Recent reviews by Sethja8

Hell Let Loose does not vouch the ticket of what I consider a good "realistic platoon-size shooter". Gone are the days of kings like the Darkest Hour mod. I didn't even like RO2, but it trounces this game.

Before I dive in, let me say I would love for Hell Let Loose to succeed, but its development trajectory over the years has solidified it as missing the mark. The community seems to enjoy what sets negatives apart from other known games like RO2, so things likely won't get fixed.

There are many complaints to list, so I'll miss things here. I replay the game around once a year, see that it's not really changed, and move on with my life.

The game's graphics and audio settings are inconsistent. Classic issue of low graphics beating high graphics that plagues other high fidelity games. Render distance is messy. Visual clarity could use work. Antialiasing is either broken or something is wrong with how it works. It's been that way since pre-alpha. Character and object inking is also incorrectly working (or executed extremely poorly) and shadows of moving objects look unnatural. Play sniper because it's easy as hell to see enemies who cannot see you due to this.

I have literally seen people get shot at by a rifleman 30 meters from them and have no idea where the fire is coming from. I have literally been shot at in real life and there's better clarity than in a video game. That should never be the case.

Over the years the HLL team have improved performance on hard drives, so good job. That being said put the game on an SSD or suffer.

Maps are incredibly massive, and though detailed, the massive sizes lead to common back-caps which ruin the momentum of the match due to movement options across the map tallying behind backcappers. So often you will have teammates so far out of position they ought not be playing the game.

Infantry is the core of the game and is unfun to play. That's not meant to say infantry should be running around like some arena shooter, but the competitor Post Scriptum does a better job at a stamina system and infantry movement feels much better. What is the point of the sprint function in HLL? It doesn't do anything. Let me move around.

The above issues are highlighted well when you play sniper. On three short testing games with sniper, I ended with a combined K/D of 142/3. From three games of playing with friends in a tank, I ended with a combined K/D of 147/4. Playing infantry feels pretty rough against these "power classes" which rely on your team to support you (ex. whoever nabs the anti-tank role). Playing these classes emphasizes how the poor mobility and visibility hurt infantry dudes who run around getting gunned down by you with a simple zoom function.

Let me emphasize that K/D isn't everything, but... it sure is more fun if you're already playing the objective and you're getting a 10x kill ratio because you can actually play the game.

Bullet penetration is broken - some weapons will penetrate certain materials, some won't, at random. Plank fences on certain maps are impenetrable by any caliber. Makes it very fun to play on with a sniper scope since you can look thru a 1 inch groove in a fence and be virtually unstoppable to the other side. Why is 30-06 so weak to penetrate?

Specialties are way too commonplace. Squad sizes are just 6, with enough specialties that you do not have to play Rifleman at all. Rifleman as a class is obsolete minus the feel-goods of helping build fortifications, and automatic weapons are too often a majority of a team. On top of harming the game's feel/balance, this also harms how no country has a distinct playing theme.

Little issue, but no allchat. Come on fellas.

The realism/competitive scene is dead as far as I'm tracking. Back before Post Scriptum committed social suicide when the developers/production team had falling outs, PS was often the go-to. Now I'm not sure. I've heard players say in-game it exists but have yet to see events that aren't backwater or near-dead.

Team 17 made a positive change (making sprinting do something) and the community immediately lashed out against it. Now they're afraid to change anything, but what they do change also angers the community. I feel like the community deserves what it's sewn in. Keep playing beach invasion maps, they're SO much fun!

Minor positive is the game size, which is just 30 gigs compared to most other modern games which are well over 60 gigs.

I hate meme reviews.

S+ tier violence, music, and gameplay wrapped into an enticing and immersive experience that will have you hooked. Must-buy.

OCTOBER 2022 UPDATE:

I am keeping my May 2021 update (below) as part of this review. Now that Bannerlord has officially released, what do we have?

I've yet to play the multiplayer on official release, but my expectations are that it will be dead after a few weeks and will only have been surged with life due to the official release. We'll see.

The singleplayer has been clunked out to a pretty good spot, but it still delivers what is a disappointing experience considering the amount of time since Warband's release and Warband's singleplayer in comparison. Yes, Bannerlord does some things better than Warband, and it has some interesting new mechanics, but there are still things missing and some Warband mods are able to compete with Bannerlord's singleplayer for how much you can get out of them.

The singleplayer is missing development time in diplomacy and character interaction, which should absolutely not be the case 12 years later. Post-midgame in Bannerlord is tedious, repetitive, unfun, and I do not feel immersed in the world.

Singleplayer could use more things to do. Way back in 2020 when the early release came out I was upset with how few quests, character interactions, and diplomacy options were in the singleplayer. It has hardly improved.

I still cannot recommend Bannerlord. I think the singleplayer is fun to an extent but it does the bare minimum. The gameplay is easily the best part, where visuals, audio, and how the game 'feels' come together well, but it falls short in everything else that would classify it as a long-lasting RPG or unique genre of its own as Warband did.

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MAY 2021 UPDATE:
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I've had some time to play recently and am updating my review. I'm still keeping my review at a "NO" until more issues and bugs are addressed. The game is on the right track but still needs lot of work before I can recommend it over Warband.

The multiplayer is basically dead in North America. I guess I just expect it to remain that way until they actually release some decent content in MP. I don't understand where the gamemodes from Warband/FaS went. Currently it seems like the only gamemode played is Duel and the majority of players (there's not many of them) are outside of NA.

Playing this on a hard drive is practically impossible. EVERY menu stutters, EVERY time a character is loaded to interact with there's a lag, and it seems like the game does no memory or item caching to load faster. Probably a quarter of your time is spent just waiting on things to load.

After using my SSD the SP is playable. The tedium from waiting for menus and stutter-loading is too much to normally bare.

Performance other than anything to do with a harddrive has been greatly improved since a year ago. Battles are running at 60+FPS for me. Everything looks great, sound design is where it should be. CPU and memory usage is average for a newer game.

Gameplay feels right for a Warband sequel. I don't have any major gripes and if it paves the path for mods to "do it right" I don't mind native weapons or armor being a little oddball.

The amount of content in the SP is questionable. I feel like I saw more armorsets that were interesting and unique in Warband. It's also annoying to me that all of the Empire factions share the same type and color of unit, meaning they're all carbon copies and the only difference is their shields when fighting in land battles. Where did the customized uniforms of Warband go, that could be shared between different factions but would color units based on their banner color? It would fix the problem with the Empire factions as they all use different shades. I digress.

The singleplayer is enjoyable. I still tend to notice game mechanics missing from Warband and I don't see why they didn't add some Warband-DLC or FaS mechanics into the campaign, but maybe those are to come? The SP is still missing some fleshed out content but overall it's about on-par with Warband's, and assuming Bannerlord is as easily moddable as Warband we could see an extensive singleplayer collection (much similar to how in Warband I basically never played Native, there was always a mod that did things better).

TL;DR Multiplayer needs to be addressed, Singleplayer is good but not worth the long wait we had from Warband, please allow modding and more customization in MP and from creators in the community. Wait and hope Bannerlord develops more.

Strategic Command is a more simple Gary Grigsby style game that can be picked up and played without spending 100 hours learning mechanics and reading encyclopedias. 10/10

Has a "hotseat" campaign system for playing against or with friends which now eats up most of my hours playing it. Good modding support as well and the devs directly interact with their community and modders which is great.

343 and microsoft should activate the rings on themselves

bring your music to life a little bit by riding down it in an enjoyable, customizable videogame.

i title this game my ideal "my internet went out" game.

no bowling or pool, but at least we have flying homing-rocket-shooting bikes, ww3 tanks, orbital laser cannons, and useless yachts for 1 billion CREDIT

singleplayer's good but won't be remembered as fondly as GTA:SA, GTA:VC, or GTA:IV.

i have certainly gotten my cost out of playing this game with friends in multiplayer, but the multiplayer feels lacking for how many opportunities they have had to make it more interesting. outside of repetitive gamemodes like deathmatchor racing, the sandbox and social aspect of the "open world" falls short in the free-roam multiplayer. on top of that, a grind-heavy playing scheme makes it unfun to get the few things or opportunities you would want to have fun with.

on sale it's good for the cost for the singleplayer alone, but the multiplayer may leave you feeling hollow

They did it right with Armageddon and somehow haven't managed to keep the magic and replayability in recent titles.

It's still worth the play and continues some of what I loved about HM1, but the level design and mechanics reveal severe issues compared to the first game that make playing through the game, especially replaying, less enjoyable than HM1.

To start positive, the music is fantastic (as to be expected). The gameplay is lightly built upon and feels "right" for a sequel. The immersion that HM1 brought to you so soon can be felt at the start of the game. That "right" feeling unfortunately withers as you progress. I won't go into the ticky tacky, but doors, pickups, and AI behavior cause plenty of issues, too.

I was someone who enjoyed stacking up combos in the first game and trying out all of the possible ways to win. In HM2 it feels like there's pressure on you, usually, to follow a specific playstyle level-to-level; too often gimping aggressive gameplay as you'd like, and you often need to cheese AI to kill them. You'll also need to "spam" a lot - find a gun and shoot as much as you can, because there are so many enemies and your combo window is so low you won't be able to score high otherwise. There's a bad emphasis on large areas with multiple sightlines that go to the extent of the engine's capability. Get prepared to use the zoom mechanic a LOT - guns dominate most of the game. Also, yes, I've high-scored every level.

So that I don't go on and on, a rundown - HM2 has faster reacting AI that punish you heavily based on distance and time, mixed with massive levels with lots of windows and doors to make melee less viable and sight-lines annoying. The worst offender is the low combo time, making executions practically useless compared to HM1. All of this combined makes the actual overall feel of HM2 to be much more painful relatively to HM1, even with multiple play-throughs of the game. There is no room for playstyle; you either have to go extremely conservative or what I call "drunk goblin" mode (the only way I can replay the game).

Some of the Beard missions are ludicrously unfun, basically CBT levels. If you disagree, feel free to tell me how non-gamer I am. Limiting the player in certain ways is one of the fresh ideas in HM2 compared to HM1 but it falls short so often and doesn't add, only detracts, from what makes HM1's gameplay style so great.

Overall it is a worthwhile gaming experience, but a greatly disappointing sequel. I want to press against the grain and tell you that you might, like me, come back upset with HM2 compared to HM1. YMMV.

Great RPG. You will for sure get sucked into the world. Very much worth the purchase and runs great on the right hardware.