The End of Dyeus

I don't know, man. Maybe when/if I finish the final area post-apocalyptic Earth my opinion will change, but (EDIT: Just beat it, last boss was godawful even if it only took 2 tries. Literal spam fight) god did this game ever fall from a solid recommend to a "I can't possibly recommend this game to anyone" at about the point where I started trying to explore the wasteland biome. Dyeus is a neat game in concept. It's basically a small-ish open world where the only power you can gain is gear, and the only gear you get is from exploring, so you need to explore everything. Combat is just LMB for attack, RMB for block, spam until the enemy dies, which is fine. If the entire game was paced and balanced like the first hour or so, just mildly increasing in difficulty over time, it would be fine. It would be great, even, though certainly too short. The issue is that it's not paced like that, it's still short, and it doesn't respect your time. Dying doesn't cost you anything unless you have a soulstone that resurrects you on the spot, you just pop back to your checkpoint and keep going. This is alright, plenty of games do this, but the dev of this game seemed to take this mechanic as a license to create some of the most irritating, spongy, and downright hyperlethal enemies I've seen in a game like this. Everything in the back half will either take way too long to kill, hit you through your shield (yes, even the best one for some attacks), knock you flying back on hit, zip around to become near-impossible to target, block 90% of your attacks, or some combination of these. How do you beat this? Why, ranged attacks of course, except enemies don't actually drop enough ammo to sustain you (due to their health) so you WILL run out of ammo, you WILL have to go back to a merchant somewhere to buy more and you WILL basically have to grind if you die too much later on. Did I mention there's no map? There's no map. You can look at some maps you find in the world but apparently John Dyeus is too dumb to just pick one up so you can look at it whenever. Anyway, the part that ended up putting this solidly in the "can't recommend" section is when you finally, after finding the plasma gun, have enough power to maybe kill boss #3 if its AI doesn't spam an attack that can guarantee damage even through your shield because its start-up can run too short for you to strafe it properly (the intended dodge mechanic for that attack). Then, after you kill the boss and go waste more ammo re-clearing guys you likely already killed once or twice to open the stupid gate with your three gold apples you basically get warped out of the world, stripped of all your gear, and have to start over clubbing idiots with a bone in Nevada while fighting off the G-Virus or something. So I played like 15 more minutes looking for a shield and failing to find one then decided to write this review. This is a really good idea for a game, executed poorly. I don't know what planet the dev lives on, but a solid 50% of the mechanics put into this game are actively unfun or time-wasting from the perspective of someone living on Earth. It is not fun to nearly get locked in a zone because you checkpointed badly and everything kills you in 2 hits. It is not fun to fight mosquitos with a dagger, especially when the mosquitos have ranged attacks. It is not fun to get knocked 10 feet back by the melee attack of a frog the size of a large pomeranian. It is not fun to end up wasting red keys on gear you already bought from merchants with zero warning. It is not fun to have to do this much ranged combat with no crosshair or aim guide (bow is at least usable). It is not fun to not find a single melee weapon worth using for like ~60% of your run because the two best weapons are easy to find early. It is not fun to have no idea what many accessories do. It is not fun having no hotkeys. It is not fun to have to do semi-precise navigation for certain secrets with no map. It is not fun to have e…

A neat little open world game if you need a quick hit of something to scratch that 1st person fantasy exploration itch that Elder Scrolls or King's Field gives you. BUT it is also fairly frustrating and after about 5 hours of the game working perfectly it began to crash constantly to the point of unplayable. (Steam Deck) Combat is very basic but feels pretty good. I think it's a fun world to explore. However enemy placement and behavior is a big mark against it. Everything is very aggressive and will follow you for a long time and enemy locations are fairly close to each other often causing you to be chased by hoards of enemies. A game that would be really cool if they just reined it in a notch.

Surprisingly good, atmospheric, and underrated. If you like exploring and feeling clever you will like this game I believe.