Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

@LtSarge i still have it on my DS , mario works so good in a RPG/Turnbased

really love the artstyle too & was actually my main attraction to it.

@LtSarge Whilst it's awesome that you enjoyed Bowser's Inside Story so much, and I really enjoyed reading your post-game / pre-bonus content impressions, it's a shame that it only manages to move the boredom goalposts a lil' further back, rather than remove them entirely. My RPG experience is limited but, thanks to those I have played, I've also encountered the unfortunate flaw of a drawn-out finale, and it's never not frustrating. When you realise that you're wishing a game to be over, it's never a good sign.

Speaking of which...

@oliverp Yeah, it's a shame Uncharted 4 screws up its pacing so often. It's a gorgeous, highly playable game but its story and character choices were a bit of a letdown for me. I often think about replaying it because the gameplay really is that good, but then I think about some of the sequences which drag and plot points which annoy me and my enthusiasm drains away. Still, I'm real glad you had fun!

@RogerRoger Wishing a game to be over happens all the time with me nowadays. There are so many games to play that I just want to move on to another one if it's taking too long or it's frustrating to play.

That's actually what happened when I played the bonus content Bowser Jr's Journey. It's incredibly simplistic with very little depth and I had to force myself to play it because I don't want to miss out on content. However, I just encountered a difficulty spike and now the game expects me to grind. In a bonus game! Yeah, that's not happening lol. The bonus content wasn't interesting to begin with and now they want me to play it longer than I have to. So I decided to give up on it. At that point, I'm really wasting my time. I'd rather play so many other games.

So I guess that's my review of Bowser Jr's Journey. Stay clear from it!

@LtSarge Oh Interesting then its not only me who feel that way sometime. Its like you know there is some other interesting game around corner but you want kind fulfill your obligation to the game you are playing and already have invested some time in ideally complete the task and the game. But yeah sometimes its feel like its maybe not the worth the time… Felt like I played a few of those grindy takes in games last year and year before..

@oliverp Yeah I'm still not good at deciding when to give up on games. It's especially painful to play something until you get close to the end and then you realise you just can't continue anymore.

I personally think it's better to give up on games rather than play something that you're not enjoying just for the sake of finishing it. But I always get a bad conscience whenever I give up on a game. At the end of the day though, if it helps me get through my backlog faster, then I'm fine with that.

@LtSarge I've long learnt to give up on games if I'm not enjoying them. Sure there might be sections that you can get through, but if that drags on for too long I will most likely move on.

I have recently been playing a fantastic rpg, chained echoes. It's a callback to the top down jrpgs of yore. For the last ten days I have been smitten. It takes everything that's been good within the genre and eradicates the faff. I was wondering why @ShogunRok hasn't reviewed it? @kyleforrester87 have you played it, I know you would love it!

The world and story are wild. Admittedly it's gotten a bit xfiles for me nearing the conclusion but the first 20 hours are some of the best the genre has to offer. The fighting builds throughout the campaign and the rewards board is one of the best mechanics I've seen for a long time. Simple, clean and you want to fill that thing!

The maps are puzzles within themselves and the revelations of what's going on, railroads you to keep playing. Not since the mass effect trilogy have I froze in horror realising it 3:30am in the morning and I can't put it down.

You have genre staples with their own twist. From the levelling to equipment, the bestiary to side quests, base building to secret bosses. Storming castles to petting dogs. It's such a beast of a game.

Oh and the music is gorgeous and perfectly fitting.

It has a couple of negatives. The crystal system is confusing, I understand what to do but the implementation seems a little off. Like a twisted version of materia, which isn't as simple. Also at times the fanatstic story is undermined by writing which looks a little amateurish (like this here review). And I was stuck on one particular puzzle in Glen's mind and needed to reach for a solution. It was just confusing were as the rest of the game is fun fun fun.

So if you want an old skool jrpg, with well thought out mechanics and a brilliant overarching story. This is the game you want to play. Its quality of life improvements are respectful of your time and it's better than the games it's inspired by. And that includes FF6 and Chrono Trigger.

Go buy it

9/10

@themcnoisy thanks for the recommendation - it is on the list actually, it looked good based on the Nintendolife review I read. But I’ll get to it sooner after your endorsement 👍🏻

@themcnoisy I've seen a ton of praise for the game, but I've held off since I often have mixed feelings about Western indies that take heavy inspiration from classic JRPGs. But maybe I'm being closed-minded. Your piece certainly represents strong praise. Maybe it'd be a good idea to give this a go on Game Pass.

Thanks for the contribution!

@Ralizah You would enjoy it Rali. 😀. Go in with an open mind and its easy to love.

@kyleforrester87 it would be even better on the switch. You can save pretty much anywhere and drop 20 minutes on your lunch break.

@themcnoisy The unfortunate truth is that it just released at a bad time, right before the Christmas break. I simply didn't have time to play through it, so the original plan was to get stuck in over the holidays and publish a review in January... But that never happened.

The review schedule has been so hectic since that I've never had a chance to go back, even though I've had loads of people tell me it's an amazing RPG. A very disappointing situation!

You never know, though. I might finally get to it one day and write something up if it meets my now sky high expectations!

@ShogunRok Fair enough bro. Reviewing RPGs is time consuming for sure. Well worth putting on though Rob! It's a breath of fresh air I highly recommend to all RPG aficionados.

@LtSarge Yikes, sorry to hear that Bowser Jr's Journey ended up being so obstinate. Funnily enough, I was thinking of this discussion earlier, as I was finishing a Naruto game which dragged out its final chapters to a frustrating degree. I was literally wishing for it to be over! Anyway, well done for walking away. It's definitely the best course of action (life's too short an' all that) but you're right, it never feels good to abandon a game before you've seen the story's credits roll, at the very least.

***

@themcnoisy Great to see you back, buddy, and glad you enjoyed Chained Echoes so much! Seems like it made one heck of an impression on you! Knowing that you're an old-school JRPG fan, I'm not surprised but still, it's awesome that folks out there are still making these kinds of games. Here's hoping that you're keeping well in general, and that you're able to catch up on all that lost sleep soon!

@RogerRoger yeah boy. Thanks Rog. I read through the thread last night before posting and it's good to see you are keeping it alive. Hope life is treating you well.

In fact I think the developer of Chained echoes should reach out to you, for assistance with the writing!

With you replaying MGS5, chained echoes is the opposite. MGS5 is fabulous, however there is a lot of running around and filler, superficially increasing the length. Chained echoes is the opposite, it has so much going on and respects your time. Pointing out optional quests and extras and you get an airship, mech suit and world map to help with traversal around 16-18 hours in. You can literally jump from quest to quest without worrying about collecting crap. There is even a trophy / achievement for selling a piece of crap.

And as an edit to my review, the developer is working on an update to the crystal system. Hopefully so you can swap in weapon and armour crystals without the added faff of crystal quality, which I still don't understand.

Great game. With a couple of upgrades to the graphics and a more cohesive writing style, the sequel could be huge!

@themcnoisy Aww, cheers! Right back at'cha, buddy!

That's kind of you to say, but I'm not sure how effective I'd be at writing pure fantasy! Besides, I do tend to waffle, and it sounds like Chained Echoes is better for being kept tight. I really do appreciate games that are as long as they need to be, though. Back when I was playing the original FFVII there'd be moments where I felt lost, or trapped by superfluous busywork, and it helped reinforce the stereotype that JRPGs pad themselves out, telling a six-hour story in quadruple the time. Which is probably why I haven't gone anywhere near the sub-genre since, so maybe I'll keep Chained Echoes in mind, then! Especially after that update to the crystal system drops; here's hoping it fixes your issue with the whole mechanic!

Cyberpunk 2077 (Vers. 1.61) Review
Played on PS5
{Warning: Spoilers Ahead}

Cyberpunk 2077. A game I wanted to talk about since it was released in 2020. I had strong feelings back then but after 2 years, I wanted to see if anything has changed. Maybe I was wrong or maybe I’m more of a Shadowrun guy.

Story

Quests

The best part of this game is the Maelstrom quest. I know this quest is brought up the most and for good reason. This was the centerpiece of the E3 demo because of its variety of choices in how you interact with it.

1) You can show up and buy the flathead bot with your own cash and walk out with no problem
2) Walk up to Royce and shoot him in the face to skip his boss phase then fight the rest of his gang
3) You can contract with Militech and pay with an infected shard leading to a shootout with Royce as a mecha boss and walk out to Militech controlling the scene
4) You can hack the Militech shard, pay for the flathead and get a stealthy approach for the next couple of fights and
5) You can hack the Militech shard and inform Maelstrom that Militech is on to them resulting in you and the Maelstrom fighting together against Militech
0.5) You can save Brick and depending on whether Royce (and DumDum) lives or dies will affect an Act 3 side quest (Second Conflict)

This quest alone is great and clearly shows potential for what we can expect in quality from the upcoming quests right? Nope. No quest in the main story comes close to this in terms of variety in both gameplay and narrative which is a shame.

Side quests vary in quality but a shining example is Dream On for me. Aside from being an Aerosmith fan, It perfectly encapsulated the existential dread of having your mind warped by outside forces and you being none the wiser.

A terrible quest is Lizzy Wizzy’s which, apart from having Grime’s awful voice acting, ends ‘off-screen’ and we get caught up via text messages. A large chunk of this game is told through text logs and it takes away from my enjoyment.

Cyberpsychos are mini-bosses and suffer the same complaint of being text-based. Cyberpsychosis is wasted in this game but gets brought into discussion more so because of the Edgerunners anime for better or for worse.

Gigs are sub-side quests and involve more gameplay variety with some encouraging you to talk through situations for a better outcome, but most come down to go here and shoot some people or find an item.

NCPD hustles are simply small skirmishes with a loot reward. Sometimes they’ll have some journal entries about “lore” but it's inconsequential.

Braindance

Braindances (BDs) are cool in concept as well as the in-universe explanation for how people make/distribute them but in execution, they’re just so BORING. They play like the detective parts from Batman: Arkham Origins with worse visuals. Seriously, looking through the vision layer in these parts is unpleasantly ugly.

The first BD mission is when you scope out Yorinobu’s penthouse suite to find Silverhand’s relic. It’s detailed with tons of minor things to scan for information through vision, audio, and thermal layers alongside an optional objective to scan Yorinobu’s security systems (which doesn’t amount to anything but is still something to do). This is the most fleshed-out BD the game has to offer and every subsequent BD we encounter pales in comparison. I’m starting to notice a pattern about the front-loaded quality put forth here.

Music

Cyberpunk wears its musical influences on its sleeve proudly. Every main and side quest is named after song titles reflecting that story’s theme. “Heroes” by David Bowie is used for Jackie’s ofrenda matching the bond V had with him (minus the lovers' allegory) to “Dream On” by Aerosmith reflecting Peralez losing his mind as it's altered by an unseen force to use him as a puppet for unknown ulterior motives to “Sinnerman” by Nina Simone showcasing a serial killer using himself as a martyr with crucifixion to escape his judgment through atonement yet being taken advantage of as a brain dance.

This rings especially true for Judy’s final quest “Pyramid Song” by Radiohead (of course its Radiohead) mirroring her feelings after losing everything close to her in Night City with Evelyn, Maiko, Tom, and Roxanne dead as you explore her hometown underwater reminiscing on her past (also her having lyrics from “Parallel Universe” by Red Hot Chili Peppers tattooed on her arm, “Underwater where thoughts can breathe easily…”).

It also extends to the endings of The Devil – “Where is my Mind?” by Pixies (better known as the song at the end of Fight Club), The Star – “All Along the Watchtower” by Jimi Hendrix/Bob Dylan, The Sun – “Path to Glory” by Plasmatics, and Temperance – “New Dawn Fades” by Joy Division where just reading the lyrics of the song defines the emotion/tone of the ending with Temperance being the best point of reference.

CDPR got Refused to write Samurai’s tracks and I think they were perfect for the job. My exposure to the band was from “New Noise” which encapsulates Samurai’s punk roots. As for the radio and original soundtrack, I didn’t care for much of it since they don’t appeal to my awful taste in music except for the addition of “I Really Want to Stay at Your House” from the anime which I don’t like.

Combat

The player has a tremendous number of options to experiment with from sprinting around with a shotgun and double jumping like it's Doom, creeping in and out of a hideout stealthily without alerting anyone/popping headshots with a silenced pistol and optical camo, sitting in your car while using quick hacks through cameras to melt brains and convert turrets to your side as well as sniping through walls from afar with a tech rifle. Cyberpunk offers a healthy amount of variety in how you want to approach combat your way and encourages personal flair for a playthrough.

I’m concerned with the enemy AI and how they’re meant to challenge the player in working around certain resistances and tactics. It's not necessarily fair to say that the AI is dumb per se but more in how the player has too many options to be countered. More often than not they’ll just stand around and clip into vehicles.

My biggest disappointment with combat outside of cyber ware abilities is net runners. has and cool hats. Can you guess what they have? 2 QUICK HACKS! Ping and Overheat. Meanwhile, my net runner can jam guns, blind eyes, drop grenades, turn knees weak, arms heavy, and make brain spaghetti. I was hoping that enemies would at least use Reboot Optics, Weapon Glitch, and Cripple Movement on me to encourage taking out net runners first but are instead outclassed by a cyber ware mod that negates fire damage.

Driving

You can’t do a wheelie on a motorcycle 0/10.

On a serious note, driving is a mixed bag where some vehicles can turn on a dime while others can struggle to make a right turn under 5 mph. My rule of thumb for a game’s driving quality is by easy it is to make a right turn. I often test via handbrake, slow down to 0 mph or let off the accelerator at high speed before I turn.

This varies from car to car like supercars, sedans, muscle cars, and bikes but there is a factor that slights against me. Steering. The default driving setting for most cars is to oversteer like Johnny’s Porsche. The sensitivity can be adjusted from an update but some cars understeer like V’s starting car so it can’t be evenly distributed on a car-to-car basis (that and I’m far too lazy to test every variable to make driving bearable).

The same can’t be said for motorcycles. I tried. I have tried every variation of motorcycles to try and make it work but they JUST WON’T TURN. It doesn’t matter if I slow to a crawl or drift, the bike either understeers off the road or oversteers the drift to mess up the angle of my turn. Maybe it’s due to the god-awful physics where cars can fly into the air off the slightest bump in the road and how often I can just barrel through other vehicles at full speed without slowing down.

The best thing about the vehicles is their interior design. Every car has its layout filled with detail from where the speedometer is located to the display of your current radio station to looking at all the buttons and knobs gives you the thematic difference between luxury cars and nomad cars.

Let’s shift over to the racing side quest. It’s bad. How bad? The AI has absolutely no feasible way to chase you or fight you in this manner, I mean gangs and police already can’t chase you in the overworld so what should I have expected? If you’re too far ahead of your competitors, they’ll rubber band so close to you that the minimap has a seizure trying to keep up. Enemy cars can shoot you, but Claire pretty much guns them down before you’ll even notice unless you pick a car with wing doors (like the Caliburn) then you’re screwed since you can’t fight back and blow up.

Gear

I like loot. I enjoy games like Borderlands and Nioh so there’s clearly something wrong with me. A part of me likes to see numbers go up to prove how much better I think I am at the game, and it appeals to my love of number crunching in making various builds based on my stats/perks. The problem is that this game wants to be a looter shooter without the commitment to its own system.

Weapons will have a variation in their damage type (fire, shock, poison, bleed) and sometimes have an exceptional trait like the pistol shown in the picture above. Weapon stats are negligible even when going into rarity tiers as the only difference is a slight increase in damage. Special traits have the potential to add some variety with some guns removing vertical recoil, reducing charge time, increasing ricochet chance/amount, etc. except they aren’t something you can reliably obtain.

However, a really cool thing is that every gun has like 6 different reload animations (3 for partial reload, 3 for empty reload). It’s something I hope more games would start doing considering how often players reload in an FPS and it adds some flair.

Iconic weapons are the exception to my complaints about weapon variety/traits. They’re reskins of existing weapons but have variants that make them unique like Problem Solver which takes an SMG and gives it an 80-round mag with an absurd fire rate, Chaos is a tech pistol that cycles between fire/poison/shock damage during reloads, Plan B which uses your money as ammo and my boy Skippy who lovingly sings Rhianna’s “Disturbia” and thanks me for reloading. He is the best and no one shall dare talk smack about him or else I’ll… cry in the corner so beware.

Weapon mods are simple stat increases to damage, fire rate, and crit chance/damage as well as adding muzzles and sights for most weapons. The only muzzle you had were suppressors until it took them around 6 months to add a muzzle brake to the roster. Sights are your standard red dot/ACOG scopes with a bizarre caveat that gives you a -0.01 to ADS time which is such an insignificant modifier I’m not even sure it’s worth explaining why this is dumb. Also, am I the only one that thinks it's weird to not have any way to increase your ammo capacity both for reserves and/or apply an extended magazine for a weapon in an FPS?

Clothing is just as worthless in terms of stats as you only need to look at the armor stat. Some gear will have a trait like more damage to enemies at a lower level than you and small cooldown reductions, but they only serve for defense alone. There's a commonality with RPGs like this where you’ll wear a hodgepodge of ugly clothes for the stats and this game is no exception to how stupid I’ll look.

They did add transmog to alleviate this problem however it took them 2 years to do this and they already had this system in place at launch. Outfits functioned the same way except you only had 3 outfits, a militech suit (used once for the heist), Big Boss’s MGS5 hospital attire, and a hazmat suit. Transmog also reduced clothing stores to a place where you want to buy a specific jacket or shirt for your costume making the entire function of buying gear worthless.

Stores are available to purchase weapons and clothing to upgrade yourself which would be fine if their stock wasn’t randomized. There have been updates to make each store more consistent in what they have to sell but their convenience is undercut by simply going to an NPC, fighting them, and looting them for gear roughly scaled to your level rather than paying for an overpriced item that gets outpaced relatively quickly. Consumables like med kits and food are EVERYWHERE so why bother with medic/food shops?

Crafting is a flawed mess of a system but it's only useful when you’re at max level and you want to play with iconic weapons consistently. Sure you can craft grenades, med kits, and gear but you can find them easily by looting so you’re better off just crafting ammo. Upgrading gear is pointless since you can find always find better gear for free.

Alternatively crafting quick hacks breaks the rule about gear because it scales through level/attribute rather than gear score so I can craft a legendary Contagion at level 8 and it’ll carry me through the entire game. Cyberware is technically an exception but they affect your playstyle with attachments to your arms and legs. Double jump, mantis blades, and mono wire are the most popular because who doesn’t want to double jump while smacking people with machetes taped to their arms or with a light-up jump rope? However, I want to mention the PLS cyberware as it doesn’t get much attention.

The Projectile Launch System is the equivalent of having a grenade launcher in your arm so why isn’t that as cool as it sounds? Because it doesn’t have any damage scaling, damage output sucks and it requires a smart link but doesn’t lock on. The only reason to use it is if you give it non-lethal rounds which knock out enemies with one shot no matter what. Be aware that the explosive radius can dismember and kill them so it’s not 100% safe. I still find it funny how it's nonlethal to blast a rocket at someone’s face. Batman would be so proud.

Finally, I’ll talk about inventory bloat. It’s a similar complaint that I have for The Witcher 3 where there are so many items that share the same effect. The picture above shows roughly 96 consumables with different art assets. All food heals the same amount and all drinks increase stamina the same amount so why bother giving me all these options?

TL; DR My Stupid Opinion
I don’t understand Cyberpunk 2077. It wants to be everything at once but nothing feels finished or fully developed. Some side quests start and end abruptly, we have a 4 mission-long racing and fist-fighting tournament but no shooting tournament. The police spawn directly behind you and can't chase you when you’re in a vehicle but can also be negated by driving less than half a block to remove your wanted level. This is supposed to be a Next-Gen RPG yet it took CDPR 2 YEARS to meet the standard other games have achieved in less than half the time. I still vehemently disagree about how this game is ambitious, it's just an unfocused mess, as I hold Red Dead Redemption 2 as a more ambitious game.

@CuteBoyMnM Extremely thorough breakdown of Cyberpunk 2077! I've not played it myself (YET), but your analysis seems to echo other assessments of the game I've read, which judge that nearly every aspect of the experience features questionable design choices that might have been ironed out had the game featured a longer development time, and that even the scenario and character writing broadly disappoint, which is a shame coming from The Witcher 3 devs. The devs have managed to patch it up a bit, but there's no mistaking the 'rushed homework' quality the game has, and it would have benefitted from being allowed to remain in development until the people making it were satisfied with the end result.

Which is sad, ultimately, since you acknowledge that hints of a much greater experience can be seen. Especially in the quest design.

It's a real pity that CDPR's writers got one shot to work on this amazing RPG world, and the greed of the higher-ups at the company forced them to produce an ultimately substandard product in comparison to what they were capable of making.

Haven't played RDR2 yet, either. Should I bump that up my list?

Strong use of screenshots in your piece, too. Great submission!

@CuteBoyMnM Very entertaining review, thoroughly enjoyed reading it! Can tell a lot of time and talent went into crafting it, and you made me laugh more than once! Huge thanks for sharing!

I feel your pain about the opening's lack of choice. Whilst I haven't played Cyberpunk for myself, I'm very aware of its marketing promises and, without wanting to unpack that whole sorry mess all over again, it's always a shame when a game built around player choice, freedom and agency fails to deliver, at least in its introductory chapters. It's even worse when it's a new I.P. as I'll forgive a sequel for knowing what came before and making a few tidy assumptions, but here? That sounds frustrating as heck. Even in service of an endgame rug-pull, which surely would've had more impact if you'd have had more input early on?

I'd also agree that Keanu Reeves was cast for cool points, not because he was necessarily the best choice for the character as scripted. Again, I'm saying this as an observer and not a player, but I've seen some of his scenes on YouTube and yay, it's Keanu, we all love Keanu, but I can't help thinking that an established voice / mo-cap actor would've been a better choice.

The way you describe the combat (yay!) and driving (boo!) makes me wonder whether the developers should've just made a linear shooter soaked in the game's effective cyberpunk aesthetic, rather than try and live up to everybody's post-Witcher expectations. All those E3 highlights you mention just serve to expose the rest of the game's shortcomings. I suppose those ridiculously strong pre-order sales wouldn't have been generated without trading on the goodwill generated by a past success. Wasn't it the case that Cyberpunk was already profitable before it launched or something? It was crazy numbers, at any rate.

And hey, given gaming's general direction of late, I'd say that there's nothing wrong with you for liking loot; in fact, it probably means you're able to enjoy your hobby in far more ways than others! It's interesting to see a breakdown of a loot system from a fan of loot systems, as so often the discourse around such mechanics gets drowned out by wider complaints. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that I universally love loot, but I have enjoyed engaging with simple loot-based systems on occasion, and understand how watching stats stack up can trigger a "Cool, I'm progressing!" buzz, so I appreciated the deep dive. There'll always be somebody who decries a reward as unrewarding, but it's neat to read that you managed to find something to work towards in Cyberpunk. Skippy sounds adorable (and very polite for a gun, too) but yes, it's very strange not to have any kind of ammo / mag capacity increase in a shooter nowadays!

Good grief, that inventory screenshot gives me a headache, though. Rest assured that your gameplay shots are stunning as always but yeah, nobody needs all that consumable artwork! Well, at least the art asset team kept itself busy during the game's endless delays and post-release polishing, I guess!

@CuteBoyMnM I know you warn of spoilers, but you really need to spoilertag the first half of that as you literally tell the whole story of the game

@Ralizah Thanks for reading. I always feel bad about being harsh on CDPR and their games because they are clearly passionate about the source material they take from. Their art design on all their games is always striking to me and Cyberpunk is no exception when it comes to the style of Night City and its characters.

However, I will defend Takemura as my favorite character because of how he is the complete antithesis of V. Learning more about him was genuinely interesting as it helped give context to why someone would want to live opposite of V and Jackie, not to place right or wrong but share perspectives.

Alternatively, I do wish Vik and Misty had more involvement in the plot since they're supposed to be our anchor to Night City outside of Jackie. Misty especially considering she's into mysticism which feels totally out of place in this super future techno dystopia but that's why I want to know more about her. She reminds me of the female pilot in Mass Effect Andromeda who chats with you about believing in god in a world with space travel and aliens. The concept alone is a fun discussion with the character that I was hoping V and Misty could've shared something similar.

As for Red Dead 2, Rockstar games are a SLOW burn both in gameplay and in character writing. I'd definitely say to give it a try but I understand it's not something everyone can get into especially with the gameplay. I feel like they tried to implement some bits from Max Payne 3 with how Arthur controls and shoots as best they could to add run and gun play-styles although it's still a cover shooter with auto-aim as a fallback.

@Rogerroger Thanks, glad I got someone to laugh. I always try to take marketing hype (especially E3 demos) with a grain of salt and try to hold any game on its own merits. If I held every game accountable for what they did or didn't promise I'd be an unhinged individual and I wouldn't be able to enjoy anything. I remember reading that CDPR broke even on preorders alone at launch but their stocks went down I think by like 40% that same week.

I guess it's becoming a bigger problem that games are becoming "pseudo" RPGs and are implementing these kinds of loot systems because it's getting more and more difficult to find suitable rewards for progression. Loot isn't something you can just tack onto a game and expect it to work, I feel like we had the same thing happen years ago when every game decided to add crafting to their game. Look at Ghost Recon Breakpoint for example, the game launched as a looter shooter, bombed pretty hard and got an update 6 months later to add a separate mode removing loot. Same mechanics, same gameplay but with no gear score. Not trying to discredit the work Ubisoft did but that kinda speaks volumes about how pointless the system was if it could be taken out with no changes to the core experience.

@MatthewJP Fair enough, shame on me for not thinking about that. Sorry.