Recent reviews by << toidi m'i <<

Darksiders I and II storytailing: Horsmans of Doom interacting with other anient beings to achive their goal
Darksiders III storytaling: Some edgy teenager slowly growing up, and somehow every ancient around him (apart from like 2 characters) is also edgy to some digree.

I don't know, if you ketter to teannagers at least make female characters apeling, how is that the only atractive one is 4 armed green-tall-mantis-like. (Male characters are meanwile smashable)

Also it would be good for narative if characters would stay consistent, not like Fury who was tired of doing nothing and then, when Concil called her, her first thoughs was someting along the line of "I hope you are finaly sending me to smack someone's head and not just for chattery". But sudenly, after the small talk with Sloth, she just decided to lazy around and needed a words of encoragment from her Watcher to not abandon her misson. Or also Fury alwais talking watcher to shut up and be silent, yet for some reason letting him talk and listening him half of the time even when she herself knows the drill and/or Watcher is just doing pointless edgy remarks. Or Fury disgusted by the ideal of interacting with humans yet istead of just smacking them with teleport-artifact she talks with them, explaing what artifact does and letting them touch it themself. etc.


Well, writing is meh, what about gameplay?
This part of the series decided to lean more into slow souls-likes with introducing non-cancelable by dodge parts on some attacks, despite still occasionally remembering that it's slasher abd droping on you 7+ enemies who will can heart you quite hefty while you are stunned by your own atacks. Which is quite a strange decision if you ask me. Tho, not really bad. But the bad part of it is that there is mimal number of different combo chains (basicly 3) which is honestly horible for slasher, not to mention that there is quite a number of "bullet-sponges". Another bad thing is that difference between secondary weapons is honestly neglageble (apart from hammer, who can be usefull for knockback (if we won't count like 50% mobs that can't be killed by gravity becouse they build(coded)differently and has their on invisible walls).
Tho despite this, by my opinion, problematic combat, fights managing to not being a complite slog becouse animations of Fury is quite fluid and deceptivly fast. Not to mention that perfect dodge from Darksiders II now is not a risk for no benefit, but basicly an essential part of combat interupting almost all enemy chains, doing significant dmg. And with limitation of one dodge, you won't probably won't be spaming it like before, but being thoughtfull about timings. So esentialy i liked combat in this part much more than in 2nd, but still legues below than 1st.

World design is quite interesting being DS1-like, but sadly you have TP since 1st minute of the game, so even if you see all those conection you unlikly to have a cohirent map in your mind after complition of the game and remeber how to get from place A to place B if they are slightly apart from eachother.

Level design is with a lot of small branching path which might be interesting to exlore, if not for the fact that 60% of them are opened after backtracking.
Sadly puzzles are pretty much devolved into "put square into square hole"(slight exagaretion) , but now you have a tad-bit more resembles of plaforming.

So overall: Quite bad writing, baraly passible combat, level design overloaded with backtracking, no more interesting puzzles (almost), but more "exploring". 6/10; won't recomend.

damn i'm slippy i typed even more momobo-jambo than before

First of all, to play this game, you must go into your graphics card settings and set fps cap on this game. Otherwise it won't work (Just toggling Vsync in game settings doesn't help depending on PC specs). Well, once I played a game that required me to set Windows settings into a foreign language. Otherwise it won't function, so it wasn't that big of a deal for me personally.

So let's start the review itself:

I played and quite enjoyed the 1st part of this series, even tho it was morally old in a lot of aspects (Well, both of them are morally old). I especially loved the puzzles, which manage to both wrench your head and at the same time be quite simple.

As for the 2nd game, it still has such puzzles, but it didn't give me the same "umpf" as in the first product, tho i'm not sure if the puzzles themselves are the problem.

The combat, unlike in the first game, has no blocking, so you have no decision-making during the fight depending on the enemies you are fighting against. Such as: can you destroy him with parries, or are you better off dodging because his chain won't get interrupted by your parries/he has unblockable attacks? Now you just dodge. But hey, there is a new addition: that dodge now can be "perfect," which will launch counter attack. And here is a funny part: you can't choose your dodge direction if you want to do that "perfect" dodge; otherwise, it won't count, so you will always dodge backwards.

And that "perfect" dodge is bad in many aspects at the same time.
a) You are killing the whole fight momentum by using it and being forced to dodge back to the enemy afterwards.
b) The dmg is quite laughable for such strict timing.
c) Not all mobs are stunnable, and the only mob on which you can really benefit from it is enraged Stalker, but if you fail the timing, you will get chained on half of your hp, and there better be no mobs around, or you can get instantly killed.

Talking about insta-deaths, I honestly don't understand if it is a bug that some instances of dmg counts twice or if it is intended that some mobs just rock your ♥♥♥♥ and can one-shot you if two mobs decide to attack you at the same time and you fail to dodge, especially considering the fact that it happens in the first world, then you suddenly get more chill mobs for like 1/3 of a game.

Personally, I think that your moveset is also dipped in quality compared to the first game, where I quite frequently juggled enemies midair or used secondary weapons because they are more handy in this particular fight environment. Now I felt no incentive to leave the ground at all, and secondary weapons are just there to get more overall dps/handy passives like Arachna's Fang.

And the combat, which I have so many issues with, is like 90% of the game.

Well, if we won't count the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ collectibles they introduced in this game, which are, by the way, affecting your characters quite significantly, doubling your crit chance and dmg, giving you extra skill points, hp and mana. They are not detrimental, but it is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ annoying to lick every ceiling/box/corner because they can be there, especially it's funny for "Stones", which you need to shoot. Usually they make sounds but can be placed so far out of reach that you won't hear them, so you need to scan every room you are in, every outer edge of the map and do the favorite gamer's activity of "looking up" because they can be on that random background building's roof.

Also, one in-game place called "The Crucible," which is somewhy accessible in usual NG, where on last waves every mob one-shots you. And furthermore, you won't even complete it because the actual last waves unlock only when you lvlup a bit in NG+. And funnily enough, you will still be obliterated there if you play it as soon as it unlocks, and you won't max out your lvl beforehand. But when you actually max your lvl you need to play all waves from 1 to 100 in one sitting, while only lvls from 75 pose any threat to you. If you won't do it, you won't unlock the final boss of this mode.

Honestly, such a slog. The first game was already poking you with rough edges, but this one is thrice as long, has poorer combat, and has many more bugs (My weapons have broken, and so my crit chance became 100%. I was crashing when I did too much dmg at once, so I had to stop using my skills. I had to change my save file parameters in the hex editor to complete one quest. In zone X some "doors" weren't open despite it factually being open (As I read in a discussion about this game; Aparenly, if I were to use the manual saving feature in such instances, my save file would become uncompletable and I could just delete it. Thankfully, I just quited out without manually saving. And more bugs I can't recall now))

Gud

Bad balancing.

Basicly 50% time (excluded bosses) will be spent into DS2-like ganks.
Sometimes game just thrown on you Throne Defenders (Dark Souls 2) but with opressive moveset, range-one shot attacks with lingering hitboxes. But, hey, you have a free companion which can destract one of them, exept the fact that enemy which is "busy" with your campanion can re-agro just for fun and throw into you range atack dealing 80%+ of your health without any sound cues! I hope you was full and didn't get chain-stunned into other mob attack.
Talking about chain-stunnes, even tho game gives you a "focus" mode witch you can get bonus stance, but even in heaviest armor in some ganks you can get chain-stunned on 6-8 hits and die from full hp (In other ganks you will be dead chain-stuned in two hits lol)

None of like 10 aspects affecting your block are explained by game (And i'm pretty sure Devs didn't intend you to block >10% of the game lol. Afterall there are oneshot-unblockables which you have only 100ms window to dodge becouse you can't dodge untill your block-exiting animation will end)
Almost no sound cues, including on one-shot attacks.
Parry exist in this game only becouse other souls-like games have it and surves almost no purpose here.

Some bosses telegrapth are ***
Camera on MOST bosses locks on into middle-ish of boss while his arms with which he telegrapths attacks are barely visible. (I remind you about no sound cues and *** telegrapths btw)
Bosses themself can range from "You have to try to get hitted, becouse my hitboxes are above player" to "I never stop attacking, also do it in 270 degree radius and debuff you with extrenly punishing status efect, also i have one-shots/attacks dealing >80% of your health. And you need to heal with your slo-o-o-ow heal 3 times to get back to full hp after one of failed dodges (And this ONE boss has 3+ more "problems" i didn't type)".

Questinable progression (passives/actives uncloking) which doesn't give you exect numbers, so you can easily waste time/curency on useless ones. Or play on "Class" with *** stats which can barely weild armor and can't use 90% of esential combat-related actives.

Music is not that bad but as generic/bland as it can be. Meh

Story is with sour taste of sugary-fairy-tail with everybody instanly befranding eachother. But actualy not bad in it's core, and "feeded" to the player in quite well-spaced way. (assuming you are walking-through memories, and even without them it's decent-ish)
The level-designer tho, was the only one person who did his job throughly. All location are relativly-interesting to go through.

Отличная игра, поиграли с моими двумя друзьями(мужчинами)

Pink panties