dakenzi-84104 Reviews

Money Heist (2017–2021)

Watch first 2 seasons only, and then don't watch rest.

[8/10 · 28 August 2021]

First 2 seasons were good, and it had a pretty cool ending.

But then Season 3 & 4 happened... Just no... Writers totally butchered the show...

Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011 Video Game)

Classic

[9/10 · 31 August 2020]

Amazing game that gives you tons of freedom to how you approach level - Sneak around? Hack robots? Shoot everything up? Knock everybody down? Non-lethal playthrough? All of this is available to you with tons of interesting side-quests!

Honestly at this point it it is a cult classic alongside Vampire Masquerade. It's essentially Cyberpunk before Cyberpunk 2077. Hoping more people become aware of this series because it's one of my personal favorites! :)

Elex (2017 Video Game)

Fun & unique RPG experience with clunky combat

[6/10 · 25 August 2020]

Cons:

• Factions are too far away from each other - this is a problem because your introductory faction is on the edge of the map and if you do not like it you have to either walk a LONG WAY to reach another faction while bypassing monsters that can one shot you
• No vehicles/horses/mounts - wouldn't be a problem if the map wasn't so big. You are essentially forced to fast travel
• Copy-Pasted Converters (dungeon-like areas) - Converters are something closest to the dungeons that this game has, and through the journey you have to disable 5 Converters which are literally Copy-pasted which is a shame because this was a potential for game to break away from open-world and introduce some puzzle-like linear areas
• Stamina bar depletes to fast in beginning of the game
• Light attacks are too slow / use stamina / no way to upgrade attack speed in skills
• Bows feel like guns - in this game you shoot arrows by just pressing a left-click instead of holding it to draw the bow and releasing it to shoot the bow, which is just bad considering that you have guns which (are really good) in this game
• Backstory told through boring cutscenes - Main character is Ex-Alb Commander that actually had very interesting story, but it is told in game either way too late, or in "flashback" cutscene of two people standing in place and talking. Would much rather prefer if game threw me in a linear playable area where I would be able to control my character and complete mission as Alb commander (similar to how Ciri's story in Witcher 3 is told)
• No flashlight - this one feels weird as you have robot companion that has flashlight, but you as character can only use some "magnesium torch" which emmits very dim light in small cirlce around you (instead of direct light beam like flashlight would)
• Lack of enemy variety - visually you have a lot of variety, but their attack patterns and behaviors lead them to a feeling like you are fighting the same 4-5 enemies through entire game

Pros:

• Jetpack (vertical exploration)
• Beautiful and unique atmosphere and world
• Very good side-quests
• Ability to recruit companions + modify your own camp :)
• Freedom to do quests in multiple ways + you can kill almost all NPCs if you want
• Choices matter (whatever choice you take impacts the game in one way or the other)
• Living world - guards patrol area + have shifts (there are night guards who sleep during day, and vice versa), travelings merchants travel with bodyguards. Animals will fight each other over territory...
• Animals you kill won't respawn (ex. if you kill area guarded by 5 raptors, either a new animal/monster will take it's place or there won't be anybody there)
• Day night schedule + you can interact with world (sleep in beds, sit in chairs...)
• GUNS - I generally don't like guns in RPGs, but Elex is an exception as they are my favorite way to fight in this game. All guns have 3 different firing modes and they just feel great, especially if you combine them with Jetpack or some of the spells you get from Clerics
• Sunglasses - they are essentially like Witcher sense - provide a way to highlight collectable items so that you won't miss loot which is pretty cool
• No UI that pauses game - when you open map it's actually an holographic implant that your character has on his arm and time isn't paused when you use it (some NPCs might even comment "hey what are you doing with that technology?" which is pretty immersive and cool)

Summary Elex is unique "old-school" RPG experience which had some very good and interesting ideas but was somewhat ruined by the way it told main character's backstory and frustrating (for the wrong reason) early game causing some people to drop it after few hours of playtime, but if you stick with it, watch few tutorials on where not to go in early game, what quests to save for later etc. (essentially how to survive for first 5-10 hours) you will have a great time! 😊

It's NOT a game for those with no patience - if you want to be able to kill stuff and feel great from the beginning then skip this game, as you WILL be essentially useless for the first 10-15 hours and will have to either leave most of your killing to your companions or try and finish quests in non-lethal way!

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015 Video Game)

Magical experience - It truly makes you feel like a Witcher

[10/10 · 14 August 2020]

Pros:

• Beautiful world, with lots of interesting places to explore
• Side-quests are all well written and just as interesting as main quests
• Even random loot that you find has a story behind it (whether it be by notes that the deceased carries, or just by surrounding scene)
• Almost nothing feel copy-pasted, and there are no NPCs who just stand around doing nothing, they are either talking or working on something. Kids are running around playing, singing songs, which leads to a feeling of the world being truly ALIVE
• Your actions impact the world around you - for example once you clear an area full of monsters you will have villagers inhabit it and restore it again
• Dynamic unpredictable weather, one day it will be sunny, another there will be a storm, etc.
• Graphics are absolutely amazing, I had to pause multiple times (and still am) to stop and just take it all in (with optional screenshots to remember the moment)
• Additionally to the "standard" side-quests, there are also Witcher Contracts that are posted on the boards in various villages with whose holders you can haggle for a price that you will be paid for slaying monsters
• Hunting monster is focused on preparations, you can see in Bestiary the type of monster and it's weakness (ex. specific oil, spell, potion, etc.) so that you can prepare yourself for it
• Combat feels great, you can side-step, fast attack, strong attack, roll, cast protective/defensive spells, etc.
• Riding a Horse feels very fluent and you can also ride boats and swim/dive
• You can destroy parts of the world (ex. doors, barricades) with a force-like spell, and burn candlesticks and similar with fire spell which is pretty cool
• Armor and weapons look great - your character will look cool no matter what combination you have
• Your hair and beard grow over time (you can trim it)
• Wolves in nature hunt smaller animals like rabbits and deers, so nature truly feels like an actual nature (if you kill alot of wolves, there will be more deers/rabbits in that area in future)
• There is a card game called Gwent, and it is my favorite card game I have ever played in my life, it is so good that I've spent first 2 hours in Witcher 3 just playing Gwent in the inn, and CD Projekt created a stand-alone game based on user requests
• Blood and gore - you can decapitate and destroy your enemies in most gruesome ways possible
• It is NOT kids game, has adult themes with serious topics and dilemmas - not all farmers are good, not all monsters are bad, nothing is black and white, but different shades of gray - are you going to chose the lesser evil or none at all?
• High replay value - I will probably play this game until I get 100% complete, make a pause, and do it all over again! :)
• No loading screens except when you fast travel (you can walk in towers/castles/homes), and in the starting loading screen you have "recap" story teller that tells you what happened so far with a cartoon so you are not watching loading animation
• Level scaling turned off by default (unlike in Oblivion and Skyrim for example) - meaning if you come back to starting area enemies are extremely weaker then you which leads to you feeling actual progress, and those insanely strong monsters (like dragons or similar) will destroy you if you try fight them at beginning (as they should since they are supposed to be strongest). Even if you don't enjoy this you can turn it on/off in settings! :)

Cons:

• Ranged (crossbow) option feels weak, and not worth it, as it feels kinda difficult to aim and it does very little base damage (it's only good underwater as you have no other options to fight water monsters called drowners)
• Somewhat distracting minimap - it shows too much information and it is really easy to find yourself just looking at it instead of the beautiful world
• Every quest you get has a pinpoint location on the map, for example, you can get a quest to find some very secret monster, but then you open a map and game is like "oh here is GPS coordinate for it", which can sometimes break an immersion a little bit, but these are all rare cases, as usually, you get a circle of an area like "it's somewhere around here" and then you have to use your Witcher sense to find clues and tracks, so it's a small flaw but had to note it)
• Whatever build you chose you are essentially playing melee character with "extra" (signs, or ocassional crossbow), so in that sense, it doesn't feel like a "true" RPG, personally I don't have a problem with this as Geralt is an already existing character. but some people might see this as a con
• No crime system - essentially you cannot sneak around, if you steal stuff from guards in SOME areas they will attack you, but in most of areas you can just walk into house, loot everything while everybody is inside and can see you, and nobody would even react nor care, which feels very weird

Summary: I highly recommend this game to anybody looking for a great story with alive, beautiful open-world with a "medieval setting". Playing it feels like magic and I can't wait to explore it even further and replay it for years to come! :)

Kinda cringe to say, but it truly makes you feel like a badass Witcher! :D

Gothic (2001 Video Game)

One of the best RPG's ever made

[10/10 · 29 May 2020]

CONS:

• Outdated graphics (understandable since game is from 2001)
• Clunky controls (you get used to it, but feels very weird at start)
• No crafting shortcuts (ex. if you want to grill 50 meat you have to go through "grilling" animation 50 times)
• Navigating through menu can be annoying

PROS:

• Great story
• Absolutely immersive
• Perfect map size (memorable world - quality>quantity approach)
• No annoying cinematics
• You can climb almost everything
• Actions have cons
• Minimal loading screens (there are almost none)
• Fighting animation improves / changes as you improve abilities (ex. at start you hold one handed sword with two hands, but after you learn ability you swing it better, and hold it with one hand)
• You learn abilities through teachers (as opposed through "magical" UI like in other RPG's *cough* skyrim *cough*)
• There are no "invisible walls" that you cannot go through, but instead map boundaries are defined by smartly placed enemies that will kill you (if you cannot kill something it means you are not ready for it, and you should go other way and get stronger)
• Map is an actual physical object that you have to buy, and some dangerous areas are left hidden in map because dangerous beasts live there so person giving you map doesn't know what is there (that section can be "unlocked" when you meet strong NPC who has been there - he draws it on your map)
• One of the only games where NPCs actually help you out a lot, to the point where you actually wish to help them, same applies in reverse, some will bully you around and you will want to take revenge later (oh boy does it feel satisfying)
• All of the side quests are carefully thought out, and are equally interesting as main quest
• You can transform into different beasts making it possible to avoid certain enemies / enter secret locations (great for speedrunners / 2nd playhtough)
• Enemies can get mad at you and stop talking to you
• Actions have consequences!
• Night and day cycle - guards have shifts, their own routine
• You can do parkour (when you unlock "acrobatics" you can dash around and jump from building to building)
• When you craft items you have to physically do whole process (ex. heating sword, hitting it with hammer, dropping it in water, and sharpening it)
• Lockpicking is very interesting - mini memory game
• Chest items are not random but carefully put in depending on how hard it is to reach it
• NPC's react when you walk into their house / pull out weapon in middle of city
• Animals don't attack you immediately, but give you warning first / chance to go back

List goes on and on, but sadly my fingers started to hurt :P It's a game that literally comes once in a 10 years (alongside Gothic 2, which is also amazing)

Would recommend it to anybody! Just note that it is necessary to look for mods online because it is still 2001 game and needs some additional work to make it run on modern system (Windows 7, 8, or 10). Thankfully there are some YouTubers who made this process trivial.

Gothic 3 (2006 Video Game)

Game mostly ruined by poor optimization

[6/10 · 17 May 2020]

Gothic 1 & 2 are my favorite RPG games, and although not as good, Gothic 3 would definitely be deserving sequel to the franchise if it was actually playable. You might hear that it has "no loading screen" as a positive aspect but combine all of the stuttering, lag, random freezes etc. and you will have greater wait time then in a Sims 2 game.

Combat system also feels very unsatisfying since it boils down to spamming single button and stun-locking enemies which in turn makes wild boars one of the most fearsome enemies in the game, and orcs (supposed biggest threat to land) weakest (dare I even say laughable), but it would still be passable if my game would actually not freeze every time I made any "sudden" movements...

That being said there are mods that mostly fix these issues, so if you take your time and install them (Community patch + Content mod + Gothic 3 Clean Up tool) you will have a very good game to play, but without them it's an unplayable mess.

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Cons:

• Poor optimization
• Clunky combat
• Main story in some points is not very logical
• Ending is meh
• Lee vs King confrontation disappointing (considering the build-up that spanned for both Gothic 1 & 2)
• Some areas are empty and feel unfinished - mostly desert area around Ishtar
• Temples are very generic and somewhat unsatisfying once you open them (they are essentially just copy pasted with almost same enemies)
• Lack of enemy variety - what i mean by this is that there are technically different animals look-wise but they have same animations, attack and movement patterns leading them to feeling like a same enemy. Also in some areas like Nordmar it feels like every second enemy is ice-wolf or sabertooth, you might get an Ogre or Shadowbeast here and there but you already seen them in other areas before.

Pros:

• Graphics are very good
• Magic/Mage very fun
• Memorable music
• Freeing settlements unique and interesting
• Your actions while you do quests actually impact the world
• NPC's have shifts / schedules
• Unique crime system that tried to do something different
• Each town has it's own arena