Recent reviews by Statistx

I dont have much experience with the genre and still can tell, that this seems more like a parody of it.
Which is damn great!
I laughed a lot, I played it in one sitting (sure, have to check some extra paths still, but got 2 endings already), I want more.
Its like an anime, quirky and over the top and all the characters are real characters.

Very surprised how close it hits the original Dark Souls feel, with proper shortcut and "bonfire" placement.
I really enjoyed it,
Even though I cheated at 3 bosses (2 out of me being incapable of parrying and they were very parry heavy and 1 because it was a gauntlet of 2 bosses and i did not want to have to get through the first every time i died at the second), I'd say a bit easier than Dark Souls otherwise, but at least to me gave me enough challenge. I did not mind to take 1-3 tries on most bosses instead of 5+, I'm here for a good time, not to bite my nails throughout the whole game.
The world itself and setting was decent. Nothing super unique, but also not the same you see everywhere.
I personally did not encounter any crashes, bugs or savewipes through the whole game.

It's a solo dev from what i read and thus i will be more leniant.

It has fun ideas and it's fun to break a chair to use the chairleg as a weapon and occasionally throw stuff at peoples heads, or dragging a corpse to a face scanner to open a door.

My main negative is that the dev loves huge areas with nothing in it.
Starting with the labyrinth of alleys in the first hub, to every level afterwards and my main issue is, that it's an easy fix.
Like there is a mining cave and it has weirdly labyrinthian unnecessary walkways with a few container huts in it.
Out of like 20 containers, 1 had something in it. Just add some closets and chests and throw an occasional item in there to reward exploration.

Janky, fun mechanics, but not much substance. More of a tech proof I'd say and lots of potential.

I loved Mordheim, which is basically the fantasy predecessor of this.I love the style of Necromunda.Why do I rate this down?Cause there's a ton of bugs. There's a mission where you have to set down mission items on the ground, but if you used an aura somewhere in the mission, you're ♥♥♥♥♥♥, cause you can't put items down when there's an aura (cause the game thinks the aura is an obstacle).I lost the mission on first try because of this. Afterwards there was a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of one hit kills and other bad "dice rolls", and on my 6th attempt where I was about to win, my game crashed to desktop.There's more bugs, but none as bad as the one described above: One time my character slid from a platform ONTO the head of an enemy below that platform and I couldn't do anything, til the next round.Another time my character got stuck outside the movable area, cause a skill pushed him and could only move after a round, cause otherwise the mission would have been softlocked from finishing.In general the AI has some big issues with clutter, like barrels and boxes and wastes a whole round running against them, instead of vaulting over or running around.In general there was a lot of frustration throughout the campaign and right now I stopped playing cause of that damn mission I mentioned. Doesn't help that some freeplay things are locked behind finishing the campaign (at least cosmetic customisation) which makes me feel forced to finish the campaign before I can get into the main focus of the game.IF the devs start ironing out the bugs (and add the other gangs in DLC later), this game might be an underrated cult classic like Mordheim, but right now, I'd suggest you wait and see IF they do something.

I'd say this is more like a spinoff expansion than a full game, but the price also reflects that, so that doesn't affect my opinion.
I like the breach point system and it's less stressful with the encounter based system vs a full map where 1 mess up can delete all your progress in the area.

Mixed bag points:
If there was a point rated system instead of "recommend: yes/no" I would deduct a point for the lack of customisation.
In the main games it was a big part that you were able to fully customize your squad, looks, ability and equipment wise.
Now you have set characters with set skills and mostly set equipment.
I say mixed bag, cause that also means they have more character and less of a nameless number quality, but you can't make a full squad to your liking.

Same goes for the HQ. It is way more streamlined, which means less micromanaging, but also I liked putting rooms in certain places and see my HQ grow, but now it's just a few menus with no options.

Overall a nice, more casual (cause streamlined) approach.

I'm (black)sad to say I can't recommend this at the moment.
Short version: The story and presentation would probably be enjoyable, but it has issues when it comes to technical execution, leading to some jank and 2 game breaking bugs.

Longer breakdown:
--- Things I could ignore:
I'm running a 1060, 12 GB Ram and a processor that is somewhere between an i3 and i5 performancewise. Not the best rig, but this game also shouldn't demand that much.
That sad, I think the optimisation is bad. EVERY time the camera hardcuts to a new angle, my frames drop from 30 to around 25 and even in the transition to the first location, when the camera goes across a street, it looks choppy, without the FPS dropping.
Sometimes I get texture drops and changing any of the graphic settings didn't make that better.

Also one time when I answered my phone, I couldn't pick any answer and then when my character put it down, he picked it up again, sat in his chair and the same dialog played a second time, but this time I could answer.


--- Things I can't ignore and are the reason why I write a negative review:
In the first area, I already encountered 2 game breaking bugs, that had me have to go into the main menu and reload, one of them simple wonkiness of the engine (which I could ignore if they are not too often) and another a repeatable bug.

First one was me looking at a book and after that NO prompt in the area was clickable and reverted back to the book, even through a closed locker.

Second one was me looking at a picture inside a locker and then not being able to interact with it or back out of the view and the game basically hardlocking itself.


--- Other comments on story/athmosphere/flow: (very minor early game spoilers)
I was happy to get a classic detective story and it seems to deliver that.
Also fun that you get a breakdown of your characters personality, which changes on your decisions.
I didn't like how the flow of the story was sometimes weird, as in you get interrogated by some baddies and it resolves with one of them being on the phone and then saying to the other he should stop punching you, followed by a hard cut to you going to a different area, with no comment or resolve of the previous scene.
It also has the occasional genre sickness of giving you choices and answers in dialogues, where it's not 100% sure what your character will do or how he phrases his answer.

My recommendation: Blast through the first area of the game, get lockpicks and try lockers. If you also encounter the gamebreaking bugs, refund. If not, then be happy that you can play the game.

Love it, mostly because there is nothing else out there like this.
I tried to play the old one back then and then again with the remake, but both times I fell off pretty early.

It IS a pretty unforgiving and 'janky' games at times and for your own enjoyment, don't have any issues with cheating, IF the game starts to frustrate you too much. Try to hold out as long as possible without cheating, do it completely without, if you can, but before rage quitting, I'd rather suggest turning down the difficulty and start cheating, just so you can still enjoy the game and not uninstall it.

I want more games like this, a sandbox small town, weirdness, mystery and misery and the playing field and characters changing over time, sometimes depending on what you did.
You have a pretty good feeling of freedom, even though that freedom is tied to being in a horrible place with dread looming above you and it often makes you feel as if you just have no time to do everything you want, which is far as I know the intention of the dev.

Now I'm just waiting for the other 2 characters to release.
I saw a negative review saying that it's only 1/3 of the game, which is true if you compare it to the original, but it's still a very long journey and giving it a negative score JUST because of that is plain petty, even more so if you compare the lenght and complexity to other full priced games that are 'complete'.

I can't recommend this game to everyone, but it's worth trying.

(I feel like this would also be a great base for lovecraftian horror, but that is only a sidenote)

I mean it's free and thus not very content heavy, BUT it's the best feeling flying mechanic for a superhero game ever.
Attacking with high speed also feels great.
I would hope that if there ever is a proper Superman or Iron Man game out there, that it would have the flying mechanics from this.

It's probably a good game, but not for me or everyone.
Just because it's FROM Soft and you liked the other games in the Soulsborne series, doesn't necessarily mean you will like this. I played through and adored all the other games, but I refunded this one, cause I simply don't see myself 'git gud'.

The biggest differences are speed of engagement and being forced to parry a lot (which I was always bad at and could circumvent with different equipment builds in the other games (dodge focus or heavy armor/shield and blocking), but not here, cause it basically puts you into a dex parry build).
Best example is that I beat that famed chained Ogre first try, just because you can purely beat him without parry and dodging only, but then there is some minor regular enemy and he just decimates me.

I also find deaths frustrating and wins not too rewarding and as others wrote, you often don't learn anything from your death.
In the other games you beat a boss and often got some nice items or some kind of feeling of reward, but here your reward for beating a miniboss often is just another miniboss, right behind it.

A personal negative for me is the starting enviroment. I didn't like 'destroyed rural japanese area with cliffs' in Nioh and I don't like them here, BUT as I've read, there's probably varying enviroments later in the game, so there's that.

Here's hoping for Bloodborne 2.

tl;dr should you get it? Do you like FROM Soft games and don't mind parrying? You probably like this. If not, then you gotta figure it out yourself. Just don't expect Soulsborne.

I'm gonna upvote it, cause I can see it's a good game, just not for me. Also I think it would be unfair to judge it negatively on the base that it's a FROM Soft game. They are allowed to stray from their tried path, even though a lot of people probably wouldn't mind them staying closer to it.

Phew, this is gonna be a hard sale and I also want to start with saying that it's definitely not for everyone.

Did you play the Gothic series or the similar pirate themed Risen series?
This is pretty much a modernised version of those. Hell, you even get the usual choices of a few factions to join, after the introduction story.
You can't have issues with wonkyness or sometimes simply unfair situations, or otherwise you probably would rage a lot.

In the series I mentioned, you always start as a weakling with no skills, barely any equipment and some story reason why that's the case and here the devs decided to market that reason as a selling point, which is either a genius or a ballsy move.
Yes, you are not a hero and start out as a nobody, but that comes more from having a rather unwieldy combat system and no special attack skills, til you have enough money and can train some from traders, than the story really showing you that.

The survival aspects don't seem to be too impactfull so far as things like a common cold only changes your stamina regen and being in cold weather just lowers your movement speed a little and can give you the common cold.

What I personally find a great an unique idea are the death scenarios, but here it also depends on personal preference, as I can imagine some people finding them annoying and it takes away the danger of dying. What that means is, if you die, it depends on who killed you and where you died and then the game picks from several situations that you land in, like being captured in a bandit camp, getting carried to safety by a hunter that finds your half dead body and so on.
So those range from simple teleports to the next closes safe zone, to an almost sidequest feeling imprisonment in an iron mine.

tl;dr should you buy it? I honestly can't tell you. If you didn't mind the jank and complications in the gothic series and want a rather unique open world RPG, go for it. If you like refined systems and graphics, probably stay away.