u/HasesHorrorHouse

Phasmophobia by Alan Wake has been here for a couple of days now. I updated the game and decided to give it a shot despite my less than ideal experience with the Character Customisation update a week prior. Here are my honest thoughts.

-THE EVENT-

Alan Wake crossing over with this game was something I never expected but as a fan I’m pleasantly surprised and I think the event is really fun.

The Words of Power are a fun little collect-a-thon side quest. Some of them are hidden in really unique places and following the arrows with the UV is enjoyable.

The dolls are tucked away in surprisingly tricky spots, I didn’t use any guides and it took me a while to find some of them.

The reskinned ghosts that look like cultists from the Cult of the Tree/Word really fit well and the new sound effects given to them are fantastic, straight from the source material.

-UNLOCKABLES-

The new cosmetics for both Alan and Saga’s outfits look neat. It’s very nice that they’re free, a rarity for licensed crossovers in this current day and age and the grind isn’t anything too taxing either, I had it wrapped up entirely with no guides in a little over five hours.

The charms are a cool addition although largely pointless, they’re very tiny and can’t be seen at all during gameplay. This is an issue that affects all cosmetics though so I can’t complain too much, they’re a nice little bonus that you can find in each level.

The new badge and ID card look nice, you immediately unlock the ‘writer’ ID card for participation and once the community accumulates enough points everyone will receive ‘the manifestation’ ID card. There’s also a couple of badges such as the ‘Angel Lamp’ and the twitch drop which goes live next week.

All in all, some nice free items.

-THE MAPS-

Really cool additions to several pre-existing maps.

Coffee World is a personal favourite, you can now see several rides off in the background along with multiple instances of ‘Mr. Drippy’ and the fairground music as an undertone.

Grafton getting a really unique cultist makeover with UV lights replacing the normal ones adds to the spooky vibe.

Very nice stuff on display here.

-BUGS & GLITCHES-

Unfortunately, now comes the negatives.

My group has still been plagued by several bugs that the team at Kinetic haven’t caught yet unfortunately.

We’re still getting fairly consistent crashes.

The player models induce motion sickness in one of my friends with certain movements.

The Spirit Box just doesn’t work, we all needed to switch to text input.

Ghosts are still exhibiting several traits not associated with their ghost type, even when it’s not a mimic. This leads to general frustration as what would’ve been a sure fire sign for an easy selection now doesn’t apply.

-OVERALL/TL:DR-

PROS :-

Decent cosmetics, fun event, nice looking maps

CONS :-

Still very buggy, lots of animation jank, consistent crashes

6/10 event for me as a fan with a little bit of bias thrown in.

I think it’s fair to say that if Kinetic don’t get their stuff in order very shortly, this game isn’t going to be doing well…

This update has broke FAR more things than it’s fixed and the very little it did fix is overshadowed by the fact that the game is borderline unplayable.

Two years… TWO. YEARS. That’s how long the ‘character customisation update’ has been listed on roadmaps for. They pushed this back for two entire years and then rushed it out because of a collab solely for monetary gain.

The greed is unacceptable and we should be making that clear.

I encourage anyone who hasn’t already to leave a negative review on the store pages. We ALL deserve better than this for a game that’s been in early access for over half a decade while making millions.

I want to preface I'm aware that the 'Attack Titan' skin is ported from mobile but in the current day and age this "Legendary" skin is unacceptable for the asking price...

1. No unique sounds (except the weapon)
2. No unique animations (except the one lobby animation)
3. Default Trapper mori instead of anything new
4. The mobile version had a unique load-in animation but they removed it here
5. All style variants cost the same as a full legendary, even when you already own one of the others

I'm so disappointed that I don't even want to purchase the skin anymore and I'm a fan of the anime.

EDIT: This post was removed in the dbd killers subreddit for being "An opinion that shares nothing with the community", take that as you will.

For me, it unfortunately had to be Alien.

The map looks the part but it isn’t very fun to play on and it appears WAY too much that it’s now become majorly oversaturated.

Ellen Ripley was the biggest disappointment to me. They didn’t secure Sigourney Weaver’s likeness. We don’t know if that’s BHVR’s fault or not but it’s super unfortunate as now she’s super bland due to the fact it isn’t *really* the character we know and love. She also has no in-trial voicelines which blows.

The Xenomorph looks and sounds amazing but its gameplay feels super uninspired and I just don’t find “medium distance ranged killer with baked in power removal” to be very fun.

All in all a 4/10 chapter for me, below average and disappointing.

What are your guys opinions?