I really struggle to understand what the people giving this game a 4/5 or even 5/5 see in it. From me, it gets 1 star for being functional *in a purely technical sense* and another for the visual design, which in a few places is pretty and somewhat interesting (even though the graphical fidelity isn't what it should have been in 2017). That's the good over with. THE BAD: - The main story is entirely forgettable. - Much of the dialogue is *aggressively* bad (both in English and German), both in terms of writing and in delivery of the voice acting. - All of the factions - and, like Gothic, you need to join a faction to progress in the plot - are completely unlikeable. Here are your choices: you can side with a) the magic tree Nazis, b) the desert meth Nazis or c) the techno-church Nazis. - The world is much bigger than it needs to be to contain what it does. It feels empty and pointless in a lot of places. - The combat is *monumentally* awful. They went for a Dark Souls-esque combat system but didn't understand what makes Dark Souls combat work on a very fundamental level. A combat system like that needs very careful tweaking and balancing to be challenging but fun. This is just a frustrating mess. I could go on about the quest design and faction mechanics and whatnot, but the game really doesn't justify the effort. As the title says: it's bad, and it's not even bad in interesting ways. The ideas put into this game were very average to begin with and then the execution was terrible on top of that. Give this one a miss. And while I have you here: *please* stop buying games just because they're "by" someone. And for the love of God stop DEFENDING/PRAISING games just because they're "by" someone. The glory days of Piranha Bytes are long gone. Even as far back as 2002/2003, only *one* of the original founders of the studio remained. It's just a company using the name to get nostalgia dollars out of old people like us, they don't need supporting or defending.
This is a tricky one because I'm not sure if I should like the game *more* or *less* than I actually do. I like the setting and the core gameplay because everything is better with Mechs and the tactical turn-based combat combined with the management layer hasn't become any worse in the years since the XCOM remake. Unfortunately, where the game falls down for me is in implementation. It just feels sloppy in several areas. - The combat UI is a bit of a mess and could definitely use improvements, although it's adequate once you get used to it. - The loading times have no right to be as long as they are. I'm running this from a SanDisk Ultra II SSD and it can take between 30-60 seconds to load one map with only half a dozen units on it. - Performance overall doesn't match the visual fidelity of the game, it clearly has optimization issues. The game looks fine because the aesthetic design is good, but the level of graphical fidelity was taken from around 5-8 years ago. - The campaign is...eh. You're a mercenary hired to help a young noblewoman conquer the throne back from her evil uncle. Somehow I can't get invested in a story about an entitled aristocratic brat who is pontificating about her "birthright" whenever she gets to open her mouth. Not to mention that it's somewhere between "woman scorned" and "damsel in distress". Lazy and tired tropes all around. - If you're a) going to make your story missions linear to-do lists the player has to follow, and if b) said missions can go on for over an hour, and if you're c) going to have autosave-checkpoints, then why on earth would you d) put the ONLY checkpoint at 30 seconds into the mission?! And then e) have the mission fail because a character died in combat even though he was supposed to die anyway - in a cutscene - literally 1 minute later? But overall, if you can bruteforce the performance issues and the sketchy mission design and writing isn't a dealbreaker, the core gameplay is still solid and fun.
...A lot? then step this way, please. Okay, so to start off: KSP is quite an excellent game in my opinion. But the more observant reader might have picked up on the fact that there are only three stars next to the review's title. That's due to one major criticism I have to level at this game, which is that it doesn't like explaining things. While playing, it explains - to use the scientific term - "f**k all". I'm not even talking about the physics or engineering principles involved, I'm talking about even basic game controls. I'll just err on the side of caution here and assume I'm relatively stupid (university degree notwithstanding), but you should expect to spend a very long time 1) reading the in-game wiki, then 2) realizing it is itself bad at explaining a lot of things, then 3) either reading tutorials or watching them on YT. If you can bring yourself to endure that for about 20-30 hours (your mileage may vary), you're gonna have fun with a unique, challenging and rewarding game. If you are into the whole space exploration and engineering thing. But if you're not, why would you even be contemplating buying this? PS: Oh, also the tech tree can really screw you over and make your progression grind to a halt if you don't make the right decisions in the early game. TL;DR: really great if you can stomach the "wiki marathon & tutorial binge watching" double feature that's required to get into the swing of things.
What Petroglyph has put out here is what I would consider a good foundation for an old school RTS in the style of C&C (no surprise there, they have some of the old Westwood people on the team). The problem is with the word "foundation". Because that's it, and nothing more. It's just enough to escape the demo verdict, but not by much. Nothing left of the cheesy but iconic FMVs and dialogues from the old C&C games, no memorable characters (actually, NO characters whatsoever). There is one single faction, and it's about as generic and bland as it could possibly be. From the people who designed Mammoth tanks, Tesla coils, Obelisks of Light and the Hand of Nod, I expect more than this, a LOT more. This is clearly not a finished product, and the fact that Petroglyph decided to release it in its current stage is worrying to me, because the only reason to release in such a state is if you need a cash injection RIGHT NOW. So...with all this being said, why does it still get three stars? Well, the mechanics are solid, there are a couple of quality of life improvements compared to the classic C&C titles, Frank Klepacki's soundtrack is good (although that's hardly worth mentioning, that's like mentioning that the tide will continue to go in and out) and I dearly, dearly hope that they make something worthwhile out of this in the future. But at a time when you can just download OpenRA for free, I can't really recommend spending money on this. Not yet, anyway - unfortunately.
