Recent reviews by Zautix

The biggest issue with the game is I just want it to be better. There is still, years late, a ton of room for improvement, but it's very good.

I played the game completely blind for the first playthrough and felt overwhelmed by the amount of shovel content that just didn't matter at all. Gigs, outside of maybe a dozen felt like a pointless chore. Side missions ranged from amazing to completely pointless. All Phantom Liberty content is a banger and they really learned from the mistakes of the base game but didn't bother to go back and bring up older content to the new standard they set.

The modding scene for this game is huge and can be used for fix certain aspects of the game that remain either buggy (vehicle controls sucks, quests not popping up properly) or could use improvement (wardrobe system) but there is no catch all "community patch" like some other games have to fix widely agreed upon bugs. This makes looking through literally thousands of mods (or cherry-picking from popular mod packs) the solution to fixing issues CDPR should be resolving.

Gameplay feedback:
- All gameplay styles are viable enough to beat the game on the hardest difficulty
- The difficulty of the game is terribly balanced and Very Hard (the hardest difficulty) is just as trivial as Easy by the late game, while being annoying more than difficult early on (stealth takedowns are the only reliable way to complete missions for the first 15ish levels, or abusing bad enemy AI.)
- Iconic weapons completely drown out all other weapons in the game.
- The crafting system felt completely pointless outside of ammo and upgrading iconic weapons.
- The equipment system is barely a thing as taking any armor with bonuses is better than not.
- Engineering is far too powerful for every single build between enhancing Cyberware and providing mission skips via opening doors.
- Air Dashing from the Reflex Tree is basically impossible to play without if you do it once.
- Double Jump cyberware has the same 'mandatory' feeling.

Cool game with a great concept, but really poorly executed.

To be clear: I had a good time playing this game and am giving it a positive review, and actually think it's worth your money (if it's on sale, anyway,) but there is an absurd amount of the game worth being highly critical of.

Unfortunately, the game ends up feeling really, really shallow by the time the 10+ hour mark rolls around. Upgrades to your car feel meaningless as you approach the final areas of the game, and you'll be done the ending without ever needing to use any of the late game equipment.

- Why put a bunch of resistant car parts in the game if you never need to even use them?
- Why give the players a catch-all damage resist ability that makes every situation in the game non-threatening?
- Why even offer engine 'upgrades' that are objectively worse than the first one?

I wanted to have to build a badass car to survive the challenges of the game, but those challenges just never happened.

I both loved the game and am incredibly disappointed by it. It just could have been so, so much better with a better story, and a better design structure for the game a whole.

I would also like to point out that I played the game for 33h to complete the story and didn't even get close to completing the log book or finding all of the cosmetic items, and not for lack of trying. Both of these collectable 'side projects' resets to zero on new save files which is incredibly dumb given how little content they provide to the game.

I decided to give this game a go after enjoying Helldivers 2 and hearing positive things about it.

The community is great and I never ran into a single jerk the entire time I was playing, which is impressive for an online title. I played ~90% of my missions through the random matchmaker, and chatted with a bunch of friendly people on voice chat who seemed to enjoy the game a lot.

As someone who is starting today, I honestly cannot figure out what they like about this game.

The gameplay loop is incredibly shallow and repetitive. The grinds feel endless due to being rather unenjoyable early on, and I find myself opening the game to play for a session, looking at the map for the available missions, and just closing the game due to disinterest.

A ton of the gameplay variety (weapons, upgrades, overclocks) is locked behind an XP grind that cannot be realistically accelerated without getting carried through more difficult, high-XP missions by people who already have the unlocks to make them easier. This style of balancing is not engaging for people who want an achievable challenge right away.

The cost associated with upgrading and unlocking equipment also feels punishing if you don't use a guide or resource to look up all the right answers. Optimizing how you upgrade can get you to higher difficulties faster, and I felt punished for experimenting since it wasted my currency, and time by association.

The caves being randomly generated is way less meaningful than it sounds, and I personally feel would benefit from more standardization. The reality is the playerbase has already 'solved' the best locations to fight swarms, and you can terraform the map as needed to make boss encounters easier. Basically, the randomness is just there to slow you down with no upsides. The in-game scanner for navigating caves is also terrible to the point most people use the Driller to just go through walls instead of trying to pathfind.

While I recognize the game is just a somewhat mindless lobby grinder, it does not provide a nearly fun enough gameplay loop to feel rewarding to play. I did enjoy my first few hours when everything was new a shiny, but after ~20h, it's just a repetitive slog.

Great game for $3 that I will never play again.

Fun for $4. An arguably better version of Vampire Survivor.

Fun little game, well worth your $5.

Waste of money and time.

Just click the achievements to see how many players straight gave up on this game. Less than 5% have finished a single play through.

Fun, but frustrating, experience. Has virtually no replay value.

Thousands of hours worth of factory-building fun and very far along in development in terms of being feature complete and stable. A complete steal even at full price (but still wait for a sale.)

Destiny 2: New Light ultimately feels hollow at it's core. Fun, sure, but extremely shallow.

It's a beautiful game with great game play, but ultimately it's just another Skinner Box. Seasonal activities are all time-gated and require consistent play to receive rewards from. Teamplay is also required to complete a ton of late-game activities but basically requires external communities to get into.

Destiny 2 also suffers heavily from console-itis. Every interface menu is clunky and slow, there are no loadout options to quickly swap weapons/gear/spec, and chat features are all opt-in by default making matchmade teamplay extremely shallow.

Games as a service are cancer, and so are games designed from their core to be played by aiming with your thumbs and having less than a dozen buttons even if your gameplay is great.