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I booted it up recently, and it holds up really well. It hits a perfect balance of narrative and action while largely avoiding repetitive fetch quests and the like. And both of the DLC are excellent - Hearts of Stone has the best plot line in the game while Blood and Wine has the most beautiful locations.
Redundancy is one tell, for sure. But another sign of AI slop is writing like this:
“While STALKER 2 can be a compelling experience even with inconsistent performance and a multitude of bugs, the continued presence of these problems could hinder the game’s chances at success.”
It reads like a middle school essay. Words for the sake of words, that don’t really mean or convey anything. Baby’s first thesaurus.
You wanted to go down; I wanted to go up. I was so annoyed when I finally realized there’s no way up to those amazing skyscraper walkways in the downtown. Those buildings are just blocks with no entrance.
I figured that as you moved up in the world eventually that whole area would become accessible, but it’s just decoration.
I didn’t hate it. Maybe a 6.5/10 game with some cool moments. But it felt like the corners they cut would have been the coolest parts of the game.
To be clear, I’m enjoying XVI, and XV was the one game I disliked so much I dropped it. But try either one! Different people may like different games, and that’s fine.
As far as XVI goes, my main gripes are that combat is pretty slow until you’ve unlocked three sets of abilities, and it relies just a little bit too heavily on its Game of Thrones inspiration. But once combat gets going, it feels really good. You can dodge or parry almost every attack in the game, and it feels pretty badass to get right in the enemy’s face and have them not be able to touch you because you’ve learned the moveset.
I’ve beaten XIII twice, so I know it well. I don’t hate it, but I don’t love it either. My main criticism of XIII is it suffers from a lack of sense of place. It feels like a disjointed series of unconnected environments, and there’s no sense of a cohesive world that you’re exploring and learning about.
Lightning is on a train. Where does it come from? Where does it go to? We’ll never know. Now we’re in a crystal ice cavern. Now we’re in a dense forest. Now we’re inside an airship. Now we’re at an amusement park. There is no sense of how these places relate to one another or how they’re connected, and that dramatically impacted how engaged I was with the story.
The battle and hunt systems were the more enjoyable parts. The worldbuilding was lackluster bordering on non-existent. I also really dislike… actually, the whole cast. I don’t think there’s a single character I like. I dislike Sazh the least, if I had to choose.
But I still finished it. Twice. XV was the only main series game that I disliked to the extent that I didn’t see it through.
To each their own. I know a lot of people were disappointed by XVI, and again, I could criticize a number of aspects of it. But overall, I’ve had more fun than I’ve had with an FF game since X.
I’m primarily a Civ 5 player and my issue is not with quick movement or quick combat (both on, of course) but the actual time to process enemy turns. It’s a 14 year old game running on my absolute monster of a gaming PC, but it’s still sluggish, especially with larger maps with more opponents. I can’t imagine the Civ AI is that computationally intensive so I’ve never understood why it takes so long. I’d also like more customization options in cities so they auto-govern better in the late game, which is also a huge time suck especially when going dom.
The article notes it later on but this is for a period before SOTE launched. It makes perfect sense that they generate less profit in between the year Elden Ring launched and the year the expansion launched. Fires of Rubicon came out during this time period but that’s a more niche game compared to their flagship series.
As I get older I find I just don’t even have the time for AAA games. Other than Elden Ring, I haven’t played a AAA game in goodness knows how long. 80-100 hours of playtime is basically a year-long commitment.
I love that there are so many indie games that offer a more compact experience and seem easier to put down and pick back up. Much more my speed these days.
I agree though that we’re at a point of oversaturation. Steam is full of shovelware and barely discernable clones of crafting-survival games. But I hope the studios doing interesting work are able to survive this period so we can continue to benefit from their creativity.
We city builder fans have been spoiled recently! This looks cool.
Edit: Reviews suggest maybe there’s some more work to do before this is ready for prime time. Will wishlist and track I suppose.