Recent reviews by Dark3nedDragon

Why are you still reading this review, just buy the season pass already.

A game that only gets better the more you play it.

Kinda sad that it wasn't a commercial success, it is definitely deserving of a critical one.

You can pick up the Legendary Edition on deep discount, although you might have to Google to see what the best price is at the moment.

Actually insane.

I came back 7 years later after playing Shattered Space to ensure I wrote a negative review for this one.

Some people are comparing it to Dawnguard, but fail to realize that Dawnguard had some awesome content drawn from their Game Jam, which revealed the Vampire Lord as something a part of the team had put together, and a bunch of other things.

We had a HUGE Vampire Rework, they went from looking lame to looking pretty cool, ton of powers, awesome eye effects (especially for the time), AND then we also got the Vampire Lord. What is there more to say, the theme of the expansion was insane, it felt awesome, the Powers and Abilities you gained were great, and the story was pretty decent.

Meanwhile for Shattered Space, I will say that I'm only 2.7 hours in, I've dealt with a frustrating number of bugs (many of which caused by collision issues with objects, a bethesda staple). The environments are pretty nice looking, the dialogue (for the main sections) is very well paced and delivered.

The combat is still lame though, everything either dies instantly or is a bullet sponge. I'm apparently only level 41 when I started, I thought i was higher (I completed most of the content in the game), all of the enemies die instantly. The DLC is 'strongly' recommended for 35+, everything dies instantly to me though on the game's normal settings.

Having recently played Space Marine 2, I can honestly say that you CAN make an engaging shooter. Starfield just isn't one.

This negative review is not really based on the DLC itself, from what I've seen so far it is okay, but it can't hold my interest for more than a few hours which is somewhat concerning. I find myself wanting to go back and mod Skyrim again instead.

The gunplay is still both better and worse than Fallout 4's, which is quite strange. Like it feels somehow more fluid, but less impactful and enjoyable.

TL;DR if you didn't like Starfield you probably won't like this either. I mean honestly so far it feels kinda like if they had just done Dawnguard, but no rework for Vampires (or Vampire Lords), and then replaced the Dawnguard with the Riften Town Guards.

Either the best expansion, or tied with Tours and Tournaments.

Hard to say to be honest, a VERY solid expansion to the game.

For an idea of what you can do, I started off as a Norse Wanderer with nothing, roamed around Europe for a bit, and went to Spain for a while. Converted to Ash'arism, then reformed into a new religion of my own with custom tenets (including Christian Syncreticism and Fundamentalists, which makes it possible to ally with Christian and Islamic Rulers, and also still revoke Titles).

Ended up invading Brittany with my massive army, then took out England itself. Did all of that in one life, took Scotland too for good measure. Ended up forming the Empire of Brittania not too many years later, and have reformed into the new Government Type, Administrative.

You can appoint governors, still have an Estate you can build up, etc.

They will die in the next 7 minutes.
-Sadako

You can chase them into TVs, teleport to the TV while your power bar is full to build up stacks, and then eventually stare them to death.

Really makes you feel like a Space Marine.

First impressions of the DLC were quite poor. Trying to go for Dracula's Adept is probably the most painful out of all of them (I would know as I have all of them).

His kit is not very intuitive, and does a poor job giving you an idea of what to do.

So I will do so instead:

Vampire Form
-You can fire a line of fire pillars that last for a moment after casting (which people CAN get caught in if they try to double back through them)
-Slow ability to let off and aim, can go over some* small obstacles, through windows, you can sometimes curve it to clip through terrain
-Has many, many hitbox glitches

You can use this to catch people stepping, like say at killer shack, act as you are going through the door (while looking at them through the window), then immediately charge it as you step out of sight, and double back, many people will have doubled back with you and can be blasted if you time it right. You should also preemptively prepare this if you know the person will drop the pallet.

Wolf Form
-Faster than Vampire Form, for real this time unlike PTB
-Scent orbs give you haste, you can see these through walls, floors, and ceilings
-The lunging bite is a 2 part combo, you can now bounce it off things to go around corners (unlike PTB)
-M2 can break pallets

Bat Form
-Seems to block aura reads inconsistently, not sure if that's a bug or intended
-You can't see survivors, but you can hear them, generators, see scratchmarks and blood
-Usually a good idea to use this to cross the map quickly, especially at the start of the match
-The teleport is honestly useless in most chases, however it can help you once you've hooked someone, i.e. you can teleport from basement to some loops that would take you 10-15 seconds to get to otherwise

His perks are horrible, the adept will suck. Otherwise I'd recommend something your standard 1-2 slowdown, and a generic chase ender. I was running Corrupt Intervention, Ruin, Undying, and Dissolution, to help patch up his weak points.

Dracula is very, very weak if he has no pressure. If everyone is healthy you're in for a bad time. If everyone is wounded, he's an oppressive monster. When someone decides to unhook, you can line up the fire to hit both every time. When people try to come up stairs, say from basement, you can bulldoze their team with the fire.

No Way Out + Blood Warden with the Iri Alucard's Shield is pretty brutal. You can open the gate, hook someone up right next to it, and catch people as they are about to 'escape'. The numerous fire pillars this spawns got me 4 downs in a single match.

Unfortunately, it is inferior in all respects to previous expansions, aside from graphics, which have seen a noticeable improvement (although not quite as much as originally touted, perhaps due to the wide array of machines being incapable of supporting it?).

From a job-standpoint, little has been added on most* of the jobs, aside from those that received reworks. Pictomancer is very flashy, I like that part a lot, but it is waaaaaaaaay too simple to play to the point of being uninteresting. Viper on launch was more difficult to play, they made changes to make it easier, now I can't really find it enjoyable.

As many have said, the MSQ is bad. It takes forever to get started, basically erases most key characters from the game, as they have little to no dialogue. It feels bland and uninteresting through most of it.

I'm nearing the end of the MSQ, close to finishing it (although a DDOS attack interfered), and to be honest I find the majority of it predictable and boring. Not everything needs to be original, but there's a clash or mismatch of themes in some areas that are pretty stark. Certain zones (trust me, you'll know EXACTLY what I mean) are like, what is this doing here, and why?!

Like comparing it to Heavensward, which has great thematic consistency almost through to the end, or Stormblood which had a bit of ridicule for the split between the two areas, or Shadowbringers, again another great example of CONSISTENT themes throughout, it is easy to see the issue.

Endwalker makes many of the same mistakes, and was panned for them specifically. They decided to double down?

I guess I should be thankful I haven't ran into any Loporrits yet.