Recent reviews by Lemecc

This used to be one of my all-time favourite games, especially during Heavensward. I've been playing since 2014, and no doubt I will still play from time to time, but out of sunk-cost-fallacy more than anything else. (Edit: yeah fair, I deserve the clown awards for paying a sub every so often to a game that isn't really making me happy anymore, that's on me.)

If I wrote a review in 2019, I would have recommended the game. As it is now... I really can't recommend it.
The game has been stripped and streamlined to the point of being a fragment of what it once was. Job and fight gameplay is miserably easy and dull, with very little strategy. At best it's DDR, but I wouldn't even go that far. Once you've played for a bit, you know everything that can and will happen before it actually happens; you know that every dungeon is two or three packs of trash mobs, two mini-bosses, and a final boss, all in one straight line. All those enemies just melt so long as you do a basic 1-2-3 button combination. You know exactly which square on the conveniently chessboard-coded arena to stand to never get hit by anything ever and effectively be invincible. There's no strategy, there's no problems to solve, nothing to engage the brain.

The few times they do anything marginally more interesting, one of two things are the case;
1: It's side content and they won't dare put those mechanics in the main quest for who knows what reason, or
2: They put those mechanics in the main quest, and then remove them two weeks later because "it's too hard" (where does this feedback come from? Especially in two weeks?)
Some of the dungeons used to be genuinely interesting, but they've had their maps and mechanics gutted over the years. A very recent example is one dungeon where you used to have to drag an enemy over to a floor plate and kill it on top of the floor plate. Failure to kill it in the right location would result in it coming back to life after a short while. This isn't exactly a difficult concept to grasp, it didn't add loads of excitement but it did at least mean that the party had to consider an extra positional aspect. Well that's gone. Deleted. The enemy now plants itself on the plate and doesn't move, so you have zero way to fail the mechanic. The whole game is like this now.

Viera and Hrothgar are still unfinished, 5+ years after they were added, and they're riddled with mesh and gear bugs. The "graphical update" is a sidestep, not an upgrade, the map design really blows now - sorry, it does. I ran around some ARR areas just the other day and was reminded of how excellently those maps build the lore and world of Eorzea, with little hamlets around and passive wildlife etc. Shadowbringers and onwards maps look nice, but the environmental storytelling drops off exponentially as it goes on.

I don't know what SE is going for, but Heavensward and Stormblood had far better job gameplay in their day, better map design, more interesting dungeons, new races actually had the full selection of hairstyles, etc, whereas the Final Fantasy XIV of today feels like... a mobile game. The content now is a mile wide and an inch deep, with a thousand things that look like a lot on the surface, but turn out to be "talk to person A... cool you're done, here's your experience reward". It's gotten so dull and easy, I can and have played using my foot on my controller whilst I work. Maybe "can be played with your big toe, an analogue stick, and a single button" could be some accessibility boast, except SE have ignored the thread on the forums that has been there for TWO YEARS alerting them to users experiencing severe effects from flashing lights and visual effects in the game.

This is a vent more than a review at this stage, but the point I'm trying to make is: just don't. The game has a positive reputation due to the excellence of Heavensward and the spectacle of Shadowbringers, but atp they were a long time ago. The game as it currently is feels like nobody at SE really wants to work on it and it gets the bare minimum just to ensure it remains a cash cow via subscription fees. It feels like more effort is put into cash shop releases than actual in-game content. I can't and wouldn't stop anybody from playing it but there are so many other games out there that respect your time and ability more than modern FFXIV does.

Maybe things will change in 8.0 (as though I haven't been bargaining that with myself for two expansions now), and if it does, I'll change my review, but right now I think your time is better spent playing something else frankly.

I began playing the DLC on launch day, and made my way through the content organically, no speedrunning to the end and no drawing things out; simply playing naturally, and here's my honest personal review.

The TLDR of it is: I've had and continue to have a great time with it. I enjoy it on the same level as both Far Harbor and Nuka World, and until whatever the next DLC is, I see myself spending almost all my playtime in this DLC's system. Very much recommended.

The reasons in an easy to digest list:

• Exceptional final sequence and amazing music. The final battle sequence was the best sequence I've ever personally experienced in a Bethesda game ever, it had the same wonderful marriage of music, dialogue, action, and fast-paced problem-solving as the Portal 2 finale.
  
• The level design of the dungeons are also some of the very best they've ever made, particularly the last one; which uses hazards to turn an ordinary office into a labyrinth extremely expertly. Whichever parts of the team are responsible for the whole final dungeon and battle deserve a bonus, that was an incredible experience as a player.
  
• Voice-acting was really great across the board, some of the citizens in particular gave gut-wrenching performances when describing what they had lost in the tragedy. A man near Herald's Rest (a bar) begins to cry whilst speaking of what he's lost, and it's truly moving.
  
• All the hand-crafted areas are a real return to form, with so many more little places to explore and mini stories to find, and if there's any downside to them, it's that it highlights how badly the base game needs that. Jemison and Akila need the Va'ruun Kai treatment.
  
• The new enemies and the higher difficulty are a lot of fun; they're iterations of things we've seen before, but with new abilities that freshen things up a bit. No longer could I just stand and shoot in one direction, it was necessary to always be wary of my six, duck and dodge, and pay more attention to my surroundings as Shattered Space enemies can access many more ambush points than base game enemies can.

I wish I could mention level design twice because I really can't drive home how good it is. Whatever your favourite Skyim or Fallout 4 dungeon is (mine's probably The Gauntlet, followed very closely by Safari Adventure); double it. Again, the final dungeon was so good, but the second-to-final dungeon was also exceptional, with a really cool choice to make near the end; do the right thing, but make your escape much harder and have to contend with fighting your way out? Or make your own life easier at the expense of others, and take the choice that dooms innocents but lets you waltz out no trouble? Then there's a side-quest dungeon that gives you a bit of lore on the background of one of the new enemy types, and it's a lot of spooky horror fun.

The story:
As for the story, my feelings are more complicated. At the end of the day, there are some factions in Bethesda RPGs that you gel with more, and some you gel with less. I don't gel with the Brotherhood of Steel for example, particularly in Fallout 4, and had they sold me a BOS DLC for that game, I would have played it but I wouldn't personally agree or relate to the BOS. House Va'ruun is much the same for me; I didn't personally feel any interest in them from the base game, so trying to make me interested for a whole DLC is actually a very hard sell. I was actively disinterested in them. Bethesda had an uphill battle to make me care. In the end, they didn't change my mind about House Va'ruun as a society, but they certainly reminded me that people are just people at their core, and I wanted to help most individuals I came across. There are some similar themes here with Fallout 4; that most ordinary people want to be good, and shouldn't be judged by the actions of those in power, and that's something I can really get behind.

My only significant criticism is that at the very beginning, two characters choose to view your arrival as a divine sign (which some have interpreted as you being a chosen one, you are not. Later in the story makes that quite apparent), which I feel is a bit of a clumsy way to have an excuse for the player to gain access to the city. I think there are several more natural ways that gaining access to the city could have played out. However, once that's out of the way, the rest of the story is much more natural, stronger, and the mysteries are a joy to uncover, especially coupled with that awesome level design.
(heavy spoilers)
The antagonist's voice actor in particular gives a fantastic performance, initially soft-spoken and charismatic, a man you can believe wants the best for his people, slipping into vindictive arrogant leech by the end. You know how many people really despise Maven Black-Briar because she's such a nasty piece of work who makes everyone's lives worse? That's the antagonist of Shattered Space for me - which just to be clear, is a good thing! I hate him so much. And that's really good, that's emotional immersion in the story, and emotional investment in the well-being of the rest of the characters.

Shattered Space is an amazing experience, and I thoroughly enjoyed all of it. It's right up there with Dawnguard, Far Harbor and Nuka World for me, and I have no doubt I'll spend many more hours in it.

The TL;DR of this: It's a NiGHTs game whether it's labelled that way or not, and I like it very much for that.

A fun and charming platformer, albeit a basic one. I'm not sure what happened to push this game for six year olds into the spheres of adult gamers who somehow have never played a bad game before (I envy those for whom this is the worst game they ever played. I wish this was the worst game I ever played), but the fury over dancing mascot characters and simplistic platforming is an extreme overreaction.

The game is a set of sweet simple stories as Balan helps people find light in their life again, be it after loss or uncertainty or other life events. As one of two children facing their own personal demons, you travel through the dream worlds made up from manifestations of various character's memories and fears, to help them overcome the issues they face. To progress, be that fighting enemies or solving puzzles, you collect "costumes" (power-ups) that give you access to different abilities, and a large part of the gameplay is using these costumes strategically. Each time you collect one, you add it to a bank of power-ups, which you can switch in and out at any checkpoint. Not all costumes are created equal, so admittedly there are some costumes that are simply objectively better to take with you - this is a bit of an inevitability of the whole "over 80 different costumes" thing, but it doesn't really bother me personally. I view collecting and using the best costumes as the level gameplay, and collecting all 80 as the old-fashioned collectathon gameplay.

Balan Wonderworld is so extremely close to the premise and atmosphere of NiGHTs Into Dreams (1996) that I have a hard time not considering it a spiritual sequel or same-universe thing. Perhaps the comparison is apt because, like others have said before me, this is an old school platformer in ways that can be a bit "you had to have been there". This would have been very at-home on the Sega Saturn in the late 90s, with Official Sega Saturn Magazine articles about where to find each costume in each level and all that jazz. If you played platformers then and you're happy to revisit how games played back then, Balan Wonderworld will be comfortable to play and feel a lot like slipping back to 1996.

If you didn't play or didn't like games back then, and you're used to the more complex mechanics platformers gained in the 2000s+ to the huge QoL improvements and faster paced gameplay that platformers of today have, Balan Wonderworld is probably not going to feel good to you. And I think that's okay and valid, it did release in 2021 after all, not 1996. But worst game ever? Not in the world where we have Superman 64 and Gollum. Balan Wonderworld is a finished and complete experience with a lot of charm and a great amount of care and talent put into art direction, music and atmosphere, it just may not be the experience for you, especially with some of the decisions made to make it as simplistic as it is. If you want something more Hat in Time or Mario Odyssey, then yes, certainly steer clear.

I do personally recommend it, because I recommend it for people like myself; played mascot platformers in the 90s, NiGHTs Into Dreams was a formative experience, and love gorgeous art and a great soundtrack. Balan Wonderworld has all that in spades, and takes me right back to the days of using my clumsy kid hands to clumsily jam a disc into my Sega Saturn and get hyped just hearing it whir to life. This is a NiGHTs game in the wrong decade.

Update August 2024:
I felt it was way past time I put an update here now we've had a few pretty big updates for the game. Whilst I still stand by my original review, the improvements Bethesda have made to the game shouldn't be overlooked. The custom difficulty options that allow you to tweak the perfect survival mode for yourself are chef's kiss, QoL improvements to maps and interface stuff are great, and oh my god is our brand new moon rover Fun As F**k.

I won't lie, I wanted and I still kind of wanted "Fallout 4 but, you know, in space". But Starfield is beginning to develop a stronger identity of its own with these updates, and I'm really excited to see what Shattered Space brings. My recommendation for this game earlier in the year was a bit more sombre, a bit more reserved. Consider it to have more enthusiasm behind it now!

Original review January 2024:
This is a good single-player linear story RPG.

I'm putting it that way, because it's not Skyrim, and I think anybody who has enjoyed Skyrim and Fallout 4 will feel the difference quite intensely - myself included. The story is pretty good, as long as you play it as-intended. As long as you pick every option they sort of want you to pick. The cities and locations and characters are all pretty good, so long as you're interacting with them only when the plot wants you to.

I think this is where a lot of friction with Starfield comes from, and I feel it too. It turns out you can't really approach it as you would a previous Bethesda game. There are factions in the game, but not multiple endings or multiple routes. There is no radiant AI in the game, no timetables or routines, everyone is stuck in place waiting for the almighty player to talk to them for all eternity. There is all kinds of junk in the game, but not a way to use it with the stripped-down outpost system (a HUGE backstep from FO4 and FO76).

In any sci-fi shooter, I wouldn't question or have any issues with the above at all. I wouldn't even think about it. But in a Bethesda RPG, the absence of it is heartbreaking.

I'm still recommending this game, because I had a good time once I readjusted my expectations. I played it through the intended railroaded way, and enjoyed the stories a lot. I think if you put Skyrim and Fallout 3/4 out of your mind, the game is good. I recently started replaying Dragon's Dogma, a great RPG but not one in which your player character really has any choices, just a big pile of quests they can take on and a linear story to witness. That's Starfield. I can live with the linear story - taking down Alduin in Skyrim was always a linear quest chain.

It's good. But... but. I think the disappointment, at least for me, comes from realising that as the game currently is, it's a one-and-done situation. Unlike Fallout 4, this isn't a game I'm going to be spending 1000+ hours in. Not because it's awful or some completely unforgivable terrible game, but because the very nature of the story and how NPCs and dialogue in this game works makes it a fairly one-time-only experience. There's no real incentive to reroll and run through new playthroughs.

I very much hope that the DLC can change this. My wishlist would be bringing back radiant AI with routines, and bringing the outpost system at least on-par with FO4 and FO76. I hope that the upcoming DLC makes me have to change this review for the better.

Every time I think I'm done with this game, I'm not. Every time I think there can't possibly be any content left in this game that I have played for 200+ hours in this version and something like 800 hours in the original version, I'm wrong.

There's nothing on the market quite like this, even today.

The chain reaction of one random encounter leading you to one npc and then you help them with their bandit problem except in the meantime a dragon kills them but it turns out they owned a shop so now their daughter has to move into the shop and she wants you to go get some plants and on your way to get some plants you find a farmer fighting a draugr near a tomb and then the dragonborn cultists intercept you whilst you're trying to help, and then suddenly you're on a boat to solstheim and oh good, you're finally awake...!

I can't recommend this game enough. Give it a go. If you don't like one questline, try another, or just throw cheesewheels at the NPC and steal their gems. The true joy in this game is embracing the chaotic spider web of your player's story unfolding as random actions lead you down paths that have nothing to do with that one dungeon you were going to clear when you booted the game up.

Really great mod, tons of effort went into this and it shows. The puzzle difficulty was perfect, actually perfect. There were a couple of tricky ones, but not so tricky as to halt progress for more than 30 minutes absolute tops, and a couple of easy ones, but not so easy I was bored or annoyed. A great variety of puzzles too, and the new mechanics felt so at-home in the Portal universe that it's hard for me to believe they aren't just native to Portal 1/2.

The voice acting is fantastic, and the two new characters fit right into the universe so well. To the point where... as far as I'm concerned, this is an official Portal 1.5.

The only, very minor, criticisms I have are about the story, spoilers ahead. This part looks longer purely because I'm explaining the reasoning behind the criticisms and how I think they could have been improved.
I did feel like Stirling "turned" too soon after you are reunited. I think he should have convinced himself to make an enemy of you over the course of 1 or 2 chambers, whereas as it is he immediately decides you're a problem as soon as you reappear. You helped him the whole time earlier in the game, I think he should have had to walk himself through the logic to hate the player. Just one or two lines that show him changing course delivered at the entrance of each chamber like his lines currently are would suffice to fix this pacing! You could also use this opportunity to foreshadow the reveal that he's a vacuum cleaner given sentience, he's going to struggle to understand having feelings and will struggle to understand why the protagonist reappearing with a new friend upsets him.

And the ending is... extremely abrupt. I understand this probably would have been the most difficult aspect of the game in a way. How do you end it in a way that makes sure it doesn't interfere with Portal 2? But I think there needed to be something more inbetween you pressing that last button and the credits rolling. It's almost instantaneous. Maybe a second phase to the fight, even if the second phase is more of a joke than a real phase, similar to the Valve games where antagonists throw garbage at the player in desperation. More of a back and forth between Stirling and Emilia could play out during this, instead of the game ending just as they start to have interactions. The way the game ends currently, with the credits rolling almost as soon as you hit the button, isn't very cathartic for a player. The post-credits scene doesn't really feel like it makes up for the character dynamics and player investment being immediately halted. I really would have liked to have seen this fleshed out, just to pay off the build-up until this point.

That aside, the game is fantastic - and even then, not everyone will care about story, so if that's you then even better! A great Portal game in its own right. Anyone who likes the Portal games should play this.

2-3 hours of pure charm, and proof that the extended cast can carry a story and deserve more of a spotlight more often. Lovely artwork, endearing story, charming characters.

(Owned and 100%ed the game on Xbox 360, my playtime here is only a small amount of what I have spent in-game.)

Arkham Origins caused something of a stir when it came out. Outsourced to a different studio, different voice actors, a prequel nobody particularly asked for, something of a rushed development and a lot more glitches than Asylum or City. With City intended as the big finale, not only did this game have a lot to live up to, but it also had a lot to answer for, trying to go toe to toe with its older sibling.

Does it succeed? Well... no, but it turns out that's good. I know, I know, I'll explain. Origins is a game that actually does not fit with the games it is supposed to be a prequel to at all. Both visually and tonally, it presents like a different universe to Asylum and City. Gone are the hyper exaggerated designs - Joker's face actually has ordinary proportions (well at least comparatively), fuller lips, and is basically completely different human being to his Asylum/City counterpart in ways that cannot be explained by age alone - or the splashes of vibrant colour (remember how Asylum/City use almost dazzling greens as accent colours in the universe?). It no longer looks like DC comics brought to life. Instead, Origins looks more like the Nolanverse movies with the smallest splash of cartoon added, and tonally it is closer to Nolanverse too. Sure, Killer Croc and similar unbelievable characters still exist, but they have been dialled right down, pulled back from their comic versions and repackaged into something that might be served on the big screen as "realistic". The story is far closer to something you would get in the Nolan-and-similar vain of Batman writing, much further away from Dini's characteristic style, and every character is so much more angry. Batman is played like Bale's Batman, half of his dialogue is roaring, making Asylum/City Batman seem so laid-back and chill in comparison. This huge disconnect between Origins and Asylum/City make Origins a pretty terrible prequel that can barely be reconciled with the games it is supposed to lead into. Asylum/City are far more Animated Series with a grittier but still comically exaggerated unique style, Origins is Nolanverse with only a smattering of comic style.

I think the problem is: Akrham Origins should never have been an actual prequel game. It should have been it's very own standalone Batman game.

Because as a standalone Batman game, if you divorce it from Asylum/City, it is really strong! It's got a great Batman story in it, sort of a Year One (though in this case it is the start of Batman's third year) mashed with a few other origins tales from the comics. Lots of staple characters are introduced, and introduced fairly well. The core characters, of Batman, Alfred, Joker, and Bane, all receive a good amount of development for a starting story. Without spoilers, some of the later interactions with Alfred are wonderful, and unsurprisingly Joker is probably the star of the show with some very good sequences. As a self-contained thing, the style of the world is well-realised. The music, composed by Christopher Drake, is reminiscent of Zimmer's soundtrack for the Nolan films (gone is the more varied pieces from Ron Fish and Nick Arundel for the previous games) and is in a permanent state of tension and depressiveness. The environments are bleak, in a good kind of Gotham-is-miserable way, even the Christmas decorations are muted and dirty. The colour scheme of the game is grey-blue and almost nothing but. This is NOT Arkhamverse as established in Asylum/City, but it is an excellent universe in its own right.

Running on the same engine, nothing can be said of the gameplay that doesn't universally apply to the games before it I don't think. It still plays just as beautifully as ever. That said, this game has much fewer "silent predator" sections in it and far more brawling sections I believe - or at least definitely feels that way. This does diminish the variety, and you can find that you're mindlessly punching dudes for minutes, mentally checking out. I have encountered a couple more glitches in this game than I did with the other two, enemies becoming stuck on terrain, becoming unable to be interacted with, but nothing gamebreaking. I would say that the biggest flaw is that the game can get tedious with brawling, as if it is not sure how else to get an obstacle in the player's way other than to throw punching bags in. The main campaign has very little in which you have to puzzle or think your way through; even the crime reconstruction mechanic doesn't require you to make any real effort - the closest that gets to a puzzle is having you find an object which has landed on a part of the environment that as a player you would not normally think would be part of the investigation area.

Arkham Origins is a solid Batman game. I think it is a terrible prequel, shouldn't have been made into one, and I think most people would probably enjoy it more as a separate thing. Outside of where it is supposed to fit with the franchise, it is a solid decently-realised self-contained Batman adventure. If you are more into Nolanverse, or New 52 Synder stuff, or generally the more grim desaturated Batman, I think Origins is very close to the game you're looking for. If you're after more Animated series, Dini, Gotham Sirens, big stakes big fun just like Asylum/City, you definitely won't get it from this game.

So all in all, I do recommend this game, in a very conditional way. Separate it from Asylum/City, and it is a far better experience. Still flawed, and still not as strong as either of the earlier games in any way, but a solid Batman game on its own.

...And in case you want an arbitrary number to sum up the review, I'd say.... 6.5/10!