Recent reviews by Daerel

Most FMV games are schlock, but very enjoyable schlock. They have a similar appeal to trash movies in that way. As such I've played quite a lot of different ones, a lot of those from Wales Interactive.

This game however is not only the worst game by Wales, not only the worst FMV game, but the worst game I've played in a whole while. The story starts out interesting but ends up being very bad. The game is very short, but feels more than 5x as long and none of the puzzles are fun to solve.
There is nothing this game can offer you, that isn't far better done in another (FMV) game.

A very fun coop puzzling game. A bit short perhaps, but well worth its asking price even without a sale.

One of greatest coop-games ever made!

Great and fun puzzle game with a unique premise, cool tunes and great dialoge.

It is better than when it was released but it's still not a great game.
Most sidequests aren't worth doing. In fact you are probably better of ignoring the optional content alltogether and just focusing on the main story and the character driven sidequests.
Exception to this is the DLC, where most quests felt worth doing as well as challenging.

There are also still a lot of bugs that frankly shouldn't be there anymore. I've lost count of the times I fell through the map while driving.

The story is fine, the character driven side quests are great as well as the relationships you built with those characters. There is however very little dialoge and as such very little reason to hang out with anyone again after doing their quest.

The combat is great, but does a boring after a while. The worst offender is the final boss which is a bullet sponge of the highest calliber and such takes forever.

It is worth getting on a sale, but never at full price.

I'm not a fan of owlcat games, despite trying to love all of them. Judged by this metric this is the best of the bunch (at least I did finish it), but there's still too much that annoyed me to recommend it.

While art direction, as well as music and the character concepts are very good, the game itself gets worse every chapter.

The cutscenes were a big disappointment. Most of them have the models just standing around while text boxes appear over their heads. It was far from engaging.

Annoyances like the random warp encounters are only made worse by a combat system that rolled over and died in the middle of the game (as I was able to finish most encounters in a single turn without min-maxing).

Leveling becomes as annoying as the random encounters causing you to level. Reason being the archetypes offering to many option with +x% and not enough new (character specific) abilities. It feels like the game is losely based on Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader. While those games also have a lot of small ability increases, the classes at least offer more variety.

Colony managment sounds like a good idea on paper. In practice this means traveling back and forth for miniscule decisions, only two of which actually justify you having to be there in person.

With that much sand in the gears and a story that felt like it could have ended much sooner, I was happy to finally be done with it.

A fun D&D adventure with well written characters and great turn-based combat. Well worth multiple playtroughs and easily one of the best recently released CRPS.

The DLC is quite short and also suffering from some bugs.
That being said, I found it to be the "more Ascent" that I craved.

With more, bigger and badder enemies and some new additions to your arsenal, such as melee weapons, it was just what I needed to use all the tools I had gathered in the main campaign.

Due to the short story 10€ might be a bit much, but I'd defintely recommend getting it during a sale.

While it still has some bugs that really need ironing out (such as random crashes and enemies disappearing) it's one of the most interesting and fun cyberpunk-games I have ever played.

With lots of weapons/weapon classes to choose from, implants to fry your opponents, a variety of enemies, interesting world-building and a killer soundtrack, top-down-cyberpunk-murder has never been this fun.

Harry Potter has been a huge part of my childhood, but following some controversy about the collector’s edition of Hogwarts Legacy I was sure that the game would be another shallow cash grab. I planned on playing it much later, if at all, and would have stuck with that opinion were it not for the recommendations and excitement of my friends, both off- and online. I’m glad that I listened or I might have missed out.

In very few words: The game is whimsical and never failed to make me smile. It accomplishes what it sets out to do and provides fun for both experienced and inexperienced gamers alike. It’s one of the very few games I had no problem buying at full price and I would recommend it to everyone, who is excited or nostalgic about Harry Potter and not sick of open-world-collect-a-thons.

• Performance
  
  Unfortunately, as expected with most games coming out nowadays, performance is still the biggest issue of this game, although improvements have already been made. Currently, the game can still slow to a crawl when loading new areas (especially in parts of Hogwarts or Hogsmeade) and I’ve experienced a few game-breaking bugs.
  I hope all of this will be fixed in the future and as such no longer be a problem.
  
  
• Hogwarts and the Wizarding World
  
  The Wizarding World is realized in great detail, better than in any other Harry Potter game I ever played.
  Hogwarts castle itself is so well done, that even after more than 70 hours of playtime I’m still finding hidden details and references. Examples range from game mechanics like following butterflies for treasure (like Ron Weasley would have wanted) to small references like a student throwing up snails in the hospital wing.
  
  The rest of the open world, especially Hogsmead and the Forbidden Forest are not bad either, but of course somewhat less exciting.
  
  It seems like game development focused on everything a fan could want: You get your own wand, sorted into a house of your choice, broom, access to the room of requirement, interacting with all sorts of fantastic beasts and even your own hippogriff to fly into the sunset, etc.
  
  The worst areas in the game are unfortunately those directly connected to the main plot. While those are not bad per se, they lose some of the charms of the more general and pre-established areas. The corridors and enemies suddenly feel much gamier and could easily fit in a bunch of other games.
  
  
• Story and Quests
  
  Without going into spoilers the story is serviceable but not amazing. Your character discovers their magical powers that tie them to a greater purpose and the story is mostly about dealing with that responsibility and stopping dark powers. Branching choices basically don’t exist, the story will always happen in a certain way and your character will always behave in a pre-written way. As such the main story was the weakest part of the game for me.
  
  What saves the game are some genuinely great characters and enjoyable side quests. The best of them focuses on dark magic, a curse, and family. Unfortunately, it is rather open-ended, but that may just be set up for some future DLC.
  
  
• Gameplay
  
  Combat and exploration are done with the help of your 34 spells, which are progressively unlocked. You can cast most of the well-known spells and many others for good measure. Everything you’d want to do in a Harry Potter game is pretty much in that spell list, including the dark arts. Combat is generally fun and your strategy changes which each new tool. That being said spells are not created equal and by the end, I found myself basically just using three and rushing through every encounter.
  
  Experience, or at least a big part of it, is earned through collectibles and challenges.
  
  As such, Collectibles are a big part of Hogwarts Legacy, be it decoration for your room of requirement, a new set of robes, a new beast, or new inventory slots. Most everything in the open world is made to support your goal of collecting stuff: There are caves to explore, riddles to solve, trials to overcome, enemies (camps) to loot, and beasts to catch.
  
  Clothing is what you’ll loot the most. It comes in different rarities and improves your attack and defense. Loot rarity is something I could have done without in this game. That being said with rapidly changing outfits in RPGs, a common problem is looking like a trash goblin, an amalgamation of different clothing styles that are ill-suited to be worn together but have to be worn together for gameplay reasons. The game avoids this problem by giving you the ability to change the look of your clothing on the fly without tying it to some sort of resource. The combination of a constant stream of new stuff and your ability to change it works wonders, as I spent an embarrassing amount of time just changing and re-changing my outfits, sometimes multiple times during a quest.
  
  For some reason, some challenges just end before being completed. As such, there is no reward for finishing Merlin trails after you’ve finished upgrading your inventory, hunting for Demiguise after finishing the quest, or collecting more magical pages after you’ve already gotten the final step for that particular challenge. While that might be a blessing for most people, because the challenges do repeat a lot, I would have wished for the completion to matter more than just as an achievement.

In conclusion: While it is not without flaws the characters, open world, and general atmosphere really outweigh the negatives for me. I’d recommend getting the game, especially on sale.