Recent reviews by Telvas

Relatively simple but fleshed out, very clean and polished, with beautiful minimalistic art style. Just watch the trailer and if it looks like your thing, just go buy it without hesitation - you will have a lot of fun.

Previous chapter, "Necrom", was a spark of hope they might actually be willing to keep ESO alive for many more years. This chapter, "Gold Road", hyped sooo muuuch as the great "10-years ESO aniversary oh so great an special best chapter ever" is extremely 'meh' and disappointing.

Zone is mediocre - not only VERY small compared to it's size on map, but also needlessly chopped into several art styles (vineyards + jungle + scorched magical land + steppes) that are even smaller and simply do not fit together and have that "this is ugly and out of place" feeling each time you go from one style to the other.

Writing is bad. Most quests, including main story, are bland, repetitive, uninteresting, 1:1 copying parts of the stories from previous areas, and feel like all of this was written by underpaid intern during 30 min lunch break.

The new "Scribing" thing is disappointing. It feels kind of like a new re-used skill line available for all classes.

If this is what they cook for 10th anniversary of the game, what they are so proud of, what they built so much hype about... Then I afraid the game might be simply shutting down in next couple years... :(

One of the most wholesome games out there.
Just buy it, dev is a great guy too.

I am surprised how much fun can a simple but clean game like this bring.
Twin stick shooter bullet hell with upgrades along the way and a tiny scent of rogue like.

I paid for CS:GO and now it has been deleted from my library, and this garbage CS2 was added instead. On top of that Steam says I played 300 hours - this is a lie, I'm not even able to launch CS2, since it is still broken for me.

Please remove CS2 from my library and add CS:GO back.

2025 UPDATE and the "Seasons of the Worm Cult" a.k.a. "Solstice", um... expansion? DLC? Season pass?
TL;DR: This looks bad, is ESO milked before a shutdown?

They changed the release schedule from "big chapter each year" to "new season pass with garbage each year". 2025 new zone Solstice is a flop. Small, recycled, writing is virtually copy&paste from 2023 and 2024.
Quality drop is expected after switching to "pay full price upfront at the beginning of the year, then we release 'something' during the year" strategy.

Avoid 2025 content.

2024 UPDATE and the "Gold Road" chapter review:
TL;DR: Uh oh... Somethings going wrong with ESO...

Previous chapter ("Necrom", released in 2023), was a spark of hope they might actually be willing to keep ESO alive for many more years. This chapter, "Gold Road", hyped sooo muuuch as the great "10-years ESO anniversary oh so great and best chapter ever" is extremely 'meh' and disappointing.

Zone is mediocre - not only VERY small compared to it's size on map, but also needlessly chopped into several art styles (vineyards + jungle + scorched magical land + steppes) that are even smaller and simply do not fit together and have that "this is ugly and out of place" feeling each time you go from one style to the other.

Writing is bad. Most quests, including main story, are bland, repetitive, uninteresting, 1:1 copying parts of the stories from previous areas, and feel like all of this was written by underpaid intern during 30 min lunch break.

The new "Scribing" thing is disappointing. It feels kind of like a new re-used skill line available for all classes.

If this is what they cook for 10th anniversary of the game, what they are so proud of, what they built so much hype about... Then I afraid the game might be simply shutting down in next couple years... :(

Also since March 2024 the game started experiencing HUGE technical issues.
OS crashes (require reboot) during launching/closing the game.
Some new spyware that monitors your PC and crashes the game to desktop after ~5 minutes if the scan shows something it does not like, ie. Task Manager running, some Razer/SteelSeries mouse and keyboard tool apps, and some other.

OLD REVIEW (2023):
TL;DR: It was great back then!

I've been trying many MMO during last 15 years, and ESO is the only one that kept me for more than few days (2000+ hours and counting, so quite a lot longer).

Pros:
- strong Elder Scrolls vibes (I'm a great fan of TES III: Morrowind)
- the best story among all MMOs I've heard of, every single NPC line is voiced over
- almost every smallest quest is a little gem - even a 15 min side quest feels like short story on it's own (I had such short quests that left me sitting shocked for 5 minutes trying to crunch emotions in my head)
- phenomenally good music
- generally good graphics (there are regions that are somewhat ugly, but also regions that are breathtakingly beatiful)
- good for solo play (I like playing solo), especially story and quests
- "grown-up" friendly - you dont need a 4h session to have some fun
- generally NOT childish story and art style (rare happy endings, frequent moral dilemas, generally dark and serious art style - even in fairy elvish lands, to a certain degree :P)
- each class and race can more or less do anything - not always in the perfect optimised way, but it will work, so you dont have to do a 5h research before starting a new character, fearing you will be crippled for the rest of the game because you chose bad option - on top of that you can always respec skills and attributes in-game for relatively low cost
- you can buy DLCs and microtransactions for in-game gold - indirectly, with other people gifting you DLCs/uTransactions, and you gifting them gold - so be aware of scammers and join World Crown Exchange discrod
- no mandatory subscribtion - buy once, play forever (the ESO+ subscribtion is optional)

Cons:
- story and questing feels designed mianly for solo play - you can't quest together with full immersion, i.e. only the person doing conversations with NPCs sees/hears the actual dialogue - the rest of team only see popups about quest progress :(
- mixed feelings about the content of the zones - one one hand zones feel well designed and polished, but when you look closer or stop for a second and explore/think about it - it starts to feel empty, i.e. cities rarely feel alive or authentic - they are nice and beautiful, but are mainly just hubs for player services and activities; the most authentic parts of the world are some remote corners with small sidequests, where designers put some flavours or had freedom to focus on actual atmosphere instead of player's convenience
- some zones and areas are really, REALLY ugly, for no apparent reason - like different zones were made by different teams, and some teams were top class artists, while other teams were bored interns trying to finish the job ASAP...
- for new players: the idea of "reversed leveling" with regard to gear - each item has some stats and a level requirement - and you are getting the full power of the item only if your character level is +/- 5 to the item level, otherwise the item stats are getting worse and worse for you... in practice it means that when you are leveling up and up, your items are worse and worse (literally, i.e. the damage or armor numbers on the items are becomming smaller), forcing you to change gear - the legendary endgame item you found at level 30 will be worse than random trash you found when you are level 50. This stops at level "CP 160", fortunately, since above that items no longer change stats with your leveling. However this ridiculous "reversed gear leveling" made me so angry I abandoned the game for few years, when I was starting to play it years ago.
- social aspect of the game moved to Discord servers, it is more and more difficult to get a group for a dungeon or trial via in-game chat
- game is cleverly monetized and relatively expensive, if you are willing to pay for extra content - you have to either pay 15€/month for ESO+ for access to every DLC (apart for the newest yearly big zone DLC...... they come to ESO+ with 1 year delay to convince you to pay for both ESO+ and yearly zone DLC) _OR_ you have to spend around 80-100€ each year to buy all content that is realeased during the year (but then you have it forever, and you have bought that big zone DLC released each year); on top of that there is gazillion of more or less usefull crap in the microtransaction store, and a super-usefull "crafting bag" that is available ONLY in ESO+ subscribtion (ppl often pay for ESO+ only for the crafting bag)
- [optional] weird end game goals - usually ppl grind endgame to farm... furniture for their houses, lol... or achievements... and that's pretty much all motivation for playing, if you have all stories, quests, zones, dungeons, trials done... no super legendary gear, no skins (you can buy them for gold), no anything to brag about...
- I don' like the direction the game is being developed for the last few years - more low-effort content like mini-games (antiquities? good idea but brought down to a silly mini-game... "tales of tribute" card game? oh crap this is awfull... boring, repetitive, and you are forced to play it or you will miss a ton of XP and loot... if I wish to play cards, I'd buy some bloody card-game, not MMO RPG...)...

Recent big yearly zone DLC, Necrom, brings SOME hope, as there is just a juicy zone story content instead of crappy low-effort mini-games like antiquities or Tales of Tribute crap, but let's stay vigilant, if Zenimax wont stop defunding the game, it would mean it is time to abandon the ship since it is sinking...

All in all - as of now I love this game. I really like doing quests, like in regular single player RPG games. From time to time jumping in some multiplayer raids/dungs to have some "organized chaos" fun. Being a Morrowind fan, the Elder Scrolls vibes in this game are huge selling point for me.

Against the Storm is a perfect mix of city building, resource management and roguelite.

Every single settlement you build is a bit different, the pool of available buildings and buffs is changing.
The "tree" of industry (raw->processed->product etc.) is more like a gigantic net where you can use like 3 or 4 intersecting paths to reach any product, depending on available resources, buildings, buffs, etc.
When it comes to the art style, Against the Storm is simply beautiful - I love both graphics and music. Together with relatively non-punishing and flexible game mechanics it makes the game extremely relaxing (even on higher difficulty levels, to some extent ;p ).

And on top of that - I've never seen such complete and polished game in early access! Moreover, devs are very friendly and responsive, releasing game updates every few weeks.

Original Subnautica was waaaay better in almost every aspect, but Below Zero is still a decent game.
Original "Subnautica" - 9/10
"Subnautica: Below Zero" - 6-7/10

I love crafting-survival-adventure games (Minecraft, Space Engineers, Subnautica... <3 ).
So it's obvious I love Valheim too :)

This game has literally ZERO innovative things. EVERYTHING you will see there has already been implemented in other games.
But Valheim developers seem to excel at understanding player's tastes and needs, brewing a perfect blend of well-known mechanics, themes, settings, features, styles, genres...

And on top of that the game is STUNNINGLY beautiful :)
It's just a cherry on top of the developer's excellence, how beautiful the game is given the simplistic graphic style.

P.S. And it's soooo daaaamn BEAUTIFUL! :) Seriously, one of the most jaw-dropping games I've ever played. I can't remember when I was making so many screenshots previously.

A decent and fun, but shallow FPS.
1. Most important thing - shooting - feels surprisingly good. I am a Unreal/Half-Life series fan so I suppose my expectation are somewhat biased yet very high in this matter. Weapons simply works as expected, are satisfying to shoot, aiming and running is smooth and intuitive. "Running & gunning" is simply fun and satisfying.
2. Level design is average, sometimes "OK", sometimes "meh". Interiors look pretty good, but too often have repetitive layouts with very similar assets. Maps/mission usually are rather small, which is good for jumping in for a 20-30 minutes, but can be annoying if you started liking the game and want to spend i.e. few hours at a time.
3. Gear/skill progression - it's there, gives "some" satisfaction when you upgrade, but is very shallow.
4. Story - somewhat disapointing and very naive. Don't get me wrong - I do not expect Baldurs Gate from a cheap sci-fi shooter. But Dead Effect promised a somewhat interesting story in the beginning, to just let it unravel in the cheapest possible way with almost zero ambition for more. Meh.

TL;DR - if the game interested you enough to watch trailers and check reviews - I think it's definitely worth buying on 50% sale.