Recent reviews by magnapinna

I killed an entire town's worth of characters by standing on a table and kicking them as they waited patiently in line for their turn to be flung across the room. After looting every corpse, I tried to buy some armour from a local armorer, only to get completely softlocked by him refusing to trade with me because I tried getting a good deal too many times, and there was no option to leave the dialogue.

I really like a lot about this game. It feels like exactly the kind of silly emergent RPG experience I've been looking for. Unfortunately, it really just isn't ready yet. If I'm forced to Alt + F4 because of broken UX within the first 2 hours, I'm refunding. If it gets fixed before launch I'll update my review.

While I think this game is fun, and a blast to run through for someone who wants a mindless action game with some very light horror elements, I just can't recommend playing this due to how much of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis's story and gameplay was not only left on the cutting room floor, but oftentimes replaced with content of a substantially cheaper quality.

If you want to play Resident Evil 3 and experience the legendarily terrifying Nemesis at his best, I would highly recommend downloading the PC Sourcenext version of the original game, and using the Rebirth patch with the Seamless HD Project. Thas is by far the best version of the game "Resident Evil 3" available. You can also use the Seamless HD Project mod with the GameCube version, running on the Dolphin emulator.

Capcom has not made a modern PC version of this game available for purchase, so the only legitimate option is to own either a PS1/NGC and purchase a second-hand disk copy. Since they show no signs of ever intending to port three of the best Survival Horror games ever made to modern hardware, DO NOT feel in ANY WAY morally opposed to the alternatives I suggested above. You owe it to yourself to help preserve those classic experiences, as they hold valuable game design & storytelling lessons that modern players and developers would do well to pay attention to.

Don't play this Remake until experiencing the visceral terror of Nemesis as originally intended. However, if you have played the original game fairly recently, feel free to go ahead and play this Remake. You may appreciate some of the differences it offers, however, aside from visuals and controls, this is a frankly inferior game that should never overwrite the original's flawed-yet-timeless vision.

I'm very very biased, as I've played the original 50+ times (and I have the save files on my GameCube, Wii, PS4 & PC to prove it). I grew up with this game, aspects of its story and designs have shaped me since I first played it as a child, almost 20 years ago. Bare that context in mind.

This game is a truly remarkable achievement from a team that seems to respect the original to an immense degree. Sure, I would have done certain things differently if I were in charge (the weighty movement feels quite sluggish, and some iconic set pieces have been cut that I would've much rather had been adapted) but overall, this game echoes the original as a masterpiece of tense, high octane action and expert pacing.

This absolutely does not replace the original - not by any stretch of the imagination. But they weren't intending for it to. Unlike 2 & 3, RE4 is widely available across all modern platforms. As long as that fact remains true, I will praise this Remake as both a case study in how to reimagine a classic, and as a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ brilliant video game in its own rite.

Alright, I'm off to grind that S+ rank on Professional. If you're into action horror and you haven't already bought this - do so immediately. You won't regret it.

I have a love/hate relationship with this game. I want nothing more than to play and play and play, but every time I boot it up pre-release I know for a fact that I'll be ruining more of that first full playthrough experience. For that reason, I'm holding back on playing until the full game is out. I haven't really played since the Market update, and even then I gave it a quick once-over and stopped.

I still highly recommend for anyone looking for that classic Immersive Sim experience (but those people will almost certainly already know the score by now).

It's already a great game in its current state - I'm just saving myself for marriage <3

I'd recommend that seasoned FPS players start with Average Joe difficulty. The difficulty scaling is quite strange and there are a lot of nuances to the movement & gunplay that you'll want to understand before jumping in at a higher difficulty. I'm good at FPS - I've beaten Doom 2016 & Doom Eternal on Ultra Nightmare and have been playing shooters for most of my life. Yet when I started on Serve Me Pain (the second-highest difficulty is usually what I start on), something about this game threw me off. I didn't think I liked it because I wasn't getting it.

I sucked in my pride and played through on a lower difficulty, turned the heat back up and DAMN is this game awesome! A proper thrill ride with some great & unique mechanics. There's a crazy high skill ceiling here but again, if you're anything like me and have muscle memory from other games, it will likely take a while to get used to.

I played the demo 2/3 times and was really excited for the full release. It honestly exceeded my expectations and the extra modes & bonus unlockables sweeten the deal even more. The polish is honestly impressive (especially considering what AAA developers can get away with these days) and I'm pretty over the moon by the amount of content available for the price tag (if anything I'd say this game's a little too cheap as it might suggest that it's not worth the time).

People are complaining about the difficulty and I understand why. I've only played on Hard and while the difficulty felt just about right for me, it also felt like it relied somewhat on save-scumming. I'm quite a seasoned Survival Horror player too so I can see it being quite challenging for inexperienced players.

Overall, incredible game. If you know what's good for you you'll buy this right now.

So first off, the Gameplay is already exceeding my expectations. I've not been playing for that long, but the whole game is of this quality then it will absolutely be a Game of the Decade contender. The level design, the combat balance, the pacing in general, the artstyle, the story, it's clear from even the early areas that it's all come together beautifully. The short of it is that FromSoftware have done it again - AAA games will likely be trying to emulate this formula for years to come.

What people are saying about the Performance is completely valid though - to put it simply, yes it runs like trash.

HOWEVER...

This seems to be almost entirely due to Easy Anti Cheat and as long as you're okay with playing exclusively offline, there is a simple easy fix that more or less completely eradicated any performance issues for me and others:
If you go into the game files in Steam/steamapps/common/ELDEN RING/Game, rename the file "start_protected_game.exe" to something else, duplicate eldenring.exe and rename it to "start_protected_game.exe" then launch eldenring.exe, the game will launch without Anti Cheat and you'll be forced offline. There'll still be a minute or so after launching where the game loads in assets etc, but the frame stutters and rubber banding are next to completely gone.

There is no excuse for this of course, but given the recent RCE exploits discovered in this engine I personally think it's at least understandable (and a small price to pay considering they absolutely could've postponed instead). My opinion would likely be different had I planned to play in co-op, or been invested in PvP in any meaningful way, but since I'm a pure solo PvE player I'm more than happy.

Also, I think people complaining about the missing Ultrawide support are really missing the big picture (heh). While it of course sucks that it's not here on launch, there are already unofficial Ultrawide patches so that is already a non-issue. As for the lack of RT... I mean... just kinda deal with it...? Video Games have been doing fine without Ray Traced lighting for the best part of 50 years, so I think you'll survive...

Either way, FromSoft games have literally never been about peak fidelity so why this is being treated like a deal breaker for some people is beyond me.

Either way - yes - play this game and support these glorious devs <3

This game makes my nipples hard <3