Recent reviews by Dumar

Music 5 / 5
Combat / Boss Battles/ Arenas 5 / 5
Difficulty 5 / 5
Animation and Visuals 4.5 / 5
Puzzles / Exploration / Secrets 5 / 5

The game really IS a masterpiece but its a masterpiece I can't recommend to many. Only a select few who will put in the many hours of their lives to die/conquer the world and challenges ahead.

This game has soooooo many secrets, (perhaps too many secrets.)

The game is HARD but its not broken. Mastering movement/dash is critical, despite the crybaby posts every where.

My biggest gripe, Crests / tools/ and spells are really lame this time around. Like, the default Crest is the best since you get an Cammy Dive-kick for Pogo. (FGC fans understand the Cammy reference.)
Every other crest is lacking and nerfed in some funky way or another, either a wonky moveset, or terrible equippable nodes.
I think if they allowed hornet to SWITCH with at least 1 crest on the fly without sitting at a bench, would have been novel. But, instead they chose the boring route and force the play to commit to a whack-ass crest until you save at another bench.
The game is LONG... VERY LONG. Be prepared to spend at minimum 80 hours on your first playthrough. (All ACTS.)
It takes a while to 'feel' powerful. Most of hornets early-game power is just in her dash attk/spear spell.
I played with the default Crest/Spear Spell the entire game. (Currently 95 percent on Steel Soul Mode.)

Played this on Steamdeck LCD 2022 512GB model. 60fps; default game-mode/default proton.

This game has.... Everything for classic castlevania or classic Metrovania lovers.

Music 10/10
Combat 10/10
Enemy Variety / Boss Work / Boss Design 10/10
Story 9 / 10
Voice Work 10/10
Technical Work 6.5/10
Secret/environments/exploration/ world design 11/10

Weighted Score 8/10

From the music, gameplay, story, secrets, beautiful and varied environments! Tons of secrets and fun puzzles!

Not enough praise.

With that said, this game isn't perfect.

The shortcomings all boil down to the technical issues. No major bugs from my steamdeck experience, simple performance with open Item/Map menus... The whiteflash when opening Gear/Map menu is annoying but tolerable.

What's far more jarring is the endless screen scrolling stutter / frametime is just having a quiet stroke with both native Proton and Proton Experimental.

All in all, I sank nearly 24 hours, and loved every bit of the game... I think I grabbed every possible secret, cleared all maps and obtained all endings.

It was a blast!!! Money worth spent on this title! I'd love to do it all again if performance is patched for Linux-Gamemode / Steamdeck.

EDIT 12/4/2025 - So many changes have been made to this game since I reviewed this back in January.
New review incoming

EDIT: Rostok hard crashes are fixed as of Jan 1.1.4 patch
EDIT: DLSS3 framegen VRAM mem-leak is fixed with new nvidia Jan30 driver + forcing DLSS4 framegen via Nvidia app

The game itself is a marvel to traverse, albeit after 30 or more game hours of exploring the entire map, it get a bit tiresome and you will find yourself fast-traveling to avoid walking.

Part of the issue with walking/exploring/artifact hunting in this game is the random/aggressive bandit or exosuit monolith, (depending on how far you are in the game.)

Fast-travel will quickly become a way of life to avoid unnecessary HIGH repairs from random scuffles with mutants / humans in the zones. (Save for forced militia fights during main quests.)

It's disappointing because exploring the wilderness is one of the greatest aspects of the this game, but the risk of running into Hit-Scan Human A.I. who buckshot / machine-gun/ AK/ pistol snipe you, bleed/ slow you is mega frustrating.


If you are beset upon a random, ill-timed spawned bandits, and there isn't any cover, you will be forced to tank all bullets/spam heals like you are DOOM-GUY - Or RELOAD your game auto-save game and poof, gone as it should have been. (You MUST save often. Not only to avoid broken enemy spawns, but the plethora of broken quests, more on this later...)

There have been under 10 patches since release. 1 patch addressed and nerfed mutant encounters on a whole. (Specifically their armor, major nerfs.)

At the same time, human A.I. enjoyed a passive buff and are hyper-aware with wonky 1.1.2/1.1.3 patch in December.

Major emphasis here, human A.I. don't miss.

They shoot through pure darkness, through bushes/foliage, through fog-of-war, and even out of LOD visibility for you, the player.
For example, looking down a hallway with a flash-light, can't see down the end of the hallway. Mutants/humans alike are obscured from view at a specific point. However, they can 'see'/'detect' you, out of vision, out of range with perfect accuracy for telepath attacks or shooting accuracy.


Stealth/detection is virtually impossible unless you run/duck behind a FULL sized Mega Concrete building/structures to eliminate LOS against unlimited cone detection from Human A.I. If they don't have their back completely 180, they 'see' from below and above, automatically through cover/foliage.

December 1.1.2/1.1.3 A.I.life patch didn't address patrols random refreshing/respawning often behind or right in front of you around the corner you just cleared. (This goes for mutants dogs/blood suckers and of course, dreadful human A.i. groups.)

Wait for patches to specifically address combat.


Broken Quests - Keeping this short, several main quests can broken in mid-to late game forcing reloads. (Sircaa: Wishful Thinking quest, Zotov NPC hello? Where are the hotfixes for this? December 1.1.3 broke this MAIN quest at the mid of the game. Over a month and still broken?!?!?!)

I had to MOD my game (UETools,) and past 1-2 commands to PUSH the quest along. Its a HARD stop. This is insane.

Daily/Repeatable quests - Most towns have vendors who can provide daily quests for tiny bits of coupons (aka money,) and all of these NPCs have the potential to -break- permanently disabling these daily quests. Worst yet, I had NO IDEA this was a thing because I thought some quest-givers just stopped providing quests after a while.
Haha, this bug is so deceptive, you can go on and finish the game without ever realizing these NPCs are SUPPOSED to continually offer quests. (I did complete the game on PC gamepass and had NO IDEA i was locked out of making money.)
2nd playthrough, now I'm once again using console commands to fix 5 out of the 7 NPC's who on occasion will break upon quest completion.

Essentially, UEtools and console-commands are a HARD requirement to play this game. If not, you risk getting stuck behind main-quests permenantly, or will have lesser enjoyment with the too-many to count side-quests that break, will break on delicate scripting.

I can go on, but honestly, I'm tired and I don't think anyone will bother reading this far.

So many reviews are probably highlighting in greater detail the same major pain-points. 3 months in, and still this product is in BAD shape.

You may be wondering, how or why i spent so many hours - I don't know, something about the zone, the atmosphere, the traversal, artifact hunting. Sigh.

Combat 9.5/10
See Through Parry I thought was the worst Parry implementation on the planet, but after spending time on Yin-Tiger / Chapter 3 (first attempt) to master how it works, this changed the entire game for me thereafter.
Attk-Parry is a really COOL/Incredible spin on the typical timed parry mechanic for an action-game.

Visuals 9/10
Full Hardware RT and Max settings, visual eye candy but you really require the best hardware to take full advantage of the visuals. (i.e. 4090 paired with a highend cpu.)

Difficulty 9/10
Secret bosses and regular game bosses are hard, but all beatable.
I love the fact that you don't have to change the difficulty later on either, just one difficulty, translation the developer believes in their vision as to how HARD the game should be as a standard.
Yes, this also means this may not be as accessible if someone isn't willing to put in the time to learn/grow their combat techniques.

Story 10/10
Journey to the West Sequel; a great spin and continuation on the old myth. Almost has a Matrix-like appeal to the story.

UE5 isn't the best engine on PC platform, but performance wise, this game performs on a technical level 8.5/10
I'm disappointed Ray Reconstruction is not natively supported in this game. Lots of RT shimmering and there's a bit of VRR flicker for OLED owners which is easily visible in Chapter 4. (Unstable Frametimes with game engine refresh and monitor refresh rate variance.)

My hardware:
I'm using 14700k/4090 on a z690 mobo.


Gameplay: 9/10
"Dodge" maneuver is a bit OP, lots of iframes, but in general it feels great to use.
Callisto Protocol could have used some help here, awful combat.
Melee'ing enemies feels so impactful, and immediately shooting enemies in head/ankle to stun then wacking them feels so great! (Hell, I also wish Alan Wake 2 employed a better melee system!)
As it stands, this LastOfUs melee combat is the best of all survival horror IMO.

Visual Fidelity: 8.5/10
- Char models, world objects/terrain /textures look great @4k, dlss performance (1080p upscale)
- No native DLSS Ray Reconstruction is weird, so shimmering from builtin denoiser sucks.
Yes, there's a mod avail, but the mod nerfs performance. (E.g. if my framerate was 120~ without mod, injecting ray reconstruction mod will reduce my overall framerate to 105~)

Atmosphere/Tone: 10/10
- Never played original Silent Hill 1 or 2 on Playstation as a teen because I thought the games were too scary.
- As a grown-up, I feel more comfy to throw my hat in the ring and to no surprise this title is scary as heck.
- Any indoor complexes are extremely unnerving.
- Some "creatures" like to ambush you


Technical: 4.5/10

I don't want to make this a lonnnnnnnnnnng rant, but really the performance in this title is not good.
Max settings with RT and framegen (thanks 1.04/1.05 patch,) depending on the scene, framerate average 95-165 fps.

Mostly the gameplay moment to moment will average 110-145 fps which is great!

Some specific areas will tank performance to as low as 80-90, (even with framegen enabled.)

Extremely pervasive in this title. No butts about it.
Outside of the prologue area, the game may appear smooth, not so bad, easy to ignore the tiny spikes here and there.

Indoors areas, major spikes, lots of stutter while you need to revisit hub points to solve puzzles, unavoidable.

Framecap in this game will only engage if you toggle-ON in-game vsync and framecap 30-60.
(You will need to make sure vsync is not 'ON' forced through Driver (nvidia/amd control panels.)
Capping framerate will,
+ hide some frame spikes
+ eliminate VRR flicker because panel refresh rate will remain locked to the highest refresh and won't fluctuate.

We have to hope for some potential driver patches, (nvidia for me,) + game patches to sort out the wonky refresh when using VRR with Framegen etc.

This behavior is unlike Hellblade 2 which is a shining example of UE5 done right for PC gamers.
Zero VRR flicker because monitor refreshrate and in-game refresh rate maintain a healthy sync, day one.

Unfortunately, Wukong UE5 also has this flicker issue, but Silent Hill 2 is farrrrr worse.

/End rant

I played with max settings and dealt with VRR flicker to get the best possible experience I could muster with framegen.

I recommend this game if you can look past the technical shortcomings; I did and I don't regret spending on this title.

However, this game could easily be a 10/10 if the technical issues on PC with UE5 were not so painful... If all dev teams had HellBlade 2's dev team, we'd be good for UE5 games on PC platform, but alas this world is imperfect.

EDIT: They fixed the mouse camera issue by 9/27 patch, changed Mouse GameInput to Mouse RawInput.
Happy to say this is finally resolved, first week of release.

Changing my review to positive.

::Original review, before the fix::
I don't usually do this but, I plan the change my review once the MOUSE Scrolling/Panning, stutter/judder is resolved.

As it stands, if you play on Mouse/KB, if you pan the camera with the mouse, the camera stutters/judders as if frametime spikes are firing on all cylinders, but frametime is fine, game engine is just doing something wonky.

The game is otherwise smooth on the best hardware 14700k/ 4090

This Mouse/Camera panning thing, was not an issue in GodOfWar 2018 on PC, and so with the same game-engine in use for it's sequel, the work involved surely isn't a massive project for their team.

Music 9/10
Art style 9/10
Exploration 9/10
Fun factor 9/10
Backtracking 7/10
World/Atmosphere 10/10
Puzzles/Secrets 10/10

The charm in this game is undeniable. While its not exactly doing something brand spanking new, it IS delivering on a proper metrovania with NES Zelda 2 adventure-like sensibilities. (I say Zelda 2 because it was the only Zelda title with EXP points, and this game features RPG lv-up mechanics!)

Combat and new-abilities are well-paced.

The map is littered with tons of secrets! Oh, and the soundtrack, mysterious, quirky, charming and fits like a glove!

So glad i happened upon this adventure, (if IGN's Gamescoop didn't talk about this title 3 weeks back, I would have missed this title entirely!)

The game is a bit narration heavy, but I also didn't experience any technical issues or a single crash 5 hours in.

12700k, 4090 rtx, max settings DSR @4k with DLSS Quality (Render Resolution 1440p)

Lets get the Cons out the way...

- The game is very demanding. (Ultra settings to me don't look as pretty as say, RE4 Remake or Dead Space Remake or Callisto or many other 3rd-person action horror games.) Yes, if you are gonna max this game out at 4k, you seemingly need a 4090 paired with a good CPU, expensive PC.
- Shader Compilation first-time with drivers/gpu will take about 15mins+.
(I'm on a 12700k OC to 4.9 per-core ratio,) and it took approx. 22mins or more and I was able to give my dog a 15min walk without incident.)
- Camera Pan stutter - I don't know what that's about but it seems to be a game engine issue I guess? (Hopefully this can be patched quickly...)

Pros -
- DLSS 2.0 provides an incredible FPS increase for Nvidia GPU's - I didn't both testing FSR because I don't care for it honestly.
From 90-110 native 4k max, I can see increases of 25-35fps overall often hitting 141fps cap (manual Fps cap) in many scenes and closed areas. (Open areas with many mobs will run the fps down to 90-110fps and without DLSS Quality, I would see anywhere from 70-85fps))

No Shader Comp stutter. (With exception to Camera-pan stutter.)
There are a few funky drastic frame dips that do occur through specific cut-scenes (e.g. the car scene during the prologue while controlling Sarah.)
- No crashing. Despite the myriad of angry PC gamers all over the discussion threads claiming bad port because of X crash or this stutter or that... Iron Galaxy's port is actually stable, just demanding on modern hardware. (Perhaps further optimization but I doubt they will do much... So many settings to tweak to lower settings to fit mid range or low end PC's so your mileage will vary.)

Other thoughts:
On a 4090 and 12700k native 4k (No upscaling, ultra settings,) I saw around 90-110fps, but on average 75-90 fps... Some areas will dip as low as 60+ fps and I don't know why... (Again, from an artistic perspective, it doesn't look that great and there's no RT so not exactly sure why this game comes off as so demanding.)

It plays well for a 3rd person shooter.

Automatic cover based mechanics akin to Tomb Raider 2016/Rise/ Shadow.

I wish it had Pedro Pascal skin for Joel...

Not much else to say, 7.5/10.

Welcome to Callisto Protocol; yes, visually stunning sci-fi horror, but that's where the positives mostly end.

Launched the the shadow of Dead-Space, it sorta just remains in the shadows where it belongs, a mostly forgettable experience.

Combat = 5/10

You are essentially Kratos with uninspiring, button-mashing melee tactics
The 'Dodge' system is too powerful; you can dodge essentially everything save for a few ranged attacks in the entire game.

Horror/Fear = 2/10

The protagonist, while infrequently shocked and frustrated about his crap predicament, isn't fearful of any of the grotesgue monsters/biomutants, removing ALL semblence of fear from the player. If the Player Character melee's everything like a Beatem'up, how can anyone be fearful? (The game maybe manages 2 surprise jumpscares and everything else is a wash.)

The story is whatever but passable.

The game is linear, (this is OK,) but the game is just a bit too short and feels hurried towards the 2nd half.

I believe this body of work would have been better off as a 3d animation movie on Netflix rather than a videogame?

PS:
(I decided against discussing the technical issues with the game on PC - im running a 12700k/3080ti - With the latest patch released on 12/15, the game's performance with RT is slightly better, overall, specific areas are still ultra demanding on the GPU while the CPU mostly remains underutilized, but overall the performance is much smoother and nearly butter (especially without RT))

This game is... Pretty obtuse and very difficult (most boss fights,) but at the same time very rewarding with a bit of patience and 'focus'

Also, try to toughen up before boss fights and zerg them with items, period.