Recent reviews by dimple

No Rest for the Wicked is not for everyone. Some points of contention may be:
- Respawning enemies for cleared areas on a timer (visible from the map).
- Heavy emphasis on resource gathering i.e. chopping down trees and mining minerals for upgrades or ingredients for crafted consumable healing.
- Area-based level scaling so it is easy to enter an area you are not leveled for.
- Randomized loot with different traits and rarities.
- Grinding daily and weekly objectives to stay on level pace with enemy levels.
- Limited upgradable inventory space so frequent visits back to town to free up slots are necessary.
These did not personally turn me away, but be aware that for its comparisons to a souls-like game, this is the situation. It has more of those traditional ARPG mechanics than you may expect.

Let's go through some positives first! The game is beautiful. It utilizes its painterly style very well in the character art and the environments, and good use of lighting considerably affects how the world feels and how encounters play out. Combat animations are smooth and there's appropriate weight behind actions. The voice acting is very good and the character animations are very expressive.

My greater issues and the reasons why I am not recommending this game in its current state are to do with the moment-to-moment combat and the systems surrounding it. Take a journey through my complaints with me:

- Enemies gain a period of stagger immunity after the first stagger, so any amount of aggression is unsafe. An enemy will get interrupted by your first hit and then ignore all subsequent hits for a duration, meaning you can only ever hit an enemy once or twice before having to play defensively. This especially makes crowd control an incredible pain.

- Most enemy attack timings must be memorized to be avoided. They will generally have a period of delay and then an instantaneous swing without a tell or indication that it's about to happen. This makes parrying that much more risky such that dodging with light equipment is almost always an easier and more rewarding playstyle. A slight input delay with controllers compared to keyboard and mouse means parries are very difficult to perform on reaction when using a controller, and certain enemies will not be staggered by a parry so there is no window for retaliation.

- Parrying does not cancel attack recovery, but dodging and walking does. Especially noticeable with slow weapons, you'll have to wait until your character moves after an attack before your parry inputs register, making it an all-the-more cumbersome defensive option.

- Some attacks cannot be parried. There is no indication as to which attacks cannot be parried.

- Heavy armour has too few advantages compared to light armour. It reduces the already-slow stamina regeneration speed at base, it causes a slower dodge, and it doesn't meaningfully reduce damage enough to be worth equipping when you can avoid damage entirely with lighter equipment. You gain access to a charging knockdown at the heaviest equipment threshold, but it consumes so much stamina that you can only get a couple of attacks to follow up with before having to back off again for stamina to regenerate.

- Leveling pace seems a little slow. I am entering most areas underleveled and I'm having to grind before exploring new places. Any newly-obtained equipment typically has such high stat requirements that I must either level up a couple more times and place attribute points exclusively into the relevant weapon stat to use it at all, or else respec and remove some combination of health, stamina, or equipment load to accommodate it. There is no partial scaling; a weapon listing a dexterity requirement will have no benefit from strength and vice-versa, so any build with both strength and dexterity leveled will only be able to use weapons that specify combination strength/dexterity scaling. Experimentation is therefore discouraged, and respecs are a limited resource.

- Weapon balance is skewed towards faster weaponry. Parrying with a slow weapon may not guarantee even a single safe attack because enemies may recover and attack quickly enough that you'll get punished for it.

- The game automatically locks onto nearby enemies, but at the edge of the lock range when transitioning between a locked and unlocked state, inputs such as dodges and parries are lost.

Still here? There's every chance that my complaints could be addressed in the game's full release, but I could not recommend it as it is. I enjoyed my time with it, but I am unlikely to go back to it until some improvements to the fundamentals of its gameplay are adjusted.

The murder mystery is compelling but the best part of this game may be the worldbuilding and the how everything ties into it. Satisfying and intriguing.

God Eater 3 can be compared to Monster Hunter in a loose sense. The core gameplay loop is to select a mission against a certain enemy, then you enter into a small instanced area to kill it. You can then use materials from these enemies to craft and upgrade gear (a weapon, a gun, and a shield) with certain elemental bonuses and equippable skills to help you in later missions. Up to three NPC companions accompany you, and there is a total roster of six.

The storyline is not altogether that important. It revolves around humanity's effort to drive back the ash, a natural phenomenon in a post-apocalyptic world that humans cannot survive in. God Eaters are given enhancements to survive in the ash and then perform tasks for the humans, often under duress. The more important aspect of the plot is the characters who live and fight alongside you. Their characterizations are unfortunately fairly flat and the game does not explore them in depth.

The instanced areas you load into for missions are not varied at all. In the 70-odd missions you'll go through in the main questline, there are about 7 total areas with occasional day/night variations depending on the mission. The companions that accompany you are more or less competent. They will revive you when downed and provide some amount of damage and support.

Build variety is decent. There are many weapons available and their movesets and abilities are distinct. There are certain swappable moves you can equip for your weapon type which lean towards certain playstyles and situations, further supplemented by additional selected effects when those moves are performed. There are selected buffs you can earn from certain actions that can also extend to your allies. Your appearance may also be extensively customized, with new outfits becoming available to be crafted as the story progresses.

The combat itself is incredibly weak, and is the primary reason why I do not recommend this game. Fights are by and large annoying. Enemies do not often have meaningful startup time to their attacks, so it is very difficult to defensively react to them. Many enemies do not have meaningful recovery times after attacks either; the only opportunities to attack most times are when the enemy is focused on your allies (which depending on your personal damage output does not happen often) or as they turn in your direction to attack you once more. Most of the time, the best way to look after your health is to preemptively hold up your shield as an enemy turns to you in case they instantly fire off an attack in your direction. It's just not fun. Missions were usually a slog, somewhat alleviated in the late game because your upgraded gear allows you to utterly steamroll missions in a couple of minutes.

You will not find a competently-designed game in God Eater 3.

Conceptually, this is an intriguing game with top-down shooter mechanics and ship combat. Its execution is unfortunately fairly poor.

Grounded combat boils down to kiting and occasional gadget use, and it never becomes challenging. Air combat makes use of an aimed gun and broadside weaponry; while this is the more interesting side of the game, your weaponry can eventually be upgraded to the point that it's trivialised by your incredible damage output.

Upgrades are straight stat increases bought with blue or red steel. Weapons gain damage and the ship upgrades (applying to all ship types) increase durability, speed, cargo capacity, etc. The mod system for handheld weaponry offers some ability to tailor guns to your playstyle, but in practice results mostly in just increasing DPS.

The writing is uninteresting. Characters are footnotes, showing up only a handful of times and having no real personality to speak of. Dialogue is stilted, partly due to the developer's first language not being English, but also because characters are only ever reacting to whatever is in front of them and making statements in a very matter-of-fact way. Most of your game time is spent in solitude, save for your enemies which all behave more or less the same way.

I gave this game a fair shot, but it's devoid of charm and its gameplay systems are shallow. There are other games that will offer better competition for your time and money.

A well-made, intense experience that rewards precision, quick thinking, and enemy prioritisation. My only wish is that there would be more of it.

Divinity: Original Sin is an amazing experience. It features smart turn-based combat and a wide variety of possible character builds, but more importantly, it provides an expansive narrative to roleplay in. Quests are numerous and the NPCs are memorable. There's humour, drama, darkness, and whimsy often all within the same questline. It's a game to be experienced at least once.

A wonderful experience for both veterans of the DOOM series, and for those who've never picked it up before. It removes itself from its predecessors while evoking the same kind of gameplay, rewarding quick movement and smart gunplay. DOOM features a large portion of the demonic cast from the classic games and a host of weapons for any situation. id software did a good job.

Night in the Woods is about bonds. It's about anxiety, growing up, building relationships and trying not to tear them down. A charming art style, deep characters, and focus on real human issues really makes you care about this game, and leaves you thinking about it for a long while after you finish it.

A somewhat short experience, but a good one. DEADBOLT balances the knife's edge between fast-paced gunplay and tactical stealth approaches, set in a seedy underworld buried in conspiracy. Levels are learned through trial and error, so get used to a cycle of dying and improving your next run. Certainly worth your time and money.

the game has a dedicated hum button 11/10