A lot of players were looking forward to Redfall. Who wouldn't? The developer behind it, Arkane Studios, already has a good track record. However, if the first impressions are anything to go by, as well as the gameplay videos people have seen, it would seem that the game isn't as good as people are expecting it to be. Is this game worth getting? Or is it something you should pass on? Here's what critics have to say about Redfall, including their reviews and scores.
Redfall Review Scores: 62-64 on Metacritic
Redfall is a new IP from Arkane Studios and is an open-world first-person shooter with RPG elements. Its release date is May 2, 2023. It is available on Xbox Series X|S, Game Pass, and PC.
Metacritic aggregated reviews for all the platforms the game is available in. As of this article, there are 46 reviews for the game, with 28 of them reviewing the Xbox Series X version of the game. Out of these 46 reviews, 11 are positive, 26 are mixed, and 9 are negative, with the highest score being 90, and the lowest 40.
Ash Martinez from We Got This Covered gave the game a score of 90. According to her, Redfall amazes with its “rich, beautiful open worlds, a multitude of weapons, and a wide variety of enemies to square off against.” She also mentioned that “players won't regret staking their claim on Arkane's latest masterpiece.”
Xbox Era's Jesse Norris scored the game a score of 85, calling it “fantastic in most ways”. He said that the game was “fun as hell solo, and ridiculously so in co-op”. He did, however, mention that the game had “a few baffling design decisions around its co-op implementation and some frustrating technical issues hold it back”. According to him, “with a little post-launch support, [Redfall] is going to become something special.” He closed it by saying that Redfall “may end up being Arkane's worst reviewed title ever, but it is going to be their most successful.”
Jordan Oloman gave the game a score of 80 in his review for VGC. He called it a “compelling adventure with killer combat and an atmospheric setting in which you can easily lose a weekend.” He also called it “an ambitious, primarily successful experiment full of narrative nuance and unique ideas.” However, he mentioned that it felt “watered down by Arkane's systemic standards”, its simplicity being something that he found perplexing. Hopefully, according to him, this game will “pave the way for more inspired looter shooters in the future“
Steve Wright from Stevivor gave the game a score of 75, saying that it was a “truly exciting experience. According to him, the game is “great solo”, and “has the potential to be great with friends.” He said that the game was “perfect for anyone who's loved an Arkane game – sci-fi, fantasy, or otherwise – in the past.”
Worth Playing's Cody Medellin gave the game a score of 70, saying that it was “a bit difficult to parse out the overall quality of Redfall.” On the technical side, it came out “better than some games that look and sound pretty but have terrible performance.” On the story side, it was “a slow burn that cranks up things once you get close to beating the first major vampire, and the same can be said for the gameplay.” Contrary to what other reviewers were saying, he mentioned that “Solo play is also better than co-op”, although this is because of “the issues we wan into with connectivity”. In short, for Medellin, the game needs some time before it gets really good.
Joshua Duckworth also gave the game a score of 70 in his review for Game Rant. He called it an “ultimately fun experience thanks to the world, the enemies, and the gunplay itself. However, as a whole, the game was “an incredibly shallow one too.” He described the game as having “an experience that is easily digestible, is full of simple mindless fun, and is easy to move on from”, something that made the game perfect for the Xbox Game pass.
Jeremy Peel from VG247 gave the game a score of 60. He said that “while it resembles its predecessors – osciliating between stealth and shooting, its domestic spaces filled with scattered stories to piece together – the results are soggier than usual.” He even said that the game was “slightly underbaked.” To be fair, he said that the game was a “good open world FPS you can enjoy for dozens of hours with friends”. However, it is “a noticeable step down from the high perch occupied by Corvo and Colt”, even going so far as to call it the “first missable Arkane game in an age.
Windows Central also gave the game a score of 60. Jez Corden called it a “serviceable first-person open-world shooter with perhaps the most needless “RPG layer” in the history of always-online games.” He mentioned features like how the “weapons you enjoy using will lose effectiveness” as you progress through the game, as well as how the tools that might make the game fun are spread across the game's four characters. Redfall, according to him, “struggles to grasp an identity of its own in a very noisy market.” He found it maddening that this “is the product of the legendary studio that gave us Prey.”
Patrick Dane from Dexerto gave it a score of 40, According to him, Arkane Studios “whiffed wildly”, even though they are “often so great”. The game “performs awfully (at least on PC), and even when running at its best, it feels like a jumbled, disjointed exercise in compromised ideas.”
Noisy Pixel's Azario Lopez gave the game a score of 40, calling the game “an anomaly because a game with this good of a team behind can't possibly be this bad, and yet, it is.” Though the game had “drips of looter shooter, RPG, and multiplayer elements… none of them work together, delivering a messy and almost incomprehensible experience.”. However, he did mention that “gunplay and exploration stay consistently fun, thanks to the satisfaction of taking down enemies and the level design.”
Mark Delaney from Gamespot also gave the game a score of 40. According to him, Redfall “is a game that should not have been released yet.” He brought up how the “litany of bugs hampers the gameplay loop of exploring its world with friends”. Not just that, but the “loop itself feels compromised by elements that are poorly executed and ill-suited to the team implementing them.” To summarize his thoughts on the game, it was as if “one of the best game studios in the world [was] suddenly made toothless.”
Is Redfall worth it?
At its current state, and based off of what the reviews and scores say, Redfall is not worth it. Players would be paying too much for an experience that is not even guaranteed to be good. Although people did have fun while playing the game, seeing how there are still some pretty high scores, that does not change the fact that the game's bugs, AI coding problems, and more will definitely get in the way of your experience.
If the game is on sale, if you have Game Pass, or if they somehow patch out all of the bugs in the following days, then maybe you can give it a try. However, I firmly believe it is not a game that you should buy at full price. We will just have to wait and see if Arkane Studios can somehow bring this game back from its eventual death.
That's all for our Redfall reviews and scores. Check out our gaming news articles for the latest in gaming news.
Follow Us
Subscribe