Recent reviews by Faust

Most of this review will be referencing/responding to this blog post for the game:
BLOG

The first point I want to address is the combat functionally resetting each chapter of the game. In the post, Mr. Gower makes it clear that none of your progress in combat skills is actually reset. I don't know if anyone was actually confused about this or just making troll posts about the subject, but the underlying issue isn't people believing that their number is somehow reset to zero; rather it's that you effectively do have to re-train your combat skill and get new gear for each new chapter. The team seems interested in eventually making combat professions interact with each other in meaningful ways, but as for now it feels really bad and jarring. (more on combat in a bit)

The blog then goes on to defend the design philosophy behind these decisions. Somehow the "we must design games for the mythical gamer dad who only has 25 minutes a week to play games" sentiment is still alive and well in MMO communities and I frankly don't get it. Their solution to this non-issue is equally as confusing.

The first couple of talking points in the design section of the blog are probably the biggest point of contention for me and it's a lot to unpack so I'll try my best. In the first paragraph the argument seems to be that players (in other games) who have progressed further than others will have any easier time than those who have not. This is sort of a "no duh" statement because this is meant to be a MMORPG after all and character progression is at the heart of any RPG. Supposedly there is some fear that a player who has a lot of progress will blow through new content when it's released unless they start everyone at square one for each new chapter. I'm also not sure how someone who has no time to play would even make it to chapter 5 considering you have to progress quite linearly through each chapter to unlock the next one. Mr. Gower seems to just be in a bubble and doesn't play other games in the genre he creates games for. I'll cite World of Warcraft as it is obviously the most well-known and popular MMO today. I think it's reasonable to claim that each new expansion in WoW could be abstracted into Brighter Shores chapters system. As it turns out, character power at the start of an expansion is still quite low despite indeed being a much higher level and relatively more powerful than someone who is just starting the game. My point here is that BS isn't actually doing anything different in this regard so it's weird to imply otherwise. If the game were less linear and had more of sandbox nature similar to its ancestry then I think it would make way more sense to do things this way.

The following paragraph goes on to describe level caps in MMOs and how future updates create "dead content" for the game. While it is true that level caps prevent players from continuing to level there are often other sources of progression in these games. Traditionally these would be things like acquiring more wealth, consumables, and powerful gear. I do agree that devs have a tendency to introduce asinine catch-up or acceleration mechanics that can often rub existing players the wrong way. I'm not sure what the solution to that would be, but I do know that it's not what BS is attempting.

This brings me finally to the part which references autoscaling that some games do as opposed to fixed levels and that it isn't desirable because it doesn't feel like there's any progression. I absolutely agree! The unfortunate part is that this game does this sort-of-but-not-really type of autoscaling where instead of one enemy scaling to your level you have a handful of enemies in each chapter that will scale up their own level depending on your own combat level. This might be an okay way to go about it, but all that changes is the higher level version has a different palette and gives a little more xp. As far as I can tell there is no new behavior of strategy to dealing with the beefier versions which ends up making combat feel like the exact same dull turn-based experience from level 1 to level whatever.

The next several paragraphs in the blog are just straight up pretentious corpo-speak and some kind of weird attempt at gaslighting-- I won't be addressing them specifically. Of course feel free to read them yourself and come to your own conclusions.

I want to loop back to combat and some professions in general. Combat, to me, is especially bad in this game. I can accept the turn-based rock-paper-scissors style gameplay. After all I was a long time Runescape player. But this is just....putrid. Even if none of the above issues I outlined existed combat is just a tedious mess. You can hold three weapons and equip eight pieces of armor. You get a one-handed (with shield), a two-handed, and ranged weapon options. Weapons and gear come with random stats so you may end up finding two similar swords, but one does fire element and the other does ice. Enemies have elemental strengths and weaknesses. This is all well and good and I don't have any complaints. You also have access to a gear storage system (which can be accessed remotely with a spell). This leads the player to the conclusion that "oh! I know! I'll collect a wide variety of gear so I can counter specific enemy types!" before realizing that the bank is extremely limited and it's not reasonable to actually create counter sets in this way. And the funniest part of it all is that it doesn't even seem to really matter. For example, I was using a legendary mace with an element strong against what I was fighting while wearing armor with 25% deflection of the element they use to attack and would still find myself dying occasionally because the RNG is just that crazy sometimes. Compounding this issue is the fact that potions are legitimately useless in normal scenarios because while using a potion you are unable to attack and can still be attacked and you'll often find yourself in a worse position that if you hadn't used the potion in the first place. Utterly baffling design choice.

Non-combat professions unfortunately feature a similar issue to the scaling enemies you find in the game. I think fishing is a good example and I really hope you enjoy cycling between three fishing spots for hours upon hours. Similar to the enemies, fishing locations in the early game consist of looping from flounders until you can do eels until you can do blowfish and then back to flounders with an adjective and palette change. Eventually you will unlock passive training which is terrible xp and rewards. That last one isn't too bad since you literally don't even need to be logged into the game to do it, but I felt like mentioning it anyway.

I've spoken at length about my gripes with this game, but before I end this review I'd like to talk about some positives. I absolutely love the graphics in this game. Isometric tile based games are near and dear to my heart and this game pulls off the visuals quite well. Things are easy to identify and if you're ever curious about something you can use the 'sense' spell and the info card to learn more. While none of the music has been particularly memorable, it's still quite good and very fitting for this type of setting. I have encountered zero performance issues and while that may be unsurprising given the graphical style I still value such a thing highly. Quests are the clear highlight of this game and they really do shine. Be it uncovering a hidden crime ring or finding a long-lost family treasure the quests are engaging, intelligent, and often times humorous. The issues I addressed seem fundamental, but my hope is that they can be fixed or future content makes it all make sense. I'd love to come back to this game and see it thriving in a much better state. For now though I absolutely cannot recommend this game.

Void Intercept Battles are pretty much the only thing about this game that isn't completely mediocre. 90% of your gameplay is going to be running out of ammo trying to kill the swarms of bullet sponge enemies that get thrown at you.

Very little mission variety and all boss/mini-boss style enemies have the same exact gameplay loop of "damage down a segmented health bar, invuln phase, repeat" and sometimes they like to drag the fight on even longer by throwing even more random invuln mechanics at will.

Upgrade systems are needlessly convoluted and you often have to go through menu hell to do just about anything in the game. The inventory system has more slots by default than in the beta, but you'll still be clearing your inventory of trash every 5-10 minutes or so.

You are also probably going to feel very weak while progressing the story content unless you over level the content by a fair margin. Smaller enemies still die relatively quickly, but elites and some of the tankier mobs are going to get some shots off (with some of the most absurd tracking I've ever seen: it literally seems like enemies will miss you by a mile or just perfectly lock on with no in-between) and if even a couple of those attacks connect say goodbye to your shields and likely a large portion of your health. My favorite are the enemies that do massive damage as well as freezing you in place for several seconds. Special mention to the kamikaze style enemies that WILL two hit you if they get within 10 meters of you. They wouldn't be as bad but they like to spawn with meat shields in front of them and you'll often find yourself reloading right as you finally notice they're close.

I found the beta to be much more fair with the enemy HP and damage modifiers so I'm guessing Nexon did a sneaky here and buffed enemies so that you'll feel weak and that you need to pay for boosters to get an edge. Speaking of which, I'm sure no one will be surprised that the cash shop is horrendous. Ultimate Descendant bundles are going to run you $100 EACH. Limited skins are going to cost $40-50 depending on how you purchase their caliber bundles. The battle pass is only $10 but it's also extremely boring, and won't pay for itself if you complete the season unlike Fortnite for example. Completing the battle pass will give you enough currency for a SINGLE Descendant and only a basic one that can be gotten fairly early regardless.

If you've read this far and still aren't deterred then by all means play this game. If you're into third-person shooters it's not straight up bad and the core gameplay can probably hold your attention for a few hours at a time. I just can't personally recommend this game to anyone as it's perhaps one of the most mediocre gaming experiences I've had this year and possibly the last couple of years.

Recently decided to try this game again after several years and was not at all pleased to run into the BattleEye install loop bug that appears to be very common. After several hours of troubleshooting I still could not even get into my own solo sever with BE disabled. I doubt this will ever be fixed. DO NOT buy this game at any price.

Pros - I recorded footage of monsters
~
~
~
~
~
Cons - *I recorded footage of monsters*

The Good:
-nailed the PS1 aesthetic
-sound design is terrifying
-puzzles are reminiscent of Silent Hill and Resident Evil
-different endings

The Bad:
-inventory is effectively two spaces due to the lighter being required
-Aka Manto's spawn system makes no logical sense and appears to be bugged or otherwise broken
-random CTD that I can't reproduce; it just sorta happens sometimes

Overall, this is a promising game marred by some pretty buggy AI. It's a fairly simple game with a barebones, but acceptable plot which is discovered via scattered tape recorders. The tone and aesthetics are fantastic. The player is forced into some claustrophobic situations and you're on edge more or less the entire time.

However, the game quickly becomes very frustrating due to the way Aka Manto interacts with the player. It's clear to me that there should be a logic to the way it tracks and finds the player. There are red portals that spawn on random walls at random times and even floating Noh masks that appear to cause Aka Manto to rush to your location.

None of this matters. Aka Manto knows where you are at all times-- regardless of if you hide or avoid being discovered by the masks. Sometimes it literally spawns directly in front or behind you to instantly get in a cheap hit and whack jump scare. I've checked the discussions page and seen some other people with the same experience and the devs seem to be too busy working on new games to fix their old ones.

This unfortunately leaves me with no choice but to not recommend this game in its current state unless you really need some indie neo-retro style horror games in your life as they are admittedly very cheap to obtain.