Lia Black

A lot of my "cons" are other people's "pros". Some people like the grind of facing a boss (with copious minions) over and over again until they've beaten him. The strategy is to just keep doing it (and dying) until you finally don't die. It's like throwing yourself at a wall until it finally breaks rather than looking for a door (these are people you should neve take to a casino, imho). And there is no way to get past this wall without breaking through it. If you play the core story line, you're stuck until you can beat the boss. There is no way to upgrade your weapons and armor enough to put you on a level playing field. I find it frustrating to spend hours just hoping to find some semblance of strategy only to realize that it's still not enough because my bullets just annoy the bad guy. In a lot of games that I've liked, you can meet a boss who kicks your butt, then go someplace else and get better gear (or even go to the same places multiple times to level up) so when you do face him again, you feel ready. I would much rather go into battle with a tank than a tricycle. Unfortunately, this game makes me feel like I'm stuck with training wheels. The player's character movements are sloooooow and half the time I get stuck in a reloading animation while the boss is pummeling me. No time to bandage up or dodge because it's not just the boss--it's his minions. It's a pity because there haven't been any decent, immersive RPG games in about a decade. If you're okay with a constant grind with little actual reward, then maybe you'll like the challenge. I need a little more of an incentive to keep going.

I started by playing the exploration setting until I could get a feel for the game on PS4. After clearing most of the outposts, I thought I would try survival mode. Wow... to say it is challenging implies that there is a level of impact the player can have on their survival. First, no matter how many times I shot a deer or cut down a tree, my survivors wouldn't' go harvest anything unless I had collected every scrap I had to leave behind because of a lack of inventory space. I could see the area appeared to be harvestable, but there was a little red dot next to the icon... so I would have to stop my progress to pick everything up, drop it back off at camp, then try to set out again. And it seems that the minute I would leave my outpost, everybody would stop hunting and gathering for themselves, even though there were spots nearby. I finally got fed up after being killed 3x in the same location while trying to cleanse the third outpost. One follower was crushed twice by falling cars and had to be revived, then there was a blizzard on top of a blizzard (and I was killed literally 2 steps away from a shelter). At the outpost after my 4th or 5th attempt, I was crushed again by falling vehicles after the eclipse had been pummeling me for what seemed like forever and (I thought) had gone away. The only way to clear outposts in survival mode is to progress very slowly-- stopping every minute or two to warm up or running around in circles trying to avoid the eclipse...but if you progress slowly, your camp gets attacked, and your followers freeze and starve to death. There needs to be a balance. I'm glad I saved my earlier game because I was interested in the story line, Getting a few trophies isn't worth the frustration of a system that sets you up to fail.