Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn

Ww1 trenches? Napolianic aesthetics? Babylonian gods?.....tony hawk combat score system......wtf is up with the MCs face?.....alien coffee shop host?.....are you confused?....ME TOO

I delayed trying this for weeks bc of what I'd read. IMO, it is far from the unplayable mess you've heard. People seem to have strong views on this, so I predict down-votes coming my way. I don't know anything about SBI, so I came in w/o prejudices. I may feel like others, if I found their practices detestable. I'm only a couple hours in, but I'm not seeing any overt political mssgs. I'm seeing an interesting take on the soulsborne formula. It leans more toward Bloodbourne with the firearm mechanic, and that's the 1st Fromsoft title I fell in love with. I do not find the control to be 'clunky', but I'm used to souls games. It's not DMC. Also, since I'm late to the party, things may have already been improved w/patches since launch. Anyway, I humbly suggest trying it for yourself before drawing conclusions...unlike I initially did.

This game has a lot of good. I think they went too big. Literally the map is gigantic and the game does almost nothing with it. It feels like there's hardly any enemies and exploration is hardly worth it. An open world game runs a risk of feeling empty, this does feel empty even if it is only partial open world. The scale of the world and its structures feel realistic, as if this is what it would look like if you lived in this world, but it doesn't make the game more fun. Everything feels like it is building to some great moment and it continuously falls on its face before there's any real payoff. This sounds overly negative, and it's only because the unique and interesting things are so damn good, but so infrequent, it drives me insane that they couldn't have made the game just better and more focused. Technical issues along with all the other issues, as much as i genuinely loved this game, it can't be over a mid score as I can't see others enjoying as much as I did.

BAD....

Everything seems a little bit off. While each thing not terrible individually, as a whole, it just seems... Bland? Uninteresting? Lackluster? Gameplay-wise, the double jump and dash jumping is a bit delayed. Kind of meh. Attacking/blocking/parrying feels sluggish. Counterattack feels decent. Shooting is fun but the gunpowder being refilled by melee attacks concept is a hard NO. Just let us reload the pistol like the rifle. Story? Nah. Not worth listening to. Some powers seem cool but I will not put the time in this boring game to try them all out.