Great review, the atmosphere is definitely the biggest carry of the game. While it still has some issues, the game has improved a lot since I last checked it out.
I bought Graven back in 2022 and am pretty excited to play the full release tonight. Your review really added to my hype, because a lot of other reviewers that I follow didn't enjoy their time time with the game.
The art direction, the colors and the atmosphere looks gorgeous. Better than most games that focus mostly on how realistic a game looks yet they ignore the aesthetics side.
Great review as always. I rarely have comments that go beyond what you have covered in your review, but in this case I do. While I understand why you put this in the boomer shooter category, I found the game played more slowly and strategically than a typical game in the genre. Also, the spells do not work as many people would expect them to. While they do have a use in combat, I find them to be very underwhelming by design as I see them more as traversal and utility mechanics rather than a tool for fighting. I am emphasizing this because I think that these two elements are the cornerstone of the mixed reviews the game has on Steam. As you presented, I think it is a good game so far even with my more limited skills. The problem IMO is the expectations about pacing and spell use that are evoked by calling it a boomer shooter and equating it with Hexen. So, I wished they made the spell intentions and limitations clearer early on. It would have saved them much frustration in the player base.
Sounds like something I would want to wait a bit on for more bug fixes and such. But man I *love* the artstyle. Loving that boomer shooters are back and in style again, cause I missed these types of games.
Most reviews kept saying how spells are useless but from what I gather here, they didn't bother upgrading or didn't know about it. Think ill give this game a shot once it get a few patches.
Idk it's not really like that though? It doesn't play like any boomer shooter I've played. It's way slower. I see loads of people comparing this to other boomer shooters and I think that's a a mistake. Treat it like it's own thing, if you compare to other boomer shooters you're gonna be let down.
@@themikeberg Boomer shooter doesn't just mean "hordes of enemies", there are other characteristics that this clearly ticks. If you told me "boomer shooter like heretic/hexen" I'd 1000% picture this game.
The exploration aspect almost looks like jedi knight dark forces which i was a huge fan of. As far as the heretic/hexen reference, it looks like it captures the atmosphere, which is really all i remember of those games hehe
Appreciate you covering this one. Been watching the mixed reviews pouring in since it hit EA. I was a huge fan of Hexen and Heretic as a teen, but those negative reviews were really putting me off, glad to hear the 1.0 is looking better. Will probably pick it up this week. Still pretty immersed in Seven atm though lol.
I think they wanted for the game to have a Dark Souls aspect to it. But it seems like they got it backwards, as the enemies respawn on leaving the game, and not on death. Also, it looked like they backed out of that idea at some point, as the respawn mechanic stops for quite a while once you reach final area of act 1 (huge area and nothing ever respawns there). There's no respawning in act 2, but then it comes back in act 3, so maybe that's just due to the general unfinished nature of the game. Who knows, in a year or two maybe we'll have a normal save system? Maybe even a map :)
The game is good if you like old school difficulty. The combat is incredibly deep(hidden spell effects like fire destroying skelly shields or mana pots being grenades when thrown, enemies aggroing one another, frost spell freezing water, box blocking/exploding), but the kick and its environmental interactions could be more polished. There is some decent jank, items/boxes falling trough the floor or just disappearing, same with enemies and even the player clipping or just falling under the map. Lots of reviews talk about the game having an identity crisis. Its hexen1+2 on UE4 and not id tech 1. That is it. Also the difficulty levels are almost like an NG+ feature and that is a first for me, very nice.
This game along with WRATH: Aeon of Ruin sort of taught me that even highly promising early access games _can_ stall out and that 3D Realms should never be given the benefit of the doubt these days, as much as I'd love them to be worth it. Glad to see it turned out well, but I'll definitely wait for a good few patches. Hope the devs will get to support their game for at least a couple months.
did you just come here to say that. WRATH is sitting with a Very Positive rating in Steam. Neither of these gave signs of "stalling out". Probably you just don't like them for personal reasons and that's fine. If you actually came here to get Mort's review, you can see this is a pretty well formed if a bit flawed game, but I really don't see where that would disqualify it as an EA game in any way. Personally I wish I'd heard about this sooner and followed along with the EA development.
@@bitrotter Did _you_ just come here to say that? You sure like making assumptions about other people and their perspective on things, huh? If you genuinely don't see what I mean by stalling out, I'd recommend you check out the original early access release dates of both of these games as well as their update schedules/communication with early adopters over the years. Or hell, their originally intended full release dates. Also, read my final sentence maybe? Of course I watched for Mort's opinion, I just happen to have one as well - which I am commenting on a video about the game it pertains to, funny enough. Have a good one - and enjoy the game, for that matter - but leave me out of it.
@@bitrotter Yeah the Wrath rating smell as a scam from miles away( I have the game and the EA was a torture)because if you see the rating graphic: for 2 years it had an ABYSS of negative reviews, it's really fishy that in only like 2 months the rating rised up from Very Negative to Very Positive whithout the game not even out yet and no updates since last year...mmhhh... 3DRealms have launched too many games at once and I have the fear that they will be really rushed and unfinished.
@@bitrotter Wrath has been in dev hell to the point of the lead devs bailing on the game. I followed that development pretty closely and it was a disgrace especially when it comes to communication. They knew development was FUBAR'd due to using an old engine yet withheld the truth to sell more copies to unsuspecting customers.
@bitrotter Graven has serious problems for its whole development and they ain't fixed, and it literally stalled, it didn’t get any updates at all for like 2 years
Thanks for the video. I think to be a boomer-shooter there needs to be a "yell at clouds" function [bad joke]. Onward to 300k. All glory to the algorithm.
Hey Mort, a CRPG has just come up on my radar on steam and i thought i'd share it. Unforetold: Witchstone - the EA seems to be coming out next week or so.
Had never heard of Unforetold, Trailer looks good. Just wishlisted. Love this channel and learning about new rpgs, especially ones that are not widely known about. 😄
Don't worry Mort's got you. He had already mentioned this game in one of his previous videos talking about upcoming games he was looking forward. He mentioned both witchstone and beast there.
Thought this would be more like Ultima underworld or an immersive sim style. Doesn't seem like it's like amid evil and has more of the hexen style puzzles
This game oozes atmosphere, I played the first chapter last year and loved it. Your assessment of 12-15 hours feels strange, that is the amount of time I spend on the first chapter.:P But I am by no means a fast gamer.
For games without controller auto-aim you should try setting up the gyro controls on the steam deck. Being able to input precise adjustments by tilting the deck will dramatically improve your experience.
I bought the game day one and expected nothing but disappointment after all these delays, but this looks pretty good. Hopefully people find their way to this review instead of Shillmanlives.
I solved most of the puzzles by accident . Few bosses died from fallin through the map. But this was before the final up date got to go back and complete the game .
I keep trying to get into this game but my biggest problem really is the lack of direction of where to go. They'll tell you "Go west" But you have zero clue which way is west. They'll tell you "Go to this guy" "go here" But where is here?
How can you tell you've found all the secrets? Doesn't seem to be any in-game indicator. Which is strange, as there used to be one in the early access version.
There is a "Casual puzzle mode" included. The combat difficulty stays the same, it just makes the puzzles more obvious. It's how I'm currently playing through the game and I'm really enjoying it.
I wanted to like this one, but I just am finding it to be kinda meh. And that is after playing stuff like Project Warlock II, and Ion Fury Aftershock. It just feels really mediocre for a game of the genre to me.
The lack of waypoints and getting repeatedly lost is a massive time waster in this game, it actually ruins the good parts of the game. I hope they do improve these basic problems, it is not 1993 after all. By the time you realize you are going through the same area for the 5th or 6th or 7th time, the urge to uninstall becomes too strong, as you feel like the game is purposefully wasting your time, it is not enjoyable at this point. Hopefully this gets fixed, as the actual gameplay is pretty good.
"untill we talk about how death works.." - oh no.. i think i know where this is going.. Yup, listened how death works, any motivation to play it is gone. WHY do they do this, Blood West was completely ruined for me by having barely punishement for death, now this. You know what's good punishement for death? Death. And having to reload a checkpoint/manual_save. Souls game's system also work sisnce it's almost the same since all enemies respawn and unkilled bosses reset health. You know what's a bad system? Respawning while enemies do not so you can throw bodies at the problem. Prodeus was another just mind boggling game in that regard, i don't get it at all at all at all. It's not rocket science, games firgue this out long long time ago, making this fundamental mistakes that kills any and all challenge is insanly buffling to me. Yes, let's meticulously craft levels and enemy placement on like 5+ different difficulties and then just put a death system that negates meaning of any of that, just invalidate all hard work in an instant, it's insane cases of self-sabotage.
Blood West was a blast to play with a stealth approach. It did run shitty on my pc, but I persevered as the feels of well aimed arrows and a sawed-off backup were too good to resist. The curse system worked well enough for the many hours I played it. The only time I had a concern with it was early game when forced to collect items from an enemy type that was lighting me up.
@@jakehopgood7446 It was a blast to play until i learned there's functionally almost no punishment for death. I can kill 80% of the dungeon, die, return and finish it as if nothing happened. Curses don't work because they extremely easy to avoid or cure if you did end up catching one. That's why it's so frustrating - i like the gameplay, but whoever came up with "only 10% of enemies respawn on death" imo straight up wrong and completely ruined the game.
Right there with you on this - that said, modern tastes are what modern tastes are. People seem to have a hard time dealing with any and all frustration in their lives these days, so for them this newer approach just makes more sense, as frustrating as that may be, ironically enough. Personally I've just started to self-impose the challenge, reloading upon failure, that sort of thing. Which is not an acceptable alternative, to be sure, but asking devs to cater to a tiny subset of people like us that do still want punishment for failure would be a bit much to ask by default. Instead I try to appreciate it that much more when this perspective is accounted for and catered to. I'm hopeful mainstream tastes will eventually either branch out or swing back again.
@@HansAlRachid I don't think it's that, Graven have ALOT of difficulty modes for every kind of player, i never against easy modes or such, and in this case it's not even that games aren't hard in a way - like i don't think casual player would enjoy Blood West, it would be too frustrating anyway. I think It stems from developers fear of locking a player in an unwinnable state or something like that. I don't know about Graven (haven't played it), but i don't think in Blood West you even can do anything about that system. In Bioshock games there were respawn chambers but they also had a save/checkpoint system so you could just reload a save/checkpoint if you die, avoiding using a respawn alltogether. So i kinda see what you mean with self-impose challenges but it's not always possible. But i do try to meet a game half-way - sometimes i download other person's save to unlock harder difficulty from the start or something like that.
@@OldyAlbert I am really glad Blood West handled that the way they did. The curses can be pretty bad if you keep dying, and getting rid of them is easy, but only if you want to get rid of them. If you are looking for more challenge, just make it a point never to use the purple potion. It's a slow, methodical stealth game. Repeating those same areas over and over with respawned enemies would just get too repetitive and boring after awhile. I saw someone else complaining about how easy it is to min-max your stats, and all I could think of was "then, maybe don't do that, if it makes the game too easy?"
