1666: Amsterdam Review Summary

Despite engaging story, beautiful graphics, and fun gameplay, clunky combat, inconsistent subtitles, and its unfinished early access state hold it back.

Story is engaging: Reviews frequently praise the story as amazing, interesting, and gripping from the start. The narrative hooks players and keeps them engaged, making it a standout feature.

Game shows strong potential: Many reviews highlight the game's promising premise and unique ideas, with potential to become great in the future. The positive reception suggests a solid foundation for future improvements.

Gameplay is fun: Overall, players find the game enjoyable and not disappointing, with lively gameplay that keeps them engaged. The positive gameplay experience is a recurring theme across reviews.

Graphics are beautiful: The game's visuals receive high praise for being impressive, detailed, and pleasing to look at. Beautiful graphics are a significant positive aspect highlighted by many reviewers.

Good for early access: Players note that the game is quite polished and performs well despite being in early access. The early access state is seen as a positive, with a great start and promising future.

Combat feels clunky and unresponsive: Multiple clusters report that the combat mechanics are heavy, stiff, and lack fluidity, with issues like sticky inputs and unclear key combinations. This affects both general fighting and cat-based mobility, making interactions feel undercooked.

Translation and subtitles are inconsistent: Subtitles and dialogue frequently switch to English or remain untranslated across multiple languages, including French, German, PT-BR, and others. This breaks immersion and indicates translation quality is poor and incomplete.

Combat is too simple and repetitive: Players consistently describe combat as basic, repetitive, and lacking depth, often reduced to spamming dodge and attack with little variety. The lack of challenge and monotony leads to boredom and frustration.

Cat platforming and controls are problematic: Cat-specific movement, especially jumping and climbing, is unreliable, gets stuck on surfaces, and lacks clear indicators for possible jumps. This makes traversal awkward and frustrating, affecting overall gameplay flow.

Game feels raw and unfinished: Many reviews describe the game as being in an alpha-like state, with numerous bugs, lack of polish, and incomplete features. Players feel it was released too early, undermining their overall experience.

Combat is simple dodge-hit: Combat is consistently described as basic, revolving around attacking and dodging without blocking or complex counters. Many reviews note that the combat can feel repetitive, often boiling down to a three-hit combo and dodging.

Cat gameplay is core: Players highlight the ability to control a cat as a central feature, with the cat serving as a second playable character that can navigate, explore, and perform actions alongside the human protagonist. This dual-character mechanic is frequently mentioned as a key highlight.

Magic incorporates spells: The magic system is a key feature, with players mentioning casting spells in combat and solving puzzles. Some note that spells are occasionally cast on objects or require specific resources, adding depth to the gameplay.

Narrative and atmosphere strong: Reviews emphasize the game's focus on story and atmosphere, describing it as narrative-driven and atmospheric. The setting, which includes witch themes and historical elements like 17th-century Amsterdam, is often praised.

Character switching adds variety: Players appreciate the ability to switch between the cat, the primary witch, and other forms, which adds strategic variety to gameplay and exploration. This mechanic is often highlighted alongside the cat's unique abilities.

Optimization issues reported frequently: Multiple clusters report poor optimization, with users noting low FPS on high-end hardware, stuttering, and performance that requires lowering settings. Specific mentions include poor framerates and barely playable conditions.

Good performance on some systems: Contrasting reports highlight stable high FPS on ultra settings without frame generation, and smooth runs with no crashes or stutters. This suggests performance is hardware-dependent.

Crashes occur regularly: Several clusters document frequent crashes to desktop, including during benign actions, with some tied to Unreal Engine errors. This indicates stability problems beyond performance.

DLSS is necessary for playability: Turning off DLSS causes huge FPS drops, making the game unplayable unless on low settings. DLSS at Epic settings yields around 60 FPS, indicating reliance on upscaling.

Minor performance complaints: Some users experience occasional frame drops or poor framerates, but not severe enough to render the game unplayable. These are isolated incidents.

Cannot recommend current state: Many reviewers explicitly state they cannot recommend the game as it currently exists, citing its unfinished or raw state.

Wait for improvements before buying: A common recommendation is to wait for the game to mature through updates and improvements before purchasing.

Worth buying and trying: Other reviewers strongly recommend the game, suggesting it is worth the time and money despite its early access status.

Good for early access supporters: Some recommend the game for players who accept early access quality and want to support development.

Acceptance needed for early access issues: Reviewers note that buyers must be comfortable with bugs and unfinished elements, otherwise they should wait for full release.

Community fair range: $25.00 - $30.00.

Game completion: 8.0h.

Session length: 2.0h.

The game suffers from early friction including clunky combat and tedious exploration, but the story and eventual opening up after 3-4 hours can make it enjoyable for players who persist.

Reported time to anchor: 3h 30m.

Friction: clunky, repetitive combat; tedious searching and exploration; poor optimization and crashes; slow pacing early on; combat lacks variety and challenge; tutorial may be insufficient.

Unlock drivers: story hooks and solid twists; game opens up with more variety after 3-4 hours; detective work and magic gameplay later; addictive combat potential once familiar.

Atmosphere Seeker: Explores the world at a relaxed pace, prioritizes narrative and environmental storytelling over combat. Motivation: Immersive world-building, story, and atmospheric setting. Stance: sale.

Early Access Supporter: Patient and engaged; actively provides feedback and tolerates bugs and incomplete features. Motivation: To support the developer and participate in shaping the game's final form. Stance: buy.

Combat Critic: Prefers fluid, dynamic combat with depth; compares to established action games. Motivation: Desire for refined mechanics and engaging combat encounters. Stance: no buy.

Across all VRAM cohorts, players report frequent stuttering, crashes, and severe FPS drops, with performance deteriorating notably in later game areas.

Windows 12-15GB VRAM: negative. Players with 12-15GB VRAM frequently report stuttering, crashes on death, and poor framerates, especially in combat and boss fights.

Windows 8-11GB VRAM: negative. Players with 8-11GB VRAM experience acceptable performance early but severe drops in Amsterdam, often falling below 30 FPS.

Windows <8GB VRAM: negative. Players with less than 8GB VRAM report widespread stuttering, frame drops, and inability to maintain 60 FPS.

Steam Deck: The game exhibits critical technical barriers on Steam Deck, where it is repeatedly described as unplayable with only ~30 FPS on similar handhelds. Compounding this, forced upscaling introduces persistent blurriness and texture corruption, and controller controls suffer from missing inputs and poor responsiveness. These issues collectively render the experience broken for portable play.

Linux and Proton: Based on the limited Linux-specific reviews, the game runs on SteamOS/Steam Deck with mixed but generally playable performance. One user reports 30 FPS on a Legion Go with SteamOS, while another finds performance acceptable on Steam Deck. No reports of launch failures, anti-cheat issues, or required Proton workarounds. The game appears to work out-of-the-box on Proton with minor performance notes.

Early access unfinished state: Numerous reviews note the game is in early access or an early release, with many bugs and incomplete content. The game is still in development and expected to improve over time.

Assassin's Creed influences: The game is made by former Assassin's Creed developers and is frequently compared to the series. Reviewers see strong similarities in gameplay and overall vibe to classic AC titles.

Game has potential: Reviewers acknowledge the game's promise and room for improvement, despite its current unfinished state. Many expect it to become better with updates and further development.

Localization issues: The game has incomplete translations, particularly for Russian, French, and German. Some text remains in English, and subtitles or dialogue may be missing in certain languages.

Polish and content needed: The game requires more polishing and additional content to justify its price. Some reviewers suggest it needs more development time and care before being fully satisfactory.