Recent reviews by turboshook™

Vandalizing the base game with an amateurish update in lockstep with the release of your highly questionable DLC is a pretty bold move. This is one of my most played games and it is in a sorry state now. Thanks, Gearbox.

At time of writing, I think I am halfway through the DLC content, but there's no telling for sure. There is a lot of game here.

I am leaving this review to offset the sentiment around the game's difficulty. I see a significant number of reviews addressing performance concerns, however, and I have experienced that some myself. It's nothing game-breaking for me and very infrequent, but I have a pretty good computer. Your mileage may vary. Anyways:

The game is very, very good. I think the overworld exploration and dungeon design specifically outpace the base game. The new map is very dense, I feel like I am constantly stumbling into the next coolest thing I have seen. The new weapons, spells, and ashes of war, are pretty rad and you are showered with enough souls and upgrade materials to try out new builds fairly easily.

The game is also very, very difficult. Maybe the message got lost in translation to the English-speaking world, but this is deep endgame content. This is built to make players with 100s of hours in the base game feel like they are playing it for the first time.

Tips:
1. Lean into the exploration. There are collectible items that can be redeemed to give your character stat boosts only in the new map. Find them. Use them. There are items that do the same for Torrent and your spirit summons as well.
2. Level up. The new content throws a LOT of runes at you. Currently, my character is level 155 and I plan to keep leveling up. In the base game, leveling past 150 felt fairly unnecessary to me and it took quite a while to get the requisite runes. That is not the case here.
3. Level Vigor specifically. The first soft cap is 60, but leveling to 80 is valid. Things hit hard.
4. Use the new consumables. There are upgraded versions of most of the temporary stat-buffing consumables you can get in the base game. If you (somehow) don't play with many active buffs on your build, that will probably have to change here. Start casting Golden Vow, at least.
5. The git good mindset. While the designs are extremely varied and memorable (some of FromSoft's finest), nearly every boss I have encountered in this DLC has presented a similar experience. Their moveset trips me up BADLY, I do about a dozen attempts where I die very quickly while I am trying to piece together how it all works, and then I miraculously go all the way while taking minimal damage. Sure, the churn is frustrating in the moment; but then you win.

This is the best Elden Ring content. If we only get one DLC, I am glad it was this one.

The ultimate D&D 5e video game.

Really solid, short game. Fun with a friend. Cool art design.

There is definitely some optimization work that needs to be done, but this is an incredible game. If you like soulslike games, or have wanted to try one, this is it.

EDIT: My first playthrough took just south of 90 hours. I went out of my way to find extra areas and bosses, but I know I still haven't seen it all.

There is so much quality content here. I lost track of the amount of times I was wandering around and stumbled into an entire mapped area with its own boss(es) and unique items. After a point, that part almost stopped being surprising.

My only real complaint is that many of the main bosses tend to have attacks that are massive AOEs and its not clear whether or not these can be avoided (other than by happening to be standing far away when it happens). In a lot of cases, it felt like an HP tax that you just have to deal with. I really can't think of other examples of this in previous FromSoftware games. It is odd to me that they would include so many attacks where the method to avoid being hit by them is so obtuse. It feels slightly counter to their design philosophy to date.

There's plenty of examples online already of players doing hitless runs of these bosses, but those strategies are not clear on a casual first run. Just be ready to retry story bosses a lot, even as someone who has played and beaten the rest of the FromSoft catalog. These things are a different breed.

Go in as blind as you can. TONS of replayability. Excellent game.

monmster hutner

It improves over its predecessor in just about every way, but especially in terms of combat. The great level design is still there, the awesome art is still there, and now it plays a lot more like a competent action platformer than the first game. There's different ways to customize Ori now and the inclusion of side quests, recurring characters, and a "soft" hub area are also great additions. Progression and exploration have also been notably improved.

The enemy variety is a little lacking and the general narrative structure and objectives feel like a LOT like the first game at times, but I don't think they detract from the overall experience too much.

Review to follow at a later date.

EDIT:

First things first. Yeah, controllers are not recognized by default yet. Yes, it is kind of annoying, but easily fixed by enabling the steam controller API. You can even disable big picture mode launching whenever steam detects a controller for good measure. There are also a handful of multiplayer connectivity issues and I can only imagine that they will be ironed out in the near future, this being release weekend and whatnot.

The majority of the negative reviews for this game are because a) someone took one of the above points very personally b) there is not a certain graphical setting that they want, or c) they just don't like MH games or this particular style of combat. To entirely write off a game as massive as this within your first two or so hours of playing for any of those reasons seems foolish to me.

A fully detailed review of my thoughts on this game so far would be too long for anyone to justify reading, so I will just leave my whole-hearted recommendation here for anyone who cares to read it. I am having the time of my life with this game, as I have with every MH game I've gotten my hands on since discovering the series back in high school.

Not an in-depth review because I am not very far, but aside from some rough edges I am loving this game.

So far, SOOOO good.

Once I configured the graphics in the launcher (which takes all of fifteen seconds) I was off without a hitch. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ I'm loving this game so far. I'm a sucker for soulslike combat and Nioh delivers it in spades. However, this time around you get some interesting real-time reaction mechanics thrown in with pleasantly intense results.

The level designs are another strength of Nioh. I have not gotten very far yet but what I have played has shown that Nioh believes in the Dark Souls 1 philosophy to map design; areas interconnect and doubleback on themselves to make efficient use of only a handful of shrines (this game's equivalent of a bonfire). It adds a level of cohesion to the world that indicates pure, masterful planning on the developer's end.

Now I think it is important to specify that all of the Dark Souls comparisons this game gets are in a strictly positive sense and no one should take them to mean that Nioh has no identity or merit of its own; it definitely does. Aside from the enhanced combat, Nioh has an attitude and an atmosphere unique unto itself. I don't want to give too much away, but there is plenty that Nioh has to offer that clearly set it apart from its contemporaries.

Again, I have not encountered any of the technical difficulties that are supposedly plaguing players and journalists alike. I can see people with 144hz monitors not being too pleased with this port at the moment (frame caps are 30 and 60 as of now) as well as anyone who wanted to play with a mouse and keyboard (which I wouldn't recommend for any Souls game and probably wouldn't here, if it was an option).

This game got my attention very quickly and its not letting go. Really enjoying this title.