Recent reviews by silverhonkey

I'm one of those patient gamers, and I've waited to play this game a while.

I had been a PlayStation console gamer for pretty much my whole life, owning PSX-PS4, but I didn't really like all the nickel-and-diming happening across the PS4/5 ecosystem (repurchasing games, constant remasters, paying for upgrades, etc.) so I was finding it easier to hesitate on PS-console purchases for as it was.

When the Nvidia leak a few years back insinuated some PS-exclusives might be coming to Steam/PC, I opted to just bide my time, and I feel like that has more or less worked out. I've played Horizon FW, GoW Ragnarok, and now GoT here on PC.

When it released, I remember all the internet raging about how awesome this game was and that it got shafted in the Game Awards and all that.

I am at time of writing about 24 hours in. I've spent most of my time exploring the first island section, it's at 17/24 zones freed, and have just unlocked the 2nd island section. I have a fair amount of skills unlocked including all of the stances and my katana has one last upgrade left.

The game is very pretty and atmospheric, and it runs well even on my mid-grade setup so kudos to Nixxes for the port.

Story is alright, about what you would expect from a samurai, but nothing really intriguing to me so far.

I am however, astounded at how lack-luster the overall gameplay comes across.

This game came out:
1 year after Sekiro
2 years after God of War
3 years after Horizon: Zero Dawn
5 years after Batman: Arkham Knight

I get that the above games can't ever be 1-to-1 comparisons to GoT, but for a game that was supposed to be a Game of the Year contender, I'm just so......utterly underwhelmed.

Combat is very simplistic, and upgrades/unlocks haven't changed that feeling much.
You have upgrades focused on stealth, but they have largely felt pointless so far, since you can really just tank whole camps if you want to, the enemy AI is not much challenge and there are few instances where it's actually risky, the game in fact seems to encourage head-on fighting. There are plenty of charms that heal you, so I've kept the Traveler's uniform on basically the whole time, better armor not needed. I'm seeing hints of increasing challenge, some enemy types with a little more variation are popping up, but it's nowhere near enough to be engaging.

There is one difficulty higher than my current setting, so I suppose I could do that for more of a challenge, but it's seems to be a 1-hit = DEATH mode. That sounds far more annoying than challenging, and I'm not feeling that attached to the game as it is. Feels like they really needed another mode somewhere in between insta-death and walk-in-the-park.

I want to reiterate, I do appreciate the aesthetic and atmosphere, including nods to Kurosawa, but as I've played I just keep wondering why it was so over-hyped.

If you like open-world exploration and scavenging with a bit of combat, it's a decent game, but there are many more that are better and generally cheaper.

Maybe I'll change my mind some if I keep playing, but I'm not betting on it.

I'm like 50 hrs in and f***ing Ubisoft Connect keeps "failing to synchronize".
Most of the time it starts after a few attempts, but now I'm at like 20 attempts and it won't start.
I don't give a f*** if you aren't synchronized, start the game I paid for.

***Update***
Definitely irritated with the Ubisoft launcher, but found that I can set the launcher to offline mode, which will allow the game to boot without failing.

I like the game, but I'll still leave the review as is because it was Ubisoft's choice to be annoying.