Redfall Reviews
Redfall is a letdown. Arkane Studios' signature immersive simulation and level design are nowhere to be found in the game. Instead, their typical poor shooting experience, lack of polish, and rough performance issues are present in the game, which is a little too rebellious.
Review in Chinese | Read full review
In all my years of gaming, I struggle to think of ever feeling a sense of disappointment as profound as I do when playing Redfall. Sure, you can increase the fun factor by adding a few buddies into the equation, the varied classes lending themselves well to group play, and there are glimpses of something great when you’re afforded the opportunity to slow down in one of the more tightly scripted missions, but these positives merely serve as momentary distractions from the multitude of issues that plague Arkane Austin’s latest effort. Between the half-baked gameplay loops, repetitive open-world busy work, and shockingly poor optimization, Redfall feels like a title that’s still in alpha, never mind a product that’s supposed to represent a flagship release for Microsoft’s premium subscription service.
With rich, beautiful open worlds, a multitude of weapons, and a wide variety of enemies to square off against, Redfall amazes. Players won't regret staking their claim on Arkane's latest masterpiece.
Redfall is fantastic in most ways. A few baffling design decisions around its co-op implementation and some frustrating technical issues hold it back. It is fun as hell solo, and ridiculously so in co-op. With a little post-launch support it is going to become something special. This may end up being Arkane’s worst-reviewed title ever, but it is going to be their most successful. Alone or with friends Redfall is a game any fan of the genre should play.
Redfall's compelling world-building and settings are inhibited by shallow mechanics and a lack of identity.
Redfall is a bigger and much more deliberately paced game than I was expecting. Fun in multiplayer, I found that I enjoyed it even more solo. Creeping around with a sniper rifle, shooting vamps with stake launchers from afar, I was able to play Redfall as a stealth game, which was highly enjoyable. Some technical issues still need to be ironed out, but there is a lot of fun here for folks that vibe with the spooky open world.
It's a bit difficult to parse out the overall quality of Redfall. If you're talking about it from a technical perspective, it's scattershot but comes out better than some games that look and sound pretty but have terrible performance. If you're looking at it from a story perspective, it's 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. Solo play is also better than co-op, based solely on the issues we ran into with connectivity, but mileage can vary. Overall, Redfall asks quite a bit of time from players before getting really good, which makes it perfect for Game Pass but tougher for those who don't have the patience to spend the time to wade through the jank to reach that point.
If this tone takes center stage in the back half of the story, combined with plot developments that add some momentum to the proceedings, it may be easier to overlook the game’s weaker aspects and appreciate it as a compelling narrative work. At this point, though, the town of Redfall is sucked too dry of liveliness for players to be invested in whether its vampires triumph or not.
Redfall is an interesting concept with some valid ideas, some cool lore, and some great moments driven by solid visual design and a knack for leaning into the supernatural. But with a vapid and dull open world, bad mission design, constant backtracking, and a plethora of performance issues—this release ends up sucking the life out of you one glitch at a time.
While not the showpiece for Xbox Series X fans were likely hoping for, it's a nice Game Pass addition that I've happily plunked 20+ hours into and will definitely continue playing to secure the 1000/1000 Achievements.
It just makes no sense that Microsoft promotes this game as this grand co-op experience but then put in place every system known to man to hinder that process or make it harder than necessary; no quick match in a multiplayer game in 2023 is ridiculous. Sadly, Redfall is a prime example of what current day Xbox has become, the potential for greatness is there but they can’t get out of their own way to reach it.
Redfall will be a good game for when all the technical problems that launch treasures are fixed. Arkane's good hand in terms of setting and gameplay is moved to the background due to errors and failures and despite everything, this exclusive is very fun, despite innovating rather little.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Redfall resembles the vampires it's based on. It lacks identity, and sucks the life out of you. Every time I see a spark of potential, it's stomped out by bugs, braindead AI, and an empty world not worth exploring. I wish Arkane well in their next endeavor, because they need to let this one die.
Redfall is one of the worst-performing games I’ve played in years, and even when it’s working, it’s undercooked and uninspired. It’s impossible to say if this is the case, but Refall ‘feels’ like a game that has succumbed to too much compromise. There’s a world where there’s a great version of this concept, complete with a much grander vision, however, we sadly don’t live in that timeline.
Redfall is a serviceable first-person open-world shooter with perhaps the most needless "RPG layer" in the history of always-online games. Tools that might make the sandbox more fun are arbitrarily spread across four separate playable class characters. Weapons you enjoy using will lose effectiveness as you "level up" with the game's pointless progression system, which only hinders the otherwise interesting campaign. There are far too many similar shooters out there that simply do almost everything Redfall is trying to do, only far better. Redfall struggles to grasp an identity of its own in a very noisy market. While embers of fun do exist in Redfall, it's maddening that this is the product of the legendary studio that gave us Prey. Arkane is very clearly out of its depth with Redfall.
There is a lot to enjoy with Arkane's latest, even if some aspects don't feel as fleshed out as they could be. The game looks and plays great on PC with several graphics options, including performance and ultra-performance modes. Although the gameplay could use more variation, the locations and enemies in Redfall are a lot of fun to experience with friends. Redfall does more right than wrong in a gaming genre filled with multiplayer shooters competing for limited screen time - and it's worth a try, especially for friends who've dreamed of forming a group of vampire slayers.
Frankly, it’s a relief to see real neck-biters treated with the proper pulp care. Arkane Austin gets right to it: teeth, claws, and clear agendas.
I had fun playing Redfall, both solo and with friends. There’s a definite Salem’s Lot vibe to a New England town oppressed by a vampire apocalypse. All the characters are interesting to play and the monsters are varied. Still, Redfall does not revolutionize the open-world shooter, or even really evolve Arkane Austin’s by-now familiar formula. Redfall feels like the product of a reliable game plan that’s due for an update.
Redfall is an open-world shooter where you can creep through a spooky mansion alone at night, then link up with some friends to take on a giga-vampire in another dimension. It's weird, and it's the right kind of weird.