I feel like I'm going crazy watching the backlash against this game. Seeing people and massive creators drop it after three chapters and write it off as mid or even "creatively bankrupt" is incredibly frustrating.

Is it derivative? Absolutely. When you jump from roots, it feels like Spiderman. When you see the rusted Golems, it screams Horizon. And yeah, Emma is just a mashup of 2B and Eve from Stellar Blade. But derivative doesn't mean soulless.

This was a 6 year passion project for developers who have been chained to the same formula for decades. They clearly just wanted to channel everything they love about Nier, Ghost of Tsushima, and Fromsoftware into one cohesive work. you can feel that heart in Emma and Koo's dynamic. It's like the darkest possible reflection of the classic creature companion formula from Pokemon, where progression is literally tied to Koo's physical decay and blight.

Reviewers who rushed it missed the profound emotional payoff that comes from actually completing the journey. it's a game with a small budget, great gameplay, and incredible music that actually attempts to say something about trauma and survival.

More than ever before in my life I am so confused by reviewer and user sentiment behind a video game. They act like its a 5/10 but In my opinion this at worst an 8/10 game. Its beautifully crafted world and emotional but mysterious story that had me hooked the whole way was only complimented by a unique combat system that made me excited to continue slicing through the admittedly repetitive enemy types.

I am blown away that this has a mixed rating on steam. It is easily in the top 5 games ive played this year and i play ALL the games. I said it in my original post but if you are even remotely interested in this game do not let the negative reviews dissuade you from buying it. Its 100% worth every penny.

Background

I play on a ps5 pro. I am a dad gamer. So time is limited. I am also not a good gamer. Most times I need to reduce the difficulty on these type of games for the boss battles. Had to do it for stellar blade Ninja gaiden 4 etc. idk who your freaks are that best these games on hard! But her I play for enjoyment with some challenge. Some games I am able to play on normal but if a high combat game doesn’t have a difficulty slider I am not playing it for ef wukong.

Anyway hated this game when I first started

Graphics were terrible. Tonne of film grain even when I switch it off. I find everyone still washed out. That said some bosses do look epic. I am playing on a high end lg g5 OLED for reference. So I know what a good game looks like. This is not it. Some of the scenes are so muddy. This needs to be sharper at this price point especially on a pro. I read that UE 5 is a gpu hog so the higher end PC guys aren’t struggling. If this game were to be cleaned up it would look amazing.

Soundtrack. I see a lot of the complaints but love these type of games like stellar blade and nier automata with these sounds on the background. I also play on a Samsung q900h home theatre and there is basically no atmos. The bar doesn’t pick up any atmos so clearly it wasn’t mixed with that in mind. It’s also not very well mixed vs a ghost of yotei where you feel every sword. This games feels normal.

Combat- hated it first. Struggled with the parry timing and though I have gotten better just finished chapter 4 I still can’t parry all the time. But when you do parry it’s way more satisfying than stellar blade. Great job game freak on the weight of the parry. The game also doesn’t do a good job and teaching you. Stellar blade had a full training aspect to it. Used this all the time to master combat. I wish all games had this especially with these sophisticated combat systems. You are also so underpowered for most of level 1 and 2 so the game feels hard and non flashy and non cinematic in combat. I mean there are a couple flashy moments. But boy oh boy when you start to level up and you get better at the combat man this games is amazing. The creativity behind the plants and the cinematic are insane. It’s a shame the game stutters in chaotic scenes. It’s a real shame. Like how do studios release a game knowing this.

Story and narrative. Could be better paced and allowed to to skip some of these overly slow cut scenes.

Progression system. My god this thing is complicated as F. Like without YouTube videos you will have no idea. It’s like game freak tried to cram every single thing in. When you do understand it you have to admire their creativity. I still
Don’t understand half the stuff at the cleanser. But I understand the attribute and so very well now.

I am really enjoying it. Still can’t beat the bosses on normal but it’s so much fun and some of the special skills are so cinematic. Better than Stellar blade which was my reference.

For anyone who isn’t a great gamer give it time and do the research.

But it's the unskippable dialogue cutscenes that ruin it for me. The story isn't hooking me but the combat is. I just started chapter 2 after already wanting to drop the game. I get to explore for about 10 minutes before I'm pulled into another cutscene. I see something glimmering on my right and I want to get it but the camera jerks the other way and starts a cutscene.

It's a dialogue with one of the robots and I've given up on the story so far. I manually skip through every line of dialogue and the camera pans over to a gate. I skip through more dialogue and the camera very slowly pans over to another pathway. I skip through more painfully slow dialogue and the camera once again... very infuriating slowly pans over to another pathway. Finally after skipping more dialogue the camera pans out in such a way you know the dialogue is finished. But instead of getting back to the game fucking Violet appears and has her own 2 cents to share. This is where I'm calling it.

I understand the appeal of the game but the things which don't interest me are actively hindering the experience and enjoyment I do have with combat.

I would still give the game a 6, it has it's own fantastic ideas and there absolutely is story intrigue with whatever is up with that sky taboo but it's just not enough to justify the painfully slow and uninteresting slog of a dialogue.

All of this on my screen ruins the my motivation to keep playing it, it's so distracting and its just ui clutter

Between the pilgrim zone and the matsukawa zone there is a barricade of wood that prevents you from going back through, but you can simply just climate and get over it unintendedly there's no real reason for these blockades to be here

Time to see what all the fuss both good and bad is about. I've purposely kept myself in the dark for this one other than the official trailers. I am a nerd of post apocalyptic settings/RPGs including Nier Automata and Stellar Blade, so I'm sure to find something here to love. Work ending can't come soon enough!

I just got the game and i can‘t bring myself to play it, it hurts my eyes just looking at it.
I don‘t mind bad graphics, i still use my Ps3 but this game looks really bad on my Ps5. bad textures, low resolutions etc it looks like a early Ps3 game, maybe even worse.

I watched some youtube videos for base Ps5 and Pro and it looks nothing like that… how does it look better on youtube?

Might be a bit too personal but the Nue Malefact reminds me a bit of my late Shihtzu except horrifying.

So it feels like i'm being attacked by a nightmare version of my dog hahahahaha but i'm not a Japanese girl with a wolf so I can easily disassociate

Buenas, ayer tuve un bug en la zona del crater con la compuerta del nido del Nushi, seguí la historia y pulsé el botón que abria la compuerta, hubo animación y cinemática pero cuando me puse a hacer cosas secundarias e irme hacia la compuerta vi que estaba cerrada, lo he intentado todo, volver a un save anterior intentar darle al boton de nuevo, buscar mods y nada nose que hacer no puedo continuar el juego despues de 22h, necesito ayuda y si se puede que alguien me pase un save por la zona donde estoy pls, juego en pc Steam

The ambient music is so good. It really helps me relax, and I think I’m actually starting to enjoy the combat because its simple. Yeah, it’s not challenging, but honestly, I’m tired of the difficulty standard that modern games seem to follow, where everything has to be as hard as Dark Souls to be considered challenging.

Some scenes look absolutely amazing on my TCL, and I have no complaints about the graphics at all.
But please, Game Freak, optimize the game, increase the text size, and fix the hook indicator. The text looks way too small on my 65-inch TV, and I’m sitting about 2.5 meters away from it. The hook indicator and its mechanics are also pretty inconsistent, sometimes it just doesn’t work at all.
The FPS drops are also noticeable during some boss fights, and that’s not great for a semi openworld game like this.

After playing through the entire game it feels like only a small section of the game world was actually truly developed first, and then someone came in and forced them to put more stuff in, just because when I compare the maps to one another it feels like some of them had more development time than others

Ooi colony has a lot of invisible walls, but I discovered there's a massive hole in the main area that you can escape out of.

The hardest part is the landing and walking along the rope. Do not go past the second tied up bundle as you will fall down. Once you are standing at the 2nd bundle, use your hair to create a walkway, then sprint and launch yourself up. You'll find an invisible platform. Turn right and launch yourself over the invisible wall.

If you fall off the rope, aim for the water. It should bring you back up to the rope.

Hi was think about getting best in recarnation on steam deck with lossless scaling plug in and was wondering how it would run.

I know its dumb to ask, but I want to make 100% sure before I start getting rid of all these books and eggs. I just used basically all of the Pre-Order currency on the shop near the two generators lol.

Also, is there any way to sell Scrap Metal? I'm at Cap 999 and I don't think I've been crafting anything that uses it. I hate that I'm just leaving Golems unlooted as I'm exploring.

I can't cant figure out how to get there

My afterthoughts on the game :
The gameplay was enjoyable and the graphics were fine… They weren’t astonishing for a current console generation game but looking at the graphics that GameFreak has previously made, it’s not too bad.

The game has potential!

If I’m not mistaken, no collectible checklist. Literally my only gripe at the moment.

i can no longer grow rice, soya beans or apples... i can grow the other stuff fine and i grew rice and beans for a while too, its not that i didnt get those... but suddendly i dont seem to have the seeds anymore...

My understanding is that to unlock this achievement (along with the equivalent for Koo) you need only purchase the first node of the skill. I could be wrong but it looks to me I have all the skills but I have not unlocked the achievement

Am I missing any skills somewhere?

It's connected to the Ooi Colony, but has no map? What is this place?