Recent reviews by Himitsu Lunefang

Great game overall. Fast-paced gameplay and engaging story. A rollercoaster of emotions.
Would give an 8 to 9/10.

Gameplay
+ Combat is fluid, responsive, and engaging similar to the Devil May Cry series. It's probably not as polished as DMC5 for example but it still holds it's own. They're not really the same, I think both games distinguish themselves apart enough.
+ Variety of moves is quite good, the pacing of it is nice, it gives you enough time to get used to your options. I personally wish you could of equipped more than just 2 moves for each Eikons but as I went through the game I think I understood why they did it this way. Switching through Eikons might have been really confusing for some people if it was possible to equip more than a few moves.
+ The big bombastic combat scenes were just an adrenaline rush, really amazing stuff. I won't spoil any of them because that would just rob people of the experience but if you like over the top like DMC or Bayonetta, you'll like this, I sure did.
- The camera could use some improving. It is a little hard to understand what's going on at times with the amount of particles and such on screen, especially as you progress through the game with more ennemies at once, etc.
- I think the worst thing about the game are the side quests. I've done them all and some of them are honestly pretty boring. A lot of them are fetch quests: talk to person, kill monster, gather this and that, etc. I found myself skipping dialogue for some of them.

Story
+ Cinematics and cutscenes are pretty good. It's not The Last of Us level but there's way worse out there.
+ Voice acting is top notch, I honestly can't remember any character that sounded off, everyone is giving a good performance. The main characters are especially amazing.
+ Characters are relatable, which I think adds a lot to the story. For that reason, I got emotional on some cutscenes and laughed at some others.
- Cutscenes are 30 fps by default. Thankfully, this is fixable with FFXVIfix mod and 60-fps cutscenes mods but I still feel like I had to put this here. I find this baffling how in today's age, they STILL do 30 fps cutscenes. There's no reason for this. If anything, just put the damn option for people! If modders can do it, why not the developpers?

Audio
+ The music/soundtrack is one of the best part of the game, every track is just fantastic. I found myself often humming at songs in and out of the game. I can see myself listening to the music outside the game which I find pretty rare these days.
+ Combat music and audio is just chef's kiss. It just elevates everything on screen and pumps you up. The chorus soundtracks for the big fights are just so epic, it fits perfectly.
+ Sound effects are punchy and weighty but I wouldn't say it's anything otherworldly in terms of quality. Overall they're still good.

Visuals
+ Graphics are very good. Sure, it's not up to par with certain recent games but it's honestly amazing still.
+ Particle effects like the elements and energy are just fantastic. Square Enix usually excels on that and they don't disappoint here.
- Not sure if this is a sort of bug with the unlocked fps cutscenes mod but if you have DLSS on, some of them will show huge amounts of trails/ghosting during some parts. It's quite bizarre as it seems to be happening only on certain parts of cutscenes, not even the whole thing.

Performance
+ Ran great for me on a 4090 with DLSS quality and frame generation, 100+ fps most of the time, sometimes up to 180. But then again, it's a 4090, you could say that about almost any games though the state of pc ports these days leave a lot to be desired.
- There is stuttering though it's definitely nowhere near as bad as some other games like Jedi Survivor or Dragon's Dogma 2 for example.
Not sure how well the game scales on the performance side of things but it is a heavy game to run.

I think this game was a really great and fun experience overall.
The highlights for me were the bombastic boss fights, the soundtrack, and the cinematics. The only big negative I can think of are the side quests. In my opinion, the rest of the negatives aren't too bad or are not distracting enough to be a deal breaker.

Took me over 80 hours to beat the game with all sidequests.
And there's still a new game plus after that which I'm sure I'll get to at some point.

8-9/10

I simply cannot recommend this game, at least in it's current state.

I'm not even sure where to begin as there are so many issues with this game, it's not even funny.

First, the good:
- Combat is satisfying and fun...most of the time at least. Some combat tweaks compared to the first one are quite welcome such as fluid/looping basic attacks
- Graphics are pleasing to the eyes, minus occasional texture loading delays
- Exploration is quite fun. The journey is probably one of the best parts of the game, more exciting than the actual destionation or objective.

Now, the bad:
- Obviously, this game's performance is terrible. The performance during exploration is "mostly" okay but it sometimes dips far too much. In cities, camps, settlements it's absolutely disgusting. Running at 30-40 fps on a 4090 no matter what graphics settings you chose is simply unacceptable. At least 3 patches have released at the time of writing and still no sign of performance fix or improvement. The game's graphics are good but nothing that blew my mind, there's much better looking games out there and with better performance.
- The camera.....jesus, the camera is so bad. The camera is probably your worst enemy in this game. I often had no visibility of my character during combat. FOV mod or menu option helps but nothing that fixes this entirely. The interior is probably even worse, being way too close to your character, leaving your field of vision quite limited.
- The story, while not completely bad, is not amazing either. I thought it was pretty generic overall, and by the end of the game, there are some plot points that were seemingly dropped with no clear answer given to you. Length of story isn't anything special, it's an average 15-20 hours if you ignore most other things. I spent a good 66-67 hours with the game in total, did both endings and the majority of side quests.
- The pawns.....while not a bad concept or idea per say, they're just as annoying as in the first game. It's unfortunate since Capcom had talked about using AI to make them better but I hardly saw any difference with the first game, at least from memory.
- User interface. Why the hell would you still have a stash system that has a separate option for deposit and withdraw in a game made in 2024? That's not the only thing, there's so many things pertaining to the UI that just had me scratch my head saying something like "Wait, why couldn't they just improve that or do that this way?" It just feels exactly like a game from early 2010 in that sense.

I think that's the gist of it. There's just so many things that could of used improvement or changes but nope, it's just Dragon's Dogma 1 with a fresh coat of paint and a few tweaks.

If I could summarise this game in two words: "Incredibly disappointing"

Actually played for longer than what Steam shows.

Game is pretty fun especially with the new mechanics added with the existing elements and the dodge. Could it have been better? Absolutely, but what's there is still fun in my opinion. It's obviously not the best game in terms of gameplay but it's not the worst either.

Graphics are also really good especially with Ray-Tracing enabled, that's when the game really shines. Sadly, the performance is not great. Stuttering happens very often even with all updates and a 4090. Nothing fixes this permanently, I tried everything, I believe it's just the fact that the game runs on UE4 engine which is notoriously infamous for it.

The Japanese architecture and lore is what I absolutely love about this game (I am a sucker for japanese culture in general). If you also like anything Japanese like me, you'll probably like the aesthetic of this game at the very least.

I would give this give an overall 7/10, maybe 7.5. It's not a great or epic game but it's good but can get repetitive. Though you could say that about almost any game depending on how you look at it.

I don't do reviews too often but I felt like this game deserves it.

- Amazing graphics, good performance and optimization. It shows they took time and effort to do a proper PC port.
- The narrative/story is nothing short of awesome. I found myself doing my best to collect every journal and collectibles I could find.
- This game just improves on nearly everything from the first game.
- I really hope Crystal Dynamics makes another Tomb Raider game. The series never really interested me before this reboot, but now I might look into the older games.

Congrats to Crystal Dynamics for an impressive game and worthy PC port!