Positives: - Graphics, music, ring-world idea - Tutorial that is actually useful - Complex strategy allowing a lot of approaches - Thoroughly thought out base game mechanics - Well approached bit of mystery - Only a few non-fatal bugs right after release - Overall game-play feel Negatives: - Tutorial / Help does not explain a lot of details you really wish you would know. Neutral facts: - Only a little of content Technically it is just a single game mode repeating over and over with option to add one of several challenges Review: This is a game of a distinctive style. It may take failing hard several times before you will learn basics. It reminds me games like Tropico, in which you have to balance the happiness of all of your citizens; when you fail to satisfy them you'll loose so fast you won't know where it came from. At the same time the citizen happiness is far from being the core of the game. The core is a fast-paced real-time strategy, which puts a lot of pressure on you, while requiring to keep everything in the balance: workers, research, army and a need for expansion to reach more resources. The game specifically encourages you to experiment and after number of failed and won games, I must admit there is a good amount of place to experiment. At the beginning, I felt a bit frustrated. but after about 3 failed games, I've learned enough to be able to win with confidence several game modes on hard difficulty with ascended dice, leaving only few last modes and hardest difficulty as a final challenge. I do not resonate with a flood of other reviews speaking of _incredible_ frustration and difficulty. The game style sure isn't for everybody, but every game needs practice. And even between casual players that thinks they know the game thoroughly (e.g. StarCraft) and the abilities of ranked players is a _great_ difference. The game feels full, complete, even though a it is a small game. I give 4/5 stars to mark a space for improvements in future patches.
Lovely design, well done sailing physic, the multiplayer in LAN works like a charm, tiny installer size. Combining battle, strategy, trading, questing, and getting better loot. If you are tired of neverending combat or if you want some, you can get your personal desired map generated in a 2 clicks. You can even invite others to your personal map :) Round and round, I´m very satisfied with all aspects of the game. As long as you take it as a relaxing sandbox, it´s 10/10. If you want a sea battle RTS or a trading simulator, you´ll be disappointed, once the repetitivness appears.
Multiple games in one, based on the style you want to play. Ranging from fast surgical run directly for the goal, to a hard-earned many-hours stealth victores sparing every single possible life. Although its age can be easily spoted, well-made graphic age like wine. -- Everything above said, the joy can be interrupted by several short mission repeating themselves over and over again and user-unfriendly controls. Many buildings cannot be went around the wall, your prepared combos randomly don´t apply, pulling the weapon takes longer than average archer hitting you twice, when you figt in a group, you hide your weapon and pull it again for every enemy there, few funny bugs in the enemy AI, few frustrating bugs in your characters AI, ... -- If you still feels like "yeah, I can live with those issues", go and buy it now! :) The game is huge fun and it can hold you nearby till you finish it. And if you just hang around looking for something new fot tonights evening, you won´t be disappointed ith this pice either.
I just tried the game, less then 1h game time, max graphic setting. + It looks marvelous, and I love looking at the planets in the sky here. - First "glass wall" found in the first minute. More came soon. - Bad movement physic engine? After few minutes I started to feel sick, because I have motion sickness from some games (game engines). It went worse that I can´t play any more. Theese points are subjective, not considered in rating: - only FPS. Not my cup of tea, since I prefer 3rd person wiev. - struggling to find anything on highest difficulty, because you can´t interract with many things that looks usefull and something like little dirty can of food hiddent in the grass to the height of your waist is nearly impossible to find without help (objective marker etc.)
