Recent reviews by AnaThemis

Pretty good, but It's lacking overall in content right now to justify the full price. After 12 hours of gameplay, I've mostly seen all the new stuff there is to see and at this point now have the choice of grinding to higher difficulties and gear to get to harder difficulties or play the PVP. There's a lack of secondary weapons, and such, but the spectacle is just so incredible and the actual missions themselves are pretty fun. There's a fair variety of objectives, but I can't imagine just wanting to run through the same missions so I can run through them again with the same gun with a stat upgrade for all that long until I am going to need another game play loop to really keep me invested over the long term. For Comparison I found Darktide fairly disappointing and wouldn't hugely recommend it, I think at least better uses the fewer maps they have by varying up the mission types and conditions somewhat.

So why do I recommend it? Well for one, because steam does not do mixed reviews. But also because the stuff it does right I really enjoy. Some people don't like the combat style but I really love it, especially in the coop mode where, due to being a bit more specialised in your fighting style, has a flow that I really enjoy. The campaign itself is just a fun blast too, and whilst the story is a bit of a let down (especially because it ends on a very "to be continued" ending that just doesn't feel great) the mission to mission gameplay is incredible. It feels like fighting through a war and really delivers on the power fantasy.

Overall I recommend this game if you know what you're getting into, but if you're tight on cash- maybe skip this one for something that is overall better value for money.

I'm conflicted about this because I have put a lot of hours into this game and had a reasonably good time even, but I really cannot recommend it. The game to me, currently, feels incomplete and yet it is coming out of early access. Despite the promises of future support, that means we should evaluate it as such. And right now whilst the idea of the sandbox world created is interesting, it takes only a short while of playtime until it begins to fall apart as you realise the world is not quite as reactive or intricate as first appears. It feels like a good half of the murder cases are solved by you finding the singular clue the murderer left basically giving themselves away, even on higher difficulties. There's also never a lot of complexity behind the killings or the interactions, it usually is very one note and you'll see things repeat very quickly. Further, a significant number of harder cases almost certainly can only be solved by brute force, and whilst such an approach is possible and the nature of an immersive sim is to allow such things- Brute forcing the game results in it becoming trivially easy as you manually profile and remember more and more of the people living in the city. Overall this game has some great ideas, but the longer you play the more you peak behind the curtain and realise that the game needs not only more written content and variations, but also mechanics and methods and different options to solve cases. It's that last part that makes this, imo, not feel finished enough to leave early access and it's that reason I don't recommend it.

A Pretty great game that I just wish had a bit more stuff to it. For the price point, it's very hard to complain, and the core gameplay loop and style is great! I'd be willing to pay a lot more for a fleshed out, it feels begging to have a mysterious deeper story like Inscryption or Daniel Mullins Games in general.

I recommend this game with some pretty heavy Caveats. First, know and be okay with loading up to playstation to play the game. Honestly it does suck, I luckily saw on the page day 1 so knew what I was getting into, but if they didn't it's sad. There's no message yet on what happens to people outside regions where they can login, but I will say the game should never have been available in those regions if they aren't supported, and I do believe both Sony and Arrowhead have an obligation to make it either payable for those people or to give full refunds. I'll update if that does not happen to negative.

So that out of the way, let's talk about the actual game instead of the asinine sign on method. It's great! I have definitely used awful DRM to play worse games. I really like the ongoing campaign feel and the content drip is so far pretty damn satisfying. It's a really great "drop in and play for a couple of hours" game


UPDATE 2: They listened to players and dropped the requirement!

The ESRB told me this game would teach me how to gamble, but when I tried going to the casino with a fresh Cavendish Banana they told me I can't get x3 multiplier because "That's not how it works". "Fine," I thought to myself, "I still have my Sixth Sense maybe I can get myself a spectral card" so I waited diligently for a 6 before destroying it in front of the dealer but, to my shock and horror, not only did they REFUSE to give me a spectral card but they also threw me out of the casino!!!
Overall the experience taught me that Balatro is better then whatever the hell they're doing over in those casinos.

This is almost a recommend and it's really hard not to for the price, but this game honestly left me with a feeling that something was missing, and that the mechanics never quite came together. The Aggressive cycling of cards is quite fun, but the game starts to become trivial extremely quickly and loses all difficulty. Plus the gameplay feels quite sluggish, especially for the first few areas as most of the time is waiting for the enemies to slowly shuffle up. Besides that I felt the game lacked a lot of... content? You never unlock extra layers or alternate paths, there's no real 'bosses', getting cash is quite easy and most of the unlocks just pollute your overall card pool with extra choices. I was very interested in the computer menu between games, and I was hoping it was going to become more of a story but it never quite gets there. Some more clever and narrative uses of that could've turned it into a game akin to Pony Island or Inscription. Overall it feels like it's close to getting it right, but the lack of substance leaves the game feeling hollow.

My Time At Sandrock is overall, a pretty great game that I enjoy a lot but a few issues I have make me really struggle to fight through to the bright spots. The characters and world building is great and so far there's really no end in sight for my progression, but every now and again I hit hard walls where the game requires me to wait in game time or just grind out resources to get to the next section. This especially goes with getting given quests that first require upgrading your equipment. Besides that my only other complaint would be that the day cycle feels really short? It's odd that a life sim is giving me so much latent stress in having to run around and organise my time- when other games do it they tend to rely less on extremely restrictive timed quests, but Sandrock has a bunch of those.

That said this games loop, nursing this town to health and the peaks at the world before are great. The romances are really cute too.

This game feels so close to working, but the issues compound on top of each other to make a frustrating experience. I really enjoy the map sizes in the game, and also I like the choice to keep expansion relevant throughout the game rather then the early city rush of many other games. On the other hand I hate the fact that players choosing a civilisation locks everyone else out of it, creating a race that can snowball very quickly. I like the idea of an evolving culture but in reality it almost always seems to play out the same way, making the overall arc of playing very samey. I love seeing the cities expand, but hate the AI. It's a negative for every positive and unfortunately when put together it doesn't make a great experience.

I advise playing this game, however, I do not advise buying the game. If you happen to come upon a free way to play it, absolutely, but otherwise, avoid. If y'all don't know why that is, just look up the recent actions of the corporate side of this company.

Edit: Following the People makes games video on the topic, please don't abuse the devs directly or anyone who still works for za/um, at the same time I basically stand by what I said, the company is indeed going in a worrying direction, and probably had been earlier then even I had known.

Lightfall, to me, is more comparable to Curse of Osiris and Warmind in terms of story then any expansion release, and that basically tells you the issue. The story here is not just a let down, it's bewilderingly bad. Besides not explaining the main MacGuffin, an issue that everyone's pointed out already, the entire tone and style of the story just feels so bad when you see what point in the story we're at. This basically feels like a side quest, and the new subclasses can't save how much the formula feels tired. Even neomuna, a nice map, is held back by this 3 areas-and-a-hub design that makes traversal on every planet feel very similar. Destiny needs to be a game capitalising on its changes, this to me felt incredibly underwhelming.