Recent reviews by Demonfoxx42

SCP: Secret Laboratory, what can I say about you that hasn"t been said already? Not much, honestly. Everything that can be said has been. It"s a charming little game filled with both side splitting laughs from the community, and heart racing moments of tension when you end up alone because the rest of your team ended up slamming doors in your face, betraying each other, or even just dying to SCPs.

It can be rough some times, the hit boxes on some of the SCP"s attacks can be really janky, and sometimes there are awkward glitches that can shove their way in, like a glitch where you are suddenly in some weird elevator pocket dimension and you gotta hit the button again to fix it. On top of that the community can be a bit..well, much. Mic spam isn"t the most uncommon thing, and sometimes people are just generally annoying, but I feel like the good and fun side of the community mostly wins out as long as you find a decent server. Overall I"d recommend the game, it"s free so why not give it a shot?

Hiya! I"m uh, rather new to this whole review thing, but I"mma give it a shot anyway!

Ah, Elsword. A game I"ve gone on and off playing constantly (Which right now I"m currently in the on stage), with characters I"ve grown to love such as Add, Eve, Elesis, Lu/Ciel, and so many more. To be honest, if I wrote this review when I first started playing it would be negative. Plenty of reasons why, all of which I"ll go into. As you can see, though, I"m giving this game a positive review, which I will also go into! Don"t worry, don"t worry, TL:DR will be at the bottom. :P

Now lets start with some negatives.

-Let"s start on matchmaking for PVP. Holy crap is this bad! Like, completely unranked level 25 goes agaisnt a S rank level 90? How"s that fair? What chance do I have? I haven"t even earned my first rank, yet I"m stuck against people of a rather high rank! What do I do against that? Well, besides be either Rena or Rose and spam X. (I do not hate either character by the way, I"ve seen skilled players for both that don"t only hit X. It"s just that most do the X strat.) KoG seems to have this problem of "Let"s rebalance the characters guys!" Rather than "Let"s fix the matchmaking!" The characters are fine! Yes, there are a few that are pretty strong, or nigh unbeatable in PVP if played well. There are characters like that in big tournament fighting games too! The big problem isn"t the characters at this point! The characters have been buffed/nerfed enough for people to live! It"s now the matchmaking that needs to be fixed! I"m sick of trying to get into pvp with my level 45s or such and getting stuck against S+ ranked max levels that roflstomp me in the ground.

-On to one of the biggest issues of this game now, the cash shop. Holy crap is the cash shop an issue. Not only are the costumes pretty damn valuable (I mean have you seen their buffs?), but their almost necessary for PvP! Not to say you can"t win without em, but they"re pretty worth while, and more often than not those with a costume will beat out those without one. Plus all the buffs and boosts you get using K-Ching? It gets ridiculous. Now, I get that you can sometimes get costumes and such from the big bad board, but those get sold for like, over 100,000,000 ED each piece. For a whole set (That"s being sold cheaply mind you) you need about 400,000,000/500,000,000 ED? That"s kinda ridiculous! Now, I may be speaking out my booty here, I don"t have a max level who gets whatever ED a max level gets, but for us lower/medium levels that seems pretty hard to reach! Then the free costumes we get? They aren"t permanent most the time! And when they are they"re those pretty bad outfits, like the Steam Halloween Pumpkin hat, or the new Thanksgiving outfit you can earn. It just kinda sucks how much good stuff is in the cash shop you just can"t get otherwise.

- Okay, okay, I may of said that the characters weren"t thaaaat bad, but I may of pushed past one little thing...Or a lot of little things. Certain characters can spam a liiittle too much honestly, or are just too hard to really do anything against. Lets see some examples! We gat Nightwatcher Rena and her endless traps! All of which she stands on so you can"t combo her! And all the while she"s pressing X! Then we got Rose and her auto guns! Pew pew pew! That"s all there is to that! We got Blade Master and his Slicy Dicy tricks which give him super armor! Speaking of Super Armor, Infinity Blade Elsword! Not much needs to be said about that lil rascal and his endless Armor! What about Iron Paladin and his inability to be damaged due to his damage mitigation, all while having super armor? Yeah, it can get pretty bad. However, realistically, all these strats CAN be countered or beaten out. I"ve not only seen it (Using super armor effectively against Nightwatcher traps, or taking advantage of the Auto Guns mana giving.) but I"ve also done it plenty myself! (Dodging Raven"s initial slashes when he starts up his Super Armor combo leaves him pretty open for counter attacks, and IS Elsword isn"t impossible to deal with against his super armor, it"s just pretty damn annoying.) However IP Chung? Naw, that guys a jerk.

Okay! That may not be all the negatives, but let"s just move on to the more positive aspects!


-The characters! Oh my god I love the characters of this game! Their personalties are so wonderful it"s not even funny. Well, okay, it"s a little funny at times. I think I"ll only go into my favorites, I don"t wanna explain the whoooole cast. So we have Add, the mentally and emotionally scarred Nasod obesessed scientist with a horrific past that drove him to the depths of madness! Then we have Elesis, the serious yet bubbly Red Haired Knight and the older sister to the games main character, Elsword! Then we have Rena, the bubbly, happy, motherly figure of the group! The personalities are all so different, and sometimes the clash rather greatly. For example, we see Aisha and Elsword bump heads plenty, and we see Add"s difference in views compared to the others when he finally joins the group. The characters are just so much fun, and watching them all interact in the little quest dialogs is a lot of fun.

- The combat is actually pretty dang fun honestly. Yes, it can get repetitive, but so can anything really if you do it enough. It"s all about taking it in strides and not just over saturating yourself to the point you feel sick of it. The combat is pretty easy to grasp. Arrow keys to move, Z and X to attack, A S D C to use abilities (With added QWER if you get the medal thing), and different attacks depending on your motion, from running to jumping to double jumping. However, to actually be good at the game? That takes a lot of practice. The combos can get pretty intense honestly, and learning how to string different attack patterns into a long running combo is both challenging and pretty satisfying. It takes practice and work, just like any other game that you wanna be good at.

- The job change system is absolutely wonderful. I know this isn"t the only game to have it, but none the less in this game particularly it"s beautiful. Each character has a choice between 3 jobs (Besides Rose who has 4) which then get a second job change to a more advanced version. Like Add goes into Time Trace at level 15 which upgrades to Diabolic Esper at 35, or Rose goes into Bloodia at 15 which then turns to Crimson Rose at 35. Of course not at those levels, unless you buy the cash shop items, since you gotta do quests to reach them. The reason this is so wonderful though is for one simple fact. Each job change technically has its own personality, even if the lines don"t fully change. Like Grand Master Elesis is technically one of the lead knights of the Red Knights. Meanwhile, Crimson Avenger led the Red Knights into an ambush that led to them being killed and her being corrupted by Dark El to survive. While GrM is far more bubbly yet serious, CrA is far more dark and agressive. I think that makes the characters more interesting, simply because you see how they do/react in different situations.

Okay, that really wasn"t everything, either good or bad, about Elsword. It"s just that I write a lot, as you saw, so I didn"t have room. So, for TL:DR Negatives are really the PVP matchmaking, some character issues and the Cash shop, while the Positives are the Character personalities, the story, and the combat.

Honestly, I do recommend this game. I think it"s wondeful, it just has plenty of issues that need to be worked out or changed. I don"t think it"s for everyone of course. If you want to be competitive without spending a dime then you got a lot of work cut out for you, but if you just wanna be a casual player who doesn"t care too much (like me) or you wanna see interesting characters interact, then this game can provide a lot of fun and can be one great time killer. So this game gets a thumps up from me!