Often left me peachless.

Endlessly creative and adorably cute, Princess Peach: Showtime! is an uncompromising but approachable adventure that’s an absolute blast for kids and adults alike.

Pros

• +Adorable visuals
• +Fantastic boss fights
• +Approachable difficulty

Cons

• -A slow start
• -Occasionally choppy performance

Princess Peach: Showtime! is an action-adventure game that’s overflowing with the boundless creativity and charm characteristic of some of the best recent mainline Super Mario outings like Super Mario Odyssey and Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Despite its more linear design and basic control scheme compared to those games, it’s packed with memorable stages and mechanics that make the most of the charming theatrical theme in truly imaginative ways.

The simplicity means that it’s one of the most approachable first-party games on Nintendo Switch making it a super choice for younger or more casual players, though seasoned gamers will still find plenty to enjoy in its brilliant boss fights and tricky challenge modes. Wrap it all up in an attractive art direction and throw in a raft of collectibles hidden throughout each stage and you’ve got an impressively well-rounded package that ranks among some of the best Nintendo Switch games available to play right now.

Setting The Stage

Princess Peach: Showtime!

The action kicks off in the sprawling Sparkle Theater, nestled in the little bay far from the Mushroom Kingdom where Princess Peach has been trapped by the malevolent Madame Grape and her legion of purple minions. Grape has corrupted the theater’s plays with her malign influence and caused all of the lead actors to disappear, leaving it up to Peach and the theater’s magical guardian Stella to save the day. It’s a simple setup that is conveyed through an introductory cutscene that is lavishly animated but rather jarringly relies on text dialogue rather than any kind of audio narration.

Still, it’s only a minor omission that is quickly forgotten once you’re thrust into the hub world of the theater’s foyer. It’s divided into five floors, each containing doors leading to different levels, and sits above a mysterious basement. There are thirty main stages in total, arranged into groups of three with each trio representing the entirety of a specific play. They’re spread out evenly across the floors, though each ends with a final stage that is accessed through the basement.

The plays all follow unique themes, ranging from a lighthearted Wild West romp to more unconventional additions like a sci-fi action thriller. They’re all brought to life by the cartoon-like visuals that are filled to the brim with theatrical details and flourishes. The scenery has a distinctly hand-crafted look, with floating clouds that are suspended from visible wires. They cast prominent shadows on the backdrops behind them which, while a simple effect, helps lend everything a wonderful sense of depth.

Despite the side-on perspective, stages are also fully three dimensional and allow for back-and-forth movement in addition to side-scrolling traversal. Bright cones of stage lighting highlight important objectives and follow Peach as you explore – likely to be a huge help for players who are less experienced in traversing 3D environments. This, in addition to an optional item that grants three extra lives and can be obtained from a non-player character (NPC) in the foyer, intelligently incorporates more forgiving elements in a manner that feels both natural and unintrusive.

Dress Rehearsal

Aside from the rare brief platforming segment, the overall pace of Princess Peach: Showtime! is more pedestrian than more traditional Super Mario adventures. Peach has slow movement speed and all of her actions are controlled entirely with just three buttons. You tap the A button to jump, hit the B button to interact, and occasionally press ZL or ZR in order to travel to secret areas when you’re standing on special spots hidden throughout each level.

In her default getup, Peach is armed with a magical ribbon that can defeat Grape’s minions, trigger key items like lamps or doors to progress, or inspire any dejected supporting actors that you stumble across. Running around mindlessly tapping that button on almost everything that you see isn’t the most engaging or subtle formula and the very early sections of the first few stages suffer as a result.

You’re soon given a transformation, however, which is where Princess Peach: Showtime! is at its absolute best. Modeled after the costumes of the missing lead actors, each play has its own unique transformation that grants Peach a wide range of special abilities. Every new arrival feels remarkably distinct, spicing up the basic formula with elements drawn from entirely different genres. The Ninja Peach transformation, for example, incorporates elements of stealth games, allowing you to hide in tall grass and quietly take down unsuspecting foes with a quick kunai slash.

The Detective Peach transformation plays much more like a story-driven adventure, where you solve crimes by chatting to NPCs and using your magnifying glass to track down hidden clues. The Mermaid Peach transformation is something akin to a puzzle game, as you guide schools of fish through maze-like gauntlets under increasingly strict time limits. Although I enjoyed my time with each and every transformation, the button-mashing cookie baking and rapid cake decoration challenges of the Patissiere Peach transformation were a personal highlight that absolutely oozed that Mario Party minigame charm.

Unfortunately, some transformations do push the game’s uneven technical performance to the fore. Loading times are long and a few levels suffer from noticeable framerate dips in busy moments. By far the worst example was one particular Figure Skater Peach stage that involved careful timing to pull off ice skating tricks. The choppy framerate made it frustratingly difficult to get into a definite rhythm and caused me to miss a fair few jumps the first time around which is disappointing, especially in a first-party release.

BEST BIT

Not only are the appearances of each of Peach’s transformations very cutely designed, but they feature distinct animations that further help set them apart. I especially appreciate Patissiere Peach’s adorable little back-and-forth skip whenever you stand still.

This shortcoming aside, each floor concludes with a boss fight, all of which are definite highlights. The boss designs are memorable and each encounter involves some strong mechanics. One sees you defeating a genuinely quite creepy projector-themed cat as it tries to swat you away with attacks that are represented by 2D projected images, while another has a giant disco-ball bird that can flip the entire stage into its mirror image in order to crush you with falling blocks. There are also separate challenge levels, called rehearsals, that offer reimagined versions of past stages with difficult special conditions. These are some of the hardest challenges in the game and make for a delightful diversion.

The same is true of the unlockable outfits for both Peach and Stella, which can be purchased from a small stall in the foyer using hidden stars collected from each level, obtained by rescuing a top-hat-wearing character hidden in each level, or are awarded for finishing certain stages. There are loads to discover, giving you plenty of reasons to comb over past environments for anything that you might have missed.

It’s a fantastic way to round out an overall package that’s already got plenty to offer. Whether you’re a long-time Super Mario fan or a complete newcomer to the series, Princess Peach: Showtime! is an excellent adventure that’s easy to recommend.

The post Princess Peach: Showtime! Review appeared first on Review Products.

Roll To Win.

Dicefolk is a fun turn-based roguelike with a decent variety of environments and characters to stay entertaining, but the content itself becomes repetitive. Although excitement is added through boss encounters and the gamble of random rolls, the repetition holds Dicefolk back from excelling.

Pros

• +Huge variety of quirky creatures to tame
• +Boss battles keep combat exciting
• +Expansive map with different biomes to explore

Cons

• -Loop becomes a bit repetitive
• -I’m always incredibly unlucky

Dicefolk, a roguelike from Leap Game Studios, puts you into the shoes of a determined summoner, responsible for an army of chimera. These are the creatures that litter the entire map and that you aim to recruit into your own party to then train and take into battle. Similarly to Pokémon, these beasts adopt a huge variety of appearances, and anything from a potted plant to a huge dragon could spring to life. You never know what type of chimera is waiting around the corner, but it’s always your job to wrangle them.

However, rather than sending your chimera into battle like Pokémon, the game takes a unique approach to every instance of combat. Although you are somewhat in control, your entire turn is based on a dice roll. So, you always have to hope and pray that lady luck is on your side and you have a solid enough roll of your three dice to take down whatever beasties you come up against.

A Roll of the Dice

Dicefolk’s combat is incredibly fluid. You take control of your team of three chimeras you recruit along your journey. At the start, you begin with three incredibly weak creatures that offer little to no power, but the further you travel around the map, the stronger the chimera you can recruit at statues positioned around the map for your next bought of combat. Each encounter needs to be carefully planned out to ensure your success through tactical rotations of party members, and well-timed attacks. However, you don’t have the same abilities – such as a ranged attack, or the ability to rotate – each turn. Instead, every round is controlled by the roll of three dice.

I’m not the luckiest person when it comes to anything, really, and this losing streak continued during my experience with Dicefolk. More often than not, my rolls gave me ranged attacks that caused less damage and team rotations rather than the option to strengthen my team by bulking up before attacking. Of course, this isn’t the game’s fault as these rolls are entirely random, but I couldn’t help but feel like it became a bit of a personal attack after a while.

BEST BIT: Dicefolk

The unknown factor of not knowing what you’re about to encounter is easily the best part of Dicefolk. I was always excited to see what creatures would crop up in the next combat encounter, heightening a sense of anticipation.

However, this infrequent success makes combat feel tense and also encourages you to be careful and deliberate rather than rushing in with all guns blazing. When you start in Dicefolk, it’s incredibly easy to be hasty when attacking your enemies, and you can be overly reliant on a few attacks from only one of your chimeras rather than utilizing your whole team. But, as you progress through the map and enter different biomes that are littered with increasingly intimidating creatures, taking your time with encounters, thinking about your moves, and which members of your party are worth bringing to battle becomes incredibly important.

Across the map, you’ll encounter a huge range of critters that you’ll have to face which keeps combat exciting and fresh. This is a major attraction of Dicefolk as you never know what you’ll find, heightening the game’s concept of everything being a gamble. The character design makes up a huge part of the game’s charm, too, and helps make the first experience fighting many of the beasties more enchanting. One moment you’ll be fighting a small, seaweed-clad dog called Algel, but then you’ll have an encounter with a towering koala-esque beast rather than fighting the same thing over and over again.

However, adding another layer to the combat, your ability to control chimeras isn’t limited to your own team. You also take control of the enemy side, allowing you to decide and plan out what attacks impact your team. This occasionally enables you to give yourself the upper hand, sacrificing your weaker chimera against enemies with stronger attacks and giving yourself an opening to hit back twice as hard in your next turn. Although this isn’t always the case, it does feel rewarding when you do factor enemy moves in and manage to tactically plan four turns in advance, finally pulling off a master heist and taking the win.

Jack of all Trades

It’s not all random dice rolls and crossing fingers in combat though, and there’s a lot of work that goes into Dicefolk outside of just attacks. Across the map, you’ll find shops to buy equipment and armor that provide different buffs to your party of chimera, as well as statues that you can visit to recruit new chimera to join your adventure. Each creature brings unique abilities and skills to the table, so it pays to familiarize yourself with the capabilities of your companions to ensure you’re taking advantage of any moves that could help you take down enemies.

Rewards from particularly challenging battles provide an incentive to continue pushing through combat, since, much like the various species you’ll recruit along the way, you never know what reward could be waiting for you. Overall, it’s a pretty familiar loop of  ‘battle a beast, get a reward, move on to the next bit’, but the surprise of not really knowing what’s to come is the thing that’ll keep drawing you through Dicefolk.

Prepare For The Worst

The numerous bosses are where your army will really be tested. Like any other battle, you’ll still take control of enemy attacks as you would your own, but these boss fights tend to offer a bigger challenge than your standard enemy encounter since each boss occupies one of the dice rolls with a special die.

Although this roll does have a similar formula to other enemies, with the possibility to offer an attack, defense, or random rotation, generally the attacks are frenzied and rotations tend to prioritize bringing the boss chimera to the front of the party. If there’s time to plan your next move carefully, it would be during these significantly harder battles especially since the boss dice roll will offer harder attacks than the others and thus cause more damage to your party.

If you’ve been playing it safe, breezing through chimera encounters, then these boss battles will feel like a significant jump up in difficulty.  These encounters are where planning your next move and utilizing whatever armor or equipment you’ve picked up along the way is at its most important. If you fail and three of your chimera faint then you’ll have to start building your army from scratch once again from the ground up.

ACCESSIBILITY FEATURES: Dicefolk

Unfortunately, Dicefolk offers no dedicated accessibility options, which is disappointing. Considering how much on-screen text there is, being unable to adjust the size of this text may impact some player’s experience.

Generally, Dicefolk is simple in its premise, yet still provides an entertaining experience that is bound to appeal to anyone who loves luck-based combat encounters and quirky characters. Rewards and charming characters offer you the drive to keep you plowing through each environment and map, and combat is just exciting enough with the reliance on luck to stay fun.

As a result, there’s always something that’ll have you excited to keep exploring and to see what comes next, or how you can approach battles slightly differently for a more positive outcome. All in, this makes for a satisfying, albeit occasionally repetitive, experience.

The post Dicefolk Review – Luck Be a Lady Tonight appeared first on Review Products.

Baldur’s Gate III was published to enthusiastic acclaim about two weeks before Immortals of Aveum, EA’s new first-person spell-shooter action game. With its richly rewarding quests, solid gaming mechanisms, and evocative characters and narratives, the Dungeons & Dragons-based RPG from Larian Studios became a worldwide sensation, attracting over 800,000 continuous players on Steam. The Forgotten Realms provides the setting for hundreds of hours of fascinating gameplay in Baldur’s Gate III, a game that is a strong contender for Game of the Year.

A massive space RPG from Bethesda called Starfield debuted two weeks after Immortals with the promise of a thousand planets. Starfield, the studio’s first new intellectual property in 25 years, lets you live out your space fantasies with unlimited exploration, precise gunplay, and starship construction.

According to studio director Todd Howard, it’s like Skyrim in space: fly anywhere, do anything. Like Baldur’s Gate, Starfield—possibly the biggest Xbox exclusive in a decade—requires hundreds of hours to appreciate its joys fully. It promises to take readers on an enthralling voyage through the wonders of space and time, examining ideas of existence and being and the profundity of human endeavor—the pursuit of knowledge.

Immortals of Aveum, a game with modest goals that let you discharge colored magic spells from your fingers in a pew-pew fashion, sits between these two enormous, genre-defining titles. That’s it. Immortals do not aim to completely immerse you in its world or provide complex gameplay mechanisms, but that is okay.

This is because it allows for fun, which is one thing that video games should always offer. The two games that bookend Immortals’ release are far more ambitious and expansive than Immortals. You don’t have to put in a lot of time; you don’t even have to commit.

Different from its two competitors, it definitely won’t be in the running for Game of the Year. However, the basic plot of Immortals, its sincere and downright ridiculous parody of contemporary superhero movies, and its condensed, 25-hour campaign provide precisely what the game promises – nothing more, nothing less.

Call of Duty meets Dr. Strange

Immortals of Aveum is a first-person shooter without the use of firearms. It is the debut title from Ascendant Studios and is distributed by EA Originals. You fire color-coded magic spells here, like what you might anticipate if Dr. Strange and Call of Duty met.

The action visually resembles Ghostwire Tokyo from 2022, although it unfolds differently. This year, magic has been making a comeback (with different degrees of success) thanks to Forspoken and Hogwarts Legacy, and Immortals also prominently utilizes the arcane. The game’s primarily linear single-player campaign features narrow levels with some branching paths for exploration.

The gameplay elements that pace out the spell-shooting action are of a modest but robust variety. Each level includes straightforward yet fun platforming features and riddles that slow down the movement.

There is a passable plot that unfolds much like a subpar DC film. The game’s arena-style shooting segments, where you use a variety of magic spells and rush and jump like a bunny on caffeine, are undoubtedly its best features.

Jak, a simple street thief in Seren’s shantytown, is how you will travel through the Aveuman regions. Unbeknownst to him, he possesses a potent and uncommon magic in his veins. As Jak endures a personal tragedy and enlists as a soldier in the Everwar, a 2,000-year conflict spanning Aveum’s five kingdoms, you follow his journey.

We watch his journey unfold as he establishes himself as a warrior on the front lines and rises to the rank of Immortal, a group of elite magicians who direct the war effort and guard Lucium, one of Aveum’s five kingdoms. In all honesty, it can be challenging to keep up with the information deluge at first.

To establish the world of Aveum, the blazing struggle, the parties participating, their motivations, and the ancient artifacts and secrets that threaten to change the Everwar’s course and, in turn, the fate of the lands, the game throws a basketful of half-cooked and well-known magical history at you.

Aveum’s universe is powered by magic

I wouldn’t blame you if you felt like you were swimming in jargon. It’s a lot to take in: the Shrouded Realm, the Wound, the Pentacade, Laylines, Fonts, Binding Stones, and Shrineforges. Thankfully, you may disregard the deep end and navigate the understandable information’s shallow waters by keeping things straightforward.

You are a battlemage engaged in an unending conflict where the distinction between good and evil is frequently hazy. It follows a well-known hero’s journey in line with most successful superhero movies, where humor breaks up the action and suspense at every turn. There isn’t much novel about the story, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. You are caught off guard by a few of the road’s curves and twists.

In the Everwar, Jak is joined by a colorful assortment of Immortal companions. Jak’s mentor and the person who took him in after his life in Seren broke apart was Kirkan, the commander of the Immortals.

She is unyielding and furious, plays her cards close to her chest, and frequently gives Jak’s inquiries regarding the Everwar painfully evasive responses. Jak’s field commander, Zendara, is focused on the next task and has little time for friendly banter.

On the other hand, Devyn is chatty and outgoing, acting as a welcoming presence among the menacing Immortals. Additionally, he brings laughs, throwing jokes whenever the opportunity arises with the assurance of a clown, even if some fall flat.

In the Everwar, the Immortals command Lucium’s army against Sandrakk’s soldiers, a despot who seeks to rule over the wellspring of all magic in Aveum. The characters in the game are the usual suspects you’d expect to show up in a phase five MCU film, but they manage to have an excellent natural chemistry together. This results from consistently strong voice acting, even in weak material.

Jak’s mentor, Kirkan, is in charge of the Immortals

As I’ve already noted, Immortals frequently resembles a genre-worn superhero movie, hitting well-worn narrative beats and action set pieces. The writing in the game often employs humor as a crutch, much like the films it aims to mimic, yet it never turns the line into being overly earnest. The volume and abruptness of jokes frequently lower the stakes and reduce narrative suspense. Still, they occasionally mirror the situation’s overall silliness, never being afraid to embrace the absurd.

New characters are continually presented; you can always count on them to be ominous and terrifying. But when you meet them, they come across as quick-witted idiots a la Joss Whedon, and you can’t help but chuckle.

For instance, to find the volcanic lair of the man you’re looking for, you must first infiltrate a horrific underworld and then go via a trail that is burning with lava and ash while fending off swarms of adversaries. When you first meet him, you expect him to be fierce, but instead, he seems mildly angry that you broke into his bachelor pad, corrects you when you call his parlor a porch and then offers you coffee.

Whistles and magic

Immortals of Aveum makes a lot of effort to be a movie, but its best parts are the video game-like elements. Bret Robbins, a seasoned executive who oversaw the development of the original Dead Space and multiple Call of Duty missions, is the head of Ascendant Studios.

Immortals, who, if you exclude the magic, is essentially a first-person shooter, benefit from his experience. The ancient power of the blue, green, and red colors sustains Aveum’s universe. Each branch of magic that a Magni can use, but Jak is a Triarch Magni who possesses a rare mastery over all three colors of magic.

Sigils, which in the game serve as magical versions of guns, are used to control each branch of magic. Red magic has the short-range, heavy damage, and more minor clip characteristics of shotguns. Blue magic can be used in place of a sniper rifle or other precision weapon for long-range warfare.

Fully automatic rifles or submachine guns with large clip sizes, ideal for taking on foes at medium range, are represented by green magic. However, the rapid-firing green Sigils have more recoil and spray, which affects your accuracy. When you munch through the clip, each Sigil has a predetermined reload time that can be shortened later through skill upgrades.

In the equip menu, sigils can be changed

Most adversaries in Aveum are also color-coded, necessitating the use of the proper magic kind to reduce their health bars. Juggling the various Sigils and switching between your magic colors (with a quick press of the triangle button on PlayStation’s Dualsense controller) become necessary and, thankfully, stay enjoyable as each fight throws a motley horde of enemies at you.

Each magic color is accompanied by a Totem that casts a control spell that aids you in navigating the environment, controlling adversaries during combat, and solving puzzles in addition to these attack-focused striking spells connected to your Sigils. Your left hand is connected to Totems, and your right hand has Sigils.

The Lash spell, essentially a magical whip that draws distant adversaries closer to you in combat and enables you to grip on to anchor points in the environment during exploration, is channeled by Blue Totems, or Chains. Limpets, fluid blobs that slow down moving targets, whether an adversary or an object, are found in Green Totems or Vials. Red Totems, also known as Lenses, project fiery scarlet disrupt spell beams that interrupt opposing magic strikes and leave the enemy stunned.

Your spellbook also contains augments, such as a shield to shelter you from approaching fire and the powers to blink and hover, which help dodge opponent assaults and move about platforms.

The mix of attack, control, and augment spells in Immortals is excellent; they all work well with one another and never overwhelm the player or become cumbersome. When your Dominion meter is complete, you can also perform an ultimate attack that releases a potent beam of magic that combines all three magic colors and delivers terrible damage.

Combat between immortals can be hallucinogenic and chaotic

Immortals’ fighting is limited to arena-style fights that are split amid twisting exploratory passages. There is a good variety of threats here, but eventually, you will primarily be shooting at recognizable adversaries. In addition, each chapter has brand-new boss fights that, while essentially simple, offer a refreshing change from the game’s normal gameplay.

While spell shooting functions like firing with guns in any other shooter, the experience isn’t quite the same. It falls short of feeling as tight and sophisticated as the gunplay in Call of Duty and needs more impact and feedback on guns. Additionally, the combat never becomes particularly difficult, and each encounter area has a plentiful supply of healing and mana crystals that refill your HP and magic bars. Immortals are easy on Normal, but I’d suggest the Hard mode if you want to work for your rewards.

Immortals of Aveum, thankfully, encourages a decent amount of exploring and rewards intrepid players with equipment and currency. It functions similarly to side trips in God of War or Jedi: Fallen Order, which has branching side pathways frequently imprisoned in mostly linear hub areas. The routes widen as you learn new skills and spells, opening up new worlds to discover, items to uncover, and foes to face.

Although these hub worlds are far smaller than God of War’s, you may always return to an area you’ve already visited and discover something new. Each level also has Shroudfanes, optional tasks that involve boss fights, and separate platforming sections, both of which can be challenging but offer high-value rewards.

There is a skill tree for each of the three branches of magic and the standard equipment and upgrading system. These are straightforward and functional rather than delving deeply, as in an RPG, which works in Immortals’ favor.

Performances and Visuals

One of the first significant games created with Unreal Engine 5’s Nanite geometry and ray-traced Lumen lighting is Immortals of Aveum, and it shows. Immortals can appear gorgeous under the proper lighting. This applies to both characters and settings. Character faces are expressive, expressing subtle variations in mood and expression.

The game’s campaign transports you across various outdoor areas and shifting landscapes. The game’s golden lighting makes open plains, icy cliffs, thick foliage, and desert places attractive. However, the art of Immortals feels copied and needs a distinct, new identity.

The PS5’s performance is also negatively impacted by the glossy graphics. There isn’t a way to alter the graphic settings or switch between performance and quality modes. On the other hand, Immortals aims for a 4K output at 60 frames per second.

Although it mostly hits its framerate goals, performance suffers in regions with bustling traffic and intense combat. You can observe that texture quality and image resolution were sacrificed on the altar of framerate because the visual quality is still erratic. Future updates may address some of the problems.

At the time of this writing, a third update is available for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S, and it promises to enhance upscaling for improved image fidelity on consoles and several other improvements.

Verdict

Nowadays, good single-player shooter campaigns take a lot of work to come by, especially with games like Call of Duty and Battlefield focusing more on their wildly successful multiplayer modes. Another disappearing species is the brief, charming single-player campaign free of battle passes, lootboxes, and microtransactions.

In addition, Immortals of Aveum comes out complete and in decent condition at a time when companies rush to release broken games. Despite its shortcomings, it has the right intentions at heart. It is simple to complete because of its unpolished but enjoyable spell-shooting action and surprisingly well-executed level design.

Although its summer blockbuster plot is nothing new, it manages to charm you with its sincere good looks. And although though it has a fair share of loose screws and dents, the machine’s various working cogs fit together logically to create it.

Games these days demand time and focus, almost like homework, which is why Immortals of Aveum is released at such a time. They require that you virtually put your life on hold to live a different, more fulfilling life in the enormous virtual playgrounds they provide.

This is not a complaint since I fondly recall the period when Red Dead Redemption 2 was released, and I gave up everything to live as an outlaw on the American frontier for roughly three months. In all honesty, no other medium can match video games’ transforming and teleporting potential.

However, only some games have to be a multi-course meal. They are delicious when eaten as a snack. Immortals are the bite-sized biscuit you need now, even though it won’t leave a particularly distinctive taste on your tongue. Immortals of Aveum captures the medium’s bygone simplicity and shallowness, which may be just as significant at a time when ambitious video games display the enormous depth they can give.

Pros

• fun spell-shooting battles
• A challenging single-player campaign
• Exploration and platforming done well
• likable individuals
• No bugs, no microtransactions
• striking images

Cons

• generic lousy guy and plot
• overpowering and excessive lore
• style of derivative art
• performing poorly

The post Immortals of Aveum Review: Warlock Warfare appeared first on Review Products.

It’s no secret that Starfield, which is currently available on PC and Xbox Series S/X, is one of the most significant gaming releases of the year. As Bethesda embarks on creating their first new world in 25 years, set across the stars in a futuristic civilized corner of the Milky Way galaxy, they are taking a risk in unexplored terrain. Xbox’s publisher has the chance to recover from a lackluster 2022 slate and take control of the gaming conversation for years, given the renowned longevity of director Todd Howard’s RPGs. Starfield strives to be our generation’s most sophisticated spacefaring experience, with over a thousand planets to explore, brash factions to side with, and cosmic mysteries simmering with political intrigue. It glides gently as a result, though not without considerable turbulence.

Review of Starfield: The flaws in the main narrative

It is the year 2330. Humanity left Earth, the so-called “Blue Planet,” and settled in other star systems after it lost its atmosphere and turned into a barren, desolate wasteland. So, our journey begins in space from the humble beginnings of a nameless space miner who discovered a curious piece of glittery debris in a tunnel. After touching the shard, we enter a strange trance in which we hear and see celestial noises that speak to us spiritually before passing out. As soon as you open your eyes, Starfield introduces the well-known RPG amnesia cliché, in which players must thoroughly create characters to recall their identities. It has all the identifying characteristics of a typical Bethesda game, adhering closely to its role-playing model of adventuring, looting, and killing, albeit on a considerably larger scale that frequently feels overwhelming.

Fair warning, though:

Starfield is incredibly slow to get going, keeping you confined to a dull exposition search for the first few hours before letting you freely explore any planet you choose. I’ll grant that the game quickly becomes impossible to put down, but for many players, that first part of the game—during which you mechanically move from point A to point B or attempt to acquire accustomed to its peculiar menus—could easily make or break the experience. For me, it took the game more than 10 hours to begin, which made me wonder if I would ever end up enjoying it. And it’s not like I wouldn’t say I like passive starts either; most of my favorite movies are slow-burn dramas that devote a significant portion of their running times to setting the scene and developing the characters. Sadly, video games are completely another animal. They demand complete focus because they might easily last longer than 60 hours of gaming.

Starfield character creation Starfield character creation

Starfield offers very thorough character creation, with swappable qualities that give you the impression of being a blank slate.

Starfield’s main campaign, which has you join a motley crew of galactic explorers named the Constellation in search of unidentified artifacts like the metallic one we previously encountered, could be more exciting, which doesn’t help. We are tasked with tracking down the mystery artifacts by exploring other worlds, which sends us on all kinds of amazing adventures via dark tunnels swarming with space raiders to desolate landscapes acting as a graveyard for mechs. As you might imagine, the story follows a similar pattern. The repetitive missions that involve basic puzzle-solving, killing enemies, and floating around in potentially alien temples are wrapped around these brilliant scenes. Still, they quickly become boring and switch to fetch quests you feel pressured to complete to advance the plot.

While the plot is undoubtedly clichéd and packed with sci-fi clichés, its intriguing characters, specifically our friends, provide some enjoyment. At first, none of them are particularly likable, but taking them on trips encourages them to share their emotions and backstories. Sam Coe, the lone space cowboy, quickly won my favor because he was trying to escape his famous father’s spotlight and frequently thought back to his early years of smuggling goods across the huge void.

When he invites his daughter along for the ride, he emphasizes his overprotective side while gushing over how smart she is, showing that he is more complex than a bold peacekeeper. But you also discover a sense of entitlement and inner conflict in his parenting, where he wonders if it’s the best thing to do to raise her while subjecting himself to perilous, frequently life-threatening situations. It is kind, but I hate how his past is revealed; it’s just a constant trauma dump at random intervals with no thought to your goals.

Starfield review partners Starfield review partners.

At times, the predicament of the companions seemed unnecessarily simplistic.

The same could be said with the other travelers, albeit I couldn’t bond with them as deeply. Constellation chair Sarah Morgan’s desire to explore the stars, the easygoing explorer Barrett, and the intriguing stealth specialist Andreja all had unique charms. Still, I needed to care more about their struggle since it seemed too shallow and occasionally poorly presented. Because talks in Starfield offer a full frontal view of the other person, you can observe the shortcomings in Bethesda’s character modeling that restrict some facial expressions. Basic emotions like sadness or happiness have an uncanny valley-like quality, almost as if the NPCs are all covert androids being taught to fake grins. They all appear lifeless on the inside, which is made worse by the voice acting, which frequently sounds stiff and tempts viewers to scan the subtitles rapidly and spam-skip to the next line of speech.

Review of Starfield: engaging side missions and world-building

Following Bethesda’s history, Starfield’s genuine magic may be found in the game’s expansive side quests that appear along the way, the majority of which are inspired by news stories and current events. Although I wouldn’t say they were all equally fascinating, they all resulted in some unexpected interactions that frequently had a tragic undertone. Once you’re on foot, it’s simple to lose sight of your original objective and spend hours exploring the more populated, lovely areas of the galaxy, which are filled with strange inhabitants with a big or tiny request for you.

One such place was the appropriately named Neon, a rain-soaked cyberpunk city, a la Blade Runner, where I went around threatening vandals, snatching hallucinogenic substances based on exotic fish, and vibing at the neighborhood dance club. However, it was mostly a location to make a lot of money, which I did by moving up the corporate ladder at Ryujin Industries. This huge tech company trades in drones, spaceships, and weaponry. I quickly transitioned from getting coffee for my superiors to going on espionage operations to hack into the systems of competitor firms to sabotage them.

Starfield’s evaluation of the tasks in Neon

I had a great time exploring the valleys of Neon and collecting a ton of quests.

It’s safe to infer that by accessing the secret information and being able to negotiate my way into confined spaces, I would grow to be a crucial asset for the faction. I decided to use this persuasive strategy while creating my character. I included a special quality that causes the Adoring Fan from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion to follow and compliment me whenever possible. His praise provided much-needed self-confidence for completing chores with little to no violence.

Because some people might find these stealth-based tales tedious, Starfield has a variety of factions to choose from, each of which has its own set of quests to complete and incentives to earn. You can pretty much take whatever option the game offers because you’re never forced to join a particular faction, whether it’s living out your space pirate fantasies, joining the militia, or bringing criminals to justice as a planet-hopping cowboy. The last of them, joining the Freestar Collective, was a memorable experience that thrust me into a massive conspiracy that tested my morality at every turn and solidified the notion that justice is never black or white in peacekeeping.

Certain quests are organically communicated through setting storytelling. I found a datapad from a dead foe early on in Starfield, and it took me to a mythical space vigilante’s hidden hideaway, where he kept a tough spaceship and famous armor. Later on, stealing and equipping them resulted in some amusing space encounters, with thieves mistaking me for the actual Mantis, pleading for mercy, and even giving me some credits in exchange for my silence.

Another day, I came across Juno, the NASA Jupiter space probe that had become an AI and deviated from its intended route. I discovered that it had grown sentient and had feelings of wanting to be treated like a genuine person when I was given the responsibility of updating its control board. The next thing I knew, I was emotionally debating what it meant to be a person and what made a machine. Starfield has so many fascinating side quests, many of which are treated in greater detail than the game’s unremarkable main plot. So, if you are getting diverted on your quest, I’d strongly advise embracing and pursuing them. They are time well spent!

In contrast to the spectacular holograms we’ve seen in previous sci-fi games like Mass Effect, Starfield’s overall visual has a retro vibe despite being set 300 years in the future. This visual language, which grounds technology with tactile buttons and commonplace trinkets like pens, notepads, and potted plants in what feels like a realistic and reasonable evolution, was given the name “NASA Punk” by Bethesda. Despite centuries of development, it’s a stylistic decision that exudes humanity’s presence and eccentricity.

Starfield’s food appears to be delicious.

Humming motor noises may be heard on the streets of Neon City, whereas Akila is a dusty, wild west area with a tavern in the center, and the people of New Atlantis are seen lugging briefcases about. According to the futuristic food company Chunks, consumers don’t care what they eat as long as it’s good and processed foods like fruits, cooked fowl, and even beverages into unappealing small cubes. However, you can also stockpile everyday foods like patty melts, kebabs, chicken tikka masala, sushi rolls, and other firmly grounded and endearing food.

Review of Starfield: Exploration

Starfield is massively ambitious, with over 1,000 explorable planets, and sounds too fantastic to be true. Realizing that one cannot freely park a spaceship on worlds and take off, as No Man’s Sky did seven years ago, quickly reduces that degree of scope. In Starfield, interplanetary transit is accomplished through a sequence of maps, menus, and an absurd number of loading screens, all shattering immersion. Here’s how it works: You open the galaxy’s map, choose a different star system to go to, choose a planet within it, and then grav-jump there. After that, you open the map again to choose a landing spot, and a cutscene showing your ship descending onto the surface will play. This fast travel system also distances you from the game’s universe by having everything so methodically organized that I could not feel a sense of connection on any of the random planets I visited.

Fast travel is required in Starfield to complete interplanetary transportation.

Each planet or moon may contain pre-determined sites of interest you can land at and explore on foot. Some of these points of interest may be quest-oriented, while others may be optional outposts and flora. But if one ventures off the established road, one may encounter procedurally produced locales, which are typically lifeless and devoid of personality. I won’t say that seeing a magnificent cluster of stars while standing on the now-destroyed Earth, a colonized Mars, or floating across our moon in zero gravity wasn’t jaw-dropping, but gradually, the novelty wears off. Aside from a few brief encounters with alien life, you’ll quickly realize that much of the on-foot travel takes place across apparently endless plains, occasionally spiced up by bandits or a distant alien ship landing to add a sense of activity.

Running about and mining for materials used for weapon modifications, starship improvements, and outpost construction is the typical loop on such worlds. The last one should be held for the late game because it needs A LOT of grinding. The fact that on-foot exploration is solely “on foot” may be the thing that annoys people the most. In other words, the year is 2330, and for some strange reason, there are no rovers to go over enormous deserts. Even the absurdly marketed “walking simulator” Death Stranding has the foresight to include automobiles for simple transportation.

The funny thing is that Starfield is aware of this design problem and allows you to pull out your scanner and warp back to your spaceship instead to avoid going backward for the next five to ten minutes tediously. Its bland surface map, which only highlights the most important spots of interest, worsens everything. It becomes even more frustrating when you memorize key stores and locations while guided around cities.

I modified my ship while jamming to “A Cruel Angel’s Thesis.”

Intense dogfights may be quite punishing early on as you try to control numerous ship systems at once, including the engine and missiles and the shields, weight balance, and more while hurtling through space. We can spend hours customizing the ship we now have, purchase new ones, or even steal one and adapt it to meet our individual needs because our beginning ship could be better. The battles become more enjoyable, and the skill improvements make your ship more powerful. Targeting Control Systems, a talent that lets you zoom in on enemy ships to target particularly vulnerable areas and gain an advantage in combat, is even eerily reminiscent of the VATS system from Fallout.

Review of Starfield: Skills and Combat

Starfield’s gunplay surpasses Bethesda’s earlier shooters like Fallout 4, but that standard was never very high. When aiming down sights, weaponry had an odd floatiness, and occasionally, even after shooting enemies in the face, my shots would fail to connect. Another thing I discovered is that third-person gunfights are almost completely unplayable due to problems like poor precision and unusual heaviness and clunkiness. Yes, I know it is a component of the ‘Bethesda experience,’ but it still seems strange for the developers to devote so much time and energy to minute animations. I recommend using the first-person perspective for battle and the third-person perspective for everything else if you’re in the same situation as me.

You must work to advance your specific skills, which might sometimes take time and effort.

It’s important to remember that Starfield’s roots are in the role-playing genre, which strongly emphasizes your character’s build rather than your own skill in combat. Yes, having good aim helps somewhat, but your character will only be as effective in battle or other activities if you level up and acquire specific skills. Physical, Social, Combat, Science, and Technology comprise the five subcategories of the skill tree, each of which has numerous skills. As an illustration, investing skill points in the Ballistics talent will boost overall firearm damage, yet investing the same amount in the Gymnastics skill will enable sliding about the area. It would be best if you determined what your character excels at. But because each unlocked skill is further divided into four tiers with escalating benefits, upgrading them takes much more effort. From this point forward, you must complete tasks to advance to that ranking before you can use a talent point to unlock it.

Although the benefits are undeniably worthwhile, the process is somewhat time-consuming. Additionally, the game hides a few beginner or basic skills beneath the skill tree. Even if you have a boost pack that allows you to double-jump across the map, you can only utilize it once you gain the necessary tech skill from the Tech section. Similarly, even if you as a player can figure out the key combination using your intellect, you won’t be able to lockpick anything higher than a “Novice” security level lock without upgrades. It feels wasteful to expend skill points on such pointless requirements.

Starfield on foot exploring the obstruction Starfield on foot exploring the obstruction

Planets that are created procedurally are primarily desolate.

The vanilla inventory system is difficult to use because there aren’t enough objects on the screen, and there aren’t any ways to organize them for easy access. Even a basic search function for the latter would have been useful. Another significant problem in Starfield is encumbrance, which makes it difficult to travel quickly and depletes energy when carrying too much weight. Since almost everything in the game is pickable, your inventory is inevitably maxed out rather frequently, requiring you to move or discard goods continuously.

Review of Starfield: Bethesda jank, bugs, and poor performance

While Starfield did occasionally experience some minor bugs, nothing game-breaking that would have prevented me from finishing the game was present. Bethesda games have a reputation for being highly buggy. Among the notable bugs I ran into were characters bumping into each other or standing on high platforms, enemies fusing with walls, dead bodies shooting up and getting stuck onto ceilings, NPCs looking in the opposite direction while speaking to me, and the objective marker occasionally directing me to go below the ground. It’s a surprisingly clean entry for Bethesda’s standards, even though nothing noteworthy in the AAA gaming industry where you expect a certain level of polish. Most of these issues were resolved by just reloading the save file. When entering congested places, such as New Atlantis and Akila, the performance on the PC was plagued by occasional micro-stutters and some framerate dips.

Another strange thing I discovered was that even though my character had a bounty on their head for a long time, the guard responded to it when I chose to have a dialogue with them. The NPCs wouldn’t blink an eye if I freely roamed the area brandishing weapons as long as I didn’t harm anyone. This is probably a mistake, and it’s terrible to see it included in the finished product because it lessens the sense of immersion.

Starfield evaluation: Final

Starfield is a flawed but magnificently immersive journey through the galaxy’s vastness, filled with impeccable world-building that engrosses you for an extended period. It’s a Bethesda game in every way, with a vast selection of side quests and a top-notch role-playing system that prioritizes player agency. It underperforms in the few instances where it tries to break the mold due to its disconnected space exploration, shoddy navigation, and the dullness of its main campaign. By turning up the intensity, Bethesda Game Studios may have taken on more than it could handle in this case, leading to an experience that occasionally gets swallowed up in the icy darkness of space. It’s still a fun trip, and Todd Howard and the team should be proud of their tremendous accomplishment.

Score (7 out of 10):

• On September 6, Starfield became available on PC, Xbox Series S/X, and Xbox Game Pass.
• The starting price of the Standard Edition on Steam for PC is Rs. 4,999. The Xbox Series S/X and PC editions from the Microsoft shop cost Rs. 6,499 each.

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