Recent reviews by Needo62

This is a flop, a fumble, a most profoundly mid 40k game but with its exterior polished to look like something amazing

Campaign is alright, cookie cutter third person shooter which isn't necessarily bad at all, but has the worst cinematography during ingame cutscenes, camera just sitting there while characters yap with Ubisoft level mocapped arm flailing and head tilting animations, and u can just tell that it was some out of touch exec that forced the characters helmets to be off most the game

Incredible set pieces that look insane to fight in but no u and ur squad are going in this hallway or entering this building far away from the massive signature 40k battles, really cool to look at but u rarely get to interact with the larger scale stuff going on

The pve mode, operations, in the 10% of times when it doesnt softlock u in the hub area or get stuck in the loadscreen is pretty good, always nice playing ur customised character in stuff, but u are forced to play with randoms or in coop, with coop almost guaranteeing a softlock for whatever reason, idk whats so hard about adding a solo mode when bot support is literally already there, ive played with bots in operations once

The pvp mode, eternal war, is definition bland cookie cutter arena pvp, it doesnt balance teams at all and has no rotation of modes or teams, lacks basic qol features and mechanics, and for SOME REASON armour and colour presets u make do not carry over between pve and pvp

Having to progress certain Chapters to get colours and stuff is very cool in concept but annoying and SOO unnecessarily grindy, its no Dawn of War 1 army painter with how long it takes to get basic colours and decals, it should have Armored Core 6 level customisation instead of being so limiting

There is a stupid amount of potential with a game like this and really NONE of it has been realised, everything is so safe, so bland and simple, it doesnt do anything unique outside of the operations mode which only has 6 missions (disregarding how borderline unplayable it is with how much softlocking it does),
Eternal War having entirely unique Chaos Marine character/weapon models and voicelines that are not used anywhere but that mode for the sake of having 2 identically equipped teams

Wasted potential with nothing to make what little is here last

Task manager, end process

Be nice if they let me do more than throw me into a randomly generated dungeon for a few minutes before the timer says I should die

Average Thief mission goes as follows:

Explore cool map
Sneak past or fight enemies with smooth stealth gameplay and fun mechanics
Don't know where to go
Map is poorly drawn and hard to understand, near useless really
Run around for an hour bhopping looking for how to progress
Find an unexplored area
Its a shortcut leading you back to where you came
Get fed up and look up guide
One of 3 things will happen:
1. Learn u missed the way to go as it looked identical to the areas you've bhopped around for an hour before (2 polygon models with the same crusty textures and no unique landmarks)
2. Ask yourself "how in the f*ck was I supposed to know that" after learning the answer to the puzzle ur stuck on or the location of a key item
or 3. Realise ur softlocked as u needed a certain item like an arrow that you used up earlier and will have to reload or restart the whole mission

There's not holding a players hand and there's bad game design. This is mostly bad game design.
This game still has the best stealth gameplay I've played and the audio while a bit scuffed at times is excellent at aiding the stealth. Its aesthetic is unique and its sound design is great. There's lots of freedom in how you traverse the maps, but the lack of direction and extremely vague objectives cause more frustration than fun overall, with the general meaning behind why you're doing what you're doing being near non existent, and a story that gets harder to follow. If the mission structure was as open and sandboxy as the missions themselves I think it would make the tedium feel more warranted, but since you're just going mission to mission, having your gear reset every time, the sandbox element is not there so the way missions play out just feels like a waste of your time, because once you beat it that's it, no permanent rewards, no upgrades (at least not where I'm at when writing this), no hub, no gathering thoughts and choosing what to do next, just pain, beat mission, menu, new mission, repeat.

get this unintuitive web browser ahh game off steam

Developer: Hey boss we made that realistic physics based movement and combat system you wanted

Director: Splendid, now give it the worst control scheme ever seen

I didn't buy this as a fan of Armored Core
I didn't buy this as a fan of Souls
I bought this as a fan of Fromsoftware

I didn't get the resource managing, strategy based combat I hear Armored Core was
I didn't get the timing and spacing, skill based combat that Souls is
I got a mindless, projectile spam auto aim shooter

The PvE is too easy with meta builds. But engaging and challenging with unique builds
The bosses are simple to challenging with meta builds. But unfair and impossible with unique builds
If you aren't using a meta build, you will be forced to die to the boss and change your build entirely just for it

I came to expect a certain quality and respect of player's skill and strategy by Fromsoftware's games. This has none of that.

The 40 hours I have in this are mostly due to customising my mech and testing various weapons and builds. Realising half the weapon sandbox and all the interesting builds I made and tested are ultimately worthless in bossfights makes me feel cheated and insulted.

I got up to the IB-01: CEL 240 boss, instead of going back to a generic meta build to either trivialise or make it at least doable, I'm quitting here. How unfortunate that of all times for Fromsoftware to finally learn how to properly implement regional matchmaking, it had to be with this game

got this to experience an earlier version of my favourite dark souls game

literally ds2 scholar of the first sin but like an alpha build, entire areas can be completely empty while in SOTFS there are at least enemies populating them, SOTFS already feels unfinished but this is ridiculous, the only good difference ive encountered so far are less stupidly placed petrified statues that block your path, heck scholar even has one blocking a literal tutorial area off for some reason so it was nice to have immediate access to basic areas

other than that there are some different enemy/item placements with some enemies being completely different to what they are in scholar, overall this just screams unfinished, scholar just yells unfinished so unless youre hyper curious about how rushed this game truly was, dont get this its just not at all worth it, i dont even know why this version is still being sold scholar just outdoes it in every way (aside from the addition of more statues like who thought that was a good idea)

best souls game

pros:
- healing doesnt take 1 second meaning its much more risky to heal mid-battle and prevents people from estus chugging after getting 2 meters away from you in pvp
- combat is slower paced and more deliberate, you cant instantly change the direction of attacks making your character unrealistically do 180 turns by sliding their feet
- explorable world is bigger than any other dark souls game making it feel like a proper journey
- some areas are exceptionally beautiful to look at
- huge amount of weapons, armour, customisation etc, allowing more creativity in terms of builds
- power stancing
- twinblades
- great visuals and artstyle rather than ds3's bleak and unsaturated world (which goes with its lore but still)
- lots of NPC summons making it easier for newer players struggling with the game
- poison is actually dangerous making poison builds great
- rolling ability is affected by the ADP skill which prevents people who dont focus on anything but certain OP skills to have less effective rolls, encouraging more thoughtful levelling
- considered to have the best pvp in any souls game, probably due to many of the points above

cons:
- strangely restricted movement (makes jumping at an angle difficult)
- due to low ADP, early game can feel quite unfair as you get grazed by attacks you thought you rolled through
- SOTFS edition added very inconveniently placed petrified statues that block certain areas off until later which feels quite cheap and is completely unnecessary
- its a souls game so pvp latency is still annoying as all hell
- world cohesion can be poor at times, with some transitions to areas making no sense at all
- world continuity and direction is awful at times unless you know each route to go from memory, causing you to feel completely lost as to where to go to get to a new area
- some early game weapons are very powerful making lots of people use them rather being being creative with their builds
- many areas feel lifeless and empty in terms of decoration and details
- ice horsies
- black gultch

dark souls 2 is hated for the exact same reason its loved, it tried many unique things, making it a very different game to all the other souls games
either way anyone who thinks people should skip this game and go straight to ds3 should not be listened to, this is still a dark souls game at heart and feels like one, for no reason should it be skipped

its such a wonder what this game would have been like if the developers accomplished all the massive ideas and goals they originally had for it, and while during your playthrough it will become painfully obvious at times how rushed and incomplete it is, with many unfinished feeling aspects to the game be it areas, enemies and hitboxes, it is still worth playing for anyone who enjoys dark souls or souls games in general, and may even become your favourite souls game

solid gameplay, but ridiculous cosmetic prices and pathetic overall player expression

343 have not learnt from their emblem colour preset mistake in halo 5, despite reverting that and allowing players to customise their emblem colours individually in that game, theyve brought it back here, and taken the same route with armour colours, armour pieces are also lacking even if u purchase the battle pass

cosmetics and player expression have been a big part of halo multiplayer for a long time, what a shame to see halo devolve in that regard to the level of forknife and valorant, everything has a paywall

i simply cannot support this game in its current state with such anti player systems and predatory prices

buy game it good