Stirring Abyss

Game starts promising, but proves to be shallow and frustrating instead of engaging. Combat options are sharply limited and the game all but forces you to go ranged- multiple enemy types heavily punish melee combat. There's very little in the way of variety and mobility, so each mission plays out roughly the same. On top of that, there's only a few enemy types, further building the tedium. The management aspects are almost nil and character building is unsatisfying. As if that wasn't enough, bosses are nothing but damage sponges and your only recourse is to wail on them until they collapse. If the story was good, that might have been forgivable- but it isn't. There's an entire angle of a Minoan Bull god empowering the submarine's crew that goes nowhere. It even claims that the monsters you're fighting are its wayward children... which is never substantiated. You don't even interact with it again after the fourth mission. The final boss has no gravitas or real build up and you beat him the same way as the other two bosses- by using your normal attacks until he collapses. Is this game worth it at full price? No. Hard no. Is this game worth it half off? Maybe, but probably not.

This game is probably closer to 3.5 but I bumped it up for being from a smaller developer and because the premise is really interesting. I'd love to see a sequel for this game that improves on the shortcomings because it has the potential to be a 5 star game. Premise: you are part of a submarine crew which crashed in the ocean and you take part in turn based missions to explore, find crew members, find equipment, figure out what happened. The tactical missions has your small squad walking along the bottom of the ocean in Mark V style dive suits. In this environment you have to manage health, air, and sanity as you search for clues and eventual encounter hostile enemies to fight. In between missions you can fix up your wrecked submarine with parts you salvaged in the tactical missions and the more rooms you can fix the better off you will be. Each room repaired can reveal more salvaged parts or blueprints for items you can make if you have enough of the right combination of materials. There is also a mechanism to give your crew helpful mutations and a "clue" resource which can be used for various benefits. These are all neat ideas and if you like underwater stuff and/or Cthulhu type stuff - even better. That said, these are my cons: color palette - choices were not good because it is very hard to see the highlighted squares that let you know how many action points you have left save system - seems like it was designed to encourage not save-scumming while still allowing it but the result is awkward and rather annoying Some things that for me aren't cons but could be improved: More variety - especially in enemies and items that could be crafted to add some tactical depth. I pretty much used the same knife and speargun for the whole game A full manual would of been helpful especially since this has some unique mechanics that even as a veteran of this kind of game were not obvious

The only XCOM game I played was Enemy Unknown on PS3. Stirring Abyss is nearly the same level of quality in terms of design but it just doesn't have as much stuff. You have a party of 3-4, there isn't as much enemy variety, items, classes, upgrades, etc. I've been playing for 6 hours and I don't know how close to the end I am but it doesn't seem like a big game, of course I will replay it for the challenge. The default difficulty is Easy, and the game is still hard at first especially if you aren't familiar with tactics games. You are fighting eldritch abominations on the ocean floor, and it feels like it: maps are dark as heck, you have to manage your air supply, and the most basic enemies can be a nuisance if you don't pay attention. That said, at the point where I am now 6 hours into Easy mode, I feel very much in control of the campaign. The music isn't remarkable. There's an intense thumping track during combat. The rest of the time I barely notice it. One thing I don't like, is in your submarine screen between missions the ambient noise sounds like some kind of fuzzy droning sound. I thought my headphones were malfunctioning. Graphically though, I think it's an excellent game! It has its own sort of comic book style. Some of the models like for the units are 3D while the environments look more like drawings. It just looks cool. In terms of the story, I'm not crazy about Lovecraft so it's kind of whatever to me. I didn't get to the end yet anyways. It has all the stuff you'd expect from a Lovecraftian game. Like there's a sanity meter in addition to your HP, and you can get corrupted to gain powers or learn dark magic. It's good.

While I enjoy the game's setting and it features some atmospheric writing, the overall story is very basic. There are some great environments and the game does a lot to generate a creepy feeling, including effective background music and ambience tracks. It features a slightly odd, clashing mix of graphical styles (a combination of pre-rendered 3D and cartoon style sprites) and a number of enemy animations are choppy/have too few frames. The tactical combat is relatively simple. That doesn't mean it's easy, though: I encountered a strange difficulty curve, where the game starts off easy, then hits you with a really steep wall as tougher enemies appear (but your mooks don't have many - or any - useful abilities yet, so you don't really have the tactical options to compensate), and then it gets much easier again. Maybe I should've played on a harder difficulty for a better late game, but that initial wall was a problem. There is a global upgrade and research system using Clues (gained from various sources of intel, including killed enemies), which provides a nice progression besides individual mooks leveling up. There is some base-building in the sense of repairing and expanding your submarine, though that is very limited. While the game is endearing to me, it lacks variety and complexity. It would also need more polish, as I encountered a number of bugs. The same tutorial hints keep popping up indefinitely. Text windows can't be moved or minimized, so a lot of the speech bubble dialogue (your troops talking to each other) may be missed. The camera often doesn't focus on the action during enemy turns and you can't manually move it. Random level names keep re-rolling every time you load in. The game also always resets your selected party between missions to the highest level mooks in your roster: You constantly have to make sure that the people you want on a mission weren't de-selected when you start. Overall a bit of a disappointment, but by no means bad.

After watching some LP´s I got interested in Stirring Abyss and after I read some of the reviews warning, criticizing, complaining or whining about how difficult the game is I knew I had to buy this now. Stirring Abyss is a good game. Nice story, decent tactical combat and a good amount of character development be it skills, gear or overall abilities. But it is not a very hard game on normal difficulty! The first 3 maybe 4 missions are somewhat hard after that the difficultiness drops significantly because than your crew levelup, get beneficial mutations, magic abilities, overall improvments, better gear and submarine active skills and passive advantages also you can do additional missions at this point for more supplies, mutations, extra divers and other stuff. If I were you I would get this game ASAP before it´s difficulty get´s boiled down even more because of all the complaining as we have seen in the past by other games. That´s what I did and I didn´t regret it!