Recent reviews by nSpyer

2 hours in. No idea how long this is, but it's a hilarious breath of fresh air so far.

This game is good on paper, as an idea. In practice, it's a lot of "hurry up and wait" for the next bit of what you need to complete a task that may or may not be impossible to complete because of roguelite RNG.

Imagine an old school RTS without any of the fun battles, presumably to remove the stressful nature of the fun battles, that reintroduces more stress with a mechanic that simply isn't as fun. (Basically a loading bar.)

If you like any of the component genres that went into making this, it might be for you. If you LOVE any of the component genres that went into making this, you might end up like me: resenting this game after a lovely introduction because it isn't enough like the things it's trying to be different from.

That said, what it sets out to do, it does well. It's not a game I could stand to play consistently, but it's one of those games that I find myself reinstalling every once in a while because I forgot what turned me off it. In those hours between the reinstall and the reminder of it's "flaws" (subjective), I tend to have a decent time with it as a second screen while watching streams.

This game was good enough that I clocked in hundreds of hours before the official release.

This game is so good in fact, that I'll probably end up playing it for thousands of hours after.

It's a huge game, and there's enough exploration and intrigue to keep you playing for hundreds of hours, but I won't be investing that much.

It's a bug ridden mess, even in 2023. The constant Bethesda-like clipping and graphical glitches are forgivable enough, but I drew the last straw at a game breaking bug that set me back hours and hours of playtime.

it's absurd that a free game about anime catgirls is somehow pushing the vampire survivors genre forward to the point where it's arguably the best one to play

When you first start playing, every setback feels terrible. You want to "win" the game. You hate the idea of "losing".

After hundreds of hours, you realize that the setbacks are what makes the game fun.

And the mods.

In terms of Metroidvanias, this is arguably the GOAT

TL;DR: Wait for 6 - 12 months because it's just that damn good.

Yes, there are a lot more bugs than there should be at launch. Is it worth it? Yes...IF you don't mind the emergent chaos that brings. Bugs can be soul crushing, game ruining, immersion breaking hell... or make you laugh until you cry. If you want to avoid bugs, you should wait a while.

In the bits between the bugs, when the game works correctly, that's when it shines so brightly that you can't put it down. The immersion this game creates when it works correctly is something magical, and something that I haven't felt in a long time.

It tackles heavy ♥♥♥♥ and pulls no punches. And it does so while learning about YOU as a player. Some of the stories have echoed through my own head and reverberated so profoundly that I have been forced to view them in the context of my own life. Amazingly, that made me feel even more immersed: Like the game itself was my version of Johnny's relic chip. I chipped in, and the game was set to run its course, analyze me from top to bottom, and change me into someone else. To be fair, I did play as a self insert.

It may be that this was just the right game at the right time for me, or it may be that CDPR has actually pulled off something groundbreaking and we (the public) just haven't really realized it yet. To be fair, they haven't realized their vision yet either, the bugs prove that. And we've been playing the game for less than a week, so there are more layers to peel back.

Still, in 6 months to a year, if you can avoid spoilers... your hardware will probably improve if you can't currently run it, and CDPR's software patches will meet you somewhere in the middle.

After that, this game will also continue to evolve. DLCs, Expansions, Multiplayer, the Modding Community... who knows when it will stop growing? Purchasing the game at this point is basically buying into the idea that you want to invest in all that future stuff. It's coming, but you'll have to wait a while.

The gameplay is some of the best ever. A lot of people take issue with the storytelling, but strangely enough, the story in this game is one that actually gets better and better with time. There are some mysteries about it that will probably never be unraveled because of Kojima's split with Konami, and because of that... it gets even better. I can't explain more without ruining the game for you, but I can tell you this: the more you put into this game, the more you'll get out of it.

surprisingly addictive