Recent reviews by Lan௵Dozo

10/10, would dive into an out-of-control city building AI superstructure gone mad in an mc-escher meets blade runner meets Ico abandoned megacity while going insane on a journey that's an allegory for conception and birth, again.

10/10, would leave the game running in the background for months on end and still be discovering new systems all over again.

The Good:
-10 acts in the campaign, for a crazy amount of content before you hit endgame (instead of having to play through the same content in Normal, Hard, and Cruel like other games).
-A staggering amount of endgame content at this point in the game (February, Betrayal league): An endless mine that goes on with treasures and encounters, a dynamic syndicate with a shadow of mordor style enemy heirarchy system, a temple where you create and update each room one by one before tackling the whole thing, an arena where you capture monsters and then fight them for extra loot, and a crazy array of maps to which you can apply modifiers while two ancient beings fight for dominance.
-Procedural generation taken to an extreme, with not just maps, but enemies and bosses kept fresh with crazy modifiers.
-New leagues 3-4 times a year with new gimmicks and additions to the game.
-A detailed passive tree which combined with uniques allows you to greatly customize your playstyle.
-A very fleshed out skill slotting system with support gems that allow even some of the weakest skills to be strong.
-More content than any other Diablo-like ARPG at this point in time
-An active trade community meaning you'll be able to buy items that don't drop for you pretty easily.
-The trade community is supported by a pretty crazy API, with a wide variety of official and unofficial programs for you to trade, plan your builds, and look up prices ingame.
-Free, with the only "required" purchases in terms of quality of life being premium and extra shared stash tabs. The rest of the purchases are cosmetic microtransactions.

The Bad:
-Grindy, sometimes extremely so. The trade system incentivizes trades by making stellar drops extremely rare.
-A lack of auction house means trading is slow and requires people to find you via the api enabled sites, message you, you invite them, they come to you, then you trade. An archaic system that doesn't allow you to list items.
-You cannot sell/trade items using the public apis without premium/paid stash tabs, meaning you'll have to use the archaic trade channels.
-Certain fights can feel completely unfair with one shot projectile spam obscuring the screen unless you have certain builds to tank the damage or dodge quickly.
-Most builds aren't viable for endgame content, although GGG is always working on improving game balance.

The Ugly:
-Crashes can occur, both in the game, or on the instance server, locking you out of instances permanently, which can be a problem for limited instances (a rare map drop, or a one-time mission (Syndicate safehouse, Zana Map).
-Sometimes the game can't keep up with certain builds or situations, lagging the game, and getting you killed in hardcore, because of this, I cannot recommend hardcore league.

The Rub:
-An excellent Diablo-clone which is probably the best on the market. Regardless of the crashes and archaic trading system, the amount of content is staggering, the variety in playstyles is great, the community and the tools they make are vast, and the price can't be beat.

The Good:
-Fun, fast paced arcade action in the vein of the old Ace Combat games (4/5).
-Excellent control response with all of the quality of life changes from 6. High G turns are easy to do and feel great.
-Great flight model with interesting interactions due to ground effect, weather, wind, and other.
-Beautiful graphics and excellent attention to detail. Flying through clouds feels amazing.
-Great sound design, battles sound and feel intense.
-An excellent musical score, as per usual for the Ace Combat game. Interesting interactions with the environment (flying into cloud cover dulls the music).
-Controller support works well.
-Graphical options are adequate, with working borderless windowed mode, limit FPS, ability to turn Vsync on/off, toggle bloom and motion blur, and the usual suspects (coarse graphical options instead of fine).
-Adequate multiplayer, with a lobby based system and both free for all and team modes.
-An interesting set of story missions, with different scenarios and situations to keep it fresh.
-Voice acting in both English and Japanese with Subtitle support.

The Bad:
-Runs hot, cpu usage can be a problem, weird interactions with steam can lead to stutters.
-GSync can stutter in cutscenes, may be mitigated by upcoming Nvidia drivers.
-21:9 support isn't working regardless of settings in the menu.
-No mouse support in menus.
-Hotas support is limited only to 4 supported sticks. https://steamproxy.com/games/502500/announcements/detail/1729848148045999311 (My T16000m FCS doesn't work).

The Ugly:
-Nothing really. I haven't experienced any game breaking bugs, crashes, save corruptions or anything of the like.

The Rub:
-An excellent Ace Combat. A large variety of missions, active multiplayer, stellar attention to detail, and excellent presentation overcome the porting issues to make this probably the best Ace Combat since the glory days of 4/5/0.

If you are familiar with Arkham City, then you'll know pretty much what to expect this game. Origins is a love letter to Batman fans, taking on Batman's first/second year in Gotham, when most criminals don't even know he exists, the police force is still corrupt and willing to kill Batman, and a freshly transferred Gordon is out to arrest him instead of help him. The combat is tightened up and improved from the second outing, and the city is much larger and has much more things to do. More importantly the villian roster is greatly improved, with over 25 villians showing up, many for the first time. Deathstroke, Copperhead, Firefly, and a vastly smartened up Bane make for very entertaining, and more importantly, unique fights. Basically this game takes Arkham City to the next level, with only the story being weak. Definitely would recommend, especially for the much faster paced unique boss fights.

An excellent Metroidvania game reminiscent of the GBA/DS era-Castlevanias. An xp-based level system, stat allocation, a crafting and equip system, a deep magic and skill system, and a focus on fast combo-based gameplay combine with challenging bosses, speed challenges, and hidden areas to explore to make this a must-play for any fan of the genre. To top it all off, it has an outstanding OST that is a joy to listen to.