Epsilon-Delta ✙ 最近的评测

Incredible game, that takes the best out of classical Dark Souls series and adds own cherry on top. It provides a mechanically known, but unique experience throughout whole game. I have completed it after playing all original DarkSouls + Sekiro + Elden Ring, so even subconsciously I have been comparing Lies of P to them all the time.
There are several mechanics that do not decrease game difficulty yet they improve the experience by few times, and I hope FromSoftware and other developers will make it as part of their core gameplay as well:
- Counter of how many Death Ergo (souls) are left after respawn
- When you die on boss arena, your Ergo is left outside the arena itself so it can be collected without starting the boss fight. Lack of often forced me to hesistate and delay boss fights in other games due to fear of losing souls/runes.
- Locations are marked in teleport menu where characters have new dialogue options. This helps so much to keep track of the story and don't miss anything.

Now quickly about game strong points and weaknesses:

**Strong Points**
1. Combat. It feels smooth, hits are easy to deal yet challenging. Especially I love deflect (perfect guard) mechanic, which I enjoyed so much in Sekiro - I played whole game by focusing on doing perfect guards all the time and it gives really good feelings visually and sound-wise.
2. Level design. The levels are very diverse, have a very consistent, pleasant style despite being linear in nature.
3. Utilities and upgrades. Golden Fruits, consumables, ampoules, throwables, Legion Arms, weapon upgrades, weapon assembly, quartz system - there are a lot of things to upgrade and tune to your gameplay.
4. Lies system. Although I got the idea of "lying" pretty early in the game, as there were quite direct hints on how important it is, it's a simple system that does not require dozens of dialogue branches yet delivers interesting impact on core story and gameplay, which was mixed relatively well in the lore.
5. Aspects of real-life Pinnochio tale were well mixed and introduced into game lore, in my opinion.
6. Character design and voice-over. I appreciate very much the ability to change stylish costumes of P, and other characters feel pretty distinct, with their own personal story. The Riddler himself has also magnificient voice-over and manner of speech, I liked him the most to be honest.
7. Performance. Being an Unreal Engine game, I cannot remember any area that caused frame-drops or crashes on my specs. Whole ~100 hours were very smooth and pleasant experience performance-wise.

**Weak Points**
1. An opposite of strong point (3) that did not work for me personally, as it didn't in other souls games - I had no incentive to upgrade other weapons and spend time on collecting required materials - half of game I played with the wrench, and the other - with Puppet Reaper. Other weapons deal less damage or just too heavy and slow. I've seen no point of using them, making them useless in some sense.
2. Background scenery and environment. Although the general level structure is pretty good, I would've liked a bit more detailed sceneries, skyboxes or environments on most of locations. Also a bit annoying were artificial path blockers made of suitcases - I understand visually that I couldn't go there, but not being able to do so because of 1 meter high suitcase is just silly and breaks immersion a bit. You should've use a bit more of them
3. My biggest disappointment - final game boss in main story if you don't go for the Rise of P ending. It's first phase was a gimmick, not interesting, and whole boss design feels rushed. Director and visual FX-wise, it could've been played very epicly, capturing and impactful, as the build-up to it was quite intense when were trying to reach it in Arche Abbery Tower. Yet for me Simon Manus ended up being a very common villain which got too fanatic about his ideas (which were not well grounded in my opinion lore-wise) and got stopped by the main character, leaving me not fully satisfied with the finale.

In summary, this game is a must-play for Souls fans and others as well. I am looking forward to playing the DLC and other games by the studio.

9/10

I have played Dark Souls series basically in reverse order, from Elden Ring, to Sekiro, DS3, DS2 and then DS(R). Therefore my view is a bit biased and spoiled by improved mechanics in later games.

If we consider this a first entry to Dark Souls series, then it's a solid, good first game in the franchise.

I liked the visuals in the remastered version, especially the Sun/sky effects are well made, the palette is "sharp", dark but visible enough and has a distinctive style to it.

I liked devs decision to not play any music during regular locations exploration, and make all the sound using environment and player sound effects. Although in ER it works well with music too, here it's a different vibe, making you immerse a bit more.

The level design is also great, I liked the interconnected world with Firelink Shrine in the middle, and although it can be tedious at first to traverse between locations - you later get a way to warp between bonfires, so it's not a big deal + it makes you memorise the world configuration, which is fun as requires you building a route in your head when you have some microgoal set.

The combat in my opinion also feels better than in DS2.

Nevertheless, here are the pain points / issues that I did not enjoy:
1. Weapons balance, particularily Black Knight Sword. After I found it, I haven't switched to anything else throughout entire game, as it's a known imbalanced item. As a player I have no reason to switch and upgrade other weapons, when I can get max damage and usefullness from just one. This is sad as there are a handlful of other weapons encountered later in the game, that I wish could use or try instead.
2. Annoying locations and areas. 60% of this game diffuculty is made of annoying to pass areas, like Blighttown, Lost Izalith or Sen's Fortress. I did have little to no fun playing them, praying every time to find a shortcut to ease my suffering and finally skip that area.
3. Another 20% of difficulty is done by forcing player to make boring runbacks that are just waste of time, skipping most enemies on the way, i.e. bonfire placement. Thankfully, this gradually improved with further releases.
4. I was a bit disappointed with the difficulty of bosses in comparison to DS3 or Elden Ring, although that is expected from the first game in the series. They may have cool design, but very easy to memorise or predict attack patterns.
5. I will repeat the same point from my other reviews on FromSoftware games - some of game mechanics or quests are too convoluted or cryptic to understand without a wiki read. I could've easily skipped several hours of content or even dropped a game fully due to not having a clue on how to proceed, as item descriptions or dialogues are not too explicit on that.
6. I got sent into NG+ right after defeating final boss without any prompts or confirmations which was unexpected as I still had content to explore - thankfully I had a save backup to finish them.

To finish, I do really recommend to play DS1 to anyone who liked later releases, if they are ready to deal or ignore some gameplay inconvenieces that they may be accustomed to from the later games.

8/10

Despite the general hate on this game in the online space, after completing Elden Ring, Sekiro and DS3 before, I cannot say that this game is inherently "bad". It has a lot of great ideas mixed with some quirks and gimmicks that you have to adapt to, which are there due to tight timelines the development team had or due to not that direct involvement of Hidetaka Miyazaki.

Strong Points
- The feeling and atmosphere of Dark Souls is definetely present, no doubts.
- It's clear that certain locations and sceneries are almost on DS3 level in terms of visual design and art direction - large-scale, vertical or far spaces are there, I've made dozen of screenshots of these
- Majula is indeed probably the most atmospheric and "cozy" hub area out of all series, even probably better than Roundtable Hold from ER.
- Great weapons variety, with some unique designs
- Bonfire placement is "OK", better than in DS1. I can't say that there were some very annoying runbacks, most of them are fine.
- There are some instances of good boss design
- Some great memorable songs in the soundtrack (others are a bit generic)

Weak Points
- Level design. I am not talking about famous meme of lava-based location (Iron Keep) flying in the air, connected by elevator with a windmill area (Harvest Valley) - I actually liked that location. Many parts of levels are just boring rectangular boxes with minimal props inside and a few common enemies.
- Enemies placement. Although many complain that there are a lot of "horde" placement of enemies which kill you very quickly, I'd say they can be dealt with some patience and care and are not that big of deal. I am more talking about placing such hordes in closed small spaces, which also eventually causes camera issues. That is indeed not enjoyable.
- Quantity over quality. In my opinion, there are too many locations and too many bosses, which caused most of them to be very forgettable and repetetive. Half of humanoid bosses share the same moveset, that can be easily killed in 1-2 attempts by circling around them. This also caused to artificially increase game duration without compensating it with great content filling.
- Obscure and convoluted certain mechanics. I wouldn't be able to complete this game without tips or guides online on how to reach certain locations or get some items, even if I was reading all the item descriptions and dialogues. I played 1/3 of game thinking that illusory walls disappear if I hit or roll into them like they do in DS3, when in reality you have to press "A" button on the gamepad. I don't think it's shown in the game tutorial on the start. Other absolutely hidden mechanics include (by the way, parts of the main storyline) - idea of killing enemies near the golem in Drangleic Castle to activate the elevator (I haven't found visual clues for that), the need of Soul of Giants in order to kill Vendrick to get the alternate ending (item description barely mentions that in very vague way), how to access Memory of Ancients, etc.
- Minor UI/UX inconvencies. Mostly, the very annoying process of levelling up - it requires always skipping 3 voicelines from the "Fire Keeper", clicking "Level up", waiting for the animation, and then you can't navigate to other menu because it will be closed after she speaks again.
- Bad or inconsistent hit- or collision- boxes.
- I do not consider the mechanic of reducing player's max HP with every death a good idea. Not because it's hard, but because it's just annoying - I played most of game with full HP reduction after finding Ring of Binding early in game, and accumulated 50+ human effigies by the end without actually needing them that much. It was probably experimental, and I am happy that they leaned towards Ember mechanic in DS3 or Great Runes in ER, which are rewarding, not punishable mechanics that actually give player a reason to use them.
- Major disappointment in final boss and the game finale in general. It does not feel completed for me, and the final boss of original game (Nashandra) is unoriginal dull looking undead skeleton lady, has 2 or 3 moves and was moslty really AFK during the fight, giving almost no challenge.
- Broken weapon and armor upgrade system. Maybe I did not understand, but I basically played the whole game with the same armorset and same 2-3 weapons that I found on early stages despite having full inventory of interesting and diverse armor and weapons, because my equipment was gradually upgraded with Titanite, and I've never encountered a decen replacement that would have higher stats than the current one. Maybe if it was allowed to transfer the upgrades somehow to a new item, then it would make sense.

In summary, if you are a fan of DS series, can give this game some benefit of the doubt and be prepared to manage some gameplay issues and adapt to them - you can enjoy it. Otherwise, go play DS3 :D

Great start from AdHoc studio. This game is a great synergy of interactive storytelling and "dispatcher" simulation gameplay with only few misses.

Strong Points
The direction is very well done, Dispatch is more a full-fledged movie than a game. The mood of superhero world, that combines elements from Marvel, The Boys and The Invincible, is delivered at high level. Comedy elements also felt very natural and certainly funny at some points. All characters feel distinct and unique.

I enjoyed the multi-aspect "dispatcher" gameplay with hero calls, stat increases and hacking puzzles. This alone could've been a great simulation game, yet here it is combined with a full length story.

Art and visual style are very consistent and pleasant to spectate. Same applies to soundtrack.

Weak Points
There are few issues that I personally think needed adjustment:
- QTE calls during the cutscenes are often missed, just because visually they are not visible enough
- From the world building and lore perpsective, heroes abilities feel disbalanced or at least variable depending on the episode they are shown. Based on initial cutscenes, I expected Phenomaman to be a local Homelander or Superman, yet he struggled during the final fight with Red Ring, which did not contain exceedingly strong villains, except for Shroud himself. The same applies to other heroes like Coupe or Malevola.
- Not really distinctive endings. I have read about outcomes in other endings, and I haven't found myself interested in experiencing them because of how similar or how little difference they have. There is also no really "bad" ending, which I expected to be.
- Sex-related jokes and humour were a bit overused, in my opinion.
- No Malevola romance option

In general, a solid 8/10. Looking forward into new projects from AdHoc.

This game is the literal definition of the word "masterpiece", it's one of the best, if not the best games I have played so far. Completing such game hits your soul like a truck. Everything in this game is at top level of implementation - gameplay, world design, graphics, sound design, UI, story, voice casting, motion capture... The OST by itself is just a separate instance of art, I have no idea how Lorien Testard just came out of nowhere and composed one of the best yet so diverse soundtracks of all time. Aside from very, very minor non-critical bugs, I just can't find any bad points about it.

If you are a living person - this game is a must-play, a must-have experience. Total banger, 10/10.

Amazing game and I think the best one of the original Dark Souls trilogy from gameplay perspective.

It has breathtaking views and scenery that is almost the same level as Elden Ring, I made countless screenshots from views in Anor Londo, Lothric Castle, Archdragon Peak and Irtythill Valley. The artististic implementation of each level is good, and level design is also decent, without unlogical locations like in DS2.

I liked every boss in the game, they are all balanced and very fair in terms of hitboxes, timings - their attack intentions are very clear and even small puzzle bosses like Ancient Wyvern are easy to understand. There were some issues with the camera with some large bosses, but they are neglible and FromSoftware seems to explicitly make camera your second enemy, as we see from Elden Ring DLC.

Most importantly for me - it does not make previous games mistakes, fixing really dumb mechanics, present in previous games that annoyed me there, like placing bonfires really generously, and placing them near bosses or providing shortcuts that really make any boss runback take not more than a minute, which is not the case for DS1 and DS2. Enemies are diverse and placed really well, without hordes attacking and breaking your camera as in DS2. You can really see how FromSoftware, little by little, improves game experience with each new release, how Sekiro and Elden Ring improved such utility tasks even more (with Statues of Marika or even more generous checkpoint placement).

As with all other games of that developer, the music and sound design are also very well made, they never disappoint in that regard.

The things I didn't like are minor and opinionated:
- Overuse of fog walls to hide secret passages, sometimes multiple in a row. There are a lot them in this game, some leading to really rich or lore-improtant locations. Without messages from other players, I would miss 90% of them. I do consider this to be a partially lazy game-design mechanic, as usually there is little clue that a fog wall is present somewhere. I bought the game to enjoy full content of it, but if it's hidden that way, I am not liking that much.
- Very cryptic lore and story communication. I do understand this is FromSoftware style and such lore messaging was one of the core principles of Dark Souls series, still I did not understand most of it in the game, even by reading item descriptions. I watched the credits roll without significant emotional impact, which I had for example in Sekiro or Elden Ring, because I just do not understand if what I did is good, bad or something in between. For that reason I focused mostly on enjoying gameplay and locations. omitting the plot or storyline mostly.

In summary, it's for me the perfect and most finished true Dark Souls game, that I really enjoyed, and definetely recommended to play.

Maybe because I didn't play Far Cry series back in old days, and played FC3 for the first time 13 years after it's release, I can't say unfortunately that I really enjoyed this game. Let's go through good points first:
1. Shooting and action gameplay. Indeed, I have enjoyed all firefights in the game, especially the main storyline quests where you either have to fire from a turret on a chopper or a car, or when you need to fight your way through whole groups of enemies. Guns have a good variety, possibility to upgrade them and they "feel" well when shooting.
2. Movement. It's fast and there are many ways to do it - on foot, by car (which are freely available, flooded on the map), with a wingsuit, with a glider or just fast-travel. The movement, sprinting, jumping animations really "feel" and immerse you enough into the game.
3. Unique design of enemy outposts. I enjoyed most of the game capturing enemy outposts, by analyzing enemy positions, looking through the layout of them, planning the stealth way to capture some of them, sometimes using the explosives or animal cages to distract enemies. This was really nice and simple tactical "minigame" for me each time I was capturing an enemy base.
4. Music during action scenes. It had good rhythm as well. Also liked the inclusion of "Ride of Valkyries" in some of the game quests.

Now the bad points:
1. Presence of custom launcher. I did not have many problems with it as others are writing in reviews, however forcing player to not only download another launcher, but also create an account with absurd password requirements that will be re-asked each game launch is stupid. We already have Steam, stop adding these.
2. Crashes. With all respect, you had 13 years to fix most of the crash issues with the game, yet it still crashed for me when I just wanted to take a screenshot or, more critically, during main missions, forcing me to replay them after restart.
3. Repetitiveness. Well, I understand it's a Ubisoft game but still. Whole map full of same-type side quests that I quickly became bored of. The main quests are surely more interesting, but half of other game content is the same copy-paste.
4. Weak character design, despite of relatively good acting and motion-capture. Nobody except probably Vaas, Doctor Earnhardt, Sam and Buck really interested or surprised me as characters. Liza portrayed as silly hysterical partner, not doing anything really useful; Hoyt is a typical movie-level cliche villain, being represented in game as "root of evil", while Vaas being far more insane than him. It's portrayed that Citra is in love with the main character, but I couldn't care less about her death in one of the endings. Jason came for combat support, not for love, being seduced or joining a cult. I had zero feelings for her as a character.
5. Plot holes. Either it's lazy story-writing, or it was just rushed, or maybe even there is some hidden deep meaning that I am not seeing - but explaining how did Jason survive certainly fatal encounters with key antagonists using "drugs" or "hallucinations" is not right. How did he single-handendly unarmed take out multiple Hoyt's guards during the poker game? Why everyone ties so easy to release knots when capturing Jason, so he can just break them with his arms? How did Vaas fail to kill Jason so many times while having good opportunities? I can write many more....
6. Terrible UI. The inventory is accessed through a pause (?) menu, same as the skill tree. UI buttons are disproportional in sizes, sometimes hard to click, the inventory management is a mess, the save system sometimes works sometimes not and other minor issues.
7. Unimmersive artificial game limits or unexplained events. Again, I understand it's a Ubisoft game and it was 2012, but forbidding me to use a boat to travel from North to South island just because I am "out of bounds" is lazy game design - make me run out of fuel then, or be shot by some patrol boats, etc. instead of just putting a hardstop timer. Also, after I capture an outpost, the Rakyat arrive almost immediately after the flag is risen. Where they were when I was fighting 5 pirates at once at this outpost seconds ago? Make them arrive a minute later at least, maybe?, it's not difficult anyway.
8. Other minor problems like same-repeating green-grass terrain, unbalanced economy and upgrades, enemy AI bugs, empty points-of-interest on the map, etc...

In summary, I am putting thumbs up as I would still say that good points outweigh the bad ones, also as an expression of respect, considering that it's a 13 year old game in a very famous franchise. However, even compared to games of the same time, there are plenty of outdated and archaic mechanics in the game, and many things that could've been done better, in a way that would allow calling FarCry3 a "masterpiece", which is not fair to do today.

UPD: this review was a thumbs down before, but I decided to change my mind as aside from the criticism below, the game is fantastic and unique in it's genre.

Despite Studio MDHR absolutely nailing the visual style, doing incredible and outstanding job of making interesting characters and levels, fitting music and just in general, polishing the game so well that it's visually indistinguishable from early XXth century cartoons, some of the mechanics or bosses are too unfair for the player.

I guess I would apply the same criticism as other negative reviews have regarding RNG, invisible attacks, etc... I enjoyed mostly every single boss in this game, except for the last one. The RNG impact on it is far too strong - as an example, the Devil can spawn rotating flames, a running "imp" and start a "Goat Hands Clap" attack at once, giving you almost a guaranteed damage to HP as there is no place to hide on the level. The Goat Slap itself has variable timing and I am not sure it would be practically possible to consistently dodge it without using the invincible dash. Oh, and all these hundreds attempts I had a rubber band attached to my controller RT button to shoot constantly, otherwise my fingers would die eventually - this could've been an setting at all in the game - forcing player to hold one button for minutes is not a difficulty enchancement, it's a stupid mechanic.

I have spent more time and attempts beating the damn Devil in Cuphead than I spent beating Malenia from Elden Ring and Isshin from Sekiro combined. And in that case I did not feel the joy of victory of achievement after defeating him, I was just happy that finally I am done with it...

Otherwise, the game is beatuiful and funny experience, if not a masterpiece, at least in terms of capturing the target style.

P.S. "skill issue" comments are welcomed.

Another masterpiece by Fromsoft - 10/10. I have previously played Elden Ring only, and was worried this game would be too difficult. But it wasn't - instead it was an unforgettable rewarding challenge, followed with extraordinary level, sound and visual artistic design.

Fromsoft somehow managed to find a very simple formula at it's core (3 buttons: deflect, attack, dodge), yet made it so diverse and interesting to learn with all additional combat arts, prostetic arm upgrades, stealth and enemies variety. The cinematic design for each deathblow, each enemy dying is so satisfying, that I was never bored of completing the same level again and again.

Bosses of course are also another great thing in this game. Each of them giving you a completely different skill check, a different mechanic to learn, sometimes combining multiple of them. Some bosses are like "gateways" or "examiners", testing your absorbed knowledge about discovered combat mechanics so far and preventing you from progressing further if you haven't mastered them yet.

Music, sound design and as mentioned before, visual design are also top-level and immersive.

The only problems with the game I found are:
- Although it's common for Fromsoft games to have a confusing and hidden plot, it was okay for Sekiro, but there are too many opportunities to miss a lot of content in the game, and I had to consult guides in order to enjoy all of it.
- After completing the game, I'd expected a change in the core characters dialogues to somehow react to the ending I have chosen, but this didn't happen. Probably I am spoiled by Baldur's Gate 3 interactiveness.
- Some minor bugs and glitches, usually related to my character getting stuck between enemies and some obstacle, or camera being totally unplayable.
- In my opinion, a bit abuse of using the same bosses multiple times, without specific plot reasoning, which looks like a cut corner from game design perspective. I don't see any reasonable plot explanations for using 2x Guardian Ape, 2x Sichimen Warrior, 2x Blazing Bull, many times purple shadow ninjas and similiar throughout the game

Totally recommended.

9.5/10

Amazing experience for over a hundred hours.
-0.5 for unbalanced weapons system, where there is no much point of upgrading new weapons received after mid-game, due to having one really upped favorite weapon in inventory - therefore you complete 90% of the game with the same weapon.

Nevertheless:
- diverse boss fights and combat mechanics
- breathtaking scenery and visuals
- banger soundtrack
- complex and convoluted plot