Recent reviews by Primus

I have a daughter now and I would die to protect her.

I've been really excited to play this game for over a year, granted I thought it had a lot of potential but also knew not to get my hopes up as you never know what a new game is gonna be like.

Well I knew after an hour this game was not for me. I've never seen a more convoluted and unintuitive control scheme in my life, requiring repeated button tapping to sprint (???), pressing RB + RT for your earliest move combo which puts uneven pressure on the right side of your controller so it feels awkward and uncomfortable (the UX standard is button combos being mirrored on both sides to evenly distribute weight, like LT + RT, LB + RB). And that's just the first one, they made the moves fighting game level combos but the game looks and feels like an action rpg? Well that's also a deception because this was the worst and most boring game intro I've ever played. You're forced to walk not sprint for NO REASON as the game starts with you talking to random NPCs with generic uninteresting dialogue that has unnatural long pauses between voiced lines in an uncanny valley way. You're overwhelmed with wall of text tutorial window pop-ups that are too much info to parse right away and it's confusing what to do and where to go and how to even find the NPCs the intro demands you talk to for no apparent reason. Jumping requires you to hold a button down then target a trajectory predictor and then hit a button to jump there, and climbing a wall requires you to jump on it first instead of just going up to it and trying to move up like any good climbing mechanic in a game.

I really tried hard to find anything interesting enough to keep me playing but everything was bad across the board. Even the visuals are bad when you're close up, with some of the weakest water textures and physics I've seen in modern gaming and visual fidelity and effects across the board being uninspired and poorly implemented, with terrible performance issues.

Unintuitive controls, terrible story/characters, bad visuals, convoluted combat mechanics, I don't get why so many people are glazing this game.

The best soulslike I've played in the sense these are huge fans of the FromSoftware games and do a great job paying homage to the formula in every aspect of this game. The combat feels good, the buildcrafting is phenomenal and littered with fun builds, armor/weapons/spells are exciting and look great. It's not at the FromSoft level of course and that causes some problems, like quests are even more confusing to do than in a FromSoft game and you can fail them easily. Levels and story aren't quite "wowing" in the way Dark Souls/Elden Ring are, but they're still great and scratch that itch well. But the biggest pro here is YOU CAN COOP WITH A FRIEND! Can't do that officially in the souls game and it's an absolute blast, highly recommend it as a coop experience if you're looking for something to satisfy the soulslike itch with a bud or even help out/get helped out by randos.

This game has got a lot going for it from an enjoyable gathering system, well designed dungeons, good social systems and many great activities both pvp and pve. But like many western MMOs it feels like much is too watered down. For a game that makes the bold choice to not have classes and instead focus on weapons that have associated skills, they really needed to nail that system being amazing and it's just decent at best. You can only have 3 active skills at once per weapon and the skill tree only has 6 skills total to choose from. This contributes to the combat feeling quickly stale with any weapon, but contributing even more to that is the fact the weapons just aren't that fun in general. Even with 15 weapons to choose from I couldn't find a single one that felt really fun to use regularly besides the bow. The hatchet also resonated with me as a fast agile weapon but having one tiny hatchet in one hand feels aesthetically wrong. Like the fantasy should be dual hatchets or a hatchet and shield, it feels incomplete. For a game that went all in on weapons-only gameplay, the weapons need to be a lot more fun and versatile than they currently are in their watered down state.

The game is also just riddled with bugs all the time, granted usually nothing too game-breaking anymore. But like people on PS auto-declining all invites until they reset the game, random crashes on consoles, input issues. Nothing that would detract from the game in major ways, just minor ones.

Overall a good game to play if you got lots of friends with you but watered down in some crucial ways that make it hard for me to enjoy personally on its own merits.

Leaving this recommendation. For those who come after.

Beautiful fun game with compelling storytelling, enjoyable crafting, a hoot with buds and randos. Highly recommend. Only jank I notice is it's hard to position yourself to be able to use the interact button for things bu t otherwise having no issues.

Oh my god, maybe the best fan remake of a game ever? They even completely redid Xen and NAILED IT in a way that blows the original out of the water. This is THE definitive Half Life experience now.

*teleports behind you*
Heh, nothing persona-l kid

*acid jazz plays*

One of the most powerful and unique gaming experiences I've ever had. Do yourself a favor, get comfy, put some headphones on, and lose yourself in this with NO SPOILERS.

Only found 1 dark soul, not sure where the other 2 are :/