Scott Petsuch

Let me start out by saying I don't dislike this game and I honestly think it's a good game, but the amount of bugs is absolutely insane. I get some bugs when a game first releases but this is cyber punk level. First off I finished the game and am chaos level 15 at the moment. There is a current issue with the servers that is causing extreme lag, by that I mean 3 fps for around 5 seconds which may not seem like alot but 5 seconds is way more than enough to die in the chaos levels, if it lags for 1/2 a second I lose my entire shield and have a sliver of health, so with the lag the game is literally unplayable. To get rid of the lag you need to completely disconnect your device from the internet. Second visual glitches including loot luck. When you get into the game your loot luck does not count the chaos levels. I don't know if that's just a visual glitch or if it's actually bugged since I have no way to test it since loot drops are rng based. 3rd disappearing weapons, I got 2 legendary weapons equipped one tested it, then in the same slot equipped the other one to test it and when I went back to check the first legendary is nowhere to be found. Also today checked my loot bank and I noticed I'm missing a chaotic shield with 25% loot luck I have no idea what else I'm missing since I don't a spreadsheet with all of my items but I'm sure I'm missing more. If this game was free of bugs I'd probably give it a 4.5 star rating but as it stands now I want to give it a 1.5 star rating the only reason it's getting a 3 star is because even with the bugs it's still a good game and I know they'll be worked out eventually.

I honestly love the game but can see why some people hate it. Pros: It's completely different from any other open world game. The world is immersive and the hand holding is held to a minimum. The option to hide the HUD and it is automatically set to auto hide. The lack of direction allowing you to make your own adventure (there are still things that show you how to progress the main story but you can ignore them if you want.) The ability to go almost anywhere and do anything you want right from the start of the game. The game is difficult but also a lot easier at least for me compared to other souls games.(this can be a pro or a con, I have it as a pro because you can make the game harder but normally cannot make them easier. Cons: Multi-player as always sucks if you buy the game for multi-player you'll probably hate it. Performance issues on PC, this seems to have been resolved but I need to address it since it made the game unplayable for a lot of people for a long time. Difficulty, like I said the game is much easier than the other souls games so if you play souls games for the insane difficulty you may be upset, the difficulty does ramp up a lot more at the end of the game, but it sucks that the beginning is so easy. Overall, everyone has preferences and mine will differ from yours, I think the art direction is amazing and graphics are decent, but you may think it's trash. I may find the difficulty easy but you may find it impossible. I may love that the game doesn't hold my hand but it may frustrate you. Again we all have options mine is that this game is amazing, but yours may be that this game sucks. If you don't like the game don't play it, if you love the game don't force it on people we all have our likes and dislikes so it's not the end of the world if someone disagrees with you. (This is an additional note and why I am lowering my score to a 4 star) The game runs well on all platforms with the correct hardware. Although, I just upgraded from a GTX 1660 Super (which Elden ring ran amazing on) to an RTX 3060 which has completely made Elden ring unplayable. For some reason Elden ring is no longer using my graphics card to process the game and has moved over to using my ram, to process everything causing 100% memory utilization and major lag spikes. I've tried adjusting settings for about 3 days now to get it to utilize the graphics cards memory but I cannot get it to work. I understand that I have the ability to play Elden ring on PC still since I kept my GTX 1660 Super for another build but, I don't see why a graphics card upgrade broke the game for me. I will note as well, I don't have the greatest Ram in the world but it's also not bad. 16 GB of DDR4 3200 which is middle of the line when it comes to ram. I'll test again with 32 GB of DDR4 3200 ram and see if that helps, but of course since the game is utilizing mainly ram and my graphics card I doubt that will fix anything. I'm sure FromSoftware is still working on the performance issues so until a patch comes that resolves my issue I'll just use my GTX 1660 Super to play Elden ring and the RTX 3060 to play everything else. It's just a pain to keep opening my desktop to do so.

The gameplay overall has a lot of potential, the issue is the parry timing for me. Sekiro seemed to master the timing, where as Wo Long seems to be about a 1/4 of a second too narrow. Aside from that the combat feels good for the most part. My other issue comes in with the controls, they just don't feel good to me, it's as simple as that. Lastly the environments seems off somehow, I can't put my finger on the reason though. I don't have much more to say since I haven't beaten the game, maybe it's a 5 out of 5 and I just wrote the review too early but from first impressions it's mid. Overall it's a 3 out of 5 it's not amazing, but it's not a bad game.

Overall the game is pretty good. It's got some flaws like a 3+ hour tutorial or at least what feels like a tutorial, and the gameplay may become repetitive, it hasn't been repetitive for me yet bit I can see it becoming more repetitive the more I play. I see some comments about it not running well on the OLED Switches so that may be something to consider if you have one as well as a lot of comments on the graphics. I'll touch on the graphics quickly, the graphics in this game are second only to pokken tournament they're really good for a pokemon game. If you were expecting BOTW graphics you have to consider BOTW was in development for 5 years, we don't know how long pokemon arceus was in development. Good things include a change to gameplay. I personally like being able to sneak up on pokemon to catch them, I'm glad there is no gym battles or champions, I think that it's great that is has a stronger focus on completing the pokedex, and I'm glad there's an increase in side quests. I've been playing pokemon since 2001 and I can say the mainline games have all become bland, this game revitalized the dream I had of pokemon when I was a kid being able to explore the pokemon world and to an extent do whatever I want in the game. It's not a perfect game but then again neither was BOTW or any other games I've ever played. It's a good game that branches off from the standard formula in a good way. I hope to see more pokemon games like it, they don't have to be the mainline games but they could be made every few years with a dedicated development team like how pokemon mystery dungeons was. My dream since pokemon gold and silver was an open world pokemon game with all regions and pokemon included where you're not bound by a story, there can be one but I'd like the main focus to be creating your own story without limitations on story progression. This is something that the pokemon company is considering since they released the game so I think it's important if we like this layout to show our support to the devs and prove to nintendo not all pokemon games need to be the same. *Update: I found out what people mean when they complain about "graphics" they do not necessarily mean the graphics themselves they mean the draw distance. Yes, pokemon legends arceus has a low render distance so that is something to be mindful when purchasing, I know some people have a huge sensitivity to images popping in and out, I have a family member who is like that and will get migrains from it, so if you're sensative to that type of thing I suggest only playing for short periods of time or to avoid the game altogether if your sensitivity is bad enough. Also I have a small issue I with how the game locations are setup; I should have realized this from the trailers and the screenshots that were released, but each location is a contained location, so there is no way to travel between them without exiting the expedition. I would have preferred it all be open to me and have roadblocks in the story to prevent progressing too early. So keep in mind the first area that you unlock is a contained sandbox and you cannot travel to the other location from there without leaving and choosing a new location. Aside from that the gameplay still isn't repetitive yet, it actually seems to have become more fun for me, if I notice any additional details I will provide more updates but over this is still a great game. Update: Just beat the game surprisingly the last boss is easier that some of the one prior. Not sure why but for me it was pretty easy. I'd say my final review of 4 stars is pretty accurate for this game. It's got flaws but is a great game.