Recent reviews by RJGrayLight

I absolutely recommend this game! It's so much fun! It's a great mix of elements from Souls-like games such as Remnant with the enjoyment and on-the-spot randomisation of rogue-likes! A surprisingly great combination for sure!

Be aware though that it is still in development with lots of changes, both big and small, happening with nearly every update. For example, a weapon that was good at dealing with single-target enemies with high-health was nerfed because the devs would prefer it to be a crowd-controlling AoE weapon despite it's terrible reload speed and splash radius. It's a recent and arguably controversial decision, but one that was made all the same, and certainly not the first of it's kind either.

That said, it's definitely fun to try out all the weapons and spells, leveling them up and eventually developing your own unique playstyle. I'm barely a quarter of the way through the current content myself being at Gnosis 2, but I'm really loving the difficulty of this game and how you have to prioritise when to fight and when to run. I've yet to manage to kill the first witch's disciple though given a streak of bad runs.

And to any players who are struggling with a specific layout of enemies, I highly suggest checking out the Placebo pill, as it can definitely help make runs easier if the layout is more in your favor, such as not having 30 traps right in front of you when you first spawn into the level, which can happen if you're particularly unlucky like I was. lol, but that's half the fun of this game!

At it's current stage of development, it's essentially a flash game with no story or endgame, just a loop to see how high you can score, aka how many rounds you can survive. It's easy to cheese the bosses, is simple in design, and you can buy every in-game item (at time of writing) within just a few deep runs. At this time, it's essentially $1 per hour of gameplay, so if you get it on sale it's an even better deal.

So yeah, I recommend it as it's an enjoyable gameplay loop in a rather unusual setting.

Absolutely! Just remember that this is an XBox360 game, so the graphics, while not up to modern standards, were the best of the best for the console it was made on. That said, the graphics are still top-notch compared to most other games!
Also, make sure to change the build to build743.0 so that nothing is offscreen. There's a bug that is extremely common that cuts off certain screen elements that using this specific build fixes.

The only thing I'd change about this game is the headbobbing. It's pretty bad, especially during the tutorial section, but if you're able to get past that area, the headbobbing gets better. That, or you get used to it so as to barely notice it. xD

Do I recommend this? Yes, but only if you can get it on sale for at least half off.

This is just a Dark Souls clone with a single unique mechanic that essentially gives you a second life before you die and can stun half the enemies. That's it. And that's a serious downgrade from the previous title of the same name that had so, so much more going for it.

The previous Lords of the Fallen game had a compelling story, a clear path of progression, cutscenes with NPCs outside of battle causing them to be memorable, unique and memorable enemies and quests, a unique and highly customisable weapon that could snipe, shotgun, or grenade, abilities that were unique to the class you chose at the beginning of the game, a unique leveling system that let you bank points without spending them or resetting enemies, boss weapons gained by killing the boss in a challenging way, challenge shrines that were a nice break and rewarded you with unique gear, and more that made it unique and fun. Everything that was good about the previous game, is just gone now though. And that's why I don't think it's worth the full AAA price tag.

Bland, forgettable enemies.
Easy to get lost or not know where to go next.
No unique, customisable weapons, just a utility item that gives you a second life, makes certain paths accessible, and helps you stun non-boss enemies for a few seconds.
Leveling system is now exactly the same as dark souls.
Challenge shrines are gone.
NPCs are forgettable and mostly useless once you buy everything from their shops. Some NPCs will actively disappear if you reset enemies, which can lock out their shop, possibly for good.
Game actively rewards you for leaving the Main quest for last and punishes you for progressing the story too quickly.
No unique classes or class abilities making the decision mean something, just a boost to starting stats and gear which is just pointless.
No more boss Weapons or boss challenges.
And what's worse is that the story is nearly non-existent now. There's something going on between the Rhogar and the church and some other faction, I think, and which you side with determines the ending you get, but other than that I haven't the foggiest what's going on here. I don't even know if there is any kind of goal other than to cleanse or not cleanse the 5 beacons!
The sidequests are all so hidden and obscure that even the Devs have had to outright tell players how to find, start, and complete the side quests, which is honestly not something that should need to be don't. Heck, you'll probably start and fail side quests without even realising that you had even found a sidequest.

Again, this game is now just a pale imitation of Dark Souls with only one unique gimmick and nothing else that makes it stand out among the hundreds of other souls-clones out there. They removed all that was good, fun, unique, and enjoyable about the pervious installment and made it into everything I hate about Dark Souls.

Do I recommend it? Sure. But don't pay more than $30 for it. It's not worth it for a clone.

It's a decent game for what it sets out to do, but there are a few bugs and QOL issues that should get addressed. This isn't a finished product and as many other are saying it's more akin to an early access given the number of bugs and issues, not to mention the frequency of updates. (assuming it's still getting updated that is.)

For the devs, here's a list of my suggestions for you to consider. I don't believe that I'm suggesting anything extreme or that would break the realism/immersion of what you're going for, and I do believe everything here is related to a bug or would be a nice QOL update to include.

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1. Where you aim isn't necessarily where you place or pick up from it seems. Great example would be with the crate. Whenever trying to taking something out of it, your cursor will hover directly over the item and the element(s) of said item will show, but when you click to pick it you, you instead grab the entire crate because the name of the vial wasn't showing. Quite annoying.

2. This game is a nightmare for those with ocd or who just like a clean workspace. Seriously, what are we supposed to do with the 100s of beakers and flasks that pile up? At least let us clean the lab to get rid of all the dirt and grime that builds up over time, as well as all the junk and trash that's on the ground when we start the game. That place is a genuine disgusting mess, and even mad scientists can care about cleaning or picking up after themselves.

3. This game needs some means to sort the loot you get that doesn't get reset or ignored after every mission. Especially since everything you get is thrown randomly throughout your storage area after a mission. I believe this could be best rectified with a means to optionally designate specific shelves for specific things. For example, shelf 1 is for all mutagens, shelf 2 is for elixirs, shelf 3 is for elements, etc. That way, if it's not manually set by the player, it'll still go to a random location, and existing sorting methods won't be disrupted by a flask suddenly spawning inside of my beaker.

4. Given how we can drop items on the floor and store things on the bottom shelf, I found myself trying to crouch down on multiple occasions, only to be reminded that I can't crouch in this game! That definitely needs to get added ASAP!

5. You can't reach over mutants to grab something on the other side of them. Not a big deal as one can just walk around it, but it's annoying all the same.

6. Our character has 2 hands, right? You look down and see a second hand and carry the mutants with 2 hands? So why doesn't our character ever use it to hold two items at the same time? I get not wanting players to have a hotbar or anything, but at least let us use our second hand! It would make mixing chemicals SO much easier, better, and arguably more realistic, and would be a great QOL update!

7. Let us change the speed of the combats that occur. Since that's the extent of the action we get, at least give players the option to slow the speed so that we can read what's happening in real time. I get that many will just want to skip past it, and that's what the skip button is for, but let it be readable in the moment without having to pause and hope you didn't miss something important like one of your creations dying or something.

8. There are some intractable objects in the game that have no explanation provided, no tutorial for, and at least I can't figure it out. For example, what's the second tube on each pod for? I get the first tube is for the mutagens, but from what I've tried, you can't place mutagens, elixirs, or elements into that container, so what's the point of it?

9. Certain items are next to impossible to find/see. Great example would be the slot to add chemicals to the stasis pods to "feed" the mutants. It's virtually invisible until you happen to point your cursor at it. Setting an accessibility option in the menu to allow a faint glow around all interactable objects, preferably one that doesn't show through walls like the objective glow does, would go a LONG way and make the game more accessible to those who struggle with that sort of thing.

10. I noticed that from time to time, a mission will give you one or some elixirs that have 4 or more elements on them (normal mode takes away the guesswork). Considering that when you mix 4 or more chemicals together you always create a mutagen, that seems like a bug of some kind.

11. Some visual bugs occur whenever picking up the syringe. You see a ghost image of the syringe on the table where you picked it up from for a brief moment when you begin interacting with the microscope.

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As I said, this is a decent game. I'd personally give it a 4/10 that could be bumped up by two points if the QOL updates and bugs I spoke of got addressed in a timely manner. I would suggest only buying it when it's on sale for $10 or less at this time.

Oh, and PLAY THE DEMO! If you don't like the demo, or get bored with what you're doing in the demo, then this game is not for you. The dev of this game was nice enough to make a demo for players, so make sure to check it out before buying!

2/5 stars from me.
This game isn't bad, but the plot is jarring and lost on me, the map is too big, the grind is real, and there are far, far too many enemies.

The world is so big that you have to fast travel or spend 5 minutes walking through the woods or on the road to a place across the street on the map. Or if you are willing to risk driving, you'll still take forever to get anywhere and only increase your chances of getting attacked since this game goes out of it's way to disincentivise driving. (The roads are actively patrolled where an enemy will pass by at least once a minute, there's active roadblocks preventing progress).

There are so many enemies between locations that I can't avoid any fights when travelling on foot from point a to point b. In five minutes you could face off against 15 enemies, an explosive tanker, a loot truck, a prison escort, and a truck with a machine gun if you travel on the road and encounter just 1 enemy. And that's at 0 Resistance level. At level 1 Resistance, they bring helicopters out to search for you, rocket launchers, water vehicles, and similar out against you. It's brutal and unforgiving, giving no chances to loot or breathe.

And if you take your time, start exploring, go back to areas you previously explored because you unlocked something that will help, or anything of the sort, then you're actively punished by the game with a forced cut scene that will magically teleport you closer to where your main mission is in that area. Needless to say, that's not a good or liked feature in my opinion. Extremely jarring. "You are walking through the apple orchards by yourself, hunting turkeys, deer, and cougars for feathers and pelts to sell, then BAM! Suddenly you're treated as though dead or dying, are dosed with bliss, and getting waterboarded. When the cutscene ends, you're in the middle of a high-stakes action sequences halfway across the map." The fluck?! Not cool!

My experience was completely disjointed, with jarring plot and non-stop action where you can't get a break unless you choose to grind. And even when you're grinding or simply fishing or something, you still can't catch a break because wildlife or enemies will spot and attack you if you stay in one spot for too long. Stealth is a must, and even if you are stealthy and disable all alarms, somehow reinforcements will still arrive.

I give this game 2 of 5 stars.

This game is definitely a fun and enjoyable looter-shooter with high stakes and high-rewards. The crafting and modding to customise your playstyle, the tactics required to survive with your loot despite the elements and various enemies and weathers out there, as well as the burgeoning lore that is hidden just below the surface should you care to read the quest dialogue is definitely enjoyable to say the least. This game definitely fills a specific void in the gaming market and is still growing.

That said.... This latest update, 0.31, for the faction reputation completely broke the game. It was clearly untested for the large part, with broken quests, completely unplayable areas, equipment and mods disappearing or simply not spawning, invisible armor, broken armor, random radiation gain without notice, the list goes on. None of which, mind, was present prior to the update.
There were also a number of significant changes that were not reported in the changelogs or update logs for existing players, such as changing the default field of view to being the most restrictive possible, or changing the ai starting behavior from "shoot if shot at" to "shoot on sight" for most factions despite the lore and logic contradictions.
Even after two hotpatches, v.0.31.20, many game-breaking bugs and controversial lore-breaks still exist.

And none of that is even addressing how imbalanced and broken the reputation system itself, the one concept that this "update" was primarily about, brings to the table. 4-6 rep per daily quest? Being able to complete the game on default modifiers without speed-running or getting to the highest tier for any factions? No dedicated faction gain quests for certain factions? Same default faction gain multiplier on each difficulty level? Losing double digit reputation per 1 forced kill or be killed but having to enter 3 different areas and complete 6 different runs to gain single digit reputation on a fetch-quest?
One might think that the core concept of the update would be fully fleshed out and balanced prior to release, right? Not so in this case.

It's clear that the devs or publishers, unsure of which honestly, wanted to force their player-base to beta-test for them. Let's be clear. That is NOT a good idea and should NOT be condoned or supported. If you want QA testing done, then allow it as an option PRIOR to release. ESPECIALLY if it's going to wipe every players's progress to 0, bring major changes, imbalance and break the entire game, and make controversial adjustments to core mechanics and enemy behavior patterns. If you need to provide an option to revert to the old version via the beta branch for any reason, then that means that your latest "update" should be in that beta branch and not the older version.

I'm not sure why there's a trend for devs/publishers to release beta content as though official content lately, but it's losing studios fans left and right. As clearly evidenced by the latest reviews.

So while I do enjoy this game and think it's a great one to have in your list, given the forced beta-testing of their player-base, the plethora of game-breaking bugs and the major lore contradictions that ruin immersion, I cannot in good faith recommend this game to others until this game is fixed or reverted back to it's old version.

Again, do NOT play this game until this "update" (which again apparently received no QA testing prior to release) has been properly tested and fixed by the people getting paid to do exactly that.

And for the Devs/Publishers who released this "update" and chose to force your player-base to beta-test for you instead of making it an optional beta for your players to willingly test prior to releasing, I dearly hope that you learn from this hopefully negative experience and never attempt it again. This is not a good trend that you'll want to repeat and you guys really do have a good game here. So please, learn from this and make sure to grow in a positive, fan-based direction from the experience.

This game released on April 28, 2023. It is now May 13, 2024. This is a AAA title and is marketed as a complete experience...

Yet this game is broken. It's genuinely unplayable. The developers and publishers have had over a year now to fix it, and they haven't.

Please, people, do NOT buy this game even if the deluxe version is on sale for $30 (1/3 normal price). It's just not worth it for 2 hours of partial gameplay before the game completely breaks on you and prevents you from progressing any further in the story.

I have a 6800-XT Graphics card, a Ryzen 9 5900X CPU, and 64 GB of RAM. I have what I believe is a high-end computer and it is more than what is recommended to be able to handle running this game. On the lowest settings with no ray tracing or anything on, I am getting, at best, an unstable 60 FPS and my GPU is being pushed to 100% utilisation within 10 minutes of loading any save, which should not be happening and means that there's a severe memory leak.
On top of that, my game is crashing every single time the unskippable cutscene for landing on the second planet, Koboh, occurs. I am hardlocked from playing past the first planet, the tutorial planet essentially. I paid $60 to be able to play a complete, unbroken AAA game. The only reason I have 14+ hours in this game is because I have tried troubleshooting it in nearly every possible way to no avail after my refund was denied after playing for 100 minutes.

So unless you rush to the second planet and don't bother to immerse yourself in the world or environment and skip dialogue and story cutscenes, then you will likely think the game is fine so long as you have no issues with low fps, clipping issues, and visual bugs. Why? Because the tutorial area is probably the only place that's been given the development time it needs. Again this is a AAA title that's been out for over a year now. And that starting area, when watching the cutscenes, takes on average 90-120 minutes to complete by design. Likely to prevent refunds
So unless you rush and ignore the story entirely, by the time you are able to find out if the game will work for you or not, it's often too late.

And the thing is, it's not like this game-breaking bug hasn't been known since launch, because it has been there since launch! And they STILL haven't fixed it despite literally tens of thousands of people complaining and reporting issues with it on the PC port!

Mind, I want to play this game. I want to enjoy the story. I want to immerse myself in it. I want to support the developers and game creators. But how can I when I can't even play the game I paid for?

Seriously, if you really, really want to play this game, buy a PS5 and play it on console. They clearly don't care about the PC port and focused entirely on making it a console-only game. Maybe Denuvo has something to do with this, or maybe it doesn't. Regardless, I very strongly urge you all to not try playing this game on PC as it is irredeemably broken to the point of being unplayable.

Absolutely!
This game is amazing, with a unique story, great combat, and fun mechanics that give a great twist to meta-games and souls-like games. But these bugs are ruining my experience for sure.

Sure, there's a few immersion-breaking issues with the game's targeting, tracking, and collisions, but those almost add to the charm of this game. Especially when you see the player messages floating in mid-air and you try to figure out how to find and read them! lol

This game is definitely a gem that everyone who enjoys a good story and a souls-like experience should add to their collection.

I will say that my previous review called out a number of missing map areas, NPCs, and similar, and it turns out that simply uninstalling then reinstalling the game was all it took to fix it. Likely one of the files got corrupted causing this issue, but in such a way that Steam's verification check wouldn't notice anything. So if you consistently are missing areas of the map that should definitely be there and resting at a shrine, killing some enemies, or reloading the game after saving it doesn't work, then simply uninstall then reinstall.

I will also say that the devs are amazing and very responsive! They were a great help in the process of figuring out what was going on, and it was definitely a pleasure interacting with them. Thankfully we were able to figure out this solution even if we weren't able to determine the initial cause. And now that my game's working, I think I'll start a new play-through to see what I missed due to corrupted files the first time around! :)

If you enjoy games that focus on survival being entirely RNG, that don't hold your hand at all, has no tutorials for even the UI aspects, expects you to learn everything about the game through trial, error, and clicking on and through everything or by using player-made guides, where the "easy" mode is brutally difficult and unforgiving, and that is somehow extremely simplistic in mechanics yet complex in design, then this game is entirely for you.

The Good.
It's hard and unforgiving. (some people like that)
It forces and teaches real survival techniques.
The first character you can play as gives you what is perhaps the best chance of survival possible for this game.

The Bad.
It's hard and unforgiving.
There's no tutorial or guidance of any kind.
You WILL die. A LOT. Even while playing with every possible advantage, you will still die a lot.

The Ugly.
It's primarily random luck for whether or not you get the resources you need.
It's time management to the extreme.
There are over 20 different gauges and bars to manage, many of which you can't possibly be aware of until it's too late.
The UI is hard to scroll through and clunky. (Feels like it's meant for a mobile device rather than a computer).
It is NOT worth the amount they ask for it. At best, it's probably worth $10, but they ask for $25.

Note for the Dev(s).
Consider labeling the free demo as a free demo. I definitely regret not scrolling down and opening the game's description before purchasing, and for not understanding that the "first days" was not another game, but actually the game's free demo.
Consider making and providing a handout in the main menu showing off all the interactable UI mechanics and explaining the nearly 30 different meters that we need to manage. It took me a full hour and 3 different failed runs before I even realised that I could click on my character portrait to access my equipment and treat my wounds.
Consider making some static items available at specific points like you do with finding a big stone within the first 25% of the beach. For example, let people find a normal stone on the beach for every 10% of the beach they explore, with additional stones being RNG. (I say this because I've done two separate runs now where I was unlucky enough to 100% the beach, roughly 40% the jungle, and 10% either the bay or the wetlands in the first 4 days, but I got a grand total of 5 stones and 2 long sticks from all of that so couldn't make a campfire or shelter to survive the big storm that starts on day 4 since I made a spear to protect myself from the birds and monkeys and to fish.)