Recent reviews by ♠.brT

Baldur's gate 3 is without question an incredible game, from story to the gameplay, from its visuals to it's amazing soundtrack, it is a game worthy of the praises it has received.

Larian Studios who developed the excelent Divinity Original Sin 2 game have managed to create a mastepiece with Baldur's gate 3, creating perhaps the game that will now define this genre for years to come, a feat i genuinely didn't expect.

The first thing players will notice when they start a new game is the character creation screen, people who played previous Larian games will already see an improvement, the character creation screen is far more detailed than DOS2, allowing the player to create some really detailed looking character. There is however a caveat, while the level of detail increase, it should be noted that it is still fairly limited compared to other games, only allowing the player to choose from a few select faces (no sliders to create unique shapes and sizes) plenty of skintones options, which is good, some facial tatoos (can only pick one), scars, a vitiligo slider which is cool, and a few other stuff. I'd call the character creation good, but nothing extraordinary.

Despite these limitations in the character creation portion, players will still likely spend a considerable amount of time in that screen, probably choosing their class, their stats, background and so on, this part i have to say wasn't my favorite, despite playing a fair amount of rpgs, i have never been good at character builds, especially considering that i have next to zero experience with D&D, so because of that i found myself spending a lot of time in that screen trying to decide my class, and then an even bigger amount of time in the attribute screen, trying to decide my attribute, it should be noted that the game does give you workable default stats, but i usually like to tweak them. On the plus side, all the time i spent in the character creation was made very pleasant thanks to the superb soundtrack playing in the background. It's safe to say that the music down by the river has worm itself into my brain now, it's such a peaceful music, simply perfect.

Speaking of character build i have to say, that for those that enjoy building characters in an RPG, this game is heaven for them, there are so many classes, that you can combine together, so many items in the game that can augment classes, so many spells and abilities that can really make a build shine, it's amazing. The amount of choices a player have here is fantastic.

The story of the game starts kinda similar to DOS2, you were taken by some bad guys, put into a ship where they put something in you and now you are doomed. And just like DOS2 once you are done with the "ship" you awake in a beach where you will slowly but surely build a party with the other survivors of that ship. Some people may understandably think they are playing DOS2 with a different skin if they based their opinions only on those initial couple of hours of the game, Larian borrowed heavily from their previous game when making BG3, and it shows. With that said, after that initial "intro" BG3 starts to become its own thing fairly quickly, with developing main story as well as the characters, but also the combat, and the character builds, Larian chose to diviate from DOS2 combat system and instead use the more estabilished combat system from D&D 5e, i won't pretend to know anything about D&D here, but suffice to say that the changes are different, but not completely alien, so if you played DOS2 and enjoyed the combat, chances are you'll still enjoy BG3's combat system, despite the changes made, you may even like it more than DOS2 because of it.

Speaking of story, i found myself liking the BG3 main plot a bit more than i did for DOS2. Don't get me wrong i liked the main story of DOS2, but i think the main story of BG3 is a bit more interesting, or perhaps just better delivered through really well made cutscenes. I also found myself enjoying the characters of BG3 a bit more than the ones in DOS2, again for the same reason, i think the way that Larian delivered the story through some really well made dialogue scenes and cutscenes has definitely help sell the story and its characters to the player. The origin characters of BG3 are all fantastic, developing nicely throughout the story, my initial impression of them wasn't all that positive, especially of Astarion, I initially didn't liked him, but the more i followed his story, and talked to him in camp, the more i started to appreciate him and understand him. Same thing for the other characters, it is genuinely awesome to watch them develop throughout the story.

When it comes to graphics, I'll call the graphics of BG3 to be good, nothing impressive, but they get the job done, it looks pretty, but there are definitely better looking games out there. I'll touch on performance later in the review.

Overall presentation of the game was very good, as i mentioned in the story portion, i think the way Larian handled the delivery of the story, through well made cutscenes really helps sell the story to the player. The on criticism i have about this topic though is the main character, due to the fact that the main character is, for the most part, a silent protagonist, Larian chose to exagerate facial expression as a way to convey emotion, this was a bad call in my view. Larian should have learned from Bioware with DA Origins, you can absolutely make a game with silent protagonist and have this type of cutscene, and you don't need to exagerate the facial expression to compensate for this, but Larian chose to go the opposite, and they really went out of their way to exagerate the character's facial expression during dialogue, and it sometimes can look straight up bad.

Speaking of straight up bad, what's bad about Baldur's Gate 3.

Well first of all, the game is somewhat frontloaded when it comes to quality, the quality of the game drops as you move past ACT1.
It's not surprising to me that ACT1 proved to be the best act in the game in terms of game quality, afterall it's the part of the game that players have had access to for years in early access, giving Larian the feedback and time to improve. So in the end act1 becomes the best part of the game, with very few glitches, great game performance, as well as being genuinely open for player choice, you'll be spoiled for choice in act1.
ACT2 and ACT3 on the other hand is significantly more linear, still plenty of choices don't get me wrong, but nothing close to ACT1. And don't get me wrong, ACT2 is still fantastic, just not as good. Same thing with ACT3, though with in that case specifically i have to say that the game's performance is a major impediment for enjoyment.


And i need to highlight this, because the performance of act3 is simply unnaceptable. For starts, let me say that my pc meets and exceeds the recomended hardware for this game, yet act3 was in some areas, borderline unplayable. There is something wrong with the performance of this game in general, even in act2 had some unstable framerates that would magically fix themselves if i talked to one specific NPC. But ACT3 takes the cake for bad performance. It was so bad that there were times where i genuinely didn't wanna continue playing because it was so bad, there is one level specifically that i dreaded going to, and it was the Iron throne. I had low 20s framerates in that tiny level.

Despite all of this i still loved Baldur's gate 3, the bad performance of act3 was really frustrating, but it didn't stop me from loving the game. The ending that i had was fairly decent i have to say, little bit bitter sweet in some aspects, but very good in others, which is how it should be.

Overall this game is fantastic, and if Larian can fix the performance in ACT3 it will be nearly perfect.

As someone who really liked the original Life is Strange, i liked this one.

Though i think it is bit shorter than the original Life is strange (maybe i'm wrong, but I think the original one was a bit longer than this one). This one felt a bit short, but sweet. Not sure it's worth full price though, i think it's really pushing at full price, but to be fair, these are not the types of games you buy for a long gameplay, because there really isn't much of it. You buy it to experience the story and to "feel something" and what price someone is willing to pay for that feeling is very subjective.

Gameplay is very basic, it's basically a visual novel with some basic exploration and point and click gameplay, very simple, not really the point of the game. The story and the choices in it are what matter and i think the game does great in those areas for the most part.

Talking about the story can be very subjective, i know a lot of people who didn't enjoy the story of the original life strange, and how can you tell them that they are wrong? if they didn't enjoy it, they had their reasons, and their reasons are just as valid as mine.
For the most part i liked the story here, i felt touched by some of the parts in the story, about the characters. I thought the dialogue was great for the most part.

My only real complaint about the story is the fact that it feels like it's missing a few bits, in between chapters you get a glimpse of those bits of character development through the phone messages, basically telling you all the cool things the characters did between the chapters. I liked that they at least added that, but i felt cheated that i didn't get to experienced some of those things. Especially because some of those interactions are with characters that don't get used much in the game so you don't get to connect with them the way that the protagonist appears to have connected. Basically what i'm saying is that it is missing some fairly crucial development with certain characters.

But anyway. My metric for a good story is "did i go to bed that night thinking about the characters" if the answer is Yes, i call that great success. And this game gets that from me, i really liked the protagonist, and the main characters of the story, even the supposed "bad guys" in the story felt very interesting and complex enough that i saw them as real people. So because of that i think it's safe for me to recommend this game.

A fantastic RPG, and a worthy addition to the Expedition series.

I wasn't that much of a fan of the idea of Expeditions Rome when it was announced. And to be honest i'm still not that huge of a fan from it for reasons i'll get to it later, but Expeditions Rome was a fantastic game from beginning to the end, and though there are plenty of flaws in it, it is a very good game, definitely worthy of your purchase if you are a fan of CRPGs.

When it comes to gameplay, it is a lot of fun, you control a party of up to 6 characters, and you build their skills however you please. A big portion of their skills are tied to the weapons that they are using so this encourages you to test different weapons to see which set of skills works best for each character.
There is also a fairly decent crafting system, that allows you to modify specific attributes on each weapon or equipment that you are using, as well as with the standard addition of "enchantments" that the game calls it "Charms".

The combat can be pretty brutal, with plenty of dismemberment going around, and it genuinely feels very satisfying when it happens.

One aspect of the gameplay that really didn't worked well is without question the Legion Battles. They are trash. i'm sorry, i kinda liked the concept, and i really tried to enjoy it, but i just can't. They are way too confusing to the point where it trying to understand how it works is a frustrating endeavor, even after 100 hours i still have no idea what any of it means or does, with the exception of morale, and maybe experience, that's it, every other "stat" regarding the legion is gibberishi for me.
With that said i should of course point out that the developers did say that they are going to change, but they haven't changed yet, so it sucks as it stands. I might edit this review in the future if what they change significantly improves the entire mechanic.

And this is actually why i wasn't soo keen on an expedition game about Rome. Because when people think about Rome, usually the image that comes to their mind is the image of the Legion or the senate, not the image of a band of warriors going out on a adventure somewhere, the developers clearly knew this, which is why they shoehorned this defective legion battle system into the game, because if they didn't do that, why even make a game about Rome in the first place?

Graphics look great, the artistic design choices they went with was also very good, sometimes it was pretty cool to just stand around and look at the pretty great looking cities they created.

Music quality, I have to be honest, for the most part I found it forgettable. Some tracks were alright, and i really liked the ending soundtrack, but the rest of them, i have no strong opinions one way or the other, i'll forget this soundtrack pretty quickly unfortunately. I'd rate the music for this game to be inoffensive to a fault.

The story is great, and i found myself very invested in the fate of the characters throughout the story. Some of the twists in the plot are unfortunately quite predictable though. But those didn't bother me very much, i liked the story, and will continue to play it to see at least all of the major endings. The story however is not perfect, and sometimes i'm a bit annoyed at how the writers decided to railroad the player in a few relatively minor quests for no apparent reason. It isn't a big deal, but there were a few moments in the story that this did upset me enough to put away the game for a day until the bad taste in my mouth from doing that thing washed away.

One more thing, for streamers, Expeditions Rome offers some pretty interesting features, for example an extension that allows your chat to kinda player "Dungeon Master" with you, giving buffs to your enemies or your characters, or sometimes picking what dialogue choice you'll take. Interesting, but ultimately only really useful if you are a streamer, or enjoy watching streamer, neither category fits me so not really something i got value out of it, but hey hopefully some others are enjoying it.

This was a great sequel to Shadowrun Returns.

This game pretty much addressed all of my problems with Shadowrun Returns, while that game was really good for what it was, it lacked in depth and was far too linear.

Shadowrun dragonfall fixes those problems perfectly, it doesn't lose the directed and somewhat scripted story line that they went with in the previous game, but makes the maps bigger, with more ways of approaching each individual objective. Giving the player the choice on how to approach each mission. It genuinely makes it for a very enjoyable and replayable experience. It'so so satisfying to encounter a different way of approaching an objective because of something you did several minutes ago.
Absolutely recommend, especially if you enjoyed the previous game, this one is a must.

The only issue i have with the game is performance, the game really struggles to save the game, it usually takes a few seconds to save it (at least it does in a HD, haven't tried installing it on an SSD to see if it's different). Other than saving the game, the other issue are crashs, i had quite a few crashs while playing through the game, they appear to be random. Nothing that completely ruined the game for me, but definitely annoying to be fully engaged with the game, and then suddenly and without apparent cause the game just crash to desktop on you.

Another issue is that if you have a multi monitor setup, the game doesn't have exclusive full screen, so very often as i'm playing i'll click outside of the screen (into my 2nd monitor) causing the game to minimize, mild annoyance but it's there.

I absolutely recommend this game, if you enjoy games in this genre, it is a must play, it's usually very cheap and goes on sale often, so pick it up and enjoy it.

Metro Last Light was a worthy successor to the original Metro 2033. It is objectively a better video game than the original in almost every metric, however some of the changes from the original are in my opinion detrminetal to the unique experience that Metro 2033 brought to the table.

Story

Last Light follows the events from the previous game very closely. The events of 2033 create a foundation to which the story builds itself from. Similar to the previous game the story has two distinctive endings based on the player's choices and actions, however different from the previous game, some of the choices you make are more subtle, and a unaware player might even miss them in the heat of the moment. While others are far more explicit. All of this is good, it feels natural, and not gamey.

There is however on aspect of the story that definitely feels off. And that is some of the characters. While some characters are very well fleshed out, others that appear to have quite an impact in the story for the protagonist are completely neglected. One of them is no doubt Anna. Her development through the story is missing so much context that makes the player be confused about the status of her relationship with Artyom. The developers simply didn't spend enough time developing her character for this game and it shows. In Metro Exodus she's a much better character, but here, she's just worthless.

Gameplay

Metro Last Light uses a very similar gameplay style to that of the original, a Heavily scripted story Driven First Person shooter horror game. It is very linear, but you have plenty of room to explore for ammo and filters, as well as room to be exposed to the nightmare that surrounds the city, as well as the entire Metro of Moscow.
Last Light was the game that introduced its stealth system to the franchise, the same stealth mechanics that are still present in Exodus. I don't like that stealth system, because in my opinion it reduces the challenge of the game significantly, but that is very subjective. What i'll say is that the system is very functional, however a player needs to be careful about relying on it too much, Last Light will ocasionally force the player into combat situations, and if you are been relying on the stealth too much to the point where you don't have a weapon that can do long range and short range engagement with humans, you will struggle a lot. Overall the gameplay of Metro Last Light is a lot of fun, it can be quite challenging and exciting so that's good in my books.

Graphics

Metro Last Light continues its predecessor excellent attention to details. The game looks stunning even to this day, It looks great, the character models, the texture quality, i really can't complain about it, the game looks great.

Performance

To deal with the great graphics of the game, Last Light also offers excellent performance. The game runs great, a lot better than the original Metro 2033 did, it is very well optmized. I have a pretty good pc this days, but even when i had a more budget computer with a budget graphics card, i was still able to play this game fairly well, and the game still looked good while doing it.

bugs

In the Redux version of Last Light i didn't encounter many bugs, most of the issues i encountered were relatively minor graphical glitches. i did encounter a bigger graphical glitch at one point but the fix was just repairing the game so i can't complain about that. So when it comes to bugs, i can't complain the game is very well polished in that regard.

Conclusion

Metro Last Light was a great game to continue this fantastic franchise, and though in my opinion the original game was better in a lot of ways, Metro Last Light continues to be a great game and definitely a must have for anybody that enjoyed the first game, as well anybody that was introduced to this franchise by the latest Metro Exodus.

Arriving at a game with no expectations means you literally can not be disappointed.


I first learn about Cyberpunk like a lot of people did, some 7 years ago or so, when they released that announcement trailer. That trailer was the only thing i knew about this game for 7 years. I didn't read a single article talking about the game, didn't watch a single trailer after that point. I didn't even know the name of the main character or what the plot was going to be about.I was blind and what a blessing that was.
By starting the game in such a situation i had no expectation for the game, and was able to simply sit back and let the game show me what it had to offer.


A product for entertainment and nothing else.

Cyberpunk is a videogame, not a world where you can jump into and lose yourself in order to live it like if it was a simulation. The game is designed to be played for its story, with sidequests to provide a bit of backstory for the world, but more important, give the players the means that the player needs to just have a bit of fun with its fantastic combat system.


COMBAT

Cyberpunk 2077 Combat system is fantastic, I was specially surprised with its gunplay. Usually in a game like this i'd expect the gunplay to be the weakest link, due to the nature of stat base shooters creating, well bullet spongies. Not in Cyberpunk, the guns (as long as they are in the correct level) will feel like actual weapons, and the damage they are inflicting feels authentic, as long as you keep your weapon at the correct level, and get the right perks, bullet spongies will only really be a thing for the "Boss" fights that you will run into ocasionally.


LIGHT RPG ELEMENTS

Cyberpunk has some light RPG elements, so don't go into this game expecting deep character builds like in Skyrim, It has less RPG depth than Skyrim, but more than the newer Far Cry games. Its there to provide a bit of diversity of playstyles but not to drag you into a hole of complex character builds where it becomes the complete focus of the game.

STORY

Cyberpunk story is fantastic, i really liked it, its not about saving the world, and it doesn't end like that either, its a very authentic story for the world where its based. And through out the story you'll meet characters that are genuinely interesting and complex, its not really surprising to me, CDPR knows how to write good characters they have done before in The Witcher 3, and they kept that quality here. Every single character, even relatively minor characters you meet have fascinating story to tell, and by the end of it i was left wanting for more of those characters, which for me its a mark of success for a story in a videogame.

VISUAL QUALITY

Cyberpunk 2077 to me has some of the best graphics i have ever seen in a videogame, sometimes when i'm driving around i have to stop and just admire the amazing city that they created in this game, it looks really good. I don't have RTX on, but boy this game makes me a bit jealous of those who can turn that feature on. But even without RTX, the game looks amazing and that's all i can really ask for. Other than maybe asking for an RTX card lol.

PERFORMANCE AND BUGS

When it comes to Performance the game is running okay on my computer, its not the best computer ( Ryzen 2700 16GB of RAM with 5700 XT), so i can't complain too much about the performance, but i heard people with more powerful rigs having issues so your mileage may vary.

When it comes to bugs, this is where Cyberpunk becomes a bit of a rough diamond, its beautiful, and definitely worth having, but there are some rough edges that you have to watch out for.
I encounter a lot of bugs while playing, but most of those bugs were not that big of an issue for me, they were small annoyances here there, but nothing that would prevent me from enjoying the game. The slightly more annoying issues like quests getting stucked or something like that, were relatively easy to solve, by just reloading a savegame.
However the trick for me is to not look for bugs, if you stand and look at the NPCs walking you'll see problems, if you hang around in an area, you'll see things breaking, So my advice is this, don't look behind the curtain, just enjoy the magic show, or in the other words, don't look for the bugs, just try and move past them so you can have a more fun experience.


And that's my review for Cyberpunk 2077, I enjoyed this game a lot, and will continue to do so. Its not groundbreaking, its not a completely new experience, its not revolutionary, But it is a good videogame. And at the end of the day, its all we can really ask from a videogame

Crusader Kings 3 is without a doubt the best game on launch that Paradox has ever released.

The game felt featured complete from the very beginning, which is saying something as other PDX games didn't quite felt that way on release date. It has the majority of the CK2+DLC content as part of CK3 base game, and even then Paradox didn't simply copied CK2 features and paste it them into CK3, quite the contrary, Paradox actively improved those features and made those features far more interesting in terms of gameplay mechanics. An example of what was my favorite mechanic that was "part" of CK2, but was improved in CK3 was the lifestyle mechanic (or Focus in CK2) in CK2, other than a few random events, and unlockable options, the focus were just stat boosts, where in CK3 the lifestyles (as they are called now) are genuine roleplaying mechanic. Unlocking not only a lot more gameplay mechanics for the player, but giving the player the path to develop those lifestyles through out the life of their character, creating a much more dynamic story for every character you play as.

In terms of gameplay CK3 has mostly improved the gameplay of CK2, but remains more or less the same system, don't expect major differences in terms of combat from CK2, there is no real control of your army, and in fact one could argue that you have less control on Ck3 due to the removal of the option to organize your army (Center and the flanks) but i'd argue that those mechanics in CK2 were so shallow to begin with that i don't really miss them much in Ck3

I don't have anything too negative to say about the gameplay in Ck3, it is for the most part better than CK2, most of my issues are UI related issues, but those will be solved with free patches down the line, and they don't ruin the game, it just midly annoying to be fighting the UI for even minor things.

When it comes to graphics, CK3 is a beautiful game, in fact i'd argue that CK3 is the most good looking game that Paradox has ever made, and that is a hard thing to accomplish in a game like this. Prior to CK3, i'd say that Stellaris was the most beautiful game paradox made, but that's kinda cheating, its really hard to make a space game look bad, but a map game, that is the opposite, its hard to make them look good, and i think Paradox accomplished that with Ck3, the game is gorgeous, and the character visuals are awesome, and there is plenty of customization from the beginning for you to enjoy, which is even better, and what the game doesn't have in terms of customization, the players can create through modding.

Conclusion, CK3 is a fantastic game, if you enjoyed CK2, you owed to yourself to try CK3.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is one of those games that really makes you feel like you are part of a bigger story, not just the story of your character, but of an entire realm, unfortunately however, the story although very intriguing, leaves the player at the end with nothing to show for.
Usually, a story has a beginning a middle and an end. KCD has a beginning, a middle, an no end. None of the major plots that it started at the beginning of the game are finished towards the end. Don't get me wrong, this is not a case of sequel baiting, this is the case of an incomplete story.

KCD has two main plots that it presents the player at the start, a plot of honor (the sword) and a plot of revenge. Neither of these plots will be concluded by the end of the story, not even the sword, which is a minor plot in the overall story of the game, will be finished by the end. And the outcome of said ending makes the player only possible reaction be "that's it?" and that's not how to sequel bait, far from it in fact.

Don't get me wrong, i love KCD, it is one of my favorite games, and i'm playing through a second time because it is genuinely fun to play, but there is no way to escape how utterly unfinished the story feels, and i'll say it again to make it clear, this is not a case of sequel baiting, the developers obviously ran out of time, money, or both.

Gameplay wise it is fantastic, if a little "clunky" things don't fully work as they should (if you played other cry engine games, some of the issues you'll see while playing KCD will not surprise you). The sword play is difficult to master, but that's really cool, because it makes every victory in combat (especially early in the game) too feel genuinely awesome, because you know you are fighting un uphill battle against better opponents, and the feeling of defeating them is great.

Archery is a mix bag, first of all, no crossbows, which is a bit odd for Bohemia in 1403. Second, there is no dot in the middle of the screen for archery, and i get it, realism and all, but first of all, that dot, is present when holding a sword, and second of all, in real life i'm not looking at the world through a flat screen am i? So the point is that, the realism argument is nonsense for this issue, this was a balance decision, and i get it, with the dot there, archery would be even more OP than already is. So in short, archery is really powerful, but some of the artificial challenges that they put in place for Archery are really annoying.

The survivor aspect of this game is really more of a nuisance than an actual mechanic, (at least on normal difficulty) you will never run out of food, there are plenty of ways of getting food for free, and this kinda hurts the story in some ways, since the idea is that the refugees are starving in the streets of Rattay, but Henry can eat as much as he want from any of the camps either inside the walls of the city or outside.
And even on hardcore mode, where they reduce the amount of food you get from those camps, you get so much food from a rabbit that, it makes the entire thing pointless, yes in theory you are a dirty criminal for hunting without the lord permission, but as soon as you cook the meat, you have no issues with the law.

Graphics wise, its a cry engine game, it looks beautiful as a result, not much to complain there. It runs okay on my machine so its all good for me.

BUGS: the game is full of them, most of them are very standard bugs for a cry engine game, again if you played other cry engine games, like the Crysis games, you will not be surprised by some of the bugs you'll encounter, a lot of collision glitches with the enviroment, sometimes your character can get stuck on the enviroment in ways that you can't escape. Basically avoid getting in tight spaces (especially with your horse) as much as possible.

DLCs: I think half of the DLCs are kinda throwaways to be honest, Sir hans DLC for example, i didn't find it very fun to play.
The Treasure of the past, not really needed.
From the Ashes DLC only purpose is to get the players to spend the silver they made throughout the game.
I'm serious, that is the entire purpose behind that entire DLC, spend silver, there is no meaningful story there.
Band of Bastards is kinda fun, so maybe worth it.
Woman's lot is the only DLC worthy of purchase for allowing you play as Theresa, very interesting gameplay, because it forces you to play in a very different way for pretty obvious reason as Theresa won't be dueling Cumans in her dress (she can't wear armor).

Anyway KCD is a rough gem, enjoyable, you can have a lot of fun with it, but if you are not careful on how you approach the game and its mechanics you'll be easily annoyed by those mechanics, especially those that had very little reason to be in the game in the first place.

Metro 2033 is one my favorite games, and it gets close to being my favourite game in the Franchise (Exodus wins on that one). However this isn't Metro 2033, it is Metro 2033 REDUX, you can't purchase the original game on steam anymore, only the remake. This is a shame, because in my opinion the original game is a superior game compared to the remake, even if it was a mess in terms of optmization

Metro 2033 is a fantastic story driven first person shooter horror game, with a great story to go along with it. The redux version keeps most of what made the original great, but it adds things that the original didn't had, and in my opinion most of what was added actually are to the detriment of the player experience.

First of all, the remake added a more functional stealth system, with non lethal and lethal takedowns. This was a bad idea. Not only does it make Stealth trivial, it actually breaks the survival aspect of the game, because even in the hardest setting in ranger hardcore mode, you'll have plenty of ammo from all those human enemies you took down through stealth. The original game had a "stealth" system but it didn't had takedowns, in the original game you would have to either kill it with a throwing knife or a silenced weapon, or you don't kill them at all and simply bypass them, and i think that was a far better system, not only is it more challenging, but it also helped hide the shortcommings of the AI, you didn't spend much time trying to sneak behind enemies and knocking them down, you just moved on to the other area and left the AI alone.

The other thing they did with the remake was change a few of the scripted moments in the levels, this was a bad idea as well. They actually managed to break one level, while in the original, you could go through ALL human levels (with one exception of the first bandit level with bourbon) with pure stealth and not killing anyone, the remake makes the outpost level, flat out impossible to stealth through due to the changes in towards the end of the level, where multiple demons (flying mutants) attack the nazi patrol. in the original, the demon would attack and fly away, in the redux, multiple demons will attack, and keep attacking until they are killed by the nazis, which take a long time (you can't wait for it, you don't have enough filters to wait) and even if you do wait for them to kill the demons, the nazis will not return to their patrol pattern and move past you, they will stick around looking for "you" even if they never saw you and only the demons. There is only 2 ways to pass that level, killing them or glitching through the map in order to bypass them, but even then you will likely get a shot a few times while trying to do the bypass option. That's a shame, the original was a masterpiece of level design, allowing a patient player the ability to just bypass enemies, the remake makes that not only the worst option (due to non lethal takedowns) but it doesn't even work in a few ocasions.

Don't get me wrong, Metro 2033 REDUX is a good game, but compared to the original its simply not that great. But since you can't even buy the original anymore, this is good enough.

Edit: I forgot to mention something, Metro 2033 Redux somehow manages to have more gamebreaking bugs than the poorly optmized original game, so there is that too.

I enjoyed this game greatly and will likely continue to enjoy for a little while longer.

I haven't finished the game yet but i feel like i have experienced enough of the game to give my thoughts and here they are
Gameplay:
In my opinion this game has a decent combat system, challenging but enjoyable, it also has a customizable difficulty setting, so if you don't want to just crank everything to the max but just wanna make certain parts of the game more difficult you can do that in the menu.
The combat system has not (yet) become boring to me, even with after playing almost 100 hours (of what is actually a 40 or so hour game - i restarted my campaign a few times) so thats good.

Where the game ends up stumbling a little bit in my opinion is the overall campaign progress, first of all you have complete freedom on where to go, but not enough information on why you should take a particular path instead of others, this game definitely has a optimal way of playing the campaign map and first timers will definitely have problems in this part, in fact i'd say that in your first play through be prepared to fail because you likely will, not because of you losing a battle or two, but because you ran out of time, that's right this game has a time limit (can be disabled in the config files), and although the timer helps a lot with immersion aspect of the story (i'll touch on the story later) it can cause some frustration due to the fact that the player will end up wasting time back tracking in the campaign map because he or she did not know what the optimal path they should have taken when it comes to which quests to do first.

The combat that i praised earlier also suffers from some downfalls, one example is related to the formation system, your main character will always be in the front of the party no matter what class you picked for yourself, this won't be an issue if your main character is a warrior with a shield, but if you picked something weaker like a hunter you may run into issues in some engagements where your main weak character will be the one having to fall back on the first turn in order to avoid tanking the damage for the warriors in your party, i heard that this issue used to be way worse because the game didn't had a first move turn for the player (so the npcs would move and attack first before the player could change the formation of his/her party) that must have been a nightmare for anyone playing with a hunter character I'd imagine, the current issue that describe isn't as bad as that, but annoying enough to be worth mentioning.

Also another problem about your main character, is that the game will not take into consideration any other party members stats for the stat challenges that you may face during gameplay (like for example, a perception challenge or a finess challenge or a strenght challenge) all of that will always use your stats, and will never take into consideration the people on your party. Like for example, lets say there is a door that needs to be opened but its blocked off, you could force the door open but that will require a force challenge (or roll) to see if you will be able to open, lets ignore the giant viking that i have in my party with 10 strenght that could easily crush this door with his fingers, instead i will, the weak frail hunter with just 1 point in strenght will atempt to break open this door. Does that make sense? I don't think so.

There are a few other minor issues with the gameplay, especially related to the camping system, you will be doing a lot of camping not only so that your party can rest, but also so that they can eat, heal or hunt or make traps, or craft, repair, make medicine or rations... I have no issue with those things what i do have a problem however is that your party will only ever eat in a camp, they will never eat in town (even in your own tribe) they will never eat, lets say you travel from your tribe in Denmark to Britain, this trip will take several days, thankfully your party will find something to eat along the way (i assume fish since they don't consume ration or meat that you have in your inventory) anyway as soon as you reach Britain, and try to travel to another settlement in britain as soon as you step your foot on the road your entire party will start starving like if they hadn't eaten for several days, forcing you to seek a camp right away. So not only did you spent 3 or so days making the trip from Denmark to Britain, but you gonna spend an extra 12 hours (maybe more depending on how far the camp is) going to a camp so that your party can eat, this also doesn't make sense and leads to some frustration, especially towards the end of the game when time becomes pretty limited.

Now i know that i just spend 3 paragraphs complaining about the game, but for the most part i enjoyed the game, for example i like how in this game Choices do matter, and not only in dialogue choices but also combat choices as well, this is probably one of the only games in this genre that allows you to have a non lethal battle where you can intentionally avoid killing certain npcs if you wish instead of - you killed everybody which is the default in most games, here you can actually toggle a lethal and non lethal mode during each engagement if you wish, that will actually impact the story (in minor ways but still impressive) I like that.
I really enjoyed the setting of this game, i think the Viking age is a fantastic setting for a story rich RPG experience, and i think that the developers in here definitely managed to create a very story rich experience, the characters are very well written with interesting personalities, and as i said earlier the game does have a time limit but it makes sense in the story, you are running against a clock, and i think in a game like this you really need a time limit to really drive the point home that you can't just go on random adventures that won't give you anything meaningful you need to achieve something quickly or your clan will perish.

To conclude, i think this game is pretty fantastic, so much so that it kinda reminded me of how i felt when i played Dragon Age Origins for the first time, and that is pretty rare for me this days. Its difficult for me to find a game that i will be able to enjoy for hundreds of hours, even big AAA titles that are created to waste my time as much as possible can't force me to play more than maybe a few dozen hours, yet this little game from an idie dev with about 40 hours worth of content will probably suck over a hundred hours of me after i'm finished beating the game a couple of times.

So yes, i recommend picking this game up, it was definitely one of my best purchases all year and i wished i had found this game earlier.