Evan A

Cute, quirky zombie fun with a good, simple life moral for teens and young 20's that is heavily repeated and presented as black-and-white. Decent animation and music, not great. Mix of good and bad eps, should've ended after Ep 7, each subsequent ep gradually gets worse - character arcs are nice but simple so become flat, writers lose the plot and increase fan service heavily, animation becomes sillier, and even the physics change to support superhero punch strength and samurai weapons. Light misogyny, cringe, and fan service relative to other animes, but still a show aimed at teen boys and young immature men with outdated views of women. Humor is mostly goofy and light hearted, with characters overly caring about seemingly silly things that are meaningful to them, in line with the nice theme of the show of pursuing your happiness, although the constant schtick of the blonde guy (and later equivalent blonde girl) stripping naked will only work for 15 year olds. Ending bbeg "anti-akira" is pretty forced and one dimensional. Worth a watch, not a rewatch, does not need a season 2. Have not watched the movie so no comment on that.

Pros: Visually creative, great music, solid voice acting, beautiful animation and artwork. Cool main concept of not focusing on action but rather examining being essentially a lonely, inexperienced "evil" god from a political, emotional, and responsibility viewpoint which brings a different spin to the overused MMORPG genre. A deep bench of side characters who tend to be the focus of the arcs instead of the MC, and a thoughtfully designed complex world and mechanics. Simple, OP fun and occasional beautifully written emotional arc/development scenes. The framework and production value to be a 5-star show are there...but... Cons: Overall plot may work in an 18 vol light novel series but leaves the show as an uncohesive winding array of mini-arcs as there just isnt enough episode time to pull it all together. By S4 the near-god Guardians are pretty much just overworked government admins, the huge issue faced at the end of S1 has long been forgotten, and a challenging antagonist finally begins to emerge. Eye-rolling predictable dialogue is a bore. Many characters quickly become one-dimensionable as the show struggles to find focus with a huge cast. To handle the ever expanding list of side characters that they spend a long time developing, the show quickly kills them off, mention them offhand occasionally, or simply forget them. Many badly written scenes as half of this show is either filler material, uninspired tropey comedic relief, or standard teenage gamer wet dream scenes where every single cool female character who had the potential to support a great fantasy isekai harem anime are ultimately reduced to gross stereotypical tropes of hopelessly lovestruck horney and catty virgins desperate for a "strong" man (either that, or are pure evil or insane).

Graphics are beautiful and intricate, very creative and detailed depictions of an old school European vampire castle and village (albeit with American accents lol), earns 1 star itself, tho at some times are janky. Gameplay is poor if you aren't blinded by expensive visuals. IMPORTANT: Ignore that it is supposedly a RE survival horror, instead prepare for a 10-hour, dark, bloody, modern-fantasy first-person action-shooter with lycans, vampires, and witches that by the thinnest thread links to the RE lore and is intended for a large/profitable mainstream casual audience, and you'll have some fun for awhile at least...well, after the opening hour or so, when you get butchered and tossed around constantly and have little agency or directive, and until you leave the castle never to return (following sections are short/rushed). Controls, weapons, and mechanics are poor - option limited, sluggish, and melee is awful. Enemies and bosses are repetative bullet sponges, and start impossibly powerful and get weaker and slower...opposite of how it should be. Lots of running away from the main boss vampires, who are pretty slow, or walking around undead swordsmen who slowly wobble. Shop (yes, in a "survival" game) and lockpick systems are unbalanced and more annoying than rewarding. Long distances between save points, and little cues of objectives, what to do, where to go, etc. Very obvious and repeated "scares". Going to a new area? Boss will walk thru the door, so you have to take a circular lap as they follow you. Walking on something unstable? It breaks and you look down. Undead soldier on the ground? It gets up....slowly. Lose more body parts than hot dinners and be turned to Swiss cheese, but just glue parts back on no problem or just ignore injuries completely. Rinse and repeat, shock factor gets old by the 4th lost body part lol. Zzz. Writing is horrendous, I was laughing most of the game bc the plot and characters reactions/motives/dialogue were just so absurd. Game is not scary, just VERY bloody (be warned if you have a phobia), but kinda fun to shoot fantasy creatures with guns instead of arrows/swords (my only reason for the 2nd star, others may disagree, I almost put 1 star myself). Last word: I usually NEVER agree with "oh the rave reviews are fake". In this case tho it's provable to a degree. First 3 Google 5-star reviews are literal word-for-word copy and paste. Others if you click their accounts, a concerning number (not all) are YouTube influencers who clearly get free game copies in exchange for typically stellar reviews. Remaining 5 star reviews are casual or novice gamers fairly new to the RE franchise more into graphics than gameplay or just repeating generic statements. The 1 star reviews are mostly the longterm RE fans angry this isn't a classic RE survival horror, but the franchise kinda stopped that after RE 4 (tho RE 7 started a return, sadly one off). The other 2 star reviews feel pretty accurate. So you get the gist, lower your expectations and don't expect a classic RE game or T-virus zombies.

Summary: Others have said it: a mile wide, an inch deep. Very, very, repetative, surface-level, and ultimatly disappointing. First time something is introduced, it's cool! Many dozens of times later...yeesh. A hand-holding and very easy (even on hard) children's or beginners game with adult themes and enjoyable scenery. Great at first and becomes a painful slog by the end. Worth a play, not at full price, and lower your expectations. The scenery is wonderfully whimsical and creative, but PS2-era graphics that's clunky for humans/centaurs and dialogue scenes. The "RPG" aspects (this is an action adventure game), are woefully underdeveloped and rushed fan bait. Lots of glitches as well - save often! There are only 7 enemy types, about 20 spells (not all useful and many overlap uses), 3 plants, and 5 overpowered potions. Enemies scale so what you fight at level 1 are the same as at level 40 (in a different skin/color), youll be crying by your 100th spider or 20th troll. I liked the combat system but was happy to get avada kadavra to skip the repetative encounters. No dementors, bogart, werewolves, etc...no new enemies from start to finish. Potions/herbology are just a timer. "Exploring" is a map clean up and collectables hunt chore with long load times while you button mash Revelio. All you find is an overabundance of scaled to level gear, collectibles if you like 100%-ing games/weak lore/decorating your room, and statues so you can break stronger locks and collect more useless gear. Each town is the same, no unique culture or events going on. Most "dungeons"/treasure vaults are 1 room, maybe with a repeated puzzle or just a chest sitting there (with gear). Merlin Trials/Ancient magic hotspots/astronomy tables are simple 5-sec repeated tasks you mindlessly do when convenient (and can take a long time into the main story to unlock, otherwise you have to ignore them). Flying is fun despite the bad controls, but makes it so you can fly over everything. I had to self impose a rule to walk to add a sense of exploration and challenge. Writing is horrible thank goodness for the skip dialogue button. Main quests are mostly tutorials with occasional plot advancement, story starts strong and then drags to pretty lame ending(s). Whole plot makes little sense...motivations are odd. Side quests you find in towns are fetch/quick combat, but your fellow 3 students have solid multi-part arcs. Beat poachers by being a better poacher and call it "rescue" lol, then spend a lot of time doing busy work/farming in the room of requirement. You cannot choose your own path. This game is linear and heavily time/progression-locked, with a clear moralistic role for your character and predetermined abilities. Dialogue decisions have no meaningful impact. House only affects 1 side mission. You can't really be good or evil. You're good (and learn less spells/get less money) or slightly impolite/fine with the Unforgivables (more benefits), even the "evil" ending is laughably different from the good with no post game impact. Limited world interaction means you cant attack non-enemies, affect most objects, or interact with anything that Revelio doesn't highlight and which usually only has 1 spell work on it in a predetermined way. Noone will even react if you run into the great hall firing off spells...guess bc no objects can be affected. Even the profs make 0 reaction if you use Unforgivables in front of them or if they see you wandering the castle at night. You're pretty much an invisible tourist/pseudo-student. It feels constrained and weird.

1 star for visual beauty alone, 1 star for creativity of new machines and weapons as well as minor additions like paraglider and focus pulse. Otherwise, this game is far less enjoyable to play than HZD. Short version, the devs were over ambitious and so traded writing, diverse environments and situations, and smooth fun game play for a huge relatively homogeneous map, added game complexity with poorly functioning mechanics, lackluster plots and character development, and tedious time sinks to artificially claim the game is hundreds of hours of game play. Hours of play accomplishes very little, so you need to have a ton of free time. While HZD was such a joy, FW is a tedious slog. Long version: Time sink was the worst bit for me. In HZD, hunt and gather as you go and you'll get powerful weapons and armor in time and craft as you go in the wilds. FW requires a lot of part farming just to make weapons useable and unlock some mod slots, looking for new merchants since there is no ware consistency, and taking time to go to workbenches. Fighting machines is tedious, not hard, just tedious. Shoot a part and they all swarm even if you're in grass 100 ft away. They attack constantly without much telegraph, so you dodge around like crazy which is easy but dizzying. Variants of machines (ice, fire, etc) are hard to see visually, so have to scan them, but many times you were auto put into combat so no time unless you dodge around a ton for an opening to scan, which doesnt slow down time and makes aloy walk even on mounts. Not hard, just tedious, especially since you are generally quite underpowered. I started just avoiding combat, although stealth barely works. Admit that HZD enemies were too stupid and the whistle too good. Devs over corrected, enemies find you in grass 100 yards out after a headshot kill. Can't stealth kill mounted enemies have to snipe them, but then everyone finds you or has very long search times while you sit and wait. Tedious. Story and side characters are boring and uninspired, skip through most cut scenes and dont bother with collectibles. Aloy herself is less developed. First game shd learned and grew, and used her smarts as much as skill. This game she comes across as arrogant and overconfident loner, literally walking out into a killing field challenging one on one fights (pure luck she doesnt become an arrow skewer). These traits are fine at first given her experiences but the devs never have her learn and develop. Mechanics were not smooth. Melee combos often didnt work, mounts get stuck on every rock, and climbing is janky. Weapon upgrades takes forever only to find new slightly different versions of the same weapon that overlap uses with other weapons and have seemingly random bonuses to them. Skill tree plus being underpowered strongly pushes you to just use a few specialized weapons and skills rather than your whole arsenal (as youd then be a weak generalist) which gets repetitive and boring. In HZD, cultural differences were a joy to explore. FW, you can waltz into a tenakth settlement just like any other and people behaved similarly towards Aloy no matter what...just was quite a let down after so much hype about Utarus and Tenakth. In the end, the fun parts of HZD - exploration, story/mystery, fast combat - were less fun in FW and the unfun parts of the game - farming, crafting, repetitive tasks and fetch quests, waiting on enemies to stop searching, dodging around, etc - were amplified. Sometimes bigger and more complex isn't better, and stunning graphics is not a replacement for story and gameplay.