Recent reviews by Noire

PSN linking.

A pretty solid cashgrab. For the same price as Rise of Rasalhague which has 12 missions to this one's 7 missions 3 of which are "FFAs" that I'll elaborate on later. First things first, I love George Ledoux, I felt less annoyed by everything whenever he was talking and yet it feels like all of the budget went into getting him on board than anything else. The campaign is bad because the first mission has pathing issues where your lancemates can get stuck and won't follow you. The second one has Hansen's Roughriders randomly betray you out of nowhere. Worst of all, Duncan Fisher isn't even your lancemate for that long. Maybe I was wrong but the advertising felt like you would tag team with Duncan and be a gladiator duo before he settles down to be a commentator. He doesn't even get to fight on Solaris before becoming a commentator. Also Mason trash talking Duncan and Hansen's Roughrider is something and made me wish he stayed silent for the DLCs.

Now for the FFAs. Yes, I know that due to AI priority, better built mechs are higher targets and this gets bumped if they do damage. Guess what means for the player in FFAs. For those 3 missions, I had to huddle in a corner and wait for them to fight because if I killed anyone, everyone in the local area would dogpile me. Once again, MW5 failed to do better than its predecessors since MW4 handled FFAs far better. Another issue is that coop is limited. PGI should have mentioned it in their description but half of the missions only has Player 1 in it so my coop partner had to sit around and stare. It's really disappointing.

TLDR: Is Duncan Fisher worth 15 dollars for you? I wish I watched a let's play instead of playing.

The grind is real.

Fun gameplay, nice scenery, and lovely music. Everything else is atrocious.

There are no crates at the end of each mission, and bosses and grimoires don't reward you as they did in VT2. The Assassination boss is a glorified Scab shotgunner. Penances actively encourage you to be a selfish player for cosmetics. Predatory premium currency purchases where everything is time-limited to encourage FOMO and you will usually have leftover currency since you can't buy the exact price. Lack of private games, and limited crafting. The endgame experience is leveling a new class or hugging the store for weapons. You're also not guaranteed to get any of the cool weapons either. The balance is also questionable as well. You have this amazing melee weapon that can cleave through hordes and it's for the Ranged Class. Then you have the Thunder Hammer which kills tanks in lore, mind you, will stop after you hit one poxwalker boy.

Then you have the devs who say stuff like, "It’s important to note that the store is on rotation to give players some variety while at the same time not creating clutter. We feel that unlimited store pages are likely to create confusion and a bad user experience." You know what, they're right. I'm dumbstruck when I see more than five items at a time and shut down mentally.

I genuinely regret buying the expensive version to support the devs.