Left Alive

I originally got Left Alive in the hopes that it would make amicable fodder for a bad game review. I had been told, by a great many people, and very reliably, that the game was awful, but as someone who tolerated Front Mission Evolved, I figured that worst case scenario, it would give me ample content for the review, and best case scenario, it would be mediocre.
In truth, what I got was neither - while it's got a number of examples of frustrating design, Left Alive wound up surprising me by being much better than I had ever been led to believe. I had seen reviewers I normally trust absolutely roast this game, so this revelation kind of surprised me. Maybe it's because they wanted a dedicated Front Mission title; maybe it's because they were hoping it would be more like Metal Gear Solid. Instead, Left Alive is a survival game with stealth elements in the Front Mission universe, and once you wrap your head around its quirks and let yourself get immersed in what it's trying to do, the game is actually quite enjoyable for what it is.
Left Alive centers around the fictitious city of Novo Slava, in the equally fictitious country of Ruthenia. Ruthenia is invaded by its neighbor, Garmoniya, and the Ruthenian military is forced to retreat - leaving scores of civilians and wounded military personnel behind. The Garmoniyans are ruthlessly hunting down and killing the survivors - there's clearly more going on behind the scenes, but the player will be left in the dark and left to piece together clues for quite a while before the truth behind the invasion comes to the surface. In the meantime, the objective is to help three characters - Mikhail, a Ruthenian soldier, Olga, a Ruthenian police officer investigating a human trafficking case when the invasion happens, and Leonid, an escaped convict, aided by Koshka, a Ruthenian military AI, the trio attempt to survive and escape a city at war.
Left Alive is divided into chapters, and in each, you will be guiding each character through different tasks - there are other survivors you can save, and your actions can have major ramifications on the story. Most of these survivors simply have to be guided to Shelters, but others have more complicated woes: some have only limited time before they're found and executed, whereas others need to be manipulated into going to safety. The stories behind these survivors range from heartwarming, darkly humorous, to absolutely heartbreaking, and each gives you a cross-section of how the people of Ruthenia are reacting to a truly unthinkable situation.
The enemies in Left Alive are not mere soldiers; they are power armored infantrymen backed up with drone support, tanks, and Wanzers. You can't just sneak up behind one for a context-sensitive takedown; you are going to have to either sneak up and beat the tobacco juice out of them with a melee weapon or resort to firearms. Individually, the soldiers are tough and do good damage, but their accuracy is questionable and they are not hard to take down one-on-one; the problem is that they are virtually never alone. This factors into one of Left Alive's more interesting quirks: Because Novo Slava is a warzone, errant gunfire won't immediately alert the local guards. They may look in the general direction, or send someone to check out where the noise came from, but they won't immediately sound the alarms. If one does detect you, you can often lose one by darting into down sidestreets and finding a good place to hide. Killing enemies is rarely ideal; they rarely drop anything useful and the more you do it, the more likely they are to call in reinforcements from the surrounding areas to shore up the location.
The music in Left Alive is fantastic, the writing is excellent, and the voice-acting is spot-on. The biggest problem Left Alive has are its occasionally frustrating design decisions, but if you're willing to soldier on, there's a lot to enjoy here. For a game I spent a pittance on, this was far more enjoyable than it had any right to bem, and if you're willing to work with it, you might enjoy it too.

I dont understant all the hate this game is getting. Its fun. The main problem I have with it are the side missions. You choose one wrong dialog option and you failed the whole quest. Hope you saved! Or enjoy replaying the whole chapter until you simply give up... Nonetheless I enjoyed myself.
BUT! Not worth 60 bucks. Get it on sale.
TL;DR It can be fun. But it isnt for impatient ppl.

It's not a bad game if you buy on sale and don't rescue stupid survivors, most stupid NPCs I have ever seen. No survivor, no rage quit.

wildly misunderstood and harshly judged by people who haven't played enough to have an opinion (seriously, factor out reviews with 2> hours of playtime and the consensus goes from very negative to mixed.)
left alive is not a stealth game. and it's not a metal gear spinoff either. go in with the expectation that you'll be running from enemy fire and focusing more on stun-and-run tactics than third person shooting or sneaking and you may be pleasantly surprised. play on hopeless to get the right idea of what's expected of you.
get it on a sale if you're on the fence. and be sure to turn off the dlc (especially the world of tanks nonsense). do yourself a favor too and rename/delete that god-forsaken "caution: the enemy is approaching" voice line. makes the whole experience much less annoying. performance is also not great but if my 7+ year old rig could handle 60fps, then you're probably fine too

Its a fun game with a few caveats,
The game isn't a stealth game per say its a game were you try to sneak and kill when you can and just run when you cant. As such its more a running away game.
Id suggest playing on the easiest Difficultly setting and just get through the story as that is quite interesting at least.
The first run took me 14 hours and overall it was worth the time once i got the hang of it.

The People's Republic of Da Han Zhong "Aprroved".

Disclaimer: I played because I’m a huge Shinkawa fan, knowing very well the game’s appalling reputation. My first playthrough was in Standard Difficulty. My second playthrough was in the hardest.
Left Alive: You are not John Rambo, you are Chris Burnett.
Tutorial:
The 'tutorial' is so bad i'd hesitate to even call it that. Instead resembles a disruptive PowerPoint presentation that interrupts gameplay. Aggressive info pop-ups and still images with text will show up every time a new mechanic is needed or convenient. You will often be distracted and interrupted by the still images. This is awful tutorial design. I would prefer a separate tutorial section to learn the basics and then start the gameplay uninterrupted and completely immersed.
User interface:
The user interface may feel complicated at first, but if you take 5 minutes to explore it and understand what’s what, it is actually quite well-designed and feels comfortable.
Controls:
The controls are fine as they are except the sensitivity for aiming that seems to be like 30 DPI or something. I had to pump up my mouse DPI and the in-game sensitivity more than once before I achieved a usable config.
Graphics & Art style:
The game is not well optimized for lower end PCs. I was running on High with a GTX1070 and I had FPS issues depending on what the game is rendering at the time, I set it on medium, and then it worked (and still looked fine). Fire seems to be an issue, otherwise I had no problems at all.
The graphics look very good like most decent games from 2019 but nothing remarkable or special aside from the art style. No flaws to report, either.
The art style of the characters is something I truly liked. A mix between ‘Realistic renders’ and Shinkawa’s peculiar visions make the characters feel unique and recognizable, sort of “reality meets fantasy half way” type of feeling.
Music, sound design & voices:
Sound design is not perfect, but does the job well. The music for tense situations and fights is good and keeps you on your toes, and during cinematics music and voices are perfectly balanced, and the music does provide something to the atmosphere worth having. One flaw I found regarding sound design is when you whiff your melee weapon no sound effect plays, absolute silence, this results in a void that gives the feeling of ‘something’s missing’.
There is great voice acting in the game. Great interpretation overall and good dialogue scripts. While some minor NPC may sound cheesy in some random side quest, the general quality of the voice acting is marvelous.
Environment & level design:
The environment is dense in detail and well fleshed out, feels like a real lived-in city that is going through hard times. The only flaw in this aspect is the spam of the same 6 car models everywhere, one of which does not fit well in the scenario. Imagine Renault 2CVs everywhere you go in Cyberpunk.
Another issue I have with the level design is the use of invisible walls and the fact that the characters won’t fit in places they should obviously fit in, and can’t squeeze through objects they could run between. Makes the environment feel unpolished.
Characters:
Character design is consistent and coherent. The evident differences between characters is also welcome and makes it feel like they truly are separate entities and stories, and not just am empty vessel for the player, villains included.
Story & storytelling:
The story and how it is told is one of the strengths of the game. The characters alternate, and they follow different paths that inevitably intertwine. You’ll see how their stories cross and play each chapter with a different perspective of the same conflict, often visiting the same place with another character.
Gameplay & game mechanics:
I would classify the game as a Stealth based Survival Action game.
You will have to manage your inventory and resources, through stealth avoid conflict as much as you can and craft items to avoid wasting ammo when possible, so that you can fight when the real need comes.
There are many interesting mechanics in the game, like the ones listed below:
Dialogue & decisions: Through the story, important decisions will be made that will decide certain outcomes and the ending.
Crafting and inventory: It is imperative to use. The game expects you to craft a ton of stuff and use the items like traps and throwables, you can’t just rely on shooting and hiding.
Smoke bombs are the best.
Stealth mechanics: Stealth is a must, but it is flawed in this game. AI is half blind and deaf, so use that, but no silent take-downs option. If you want to kill an enemy, you have to kill him quick before he sounds the alarm. This being said, the AI is not as smart as in other stealth-based games, a shot won't trigger the alert status unless you are really close to the enemy group. You can shoot enemies down one by one, but ammo is scarce.
Multiplayer element: Other players dead bodies can be found in game, and they represent a high risk high reward situation where you can loot their bodies for good loot, but if they died there, it is for a reason. A cluster of dead bodies is a clear sign of STAY AWAY. Don’t get baited by the apparent free loot. Check the “heat map”.
Chest storage: You can store your items in a box, but make sure to understand how chests work. They do not transport objects through maps or levels. If you deposit an item in a box, it will stay in that specific box, in that specific level. If you don’t know if you will be back, make sure to take every useful thing with you. This can be used to share items between characters.
Variety of foes:
The design of the enemies is not a focal game point as it may be in a Horror title, so the limited differences between enemy types do not dilute the gameplay quality. There are 9 types of enemy units, although some of them are just the same soldier with a different weapon and armor color (which means different armor strength).
Replayability:
There is a NewGame+ that uses the dog tags that you gather during your first run as a currency to buy perks that change the game experience for the better, A LOT better. Every chapter you finish will give you more points to unlock more perks and skills. This makes the game more fun and balanced.
The game’s biggest flaws:
The game has an identity crisis, not fully a stealth game, not enough ammo to be an action one.
No silent take down available.
Good luck killing a small drone with melee weapons.
The character sprint is WAY TOO SHORT (til new game +).
The AI assistant won't shut the ♥♥♥♥ up.
Enemies have literal AIMBOT, if you encounter more than 3 you are as good as dead.
In chapter 11 a scripted event destroys your mech almost instantly with barely time to exit, no matter the mech HP.
Some games want you to feel a challenge, some other games want you to feel mentally challenged.
Conclusion:
I suffered the first run, but loved the scond run.
One of the best tips I can give: Use your ammo sparingly, craft traps and throwables as much as you can, avoid conflict.
In the end, a flawed, unpolished gem. If you can endure a hard, difficult game, it is a great game with a good and well narrated story and likeable characters. The game is a ‘Horizon Zero Dawn’, dressed like a ‘Metal Gear Solid’. I definitely recommend buying on sale, not for 60€.
About the World of Tanks adds:
One of the first things I noticed in the main menu is some sort of advertisement for World of Tanks. This left me speechless. Among the collectibles, there are legit ‘Advertisement pick-ups” for World of Tanks. Good thing these items are easy to identify and ignore. In game posters of World of Tanks are abundant, but overall it is not as bad as people say.