Average User Score:
7.2
Jun 5, 2021
37 hours played, max level 50, 1000/1000 Gamerscore, everything done and the game is a 6, AT BEST. (The only achievement that took any effort37 hours played, max level 50, 1000/1000 Gamerscore, everything done and the game is a 6, AT BEST. (The only achievement that took any effort were the 20 glittermoths.)
After finishing it last night, I went through my complete quest log and scribbled down the list of fetch and collection quests. It's not an exaggeration to say it's the bulk of the game. Easily 85% of it. I could live with that if such quests meaningfully expanded the world, but they don't. The vast majority of them just lead you to a tiresome rotation puzzle that gives you a piece of random loot you've probably seen a dozen times before. They had an opportunity to use the old world items like televisions, radios, computers, and movie projectors to help tell the story of this broken, apocalyptic world and, inexplicably, did nothing with them.
The combat was lackluster and felt detached throughout. Playing as a melee Sentinel class, I was disappointed to realize that guns always beat melee weapons no matter how much you invested in strength or how much you'd mod your melee weapons. Other than the few-and-far between armored enemies, every enemy could be easily dispatched with a rifle or auto rifle and kiting them around the combat area. Crafting was a bright spot early on but then I started finding "Ultimate Meleeweapons" and "Ultimate Rangedweapons" which outclassed anything I could craft by a LARGE margin. If they started losing power, all I had to do was swap a higher level addon and it was overpowered again. Playing on Hard difficulty, almost all enemies were pushovers with exception to the Worldeaters, who were only difficult by virtue of the fact that the player has to use a scripted method of defeating them rather than our normal combat skills. Bio and Psi skills do little to no meaningful damage, and only Shroom and Freeze are worth taking for minor mob crowd control. All weapons use the exact same combo button presses. Learn one, you've learned them all.
Most damning, I felt nothing for the world or my character because the game did little to make me care. It just throws you in with an hour of exposition dump and sends you on your way. It then showers you with endless collection side quests. The tribe war was boring as nearly every outpost and fortress played out the same way every time, without fail. Plus they did nothing to really distinguish the tribes beyond a blurb about whether they were light or dark aligned.
All in all, this feels like a game that would have been an 8 about a decade ago. With the evolution of open world games over the last generation, this now feels dated and utterly devoid of meaning. Strip out all the collection and fetch quest padding, and you have a game that is, AT MOST, 10 hours -- and that's assuming you don't skip the tribe war after conquering the second tribe (yes, the game will let you fast-foward *a main story arc* after only completing two of five conquests).
It's a $20 game at most. It is the worst kind of open world checkbox padding, the kind of game that would have been at home at the tail end of the Xbox 360/PS3 generation, not at the start of the XSX/PS5 one.
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And now, the collect-a-thon list for those curious:
Old World items that reward you with crafting mats or armor (5 of each type unless noted, all are rotation puzzles): Washing machines, telephone booths, house telephones, globes, record players (3), radios, guitars, pianos, computers, televisions, movie projectors, safes, arcade cabinets, toilets, microwaves.
Old World items that reward you with slight stat boosts to strength, vitality, or agility (3 of each type, all are QTEs): Treadmills, Dumbbells, Bench Press machines.
15 Old World Noticeboards that reward you with cosmetic automation skins.
Others: 4 sundials, 13 captives, 11 bandit outposts, 14 Old World storage shelters, 6 lumen shrines, 4 aura altars, and more I’m sure I’m forgetting.… Expand
