DYSMANTLE

On everything else other than the combat. When I started, I figured that it was kind've a "kiddy" resource gathering, exploration game that I could just kill time with. I wasn't expecting having to learn attack patterns, time my attacks and dodge incoming attacks in basically an endurance run until I met my untimely demise. I got bombarded a couple of times. While I can manage 3 or 4 enemies at once now (with basic enemies mind you), it's when the more advanced ones come into play. Wanting to "third party" my encounter and changing the dynamic of it and becoming a nuisance. But that's not me complaining. No matter where you go, you will run into one or a group of different enemy types. Around 3 hours at the time of this review, I can see myself dumping a fair amount of time into this. While it may be an on and off again playthrough, I think with the vibrant colors, straight forward objectives, a good stack of different enemy types, an almost completely destructable enviornment, an open world/discovery type gameplay model, and especially this cool mechanic where you can enable emojis for when your character has an inner thought or discovers something; makes this a nice game for any survival player to enjoy. I love getting games during a sale because you never really know what kind of game you're getting and I'm diving more into indie titles now. This basically being a gamble and I have refunded more than 10 games by the time I bought this, I doubled down and decided to get 2 of the 3 add-ons in which I will be getting the animals pack soon. Key note for modders. The devs have provided tools for anyone in the game files if you feel like tweaking the game, they do warn to back up your save file, but I'm sure y'all already know. If the devs look at GOG reviews, I want to personally say "Great Job" and I hope y'all continue with this style or hopefully make something that is this appealing again. Take care.

I wish I'd never started this game as my autism enforced me to finish it. It fails on so many levels like depth of mechanics, convenience, control and game-flow. - The game is about destroying and looting, yet there is a delay of about a second until items can be picked up, which permanently enforces you to either wait or micro-backtrack even with increased pickup radius. - They even added a delay between cycling weapons in a single-player game. You can't double or triple click in order to switch two or three weapons, since the commands will be ignored during the delay, instead of being queued in. It is so slow and unresponsive, it is easier to switch into inventory and equip items, especially when you want to cycle through 2-3 items. - Movement feels very sluggish like controlling a person on ice-skates. - You can't use your mouse to aim your hits properly like in other games with isometric view. This is for a ton of reasons that gog will not allow me to elaborate. - Powerattacks can only be done when you face an enemy near you while being aim-locked onto it. Since the lock activates much too late, you need to do it manually every time. - Monstermovement patterns are easy to read, certainly to compensate for the sluggish playstyle. They are also literally blind. - Have fun planting and harvesting over 500 seeds into the ground, costing you hours of lifetime only to watch a senseless animations and press 1 button every 2 seconds. - Dying is not something you need to be afraid of in this game. - Most open world areas are filled with tunnels that restrict player-movement, treating the player like a toddler, which directly corresponds to how the story progression is handled. Not recommended, even when discounted, unless you are a controller-cowboy that is okay with a very slimmed down survival game experience and sluggish game-play and controls.

I really enjoyed playing Dysmantle (in single player mode). The basic game mechanics (destroying objects) can get a little repetitive, but solving the twists and turns and puzzles and crafting advancement that led to completion kept things interesting.

Dysmantle has a great early game and lots of potential. Unfortunately most new content after that is separated between hours of grind. This amount of content should take half this long to play through; then I'd buy DLCs for more. Pros + A mostly relaxing atmosphere + Lots to explore + Interesting early game + Nice cutscenes + Many good core mechanics and puzzles Neutral = Bosses are fun but easy = Tower defence quests are fun but too hard. I had to complete most of the game to beat even the first one, which you find early on = Most issues seem easy to fix. But many are already two years old (see philkingz's review, which I found to still be mostly spot on) Cons - Gets way too repetitive from mid-game onwards - Running back and forth to carry resources to unlock a new area/shortcut is tedious, and takes hours in total - You can't complete a late-game mission without hours of boring farming. Even half that long is too much - Weapon/tool switching has a janky delay - Loot pickup has a janky delay - Leveling up becomes meaningless around mid-game. This is especially bad due to the grindiness. All that work should be rewarding - Lack of direction, Part 1: I missed major features of the game, like the ability to build a home base and teleport there, until completing most of the game. Simple early quests to find these would have made the game much more enjoyable - Part 2: There should be more side quests to showcase different upgrades' mechanics. The player shouldn't have to guess which are worth the investment - especially due to how grindy this already is - Part 3: Many quests lack area indicators - Some upgrades are OP, esp. knockback and stun (e.g. sledgehammer) - You can stunlock many bosses (e.g. Alpha Dog, Vicious Slasher, Vicious Twins) Dysmantle feels like it should still be in Early Access.. It's about 80% ready. The base is good, but only the early game felt right; the rest needs balancing. This could be 5/5 instead of 3/5. A decent timesink at discount.

Dysmantle is another post-apocalyptic tale of emerging from a bunker to see what the world is like after being sheltered for a long period of time, though this one is only 2-3 years after the devastation. You come up into a pretty familiar, but overrun world. Immediately you start breaking things down into useable crafting materials. Fighting and salvaging your way from area to area. I like that the combat is fast-paced and requires some dodging. It's not just smash smash smash. The crafting is complex, and there are plenty of save your progress campfires spread around the areas. The only thing that bothers me is that it is a bit grindy, and there are lots of enemies to kill, over and over, they respawn when you camp to rest / craft. Overall for being an Alpha / EA title it's got a great base to build from with plenty of time to work things out and keep expanding. The dev teams seems very active already pumped out 3 patches in its first 2 weeks of life. I think once they get it fleshed out and content filled this might be a very fun and chill zombie survival smasher. First hour of gameplay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snIcJWKzdww&feature=youtu.be