Recent reviews by SleepySolace

I can't begin to explain what this game means to me personally. As someone who grew up in the early 2000s, Big Cat Week and the work of the Governors Camp fundamentally changed my life. Through various reasons, I was never able to pursue my dream of being a zoologist or documentarian.
This game reawakened those same thoughts and feelings I had for African Wildlife when I was young. While I might never get my chance in life to be there physically, I'm truly grateful for the art and passion that has gone into this game. What a genuine pleasure to play and experience.

My ONLY feedback, is I need more space immediately for more photos! And that the Lions mane is a little immersion breaking and could use an upgrade on it's textures. Everything else down to the last fine details of the key art, environment, and small interactables like the tea and biscuits, is absolutely noticed. You can really feel the love through the screen.

Initial premise is great, really enjoy the gameplay itself and I'm excited to see where it goes.

Eye tracking and motion on the npc characters is weird, it's difficult to have a conversation with the female character because she's looking off to the left and wont keep still. (The animation for her getting onto the bike was also very odd.)

Humour is great, dialogue is well delivered. The musical score and the melodies are fun, but the songs themselves less so. I don't really like the concept of this being a musical, the game is already a paranormal mystery investigation, with builder elements. It didn't ALSO have to be a musical, and the songs fell very flat for me. I couldn't repeat a single tune. It was all just spoken word sung for the sake of being sung, and when I looked at the dolphins, seeing her singing next to me while moving as much as she did was really goofy and immersion breaking.

I enjoyed piloting the bike and the boat, but the framerate drops and stuttering are the worst.

This is so poorly optimized, on high I was averaging about 20fps and on low it peaked at 41fps. Constant stutters and freezes, it needs a lot of optimization work.

My feedback would to be improve a lot of QoL on the character models, and work on optimizing the game for performance.

I've often struggled to find a truly immersive game outside of silent protagonist RPGs like BG3, DA:O, the "greats" etc. This game offers something far superior to that, something I never truly knew I was looking for or needed. I can't get this game off my lips, I can't recommend it enough to anyone looking for that long haul RPG experience, even those like myself who opt for a more medieval setting that a futuristic one. I'd seen and played a little before watching Edgerunners and it made the whole experience even more breathtaking.

68 hours in on a Netrunner build and still haven't gone to meet with Panam, I'm enjoying everything else the game has to offer just as much. Just started Phantom Liberty. I feel so incredibly strong, dropping an entire building full of enemies before they even know I'm there.

£20 on sale is an utter steal for the content of this game. Treat yourself.

I do not take that jacket off. I'm going to the moon with it.

A complete surprise, and a really great one at that. I've played DW since 1997, I've had a lot of issues with a lot of the modern games post 8 (excluding Origins.) This is another delight in the franchise for the die-hard fans. Much closer to Hades than Vampire Survivors, just an enemy horde as opposed to fixed enemy types. If you're a fan of the franchises and know what you'd be looking for (i.e For a Fire build you'd expect Wu, Ice for Wei etc) the game translates really well. Game is well optimised and runs perfectly fine at 60fps.
Nice to see some old cutscene footage used for random occurrences between Phases. Did the pointing leonardo meme a lot.

Game has everything you need in it's base game, don't be tempted by skins because that's all the price tags are. You don't need the "Karma" either, earn it as you go. It's not a micro-transaction currency, it's just what you use to unlock characters who are all rewards for the rogue-like runs (Which is the point of the game.)

5 hours in and a sore wrist, it really truly is "Just one more run"

An unfathomable experience not only in game but what it's done for the community, for D&D and for the industry. Giants among men.
Thank you.

I'm a long time DW veteran back from the Ps2 days. I own the Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel, safe to say this series was a special interest for me for the past 20 years.
We've had a spate of lacklustre games in the past few iterations, whether due to technical issues or the games just falling flat in places. But this was a breath of fresh air. I had consistent 60fps, the game felt and ran exactly as I've been longing for for so long, I was getting excited at seeing various characters and factions like a kid pointing at a Disney parade.
This is exactly what long time fans have been waiting for in a next-gen DW, and what a privilege for new fans of the series to start right back at the beginning with the coalition army at the gate. What a complete delight to play.

I've put a good chunk of hours into this now to formulate an EA review. I play using an Xbox One controller.

Fields of Mistria thrives off of it's overall aesthetic, a farming game I have been looking forward to for a long time after playing the demo. It doesn't do a lot different to similar games, it's closest being Stadrew with Animal Crossing elements. But what it does best at it's absolute core, is characterisation. The NPCs in this game are well written, well rounded, and most importantly feel actually alive. They talk about events that happened the night before, they talk about what you did last week, and they talk about what they'll do next week. They know who/if you spoke to them at events too to carry on dialogue chains. It might seem redundant but in a game that offers a spouse and the ability to do quests I think it's so important that NPCs have actual personalities and not repeat dialogue.

My current feedback so far would be:

Despite the above, the PC falls flat completely. You play more like a dating sim role as the PC and have to import a lot of your own theatre of the mind. Dialogue is always 2 answers, a good answer and a mediocre/bad answer you just... wouldn't ever say? I want some more personalisation to those choices to define who my character is or words that are closer to what I would actually say.

I would like to persistently hold my action button at times, instead of having to tap to plant each seed. I want to hold it as I move around the soil.

There is a current exploit with gardening levels. So long as you have food, you can till and untill the same spot of soil for as long as the day has time to gain infinite exp.

I initially thought I was levelling too fast but noticed it was actually 10 levels in the same bracket/rank which is fine and I really liked. I personally like to feel rewarded little and often. However - The map in it's initial start is far too big and you immediately have access to crafting, cooking and other facilities around the town. Things like these shouldn't become available until you actually have the tutorial quest with the representative villagers. (I also believe the house shouldn't start with so much basic furniture. I crafted a lot to just be sold so I could get my crafting rank up. Let the introduction be to decorate your house for example.)

The museum turn-in items could do with having some sort of little completion mark to both show they can go in a museum and whether you've already donated it. I brought 6 bugs and he only wanted 2 of them and at that point had nothing else to do with the rest I'd just spent the day catching.

The days are too short to compensate for the size of the map. Either a manual time adjustment scale or 20 to 40 minute days would be best. You can save any time at your desk so we're not locked and reliant on Stardew style saving on sleep. you don't have to finish the full day, you can pause and resume.

I'm loving the ability to level my skills via the statues, something unique that passively helps by my own choices.

I do however appreciate the simplicity of some things, fishing is very similar to Animal Crossing. Bobber, wait, grab. Much preferred for me personally.

I want to be able to sit down on the benches, chairs and swings.

The game stands currently at an 8/10 for me as a seasoned farming sim player. I adore how it looks, feels and the characters are just so lovable. I think there's still some QoL adjustments to come to make it close to perfect but I'm very excited for the journey. Road map is looking good!

This is such a delightful experience, I've barely scratched the surface and to say I ran to make a review is an understatement. I am overwhelmed by just how much I'm enjoying this game and it's fantastic (if not a little unhinged!) cast of characters. Down to the fine educational content about other shrooms, I am utterly in-love with everything about this. I have already recommended it to so many people, think BoTW meets just a lil mushroom guy.
Reminds me very much of the Issun/Poncle phase of Okami as well. Music beats that immediately make me think of Bee and Puppycat, Zelda, Moomins, Pokemon and everything about a good wholesome adventure.
I will get this little mushroom home!
STRONG. CONFIDENT. BRAVE!

So, I have quite an extensive essay to say about this game. At the time of this review, it's still in Early Access and it's the June 7th update which introduced the Fairy Godmother and... Some other stuff I guess.

Now I have played in my lifetime, every sort of high-end farming/crafting game of note. Harvest Moon, Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley etc, and I have a pretty solid idea on what I want in a modern game that advertises itself as something that fits along those sim categories. The closest resemblance this game has to any others, is probably Stardew Valley, but not in the ways you'd initially think.

To start off, if you are a huge (and I mean your wallpaper has hidden mickeys, huge) Disney fan, then this is a literal dream-come-true game. If you're here for a casual easy time, no end game, don't often play many games and wouldn't have an idea otherwise, then stop reading now, the game is utterly fine for you.

If however you're looking for something more in depth and you're looking for that next farming-sim fix or even a good pass-time game, then this might not yet scratch that itch.

Fundamentally, the game is still (even after multiple community surveys) missing some rather unforgivable QoL updates at this stage. I expected a lot more from Disney. They don't have the best repertoire of games, their studio for games has never been exactly anything special (I am discounting KH as that is just a SE game with a Disney IP). But, considering every piece of material and all the games of this nature that pre-date this by years, they're missing the mark entirely.
So at the time of writing, you can craft pre-made/design furniture. You can buy SOME basic essential blank furniture and throw a bit of pre-designed splash art on it to customise it. You can craft a type of path, a type of fence, and you can cook. You can craft enchantments, that you will never use as your tools are all one-hit-wonders anyway and it's a waste of resource. You can collect materials, and finally you can farm.

You cannot Batch Cook. You have to find and either manually add or "Auto-add" set ingredients. Cook. Wait for the animation. Hooray.- It's tedious. Almost every villager will have 2/3 cooking quests as well. (Food is also a source of increased running speed and the new air surf feature. It consumes it almost instantly, it's faster to just teleport.)

You can't store efficiently. It uses a chest based system where you will need at least 30 small chests, about 20 medium chests, or several large ones either in one chest room or scattered around your village. Most quests allow you to craft/use materials that are in your chests already when you get to a crafting station. Some quests require you to have the materials on hand in your inventory to deliver them or carry them to a crafting station (Even though you craft FROM your chests as a resource? It's stupid.) - If you have mismanaged your materials up until those points, I wish you all the luck in the world in either finding what chest in high tide you've put it in, or with re-gathering them.

Placement of items, furniture, paths etc is all blocked by the never-ending spawning of materials, usually ones you have x1000 of like Basil. In the placement mode you have access to your entire map, but if so much as a sprigg of ginger has spawned, you need to manually go over there and pick it up before trying again to place the item, which is also notorious because:

Your menu resets to the top. - Scrolled down for ages trying to find something that wasn't in the category you thought it was? Wondered why the "All" tab on food makes it so nothing is alphabetised? You will eventually find it, then if you go to find it again, more often than not your menu has flicked back to the top of options and you need to essentially doom-scroll down again until you find what you were looking for. It just wastes time. There's no type search feature.

Farming: You will only ever farm your basic veg needs until you have 50 of every item, then unless you intend to use it purely for display, you will only ever grow and farm pumpkins which are unlocked in the last zone. Pumpkins are the highest produce to sell and the best and easiest way to make money. I've been sat on 5mil for the better part of 6 months. Never farmed since unless a quest specifically told me to.

Scrooge's Shop: You might find one new item a week. You can't sell anything you have duplicates of. You will get a lot of basic furniture sold here too, stuff that comes with the base game like "Red Couch." "Basic Grey Counter." "The same portrait of Micky you've seen 60 times."

Going back to talk about placement, let me be broadly frank, you are far more limited than you think.
So unlike Animal Crossing for example, which is entirely shape-able by the terrain tools in it's hills, water, etc. When I compare this game to Stardew, I mean that your farm/village has a fixed shape. You can't alter walls, biomes, rivers, ponds, or any sort of environmental placement. Because of this, I have often been trying to work around places and shapes that unnaturally fit, and pathways don't curve and can't be placed on slopes. I'm finding I have say, 20 squares made up exactly how I want them, nice furniture placement, maybe a hedge or fence. Then the surrounding area will look a total mess and frustrate me that I can't even finish a path (and then basil will spawn.)
This being said, you ARE given the entire map to work with despite having to have the villagers homes in somewhere. If I could give any new player advice, it would be to entirely strip your island, keep all the villagers in one place until you reach a point (I'd argue around the pridelands stage) where you can start comfortably having control of your map placement, and not get too excited to start building and customising your village until you're done with a SOLID margin of the game at this stage.

The economy:
So 134 hours in. I am STILL short on some resources, specifically gems which are a rare drop chance when you need very specific ones.
The economy on important resources outside of sticks, is ludicrous. Paths are completely written off, you will not have enough stone for a nice brick set of pathways because when the valley is divided up into squares, each square is pretty tiny and that's a single piece of path each. Animal crossing and Stardew are both forgiving in this. But this map is HUGE on a different scale. To make up for everything the villagers need, you're going to have to sacrifice your own wants and wishes for customisation.

Gathering is easy for basic necessities, but it's not the function, it's the time. You can get Kristoffs shop (Which will save you a good 2/3 hours of time) when he has things like Iron Bars in stock. But the drop rate on Iron Ore is low, you could be mining for hours and end up with 50 pieces or 5 pieces. You could argue that yes, this is the entire purpose of the game. Gather resources for 3 hours - do villager quest - rinse and repeat. But it's sadly unimaginative, tedious, and has even brought me to some points where I resent certain characters. Ursula and Airel will literally fly around the map.
The entire point of this game to me, feels like to waste time. You can interpret that as a good or bad thing.It's not designed to be completed, but to get to a space where I feel ready to feel like I can safely use my resources and breathe a little customisation into my valley, I instantly need all the resources again I've just spent. Crafts are COSTLY. Horde everything, use it efficiently and wisely or not at all for a time.

This game still uses in-game purchases and I won't even elaborate, stop normalising this. It's a bad practise. Don't buy from the store, it's like the Skyrim horse armour. Though the Event Path isnt too bad, you'll have the leftover stones already for that each time. It does however, only make me do basic activities when I have the rewards available for simply playing.

Story Spoiler Free Review

Tldr: It's fun for the first 10 hours+ so long as you literally do nothing but play in Hogwarts. Do as much main quest as possible and don't be tempted to go off and wonder or do every other side-quest. Enjoy Hogwarts and life as a Student with your fellow Students for as long as absolutely possible. Don't over-saturate yourself and stagnate. You can't miss anything and a lot of the world will be open but puzzles and a LOT of doors also locked behind main quest spells. (And use Revelio as sparingly as possible, it's so wide it reveals things on other floors and in back/locked/secret rooms and completely ruins immersion. Unless you want your hand entirely held.)

Main Review:
So... On sale, absolutely. But 30 hours in now and I can't in all good consciousness recommend this game at full price.

Let me explain and digress that this game in of itself is phenomenal for I'd say... About the first 10 hours. But...

The world is so... 'bloated', I literally have spent at least 20 of these hours doing whatever I want, and I mean literally, whatever I want without any sort of consequence what-so-ever. Somewhere along that first 10 hours the initial spark, the passion, the 'wow' moments just evaporated and I realised I'd started stagnating behind classroom unlocks to just ensure I had an easier time exploring the wild.

I wish I could go back and tell myself to stick to the main quest and classrooms for as long as absolutely possible and honestly not leave the castle until the main quest takes me places and brings me back. I've completely ruined the ability to even feel like a Hogwarts student anymore. You receive so much special treatment, and (Choices spoilers here) not a single one of my choices has mattered.

I'm 30 hours in, after literally ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ around and being praised and treated like gods gift to the world of magic with 0 consequence for anything I do, my actions, or if I ever decide to use unforgiveable curses. Doesn't matter. Can still just 1-shot zap people with lightning I guess. Regardless of playing a pacifist or not, you have no choice to subdue in combat, you literally kill everyone/everything.

I realised in these past few hours that while I'm not necessarily bored, I think I gave a half-assed smile at one of the beasts I've ONLY just met because I was given so much free rein to just... literally ♥♥♥♥-off consequence free. Not even a curfue, no one giving a single cultivated ♥♥♥♥ about where I am or what I'm doing at any time at-all.

Because of this I'm just... Here, staring at it, working out rather uninspired puzzles and at this point starting to skip through side quest dialogue for a fetch quest I probably already completed just exploring.

Ultimately, I'm not disappointed, it's a fantastic game, but I never thought I'd be so incredibly saddened by 'too-much' freedom in an RPG. Especially because not one single choice matters.

It might seem minor but for, literally the best rpg that's most interactive game out there right now/of this time (I'm talking about the past few years excluding FF7R and TW3WH), the AAA RPG we've been waiting for to scratch our itches. This one just... Fell flat? It's missing that "je ne sais quoi". In a game that's so responsive and caring of every little environment detail, important factors, literally hitting every-single-note in the orchestration of an RPG. Why is it missing Consequences and actual choices. Not even my gear feels like it matters, theres no gear goal I've found, it's literally "oh this is better I guess, sell the rest". Everything is overwhelmingly underwhelming, as if I've looked behind the curtain at Oz.

What would have been a solid 8/10 is probably more now like... 6/10. No replayability beyond a few quest differences and not worth its full price especially not for what amounts to cosmetics. I'm going to play the rest of it out regardless, maybe the story will keep me motivated because it is interesting, but I'll be honest I feel like such a Mary-Sue. I feel like I've seen the world and nothing new will surprise me. (And I honestly don't even feel like I did THAT much outside of the castle despite everything I've said here, I literally did just ♥♥♥♥ around and get distracted.)
I might come back and edit this review after I finish the game, but final closing thoughts are echoed in the TLDR at the top. Just don't leave Hogwarts and do every main quest you literally can. Enjoy being a student as much as possible. Thats where the real magic is, you're not going to find it outside the castle.

If you're just a casual HP fan, you're going to LOVE this. If you're someone like me who's here for the RPG first and the setting second, see below for more in depth but may contain spoilers..



Further Spoiler Review/Comments:

So, I like Harry Potter at the surface level, never read the books, enjoyed the films. Don't own any merch. Like the aesthetic, Hufflepuff, I like beasts etc. The freedom of what I wanted out of that Hufflepuff experience is... Eh. Maybe because it's taken me 30 hours (Of my own exploratory volition) to unlock even interacting with beasts, and I literally as always just... press a spell I hot bar and watch a short animation.

All locks have a Bethesda like puzzle, luckily if you play on controller it vibrates rather than you having to guess and hope. Keyboard idk good luck?

Chests are 90% of the time just another beige coloured cosmetic or not enough gold to even afford fertiliser.

Your character is literally untouchable. You're so powerful, if you're timing every counter you have, you're literally an unavailable God. Most powerful wizard that's ever lived/is currently alive, and not a single soul cares. Not necessarily a bad thing, play on a harder difficulty, combat is entertaining unless you're fighting statues. At all times the game pushes you to just use unforgivable curses though. With 0 consequence for doing so so... Go ahead I guess. Unfulfilling. You're also little miss/mister/themster perfect and you can't do any wrong. Honestly the sun shines out of your characters ass. Walk around at night. Forbidden Forest. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ around in the dungeons. Casual af trip to Askaban. Dark Arts arena, literally night fighting, and if I want to just casually killing anyone either with my god magic or using unforgivable curses if I want to with nobody giving a ♥♥♥♥. I don't feel like a Hogwarts student anymore, Hogwarts and classes feel like a waste of time canonically. I've got so much Special Treatment you may as well forget the whole thing and become a bored God.

I have issues with the room of requirement. As in I have an actual manor house of everything I could ever possibly need at all times why would I even go elsewhere. Exploring freely gives me nothing new material wise. You get it all main quest or buy it for professor side quests.

You never have enough Gold. Just accept that.

I wish I had more Pro's to talk about but all of that came from living the experiences, which I do wholeheartedly recommend. Live and enjoy them and embrace all the elements and love they come with, it's truly a blessing for fans and they've done that so impressively well with love and care. But just enjoy it while it lasts before the world starts to slip.