Recent reviews by Neofactor

Still on the first world and it's crashed more than any other Bethesda and Bethesda-like game I've ever played. I assume its an issue with UE5 but it's pretty bad. It will start in after the first 2 minutes, the first 15 minutes, or in the middle of a 2 hour session without any consistency as to what causes it.

It's a real shame because the game is alright. Not great, but overall satisfying to play. Nothing groundbreaking or unique though.

The ping on every server is pretty insane. It's like fighting a power point presentation. I have a gig internet connection but every server I can see shows 80-300 ping. The delay makes matches extremely unenjoyable. I hope this gets refined a bit soon.

After playing significantly longer with both good and bad team mates, I managed to beat every night lord at least three times. They patched the single player experience so it is much more bearable. There are just some important lessons to take early on when playing:

1) Using the bosses elemental weakness is really a must. Prioritize getting weapons that exploit their weakness. 2) The consumables used to remove status effects give your a permanent buff for the run to increase your resistances. 3) Leveling up is the biggest boon up until level 12. Once you get to level 12 the benefits are minimal by comparison vice ensuring your equipment is maxed out.

All I can say is that the typical obtuse explanations of essential game-play mechanics From Software is loved for don't work well in this kind of game. A lot of this information should really be spelled out. There are several spells that I didn't really use in the original so when I come across them I am not sure what they do for me.

The randomization is a boon and a bane. I have two great runs ruined by the plague of locus draining four levels on night 2 and disappearing before we could locate the swarm controller. A second run ruined by a Evergaol opening up with an extremely hard boss variant (it's a mixed bag) and than halfway through the fight, the fell omen shows up and we are fighting two bosses at once at level 5. Didn't go well and we wiped twice, only for Morgott to dip and us down to level 4 with day one closing. These were rare instances that just randomly kill the run. It's rogue-like I guess but still annoying.

As a fan of dark souls and Elden ring, I must say that this is an incredibly frustrating experience when first starting out. There is a significant difficulty curb that needs to be overcome. It took me about 6-7 hours to get adjusted to it. While the combat is based on Elden Ring, there are some major differences in the enemy tuning. The difficulty curve at the start of each run needs can vary based on enemy spawns. In some instances, It's extremely easy to die in the first 10 minutes and doing so is extremely hard to recover from. Others, you feel overpowered and can shoot up to level 10 on the first day.

Heaven forbid you find yourself next to one of the several insurmountable cliff faces, or in a cave or dungeon, while the ring is closing. You will die, lose a level, as well as all of your runes, (so maybe really two levels) and its such a struggle to recover from being stuck in a bad position.

If you die due to a strong enemy, there is a good chance you will spawn near them again. Normally a good thing, unless they are overwhelmingly stronger and you spawn too close and die immediately after. This problem is only an issue in solo play or separated from the group. Either way, it's no less annoying.

I still think that some kind of chat/less primitive ping feature needs to be introduced, and some balancing is implemented in the early game. Other than that, it's a pretty fun for a quick 45 minute session.

This is a great game that puts an interesting twist on blackjack. Considering it is a form of Blackjack, don't be surprised that RNG is very much a driving factor.

After you learn the basics you can figure out what the best cards are and do a pretty decent job at controlling your own deck. My biggest piece of advice is to avoid card values higher than 11. Hitting when your already at 13 and pulling your only 12 is pretty discouraging. I learned early on to rely mostly on cards that round up and stick to either lower values or cards I can choose the value on.

A lot of people complain about the RNG but you have control over your deck. You don't need to add cards after each round if they don't help your overall strategy. The starter deck is great but I would avoid going to the basement with it. Overall, surprisingly I think the best deck is the one the Wizard uses. Once you unlock it, it's a load of fun but a slow burn.

I'm glad they returned the arc thrower to it's former glory. It's time to dive!

I gave this game an honest try but I am struggling to see the appeal. The core mechanics of combat are interesting enough, but the lack of fast travel is nothing short of a huge hindrance. While the game director is under the impression that fast travel isn't necessary for games that have things to do.... that may be true but Dragon's Dogma (2) is not an example of that.

Each region has the exact same enemies dressed up in different armor but with the same attack patterns and skills. Cities don't have fast travel locations, as those have to be found or bought with real world money (in a single player game). Each NPC has the same dry dialogue and over-acted voice lines that are so over the top it appears satirical. Every quest is a fetch quest that either tells you exactly what to find, or has you try and figure it out with garbage context clues. And the explanations for the wonky game mechanics are all equally cliche and obtuse.

The only gem is the moment to moment game-play in combat which takes upwards of 15 hours to get a true handle on and maybe 20-30 hours to become truly proficient at. That and the pawn system, which while interesting, also becomes dull as they lines they constantly say become stale rather quickly.

If I could take this combat system and apply it to a game like Baldur's Gate 3 we would have a masterwork. This doesn't even cover the performance issues. I have tried to give this game an honest try but, for the life of me, I cannot understand the overwhelming praise reviewers are heaping on it.

Make no mistake, mortal shell is a good game. The mixed reviews seem to be some controversy about they price of the game staying fixed regardless of region. I don’t know much about it one way or the other, so I’m going to provide my inputs on the actual game.

It’s pretty obvious that it’s inspired by the Demon souls/Dark Souls series. I had initial thought so, but 18 seconds into the game when I see the loading screen in between areas… well all doubt left my mind at that point. At one point, right after I died and NPC told me to “get good.”

Inspirations aside, there are some major differences between the combat of Dark Souls and Mortal shell. The harden mechanic is pretty neat, as it can function as a way of adding invincibility frames to any attack, delay a dodge that was mistimed, or rapidly recharge your stamina after a flurry of attacks. There is a lot going on with just this one mechanic… And I don’t feel like the game does a good job explaining weapon abilities, parrying to heal, or the resolve system/second chance system.

The graphics are pretty good and I’m impressed how well the game runs. I guess I’m just use to every modern game running like *** so it’s impressive to see a 15 man indie team make a game that runs well. (maybe that was the year it spent in the epic store). Regardless, as a souls fan it seems like a nod to one of my favorites but it does enough to differentiate itself.

For those having trouble, I would highly recommend checking out a video explaining the combat before you get started. You will have a lot more fun that way, rather then suffering through. I would die every 30-60 seconds until I got fed up and just looked up some videos. Now it’s only every 5 minutes. Also look up a video on how to find Eredrim at the start. He has a massive health pool, paired with the highest defense. This game (like most souls like games) is all about understanding enemy attack patterns. Being able to survive a number of attacks will help you to that end.


****One thing I will say... the drawing distance for enemies and traps is really unacceptable. If traps just hindered you in combat, i could forgive it. But the traps can suddenly appear 10 feet in front of you, right after you checked and didn't see anything, only to suddenly be stuck in a bear trap. Luckily they don't deal that much damage, but DEVs come on... That needs to be patched.

My specs are above the recommended but lower than a lot of people having issues and the game seems to be working fine. So far the story is rather enjoyable and it seems pretty polished overall. With a GTX 1070 TI I can run the game on high and average at 50-70 FPS.

It does stutter more than it should and I think some patches will clean this up. I would have preferred a more optimized title at launch but it's very playable.

I haven't gotten to far into the story yet but it has subverted some of my initial assumptions. In the beginning I met a few characters I though "oh, this is going to be a cherished friend or that character is the rival that's a POS the whole game until they redeem themselves. Boom, they're dead. What? Didn't see that coming.

Pretty good so far.

When I bought the season pass when the game came out I was under the assumption I would get all DLC since it didn't say otherwise. My bad.

The most polished VR game I've played. This is how it should be done.