StarCrawlers

Now, that I have played the game through, there is quite a lot I liked about it: The humour, the lovingly animated and drawn enemies, and just as much the details that were put into the background. The story, while not great, suffices for a computer game, and the ending was rewarding. It was well integrated and fit the universe. On the other hand, the game was tedious. Grinding is the core mechanic, without it, the party won't be strong enough to kill some of the late game bosses. You will only find the best equipment on crawls, too. And here comes the primal weakness: There simply was insufficient variance to keep the grinding interesting. There were only few different areas to crawl through, and within those few different monsters. Sure, procedurally generated dungeons will be always different, but that alone does not guarantee replayability: You'd also need either different tactical approaches to try, different stories to follow, or some other kind of different influence. Now, this is in no way a bad or unplayable game. It is an acceptable little game, but it lacks the little something that would turn it into a good game.

The game has a good foundation and does some things right, but ultimately it is lacking especially with the 20 bucks price tag. The story is not bad, the deus exian lore about megacorporations never gets old. The visuals are simle but nice, it has a good art direction. Solid music. And that's it, everything else is mediocre and tedious. Combat is turn-based. Not difficult, can be enjoyable, but very slow, and there is way too much of it. It basically kills exploration. But to be honest also exploration is quiet bad as the side objectives are randomly generated. Main quests are ok. Companions and side kicks don't have quests, no random story events, only one hub. A nice looking but tedious game which lacks interesting features. Not recommended.

This is a fantastic game! There are very few modern takes on the dungeon crawl, and even fewer that aren't taking significant inspiration from Grimrock. In my mind, StarCrawlers, is a thoroughly unique re-invention of the genre based on current design sensibilities. For instance, combat plays more like a modern deckbuilder than a tradition RPG stats fight. Every ability synergizes with others to create a very satisfying experience. Level-ups feel more like building a deck than rote stats assignment, picking which abilities work best with your current squad. Every class is unique and there is a lot to discover with a diversity of playstyles not found in the classics. This modern sensibility permeates the entire design providing a very streamlined experience. This is not to say it is perfect. The difficulty curve does not feel very smooth so it can happen that you go from demolishing enemies in one mission, and the wiping on the next (although rather rare if you play carefully). Additionally the battle animations can be a bit drawn out even in fast animation mode. The inventory feels overly restrictively small, and one can be locked out of side quests by RNG (tunnel entrances can collapse stopping you from fully exploring the map which can contain bonus quest items). These are all minor gripes, and a lot can be addressed with a bit of patchwork from the devs who seem extremely responsive (my post about a bug was responded to within minutes on the steam forums, which is where they seem most active). I highly recommend this. It is very slick and inspired by the past greats of dungeon crawling while still being very unafraid to try out new things. The whole package inspires feeling of "one more crawl" that keeps you in it, and I know I'll be spending a lot more time there myself!

Starcrawlers is basically a turn based Legend of Grimrock in space and that is an awesome combo. It has many good qualities and few downsides although the downsides are pretty annoying and ended up ruining my enjoyment. You pick a class and assign your points to different attributes and special attacks you can upgrade. You can also hire additional crawlers and can pick which ones to go on mission with based on. Having the engineer or hacker on your team gives you additonal options. You can distribute loot to your crew to get them better armor or weapons. You can either increase or decrease your standing with various factions. This is an awesome concept but I found it all had little impact on the story or gameplay. Most maps are very similar and only have about three or four variations that the majority of maps are made from. There are story missions to progress with but there are a lot of optional side missions you can choose to do. There is one mission, where you have to trap an enemy called a “Gorzilla” that made me quit the game I hated it so much. The game is a first person dungeon crawler up until you have to get into a stupid puzzle trying to trap this thing. It felt out of place and unneeded. It is a story mission and can’t be completed without this puzzle. The turn based combat was great, felt like a space based JRPG. I played on Linux. It never crashed once on me. It has options for Vsync, AA, AF, an FOV slider that goes up to 100, three other graphics options, it has manual saving outside of combat, and runs great. ALT-Tab didn’t work. I used version 1_1_3_3_27395 from GOG. My system: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 19.0.2 | Samsung 850 Evo 250GB | Manjaro 18.0.4 | Mate | Kernel 5.0.7-1-MANJARO

I played StarCrawlers through to the end on the Challenging setting. There were a few bugs along the way, but restoring a previous save and retrying solved the issues (at one point you must flee battle, and doing that didn't progress to the next game phase). I also thought the ending was weak, but still acceptable. There is a lot of variation in the classes. What class is best, and which group makeup is best seems pretty flexible. If you search for answers, everyone has a different response. That makes it fun to replay. It's time for a break from the game, but I will come back to play on hardcore and using different characters in the group, as well as siding with different factions. There are many factions in the game, but they don't appear to make a huge difference to the game play. Some have loot perks that are nice, but that is about it. I spent a lot of time on the game and enjoyed it, and will play through again sometime soon.