PC Game Reviews

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Our detailed reviews help you make informed decisions about your next PC game purchase. We provide a thorough analysis of gameplay, graphics, story, and more.

Bodycam Early Access ReviewBodycam’s early access version is an interesting proof of concept for a good looking, GoPro-view shooter, but has little else to offer once the novelty wears off.

IGN PC ArticlesJun 21

Review: Times & Galaxy Can Really Feel Like an Investigation There are games that will end up falling into the visual novel or adventure categories that, honestly, might feel a bit limited when it comes to their premise. When something suggests you participate in the day-to-day affairs of a newspaper, for example, simple responses may make you wonder if it really feels fulfilling. With Times & Galaxy , it really feels like the game works well within its confines to create an experience that does mimic what life is like as a reporter when gathering information and creating stories. You’re a robot. A unique one, mind you. You’re the first one qualified to act as a reporter. How do you know that? You were made that way. Upon completion, you’re sent to Times & Galaxy to act as their new intern. That means immediately jumping into the field to go on investigations to uncover stories. Once that element of your task is done, you head back to the office to put together an article based on your work. What you learned and how you present it determine the course of the paper, influencing the reputation and readership. Screenshot by Siliconera What follows feels like a blend of point-and-click adventure games and visual novels. Your journalist will head into the field to investigate the scene. This means talking to people involved and witnesses. You only get one chance to talk to people, which influences the sorts of information you get out of the interview. You’ll also be able to take a look around the scene, being able to look at points of interest to pick up additional details. For example in the first story, which is also present in the demo, you’ll investigate a ship that crashed. You can look at the wreckage to find there was no pilot or autopilot present. Depending on what you ask of people around you, you can also learn how involved the police were and other details about the ship itself. It’s fascinating and, as I approached each interaction, I found myself wondering if I was handling it the right away to get the story I wanted and needed. Screenshot by Siliconera From there, you take the details you pull together and create a story. Everything you picked up earlier from the investigations and interviews led to acquiring certain keywords and elements. So you’ll be putting together the headline, the lede, the nut graph, a key quote, and a color to help build an article. It will then commit to an approach, such as one that is informative and hard-hitting or more gossip rag in tone. This, in turn, determines how “well” you do in getting people to read and building up the Times & Galaxy reputation. It’s essentially the “pay-off” of the game, since everything you did before that come together to create a result. Image via Fellow Traveller It also feels like a bit of replayability comes together in that moment. Times & Galaxy is the sort of game where I feel like you go into it determining what kind of reporter you want to be right away. You need to have a persona for yourself, then always tailor your questions and responses. Basically, you yourself need to commit to a bit. Then, you see if that pays off for you in your performance at the newspaper. At least, I had more fun with it when I went into the game with that mindset. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0nklMg5bxk&ab_channel=FellowTraveller Also, while I know I’m not doing hard-hitting journalism myself in my day job, it does take me back to college classes I took and past roles when I was doing more interviewing for my university’s paper. There is this element to the game where when taking approaches, you need to factor in things like professionalism, your own biases, and how to properly tell a story. Your morals might be questioned when you report. You will find yourself in situations where you may have someone trying to force the “party line” and “official explanation,” rather than the truth. You also might be in a position where instead of just asking what someone saw, you’ll notice the question is a bit leading. You know, as though you’re trying to get evidence for the story you “want” to tell, rather than what is there. Times & Galaxy feels like it blends what you’d expect from adventure games with a sort of newspaper management simulation. You’re investigating situations, piecing together a story. However, you’re also shaping how things are approached and turn out, depending on what you choose. There’s a sense of balancing things. You want to search for truth and find out what’s going on, while also telling your own story based on what you learned. It’s really compelling. Times & Galaxy is available for the Nintendo Switch, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC . Switch version reviewed. Review copy provided by company for testing purposes. The post Review: Times & Galaxy Can Really Feel Like an Investigation appeared first on Siliconera .

PC Archives - SiliconeraJun 21

Even if you’re a city builder veteran, Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic may stump you I’ve been laying down cities since the first SimCity . The SNES version, I mean, so a few years late, but I got in deep. Since then, it’s been one of my comfort genres. So, I’m not sure where I stand with Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic , which has just left Early Access into full release. I’m not doing a review – at least not right now – because, despite having put around 20 hours into it, I haven’t come close to piercing its shell. I was thinking this as I was trying to set up plumbing in my burgeoning city and finding a new complication at every turn. “It will all become clear with some experimentation and practice,” I told myself. Yeah, when? How many hours do I have to put in to learn this game, and will it be worth it? Screenshot by Destructoid At some point, I was trying to figure out how to prevent my trains from bumping into each other, but when I looked for help, the text box I found literally said, “Please find additional guides on the Steam Workshop or the internet about this topic. It is a very complicated topic.” That’s, uh, hm… I don’t doubt that setting up a system of train semaphores (as I learned they’re called) to organize the traffic of your railways is complicated, but should it be? Yes, it should. Because there’s someone out there who wants this level of depth. I wouldn’t mind learning the ins and outs of setting up a functional railway system. I just would expect it to be in a railway simulator. In Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic , this is one singular component of a massive number of systems, each one with its own learning curve. I need to make it clear right here: Workers & Resources has a number of different ways to tweak the experience. You can, for example, turn off power, water, or waste management. When creating a custom game, you can turn features on or off to tweak it to your liking. I hate having to set up my own difficulty because I never know where my skill level is at, and I’d prefer it when a developer has a default setting to tell me where my skill level should be at. The individual settings do have presets like easy, medium, hard, so it might be acceptable to start at easy and work your way up. That is, if you're willing to make multiple cities. https://youtu.be/NJ05ohxfnq8?feature=shared However, even at easy, you need to set up train semaphores. And, even at easy, that is just one facet of a more complicated whole. Setting up a system where I could get coal from a mine to a processor to the train took me a whole lot of bulldozing. I’m not sure I ever got my public transportation functioning properly, because not enough people were using it to get to work. Or maybe I just didn’t have enough population, I’m not entirely sure. Setting up a distribution chain was something else. I was doing it entirely wrong for a while. Then when I started doing it the way it told me to, it wasn’t working right. I then had to figure out how to adjust the minimum stock level at shops and bars, which was never explained anywhere. Many times when I thought I was doing something correctly, I’d have to add something new to the pile and would find out I had set everything up in a way that felt optimal at the time, but turned out to be completely unworkable in the long run. It lets you work in the wrong direction unhindered. At some point, you may have to raze it all to the ground and build upon the ruins. It’s hard to tell how much unintuitiveness is acceptable for the sake of complexity. Screenshot by Destructoid It can all be learned, of course. I didn’t know the relationship between residential, commercial, and industrial zoning until I played SimCity . But while that skill carried over to future city builders, I’m not sure train semaphores will. I’m not certain if the treacherously steep learning curve is going to be worth it. I finished the first “campaign,” which acts as a tutorial. I moved onto the second, which is another tutorial but at a higher difficulty. It has a different focus that I find more enjoyable, but it also feels daunting. The added systems are sprawled out in front of you, and while you’re given the time and money needed to tackle them at your own pace, just the demonstration of how much left there is to learn is nearly disheartening. On top of this, I have further reservations. It uses generative AI for some things. Mostly portraits of characters who give you instruction throughout the campaign. It’s not a pervasive thing, seemingly only shown in the tutorial campaign. However, that kind of makes it worse because it isn’t necessary and could have been done by an artist. The digital bodysnatchers don’t need to be here. The UI is also not up to the task of managing all the complex systems. It tries. In particular, managing the routes of all the varieties of vehicles zooming around my brutalist cities can require digging through multiple windows just to find the one that will allow me to add and remove stops. I don’t even understand some of the displays, but I’m sure that would come with time. Screenshot by Destructoid Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic has a very specific audience, and I’m pretty sure I fit in there somewhere. I just can’t be certain yet, because I haven’t found the bottom. I’m not sure if I’m going to find the bottom with the amount of time required to dig that far. On the other hand, I made some far-out stuff in Kerbal Space Program , so I have an appetite to learn new things on some level. That’s just my warning to you. If you felt that games like Cities: Skylines 2 went too far with abstraction when it came to their urban construction mechanics, then Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic has a lot to dig into. You just need to be aware that it is a tremendous leap from those games. This isn’t the next level of city builder, this is quite a few steps above that. You have to have the mind for it. You have to have the time for it. The post Even if you’re a city builder veteran, Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic may stump you appeared first on Destructoid .

PC Archives – DestructoidJun 21

Review: Another Crab’s Treasure In the ever-crowded world of games inspired by the work of FromSoftware, you wouldn’t expect the story of a plucky hermit crab trying to recover his beloved shell from an undersea capitalist hellscape to hit the nail so thoroughly. The setting of Another Crab's Treasure couldn't be any further from Lordran, or Drangelic, or Lothric, and so on. Instead of a grim expanse, players are immediately introduced to a colorful ecosystem in the depths of the ocean, at least for most of the adventure. Under that spongy veil, thorough challenges await, ready to pounce on the adorably naive Kril. The story starts innocently enough. Kril is minding his own business when a loan shark — you can probably imagine how literal this interpretation is — appears and reclaims his shell, citing the Duchy of Slacktide's annexation of this particular tide pool. It turns out Kril owes more than his fair share of back taxes, so unless he can pony up he's out one delightful little home-on-the-go. From there, Kril's adventure begins, taking him through an aquatic world under the affliction of a mysterious curse. That curse, it turns out, is our good friend pollution, an inevitable side effect of the aforementioned capitalist hellscape. As above, so below. Screenshot by Destructoid Another Crab's Treasure (PC [Reviewed], PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S) Developer: Aggro Crab Publisher: Aggro Crab Released: April 25, 2024 MSRP: $29.99 Wetter is better Despite his seemingly innocent nature, Kril isn't going to take this one lying down. He quickly grabs a fork and sets off on a quest to get his shell back, getting more than he bargained for along the way. As he meets new allies and uncovers new, more intimidating parts of the sea, he'll have to fend off all the crustaceans and similarly mad creatures that have already succumbed to the affliction known as "Gunk." Many of the classic Soulslike ponderments are answered right out of the gate. What’s the stand-in for Bonfires? Moon Snail Shells. Is there a parry and riposte system it would behoove you to master? Absolutely. There’s even a primary central location known as The Sands Between, so the team at Aggro Crab are having plenty of fun with the sub-genre. As Kril progresses, he'll enter arenas littered with empty shells, taking in the scenery briefly before some hulking foe appears, health bar stretching across the screen like the yawning abyss itself. In many ways, especially with grappling present, it's even closer to something like FromSoft's Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice . If Kril wants to survive more than a few hits in these and even the countless standard enemy battles, he'll need to find the right shell for the job. Thankfully, the very detritus that contributes to the decline of maritime civilization can be used to your advantage. Soda bottle tops, shot glasses, and thimbles can become trusty means of defense. If you're really in a pinch, you can slip into a banana peel, or maybe a discarded milk carton; they all have their own unique stats, from the amount of damage they can take to built-in secondary attacks and buffs. Screenshot by Destructoid When the going gets tough — and it often does — you can always increase stats through leveling. Defeated enemies and bosses drop Microplastics, which are this game's take on Souls. You can also sell junk you find, from clothespins to paperclips, for larger amounts of Microplastics. Aiding you further is a skill tree, the nodes of which can be purchased with crystals. It starts with the basic Shelleportation skill that lets you warp between Moon Snail Shells. From there, it branches off into everything from the essential parry and riposte to the ability to use consumable Barbed Hook items to reel in vulnerable enemies for a pummelin'. Toss in Stowaways, which can add passive benefits when you have a shell equipped, as well as powerful Adaptation moves, and you have an action game that gives you plenty of options for improvement and the eventual besting of some legitimately tough opponents. Despite its cute exterior, Another Crab's Treasure doesn't shy away from throwing you into the deep end quick, both literally and figuratively. In true genre fashion, you'll die and die again at the hands of its many bosses, but Kril always has a fighting chance to survive. One of the advantages is the fact that you don't respawn all the way back at the nearest Moon Snail Shell after a boss kills you. Instead, you have the option of returning to life right outside the arena. Said arenas always have more shells to pick up, and there are often extra Heartkelp Pods — the equivalent of flasks — lying around. If all of that isn't enough of an advantage for you, you could always just shrug, cock your gun, and let the fight end before it even begins. Armed and dangerous Screenshot by Destructoid Let's talk about the gun. Yes, Kril has a gun, and it packs some mighty heat. Kril's gun isn't something you're going to find buried deep in the darkest depths of the ocean; it's actually sitting right there waiting for you at the bottom of the accessibility menu. Another Crab's Treasure is keen on letting you have fun, regardless of your skill level, so there are a wealth of options to choose from should you ever find yourself banging your head against a particularly rigid wall. Among those options is one especially powerful last resort. If you toggle the gun on, it appears as a literal gun in place of Kril's shell, absolutely dwarfing him. Not that it takes much to dwarf a tiny hermit crab, but still, it's really big. That makes it extra funny when Kril uses it to fire at enemies, most of which will go down in one shot from a very generous distance. This applies to bosses, as well. If your skills aren't quite cutting it at any point in the journey, you can just toggle the gun on and one-shot that colossal creature that's been thrashing you for the past hour or so. Naturally, if you choose to use the gun, you're not going to get any better at Another Crab's Treasure . Allow me to push my spectacles up and murmur, just loud enough to hear, ""You cheated not only the game, but yourself, " etc. etc . If you want to improve, you'll have to brave Kril's toughest challenges with the abilities you've earned. If you don't, though, or if you just want to breeze through a section of the game? Hell, go for it. I know it's controversial, but I believe games should be fun, and if you're not having fun, you should either play a different game or let a crab use a gun. There are other less "final" options, too, like decreasing the damage Kril takes, lowering enemy health, or even increasing the parry and dodge windows. Whether you use them or not, it's great that features like this exist and do nothing to detract from the game itself. That swamp is poisooon Circling back to that FromSoft checklist, the team at Aggro Crab decided to seal their loving missive to Hidetaka Miyazaki and co. with a deadly kiss. Yes, there is a poison swamp equivalent in Another Crab's Treasure , and yes it is a pain in the ass. It's very easy to fall in and boost your poison meter, or have some gnarly fish vomit on you and boost your poison meter, or, you get the picture. Somewhere, Miyazaki is smiling the most devilish of smiles, reflecting upon the hell he so effectively wrought. This area was really the turning point for me. While the whole of Flotsam Vale wasn't actually that miserable, it sets the tone for the rest of the adventure. Kril eventually makes his way beyond a pier, to a factory that deals in magnet manipulation and platforming and very much overstays its welcome. I've certainly played 3D action games with worse platforming, but Another Crab's Treasure never really makes a case for why it's so prevalent. There's a lot of verticality, and the punishment for falling is minimal, but between wrestling with the camera and just wanting to get on with it, the tuna was starting to turn. By the time I completed the area, I figured I was getting near the end anyway, but there's actually a ton of game beyond that. Some of it is really great! Some of it, not so much. On one hand, I absolutely appreciate how much work went into Kril's journey. Aggro Crab put a ton of care into this, from the surprisingly earnest and funny story to some excellent voice acting and an abundance of fully-realized locales and imaginative challenges. Screenshot by Destructoid On the other hand, much of it left me feeling fatigued. Each individual area is typically populated with a handful of enemies that you'll either love squaring off against or feel the need to avoid at all costs. I found myself being momentarily wowed in each new zone before quickly wanting to rush ahead and see what else they cooked up for me. You know what that sounds like? Dark Souls ! Like I said, they absolutely nailed what they were going for. There comes a certain point, though, when seeing the credits roll sooner might have been a salve for a wounded warrior. As draining as I found some of the backend to be, most of the boss fights are really well done. Like all good games of the genre, I still find myself thinking about many of them well after completing the main story. I loved the moves of bosses like Heikea, Intimidation Crab, who stomps down atop a sunken boat and wails at Kril with a set of freshly-snapped chopsticks, the arena littered with sushi rolls that can serve as makeshift shells. Voltai, the Accumulator, is an electric eel with some novel stage-based gimmicks. Even the final boss has some interesting surprises in store. Even with some crab-meat caveats, it's really difficult to be too down on my overall experience. There's so much to like about Another Crab's Treasure that I keep coming back to everything they accomplished. The underwater world, the puns, the monster designs that include iconic threats like "crab with knives rubber-banded to its claws"; it is the very essence of commitment to the bit. Outside of some frustrating platforming, it's also just really fun to move Kril around. The way he skitters across the ocean floor, fluidly dodge-rolls to and fro, uses his hook to zip higher up, and floats with all his might to get just a bit more distance under his little leggies; great stuff. Part of me wishes Another Crab's Treasure predated the Souls games, just so we would have to refer to genre offshoots as Crablikes. The sauce is certainly thick on this one, and I'll be thinking about it for quite some time. Another Crab's Treasure pulls off exactly what it set out to do, and it's going to be a favorite for many. Thanks to some of the less palatable late-game moments, it didn't quite get to that level for me, but I very much appreciate all the shell-bound friends and pelagic puns I met along the way. [This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.] The post Review: Another Crab’s Treasure appeared first on Destructoid .

PC Archives – DestructoidJun 21

The Rogue Prince of Persia Early Access ReviewA promising Early Access roguelite that's currently a little too light on content.

IGN PC ArticlesJun 18

Review: Still Wakes the Deep Still Wakes the Deep takes the horror of the sea and drags it into a virtual reality where you're small, trapped, and must try to escape an entity you cannot understand. It's brutal cosmic horror that borrows from some of Lovecraft's best work and manages to craft a survival horror game that I believe is going to be remembered by the horror community for years to come. Developer The Chinese Room is perhaps best known for games like Everybody's Gone to the Rapture and Dear Esther , narrative titles that do a great job of telling a compelling story through gameplay that's generally okay. Still Wakes the Deep kicks things up a notch. Set on an oil rig in the North Sea in 1975, you play as Caz, an electrician who took a job on the rig to get out of Scotland and dodge some police charges. While his past has caught up with him, it matters little compared to the monumental event that occurs on the rig right after his boss gets wind of them. Screenshot by Destructoid Still Wakes the Deep (PC, PS5 [Reviewed], Xbox Series X|S) Developer: The Chinese Room Publisher: Secret Mode Released: June 18, 2024 MSRP: $34.99/£29.99 The opening to Still Wakes the Deep is dripping with atmosphere. You're introduced to a plucky crew around a rig that's barely holding itself together, a flawed protagonist whose past is less than glamorous, and a first-person perspective and movement system that's good enough to get around, but feels as clunky as a middle-aged Scotsman should. Something that stuck with me from the outset and lasted all the way through is the exceptional visuals. At points, I struggled to understand how the game looked so real. The Chinese Room has pulled off some sort of magic with this game, and it makes the horrors you face all the more terrifying, because they seem to be bursting out of reality. That's quite appropriate because, soon after the muted introduction, the rig drills into something, an entity, and all hell breaks loose on the platform. However, the visuals, like the movement system, aren't perfect. An update may fix this, but the logic of narrow wires in Still Wakes the Deep is, to put it bluntly, bonkers. It makes sense for enemies, but phones and other wiring will also go haywire and fly around in unnatural ways. Seeing these glitch in and out of existence or fly around for no reason broke my immersion, but at least they didn't break the game. Screenshot by Destructoid After being thoroughly thrown around, Still Wakes the Deep reveals its true colors. What starts out feeling like a walking simulator very quickly becomes a first-person horror game, and I adore it. There's a lovely split between environmental puzzles, things like switches and fires, platforming, and sneaking around or running away from colossal, impossible enemies. The environmental puzzles are a lot of fun. They're all framed as fixing a system or finding an item that you need to help someone and progress, much like in the original Dead Space . This gives you a sense of purpose and helps you forget the scary parts until they suddenly rear their head again. Mechanically, these puzzles are simple, but the way they're used throughout the game keeps it fresh without anything ever feeling overused. The enemies are where the real horror/fun is, though. Certain crew members have been altered by the entity the rig's drill ran into. They're bloated and barely human, but retain some level of intelligence and a few dangling limbs. The monster design is top-notch and grossed me out more than once. I even froze up a couple of times just because these creatures look like they were ripped right out of nightmares. You're not fighting these things. Instead, you're escaping them, working around an environment, sometimes quite a long series of rooms, while throwing objects to distract them. Some encounters even have you activating systems for the rig, which feels incredibly stressful when a giant blob of fishy human meat is moving around trying to absorb you. If this sounds a lot like Alien: Isolation 's Xenomorph encounters, that's exactly what it feels like to play. Where in that game, the environment and your arsenal changed how you explored and worked around your enemy, S till Wakes the Deep 's environment and enemy variety keep things from feeling dull. Even when you think you know how an enemy will react, it's going to surprise you and keep you on your toes. Screenshot by Destructoid It's not just how these things look and move, either; it's how they sound. Human voices have been distorted to sound like animals or certain personality traits that they had before being transformed. This debases them, but also makes them feel scarily advanced, because you just don't understand why they've been twisted in such a way. The sound design, in general, for Still Wakes the Deep is better than many AAA titles. Silence is used to devastating effect, but the soundtrack, where used, is superb. Every footstep, creak of metal, or groan from something in the distance is done so well that this game can scare you with the controller on the table and nothing happening. The Scottish voice acting is also just amazing. Most of my family is Scottish, and it felt almost homely to hear so many Scottish words used in passing that I'm sure a lot of people will miss. While some of it feels a little forced, the majority of the dialogue is stunning. It makes the game feel authentic, even though it's packed with dreadful monsters. Lastly, there's the story. The real narrative in Still Wakes the Deep is told through flashbacks, your actions, and even the way the enemies look. In true cosmic horror fashion, the true nightmare lies within protagonist Caz's mind, not the rusty rig falling apart around him. Similar to how the horror community still analyzes, dissects, and discusses Soma to this day, I can see Still Wakes the Deep being a game that people find new ways to explore and explain for at least a decade. It's well-made and clearly has a strong vision behind it, which I'd say has been nailed. I've always thought that the unknowable depths of the sea make for a terrifying realm to contemplate. We really have no idea what lies at the bottom of a large percentage of Earth's oceans. That's why it's always seemed a little bonkers to me that we're so willing to drill straight down into the crust below and hope for the best when aiming roughly where we believe there's some oil. Still Wakes the Deep blends this terror with genuine human flaws. Outside of Dredge , I don't know if a game has felt so uniquely Lovecraftian. This is a game that everyone should play just to experience once, and thanks to its deathless story mode, you can. It's not perfect by any means, but it's noteworthy and a game you're not going to stop hearing about for a long time, and it scratches the itch you'll have been feeling since playing Alien: Isolation . The post Review: Still Wakes the Deep appeared first on Destructoid .

PC Archives – DestructoidJun 18

Crime Boss: Rockay City Review – When Video Games Go Hollywood (PC) An epic ensemble of Hollywood greats is always a delight on the silver screen. However, no one expected a video game to successfully put some of the most outstanding cinema performers together in a heisting video game set in a mid/late twentieth-century rendition of Florida. That is where Ingame Studios’ Crime Boss: Rockay City saw […] The post Crime Boss: Rockay City Review – When Video Games Go Hollywood (PC) appeared first on FandomWire .

PC – FandomWireJun 18

Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree ReviewTry finger, but whole The post Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree Review appeared first on WellPlayed .

Reviews PC – WellPlayedJun 18

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree Review – Throwing ShadeDark tidings. The post Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree Review – Throwing Shade first appeared on Kakuchopurei .

PC | KakuchopureiJun 18

Review: Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree Weaves New Mysteries A man sits in a dark room, his flaming red hair spilling from beneath his helmet. His eyes are golden, pupils slit though bearing the same cross found throughout The Lands Between. He raises a spear, a snake twining around his arm. Messmer the Impaler, the face of FromSoftware's Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, murmurs secrets to me as he pulls back his arm and proclaims me an enemy. Leaping into the sky a ball of red flame gathers in the mouth of a serpent, and he comes crashing down nearly killing me in a single blow. But I fight back. I fight for my life as the jaws of that terrible beast come down on me again. Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree doesn't open with the same kind of dramatics I described above. That's solely saved for more cinematic boss fights. Instead you are transported to another realm beyond The Lands Between. It's a new and foreign place where Miquella the Kind discarded his flesh and Messmer's flame ravaged the world of the undying. The setup is compelling enough in its own right, pulling on narrative threads left unanswered in the base game, while still managing to weave its own set of mysteries throughout. Improvement in performance is one of the best things to come with Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree . I did not experience major framerate issues, outside of a few instances when the game would freeze, somehow still be responsive to my inputs, and then rapidly catch up a few moments later. I do want to mention that this ended up affecting my entire system and my audio card. This has only ever happened with Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree . Outside of that, I did run into one other issue which was isolated to a specific area in the DLC where if I stayed in one spot for too long, I would clip through the ground and fall to my death. I cannot explain why this happened, but I replicated it several times just in case if this was a one time issue. It was not. Image via Bandai Namco While the performance for the Shadow of the Erdtree was a vast improvement, I still take umbrage with dropped frames or outright freezing in a game where movement and invincibility frames mean life, death, and progression. Obviously, this has impacted my overall score, which I think is fair given what I've just outlined. Elden Ring is a far from perfect game in that regard, but it is still functional enough that I was able to enjoy myself once I conceded that the build I had carried through the base game into the DLC was simply not going to cut it. Through the course of my first review , I used the Reduvia Blood Blade to devastating effect. It carried me through a majority of the game before I switched over to the Hoslow Petal Whips that I enchanted with Frost and Bleed. These were powerful and had a significant amount of poise damage, on top of applying a generous amount of Bleed to common enemies and bosses. I'm not sure what happened between then and now, but whatever nerf happened made me hang up my whips and forced me to pick up the Reduvia once more before I ended up respecing to more effectively use Rivers of Blood and Mohgywin's Sacred Spear interchangeably. Bleed damage is still king. With enough finesse, I was able to clear most bosses with relative ease through the use of both and my Mimic Tear Ash... when I remembered I could use it. Boss fights in Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree are challenging and sometimes feel unfair. Some feel underpowered, while others feel vastly over-tuned in terms of mobility. There were a couple of fights that I did breeze through due to the sheer amount of Bleed damage both my Mimic Tear and I did in such a short amount of time, but others with more aggressive and agile movement were frustrating. The Dancing Lion shown in trailers more or less serves as a roadblock for players with its high mobility and how it dances between lightning and frost attacks. This isn't the hardest boss however, but is more or less a sign of what you will come to expect. That said, I felt like the Elden Ring DLC was definitely trying to funnel me into specific builds or build certain stats that I had neglected, like Vigor. Even through powering up my resistances through the use of Scadutree Fragments and Ashes, it never felt like quite enough. The add-on does expect you to be at least moderately skilled and at around level 150 if you want an easier experience. I made the mistake of going in at around level 100, which was fine. It just made the game significantly harder, at least in my opinion. Image via Bandai Namco The new weapons are also interesting, as their movesets are more agile than anything I've seen in the base game. A set of claws I took off of the body of a naked man I found wandering the forest with some animal companions had me leaping and lunging. A pair of twin blades I acquired from a boss allowed me to spin elegantly across the battlefield. But in the end I resorted to using my Rivers of Blood just to get through the DLC. I will probably go back and try out other weapons I acquired just to see what they're capable of as I help my friends through Shadow of the Erdtree , or help them get to the point of starting the add-on. NPCs are aplenty in Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree . This realm between realms is populated with them, each a servant of Miquella the Kind. I had no issues completing their quests, as they seem to be complete, with progression allowing me to summon specific NPCs as companions during boss fights integral their own backstories. One of my favorites was Ansbach, a follower of the Blood God Mohg. I thought his decision to forgo worshipping Mohg was strange until I reached a specific point in the story, which began to unravel more and more of the narrative which is arguably a lot more clean cut than Elden Ring or anything from the Dark Souls series. These characters' motivations are made clear and you understand where their allegiances lie, but there are still mysteries to be found and context clues scattered in items you can find around the map. One of my favorite additions in Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree is how NPCs will actually talk during certain boss fights, allowing you to glean more lore. Ansbach had a lot to say during one specific encounter, with more dialogue spoken between Ansbach and several adversaries depending on how long it took me to kill certain enemies. Or even finding a random NPC after slaying a dragon that asked me to summon him for another fight to learn even more bits of lore. These were neat little touches. Summoning them does have a downside, as they will affect how much health a boss has by specific increments. But I more or less bit the bullet and summoned them for at least one or two attempts to get as much dialogue out of them as possible. Even if it was something of a double-edged sword. It is also worthwhile going back and speaking to NPCs whenever you complete a boss fight or make any kind of progress, as they tend to move around the map constantly. While I was interested in how Messmer the Impaler would fit into the lore and overarching narrative of Elden Ring , I felt like his inclusion in the DLC story was perhaps one of the weakest, with the aforementioned NPCs being the strongest additions. Messmer exists to be feared and is implied to be the favorite of Marika, but little else is known about him outside of obvious parallels to Jörmungandr. Miquella's role in the conflict between the Gods is expanded upon, along with his implied seduction of Mohg. You learn about this supposed realm of undeath, what the Warrior Jars truly house, and the misery that has swept over this world. Some of it feels superficial, and at times shallow, answers to questions we did not ask, but help flesh out certain narrative elements that existed in the base game. As you can imagine, there is a lot to sink your teeth into, and lore hounds will more than likely love this DLC. (It's me, I'm a lore hound.) Image via Bandai Namco In regards to the map, Shadow of the Erdtree is smaller by far, but has more verticality. I was navigating up and down cliffs on the back of Torrent, carefully teetering on the edges of rocks and gravestones to find monochrome fields of red chrysanthemums, or racing through plains of dried grass. The castles and keeps are impressive, sprawling structures that reminded me of Anor Londo, though not half as large. There were other areas I chanced upon as well, which keeps the spirit of exploration alive that was present in the base game. And as I navigated these areas and discovered more secrets and defeated more bosses I clocked in around fifteen hours of total playtime. But I'm almost certain there is still more for me to do. Shadow of the Erdtree is more Elden Ring , just with a much better performance. However, I was underwhelmed by some of the locations and felt as though the boss fights weren't challenging in a way that felt rewarding when I did manage to beat them. There's a lot of good in Shadow of the Erdtree , but as I sat on my feelings once I defeated the final boss, I realized that I thought it was really just alright. If you aren't a massive fan of FromSoftware games or adore the lore in Elden Ring , this DLC might be something you want to wait and purchase later. But if you adored Elden Ring , you will probably fall in love with the game all over again through Shadow of the Erdtree . Regardless, I'll probably spend another twenty or so hours in it, digging for nuggets of lore I might have otherwise missed. Reviewer’s PC Specs Processor AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-Core Processor 3.70 GHz Installed RAM 32.0 GB Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Elden Ring is available for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and PC . Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree will be available on all mentioned platforms on June 21, 2024. The post Review: Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree Weaves New Mysteries appeared first on Siliconera .

PC Archives - SiliconeraJun 18