Beat Black Myth Wu Kong 8/10
A game that gave me really bad impressions for so long, perhaps the first half with the odd great boss fight here and there but it was effortless to play so I battled on and it became a fantastic game in the second half, so good that I beat all bosses before the final boss and I have apparently one area left with the "True" boss. It had such ups and downs, the image quality and games assets are literally falling apart at the seams, I had 7 freeze crashes and all during Boss fights and the quality of areas can dip really low in art style and technicals. It can go from ugly as fuck with loads of pop in of shadows and textures and then it can look beautiful just around the corner and the next area could be dark and the contrast differnce enhances the artificating and it can make you feel ill but that's this game in a nutshell. From the core combat that feels just a little off and missing something central to the difficulty of bosses ever wavering to the cohesiveness of the areas and the story that is just a bunch of call backs to Journey to the west but foesn't really try but then has really great VA, presentation and the odd moments where new characters come in and are actually interesting yo areas going linear and then balooning in size which is kinda fun. It just so wavering in quality and I'm surprised the second half hooked so much.
Once you make peace that you aren't going to get the most finely tuned game or quality of something like FromSoft would deliver and you aren't going to use half the stuff in the game because you'll only be challenged a small number of times, it's a ball of fun.
The game has crazy scope for the genre, almost like an effortless Soulsborne, and while I really want to give it a 7 as a good game with flaws and objectively terrible technical aspects, the fact that kept me playing while I'm very much down in the dumps and I was able to find many hours of enjoyment counts for something and there is a rough diamond under the jank that shines through, that'll make you almost ignore the jank. And on top of that they continued to build the game after launch, adding a map function and built out boss gauntlet post game and the ability to fight bosses as well as (failed) attempts at fixing technicals with a balanced graphical mode. I'll have to rate it as an 8, a great game but it is likely the weakest 8, I've ever rated anything under the sun.
I can see a sequel or another title from game science being a potential 10 if they can learn how to make a cohesive game, even cut content they worked on if it doesn't match quality levels, something they seemed afraid to do on this title. I don't know much about Chinese business but I hope that isn't a cultural thing where they don't want to throw out peoples hard work or throw out content to not be wasteful cause I get they sense they aren't bloating this game for scope so leaving the poorer aspects in was a decision or I'd hate to see what the content they threw out looked like, because it must have been horrendous. There are many Chinese games upcoming the look to have potential and I hope this isn't an issue.
Essay Pro