Recent reviews by cheerie

Frustrating. I love puzzle games and I gave up after 2 hours on this one. Bad controls that make every puzzle take twice as long as necessary. Even when you know exactly what to do, it still takes usually several tries to complete a puzzle because the puzzle piece does not move like it should - gets stuck etc.

I wanted to buy all 3 games, but after trying the first one, I will skip the others. There are better puzzle games out there.

Absolutely infuriating experience. "Normal" difficulty is actually very hard if you want to play as pacifist. This is working as intended, apparently, since you - the player - should feel the same temptation as the main character, because the fastest way to level up is to kill people. But the xp gain is absolutely ridiculous if you do a pacifist run.

Positives:
+ story
+ characters
+ voice acting
+ setting/theme/atmoshpere

Negatives:
- if you play as pacifist, preprare yourself for endless frustrations while being repeatedly killed in 2 hits from enemies, while your hits deal minimal damage
- autosave and no manual saving, bad design in so many ways - oh, you defeated 4 groups of enemies and got killed by the 5th group? Sure would be a shame if you had to go back and and defeat all the groups again (just to fail on the 5th group another time), instead of having to repeat just the last battle
- autosave in boss fights - the game very "conveniently" remembers all the ammo and serums you used up, so if you fail a fight, you have to repeat it WITHOUT any of the items you used the first time. The game pretends it is loading from last saved point, except it punishes you so severly you have an even lower chance of winning another round than the first time
- after every death there is a loooong loading screen and a respawning animation, which is unskippable. The first few times you see it, it is pretty cool, but after a while you will wish it was not a thing, it just makes you wait longer to repeat a sequence
- every. single. enemy is like 6-10 levels above you, from the start to the end. Always during pacifist, I was never even on the same level as my enemies because of ridiculous XP gain for pacifists
- ridiculous XP gain system - same xp for defeating all enemies, regardless of type or level. Oh, you defeated a level 32 enemy? It sure would be a shame if you received the same XP as for killing a level 16 enemy, which is the same xp as killing a level 6 enemy...
- if you are wondering, it is 5 XP per enemy killed. For comparism, it is from 1000-6000 XP per one citizen killed (drinking blood)
- another way to get XP is to cure sick people - this seems like a cool concept, except they get infected at random every time you level up and the game has no fast travel - so very time you level up, you might have to travel ALL OVER THE MAP just to cure the people who got sick because you chose to actually use your hard-earned XP. At first this is fine and interesting, later it is just boring and annoying
- the map is badly designed - there are COUNTLESS doors in buildings, or worse, between districts, which can only be opened from one side. This means that if the game tells you "Go to districs X to complete action Y", you might spend quite some time looking for a way into the district, because 80 % of the ways from on district to another cannot be opened from the side you're on - you have to find the one opened path, get inside the district and then run around to open all the doors that say "This door cannot be opened from this side"
- the boss fights are also just weird, because again, you spend maybe 30 minutes or more, repeating a hard boss fight, and then the game rewards you less XP for this difficult challenge than for killing one citizen
- XP is difficult to get and it is necessary to spend it to increase the amount of ammo and medicine you can carry. WHY??? why should you spend hours killing enemies, who are way over-leveled compared to you, who give you +5 xp per kill, to be able to carry 1 more bullet? Every other game considers this a costume upgrade to be bought with money, only Vampyr thinks it is a skill
- last but not least, the game presents several pivotal decisions for each pivotal character. Unfortunatelly, the options are sometimes so badly labeled that you end up doing something stupid unknowingly, and you are stuck with that stupid choice because the auto-save functions just works like that.

6/10 for the story and characters, if I had to give points solely on fighting mechanics and level-up system plus the bad map design, it would be maybe 3/10 max.

The remastered version, with thousands of reports of bugs and - even worse - constant crashes, finally got an update in 2022, after 5 years of complete silence from devs/publisher. Was this update released to finally cure the game of its unplayability issues? LOL, of course not, they added a useless 3rd party launcher to make your unplayable game even more unplayable.

I clicked "Ignore this creator" on both publisher and devs pages, I'm done with this company. With so many games available nowadays, I can spend my money with some other company that won't make my gaming experience a hell on purpose. Shame on you!

The remastered version, with thousands of reports of bugs and - even worse - constant crashes, finally got an update in 2022, after 5 years of complete silence from devs/publisher. Was this update released to finally cure the game of its unplayability issues? LOL, of course not, they added a useless 3rd party launcher to make your unplayable game even more unplayable.

I clicked "Ignore this creator" on both publisher and devs pages, I'm done with these companies. With so many games available nowadays, I can spend my money with some other company that won't make my gaming experience a hell on purpose. Shame on you!

8,5/10 - recommended if you enjoy those "bureaucracy" games like Papers, Please or Headliner

4 hours to beat the game, there is a replay value because of multiple endings and multiple playstyles - follow all rules? disregard all rules? doom humanity to total chaos? try to create a distopia on Earth? - all of these are possible playstyles and maybe more.

Great experience for me, even if it was not as stressful as Papers, please where you needed the money to support your family, so breaking rules was a tougher choice than here.

9.5/10

Can't remember when I last played something so refreshingly new. A unique concept for me, just the right touch of dystopia that could be real, the most bizzare humour I have seen in a game in a while, and stressful gameplay!

Can't wait for the last chapter to be released, this game kept me coming back for more. 8 hours on record so far, on normal difficulty, including watching the archive stuff after each broadcast because the story is actually very interesting and I wanted to see the stuff I missed while I was pressing all the buttons like mad.

Definitely recommended for everyone who likes:
-great storylines
-very weird humour
-dystopian games
-Papers, please
-being stressed out while playing videogames
-reloading a whole chapter because they did not like the grade that they got at the end of the day

There is a custome challenge mode after you finish the story, and there are multiple ways to play the game (government lackey, rebelious employee, good parent, strict parent) that probably influence some aspects of the game, I have only explored one journey so far and am curious to find out what changes if I follow a different moral compass. I'll keep my eye on this one, the final part can't come soon enough!

bought on sale for 6€. Had 16,5 hours of fun. Fully explored 2/3 districts, not interested to explore the third sadly. The game is fun at the start, but after I bought all the equipment + the van + the hideout, I lost interest when there is nothing more to spend the money on. But no regrets, I got my money's worth. A unique concept for me, well worth the money

6/10. Buy at a huge discount, during a big sale.

+ setting (vast, beautiful, can spend hours in)
+ some of the story
+ most of the characters are well written
+ maybe (maybe) the combat system, but it's on thin ice
+ mods are available to cure the game of the most annoying issues, like the inventory system or the herbalism animation

- timed quests; you either research which ones those time-sensitive ones are (which breaks immersion) OR you fail some of them because you did not know. The best approach is to only have 1 or 2 side quests active, run around the whole map trying to complete it, then pick up another quest and VISIT THE SAME PLACES again. You could easily complete several quests in one place like Sassau but because you can't be sure which ones will fail automatically after a given period, you take on just one quest to be safe. Sometimes there is an indication or it's obvious that it's time-sensitive (the NPC that gives you quest tells you so) which is tolerable but sometimes it just fails randomly out of the blue
- unfinished (and no, I don't consider it a cliffhanger, just bad management/writing/whatever - the main quest is NEVER completed in this game, you gotta wait for an imaginary game that will take years to develop to complete the MAIN PLOT of the game you have just paid your hard-earned money for)
- the main plot is actually pretty short, everything else is a filler
- some of the filler side quests are badly scripted (every quest has multiple sub-objectives and if you complete them in an order that was not intended by the devs, which is not indicated in ANY way, you will get a non-sensical and unsatisfying mess of a quest - your character already knows information he has not found out yet very very often)
- very confusing scripting in some parts. You're told to go from A to B and talk to a guy. You get there and the guy is asleep in the middle of the day. So you wait until next morning. Still asleep. Wait till midday. Asleep. Scripted to be awake for 1 hour a day, go figure out which hour that is and enjoy that detective work
- the combat is actually not that good. If your opponent looks well armed and well armored, you'd better just defend and never attack. Why? Because well armored enemies know how to riposte and if they succeed at ripostes 3 times in a row, you're finished. Just don't attack them, only wait for them to attack and do your own ripostes to take them out. That's boring and counter-intuitive, I don't want to defend only
- GRIND. grind some more. And then continue grinding. The game is pretty much just "run for your life" until you get some skills. To get skills, you need hours of grinding and even then the game can screw you over in combat
- some animations in combat just screw you over instantly. 2 enemies are attacking you, you try not to get flanked so you position yourself head on to them both. One attacks, you riposte and the riposte animation is the "position swap" so now as a reward for your perfect riposte skills you get yourself positioned with your back to one of the enemies, facing just the one enemy you have completed a riposte against - and the other enemy is free to stab you in the back
- the time-passing clock animation is annoying. If you need to skip a lot of time, especially towards the end of the game, you will spend a lot of time just looking at the same boring animation of a clock slowly turning
- hard side quests and battles, very easy combat in all main quests (I died plenty in the open world, but never once in a main mission)


The whole time I was playing I wished that at the end I could post a "neutral" review, thinking some aspects of the game are INCREDIBLY good and some are just so bad it will make you want to quit (and before you hear anybody say "just learn to do XYZ and you'll be fine", believe me I did. I took time to learn all there is to learn, how to fight, defend, archery, potions all there is to learn - I learned it.). In the end a "neutral" review is not needed, because the fact that there is no satisfying ending was the last straw, so my review is negative. It's not a cliffhanger, it's that the whole campaign you're told your main mission is to kill 2 bad guys and you get to kill NEITHER ONE. Unsatisfying. almost 110 HOURS of my time and I got no ending at all. To be concluded in a game that may or may not ever be made, or made in 5 years.

Edit: Just to further explain: Mass Effect was 3 games long (I mean only the original trilogy). At the end of Mass Effect 1, the story arc was complete but it was very much obvious it's not the end. The "small" enemy that you were fighting throut was defeated in the final battle but you knew the war was far from over. That's a satisfying ending to a game. "Wow, this was so good, I fullfilled my mission but I can see more is yet to come and I can't wait for more missions to appear in Mass Effect 2".

Kingdom Come is not like Mass Effect. The whole time you're told to do this one thing that is your DRIVING FORCE behind everything you do, you have one end goal in mind and then the ending screws you over.

Don't get this, it's bad.

Badly designed story missions, pathetically handled main storyline, repetitive side quests, world designed to be annoying (mostly hills everywhere, and no friction in sight, you'll be falling more often than climbing up), just bad overall. ONLY get this if you're a die-hard fan and can't live without playing it. If you only care about the story but not the gameplay so much? watch it on youtube, you'll have a better experience that way. If you care only about gamplay but not much about the story? Move on, this one's not it, it has nothing to offer to anybody. If you're getting it anyway, keep your expectations extra low and be prepared to be dissapointed anyway. Literally the only part I enjoyed were the party interactions, and again, you can watch that on youtube. What a waste of potential, and what a terrible end of a great saga. Can't believe this won any awards, let alone GOTY.

I actually did like this one. The story was good, voice acting great, music amazing, I liked the driving mechanic okay (except for nonsensical damage model - you barely scratched the car's paint? too bad, you'e gonna get almost the same effect and animation as if you ran into a tree at full speed). Yeah, the stealth is kinda weird, once you get silenced pistol you can exploit the enemies all following the same paths to take them all out, but I still like playing stealthily, moving around and grabbing them from behind, from a different spot everytime. The combat was okay for me, but I used the same pistol and same rifle the whole game so can't really judge how other weapons are. The controls take some time to learn though, the assigned keys are kinda weird (like X for crouch) but re-assigning them is not really worth the hassle, I got used to it a few hours in.

TL;DR: It sorta kinda plays like The Godfather 2 game - take over rackets, eliminate capos, then eliminate underbosses, then eliminate final boss. The end. Just what I was looking for, 8/10