At it's best it's an 8, at it's worse it's a 5 but the good outweighs the bad.
Should Bethesda be promising beyond what is capable from their studio? No. But I kept my tempered expectations and they paid off with this game. While most complaints I've heard are valid, the end product is still a style of casual action RPG that I am interested in playing.
Now if we could get another non MMO Fallout entry this decade, that'd be swell.
Ultimately just not for me. Phenomenal art design and style but gameplay that left me more frustrated than challeneged. I am without a doubt in the minority.
This is such an impossible game to even begin to enjoy without a walkthrough. It contains the worst adventure game puzzle logic, the most frustrating level design, the worst voice acting, and it all comes together to paint the most horrifying realization of a waking nightmare that I wouldn't change a thing about. It could not be less perfect but it's perfect to me.
I hit a wall with the scavenger hunt level design when it wanted me to create 3 different kinds of bait after my dumbass didn't realize I had the previous item I needed to progress in my storage and not my inventory and I had been wandering checking absolutely everything for hours.
This game's atmosphere is oppressively horrifying. I never get used to it and am always on edge playing it. It hits a crazy difficulty spike and could use some balancing with it's health items but goddamn. Scares me as much today as it did when I was 11. The level design is unfortunately one big scavenger hunt that results in more backtracking than I think I've ever experienced and overall hurts the experience. However I've come back to this game many times over the years and always enjoy my time.
Kingdom Hearts 2 is the most ****ing stupid thing and also kind of the best. I'm convinced no one has ever understood nor liked everything with organization 13 and the Roxas/Ventus/Venetian bullshit.
But goddamn, when the music kicks in and you see these stupid ****ing anime kids fighting for friendship with their goofy looking dead *** serious Disney friends it's hard to not love it.
10 hrs in and I cannot stop thinking about playing this. It exists somewhere between Breath of the Wild and Witcher 3, pulling you into quests and out into the playground that is the world is an exceptional experience. I can't wait to see what else this game has in store as it continues to unfold.
The dragon poking your heart out was goofy AF tho.
I think I get it. Once I got past my hatred of the khaki colored face ****ed landscape, I was able to actually role play in the wasteland and it was pretty rad.
I miss the quality of life improvements brought by 4 but the storytelling is so much more ambitious. I wish it came together for me, how did for many others; but my playthrough just turned into me being hunted by the legion until I had to just mainline the story to stop the constant ambushes. It put a damper on the whole experience and forced me into playing it like any other shooter rather than being able to take advantage of its complex branching narrative choices.
I'll likely do another playthrough some day and I once again hope to get the experience so many others have had with this title.
Grown up equivalent to jingling keys but I'm not even mad. Possibly my favorite gaming experience this year.
I do end up skipping just about every cutscene and dialogue because they just drone on and on; so I have no idea what the story is but I know I can buy a house and have a little buddy that follows me so that's neat.
EDIT- 100 Hrs in: the more I play this, the more I love it and I am not entirely convinced that I am not in some kind of Stockholm syndrome with it.
I get why people soured on this over time, it's not a great crpg game, but goddamn if I don't love this game for the fun wasteland shooter with lite RPG mechanics it is.
The games themselves are some of the best of the best but this is one of the lowest effort collections I've seen. Metal Gear literally has the HD Collection logo from ps3 pop up when you boot the game.