I've really enjoyed what I've been able to play so far, but the game has crashed 8 times in 30 minutes. Edit: 12 times People keep saying my PC is a potato. 4070ti (on par with / sometimes out performs 5070) + i7 13700k Black Myth Wukong and Arc Raiders (both UE5 games) get over 120+ FPS without frame gen on this system, whereas High on Life 2 gets around that or less with frame gen. This is, objectively and not my opinion, the sign of an unoptimized game with clear performance issues. Digital Foundry was getting stutters on a 5090, which is the best card money can buy. Crashes are profoundly common, in such a way that doesn't seem to care about how good your hardware is. This is not a hardware issue. It's an issue with the game itself.

Crashes like crazy on a high end system 5070 ti/ Ryzen 7 9800X3D/ 32gb DDR5 RAM/ I'm sorry I'm just not supporting games that release in this state. "Oh it's only day 1, they'll fix it in a few weeks" the gaming industry was never like that! Never in my life did I ever remember returning a PS1/PS2 game to the store. When a game was released and alpha/beta tested it was released so that I could play from start to finish with minimal issues. But I can't even get past the first level without fatal crashes.

My favorite part about this game so far is downloading 30,000 shaders every time I reboot it after it crashes.

Funny idea, same as part 1. UE5 however is still a pure nightmare to run. Upscale and framegen are mandatory including frequent game crashes. next time I'll check the used engine first. No UE5 anymore.

To be clear: I do not want to give this game a negative review. I want to play it. I don’t want to refund it. I’m not trying to discourage people from buying it. But in its current state, I simply can’t play it. I genuinely hope this review pushes Squanch to fix the game and get it into a playable condition. I know some people will look at my 102 minutes played and say, “How can you judge it? How can you say it’s not playable?” Because I can’t stay in the game long enough to play it. I’ve crashed roughly every 15 minutes. At this point, I’m firmly in the camp that this game is not playable. Not “needs some tweaks.” Not “minor launch bugs.” Not “a rare crash.” It is consistently crashing to the point where actual gameplay is impossible. And before someone jumps in with, “Have you tried this optimization? This driver rollback? This obscure workaround?”... no. I haven’t. And I shouldn’t have to. This is a full-priced release from a reputable studio. The expectation is simple: the game should function on launch. I should not need to troubleshoot, modify settings beyond normal graphics adjustments, or dig through forums just to make it stable. We are four days post-launch, and many reviews are highlighting the exact same issues. Yet there has been no meaningful fix. That’s not acceptable. Squanch fix the product. Make it playable. I want to enjoy this game. The moment it works, I’ll happily update this review to reflect that. Until then, I can’t recommend it.