Recent reviews by Va5syl

1) Combat – Obviously, not everyone has to like it. I did and I understand why people may find it bad, but IMO the biggest issue is how skills necessary for combat are tied to character progression. If you don’t hyper-focus on specific skills, the game can become incredibly slow and frustrating. However, people are claiming that combat is "just like Skyrim/Oblivion," which is simply a lie repeated by those who either haven’t played Avowed or TES. Avowed has more complex and engaging combat in every aspect (except for the stealth system, but that’s about avoiding combat, not engaging in it).
2) Graphics – I don’t know why, but lately, it's become trendy to say "Mobile Game Graphics." Avowed is gorgeous—especially the location and environmental designs (huge props to the environment team). The game might not be super optimized (I had to use DLSS), but at least it doesn’t look like the blurry Unreal Engine sludge that so many games are serving up lately. My biggest issue? The character models—they look... not great. Some characters look like they have FAS, others like their parents were siblings, and the rest are somewhere in between. The worst are probably the Orlans, who, in the Pillars of Eternity universe, are supposed to be furry gnomes, but in Avowed, they look like someone had a close encounter with meth and glued pubic hair to their face.
3) Game length – The game isn’t insanely long for an RPG, but it’s also not short. I didn’t go for 100% completion, but I did every quest I could find, and it took me 55+ hours. For comparison:

• Completionist run of Mass Effect 1 – 42h
  
• Mass Effect 2 – 50h
  
• Dragon Age 2 – 50h

Plenty of AAA RPGs have similar lengths and are now considered "timeless classics," so I don’t get this complaint. Okay, sure, Avowed's price is too high, but even if the game were 30-40% longer, it would still be overpriced.
4) Dead world, no NPC interactions – IMO, this is due to "Skyrim Syndrome"—people see a first-person fantasy RPG and immediately assume it's Skyrim 2.0. Tons of similar games don’t have NPCs with "daily routines" like Skyrim. Even Baldur’s Gate 3 doesn’t. Also, the fact that you can’t knock a cup off a table with your sword has nothing to do with whether the world feels "alive."
Nobody complained about Mass Effect's NPCs standing around like statues.
Nobody complained in Dragon Age that you couldn’t kill random civilians or enter every building.
Nobody complained in The Witcher 3 that you couldn’t be a pickpocket.
Is it a plus when a game allows these things? Sure.
Does every game have to be Skyrim? No.


1) Character progression – Holy ♥♥♥♥, who designed this disaster? A lot of passive skills that should be built-in (like parrying) are locked behind skill points. Some skills are mandatory, like weapon damage boosts. So despite the abundance of skill points, your actual options are limited. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, because some genius decided that your stats and skills don’t matter because they slapped an MMO-style gear upgrade system on top of everything. You have to farm herbs (yes, herbs) to upgrade heavy armor and two-handed swords. And if your gear level is too low compared to an enemy’s tier, you get artificial damage reduction and increased damage taken. Too high? Enemies barely hurt you, and you one-shot everything. Too low? You barely do damage, and they one-shot you. This completely destroys the point of character progression. This system should not exist in this game.
2) Enemy variety and encounter design – There are a lot of enemy types on paper, but in practice, you encounter almost all of them within the first two hours. Humanoid enemies are basically identical between the „themes” (Undead, Fungal undead, Lizard people, Normal people). Encounter design has its flaws. Worst offender? Enemy priests/healers. They instantly heal their allies. Their healing spell lasts several seconds. You can only interrupt it with hard CC. Don’t have that? Too bad. And in boss fights, enemies spawn in waves, so:

• You focus on the big guy.
  
• Get him to 50% HP.
  
• Suddenly, a skeleton priest spawns behind you
  
• Full heal.
  
• You sit there, wondering what the hell just happened.

3) AWOKED – I usually don’t get triggered by this kind of thing, but Avowed made me roll my eyes several times. Any mention of colonialism/racism/religion is extremely one-sided:

• Western culture = bad
  
• Western colonialism = bad (but non-Western is fine)
  
• Racism = bad (but only if Westerners do it)
  
• Religion = bad (but only The Western religion)

The funniest part? Your character is pushed into "White Savior" mode - you’re from a Western-style empire, and the plot havily implies that you should "liberate the oppressed locals." (Who are just colonists, but from different nations)
4) Dialogue and Choices – Even though you can check the in-game “encyclopedia” at any time during dialogues to look up key terms that appear in conversations, the game still explains basic concepts to your character as if they have never interacted with the outside world before.
On top of that, there are obvious plot twists that are held until the very end, despite being painfully easy to predict from the first conversation. (Wow, the strange lady who is rude, incapable of dying because she is kept alive by her own fanaticism, turns out to be mentally unstable—who could have seen that coming?)
It seems like they took the feedback BioWare received when it turned out that you couldn’t disagree and argue with companions in Veilguard—and decided to “fix” it in the worst way possible.
Take, for example, a mage who practices magic that is banned in most civilized lands, originating from a country that not only has slaves but also reanimates those slaves as undead laborers after death. Her parents died in a failed experiment using this very magic and… when you merely mention that this kind of magic might actually be dangerous, you get completely chewed out for being prejudiced. Your only dialogue options are:

• I’m sorry
  
• Let’s not talk about this anymore
  
• I come from an empire that dislikes this magic, so it must be stupid

Every single time in this game when you do something your companions (or rather, the game’s writers) disagree with, you get chewed out and reminded that YOU (not just your character) made the wrong choice. Immediately afterward, your only options are either apologizing or making yourself look like an idiot through another dialogue choice. There’s no way to try to convince anyone, that you based your choice on something else than being emperors pet or a bigot.


5/10 – Too expensive

Don't get me wrong. I like the story, the world. It's good. But the combat? My god.

People say that "Combat is rewarding when you practice enough," but the only reward that you get is the lack of punishment. This is not a reward! Most of the enemies can parry, block, and master strike you without any problem. The combos you can learn (which are out of place because they are just basically your typical Tekken combos) are blocked by even low-level bandits.

People are saying that "Henry is just a blacksmith's kid. He should not be able to fight everyone from the start." Yeah, I agree... However, the same is not applied to EVERY ENEMY. Even the most basic farmboy is able to parry and master strike an end-game PC.

Stamina is your (and their) block meter, so even if you hit, you won't do any damage. This makes combat a tedious back and forth where you try to wait out enemy attacks so you can master strike them. Some enemies don't care that you blocked/parried their attack and just continue their combo (something that you can't do).

And don't even get me started on fighting multiple enemies, where your camera locks onto one guy and refuses to let go (unless you hold the unlock button). If you try to focus on another guy? Yeah, good luck with that. You get rotated like a fidget spinner because the game does not know what to do.

However, I liked the story. There's a weird lack of similar stories that are based on historical fiction and not just straight-up fantasy settings. However, it does not come without issues. Despite the game lasting 80 hours (non-completionist run but with DLCs finished), Henry... does not accomplish anything after the epilogue. The status quo stays the same. Despite the game being a risky experiment, instead of "THE END" before the credits, they should put "See You in KCD2". It didn't feel satisfying.

Not for this price. Current pricing is a joke, for years it was only 23€, but 45? It's a joke. I don't care that it was early acces. Game is basically still the same as it was back then. Games should get cheaper with age, not more expensive.

Short but sweet :)

I tried Lost Ark once when it released for "The West" and then again recently, because I wanted to play something resembling ARPG.
Let me say this straight: If you’re not willing to dive into hundreds of systems – Stay away from this game.
I’ve installed the game, hopped on old character, and I’ve remembered why I’ve dropped it back when it released.
Too much bloat. I get that this is partially the nature of Korean MMO’s I have “some” experience with that type of games, but here?
Housing is not just housing, it’s crafting, event creation, fleet management and many more in one. I can’t say that the game is bloated when singular features has so much extra fat that you need hours of tutorials to understand what you’re doing.
This is only one small part of the game but bloat is seen on almost every feature, and the game has a lot of them.
I’ve played for over an hour and did not manage to fight any enemies. It was just: get quest > interact with bunch of menus > finish quest. And like that for an hour. And from what I remember from release weeks this was the reason why I dropped the game, so I’ve just stuck in endless quests where I just have to click through menus.
This game supposedly has a lot of other problems, but I could not experience them, because again I am not able to dig through hours of tutorials, and menus on top of menus, for functionalities that I am not interested in.

What can I say? GOTY material!

Less creatively bankrupt than Starfield.

Is this game without a bugs? No, there's plenty of them, but most of them are not gamebreaking and they're result of the freedom that player has when doing story missions.
Is this game long? Time on my last save states 70 hours. Not long for a modern RPG, but... There was no filler content. No collectibles, no map markers just to increase your playtime. And I probably missed a lot of stuff.

Character creation is deep.
Plot is fun.
Companions are mostly fun.
Length is perfect.
Gameplay is smooth.

Maybe this is not “The best game ever” but I’m certain it will be regarded as one of “The Classics”, and probably one of the best RPG’s in the last 20 years.

BL was sitting in my library for years. I probably got it in a bundle or something similar. Finally, I've decided to play it and... I definitely didn't pick up the memo. It’s on me, because it’s not a new game, but from what I got, back in the day people were confused as well.
I was expecting Darksiders with a lot of humour, metal and Jack Black. Instead, I got discount Overlord (with a lot of humour, metal and Jack Black). Don’t get me wrong, I liked both Overlord 1 and 2, but here? I was not expecting that, and it got me off guard to the point that I’m not eager to continue the game. Especially that the RTS elements are just... mediocre at best. Add to that the fact that this game is an open world with nothing interesting to do between quest locations and... I probably will never finish this game.
It’s on me... but I can’t recommend this title unless you really love JB.

Skyrim VR is a lazy VR port that can be transformed into a good game with creative use of mods.
Fallout 4 VR is an atrocious VR port that can be transformed into bearable experience with use of mods.

I don’t even know where to begin. How to list every problem that is visible right from the start.
I’ve got the game for a fraction of the Steam Price (approx. $15) and I can’t even express how sorry I feel for the people that paid the full steam price, tested the game around for 2h only to realise how deep in ♥♥♥♥ they are.
The quality of the port is one thing but most outrageous thing for me is the fact that for the low price of $59.99 you get no DLC’s and while they can be loaded (if you Install OG Fallout 4 with DLC’s) they aren’t officially supported and can cause CTD’s.
The gunplay is just not there. A lot of weapons (especially pipe ones) have broken Ironsights, reflex sights are barely readeable, guns have CS-GO level of spread (which in VR is unacceptable since you’re aiming for real) There’s no interactivity with the gun. You hold all weapons with one hand and the reload is automatic.
The locomotion is okay’ish, but menu/pip-boy navigation is just nightmarish. You have to tap the piboy on your arm (which is nice) to turn it on, but the rest of menu navigation is exclusively done with your left controller. Which causes that you have less buttons than on a console controller and... if you accidentally turn the pip-boy off (by slightly lowering your arm) you’ll just walk randomly because you move with your left analog stick.
Graphics... Oh boy. It’s just awful. Skyrim was blurry, but this? Environment in closed quarters looks bearable, but when you go to the open world it looks like a mess. Forced low resolution, weird blurring, and a lot of typical Fallout 4 problems (z-fighting, texture pop-in, lod-pop) causes a lot of things to just “move”. That combined with barren and brown aesthetics of Fallout creates a visual mess that looks like cat puke that decided to come alive.
UI also suffers, but honestly? I don’t know why. It just looks awfully low-res. Especially things like compass and Perk Sheet. You can fix it with mods so it’s not as bad as the 3D visual mess that we’re cursed to look at every second we’re outside.
FPS drops are here double the usual fun (because of two screens that you’ll be looking at). I don’t know how they manage to make this game run so poorly on 3080Ti. I think they did this on purpose, because even OG Fallout 4 does not have issues like that. This is the first game that allowed me to catch ghosting on screenshots.

Long story short: Fallout 76 on launch was better experience for me. I really think that this thing either should not be allowed to be sold, or Steam should allow people with over two hours to refund this game. You can fix a lot with mods when it comes to Bethesda games. But this? This can’t be fixed.
If you’re Fallout 4 fan? DO NOT BUY THIS!
If you’re game-starved VR owner? DO NOT BUY THIS!
This shouldn’t be allowed to exist, at least not in this form.