First the pros. Visual is not bad, story is intriguing enough to keep me playing. The cons: As I understand it, Chinese Room is not an action game developer and it shows. Combat is bare bones and unwieldy. Stealth is meh and getting through level pretty much boil down to wheetling down isolated mobs so you can kill everything else. Again, should have just made a visual novel.
I must say this game is a disappointment. The graphics and sounds are excellent. However, that's about it. I am a big fan of Darkest Dungeon and that game took quite a few patches to get good too, BUT, the mechanics are there already and just need polish. This game don't even seem to have the mechanics in place or require some drastic rewiring to get it. Let's start with the polish part. You cannot access your inventory or menus in town map. Yup, you have to enter an area before you can open your inventory or look at your character sheets. Also, when hiring you cannot look up the details of the hires. So if a brand new character show up, only way you can look into the character's skills and statistics is to dismiss an existing character in your part, who is gone forever then, and hire the new one. But what really kills my enthusiasm for the game is lack of character progression. Both the MC and hires only have 1 normal attack and 1 limit breakish skills. That is it, the other 2 slots are defend and pass. Seriously, instead of adding a second skill, the game wasted a slot to have BOTH defend and pass. Also, only the MC level up, everyone else stays the same. So yeah, really regret buying this game.
Back this game during Kickerstarter, played through earlier access and now playing the full version. This game teaches me a few things about myself that is weird and disturbing. Things like how much I can scream at my screen in frustration. Or things like how much abuse I can take but still come back for more. But seriously though, this is an awesome game. First the atmosphere. This game is an excellent example that you don't need triple A graphics to make a beautiful game. The art direction, coloring and stylized character design all convey the grittiness and brooding atmosphere of the game. The narrator's hammy and overly fancy vocabulary really nail it. Difficulty and gameplay wise. There is ironman mood and that's it. If your go to guy screw up and goes belly up, no do overs. And your guys will screw up because every 3 level, just when you think you got that dungeon down pat, they jack up the difficulty and made your veteran team feel like a punk again. Character customization is a big complex. Some character have great synergy with some character but only in certain position, but those two characters are slow have no movement skills making your formation each to disrupt. Basically, you can agonize for hours trying to figure out a team you like. Just game the game, you'd love it.
Good old days indeed. I played then back when the only way you can input command is with a keyboard instead of the fancy schumancy mouse with all the eye, and mouth icons. On hand hand it certainly is damn frustrating for a elementary kid who don't speak English, on the other hand it provide heck of a motivation to hit the dictionary and learn that second language. A pity I do not still have the floppy drives with my saves in them. But if you did not have a chance to play this series, by all means do it. It is a blend of adventure games and RPG with REAL multiple ways to approach a problem. Skipping out on this classics is doing yourself a disservice.
The cartoonish graphic might be a bit of a turn off but it is servacible and beyond that, there is a well polished and great game there. After the event of the 2nd UFO series, earth cannonically surrendered and some of the survivors were relocated to Mars. You job is to build enough terraformers to turn Mars to Earth 2.0 while fending off left over Reticulans, invading Beastmans and the re-awakening Martians. The combat is pausable realtime and worked smoothly and fast paced. The different races of enemies were different enough that you require different equipment and approaching to take them on without getting massacred. Incidentally, since you are playing a small colony, there are only 3 new recruit if one of your original character dies. There is a pretty extensive list of technologies that you can research, reverse engineer and manufacture. However, I highly recommend using Shadowarrior's Total Rebalance mod which add tons more gears for your sqadies to use. http://www.strategycore.co.uk/files/?dlid=546
