter, it explains why their mood keeps dropping. Do not say the game is bad because you didn't read a one sentence instruction the game tries to force you to read and you still refused to.

I'm just so tired of the gaming community coming up with ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ reasons to hate on games. Like *right now* there is a forum post saying, "I'm not playing your game because I don't accept your EULA". Like bro, every single game in existence has a EULA. It is required by the software they used to make the game. It is required for the operating system you're playing it on. The EULA doesn't even have anything bad in it, if you actually take the time to read it, because it's just software use agreements concerning theft and copyright. Yet, if you search hard enough, you'll find reviews talking about this and I just... my mind is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ blown by how actually stupid the gaming community has become. Dear lord.

It's definitely a killing floor game. It's a supped up Killing Floor 2, new enemies, weapons, etc. The same core mechanics are there.

First, let's go down a bug list:
* When you first spectate, the gun values are wrong. Not the worst bug ever.
* There's sometimes green artifacts that can be seen through walls.
* Zeds have occasionally gotten stuck but it's a lot more rare than people make it out to be. Also, there's a teleport function if you wait a certain amount of time so it's not game breaking.
* There was one crash 5 hours in.
* Apparently, the loading screen came up for everyone in a lobby I was in in the middle of a wave, killing almost everyone.

Now onto things I didn't like...
Very quickly, you start running out of challenges. The quests end pretty fast and there isn't really story past that. You play to gain experience for your perk and for materials but it quickly becomes repetitive. The core gameplay is fine and if you played KF2 for years, you'll probably be fine with this. You're given a "weekly mutation" that's required to be done in hard mode.

There's not enough variety still, which is a problem in the previous games as well. You quickly run out of "logistics" to do very fast. The number of weapons you can choose from are very limited. The skills aren't exactly exciting for the first 10 hours. The crafting system isn't complex enough to be interesting.

The crafting system is... meh. It's basically a roulette for finding attachments that have the good effects. There's no complexity to it. You don't really farm items outside of just doing the matches. It's boring in about 5 minutes.

I see people upset about is the "season pass". It's called a "supply pass" in this game. It costs $19.99. It provides nothing other than cosmetics. Honestly, this is how the "battle pass" concept should be done. To reiterate, the battle pass does not give the player any advantage other than some cosmetics. You can argue the cosmetics are bad but I don't really get why people are so upset over it.

The core gameplay loop is great but the number of weapons and skills you can choose from are limited and that loop gets stale really fast. Maybe the game picks up later but it takes too long, and that's a problem. If you just so happen to like these kind of games, it could be enough to keep you going.

Personally, I don't think it's bad for $40.

Is the game unfinished? No, it's finished. It has polish to it and the game looks good. It has some bugs here and there but it's serviceable.

Is the game fun? Yeah. The core gampelay loop is still fun. I think the game lacks a bit of variety but it is fun for at least a good while. I think the release is fine.

Overall, the game in its current form is a 6/10 in my book. It's "above average" and I'm still a huge fan of the game series in general. I hope they continue to work on the game to get it into a better state but I think it's serviceable as it is. Not great... but good.

There's quite a few things I do not like so far:

* Probably the most annoying is the voice over quality. I don't mean the voicing is bad, I mean the audio itself is terrible. There's crackling caused from the audio being way over-compressed. It's extremely noticeable. I don't see many others complaining about it, so I thought maybe it was just my system. It isn't, the audio literally just sucks. People just don't notice for some reason but I notice very clearly. Apparently, there are hours upon hours of voice over in this game and it all has that problem. The music, sound, and other audio doesn't have this problem. I'm guessing the goal was to compress it to save space but it's waaaaay too much.

* They basically hand you personas that are way overpowered for you level at the beginning of the game. That's cool and all but I really hate when Japanese games do this, especially in single player games. I have to explicitly restrict myself and the tools I use to give myself any semblance of a challenge. I don't like doing that with a game I just pulled off the shelf.

To add to this, they give you picklocks and some medicine that you can't really tell if you should use or not, you have no notion of their rarity in the game because you haven't built up a perspective through experience.

I dunno, I just wish these games would refine this a little bit, they've been doing it for years and it feels terrible to me. Like, if I replay Final Fantasy X, it's like going in with a bunch of mods that give you stuff or using the booster in FFIX. It just sucks the fun out of it for me.

* I'm 9 hours in and not even past the first palace. I'm not going to say this is bad but there definitely comes a point of exhaustion with this game. At some point, you just want the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ task you're doing to be over. I literally left the palace and started doing other things to help vary it up a bit.

It took 5 hours to just get to the first palace... While I'd sometimes be glad because it's content, that 5 hours was just boring. It's dialogue after dialogue after dialogue, most of which is just rehashed sentences from just a few minutes ago. It could have been condensed down to a couple hours if the game didn't treat you like a complete moron.

* They hand you a few dozen costumes to wear but there's no way to preview them that I can tell so you just have to equip them in the menu, back all the way out of the menu, then go back into the menu and try again. Pretty minor compared to the other stuff.

* The combat is meh but honestly, it's not bad. The weakness system is cool but plain. However, the baton system adds a dynamic I'm not used to which is neat. So far, none of it has been really challenging, even on harder difficulties. I expect this to change.

Something I'm not clear on is the "savage" enemies. They literally seem to be just "smack until dead and heal up afterwards". They're immune to everything at my disposal at the moment so I can't tell if the game intends that I come back later or if this seriously is the way to kill them. I can't use the neat baton system I was just praising and instead have to just auto attack it to death and keep at least one member of the party alive. It feels cheesy.

* 9 hours in, this story is hotdog water so far. The main character is swimming in a society of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ apparently. Everyone is giving off total rape vibes constantly. His parents obvious don't care about him and his new guardian has no problem calling him an idiot to his face despite him apparently being a good-looking intelligent well-behaved almost literally perfect everything. What in the ♥♥♥♥ is this story... The dimensions thing just comes out of nowhere with no real explanation and 9 hours in, I still don't know much about it. It's an app on your phone that can bring you to a weird dimension, where a teacher who gives off the worst rape vibes you can possible imagine is the king. All the weird japanese tropes come out, you got the teenage girls in latex, you got the little loli girls in a prison guard uniform, you literally have statues of teenage girls wearing gym shorts. Look, I understand the "fan service", but I need an interesting story to go through a 100+ hour game.

This is my first Persona game. I plan on stick through the 100+ hours to the end so maybe my opinion will change a few dozen more hours in. So far, I feel like I'm missing something. Honestly, what I'm afraid of is I put 50 more hours into this and just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hate it. I need the story to get better, I need the combat to be more than what I've seen. Because the experience for the first 9 hours so far has not been great.

If you like turn-based action games, this game is an 11 out of 10. It is perhaps one of the best games I've ever played. Every aspect of it is a work of art.

EDIT: Having played the game in excess and really dissected it to figure out why I like the game so much, I think I'm knocking the game down to a 10 out of 10. It's not a perfect game but there isn't much wrong with this one minus some minor complaints. Where the real complaints might come in is during things like new game plus which I can imagine they didn't put a ton of time into.

I also ran into some consistent crashing which magically went away for some reason.

So I've played the game enough to get the gist at this point. This game is about macro management with a drug theme. It's creative, plays pretty well (initially). This game, especially for the price tag, gets a thumbs up from me.

Onto the criticisms. The game is still early access... it's still pretty good for what it is in its current state. But alas, I'm one to criticize.

* The police end up being really easy to avoid and more of a nuisance than a real problem. I don't think I ever felt scared to go out during the night at all actually. Sometimes you get a deal in front of the barbershop and the cops just sit there. You can alert them, hide in the dumpster literally right next to you, and then do the deal when they go away. It's a big ask, I know, but the threat of the police needs to increase somehow without making them more annoying.

* The vehicles are fairly useless. I never drive them except for rare occasions where I need a ridiculous number of things, usually when I bought new buildings. I didn't one single time use it for travel as they tend to be less useful than the Golden Skateboard. Perhaps in a future update where you have to travel between towns, I can see it. But otherwise, you can go the whole game without a vehicle without many issues.

* The trash can needs to hold about 10x more trash than it does.

* Shelves need to hold just a few more slots maybe... or use a weight system maybe. It very quickly turns into inventory management which is alright to some extent but having to face shelves front to back is annoying and clunky.

* I wish I could clean up the town, garbage being everywhere drives my OCD crazy. That said, it's a game about dealing drugs...

* Uncle Ned just disappears from the story after a certain point.

* The gang that blows up your RV never show up again.

* There isn't really a goal to the game outside of sell a bunch of drugs. I'm a stern believer that every game needs some sort of end goal, even if it's a ridiculous goal. And no, not a Steam achievement.

* NPCs are a bit buggy. I had to reload a save quite a few times. This is annoying because...

* When you save and load back in, it seems all your XP for the day up to that point is gone. Not that it matters after a certain point though.

* And lastly... weed combinations needs a 2D graph showing the relation between each strain. It's the perfect scenario for it. Having an unsorted list of random combinations makes it absolutely impossible to keep track of. This is one of those where I ended up having to make my own connections graph on paper so I can figure out which direction to go. I really hate when games make me do that, it starts feeling like homework.

The game is cool in concept and in gameplay. It does get dull after a bit, it might be better with friends. It's enjoyable to watch on Youtube. I'm looking forward to future updates and the eventual release of the game. I think I'm setting it down for now and waiting.

The game is mostly well done! It has a good foundation... but when you get into the gritty details, things seem a little weird or even embarrassing.

The entire game basically copies stardew valley, adding a 3D visual but with isometric gameplay. They do make some changes to plot and some changes (like enchantments or diving). But it's otherwise extremely similar in how it plays. Honestly? I don't think this is a negative of this game. It's a good implementation of the concept.

Now... here's the problem. The game has a bad technical implementation. What I mean by that is constant crashing, constant bugs, and a waste of your time. There are sections of the game that is entirely unplayable as of this writing. It's not uncommon for crashes to occur during the only time you can save, meaning you lose an entire in-game day worth of gameplay. NPCs disappear for seemingly no reason. Underwater caves will literally corrupt your game and make it unplayable until you go to the next day or even have to leave the game.

Also, a personal pet peeve, controller support is awful. The deadzone is too large and it makes it impossible to aim correctly with no way to work around it.

Anyways, they need to fix the obvious problems. It has potential to be great but it was too early for a full release and I'm treating it as such.

This is a hard one to judge. This game is a culmination of both what I love and hate about modern video games.

Pros:
* The game loop isn't bad. It's similar to the predecessor and they didn't modify it much from there.
* The characters in the game are pretty decent and distinct. Some of them develop in unexpected ways which is neat.
* There "larger than life" events that do better than what its predecessor had.
* The conveniences later on are better than what was in its predecessor (with unfortunate caveats due to bugs).
* A cozy quality-of-life game.

Cons:
* This game is buggy to a point I'm not sure how the hell it was released like it was. Some of the bugs are similar to what I saw in early versions of its predecessor game which tells me they didn't learn much from their mistakes in implementation. I've made a list I can remember off the top of my head below.

* The combat is pretty weak. I didn't pay much attention to the early access but I was hoping they'd really make the combat more interesting. Make no mistake that it's definitely better than what Portia had. There's more variety here but it's literally "smash the X button" when you get down to it.

* After awhile, farming and mining stuff becomes repetitive which thankfully becomes easier. Unfortunately, because the Factory has such a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up implementation and literally doesn't work half the time, that convenience can be more irritating than helpful. There's also no way to farm certain stuff or to get someone else to fetch it like Agate. You have to go out and spend 5-10 minutes picking them 2 at a time. This isn't as big of a deal though, you don't generally need Agate that often but for example, Flourite you do since certain items that show up on commission require it to increase rarity. The only other way to get that is through Ruin Tokens which is already expensive and time consuming to obtain....

* Some commissions are a trap. It might look easy but they want increased rarity on something like a Steel Bar which requires Flourite to create which is an absolute pain in the ass to get. These commissions are never worth the gold they give (and they don't give much generally). They're there to make you feel miserable. The game should give double gold for such requests or triple gold for Rare quality items.

All that said... I've already gotten over 100 hours out of it and I'll probably finish it. I'd wait for a sale but I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it. There isn't really any challenge to it which kinda kills it a little bit. You can fail some stuff but you either have to try to fail it or fail it via a bug.

Bugs I saw while playing:
* Literally first five minutes into the game, you'll notice that CoCo the bird fly's sideways and slow as if running into a wall. Literally shows in one of the earliest cutscenes as you start playing.

* Mobs and NPCs end up your workshop seemingly lost, as if their pathing is telling them to go there for some reason and then they just literally run around doing nothing.

* Soft locks are brimming in this game. They seem to be worse when you play the game for extended periods of time which brings me to...

* The game has some issues when played for long periods of time. Things load slower or not at all, animations are wonkier, sound may not occur at all having you miss actually interesting voice lines.

* The Factory you get later into the game is a broken mess. The UI doesn't update properly, parts of the UI doesn't work with controller for some reason, and multiple times now I've had the recycler "production queue" absolutely busted to where it was unusable. Things that should produce more than one of a thing, for example bullets (5 each) or copper screws (2 each), will only produce one which is a clear bug since it shouldn't take ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 20 steel bars and 50 gunpowder to make literally 10 rifle bullets, but doing the same thing directly on a forge would give you 50. This was fixed in latest patch of this writing.

* NPCs will fall to the bottom of the map, teleport endlessly, float in the sky or just out of reach, or not be able to interact with them at all until you leave the room or restart the game even.

* NPC pathing will often put them smack dab in the middle of a cutscene where they mob pile to the point you can't see anything going on anymore.

* I've softlocked on a lot of scenes that want your character to automatically moved but apparently, I'm alone in this according to the forums.

* I've had the planting grid get stuck in 5x5 when in 4x4 mode, then plant incorrectly. This was with the Robot: F machine. EDIT: There is a 5x5 mode later in the game but the robot isn't supposed to have it.

* Quests not triggering which would then fail after time passes.

* Too many events scheduled at once. I had several quests on the same day as the Day of Memories, all at 1600. They not only won't reschedule any of them, they also will cause bugs like not letting you join the Ghost Hunting event.

* Probably more I'm not thinking of or too small of a bug to care.

This is an alright, relaxing almost-idle game. It gives you at least a goal to work towards and there's an eventual end. The mechanics are fair, it's not too drawn out, you'll get your money's worth.

There isn't really any adversity in the game. I think that's okay here because they do give you a goal to accomplish. It does cause a feel of lackluster drive and maybe the game could have been padded out a bit more if challenges were put in place to do so.

Still, good for numbing the mind and relaxing.

The game is simple and pleasant. Story is great, the restaurant is fun and rewarding, most tasks are worth the incentive they give. The diving portion is the "unique" thing about the game and I think it does it somewhat well. It gives me a Motherload vibe except in the ocean. The other mechanics aren't that unique. They tend to be simple. However, they mesh well with everything else. It all feels cohesive, well-done, and most importantly, fun.

I don't think the game is great for one sitting. If you like rushing through the game, you'll likely lose patience with the game. It doesn't let you rush really so if you get tired of diving or not having money, you might get burned out. Most people who do this still end up with 15-20 hours of gameplay so I still think it's worth getting... but I say power through the story, it's interesting.

TL;DR: For $15, it's not bad. But it's no battlefield.

This game is pretty good! It's basically a suped up Roblox Battlefield. And I mean that... if you criticize the game, people will something along the lines of "it's Roblox Battlefield, what did you expect?". Meanwhile, everyone keeps saying that the game is better than Battlefield which is a direct contradiction. To make my stance clear, it's not better than Battlefield, even that last ♥♥♥♥♥♥ rendition of Battlefield. You could argue it's a better bang for it's buck.

Anyways, the game has some problems, ironically a lot of the same issues with BF1 and others.

* Anywhere from 1/4 to 1/3 of the players want to sit in a corner and snipe all game. To each their own but it makes it pretty miserable for the other players who just get sniped out of nowhere from one of the 50+ snipers in the game. Battlefield has the same problem really. I get it, people enjoy sniping. I don't really get why quick scoping and one shot kills from half way across the map without the player even knowing your presence is a popular thing. The irony here is they often don't contribute ♥♥♥♥ so the team with more snipers just does worse because they won't get points.

* The SMGs are out of balance. In particular, the Vector has the highest fire rate possible, kills in 4 shots, has almost no recoil, and has no damage drop off. What in the actual ♥♥♥♥ is this gun. Other SMGs aren't near as bad but are still more powerful than most of the ARs in the game.

* The helicopters are fun... until you realize they're pretty broken currently. Ground troops cannot take down helicopters to save their lives, literally. I had a squad of 8 people using nothing but LMGs and we couldn't take down one singular helicopter. We had over 40k points combined from vehicle damage yet somehow no vehicle destruction. I've had matches where helicopter drivers will go 70-0 KD because they're so ridiculous. RPGs are impossible to hit them with unless the helicopter stands perfectly still and even then, it's still hard because of distance arch. There are no vehicle seeking missiles. Ground vehicles are far easier to destroy so just getting them to a location that can target the helicopter is extremely difficult and takes literally 10 minutes. Even then, they don't actually do that much damage, you can hit a helicopter with a tank and it will be perfectly fine for another two hits *from a tank*. Just to make clear what it's like, imagine a helicopter going super fast in a circle around you firing non-stop and you being basically unable to do anything about it.

* The APCs can sit in water which is fine but also makes it literally impossible to destroy. APCs are accurate enough to where they can snipe you from water and far enough that rockets don't reach. You can't hurt APCs with the LMG or anything other than explosives which makes it incredibly annoying.

* The night mode is cool! It disables large scopes on sniper rifles (and all other guns). It encourages close range gun fights which softens my earlier complaint. The downside is people put down flares which will burn your retinas permanently and are unnecessarily bright for no reason that I can discern. They don't act like a smoke screen, they don't provide lighting for the environment, it's just a flare with the brightness of the Sun sitting on the ground when you look anywhere near it.

* The hitbox on vehicles and structures are flat rectangles but the models are not. You can think that you're shooting someone and actually be shooting the vehicle/structure in front of you.

It is a decent budget battlefield... but that's all it is. The hype on this game is disappointing but until I started getting into the nitty-gritty details, I had a lot of fun. That said, it's going on the shelf.