Fun! But has some minor flaws, which hampers it's replayability. // +Gameplay (fun and original) // +World (I wanna see more games in this universe) // +Art (nice style) // -Progression (it's very slow, also requirments for next upgrade is not listed) // -Sluggish (missing speed up options, after you get used to the gameplay you sorta want to speed things up a bit) // -Balance (Explorers and Echo just seems to beat everything by a decent margin compared to anything else I've unlocked so far) // +-Lanes (I was hoping they whould be a bigger part of the tactics)
Have to say that the start of the game (chapers 1-3 roughly) was a clear 5 game. Exellent writing, voice acting, gameplay. THEN when you start reaching the fourth and last district the game starts seriously outstaying it's welcome. To much of the same, had the game ended around this point it would have been an excellent game, but it didn't. Around this point it was a 4 star game... BUT it keept going and ruined the writing with an ending that jumps all over the place, in true Brittish-season-two-series-style. Had this game been roughly 20-40% shorter it whould have been that much better.
A funloving turn-based tactics game. +Light-hearted and humorous story. +Interesting mechanics and combat tactics. +Well designed missions and challenges. +Gameplay encourages experimentation with easy and quick retries. +Most of the puzzles. -At times a bit to frivolous story. -Blind progression (difficult to plan equipment/skill choices without foreknowledge and little in the way of respec options). -Arbitrary boss weaknesses (you need to guess at possible ways to two seemingly unkillable bosses) -The Mansion missions 3 digit puzzle.
The game is designed with CONSTANT quick-saving (and scumming) in mind. Shame to have such a nice engine and art wasted in the hands of inept designers. I've not gotten that far in the game (party at level 3) but already run into these problems (in order): 1. Spider swarms (first optional quest) becomming unkillable due to bad RNG on hitting with the limited supply of fire pots you are given. (around 7 reloads to kill + not get HORRIBLY crippled by -stats debuffs that need WEEKS to remove). 2. Scripted ambush encounter which saves just before you face off vs. an unhittable mob that kills everyone (37 AC + AoE Fear that never seems to miss, had to reload an old save and redo a bunch of stuff due to the auto-save) 3. "RNG" map encounter with slavers which will kill your party. Ran into these due to poor information as to where you are actually supposed to be going (didn't even bother reloading this encounter, but ran into it 3 times while trying to figgure out where to go). 4. Huge centipide which has attacks with and extra +15 bonus (for no apperent reason) which poisons up to your entire party with and murdering permanent -dex debuff (even when it's cured, wtf, reloaded and tried this encounter around 10 times, then decided to write this review and uninstall the game).
The game is solid. It's quite fun. But what prevents me from giving it a 5/5 are all the little annoyances which are racking up. If you loved Fallout 1&2 this is definitely a game you will like. It does several things better and only a few worse. Comparing it to something more recent like Divinity I would say it's less polished, but gives you a lot more options (and thereby fun) in how you want to play. Good points: Setting (post-apocalyptic at its best, definitely on par with anything I've experienced) Atmosphere (gritty with humor and charm, anyone need a #13 Water-purification chip?) Dialog (well written, suits the characters I've talked to so far) Sense of freedom (both in choices regarding missions as well as character development) Sense of adventure (you are rewarded for not bee-lining it from objective to objective) Patience & Tactics (both are rewarded, as it should be in turn based games) It's a Party (finally a game which takes "the more the merrier" to heart, up to 7 rangers) Bad points: Sluggish UI/camera (could be settings, but I wouldn't bet on it) Messy inventory management (lots of clicking around to sort/mod your stuff) Very rewarding scum-saving/loading (game is not designed for hardcore) Lacking a lot of voice acting (I'm assuming a budget issue, but it can't be THAT expensive) Steep introduction (spend at least 1h planning what kind of team you want to have) Hard to see (you will find yourself spamming that Z-key a lot to highlight objects) Superfluous skills (separated lock-picking and safe-cracking for example) Very limited sneaking (which is a huge shame considering the tactical potentials)
