Love how my butt crack clenches whenever I do a risky jump and grab onto the rock on my way down. Keeps me on the edge of my sweat-stained seat.

Good game, both solo and in coop. Playing Zelda prior to this helps. I checked.

Even though Lords of The Fallen 2 has some neat ideas and SHOULD be a good game ON PAPER - I couldn't ever bring myself to call it good, I'm sorry.

The game looks... burnt. It feels burnt. Everything is kind of over-detailed but at the same time you can't make anything out. Animations, movements - everything feels 'jagged', an enemy may travel through a footbal field in 1 swing, whereas YOUR attacks send you forward SO LITTLE - most enemies will get out of your range by just breathing.

The story is the typical SoulsBorne vague depressing religious drivel, except it's terribly written and even less interesting than you could imagine. Bad god is bad, good god is good but kinda bad too. Myegh. Tragedy can only go so far before it becomes monotonous.

The alternative world had a lot of potential, but in the end... It's just there. You can't progress through a part of a level? You probably need to go into the other world. Don't stay there too long or you'll die. 'Puzzles' are... barebones-y, I don't know what to tell you. It's not pleasant to explore the 'Umbral' because enemies constantly spawn everywhere, you have a disgusting array of effects on your screen and some bugs crawling sounds are present ALL THE TIME. It is PHYSICALLY draining to walk through the second world. I GET that it's a bad place, but damn. Imagine suffering for 50% of the game just because of all the visual and audial noise.

Oh yeah, not to mention game-breaking bugs like entire buildings/floors/walls blinking in and out of existence until you clip through and fall into infinity.

There are VERY FEW redeemable qualities this game has, and in my opinion - none of them are worth forgiving LOF2 her detriments.

This game lists Hunt:Showdown and STALKER as inspirations. From where I'm standing, that's pretty much on point. I'd say give it a chance if you like either of those two or if you absolutely hate that Hunt:Showdown is a multiplayer only pvp battle-♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥-royale and there is nothing like it in singleplayer (now there is, though, thanks to Blood West).

Your main guy handles rather clunky, which means you're not gonna just run in and gun everything down willy-nilly and stay alive, most of the time. Instead, Blood West encourages a methodical and planned approach to combat, which may not be everyone's cup of tea (aka you may be bored out of your butt by this), but thankfully it works veeeery good with the rest of game mechanics, like a good oiled mechanism.

This is one of those 'hoarder paradise' kind of games. Your inventory space is pretty much your 'how soon should I go back to base' timer (so I suggest buying both of the bag items in the first location) and you'll be stuffing it with loot, ammo, artefacts and weapons, even more so if you level up the right perks. As for me - I live for this shizz. I'm one of those guys who will make several trips to haul all of the armour sets from the battlefield back to the trader because they sell for insane buck, so this is my cup of tea perfectly.

Stealth and sneaking are done adequately. In fact, they are done so adequately I can't even find much to criticise. You can be spotted by sound and sight, there are skills and items and bushes to modify all that, and it works as you would expect. The only weird thing is that shooting a firearm doesn't really reveal your presence as much as it logically should, so there's no need to stick with bows and arrows if you really don't want to (although you'll have to consider doing that for other reasons).

So in general, you sneak around various compounds, headshotting some real nasty fellas and collecting a bunch of stuff that will help you get out of a pinch when stealth fails. Most of the time a direct confrontation would either be a waste of ammo or... well... life. Between murdering and looting everything on the map you're doing simple quests and finding more ways to turn yourself into a badass, be it through skills, artefacts or unique weapons. It's surprisingly addicting because level design is pretty good with lots of secrets, looping pathways and points of interests to explore.

If I was advising the dev I would've suggested adding a bunch of environmental hazards, traps, exploding barrels, sound traps, useful contraptions and etcetera etcetera. It could've made wonders for the overall world feel, but it's kinda too late for all that now, oh well.

In the end, I'll say that I scoffed at this game some time during its development, but seeing some gameplay from the second location piqued my interest so here we are.

Vewy goody-good times, luv seeing me mommykins prowd.

Saw this game on a channel of a Youtuber called Olexa, so you can say thankee to him, Caiys.
A very very well made, concise and stylish game with a bunch o secrets and CHARM. It somehow manages to unroll some new stuff even after I thought I found everything out. It is a bit slower and methodical than the usual breakneck roguelikes like, uuuh... ScourgeBringer, Gungeon, Isaac and Monolith, but I LIKE IT THAT WAY. Here you're punished less for the lack of reactions and more for not paying attention. The overall formula of exploring destructible levels works very good here.

After a couple long runs the builds get kinda samey because there are a handful of really impactful items while the majority of them don't really change your tactics much - that comes from different character classes, of which there is also quite enough, so no complaints. A game like this surely could use more insane variety, but what's here is still great, the game makes up for it with the variety of locations and some obscure secret insanities that are very satisfying to uncover.

The first game I could actually enjoy and binge in quite a while amidst the sea of mediocre and mind numbing AAA slog.