Atlas Fallen: Reign Of Sand

[i]asterisk signs are used for minor details and notes[/i] ---{ Graphics/Design }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☐ Masterpiece ☐ Beautiful ☐ An original artistic direction ☐ Good ☐ Decent ☑ normal ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS - looks kinda different from the trailers even on highest settings - distance view is pretty low - not quite a con but feel like a lot of the designs just look a bit too cartoon-ish ---{ Gameplay }--- ☐ Won’t ever touch any other game anymore ☐ Very good ☐ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☑ Mehh ☐ Tic Tac toe is better ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't + the momentum mechanic is pretty nice: the more aggressive you are, the more abilities you can use and the higher damage you deal but also take + customization options (transmog and colors) +- while the movement and speed feel good and it's made for the world's size, it can feel really empty and way too big +- there's only few types of enemies but they're usually pretty unique in their attacks/mechanics +- while fighting bigger monsters is fun, it can also get quite annoying since you can get stuck around them pretty easily +- the Monster Hunter-lite enemy mechanic is nice - need to destroy specific parts of bigger monsters to kill them BUT I wish that that mechanic was more like a bonus rather than a core mechanic and all enemies would have "main" healthbar instead afak destroying specific parts doesn't even change how enemies behave or attack - a lot of the enemies attacks can feel like they have next to no impact meanwhile dropping even half a meter feels like you weight a metric ton - while not big deal difficulty-wise, and it is important for one of the game's major mechanics, I don't like much how anything above medium-sized enemies can just spawn smaller enemies - Vantage points only give you temporary "markers" while using them - some enemy hitboxes are waaaaay too big - camera can feel pretty bad - ledge grab just doesn't work at times - treasures areas still get marked on the map - expected A LOT bigger weapon and armor variety (possibly "modular" armor) but turns out there's only 3 weapons and 10 armor sets (+1 basic clothes) also basically every new armor is a direct upgrade of the previous one - a lot of the quests (both main and side) seem to be in the style of: go to X location and look around 5 areas, then go to Y location and look around 3 areas - right after the intro, I noticed that there are some places you can't enter because you don't have X upgrade, yet you can physically get to the place without it - you must find more gauntlet shard, you must find more gauntlet shard, you must find more gauntlet shard, you must find more gauntlet shard,.......oh and then one more time, just to be sure * on map, LMB is used both for moving the map and for creating waypoints * some prompts have to be held some just clicked - just a bit weird inconsistency * can interact with items even in fight * why do all essense stones pickups need an animation? (when killing medium and bigger monsters) * sprinting/sandsliding seems to turn on auto-pickup, pretty nice QOL ---{ Replayability }--- ☑ A one-time experience ☐ For achievements ☐ If you wait a few months/years (or with mods) ☐ Definitely ☐ Infinitely replayable (or almost) - doesn't really have much replay value in terms of RPG elements, world or story ---{ Audio }--- ☐ Eargasm ☐ Very good ☐ Good ☐ Not too bad ☑ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf - the dub kinda bad most of the time - feels like sometimes there's some missing audio or that there should be some different sounds ---{ Music }--- ☐ Just filling noises/No music ☐ Would rather go deaf ☐ Bad ☑ Trivial and uneventful ☑ Okay ☐ Decent Soundtrack ☐ Good and/or fitting the game's artistic dispositions ☐ Great ☐ Memorable ☐ Peak ☐ Transcending whispers of a forgotten world +- not bad, just feels like every track sounded more or less the same ---{ Audience }--- ☑ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☐ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☐ Potato (RTX X050 / RX 7600) ☑ average (RTX X060 / RX 9060 XT) ☐ Decent (RTX 4070 / RX 9070) ☐ Fast (RTX 5070 / RX 9070 XT) ☐ Rich boi (RTX 4080 / RX 7900 XTX) ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer (RTX 5090) - A LOT of stuttering issues, even with FSR on +- seems to be better if you play on Vulkan instead of DX12 - some FPS drops depending on the location especially while fighting in the open world (50-58 FPS) or more dense locations like the camp and the city in Monsalar (30-45 FPS) ---{ Game Size }--- ☐ Floppy Disk (<1gb) ☐ Old Fashioned (1-9gb) ☑ Workable (10-49gb) ☐ Big (50-99gb) ☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive ☐ You will want an enitre hard drive to hold it +- 33.37gb ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ My 90 year old grandma could play it ☐ Just press 'W' ☑ Easy ☑ Medium ☐ Hard ☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ☐ Team Ninja games +- most of the time pretty easy game on medium but in Black Alms devs just decided to spam you with medium sized or bigger enemies - final boss is quite literal nobody - both in story and difficulty ---{ Grind }--- ☑ Nothing to grind ☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☑ Required for achievement hunting ☑ Isn't necessary to progress ☐ Minor grind ☐ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second live for grinding + never had to grind to progress (except gauntlet shards) ---{ Story/World }--- ☐ No Story ☑ Some lore ☐ Bad ☑ It's there for people who want it ☐ Bizarre ☐ Average ☐ Well written ☐ Good ☐ Very Good ☐ Leading to more in-depth researches/thoughts ☐ Lovely ☐ It'll replace your life +- the world/lore had potential, but the dialogues just didn't sound good - talking gauntlet - the MC basically doing a 180 with his opinion on Arif right after the first location (not spoiling why) is just....odd the game has some different dialogue options, so why not give player a choice to decide on what they think ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee (<2 hours) ☑ Short (3-10 hours) ☐ Average (11-25 hours) ☐ Long (26-50 hours) ☐ I have to ask my boss for vacation time (51-99 hours) ☐ To infinity and beyond (100+ hours/doesn't have an "end") + 8.5 hours - finished the main story + over half of the side quests/errands ---{ Achievements }--- ☐ No achievements ☐ Obtainable just by playing ☐ Requires multiple playthroughs ☐ Minor grind ☑ Some grind ☐ Significant grind ☐ Too much grind ☐ Requires co-op/multiplayer ☑ Requires DLC(s) ☐ Can't be obtained anymore ☑ Hard to obtain (specific playstyle/challenge) ☑ Completionist ☐ Missable ---{ Bugs }--- ☐ Never heard of ☑ Minor bugs ☐ Fixable ☐ Can get annoying ☐ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ☐ Hollow Knight +- going into pause menu/inventory resets any dialogue (kind of a bug?) - looking at minerals and essence stones in inventory lags the whole game - at some point I just couldn't move map with mouse ---{ 5 / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 ☑ 5 ☐ 6 ☐ 7 ☐ 8 ☐ 9 ☐ 10 ☐ 1̷̤̃1̸̢̤͗̓ It's okay Not that bad action RPG but I feel like I can't really recommend it unless you've already played some other, better, games in the genre. It does what it should do more or less, but it never really exceeds in anything, just one thing I didn't expect is how short it is. This is the kind of game where I wish I was done like halfway through the game. Maybe it would've been better if this was designed as mission based rather than open world.