Recent reviews by Corax

What a sad state of affairs that people with nothing better to do than review bomb for removing particularly red armbands and like 3 panty shots from still art in the game.

Game is a good fighter, one of the first to embrace rollback, and still fun to this day. Not one of the negative reviews in the past little bit of time are worth anymore conscious thought than required for chewing.

Never have I been so conflicted on a game.

On one hand, game is quite pretty, love all the concepts at play, gameplay feels pretty good for the most part.

On the other hand, this is not ready for launch. Simply put. A lot of bugs, (Don't even bother using the 2nd mask you get, good chance it doesn't work, or softlocks the game), typos, and the most absurd difficulty arrangement I have ever seen.

Did you guys actually play through the silver mines? I don't believe it, not without some absurd amount of grinding. Enemies seemingly just randomly reflect stuff by the mid game, with no rhyme, reason, or tell as to why. Everything one shots your characters by the aforementioned point in the game, even accounting for elemental resistances, and being about as leveled as seems reasonable.

There is a good game here, I can see it, and feel it. But it isn't there yet. I will (see below)recommend, for now, for the sake of looking fine enough for steam review score, but it will change if enough time has passed and the bugs are still there. Perhaps the difficulty is intended, but when One Step From Eden looks like child's play compared to this, perhaps one might consider if it might be a bit much, at least with no difficulty options. Maybe its the sigil distribution feeling stingy, I did see stats move a whole lot when I could get a full sequence done for levelling up another character.

EDIT: (removed as it has been in some amount addressed, point was silver mines was the hardest part of the game, and softlocking repeatedly as I try to beat it.)

EDIT2: Very fast turnaround on fixing stuff! I am sure there will still be more to find, but seems good thus far! It pained me to put a not recommended for any amount of time, but multiple softlocks for a simple action like using a mask is kind of a launch delaying problem, I would think.

Updating back to positive, and I hope all goes well in the future!

So, loved the first game, loved the story, and was well hooked with this one.

But, what happened then? First half of the game was pretty alright I would say, chugging along just fine.

The time puzzles have always felt the weirdest part of these games, but some of the first half ones are pretty good. However, some of these in the second half are bad, and not moon logic bad, just phyiscally awful to play, and the worst offender of them all, you will have to complete, TWICE!

The most jank stealth section I have ever seen a video game, in a clutter of an area, with QTE prompts to do if you mess up. Mess up the QTE, game over. This was not a puzzle to figure out, and I am going to guess people usually aren't buying games like this to be stressed out in a poor stealth section, while still trying to solve puzzles. QTEs as a whole are back, and add jack all to the game.

I would forgive that if, as the game has a story difficulty option, if it just let me skip this somnium, but no, the story difficulty does jack all to make things easier.

I will look up the rest of the story on Youtube, because I am not wasting any more time on this waste of effort called a somnium, and I'm sure it won't get better, given it already felt like it was going downhill. gameplay wise, even if the story was hitting some cool moments.

Will change review if or when the story difficulty lets me outright skip this chapter, full stop.

EDIT: Finished a while back, the plot developments feel kind of meh. This specific issue chapter notwithstanding, still, the whole game just feels like the first game, but worse. Play the first one, and pretend the sequel doesn't exist, because it really doesn't feel that necessary to play at all.

A MOBA/Battle Royale hybrid. An odd combo, but it pretty well works. If neither of those game types interest you, this game is most likely not going to change that idea.

Many reviews will talk about the brutal learning curve of this game and matchmaking issues, but, to keep in mind, when playing the default solo mode, any inexperience you have will not have people berating your skill or whatever toxic sludge comes out of what you would call "teammates" in other MOBAs, or really any other team-based games.

There is you, and 17 others in a lobby that you would call a foe. Your mistakes, and triumphs, are yours, and yours alone (in the solo mode).

The game's tutorials could do with a bit better elaboration, but there are good external resources for learning how to pick up the game, and the in game training mode and replay system are good for learning and practicing some of the most basic things, like getting your build in a timely manner.

Approach this game like a fighting game, in that it will take some time and practice to feel comfortable, and, sometimes, you are going to get beat, and sometimes, it might not be close. And sometimes, like with any battle royale, you will get third-partied, and be served a remarkably unlucky situation, and actually winning a match may be elusive. Always be ready to learn from what goes wrong, and enjoy even the small victories, like successfully winning engagements, or even just crafting your build quickly.

The characters are all fairly interesting, and decently well-balanced, in that almost all characters are perfectly viable in solo. Matches have a good flow, with plenty of objectives to contest over as early as 3 minutes into a match, and plenty of ways to continue scaling or getting ahead in a match.

The game is free, and decently generous with the free currency to purchase characters. Anyone can be practiced with in the training mode, so you can know whether you like a character or not, and when you find someone you like, unless there are 3+ more people picking that character in matches, you can always play them. Even if multiple people have picked the same character, you can still pick them, you just have to be mindful of route congestion, potentially making your build harder to finish.

It's got some roughness, but, if you have grown tired of other MOBAs, or even other team games, specifically because the solo queue environment in those games is exhausting, perhaps this might be a good idea to check it out, even if not now, in maybe a year's time to see how much its evolved, given it is in early access.

EDIT: So the solo mode has been removed, so the focus can be on setting the game up for Squads (3 man team). I am mixed on this decision, given it's kind of the exact opposite of what I would want, but, I do suspect individuals will still be well-empowered to find success. Either way, the cliff of approaching this game will be reduced somewhat because of it, so still recommend giving it a go, especially during its launch period, where its guaranteed that plenty of people will be new to the changes. Losing is at least a quick prospect, so hopefully toxicity doesn't fester like it does for other MOBAs.

Solid Fire Emblem like game, with some interesting ideas of its own. Take's more inspiration from the older NA releases of Fire Emblem from the GBA than anything after Awakening.

Combat system with many different types of attacks and armor types can be a bit to get used to, but its not too hard, especially given the nature of other strategy rpg mechanics. It ensures no one is able to face tank the entire stage, as something will actually hit with some damage, even trying to evade everything will eventually need to be careful, because plenty of enemies will actually match your speed.

Plot is sort of decentralized from the 'main' character, with almost every character you use having plot relevance.

Support conversations range from memey for characters that are clowns with each other, to learning quite a bit of the backstory and motivations of the characters. Overall, quite solid, though if you are expecting waifu sim, this is not that.

The relic system can do some really funky things with stats and such. Invert crit chance for damage, turn magic stat into defenses, plenty of absolutely silly things that can happen.

No side missions to grind, which means that you need to be somewhat mindful of who gets experience. I didn't have any particular issue with levelling, though I did have to sideline a few characters for later characters because the growths were not kind. But no character is pre-premote style bad, so everyone you find is at least supposed to be worth using.

Game has great randomizer options, which are always really interesting with games like this.

Given Fire Emblem games are not, and almost certainly never will be, available for PC, if you like them, this should be quite enjoyable. If I had one ask, it would be another set of tier 2/3 classes for each base, to help give just a bit of balancing out to each of the attack types. Bolt being exclusive to a tank mage, and an adept upgrade to try and all in magic is, rough, crush not existing on non-heavy armor units, another projectile option outside of ranger, etc.

When I heard about the microtransactions, I was thinking it would be a joke and at the end of Crimefest, it would be changed more radically.

It was not

EDIT: Apparently, Overkill owns full rights to PAYDAY now, and have also removed microtransactions and added free grenades. Hmm..., I wonder if they are connected.

Still a bit heavy on the DLC, but hey, still a really solid co-op heisting simulator.

Constant updates and balancing, a real commitment to a quality product, and decently enjoyable to boot.