Recent reviews by RelicLord

Loved the game on release, so I let it simmer for a good year before trying it again.
Holy **** it went off track faster than a butterbar leading land nav.

Like a mediocre E-6 who needs to pad his NCOER, they spent the whole time fixing the things that already worked. The rough parts are still rough, and all that was good was brutalized. Take aiming, which now has a weird FPS crosshair instead of the old half-sighted point shooting. Meanwhile the acog is still some half-res PiP that's barely worth using.

Where before the game was challenging, if a bit of a shooting gallery, now it's just nonstop platoons of insurgents to replace every second of planning with gunshots. RPGs spawn in by the dozen to instantly obliterate teammates and the respawn vehicle alike. Plus the AI took notes from Wanted, and will fire bullets sideways out of guns and RPGs, even mid-animation from being shot and stumbled.

But the greatest tragedy is the audio, which was once the single most powerful aspect of the game. Now my teammate can melt the barrel off his SAW, and all I hear is muffled rumbling because there's half a burned out car between us. Insurgents slamming open a metal door next to you makes less noise than your brass hitting the asphalt. 6DiF had the best sound design of any shooter ever made. Now it sounds like unmodded Arma.

Something went wrong here, and it's a tragedy what was lost.

A solid shoot 'n slash game with honest-to-goodness AAA quality that the rest of the industry has chosen to forget. Graphics and effects are stellar. Combat flow tends to be unforgiving at higher levels, but rewards technical skill and communication. The class designs are varied, engaging, and each fulfill a different power fantasy.

Unfortunately, it also released with some of the most muddled and uninspired PvP I've ever seen in a major title. If that's your point of interest, you'll be bored and disappointed within a day.

Overall, a very solid recommend. Good campaign, great co-op play in Operations modes.

Nice engine upgrade over PD2, but every other aspect of the game has been cut down to the lowest common denominator. It's the FPS equivalent of a baby-proofed house, all corners padded and features locked away to keep it accessible for cross-platform play. The end product feels like a sequel to PD1, with no inspiration or experience taken from the second game at all.

Skills were simplified to mostly situational 10% buffs to damage and/or armor. Concealment was done away with entirely, with nothing takes its place. The UI is clearly made for consoles and feels clunky to navigate on PC. Gun mods are unlocked by grinding gun XP, which is way better than random drops, but without any numerical stats it's hard to tell if the mods make any real difference. I don't know if any of this applies to the premium currency guns, because F that noise.

I fear this one may die in the first couple months. Most of the core elements of the game need to go back to formula.

A solid early access title with a well devised gameplay loop. Much better with friends and/or good comms. The ship management functions are simple, but feel rewarding to manage well. The devs took the "DRG" approach to early access, and focused on getting out good core gameplay with a limited set of ships/enemies. That means the game is already worth your time, but will rely on some content drops down the line to keep things fresh.

Do recommend.

Meh? This is by far the closest anyone has come to recapturing the magic of JA2, but playing the game feels like juggling bricks sometimes.

The style is here, the humor is here, and it has the energy of JA2. Unfortunately, in addition to ignoring the popular functions added by JA2 1.13, JA3 also takes several steps backwards from JA2's core experience. For example, combat is turn-based, but sneaking around to ambush enemies is done exclusively in real time. The game does not pause while you navigate the aimed shot GUI to choose a target location. You will end up quick-loading dozens of times to try and aim a melee attack before the AI either moves away or detects you and initiates combat with a free move. Needlessly frustrating things like this sour the experience of what is otherwise a pretty solid successor to JA2.

They've also made the choice to fully embrace asymmetric gameplay a la X-COM, where enemy equipment deletes itself once they are slain and enemies do not use the same health system you do; their action points and combat performance are not reduced by taking critical damage, etc. That works when you're fighting mind-controlled aliens, but against human opponents it is frankly puzzling.

JA3 will probably be great in a couple patches, or once mods roll out. As it stands, though, I do not recommend this early release. Mostly it just makes me want to reinstall JA2.

Despite what I read, the game's quality absolutely does match the graphics. The core gameplay is just not good. It's a twitchy mess of a shooter with zero gunplay and no capacity for tactics, since respawns are instant and come from anywhere on the map. For all the hype I saw in the comments, it plays like it came out of a cereal box. Gonna refund this one and continue the long wait for a successor to Bad Company 2.

I bought this game last night, and according to Steam I am now...

72 hours late for work.

Not sure what happened. Game was released in a shallow but polished state, now it's just... not anything. Feels like a UT2k4 mod.

Game runs so much worse on every level than it did at launch. Performance tanked, even with DLSS. Enemies have jarring, jittery animations that are hard to follow. There's almost no feedback to combat; your crosshair marks are the only indication of a hit, since animations are so bad. In exchange, they added a restrictive mission board, and some new classes. It was not a fair trade.

The best EDF they've made so far, and given the titles that have followed since, probably the best EDF they'll ever make.

The four classes offer highly distinct playstyles and support each other well. Each has a huge armory of weapons that are equal parts wacky and destructive. The writing and dialogue can only be described as 'particularly Japanese,' and the entire game strikes an elegant balance of being a campy war story while also being ridiculous on its face. It's like being a kid again and having your Starship Troopers fight against the mismatched horde of bugs and robots you dumped out of your toy box.

That said, it's a co-op game through and through. Bring some friends or face frustration.

BLUF: I see a game with short-term problems and long-term enjoyment, crafted with tremendous attention and care. It's another top tier entry into L4D style games.

There's a lot of work to be done on optimization, stability, and the obtuse way weapon/class stats are presented. Despite the delays, it feels like the team is still burning the midnight oil to get the product stable and the game balance right. That said, what we have underneath the launch problems is a deeply satisfying game. Visuals are outstanding. Every single facet of the audio, from weapon sounds to environmental effects and musical score, is beyond stellar. Ranged and melee combat both feel kinetic, powerful, and gratifying. The L4D formula we've seen growing for 15 years is still going strong here, and the focus on adding enemy ranged elements spices it up enough to keep it going. The game makes me want to play more of it, and not just for the loot treadmill. And special shoutout to the chain weapons. Even if the game were a dumpster fire, I'd still keep it installed just to rend armor with a chainaxe now and again.

If you're a big 40k dork afficionado like I am, you'll find exquisite attention to detail in their portrayal of the setting. Big things like architecture, lasguns, and bolters are done exactly right (which may be the first time ever for our humble lasgun). Little details are captured as well, like the violet eyes for Cadians. When all the details add up, you realize that Fatshark must be full of nerds who actually give a damn about 40k's setting and lore, and decided to do it justice in their game. After decades of studios blithely cashing in on the IP, that's really refreshing. If that's where their time went, then it was worth it.


P.S. Fatshark pls do Space Hulk next. U've got 70% of it here already and I'll giv u money. Promise.