Recent reviews by Gobbo

You know your game's start is utter ♥♥♥♥ when it makes FFXIV's ARR beginning feel significantly more engaging and important than whatever slop they try to shove down your throat in this game.

Holy ♥♥♥♥ just give me a world to explore, quests with a story that players CHOOSE to do, and ♥♥♥♥ to kill, and a linear progression.

Why is this such a hard ask from MMO's?

I love the concept, but executed poorly.

I'll keep it short and sweet.
The biggest disappointment this game gives is the fact that the classes abilities are under utilized. For example: The tutorial gives you the impression that you can use the hacking device (For the combat class), and the electric discharger (For the mobile class) to manipulate the technology around you to distract enemies. THIS NEVER COMES INTO PLAY.

In the actual game, the discharger is only used to disable land mines, and the scanner is used for VERY specific parts of a puzzle. Other than that, it's barely used for combat or anything else.

Combat - Mid to bad.
Puzzles - Good start, gets REALLY convoluted and lack of common-sense later on.
Story - I forgot what was my purpose half-way through.

Even for $15 dollars, the game isn't engaging enough and the puzzles become frustrating because the answers don't even make sense, on top of A LOT of the things that kill you into a "Game over" screen are things that you can only avoid once you know about it afterwards.

So unlike some early reviewers, who are simply not recommending the game because of the fact that servers are, so far, only located in very specific regions, or weird errors that may occur on day 1 of release, I actually played the game.

In terms of combat - It felt fine, I didn't get far enough into the game to really get an idea of how it evolves and potentially becomes engaging as the game progresses, but it has potential?

Progression - Gear, levels, skill upgrades/unlocks, class advancements. All typical, with minor upgrades so you do feel like you're constantly increasing your strength in multiple ways. Felt fine but I can sense it might become taxing/bloated in cost the deeper in the game you go.

Aesthetic - Probably the best part of the game, characters are cute, world looks nice and runs well. Though it's not unique when compared to other games like genshin.

Character customization - Decent, better than FFXIV truthfully, but definitely lacking. I had to make a second character because my 1st character was supposed to be masculine but they were defaulted to a young-boys voice and ran like as someone said in-game "Yoinky Sploinky".

Why the negative review? - Simple, This game so far has some of the worst MMORPG choices ever made. You know what players LOVE to do? Certaintly feel like they have to come and play at SPECIFIC TIMES OF THE DAY to engage in events that offer rewards. This system even creeped into the main story quest, where apparently the place I needed to go to continue my main quest opens up in 15 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hours??? Ludicrous!
Whatever! Maybe I can do side quests and other things while I wait?

Dungeons have daily limits, if you try to do them past the limit, you get 0 rewards. No incentive to grind or repeat to help others.

Some quests introduce to you world bosses. They also have EGREGIOUSLY LONG RESPAWN TIMERS. So you'll be hanging onto that quest for a while unless you want to just sit down and idle, waiting for the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing to respawn. Fun...
I did try to converse with the players around me, but sadly...the chat is global. So you're actually speaking to people nowhere close to you. It's not as engaging socially.

Eventually, all the timed stuff is what REALLY deterred me from even wanting to commit more to this game.

This can be fixed but... I highly doubt the devs will do something about it.

Do NOT play this game on it's hardest difficulty, as this game severely downgraded the ledge detection to your jumps and you WILL die to the most absurd deaths that make you scream "WHY THE ♥♥♥♥ DID SHE NOT GRAB THE LEDGE THERE? I BASICALLY KISSED THE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ THING."

and then the game sends you back to your last camp that was roughly 5-15 minutes ago, which you have to backtrack again AND collect all the things you picked up along the way, if you care enough.

Game is a lot more enjoyable without that crap.

Edit: After much time has passed, and many updates. I gave Ready or Not a try again because I heard the AI got better from my friends.
Although there's some instances that still question the integrity of that. Without a doubt the AI has severely improved since I last made this review. I can firmly say that you can now enjoy playing this game worry free of godly accurate, x-ray visioned, murder junkies. The game is a blast to play alone but even better with friends.
The AI can still be improved, and I'm glad to see that the development team is constantly asking feedback about it! I'm looking forward to any further changes to it, and I'm glad to say.
I recommend this game.

Old review below this point.





(OLD REVIEW)
I was in the mood for a tactical shooter, this game showed A LOT of promise, but it was seriously rough around the edges when it came to the AI.

I thought that maybe things would be better after some updates since they said they were working on it.
I came back a year later to see how the new updates have done to appease the AI issue, and wow look at that...Nothing. It's the same janky ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ AI.

Hostages don't listen and rebel, making it tediously annoying to spam "GET THE ♥♥♥♥ DOWN."
Suspects can sometimes x-ray vision you randomly and shoot you through materials while completely out of sight from your vision.
Suspects sometimes can have a stun/flash explode right infront of their very ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ faces, and remain UNPHASED by it, as they continue to shoot you with prestine accuracy.

and don't get me started on the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 180, snapshot bullseye shot to your eye cavity that ignores all your armor in milliseconds WITH A PISTOL?!

The AI is the worst in this game and it really pulls you out of the immersion and flat out ruins the experience when you get wall-hacked by a poorly designed AI.

EDIT: Game devs got ♥♥♥♥♥♥ over and game is dead before it got to flourish. RIP.

I recommend this game just because of how smooth and well put together it is overall.

But unfortunately, the lifespan of the game is going to be incredibly short due to the fact that the game suffers from improper balance. I don't mean that the enemy scaling is too high, or the higher difficulties are too difficult, but actually....that the main characters... (Mainly the default character, Lilya) are far too powerful.
At some point, I threw skill out the window and just abused the fact that dodging has such a short cooldown for how long you remain invunerable that it's actually a valid strat to just spam dodge and your 1st normal attack. Lilya abuses this the most as her skill is absurdly high damaging while giving her invulnerability for the whole duration, and then add the Rhapsody that resets the cooldown when you use it on the best beat. I was able to sweep the entire game with little to no effort on the hardest difficulty just because of her base damage and very common Rhapsody.

Meanwhile there's Maz who deals significantly less damage, and most of his mechanics surrounds charging his skills, which is a big nono in a game that's like Doom, where you should always keep moving or else take damage. It could work if he had something that encouraged to take damage for hard hitting charged skills, but sadly there isn't; especially when the damage is negligible compared to Lilya's skill.

In Summary: Neon Echo is a very smooth and satisfying Action-Roguelite that really hammers in your power fantasy all the time, but at the exchange of overcoming difficulty as it doesn't seem to exist one you find out the exploitation of invulnerabilities.

A game that came out on 2016 doesn't have the most basic of account managing options as "Delete your team". So if you're an old player and you want to play on a new server, or play with a friend who made a team on the new server. YOU CAN'T.
2016 btw and this is the type of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ you have to deal with? f u c k o f f IMCGAMES.

I've heard many good things about this game but I've never realized how good it was until I officially played it myself. I look forward to CD project reds next game, Cyberpunk 2077

Ayyye, I've played this game enough to know that it's a pretty darn good arcade beat em up. Like every game it does start to lack in fun after some time, but you do come back to flail your damn swords towards everything in your path.

But sadly the worst part of the game would have to be....
Want to be lvl 99? BUY CONTENT PACK...
I NEED TO SPEND MORE MONEY JUST TO BE LVL 99? INSTEAD OF 50? K...Uhm, No?

It's by valve, it's good.