Recent reviews by Hopsake

Currently this game unfortunately does not run well enough for it to be enjoyable for me, however I like all the bits and pieces of it enough that i will recommend supporting the devs.
Am I biased? yes, yes I am. Lady knights are one of my favourite things.
I don't really know how others are getting it to run fine with similar or less powerful setups than mine, but i can't properly respond to the triggers in combat because of delayed frames.
The characters seem interesting, the dialogue seems good, the combat system seems fun.
But right now the ability to actually play it seems to be a bit of a lottery, so my positive review is mostly an encouragement to support the devs so the game can become the best version it can be.
PS: I did not mean to allow comments, what a ridiculous set of dorks i woke up to having commented on this. I flat out admit the game is currently not really playable (for me), but that i'm biased in wanting to see games with stories like this. So yes i'm gonna leave the review as possitive but be open about the faults. Someone said i'm new to gaming, i love being new to gaming 26 years after i started playing games with a 16 year old Steam account.
My personal opinion is that the necessary improvement to make the game playable is rare, but an encouraging review might be better received by the devs than a review that reveals how jaded I truly am about gamedev.

I'm enjoying this expansion so far. I like the direction of the story, I like the aesthetics, the music, the characters, and the new build opportunities.

FromSoft never fixed the performance issues as far as I'm aware, so it doesn't run smoothly for sure.

The game has a very direct way of trying to make sure that everyone is challenged when they get to this new content. It seems a lot of players are unhappy with the way they did this, and it's definitely not an elegant solution. Literally augmenting your attack and defense by 5% each time you increase one of the Shadow Realm Blessings. Those who get this expansion I'd recommend explore to find some of the materials to enhance the these blessings. I find after getting a few, the game now at least leaves me room enough to learn patterns, I have the same feeling that I had with a lot of bosses in the base game difficulty-wise. This system could be much better communicated, and as a player i'd hope FromSoftware would spend more of their time thinking up a better way of ensuring challenge.

I've heard something about recycled bosses and I'm not sure I've seen what people are referring to. So far the expansion feels fresh and intriguing to me. If these statements turn out to be accurate, it would of course be disappointing.

All in all, this is not the expansion which centers accessibility, not the one that respects what power level you had attained previously through levels and NG+, nor the one that fixes stutters or low framerates. It could definitely be better on all of those points.
Instead this expansion is an interesting flipside of the worldbuilding and story we knew in the base game, it has new possibilities for fun exploration and new builds, it has very appealing characters and visuals and more than anything it's more Elden Ring.

The game is unfortunately terribly optimized, saves are stored online so as to force you to use micro-transactions for stuff like revisiting character customization. I'm also noticing that they are selling quality of life and low-level "cheats" in an expensive single player game and it apparently runs something similar to anti-cheat!?

What's funny is, I was reading reviews before accepting this as a personal gift: None of the reviews I read mentioned this in the slightest. I must assume that these micro-transactions were obfuscated for reviewers to not warn consumers about the unprecedented predatory nature of them.

I have now heard of countless examples of being unable to reload or restart, this is simply... unacceptable. Exactly what was warned about with regards to "always-online" singleplayer games.
The gameplay seems fun, but I would advice people to stay away from this one. Not only do I not want you all to end up with a game-state you want to change with no way to do it, but I also don't think CAPCOM should be rewarded for releasing something this predatory.

One of the most thoroughly thought through games.
Is it buggy as hell? Yes. I am currently waiting for a fix to a quest before finally finishing the game.
But does it do everything it sets out to well? Yes, absolutely and it transcends what has traditionally been expected of games and avoids concurrent exploitative schemes along the way.
Writing, including character arcs, the plot, analogies and much more are of the highest tier. The music is really good, the graphical style and fidelity are in honesty exceptional, especially considering the genre. And the gameplay is rock solid.

I'm sure I'll have more words after more playthroughs but this game has already been great

Lots of potential, genuinely very fun combat and I could see that being satisfying enough to get a 20ish hours into the game with two friends.
The problem with recommending this is that since launch the game has been on inconsistent servers (since it's always online), it doesn't scale well at the higher difficulties, and it's just... buggy for a full price AAA game.
Mostly I'll just look back at this game as a spark of hope that one day we'll see a much better version of this idea.

This is something we need more of and it's a really good price, even off sale. The characters are really cool and I've been excited about this for some time.
Unfortunately, I personally did not have a great time in my first hour playing the game and I think I will return to play more of this, once the playable characters I was hoping for become available.

Yes, i think this is a game worth playing, it has a lot of moments that are meaningful and well written. Sometimes I wish there were more characters to meet, or that some of them were less caricatures and perhaps even closer to the the protagonist(s).
I think unfortunately the overarching story told lacks depth, though it is deeper than most, but it doesn't end up hitting the nail on the head, and i think maybe the writer's understanding of certain issues could have been deeper.
With that said, I think this is one of the more interesting titles to come out in a long time, and if you enjoyed Suzerain, maybe this is also up your alley.

Okay so... Are you easily scared like me? Then this is traumatic...
It's a really cool concept and very innovative gameplay, something I'm hoping and expecting to see more of in hopefully near future. Unfortunately the scary makes it that much more notable and non-scary probably won't get as much attention.
Play this with friends, but watch out because it genuinely scares me to even touch the game after my first play session. Fun but I'm easily scared.

Great way to relax if your're into it.