izigame.me

I played this to punish myself for having pre-ordered like a total dumbass. I wasn't able to refund it, so I 100%'d it to make up for my brainlessness.

Key takeaways: in some ways it reminds me of Cyberpunk at launch. You can tell that there's a good (potentially great) game hidden in there somewhere, but the game never truly realizes its potential.

Where CDPR recovered fully, Bethesda/Arcane really shit the bed. This needed *at least* 6-12 more months in the oven. Had it been given that, I really do think it could have been a solid 7-8. Even after about a year's worth of updates, I'd say Redfall hit somewhere between a 5-6 for me.

The atmosphere is pretty cool, and I can appreciate the general aesthetic, but the world still feels very empty and "same-y". There are points of interest scattered throughout the world, but none that made be think "wow, that's cool!". There are scraps of story bits strewn in, but it's mostly just weapon finds.

If that's your thing, you can find yourself in a mindless flow state fairly easily, and it could be worth a purchase (in the $20 range at least). There is a lot to explore, but ultimately nothing super rewarding for doing so. On that note, I was surprised at the amount of subquests, but they were all fairly rinse & repeat for each zone / neighborhood. I almost feel like they should have made this more like a L4D clone with fairly linear level design. There's no real purpose to having an open world for anything you do.

The story really fell flat -- at no point did it ever have its hooks in me. The AI isn't the worst, but it's a far cry from being good. Combat can feel pretty good though, and at least as Remi, I enjoyed my kit quite a bit. All of that said, you can still catch whiffs of what could have been... This could have been a very good game.