Last Epoch reminds me of the relationship you start after you worked up the courage to leave your cheating ex. I've learned to love and trust ARPGs again.

I spent a few days watching as many videos as I could find on reviews for Gotham Knights. Like most of you, I've had this one my Wishlist for a while now, and was completely gutted when the reviews started pouring in about how un-fun or underwhelming this game is. Truth be told, I suppose I can see where they're coming from.

People didn't like that the enemies are bullet sponges (take too much damage before being defeated), the crafting system, how grindy the game feels, and performance. As far as I'm concerned, all of these were honestly fine. I aim to express my opinions on all of these negative aspects as best I can.

Combat: The combat is fun for me. When I play games, I go into the settings and immediately change the difficulty to the easiest difficulty the game provides. I care more about story than defeating the enemies on god-mode. In doing so, it takes away the bullet sponginess of the enemies. I now truly feel like a legitimate superhero, running down lowly thugs and beating them to a pulp, while still maintaining a fair-ish enough fight against the tougher baddies and the bosses I've encountered. Does this make the combat boring? Some would say yes, but I find it enjoyable and more "realistic". These baddies don't stand a chance, just like they don't in other mediums we see these super heroes.

Grind: Yeah, it can be grindy, sure. I've only stuck to one hero, because that's how I want to play. I viewed unlocking the knighthood as a sort of mini tutorial, allowing me to get more used to my hero choice and their combos. It took...maybe an hour? to get my traversal ability. Once I unlocked the ability to fast travel, and all the waypoints (also took a short amount of time), it makes navigating Gotham so much easier. So the grind wasn't really there for me. I'm not doing the Knighthood stuff 4 times over, just the one. And now I don't ever have to think about it again. Certain challenges are required to continue boss stories, but so what? I'm investigating stuff and progressing the story. It feels more realistic to me. I have to earn the knowledge to figure out what's going on, just like one would have to in real life.

Crafting: It's a numbers game. Slight variation on gear (I suppose) but if you like seeing bigger numbers, that's basically it. You start to unlock elemental variations of your weapons, blah blah blah. Nothing to write home about, but also not a deal breaker. Every time I go back to the Belfry I look at the crafting options, see a bigger number, craft it, mod it, and move on with my day.

Performance: This is my biggest gripe. My CPU is a bit older, but I have a 3070 Tuff GPU and it hits maybe 40ish FPS while in the open world part. That's the most frustrating thing, but its livable. While in the Belfry, or on a mission I hit well above 100+ FPS (DLSS on, Medium graphics, 2k resolution). I'm hoping a patch comes out to address this issue, and if it does I'd be extremely happy with this game.

Overall: I'm enjoying my time within Gotham. I was turned off by all of the reviews I watched, but I took a step back and analyzed what they were reviewing, and realized it didn't necessarily apply to me and the way I play games. I don't care about the enemies taking too long to defeat, since I play on easy mode anyways and I 1-2 shot enemies already. I don't care about the grind, because I'm not trying to play all the heroes and the grind it took to unlock my single hero's Knighthood/fast travel felt totally fair and expected. I don't care about crafting, never really have in any game, to be honest. My numbers go up and I hit harder now, I'm good with that. I do care about performance, but it's not like I'm hitting 2FPS, There are moments where it stutters and drops, but the lowest I've seen is maybe 25ish FPS? And it doesn't stay there long. I'm fine waiting for a patch and playing in that.

I hope this review helps someone out there that may be on the fence, that plays games similarly to myself. You'll likely enjoy it, just like I have. Good luck!

The game play is pretty fun, and combat seems fair and balanced. If you can get past the somewhat cringe dialogue and spotty camera controls, you'll have a blast. I'm super enjoying my play through. The story concept is interesting and a cool take on a well known legend.

First "Dark Souls" game I've ever beaten. Absolutely loved it. Those pesky cliffs are still the most difficult thing for me to beat, though...

All i want to do is build/gather resources and this game meets those very minimum standards. Add on top the option to cave dive and make a farm, and I'm sold.

Love the game! It can be tedious, but I'm a huge sucker for base building/strategy games. I will say, my only issue so far is that I can't continue my story after taking over the world. Story/Lore wise, it makes sense, still bummed, though.