Recent reviews by dynamic_zero

To be honest it's not that amazing yet, it's lacking tons of features that would make me freaking GLUED to the screen like other roguelikes do (more meta progression, unlocking new stuff, cool events, more robust objective design, better animations, etc), but as an early access game, this is pretty promising. Play it for a while to get a grip on the gameplay and come back once in a while to see what's new, that's what I'm going to do

Imagine if Overwatch 2 was a good game. This is that game.

What can be said about this game.
Great open world design, great progression systems, writing is excellent, OST is a banger, Geralt is cool as ♥♥♥♥. Having read the books recently, playing this game is an absolute treat. It treats the source material with so much respect that it actively enriches what's in the books.

EDIT: After finishing TVHM and UVHM, I have to say build diversity is amazing and enemies start to get less repetitive when you take DLC into account. The story gets to some very cool places with the DLC (Captain Scarlett's is a nice change of pace, a treasure hunt, Mister Torgue's is kinda samey but the NPCs are very fun, Hammerlock's Hunt is also great and Tiny Tina's is one of the best DLC ever made for a game, seriously). I also have to admit that on TVHM and UVHM the loot is consistently relevant, and found myself changing loadouts more often. And that fighting the robots gets easier on later playthroughs, once you get used to them.

It's a classic. You can buy this and all of its DLC for almost nothing (or maybe you even already have it on Epic for literally free) and can get hundreds of hours out of the game.
The story is great for this kind of game, you get an awesome villain, and gather the characters from Borderlands 1 together to defeat him. It also explains some things that I was curious about after playing BL1, like who Angel is. If I had to nitpick something about the game, it would be:
1. I wish there was more than just 1 ability per character. It feels really limited.
2. You get too much trash. I get that these Diablo-likes are all about getting tons of loot and sorting trash from the good stuff, but 90% of what you get is either absolute trash or fine, but worse than what you already have. Inventory management is kind of ass.
3. The enemies in the second half of the game become repetitive as ♥♥♥♥. They start throwing these Loader robots against you and there's like 10 flavors of them, every one ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ than the one before it. I played as a sniper and getting critical hits on these guys is first, hard, and second, not gratifying at all. And when you get to a new area and think "hey finally I'll get to see some new enemies" it's just more ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ robots, either the same ones or new, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥-to-deal-with-ones. Can't wait to start the DLCs and get rid of these guys.

But besides all that, this is a great game, a timeless classic, and a good investment if you value time for money spent in games.

As a quick disclaimer, I'm an avid Final Fantasy enjoyer. X-2 was the first game I played on my uncle's PS2, and in my teens I went on a quest to play through all of them. As of now, the only mainline games I've got left to complete besides XVI are XIII, 3 expansions from XIV, and XV. So yeah, this is coming from a fan.
FFXVI is a great breath of fresh air for Final Fantasy. Maybe I'm too much of a sucker for FF content (I mean I even liked Stranger of Paradise), but I think that what they did here is amazing.
This is the first mainline FF game to switch completely to an action combat style, and them having the combat director from DMC5 is a bold statement. The combat, while not as deep as DMC5's, is very engaging and spectacularly portrayed. It can be said that the game is a bit on the easier side, but like with DMC, you'll want to make things more stylish and perfect. I'd say it's really on the perfect middlepoint between accessible and expressive.
The surrounding gameplay is slightly disappointing, though. Sidequests are mostly fetchquests, the ones you can expect from an MMO, however, there were 3 or 4 quests that really surprised me. Exploration is really linear, I'd say this game is very similar to XII on its field map exploration. Also, dungeon design is very bland, mostly corridors with trash mobs and mid-bosses in between, leading up to a big fight. However, the combat and the visuals are so enjoyable that I didn't mind this very much.
The graphics are as should be expected of a mainline FF, either on the vanguard of current graphics or just under that. I'd say XVI looks great almost all the time, but on occasions, especially on big maps, it can stutter a bit and distant objects don't look as good as they should (but maybe it's my 3060Ti getting a bit outdated).
And then we get to (arguably) the most important point for Final Fantasy, the story. XVI is kinda weird, because we only control and follow Clive during almost the whole game (there are 1-2 scenes where you don't). So yeah, Clive is a great character, and we see his development throughout the whole game. That doesn't mean the surrounding cast isn't well written as well. Cid and Jill are also very close to Clive during the events of the game, and they help build out each other's character. The other characters, mainly, the other Dominants and some other relevant characters, are kind of one note, but some can surprise you. For instance I thought Benedikta would be the standard angry and spiteful female character, but there's a bit more to her than that. Overall, the cast is strong. The plot, however, is kind of shallow. I think the characters carry a lot of the momentum of the story. The worldbuilding, at least by now, is also not awesome, it's just functional and interesting enough for me to keep wanting to know more.
Doesn't need to be said, but the music is just incredible. Soken is up there with Nobuo Uematsu, Yasunori Mitsuda and Shoji Meguro as a JRPG composer, no joke.

So, to summarize, if you have a strong preconceived notion of what FF should be and think there hasn't been a good one since FFX, yeah, you won't enjoy this at all. If, on the other hand, you're a bit more open minded and don't mind the saga switching up the formula, there's a lot to be enjoyed here.

WE ACTUALLY WON, THEY'RE NOT DOING IT (leaving my original review here to chronicle our victory)


I'm usually against review bombing but I think this is one of the few instances where it can help. You already know the situation but in case you live under a rock, the game will require a PSN account to play. This, admittedly, would not be a big deal (I'm used to needing accounts for other services, especially Ubisoft and EA games purchased here on Steam), if it wasn't for the fact that this has locked out many people that can't create PSN accounts because of region restriction (for instance Ukraine or China), and also is a change in EULA that users weren't informed of when they purchased the game. So yeah, ♥♥♥♥ Sony

The PC port is not the best, and you have to go through Ubisoft's servers just to boot it up, but it's still an amazing game through and through, even despite its age.

It's one of the best "Survivors" games out there. Simple mechanics, but cool building options, stats are very interesting to learn and master. Making a good build comes naturally and the game gives you a lot of tools to balance out your RNG and get all or almost all the traits you want/need. Abilities are varied and almost all of them are very satisfying to use. Also, the aesthetics of the game, emulating that old Diablo II style, is gorgeous.
Great game.

Playing this after Kiwami 2 was... Rough. It's a good game, it's great for a 15 year old PS3 game, but the presentation, engine and mechanics really feel like a massive downgrade if coming from Kiwami 2. I also feel like the combat in this game is the worst yet, I even decided to play on Easy and just breeze through it to not get stuck playing a combat that not only I really dislike but also is hard. Enemies block like crazy here, more than in past games, even on easy. Your combos feel awfully repetitive, it's always a combination of pressing X 1 to 4 times and then Y twice, or grabbing. Heat actions feel a lot less crunchy, are harder to do, and are less diverse. Random encounters have 2 lines of dialogue before and after battle, which slogs the game down a ton. The minigames are not bad, but some feel very undercooked (like the cabaret hostess training one).

However, despite all this, I really liked everything else in the game. The setup is very different to earlier Yakuza games, it begins with Kiryu having a brief moment of peace in his life, and the game lets you sink into that feeling a lot. It then grows into a Yakuza plotline like we're used to, but those first few hours of "slice of life" make you care a lot about the new characters, and that half of the game being set in Okinawa is a treat. The main villain is one of the best I've seen in this series yet, maybe tied with Ryuji from the previous game, but it (and the other villains) could benefit from a bit more screen time and development, it feels like they do one specific thing in the story and stop existing.

Enjoyable overall despite everything, I hope it's uphill from this point on :D

The upgrade from Kiwami to Kiwami 2 is astronomical in terms of the engine. This game uses the Dragon Engine from Yakuza 6 and it's great. You can access most buildings without any loading screens or transitions, exploration is more free than ever, and the cities feel amazing. The story is actually slightly better than the previous game, and it presents a very cool character that will be very important later on.