Recent reviews by L.S. Vietruan

Fun game

Worst madden I've ever played. You think after decades of football games someone would figure out how to make the passing game realistic to any degree. Receivers are basically incapable of catching any ball that is even slightly contested. No big 1v1 catches, nothing. Interceptions most of the time because your receivers won't actually play the ball even if you press Y for "aggressive catching" (it makes literally no difference whatsoever).

Controller mapping on PC completely broken. Spent hours working on it to get it to sort of work, still makes it really hard to play and impossible to navigate menus properly sometimes.

Wish I could still refund it. I was already pretty set on not buying EA but just wanted to play some good football. Will not be buying an EA product ever again. This game is very pretty but designed with gross incompetence and a severe lack of playtesting. If I knew the game was this bad, I wouldn't have bought it if it were 20 bucks.

I'd say the graphics are really good, but they are pretty much on par with anything that came out 2018-2020. Nothing impressive. Human facial expressions are pretty bad, animations are various and comprehensive but overly rigid and lack the fluidity and impact of humans.

But I guess I'm expecting too much from this multi million dollar organization.

game good

sex

Some interesting gimmicks that might entertain some people for a while. Otherwise, it's just your average early-access-limbo VR title. I wouldn't refund it, but I wouldn't buy it knowing that the game does not typically break 10 players (there is essentially no single player content to enjoy other than bots, maybe). Needs a lot more work before I'd really want to be spending money on this.

Democracy prevails once again.

Honestly, I love the music and graphics for the time the game came out.

The music is pretty well done.

The story is... eh. Pretty uninteresting and sometimes completely incoherent but if the combat is well done it doesn't matter (spoiler alert, it isn't!)

The combat and game-play mechanics are like watching a promising child commit suicide right in front of my eyes.
There are so many things wrong with the mechanics of this game, not at a fundamental level, but at an execution level.

Camera system is a total train-wreck, as was the case for most third person PlayStation games at the time. The lock-on feature works maybe 15% of the time and there is no in-wall transparency. I shouldn't require mods to play the game comfortably.

Parrying is like dark souls if dark souls parrying was wildly inconsistent and didn't give you a guaranteed opportunity to deal significant damage to the enemy.

Most combat mechanics are taught through tutorials that... get this... aren't even taught in the story but that you have to leave the story and do separately????????????????

This is probably the worst aspect of this game... like what the f-? It's not like there are a lack of fights in the game where opportunities could arise for combat mechanics to be taught, other than the very VERY basics. So many other games do this without fail, even long before 2013. I would name them but the list includes... basically all AAA games made after 2000. I shouldn't have to watch a 15 minute tutorial just to understand how to use the mechanics of the game. HELL, even the menu where you unlock new moves doesn't even tell you how to use them! Platinum has done all of these things correctly in their previous games, so why it's so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ terrible in this one is entirely beyond me.

In conclusion, I recommend this game only if you intend to play it for 1 hour and 59 minutes then refund it. Because there is no way in hell anyone should be paying 30 dollars for a half baked attempt at a hack and slash game, even if it comes from Platinum.

TL;DR - Ever played Subnautica? If you haven't, play the first game. If you have, play the first game with mods - You'll save 30 dollars and 15 hours of boring story.

Story is meh. Not very intriguing. Well written? It's okay. Does the game match up in design quality with the story? no, not even close.
The only reason I played through the story (I played through AL-AN's, not the sister's) is because it was the only way to progress through the tech tree. The things you need to scan are often around artifacts you need to discover. Also, seriously? Why bother to make a second game if the entire story is just a big ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ boring scavenger hunt. Most of the artifacts' lore derived from scanning is "It probably did x".
Improvements from last game are even more meh (they don't exist).
There is no horror to this game, not like the first.
There is so little diversity in this ocean and fish are so few and far between. There are large schools that swim around... accept you cannot interact with those schools, just individual fish. This limits your pool to whatever is already there, and it makes the overall amount of sealife you can interact with very low.
AI is lazily designed; Creatures do not behave realistically.
Artistically the game is very good - same as the last one. If you expect any graphical improvement from the first game whatsoever, prepare for disappointment. It looks good, but just as good as the last game.

Overall, this game is just so meh. It's just Subnautica... but with a way less intriguing story, not that the first game had amazing engagement in its story either. All of the changes were negative. More land exploration? Why bother when you make the above ground areas a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ labyrinth and give the player no direction whatsoever (remember, 2d environment - you can't just swim over a wall)? New enemies? Why even bother when they are essentially reskins of the same enemies and the same AI from the first game? New story? Why bother when it's just a fetch mission scavenger hunt? New tech? Why even bother when you introduce the same tech but in worse ways? This game is thoroughly disappointing. I would love to see Unknown Worlds take on a new project.

They are wasting the potential of an amazing studio trying to milk the success of a survival-horror game by... making a game that is essentially the same as the last, ruining any aspect of horror and making the tech progression bland and monotonous.

Again... why even bother?

P.S. Above ground map bugs are atrocious. If you get stuck, you are ♥♥♥♥♥♥. Since there is no autosave (for whatever ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ reason) you have to reload your save from 1+ hours ago.

A wonderful concept marred by clunky controls, awful AI, and a shambled progression system. Needs plenty of work, but I could recommend this one day.

Ubisoft's game template is as greedy as ever.