Recent reviews by Richard Relocation

PLAYED 2P CO-OP

Marking this as a positive review, but that's a tough call because of all the ridiculous design choices that make CO-OP incredibly frustrating.

Positives first: Art style, cool as hell, combat, WHEN WORKING PROPERLY, extremely satisfying, if there were less glitches and some better encounter and game design, would rate whole game 9/10. COMBAT ALONE, even bad encounters, was extremely fun. If all you care about is the combat, visual spectacle, and setting, you will love this game, buy it and have fun, 9/10. UNFORTUNATELY, many negatives.

Less important negatives next---- Story, sub-par, cool overall universe, but some character choices are birdbrained and no logical person would think that way, should have flown the eagles to Mordor type of plotholes. Also, no characters are particularly well-written which makes potentially cool story into an unintentional comedy.
SPEAKING OF AFTERTHOUGHTS---------

Co-Op (which is this game's biggest draw imo, is POORLY IMPLEMENTED. One case of softlocking other player and having to restart from checkpoint due to progress gates only triggering for one out of two players. Animation issues for other player model are prevalent, slowing progress through platforming sections and choke points.
BIGGEST NEGATIVES NEXT-------- Still on the topic of glitches, had to quit to main menu at least 10 times, all the way to desktop at least another 10, and restart computer twice due to hard crash. most glitches were loss of audio, but some were encounters not progressing, and specifically on the snow map, FREEZING and crashing when leaving menus, leading to multiple repeats of already finished combat encounters. Also few cases of clipping through floor, leading to soft locking fight because teammate couldn't revive. I mention these minor glitches because at the time of this review, the game has been out for almost 3 years and some of these feel inexcusable. Also all occurred in only 13 hrs of play.

NOW FOR THE DESIGN ISSUES------

A whole third of the game is functionally a walking simulator with invisible walls that could have all been half their length or even shorter. Appreciating the beautiful environments is great, but that could have been done in half the time or less. Walking, "puzzle", and "platforming" sections at a point early on begin to feel as though they are only there to pad out the runtime.

Puzzles aren't worth mentioning because they are not puzzles, they are just "Slow Time Events", with only one way to progress and colorful cables and lights illustrating every solution. However, even these get confusing in the last third of the game, because established ways of interacting with the game world change without warning or explanation. Keep in mind, you will be spoon-fed constant tool-tips for things you already know, but given no cue, either visually or verbally, when core game mechanincs are handled differently. FOR EXAMPLE, fuseboxes for the first 3/4 of the game require a power source that must be "puzzled out". However, the last few just act as self contained switches with no visual cue to indicate the change, leading players that have chosen to learn from previous sections to waste time searching for a generator that doesn't exist. Another example is invincible enemies, that you have never been able to kill by normal means in previous levels, that suddenly need to be shot an unreasonable amount of times with no indication of taking damage, leading players to assume they are once again invincible, and to reset, believing they are in a softlock.

Honorable complainer mention to enemies with massive health pools that regen each other, with no visual cue, leading to confusion, and a very not fun encounter.

EVEN WITH ALL THESE GRIPES, I believe the game is worth playing when on steep sale, I believe some of these issues would not exist in single player, namely some softlocking and glitching, however, core design issues remain. Overall, considering it's had plenty of time to be patched and is still in an UNSATISFACTORY state, I give this game a solid 6.5/10, 6 if played singleplayer due to fun factor, and was worth the low sale price but certainly not worth MSRP or anything near.

This game largely falls into most open world game tropes, but it does all of them remarkably well. If you like the traditional open world formula even a little, you'll like this game. Not to mention a gripping story, and tense and sometimes genuinely difficult gameplay on the harder difficulties, and I mean that in the best way possible. Strongly recommend.