Recent reviews by Syn Gaming

Another predatory game specifically designed to take advantage of the vulnerable and those prone to addiction / gambling.
In-game systems ("gacha" pulls, echo upgrades, stamina "management" etc.) are surgically created to encourage in-game spending by dangling cute anime waifus in front of consumers' faces.
The fact that this exploitative pile of dog**** ‘won’ Player Choice Game of the Year tells me that we, as consumers, deserve everything we are getting.

I think it's an okay game.
However, I need a few more hours to verify.

Very very solid souls-like.
Incredible combat with satisfying and impactful visuals, great sound effects, solid story and fun boss fights.
However, even though it's a clown take, I have no other way to express my feedback about irritating flavor of the month updates but through a negative Steam review.
Can we please stop with the cosmetic updates that can be accessed only during a specific time period? It's annoying as hell, especially for the single player game.
Additionally, female Khazan update made no sense, was implemented incredibly poorly (no voice acting, no cutscenes, no dialogue), and completely broke immersion. And this is coming from someone that has almost 200h in Stellar Blade, 180h in Nier Automata and really enjoys playing female protagonists in video games.
I hate to give the game the negative review, but this is the only way I can express my disdain for FOMO.

Three stages of playing Elden Ring:
1. (Learning): "These boss attacks are bullsh*t; they are too quick; there is no way to avoid them; what were they thinking when they designed this?!"
2. (20+ deaths): *Complete silence while dodging attacks after getting familiar with bosses' patterns.*
3. (Post Boss Clarity): "That had to have been one of the greatest fights I've beaten; what an incredible design!"

Elden Ring was my first FromSoftware title, and my initial response to this game design was to reject it. But, in all honesty, this game taught me that determination and willingness to put effort into overcoming an obstacle are always possible if you put your mind into it.

But if not and if you are struggling to beat certain pieces of content, the game allows you to overcome those obstacles with variety of other tools, which is a great thing.

Overall, a solid 8 out of 10 from me; imperfect but an incredibly fun game.

Never considered playing rhythm based games before, especially paired with first person action shooting, but this game absolutely nails it. The music is incredible, shooting is decent, and timing your actions to the beat turned out to be one of the most satisfying gaming experiences I had this year.
Few flaws here and there, but completely overshadowed by incredible gameplay loop, making Metalsinger of the funnest games in 2023 for me.

Don't worry guys, modders will fix it.

Edit: It turns out, the modders didn't want to fix it, so I guess I was wrong.

Perhaps I have a really odd taste in games but regardless of its obvious (!) flaws and shortcomings, I just simply had a blast playing this game.
The writing was horrendous, the main protagonist is obnoxiously annoying to the point where it feels like it's on purpose, there are no memorable characters, and the game offers exceptionally low tier dialogue.
But at the end of the day, combat and parkour elements are insanely fun, and gets increasingly better the more magic tree talents you unlock later.
For me personally, the game ended being incredibly fun, that I simply tolerated all of its shortcomings all the way through 40 hours of my playtime.

For me, it fails to live up to the beloved Vermintide and Vermintide 2.
Instead of sticking to the original formula that made Fatshark great, their team decided to shift the game's focus towards FPS and completely let go of the reason I personally played their games.
Additionally, the game is plagued with performance issues, and has no end game.
It also seems that the systems in place are developed to encourage microtransactions.
Don't purchase but instead, wait for a massive discount in like a year or 2, or just play Vermintide 2.

As someone with 500+ hours, I feel like I have a good grasp of what this game has to offer.
Lost Ark is the best looking top down MMO ever released and has an incredibly satisfying and impactful combat. A plethora of horizontal progression and decently crafted story cinematics, if you are interested in watching them.
However, after the "honey moon" phase is over, the pay to win elements of this game become glaringly obvious to anyone that wishes to play this game free to play.
The systems in this game are purposely crafted in order to compel the player to spend money to progress, either out of frustration or in their attempt to keep up with sad individuals that sink thousand of dollars for additional pixels in game.
The content releases are purposely locked behind certain gear scores, which are unreachable by 99.5% of the free to play base, and in KR and RU, all top players are exclusively pay to win players.
All of this resulted in me pulling the plug on this game, and made me understand that this game will never value player's time over money. It's the truth in KR, RU and now in Western servers. Don't be fooled by content creators (streamers, video makers and social media influencers) when they tell you that this game values player's time, this is simply a lie.
The game is blatant pay to win, daily repetitive Korean grinder, and the fact that MMO communities have become overly accepting towards pay to win elements is even more discouraging and damaging for the future of MMOs.

Avoid this game at any costs if you don't want to feel like your time has been wasted, especially if you enjoy min maxing and being a competitive PvE player.

Clunky controls, horrific camera, mediocre combat without any improvements to previous installments, & a failed attempt in improving upon previous games.
I cannot stress enough how bad the camera work is in this game. Half of the little play time I've spend with this game, I've fought the forceful camera angles against my wishes, taking control away from the player and randomly wobbling effects in a failed attempt to increase the dramatic feel of the scene its trying to present.
Worth only if you can grab in at the significant discount.