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nakesudatakeyoshi · 4 months ago

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The Last Plague: Blight - An honest review

Hello again my fellow survivors and welcome to this post where I give you a complete and honest review about the game The Last Plague: Blight. This is going to be a long post, so grab your pen and parchment and keep notes, cuz there are a lot of things to break down. I will try to keep a good structure of the post so you can jump wherever you want: I will begin by briefly giving you my opinion so you can jump in the game if you want immediately, then I will go to game originality, game story, game mechanics, building system, survival system, graphics, requirements, hours of unique play and lastly an overal conclusion of all the above to justify my review and opinion. So, lets jump right in! Newcomers and Veterans of the Blight, bear with me as I tell our story.

Note that I will not make a "what it lacks" category because the dev has recently uploaded the 2025 roadmap and many of the things we want are already there.

I have also colored some lines in different colour, giving you the summary of each section because even I would be bored to read all of this (LOL).

1. My general opinion.

Let's start with the my opinion about the game. Note that this is my personal opinion and I do not expect everyone that has played the game to agree with me. Overal the game is very solid and good. I believe in it and it kept me excited throughout my playthrough and I will still be playing it. It is worth it and even if you don't feel like spending your precious gold fellow traveller, you can try out the DEMO version where there are PLENTY of things to do giving you the complete scene and total package that will convince you to either get it or "teleport outta this world at once".

2. Game originality

Well, it is very hard to speak about game originality. What does it even mean? There are plenty of games in the survival grenre and each day that passes more and more are coming out or being announced. And yet, I have to admit that this game feels a little bit different. Let me explain.

TLP:B (I will be reffering to it like that cuz man, its a long title) offers a unique hardcore (is the key word) survival experience. What do I mean by that is that the game is not only story driven (talking about it later) which by the way, the story is cool, but it is also not the everyday sandbox game where you can build your castle with wood or rock or whatever and grind for gear and stuff. It is unique because it combines those aspects and also it is tough! What do I mean by that? Well, you can call it "close to real life simulation" hard because in order to do the smallest of things you need to put time and effort.

Time? Effort? I do not have these available man you might say, but do not me discouraged you can go play something else its totally cool. BUT if you want to invest some of your time to see how you would actually survive in a situation like this, this is the game for it! And yes you could argue that other games like Green Hell or Sons of the Forest is pretty darn hardcore, but TLP:B takes it to a whole another level and it doesn't feel like it forces anything and bores you, grinding tree after tree for nothing, but it emerges you into the world even more. Wakes up your primal survival instincts!

3. Game Story

Well, the story pretty much can be summarized as follows: You live in medieval times. A strange plague has emerged and plunged certain parts of the land into the called blight. These parts are inaccessible because you get infected if you enter the blight and you could potentially die. This doesn't mean that everything else is clear outside these areas. The blight has contaminated other things like lakes and rivers, as well as animals and their meat and also the herbs and shrooms! The blight spreads, you have to find a way to stop it or the end will be upon you!

Now I know that many of you will go like "Aahh, another one of these games huh?" well don't be so quick to judge young earthling, because even if the story does not feel that original or new, it greatly affects the whole game in many ways. "Yes but in every game there is a story bro", well 'bro' take for example other games like Valheim which the story just... exists. There you are a viking that died in battle and you wake up in the realm Valheim where you must prove worthy to enter Valhalla. And that's it. There is nothing else in the game that is a must for the story (except the cool raven of Odin). In TLP:B, every decision you make, every bite out of a cooked contaminated meat you take, every sip of an uncleared water you drink, you are polluted and YOU WILL DIE!

So, although the story is not something new, I like that it affects the whole game in the way it does and it doesn't feel like it's just there. It IS a part of the game in a BIG way.

4. Game mechanics

We have reached this part, haven't we? Since bulding and survival system are parts of the game mechanics, I will include them here in their categories. And we will go through Building, Survival, Fighting. Certain things will be inside other, like smelting and smithing in the building. I hope you are not mad and I will try to make it all clear!

A. Building

A building system that is actually free and to actually build you have to go through the whole process. What I mean by that is that the placement of building foundations are not grid-like and the system is very close to reality. Well you can argue that in all games you can place foundation wherever you like. I know but here you have the freedom of choosing how to place each piece of the foundation and not necessarily in a rectangle. Let's check an example: buidling a basic shelter. In order to do that you have to place 4 posts wherever you like close to each other, then place support beams to create a kind of a base, then build some rafters for the roof and eventually fill the roof with either clay tiles or leaves. And the materials needed are actually a lot, depending on the size of your build. This can lead to pretty good and coold designs that you can create. I like the freedom that this game provides me with and also the process of it, getting the materials and placing them in the right way. It feels real and unique.

Placing other building pieces is the same, you need to have at least one of the materials and you can place a blueprint down, then get the rest of the materials to complete it.

B. Survival

Here we go. I LOVE THIS ASPECT of the game. Where to begin? Lets start from the basics. The materials and resources in general. As in every games, you can find wood on the groung or cut trees. But here is the catch. A single type of material, like wood, can give you MANY types of products connected to it. "Why you make such a fuzz about it Green Hell is the same" I KNOW I KNOW STOP! But here you have event MORE options, and sometimes you need the right tools to do it! As we used wood for our example, let me explain. A tree gives you pine cones, long sticks, sticks, twigs, pine leaves and pine cones. Long sticks can be broken to sticks and the latter to twigs. BUT, different size of trees give you different trunks, different size logs nad then if you use an axe you take firewood, if you saw the trunk you get long planks or short planks. You see where this is going. It is HUGE. And this happens with pretty much everything in game.

Need to start a fire? You need some kindling, some tinder and a tool to start a fire. And even then you cannot be 100% (at least in early stages) that the fire is going to start!

Need to drink water? Boil it first in the fire to be sure it is not polluted. For that you need a bowl, use a small stone to carve a large one into a bowl etc. Need to eat? Kill animals, harvest their meat, cook it on the fire and eat it. But if you eat contaminated meat your blight level increases.

The possibilites and effects of ANYTHING you do are endless and the consequences can be severe, increasing the feeling of verisimilitude and makes you feel like in this game, you are not godmode. It is intimidating and exciting!

Also, as in every game you have hunger and thirst meters, so you do here. But you also have a blight meter that pretty much affects all of your other meters and your survivability, stamina and health. These are pretty much straightforward and obvious.

C. Fighting

This might be one aspect where this game might be lacking. I understand the need of originality and freedom that this game wants to introduce to you, so there is no hard combat system with hits, grid-like battle or specific way of attacking. Here you press space and you attack, if the enemy's hitbox is within your attacking spot you deal damage, depending on how precise you are. This sometimes can feel clumsy and frustrating because you will be missing many hits especially early on against the fast moving coyotes.

Also the AI sometimes feels awkward and it can get either stuck sometimes or even behave abnormally. This is still in development and I am sure that the dev will make things right. But overal, it is not that bad.

5. Graphics and Requirements

Okay, I am not really an expert when it comes to graphics or system requirements, but I know when something looks good and when an ol' rusty machine is able to run a game.

The graphics seem ok, there are cool colors and particles within the game. Nothing seems chunky or out of the world and everything kind of fits together in a good way. In some cases, the generation of things in the world could be a little bit better, but it is not a big deal if any at all. Ultra is awesome of course, but low graphics also give you an amazing looking game.

Now when it comes to the requirements, I don't want to talk numbers and parts. These are there, go to steam and watch it. I will talk about personal experience for this matter. My PC is modest and it can run the game easily on high graphics. On the other hand, my laptop is 17 years old and I got the game there on low graphics, and it runs smoothly without lagging or pushing the laptop to its limits. So I reckon it is ok.

6. Unique play

The game offers a good chunk of gameplay. So far it is still early in the development stage, but you can grind 6-10 hours of gameplay even just in demo mode (and of course enjoy the game not speedrun it) so there are a lot of gaming hours that are unique to the game.

7. Overal Summary

"Come on I'm tired be done with it already!" well sorry but you had it coming. You wanted an honest review huh? I tried to explain the game in simple worlds and as quickly as I could, leaving many detalis out of this post in an effort to give you the best picture for you to play it or not.

As I said in the beginning the game is pretty solid and good. There is of course room for improvement, but I know it is coming. The roadmap is already out and we can embark on this journey together with the dev!

The game offers a unique hardcore survival experience, which is more intense and intimidating than other games without it being boring and all for grinding. Good building system, good survival system, uniqueness in resources and materials. What I am looking forward though is the character customization because the game has none yet. Grab your friends and join a world to fight the blight back!

I will be hosting some games from now and then to share experiences with you as well as have some fun together, so stay tuned!

Thanks for reading the post!

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