Serious Sam: Shatterverse so far has been an amazing experience to me personally, and if you're reading this because you're hesitant but enjoyed such games as Hades, Left4Dead, and BPM and happened to also like Serious Sam and its gameplay, then you should give it a try too!
And speaking as a longtime fan of the Serious Sam series, even if you didn't play games like this one before, I believe you should give it a try anyway. Especially if you know other people with whom you can play it, but Shatterverse also supports peer-to-peer, quickplay, and singleplayer experiences, which are all great options.
I would still like to voice some criticism of my own, however:
The grind to upgrade your Sams takes quite long.. collecting those orbs in shapes of Serious bombs is a pretty lengthy process (even if you get them by simply exploring , their quantity is still not enough to upgrade all the things and get more weapons for your arsenal) , I think giving players more of those orbs would help them unlock more weapons and make the gameplay much more fun and offer more replayability.
The description for Jungle Chasms B-side in The Codex seems to be missing, and just says "CarzanCliffs001B_Description".
Some of the dialogue keeps repeating itself , so you hear the same character interactions 4-5 times during a single mission, which could sometiemes make the experience a bit annoying , depending on how corny the dialogue itself is (which, sometimes it is).
Unfortunately, there are no player callouts, no chat function or any way to communicate with your squad in quickplay, which could be a bummer. I would hope maybe some funny greeting voicelines like in Deep Rock Galactic are going to be added to this game eventually, or some other ways to communicate with your teammates besides the basic ping function. Some form of in-game chat would be nice as well. Also the crouch function seems to be gone completely now, which isn't a huge deal , it was never used in Serious Sam games to begin with. But it still feels weird to have it be gone completely now.. I'm sure given the time the developers will address some of these issues, however.
I will now list things that I've enjoyed quite a lot as well as some other notes I had with this game:
The art, music, locations, characters, and enemy designs are all fantastic, and it's all quite refreshing, considering recently there have been so many people willing to make ugly, talentless AI art that put actual effort into their work (and poison our planet in the process). There's clearly a lot of heart, soul, and effort that was put into this game. The sound effects and animations are satisfying, and the gameplay is fun. The biomes are all interesting, unique and well-designed, different locations also feature many different rooms which by itself offers good replayability.
And let's not forget how this is a co-op game too, and while playing with friends it was even more fun to experience it (hence the comparison to Left4Dead, goofing around with friends together and doing stupid things is always fun).
The gameplay is really fun too, and there was clearly a lot of thought and effort that was put into making it this way. I really enjoyed it overall! Collecting trinkets and unlocking new stuff is quite satisfying and helps with replayability.
I also really enjoy the cartoony takes on the series, and certain enemy designs were an improvement over some of the previous titles, in my opinion, especially the harpies who I think just look a lot better.
The characters feel alive and are well-animated, and I honestly found their interactions and personalities to be quite charming on occassion. (even if some of them were a bit corny at times) This is something Serious Sam 4 and Siberian Mayhem tried to do with their characters and, unfortunately, failed miserably. And, despite the whole multiverse thing being quite overused in media by this point, I enjoyed this game's take on it. The writers of some of the voicelines could've done a better job, but those don't bother me as much.
I understand if some people have not enjoyed certain aspects of it, to each their own. Personally, I like this game, and I truly believe you should give it a try if you're hesitant! Please do not be discouraged from trying new things, just like a lot of mostly older men who make up a big amount of the Serious Sam fanbase, who are stuck in the past and are unable to move on from the previous titles of this franchise, and would rather dislike anything different than try out new things and form their own opinion on them. When Croteam was still developing Serious Sam 4, they took quite a lot of feedback from said fanbase, and that didn't really work out too well with many aspects of the game. Syberian Mayhem, made by the fans, too had its issues.. it felt uninspired, suffered from some of the same issues that Serious Sam 4 had and to this day has terrible optimization, while this game is quite well-optimized and, by today's standards, the fact that it takes up less than 8 GB of disk space is incredible.
I've noticed that a lot of people would apply to themselves some of the most "popular" reviews and opinions , I would pesonally recommend to generally avoid reviews from people who take offense with a female character being playable.. Seems like a bad idea to respect an opinion from a person who's that frustrated at the fact that they're lonely and miserable, and whose fragile masculinity drives them to the point of misogyny. If you're looking into playing this game do not be discouraged by them and form your own opinion as you play through the game.
A lot of people expect Serious Sam 5 to come out with the conclusion to the story, and they have an expectation of it in each of Serious Sam's new titles, but holding a grudge against this game purely because it isn't "Serious Sam: The Endgame" is just plain wrong and unfair to its developers. This installment is clearly different in certain aspects from the other games and, despite the flaws it may have, does its job excellently in being a fun experience. Despite being very different, it still retains some of that Serious Sam charm that other games had.
Overall, this game has some very solid gunplay mixed with roguelike elements and is quite fun to play (especially with friends) and performs well, has great replayability, art style, and sound design and a lot of effort put into it. Not a single thing is without its flaws, but I didn't personally run into any technical issues playing this game, and it succeeds in being fun, and that is the most important part about any game.
