Последние обзоры FiddlerOfTheForest

Quick explanation: You create a character (Saiyan, Earthling, Namekian, Frieza, Majin) who works for an organization that aims to prevent changes to the main timeline(s) of the Dragon Ball universe. You slip in at certain moments in time to prevent changes, and then leave as if you were never there. You work with Trunks and two Supreme Kai against two demons attempting to manipulate history in their favor (and in the DLC stories the plot is relatively the same, but with a well meaning anti-villain).

There is no cross-platform play, sorry folks. If your mate has it on XBOX or PS4, you gotta get it for those.

Review portion:

Although the story isn't unique compared to the first game, and I might even argue that the first game did it better, this game is a better purchase over the first which I originally had on XBOX360 many years ago. If you're a story over gameplay person, don't let this deter you from getting this one. There's a lot more content and the gameplay mechanics are much more refined than the original. If you miss the original story that much, there's a DLC to play it in this game apparently, at a cheaper price than just buying the whole first game. There's also 5 time-rifts in the main area that you go to on occasion to finish those 5 questlines, unlocking extra features for your character and the main story.

I won't write a thesis on the story, but I do wish we learned more about Supreme Kai of Time and Xenoverse Trunks, but hey, this is a game based mainly upon Dragon Ball Z and some of Dragon Ball Super, and those two shows aren't known for great writing and you probably already know that. The writing is mainly about justifying the next fight we'll see. The powerscaling isn't realistic at times, but if you play the main story without getting severely overpowered from the non-story gamemodes it'll be smooth enough to stomach.

Part of me also wishes the story tackled some stuff from the original Dragon Ball show, but I understand that's a powerscaling nightmare, and would also not be very fight-oriented.

Outside of the main story, there's "parallel quests" which will probably make up the bulk of your time playing this game. These can be done solo, solo with AI teammates, or online. Through them you unlock characters, moves, outfits, and various other loot. Some of them can be frustrating, but a good amount are fairly challenging and/or pose interesting "what if?" scenarios. Each quest has an "ultimate finish" where if you do the quest in a certain manner, you unlock an extra portion, which tends to have more loot and gives more score. While I'm not super into it, there's an in-game figure collection and fighting game, and it doesn't cost you real-world currency to play it, just in-game earned currencies (zeni and medals). You can also use those currencies to collect outfits for both you or your mentors. There's even a photo mode where you can get some sick screenshots of your character or other characters (both in a photo-mode fight or in the lobby). The game also rotates through online events, such as raid events (team of players vs one super-powered AI), city tournament (PvE against difficult AI for rewards, including unlocking Chronoa), and world tournament (PvP, usually with specific conditions such as "GT Characters only"), probably a few others that I'm missing given that a recent update expanded online events.

My main negative is the PvP community. I'm not good enough to say that things are unbalanced or cheesy, though I hear that complaint thrown around a lot, but coming from a newer player and writing this review for a would-be newer player, it is extremely difficult to get into PvP on your own this late into the game's life. All that's left are people who have been doing it for years, making for a horrendous environment to try to learn PvP in. The AI does not play the same way people do, it cannot emulate how people play, it will not prepare you for PvP. The people you face in PvP, EVEN THE CASUAL MODES, will thrash you, no mercy, in a perfect combo immediately and the match is pretty much over as soon as it began. Find a friend to learn PvP with or just don't bother and find your fun in PvE.

All that said about PvP, the three or four rare times I found another player at my same skill level the PvP was insanely fun, and it was nice to play casually about it. We were just chilling and after three serious bouts we decided to mess around and play characters we never played before, or use a goofy build we have on our player characters, before finally finishing our night by going all-out with our best character/build. It was a great experience where we both learned tricks together by playing off of each other. So the PvP at its core is incredibly fun, the community is just too brutal to let it shine these days.

While the DLC comes in thick and, at times, pricey (I only have a few from when they were on sale), I don't think they're terrible. You pay for a couple more hours of Parallel Quest content and they aren't necessary to the game. Some might be deemed necessary if you're getting really into the Player vs Player, but if you're at that level of dedication you probably like the game enough to get them all anyways. (Don't go buying a DLC because you think it might make you good at PvP, because that means you aren't really having fun with PvP.)

Free updates have added a lot of content to the game without DLC (notable for me are Beast and UI transformations), and given that at the time I'm writing this review they added a whole new Festival Of Universes just to keep some online interest, it's not a bad game to keep around for some PvE or PvP experiences whenever you feel like it. While some people say the developers don't care, they still care enough to pop in and give us some fun stuff every now and then, and this game is fairly old.

As a bonus there's supposedly a nice modding community, but I haven't messed around with that so I can't tell you what that's like.

This game won't change your life or anything, but if you like Dragon Ball Z and you wanna chill out and fight like you're in the show, go for it, you'll get a lot of mileage out of this.

All the comments you are hearing about instability are true. My best advice to mitigate it is to save very frequently, and in different save slots. When you get a crash, delete the most recent save slot and go back to the prior one. This helped me with stability. This is a huge con though, you shouldn't have to do this to make a game playable.

On to the review.

TL;DR: I recommend this game. It won't top Bioshock 1 since it was the first to do what this game also does, but if you have that itch for more Bioshock then this game will definitely scratch that itch and is worth playing for that alone. AND DEFINITELY PLAY MINERVA'S DEN, IT'S A FANTASTIC DLC.

I'm late to the Bioshock party, having played Bioshock 2 in 2021. Benefits of that is that you can expect this review to not be clouded by nostalgia.

The overall consensus of this game is that the gameplay improved upon the original, but the story got worse. I may be an outlier, but my personal experience is actually the opposite.

Why I find the story "better"...

I should probably clarify that I don't find Bioshock 1's story bad by any means whatsoever. It was a fantastic story, and in several ways is definitely better than this game's. Bioshock 2 has the unfortunate task of one-upping its predecessor, which is a smash hit and virtually perfect. It was going to be worse, that's just how this goes. Much like Dishonored 2 to Dishonored 1, Dishonored 2 improved on the same story in several ways, but Dishonored 1 did it first and therefore did it best - you can't do the same story twice and expect the second one to feel much better.

Bioshock 2 makes the moral decisions feel more impactful and make far more sense compared to Bioshock 1. There are several cutscenes, conversations, and plotlines that deal with your decisions and their consequences, meanwhile in Bioshock 1 it was just "to kill or not kill" mentioned in the first level, and the resulting consequences halfway through the game. Your decisions as a character influence your "daughter." The ending can be pretty tearjerking depending on what you did, and it takes quite a lot for a game to make me cry.

The game also fills in so much more background information that you may have wondered about in the original.

Bioshock 1 still did the story best, since it was completely fresh and it meshed with the gameplay and lore and philosophy a lot better. The events of Bioshock 1 feel more important than those in Bioshock 2, which Bioshock 2 feels more like it's wrapping up loose ends (especially with Minerva's Den DLC). But the small improvements don't go unnoticed by me. It's a tearjerker, if you ask me, and overall a more emotional journey compared to 1, and I'm all for that.

Now as to why I find the gameplay worse compared to the original...

The combat pacing, level designs, and all that in the original were well done. There wasn't any particular point where you wanted to pound your head into the wall. When they wanted a section to be more difficult, they planned out the enemies better and forced you to think on your feet and make a new strategy. If you failed, you knew why, and you knew how to improve. If you succeed, you feel accomplished.

Bioshock 2 does not keep that philosophy. If they want to make a section harder they just add an unnecessary amount of enemies spammed out from all directions. If you fail you can't really find out what you did wrong, you got bum rushed by an event trigger that you have to trigger. You can't really improve on it any better than just having more health and more ammo - not really any better strategy. And if you succeed then it just felt like you either barely scraped by, or just completely destroyed everyone like it was too easy. It's hard to feel accomplished.

If that's what you like for whatever reason, then sure, the gameplay is improved. There's more things to kill. I personally was not a fan of this, and I believe it contributes to the game's frequent crashing. There's a section where the developers for whatever reason decided it wasn't difficult enough and spawn in like 10 spider splicers, all of which throw a bunch of physics objects. The game lags because there's about 30 physics objects clanking around the room and then - whoops, you crashed. Immersion-wise your character is an actual tank, but unfortunately doesn't feel like one given how annoying they manage to make just regular enemies - boss fights ironically don't suffer this issue, the normal enemies are far more difficult since they just get spammed out at you. You definitely feel tankier compared to Bioshock 1, but unfortunately not tanky enough to fit the fact that you are a Big Daddy.

However, despite all my complaints here, the gameplay can still be quite fun. It's just less immersive and has extremely frustrating sections and is overall a less smooth experience compared to the original, but still a good experience nonetheless. If this game didn't have another installment to be compared to, it would be hard to find issue with it. Bioshock 1 is just that much cooler, and it's just hard to top. The combat gameplay gets better in Minerva's den and is a lot less spammy in nature.

I'm very late to the Bioshock party, having played this for the first time in 2020-2021. Pros of that though, this review won't be clouded by any nostalgia.

I can't speak for the original version, since I played the remasters only. People are complaining of crashing issues. I personally didn't experience too many in Bioshock 1 Remastered, only in Bioshock 2 Remastered. Regardless, these crashes I got in Bioshock Remasters are the same crash issues I frequently get on Dishonored - I think it's an issue between these versions of Unreal Engine and Windows, given what frequent google searches have told me, but I could be wrong since I'm not very software-savvy.

This game is genre defining on so many levels. The story is fantastic - maybe there's no huge morals to learn from the story directly, but the background information is top notch and thought provoking, and it definitely finds a way to embrace the concept of being a video game through a clever storytelling trick halfway through. Artistically this game is fantastic, and as I said, genre defining.

If you played Dishonored, Prey, Deathloop, and hell, even Doom, you would most likely enjoy the gameplay of this game. If you like immersive sims and somehow HAVEN'T played this, this game is definitely for you.

Definitely don't shy away from the remasters - the only con I can imagine from them is this crashing issue, which I can't guarantee the original is safe from given the supposed Unreal Engine/Windows issue and the fact that I played Remaster over original. Especially don't shy away from the remasters if you're a picky type who can't stand outdated graphics - the remasters will bridge that picky gap for you, though I suspect the art style has allowed the graphics to age well in the originals anyways.

Besides the crashing issue, the game seems pretty easy to run. So if you have an older gaming PC the chances are you can run this with no problems.

There's a reason this game defined immersive sims and continues to do so. This game captured lightning in a bottle.

A great story about revenge and consequence, told in a beautiful and depressing world. Great mechanics, both stealth, combat, and powers. This game is fantastic artistically. You can tell the developers loved this game. So many little details, and still, years after release, I'm finding more. First playthrough will be fantastic, but the replay value is nearly endless given the many physical and moral routes you can take differently each time. To those who haven't played the game yet but intend to - consider your actions before you make them.