Dinoblade

“The only way you can reliably identify an enemy during most parts of this game is by their glowing weapon, so when you have a brown-textured enemy with no weapon, in a brown environment with lots of dark shadows causing them to blend into one visual mess, it just feels amateurish and like no real consideration was given to actual gameplay or design.”

“Later fights rely heavily on a parry mechanic with startup frames so long you can only reliably parry the first and last hits in a combo without eating every subsequent attack.”

“The parrying mechanic feels so loose that you only parry if you get lucky, and trying to parry a 3 or more hit combo is impossible.”

“The story is incredibly barebones and largely unexplained, but chances are you're not considering this game for its riveting narrative.”

“There is basically no story, there is no world building, the voice acting is ok at best, the game lacks polish and is janky and buggy, the sound design ranges from average to bad, the actual progression system is as basic and bland as can be, the new weapons are not as creative as i and most likely others would want them to be (many of them just buff your heavy attacks in some way which gets very redundant very fast) and the biggest crime is the bosses are not good.”

“You have no idea why you're fighting people, because the game has basically no story except for the first incredibly vague cutscene.”

“Dinoblade can't maintain a consistent 20 fps with every graphical setting turned down to the minimum on a machine that obliterates the recommended specs.”

“My only gripe is that I have to play it on the lowest graphical setting otherwise the game will struggle to run and start hard dipping in framerates, which normally I wouldn't notice... but going from consistent 30-50 on low to 9-10 on medium is bound to be noticeable at some point.”

“The second phase of the final boss is wholly underwhelming after an entire game testing your skills at fighting dinosaurs. The final boss is the most generic humanoid demon of all time, but worse than that, the boss does not choreograph any of its attacks. The sound cue is so quiet I can barely hear it under my computer's fans and the visual cue is non-existent for an instant attack that can't be fully parried (you can only do 2 consecutive parries consistently) that does more than half your health. Also, once you reach the true final boss, your health pots don't regenerate, so after you've wasted them all killing the pointless tank before the real fight you have maybe one or two to fight a boss with near constant fast light attacks that can't be stunned. If not for this single terrible fight this game would be a solid 7/10 but this fight alone drops the game down to a 5, not counting the crashes and performance drops I suffer if not playing on low graphics. Yet that doesn't even matter because playing on low graphics is an advantage; there is so much unreal engine clutter on the screen that by turning it off you can see bosses better. This single boss is hell; this isn't even a skill issue either, I've beaten Souls games before!”

“Poorly optimized and the game settings won't save, so you have to redo them every time you load the game.”

“The graphics from the trailers look good or at least decent on paper, but no matter your specs, you will have to lower them down a ton because of the terrible performance optimization, which made the game run at like 15 fps on average on my 3090, despite it being able to run every other AAA game with stunning graphics much, much better.”

“I recommend this game still because I know this wasn't even supposed to be a game at first, and it's the dev's first game ever, but yeah don't expect an actual banger game, the controls are super jank, the camera can be a little jank too, bosses sometimes decide to dash around you so fast you can't block any attack, and dodging won't work so you just gotta tank the hits, the game is extremely poorly optimized (I should never run this game at 60 fps at most with freezes here and there with my current PC specs).”

“First, the game is very buggy. Bosses will get stuck inside trees and become locked outside of the map.”

“Was very excited for this game for a long time, but always disappointing when a developer releases a buggy mess that crashes on the Steam Deck.”

“It feels as if the developer has had absolutely no time even playing his own game, considering that getting stuck on geometry constantly, the buggy and very low quality looking animation blending, and other various issues are immediately visible off the bat.”

“The last two bosses feel like stat checks that force you to spend a large amount of boring time farming skill points while trying to stay awake.”

“Currently stuck on a boss with two harsh phases; after dying 80 times, I'm grinding to get through it.”

“There are multiple UI shortcomings: you cannot see how much XP is needed to level up, only your current XP level, so you're essentially grinding blind.”

“I still think this is a good base coming from a single person, but it's nowhere close to a full-fleshed out game that, while being cheap overall, is still more expensive than other indie games that have much more value, polish, and replayability.”

“Other than the boss rush mode, the game is not very replayable.”