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WRATH: Aeon of Ruin is leaving early access in a month and not being developed by Slipgate, so hopefully it turns out better than GRAVEN.

Graven's craven tech failin's have shaven Kirk's ravings despite nailin' his visual cravings. Ship's sailin' on the hype that was trailin' it.

It always hurts to see these projects that start with so much promise fall flat. Makes me nervous for Wrath next month

Somewhere out there there's a man, most likely with a full-time job, getting off work after a long day, and instead of going out for drinks or a nice drive, sits down to create FPS-focused entertaining game review videos for his up and coming channel, and by his own account, writing notes for an elegant script to create relaxing videos, only for the game to crash, a game where the walking speed is set at "chemotherapy". Hopefully I have adequately communicated how truly evil, how despicably heinous, game crashes are. May Kirk's free time rest in peace, it will be sorely missed.

It’s crazy how probably a bunch of people worked on this and it was kind of messy, but one guy can make something so good such as Hrot. I don’t know how to feel as a solo gamedev

Stellar review as always, Kirk!

That is incredibly unfortunate. For every review im getting into gives me this suspicion; the gameplay being what it is, some lackluster animations, and the overall lack of polish...i think they rushed this out the door because of the state of 3DRealms lately. The fear that they rather out what they have now, or risk having the project be axed overall. And it's a damn shame since, i REALLY like how it looks. For someone who loves the aesthetic of early 2000s-"PS2 era" games, Graven LOOKS incredible. In the same vein as Wrath, Bloodwest, and the upcoming(hopefully?) Phantom Fury.

Yes it is.

I love your reviews, good work 👌

I was looking forward to get this, but after years in early access and 3DR obviously rushing this out of the door so they can't get more lay offs from Embracer, made me think I wouldn't play this even for free. I agree with your suggestions about shortcuts and fast travel, but also are quicksaves a lost technology by now? A lot of these retro shooters doesn't offer a proper save system at all, just this frustrating checkpoint/hub systems.

First off, thank you very much for the honest and well argumented review. It's disappointing that after 3 years of Early Access, this is the state. The 1.0 should be a celebratory release and at least polished. After Kingpin and this, I am very worried about 3D Realms (they co-published Graven) right now. If WRATH is also a misfire, than this publisher cannot be trusted to dish out quality. Which is unfortunate, because I love the genre and some a lot of 3DR published works like CULTIC and Ion Fury. Here's to hoping they get their stuff together.

I'm definitely the target audience for a game like this. I'm probably going to get it in a Fanatical bundle a year or two down the line, after it's been patched.

I enjoyed it. First episode is the best, but I also liked 2nd and 3rd. Those last 2 feel a bit as if they were rushed though. I can only hope for an expansion with more polished level design. Still worth in for the price and a second playthrough

Thanks for your honest views and critique. Hope they can get those nasty crashes patched.

Is it too negative to say this game reminds me of Underworld Ascendant? I also get the feeling 3DR just had to force the devs to push the game out when it still clearly has large holes in its design. This would not surprise me given the recent Embracer news. Here's hoping they can pull a classic out of the rough.

This is tragic. I was so looking forwards to this coming out good...

Kirk’s comments about hoping the game gets fixed, given the layoffs as Slipgate Ironworks that were announced in mid December, combined with the entire downsizing issues going on at 3D Realms (among other Embracer publishers and studios) I very much doubt that this game gets much in the way of post launch support at all. The team will either get assigned to new projects, if not let go entirely within the next three months or less is my prediction.

Agree with your review entirely, especially with the part that it draws you in and makes you want to just keep progressing, despite all the technical fails. Still, I really like it and can't put it down.

The assets and art style are amazing but the gameplay loop really leaves much to be desired. I hope this game is not just abandoned.

I appreciate your point regarding optional help for players that get stuck. People who idolize the "non-handholding" approach seem to forget that getting stuck, going around the same maps for hours and leaving the game unfinished due to frustration isn't typically the intended experience. Just give us the option to help ourselves when in dire need (Quake 2 did this expertly in my opinion).

re: crashes, I've been playing the game throughout early access and again now on release and during the most recent run of a good 3 or so hours, I haven't had a single crash, nor did I have any during early access. Not to say you haven't had this happen of course, but it's important to point out that your mileage may vary.

That reminds me of a bug in Wrath, which set your difficulty to hardest no matter what difficulty you choose. Maybe Graven has this bug too?

I'll be playing solely for the the art direction and music score, they're both awesome. I hope not to get too frustrated with the other elements lol The amount of backtracking and item gathering seems to be a nod to Hexen 1 and 2.

Couldn’t agree more. Great looking game, but so confusing in so many aspects.

Man you really summed up my opinion. It’s a shame because it’s really a fantastic looking game. Cool level design and very immersive world. Here’s hoping the Wrath 1.0 sticks the landing a bit better but honestly…I’m nervous. Any chance of you reviewing Blood West? It’s very much a stealth/immersive shooter more than any kind of Boomer shooter but I’d really like to hear your take on it. It was my personal GotY of 2023.

you play a magical wizard priest! why they dont give you a teleport spell or potion is baffling.

I think 3D Realms is trying to make people look foolish for buying early access titles

The problem is its trying to be multiple things. It should have stuck to being a Hexen/Heretic successor not a hybrid of immersive sim/retro fps/ diablo type gameZ

I thought long and hard how to describe this game in a short way like a review title and yours is perfect, its hard game to like. Like hexen 2 it has confusing level design and what you have to do. Some times i was wondering if the game bugged up and i was hardlocked, nope everything works as intended as far as the crystal puzzle goes, not sure if the platform raising platform is broken, still in act 2, i am over 20 hours, so you cant say this game lacks content. Like hexen 2 the combat is off, enemies do alot of damage and some times it feels like you do no damage at all to them. It also felt like i was getting killed by enemies that appear behind me, your video proves i wasnt imagining it. The moment i saw that difficulty does not alter anything other than how many enemies you find, i switched to the easiest difficulty, i actually think its cheap to do crowd control in tons of enemies unless you got a bfg, but since this game has no minigun and most of the guns are crossbows, ill opt out of the extra trouble. The spells in this game are pathetic, so what if you can stun enemies if you shoot electricity in the water, the moment you get close to them the effect wears off and they attack you and they hit like a truck, as if the mechanic is broken. You take way too much damage and enemies take a big too little when you shoot them, the upgrades are very expensive and you need to search alot to find extra money, i didnt play the early access version, apparently that one had a map and secret count, well thats gone, i wonder if it has to do with the fact that the guy who made the maps was working on patching the game. Also i experienced one crash but the performance in the first hub was atrocious, my game was constantly stuttering and sound was cutting off, at one time i fell of a cliff because the game microstuttered as i was turning around to climb a ladder, speaking of which the ladders were horrible i find it hard to go down on them without not bumping in their collision of falling off, it feels like the game needs more hints, i saw pagb666 playing the early access version as i was looking for hints and there was a dialogue hint after burning the evil tree that is missing in the full release or maybe the game bugged up. I dissagree the second hub does not feel like a forest but more like a frozen corridor and this is why the game runs so much better there. I think alot of the games issues come from the coop mode for example it seems the only reason you dont have quicksave and you have to continue your game from the hub is the coop, traveling such long distances every time to get to where i was suppose to go, provided i even knew where i need to go was super annoying. Still i dont think they should give up on this game, just make a cyberpunk style overhaul, because despite everything i enjoyed this game since i like complex level design and i am so tired of open world games, but also this game made me appreciate them, dont know where to go? Just go wherever you are by following whatever path you want, this game however its a maze, dont know what to do in that area? Go somewhere else, in this game however if you dont know what to do, you are stuck. At least in hexen 2 and hedon you could noclip see whats in that room and work out in what order yo u have to do stuff in the game. The only reason they disabled the console is coop. Really sad makes finding the much needed secrets for the money, a real hard thing to do. The only immersive sims aspects are stacking objects to reach areas that you are not supposed to because this is not how you suppose to get there but you cant figure out how on earth you are supposed to go there.

I honestly have had 0 crashes or soft locks (yet) but I still have some issues with this game

god damn i wanna buy this it just has to get good first.

Even with all the negative things said, I was still on the fence.. until those fast silent enemies in the snow.. wack.

only had 1 single crash in about 15 hours, so I'm happy to know that for me the game works, but yeah some of the enemies hit way too hard, those zombie enemies in Chapter 2 are best taken care of before they actually rush you, they have the freeze spell affecting them, that's why they are initially slow, but when the spell wears off they rush you, my tactic was flame spell, and a headshot from the burst crossbow while they were doing their defrost animation while the game definitely has flaws, I feel like all of them are fixable, a little enemy balancing, a minimap with interactable locations marked, getting rid of the inventory system and the game is mostly fixed oh yeah, almost forgot, get rid of the pointless stamina system, or only apply it to melee and not to sprinting and jumping

I’m a bit disappointed with this game. This is one of the titles I was expecting the most a lot since its first announcement. Unfortunately, the game is so unfinished, the combat and magic is so unbalanced to the point the game becomes boring. It’s beautiful, immersive but rushed and unfinished. It’s a shame because this game had so much potential. They should release some tools or SDK, I’m pretty sure fan made patches may complete the game and unlock its true potential.

just finished an entire game in 30 hours. gotta say it's 6/10 at most. The first act is incredibly unbalanced. you have no gear and no weapons to fight off enemies, so i died over 100+ times, even though i played the early access before. The level design is also questionable at times. Some places i had no clue where to go or what to do - only video walkthroughs helped. 👍

I have seen a couple of over positive reviews for this game, which is why I bought it, but it does not live up to the hype, I hope it gets fixed at some point.

How exactly is "time in the oven" meant to fix intentional design flaws? They had 3 years to get their head out of their collective asses but they didn't

I love Heretic and both Hexens, and was hoping this would be closer to those, but it was lacking in early access, and mostly feels worse now, despite some improvements. The 2nd and 3rd acts are certainly rushed, and the whole experience is largely negative unfortunately.

After being forced to replay chapter one for like the 5th time due to each new update making my previous save irrelevant, they really need to add a chapter select for the early access peeps. I refuse to replay chapter one again for a long time.

I feel like this can be saved by just a few mods

Dark Fantasy fps’ are my favorite, but goddamn Graven got bland quick

I've had absolutely no crashes and every other review video I've see, never mentions crashing (I've seen a lot of them) I believe It's something in your system it doesn't like (driver or something)

I think the game in itself is fine, but the performance is abyssmal. My pc on which i can play kingdom come on high, 1440p 60 fps struggles to keep this game fluid. Even lowering quality to medium and lowering the resolution did nothing to fix the constant micro stuttering. I quit playing after a few hours because it made me feel unwell and annoyed.

You, Gman, Jarek, myself... Seems like this didn't work for any of us. Unfortunate.

i might pick it up, it reminds me of Painkiller.

Not sure why all the vile hatred. Sure it has some rough edges however I think it shines in its tone, graphics, and atmosphere. The level design (IMO) is very clever just like Hexen was. Hexen wasn't put on a pedestal when it first came out unlike today, a lot of people didn't like it originally. I think this game will age very very well in time. I sure am crossing my fingers they open it up for modding but with all the vitriol being thrown at the Devs it wouldn't surprise me if they decided not to.

I think Boomer Shooter is too miss leading. Graven is more like Bioshock and Dark Messiah than older titles like Hexen. But unfortunately there isn’t a snappy name for 2006 throwback shooters

This game is bad. I dont recommend it. I bought it and uninstalled after beating first boss. I was frustrated almost all of the time playing it.

pass

Sad to hear people are feeling the need to dog this one. Felt like one to break the mold of generic boomy shooties

This seems to have the same issue that almost every boomer shooter does, too many enemies on screen.

More time in the owen??? So is 3 or I lost track of how many years in EA not enough ?! You should call it out. Your channel is focused on shooters, mostly indie ones so if unfinished mess like this is ok than the things can only get worse. I am not attacking you, what i am trying to say is that 3DRealms as a publisher really has a poor reputation in my opinion. Kingpin fiasco now this, games getting stuck in EA or never seeing the light of day like SIN etc. BTW Ion Fury is not a good game, it was the first major Boomer so the people liked it but most of the level design is crap.

To anyone who finds this: have you done or know someone that has made dumb decisions in order to remain independent?

when you dont know how to name your game; just pick a random artist name, stole and copy it from the art; thats it ; everybody dont buy this failure, just listen to me and keep your money. this is crap; you dont need 2 step in it ^^