Remnant 2

 

I had played through the first game, Remnant: From The Ashes, in co-op. It had entertaining moments, and was this weird blend of souls-like combat with third person shooting. It had a handful of problems and gripes that I felt were holding the game back, so when I heard there is a sequel I was hopeful that these things would be ironed out and the games formula would be better than ever. I bought it on a discount, almost hyping it up for awhile because I was so hopeful that it was going to be a fun co-op game to look forward to.

The game starts off with a basic character creation, spent some time making a character but in the back of my mind I suspected it would be irrelevant because you'll just get armor/a helmet and wont ever see him again. Turns out that was true not long into the game. The game starts with this odd linear tutorial sequence where you follow this girl around and the game teaches you basic things like how to shoot and interact with the enviornment, its frankly just a boring and unengaing, lame first impression. For the first seems like 20 minutes of the game you aren't doing anything interesting or substantive just following this boring NPC around. Its even more of a strange choice because thats like the only section in the entire game like it, nowhere else in the game really felt like it had any sort of mission structure or scripted events or anything, only this introduction scene had this out of place scripted event.

After that lame intro, you get introduced to the main hub. This place is...well not that memorable or exciting either. Its just a generic little village outpost area with NPC's scattered around, a goofy looking giant crystal in the middle (used for teleporting, basically Souls-like bonfires)  and the first objective of the game is to force you to go around and talk to every single NPC in the village... that was also kinda boring and dull. I don't want to go around talking to a bunch of uninteresting characters, I just want to play the game. So its like 45+ minutes into the game and you havn't done anything yet. Not good.

Finally after being forced to explore the hub village, you get sent out into the world to play.
Up to this point I couldn't do any co-op, you had to get to a certain point. But then suddenly I unlocked co-op and could just go into my Steam friends and click Join and I just popped into his world just like that from then on. Sorta jarring system but alright.

Once we got into the co-op the games problems really started to reveal.
For instance, the co-op partner cannot even interact with the crystal checkpoints (Bonfires) in any meaningful way.
The host gets all these different menus, and is able to look at the world map and pick where to travel, and even look to see where the next Objetive is - all the while the co-op partner is supposed to do nothing but just sit there and wait for him to finish. Why do games implement co-op so poorly and half assed? Why does one player get the shit end of the stick? So now the co-op partner misses out on checkpoints even being interesting or exciting, because they cant interact with them in any meaningful way besides just resetting the zone.

The general structure and pacing of the game is strange too, like nothing really coheres together. The first zone is this like medieval kinda palace place, you go through it killing enemies for seemingly no reason, picking up these Quest items which unlock doors or areas, and then you get to a point where you just have to teleport away to some completely different area where the objective is and none of it really makes any sense or is coherent. It's just all over the place. And often times confused us if we were even doing the right thing or progressing the right way , or just wasting our time resetting zones and killing enemies over and over for no reason.

Eventually we realized that what you have to do is press Start and look at the map, and basically always go towards the Red fog areas to discover new places you havn't been, then keep checking each Crystal checkpoint (Bonfire) to see where the objective is (Only host can do it) to see if youre progressing the right way. Just a sloppy, poorly implemented, annoying way of progressing.

The gameplay remains largely the same from the first game. You get a few classes to choose from at the start, Medic, Close quarters tanky shotgun guy, A class that uses a dog pet, and a sniper type class. We both chose the Shotgun tanky guy because well, he has a big suit of armor so we figured cant go wrong with that. The classes arent that appealing anyway, like who wants to be a Medic? Using a pet to do all the fighting for you? Nah, Sniper? Dont want to play the whole game using a scope..so options didn't feel that extensive really. Once you pick the class it gives you the loadout, you get the suit of armor, and the shotgun.

Now, one of the major gripes I had with the first game, is that its trying to be this randomly generated levels RPG type game, but the game had no loot! Like there was only like 4 guns in the entire game or something, and you couldnt find any armor sets or anything. You just used the starter stuff the whole time, and in a game trying to be this like RNG random world kinda game, it really feels bad to have no loot besides consumables and random upgrade materials. Well guess what? Its pretty much the same thing in Remnant 2 to my utter disappointment. Sure, they added a NPC where you can buy a few more guns from, and another NPC you can buy like 3 different armors (I think they are just the ones from the starter classes) - the selection still feels bad, and you still dont find armor or loot in the actual world. I tried experimenting with like 2 other guns from the shop, but quickly just went back to using the default shotgun for the ENTIRE game. Whats the point of having these randomly generated levels if theres no interesting loot? I just dont understand their design philosophy. It works in games like Diablo because you're constantly finding this interesting pickups that change the gameplay to complement the randomness of the world, without it, it makes everything dull and feel pointless, like I'd rather just have a carefully curated handcrafted maps with enemy placements.

Its still the same third person shooting and rolling around, thats most of what you'll be doing. Going back to down infrequently just to upgrade your main weapon and not much else. They try so hard to make these weapon attachments (Mods) seem compelling and interesting - but the system completely falls flat. These things suck and are not engaging or fun to interact with. You press RB on controller to swap to the weapon attachment, and they were so ineffective, unappealing, and boring, that I only used like two of them the entire game. At one point it was this "Concussive shot" that seemed to do jack shit, maybe it just stunned an enemy? Who knows. Felt pointless. Then I got this like grenade launcher thing, also barely did any damage and felt like a waste of time to bother using. Then towards the very end of the game I realized you can get an attachment to give yourself or allies infinite heals basically, you shoot this healing explosion at the ground to give yourself back half health. Wow, this thing is crazy good, and I was cursing myself for not using it the whole game. But really the whole weapon attachment/mod system was flatout boring or ineffectie feeling.

Then you have the class skills...this is equally as pointless and lackluster. For like half the game I didnt even know how to use this because the controls are so uninutiive and clunky. You have to hold LB , THEN RB to use your class skill. Yeah, didn't figure that out for many hours. And the skill I had was this Stomp ability where you stomp the ground to do some AOE wave of attack? Any time I tried to use it , it felt worthless and shit so I didnt bother. Then eventually you get another skill that takes 5 seconds to cast and you buff yourself with 15% movement speed and not much else. Wow, also kinda completely pointless? The game tries so hard to pass its self off as an RPG but all the "RPG" mechanics are completely worthless or laughably pointless. It really is just a poorly crafted third person shooter with pathetic excuses for psuedo-rpg mechanics.

The only other real RPG mechanic in the game is this Fragments tab where you interact with this menu of a circle of crystals and fragments and honestly I never figured out what the fuck I was looking at or how it worked. I just pressed the crystal in the middle to get tiny passive buffs like +1% health or whatever. Another pointless laughably stupid mechanic.

The only other RPG element is the "Traits" menu. These are basic perks you can put points into to improve your character. Stuff like more health, faster revival time, and mod damage. But really these traits were also extremely uninteresting, dull, and didn't even seem useful. Of course I first maxed out the health Trait (+10) , from there nothing else was appealing. I just got max revival speed next, because co-op reviving is really important (typical revive system, walk over to friend and hold button). From there the game had nothing left that was interesting. More AOE damage? What AOE? The melee? I'm not using melee, the game has such a huge emphasis on Guns why the hell would I use melee?  More mod damage? The mods suck ass and arent fun to use. Playing through the game you can randomly unlock new traits , but none of them I found were ever appealing. Another failure.

Technically the game does have loot you can find, but its only jewelry. I found a handul of rings and amulets, but again, none of them felt that significant. Just stuff like +15 health, slightly faster health regen, 15% increased damage. Really nothing major. BUT, halfway through the game we found this insane incredible drop - This amulet that gives you INFINITE AMMO. What the fuck? thats so overpowered and busted, surely this is like a super rare item? Well this was totally confusing to us, I had to research it. The item is Zero Divide, and it turns out it was added in some DLC update. Well, we dont have any DLC. So how the hell did we get it? Well it seems like it was added to the game as part of some DLC, but then they added it to the core drop pool of the game anyway, so anyone can get it. And I dont even think its a rare drop, seems like you always get it in that area I found it. What a totally strange, stupid choice for an item to put in the game. Just give yourself permanent infinite ammo and completely bypass one of the main mechanics? This was such a strange choice that we were conflicted if we should use this item, cause it might ruin our impression of the game. Well we only used it when we were at a particularly stupid, obnoxious, boring, or annoying part. Like if we hated an area or were so bored we just wanted it over as fast as possible we would use this amulet. I don't know what these devs are thinking or doing, some of these design choices are just baffling.

So if the RPG mechanics are near non existent, just like the first game, with no improvement,  what about the rest of the game?
The levels are very hit (I say hit lightly) or miss.
The first stage is like I said this palace stage, that was decent enough.
Second area is this Victorian city streets  area that looks something out of Bloodborne.
This stage was fine enough, but also a big maze with multiple exits and routes and this was early in the game where we didnt realize how to figure out where to go so it turned into a slog pretty quick where we just kept resetting the area fighting the same enemies over and over for no reason.

Then you go to this weird parallel dimension realm with platforms floating in the sky and these portals you have to run into at the right time to teleport to certain places... this area felt like something that belonged in an alpha test or something, like there wasnt much to it. Just platforms floating in the sky, and these goofy cutesy rock creatures that attack you.
Then another area is this terribly dull, boring, flat deserty plains area but it looks grey and cold, where you just run around in the open fighting random waves of enemies in the most boring fashion, then you get to these underground buker areas and suddenly the game turns full generic sci-fi slop where youre inside these big metal container rooms and flashy glowing machines and neon lights and stuff. Like what the fuck is going on in this game? They cant figure out what they hell they're trying to be. It's a mess.

Later on in the game you go to these red corruption zones where you go through these crypts and buildings taken over by this monster corruption which was OK , atleast better than some of the previous zones, but still nothing to write home about.

Sure, it does have a lot of monster variety, but at least half of them are stupid or goofy nonsense. I cant even tell what I'm fighting half of the time.
The game also has this annoying ammo problem, like for the first half of the game we would keep running out of ammo and having to use our shitty pistol. The only way to get ammo is to pick it up off enemies, and you and your co-op partner have to fight for it. It sorta gets resolved when you upgrade your gun enough times, but the whole ammo system felt a bit undercooked and awkward.

The bosses are also mixed. Most of the time it feels like typical gimmicks.
You have one boss thats these stupid cubes from like Mario 64 where you have to stand inside the cube or get crushed, while shooting these floating orbs.
Another boss thats basically Bed of Chaos from Dark Souls where you have to stand on the right platforms or you fall off and die
Another boss where if you stand out in the open your "Madness" meter fills up and it fucks with your hud..
Another one where its a series of platforms and these floating balls flying towards you where you have to keep jumping around platforms but the controls suck ass so you keep accidentally falling down, spending half the fight climbing ladders and shooting these dumb balls.

Yeah, most of the boss fights are lame gimmicks that make the fights annoying or forgettable rather than engaging skillful fights.
There are a few exciting, no-frills boss fights, but theyre kinda few and far between, and none of them particularly have any mind blowing designs or interesting movesets, its either full on gimmicky bullshit, or just a generic monster with a lot of health where you have to shoot the right weak spot at the right time. Nothing really unique or memorable. The game does have a lot of boss fights, so there is that to look forward to, but at the very least if the game has shit RPG mechanics, and theres not much fun to be had, I would hope at least the bosses are good, but they're pretty mediocre. Even the few bosses that would be good, usually have terrible annoying flaws that ruin it. Like this one boss towards the end of the game you fight in some outdoors park area, he has this one move where he slams the ground at a random time or something and its almost impossible to dodge it so we just ended up having to tank the hit every single time. Some of the choreographs and tells are non-existent which makes an otherwise decent fight turn into trash.

This isnt even to mention the last boss, this is the thing that tipped my disdain towards the game over the edge.
He has three phases, phase one could of been OK, we learned it and could get through it. Its this like floating generic dragon that does ranged attacks.
But after phase one the fight is just horribly designed and one of the worst boss fights I can think of...period.
Its this like tron sci-fi simulation bullshit where the graphics turn into a grid and the arena is so visually cluttered and full of random trash you cant tell what the hell is going on.
He does these moves where he swipes the entire area and you cant even see it because youre too busy aiming down the sights.
Not only this but you also randomly get teleported all over the fucking place, orbs flying at you, projectiles, minions spawning - The whole fight is an absolute disaster and is horribly designed.
We kept trying and failing because its just such a bullshit encounter that eventually I just went online and asked some random devoted player to come join our game and kill the last boss with us, which thankfully worked. Besides that I dont know if we could of ever gotten past it. Just awful.

Thats really all I can say about Remnant 2. It didnt improve really a single flaw I had with the original game, and infact I think in some ways this game is probably worse. Felt like it had more gimmicky lame bosses, the areas were more bad than good,  the enemies and general flow and design of the game is all over the place in a bad way. And oh yeah, the story - The story is inane gibberish. This ridiculous plot about a girl called Clementine where you teleport throughout dimensions helping these alien creatures to do....I don't know. It stopped being interesting very quickly. Just total drivel. Luckily the game doesnt focus too much on story or plot, but when it does it could barely keep my attention with how lame it was. Really was not enjoying the sci-fi contrived nonsense of the plot. Sure, the general controls and gameplay follow the Souls formula, and it can have some moments of satisfaction, shooting the enemies, seeing all the designs, seeing the damage numbers pop out, hitting that satisfying crit damage on a weak spot, some of the bosses do have that intense dodge rolling action, but much of this falls flat once you realize the scope of what the game is and all of its flaws.
I don't have any faith in this developer anymore, I don't think they have what it takes to make fun games.
If Remnant 3 is ever announced, I will only play it if its like 90% discount, even as a co-op game its not worth it.

5/10

Evil West

 

Evil West is a game by the devs of the recent Shadow Warrior reboot series, Flying Wild Hog. I sorta liked Shadow Warrior 1 remake, 2 was this weird Borderlands clone, but atleast it had Co-op campaign, and apparently in 3 they dropped the co-op so I didnt pay as much attention to it. Since then, they've released Evil West, which to the naked eye , to me, just seemed like some typical third person shooter, maybe like Gears of War style game, and its advertised as having campaign co-op, so thats all I really needed to know to buy it when it became on sale at a decent discount. I pretty much had no expectations or information about what the game really was before I bought it, I just let the cover of the book give me a first impression.

Starting up the game for the first time we could join a co-op lobby easy enough, then it asks us which difficulty. Thinking it would just be a standard third person shooter, we went with Hard (so something like 3/4 difficulty). Strangely enough, it gives this big warning on the side of the screen about how the co-op client wont be able to save their progress, and their skill tree gets reset each time you join back the game. This alone almost made us refund the game and not even bother, like they half assed the co-op this much? But we passed on, and started playing anyway to see how much of a gimped experience the co-op guy would have. Thankfully it didnt seem that impactful, because unlike the game explains, everytime I (the co-op client) joined back, I was able to choose "use skill tree from last time" -- contradicting this supposed warning. After beating the game, I still dont know what that was all about. Maybe they patched it later? Who knows.

After a brief introduction setting up the games concept as some sort of two wild west Cowboy type men, I figured one of us would play as each individual character from the cutscenes - But bizarrely, in co-op mode, you each play as the same character...even though all the cutscenes and game plot seem to be perfectly set up to have each you you playing one of the two main characters in the story. Because of this, the co-op feels like it was developed and shoved in at last moment, rather than something revolved around the whole design process. First disappointment.

It didnt take long to realize the game isn't what I'd expected. Its not just a typical third person shooter. Its some weird mix of Souls-like combat, rolling around, and Beat 'em up arenas instead of level design, a bunch of random elements stolen from Doom Eternal, and then some very uninspired third person shooting ontop of it. You have this melee combat system that uses small bottom combos to pull off different moves and abilities, blocking, punching them up in the air, this overcharged supercharge mode that you barely get to use for half of the game, and so on. Ontop of it you have this magical gauntlet glove thing that gives you extra special magical powers and electric abilities. Mixed ontop of it is this third person shooter mechanism where, admittedly has a sort of unique control scheme where instead of sort of equipping different weapons you just tap different buttons to use the weapon abilties - and they each usually have cooldowns. Like the Shotgun you can only use once every 30 seconds or so, then it goes on cooldown. The Gatling gun you get much later, same thing, huge cooldown after you use it for a bit. Even the healing ability is on a cooldown, and the ability to stun all enemies. Each gun has infinite ammo, but its balanced around these cooldowns. The only guns you can freely use is the Starter pistol, which quickly becomes useless, and then the Crossbow machine gun, and the Rifle. The crossbow machine gun is OK, but it has this annoying quirk where, while you can hold the trigger to keep shooting, after each reload you have to remember to tap the trigger again to start firing again or else it does nothing. It feels clunky and janky. The rifle is OK, working as expected. The problem is the enemies are such insane sponges that nothing feels good in this game. A single generic enemy could take 15+ bullets, or hits to kill. It makes every gun feel like pea shooters or useless brainless spam. The melee is not any better, the techincal design and polish of the game is terrible. Hits dont feel impactful, theres no crunch to anything, I can barely tell if I'm hitting the enemy most of the time. Nothing really feels satisfying or fun. The game feels like a mess of random trendy mechanics, like the developer just looked at the modern gaming scene, saw Doom Eternal being successful, saw the success of Souls games, and just stole random mechanics from whatever games are most trendy at the time and shoved them into their own game. It doesn't work, nothing is cohesive or makes sense.

The game gradually introduces new enemy types, but under the guise as they are one off boss fights. Only to find out these "bosses" keep showing up for the rest of the game from then on, as regular enemies. It feels like the devs dumped money into the assets, and realized its a "waste" to have them as one off boss fights, so they just keep reusing the same fights and scenarios over and over "to get the most of their investment". The game would of had many more memorable moments if they actually had unique encounters instead of endlessly resuing assets, copy pasting scenarios, and doing these lame arena fights where they just spawn random waves of enemies at the player...

Let's talk about the stupid level design. Well there arent really any levels. You just walk through very linear essentially corridors (with a sky roof) with maybe one or two extra path that give a chest with some gold for perk allocation,  then you get to these dumb little logs you have to climb over, and climbing over the logs then locks you into a square arena where the game spawns enemies at you. Thats every level in the game. Theres no enemy placement or carefully choreographed level sequences, its just this same stupid formula. Its like they took the worst aspects of Doom Eternal that I didn't like, and put them into this game. Yes, this game even has Glory kills. These devs are creatively bankrupt. Not only is the "level design" just stupid with its lack of creativity, the game also looks terrible. The graphics suck and arent appealing to look at. Frequently you will get these baffling choices of color pallettes. like one level will be nothing but yellow piss filter, then the next will be nothing but overly saturated red filter, then the next will be puke green. Its like they dont understand nuance. Its all or nothing, and quickly becomes an eyesore. Even the levels that dont have these extremely oversaturated color tones don't look good. The game looks like an Xbox 360 game, actually no, even a bunch of 360 games look more impressive than this. The artstyle is terrible, too, at first I was like "Ok yeah, Wild west thing, Lever action rifles, mixed in with some evil demons, kinda cool yeah I can dig it" but no, like I said earlier, its this gaudy mix of everything under the sun. Devs must be like:  Crazy magical spell effects? Yep. Demons, insects, all sorts of horror monsters? OK sure, Wild west? Yeah why not. Magical gauntlet that turns you into a magical Beat 'em up warrior? Cool! A plot that both tries to be overly serious, then comedic, then incorporate random cliche hor ror elements (like a possessed little girl) Yeah! Fantasy-inspired magical multi-colored crystal wonderland areas where you have to find the "Glamour" crystals? Ok. Like what the hell, man? The devs just threw the whole kitchen sink at is, because of it the game is an incoherent mess.

Here and there I could tolerate the lazy arena level design, the clunky unimpactful combat, and at times it got sorta entertaining. Like at one point I was wondering "Maybe this game could be a 7/10, I could see potential. Lets see where it goes" because yeah, early on you're not sure what they're gonna throw at you, and it looks like it plausibly could be a pretty good game. Some of the fights are sorta intense, like youre rolling around dodging attacks trying to get your hits in because its quick to die (Thankfully it has a typical co-op revive system where you just tap a button to bring you buddy back up at no cost) so at times you can get a rush of intensity. But it all falls apart once you feel how tedious, and downright exhausting some of the fights are, due to the spongy enemy health, and unimpactful combat and lame abilities. I dont want to play a beat 'em up game using my fists, I dont want to do button combos to do melee abilities, I dont want to roll around constantly like I'm playing some dollar store Souls game. Since we chose Hard difficulty, I couldnt even do melee combat for half of the game, because its so punishing. So most of the game I just stood far away slowly chipping away at enemy health using my rifle or shit crossbow, it just was not a fun or satisfying experience.

And the plot...where do I even start. My eyes were glazing over everytime a cutscene played. The most contrived, boring, senseless bullshit I've ever sat through. Nothig exciting ever happens. Every single cutscene is just a handful of these cliche, boring, dull characters standing around in a room yapping about some uninteresting trash. Every once in awhile you'll have that comically overly-dramatic angry old man show up that calls everyone a cocksucker, or this or that, using rediculous rhetoric that finally makes the cutscenes sorta entertaining, but its few and far between. Frankly, often times I'd just alt+tab whenever a cutscene would play I gave that little of a shit. The plot is just inane. I cant tell you what its about. Something like these two progatonist cowboy men are the chosen ones that must use their crazy magical gauntlet to take down the evil vampire child girl? Who the fuck knows. The characters are hideous, too, like you have this one female character thats always angry or snotty with a stupid look on her face, the game is all around just unappealinga as hell. Like I said before, its even mroe baffling because they've set it up in such a way where you'd expect by playing in Co-op, one player would play as each of the main progatonists, but no, you just copy paste one guy twice. Its so fucking lazy and half assed, all of this game is.


So the combat sucks, the story sucks, the graphics suck, what more can be said? Oh yeah, the controls are pretty bad too. I touched on this a bit earlier with the awkward shooting trigger behaviour, but it gets worse. The game seems to have button responsiveness issues, like youll press a button but it doesnt respond or just flatout drops the input. The control scheme also isnt good, I appreciate the fact they were trying to come up with at least one thing original, by tapping buttons to use different weapons instead of actively equipping them - but it becomes a cumbersome mess. Youre tapping Dpad left for instance, to equip the flamethrower , but then you instinctively press Lt to aim, and it puts the flamethrower away and goes back to the rifle or whatever. Theres such a specific way you have to give inputs, that the whole control scheme falls apart and becomes more of a hinderance than something interesting.

And of course it has skill trees. Its got a Perks tab, where you get to pick various upgrades using skill points you get just by playing through the game. These are really nothing exciting, in fact most of it is melee beat 'em up stuff, like "if you do this and this button combination, at this specific time, this thing happens!" ...I dont really care. It doesnt let you play how you want, it doesnt let you just be a ranged gun guy, it always is encouraging you to interact with this fist fighting combat. The only really notable upgrades on the Perk tab was the things related to More health, Health regen, and some of the Energy things. There is a few upgrades for the Super power mode (whatever the hell its called) but other than that I really couldnt give a shit.

Then you have another tab, where you spend your "Bucks". This is where you upgrade your weapons, the shotgun, rifle, and crossbow. Im not even sure you can upgrade the Gatling gun, as you get it so late in the game I didnt even notice to check for it. Likewise, these are lackluster and uninteresting. So much so I cant even remember really what they did. Mostly its just turning your normal guns into Electric versions, making them look even more tacky and stupid. Now your rifle shoots electric bullets and if you hold the button you can charge it up (holding the button funny enough seemed like worse DPS cause it took so long)..  Thats really about it. Theres an upgrade for flamethrower that "makes melee hits do 30% more damage when enemies are on fire"  further showing how much they are trying to incentivize you to interact with the 'beat em up gameplay as much as possible, cause they know this game doesnt have shooting mechanics worth a shit. Well the melee mechanics arent fun either, so ya got me!

Now the biggest sore spot - the game is buggy as fuck. Really, one of the buggiest, glitchiest games ive seen in many years. The co-op partner has insane bugs such as: HEALING BUTTON not working, he will just throw his arms up into the air, and not heal, randomly, sometimes I would be playing for 30+ minutes without the ability to heal. This also goes for all the rest of special abilties such as the freezing enemies ability. Animation glitches where you cant tell whats happening on screen just multiple animations playing at the same time especially when you do enemy takedowns. Ugly visual glitches such as the HUD damage display being shifted up the screen and cut off, the co-op partner having this weird rope floating around them,  visual glitches on the gun where youre holding like 3 guns at once,  glitches where you're shooting your gun but hes not even holding the gun. Glitches that break the stage where you cant jump over obstacles to progress the level, glitches involvig co-op progression where one player cant enter an arena...the list is endless. Not beimg able to heal is worse enough, but ontop of it almost every aspect of the game feels broken, unpolished, or just a mess.

This game truly is terrible, and by the halfway point I was almost begging for it to be over, I had enough. And infact we even decided to turn the difficulty back down from Hard to Normal just because I didn't want to put up with it, Hell, I would of been fine to drop it down to Easy and just speedrun the rest of the game, achievements be damned. It still barely made much of a difference for enemy sponginess, it was still exhausting, tedious, and annoying. We just died a bit less.

There are a handful of actual boss fights, maybe 3? by actual I mean has a health bar on the screen. I cant even really remember them. Towards the end of the game you have this old frail guy that floats around doing magical spells or some shit, then the last boss is that little horror girl that turns into a laughably stupid looking demon monster that was actually the easiest boss in the game that we killed second try. Other than that there was another boss or two, actually the first boss I remember we said "Yeah that was kinda fun, if the game keeps having fun moments like that it could be pretty good!" - Well it was only downhill from there, and it took like another 6 hours before we saw another boss. The game has a habit of using these enemies that regenerate health, like youll be in an arena fighting 15 different enemies, and one of them will do this move where they float into the air and start regenerating health, undoing all your progress. Thats just one example of many of the tedious, exhausting gameplay mechanics. It also makes the controls feel worse cause youre aiming down your gun and shooting, but since theres no cover, and youre stuck in this stupid square arena, your field of vision is so small so it doesnt really work and you cant see what the hells going on around you. Even the devs knew this was a problem, and they tried to mitigate it by putting these dumb little arrows on the screen to try to show incoming damage, but it just does nothing but add to more of the visual spam.

This game is bad, I'm so disappointed. Actually for months I was eyeballing this game like "Oh man, I cant wait until we play Evil West, theres no way it can suck! It looks cool, right?" so it was like the light at the end of the tunnel. But when I got there, it was more like the shite at the end of the tunnel

4/10