Store page makes the game look good. Especially the concept images they show in the description. This is NOT what the game looks or plays like! Initially game seems good. Visuals kind of remind you of Hellgate London. Mystery about who you are and whats going on. You're curious to explore and find out whats happening. Within a short time it starts to fall apart and it just gets worse. Combat is easy but feels pretty good and is fun. But... The camera is AWFUL! If you're fighting multiple enemies or in a narrow space you'll typically have a camera view of only your characters back or inside your character model. If you or the enemy are on stairs or a ramp one of you will have their hits not register. Enemy AI glitches out and gets stuck. Bosses will bug out and do nothing. I even had one main boss actually fall out of the level and die before I even saw them! Blocking is sporadic. The same enemy and the same attack. Sometimes it blocks it sometimes it doesn't. Enemies sometimes randomly have invulnerabilty for no discernable reason. Enemies are solid and push you around, often this can result in you being stuck waist deep in the ground unable to do anything. The games lighting varies between extremely dark or stupidly bright washed out overbloom. The main thing that will kill you is gravity. You'll fall a lot. The game is stuff full of annoying fatal jumping puzzles. Made worse by the games awful platforming. Your character sometimes won't jump when you try or will randomly stop sprinting even on flat ground. Worst is that the developers use jumping puzzles CONSTANTLY! No rhyme or reason. Just jumps everywhere. If you turn a corner or go down a dark hall except a sudden drop. Always. The story is a jumbled mess. It seems like they couldn't decide what story they wanted so just did all of them. They try so hard to make it vague and enigmatic that its just forgetable. The true final boss is worst designed and balance boss ever.
Got at the very tail end of 2020. I had read that it was a great game at this point and was absolutely worth buying. Even with a massive discount it still wasn't really worth it. After "beating" it and seeing all the content. I can say that it was an interesting tech demo. I hope they make a game out of it someday. All the core components are there. It just doesn't end up being fun or interesting. There are more planets than you could visit in a hundred actual lifetimes dedicated solely to playing this game, but there isn't any point. After the first 10 planets they all just feel the same. They all have basically the same stuff, same look, same wildlife. Same things / resources, etc. They could have just made 10 really AWESOME planets and had a much more satisfying game. There are spaceships and they look neat. But they are pointless. They all feel the same and there isn't anything to do with them. My class-S Exotic ship was no more interesting, fun, or capable than my Class-C Shuttle. There are vehicles and they sound awesome. Dune Buggy, Tron Cycle, Mech... but they aren't useful or fun. They are slower and less capable than you are on foot. They are a novelty for about a minute each and then you never touch them again. Got a freighter. It was a neat, but it was just a glorified set of extra inventory slots. Built a base. It was fun to build, but entirely pointless. Found and named countless creatures and planets, but there was no point. Nothing to do with creatures thats fun. "Fighting" them is boring. You can ride them, but slower than you can walk. There is combat, but its awful. Spore had significantly more involved and interesting combat. It feels like less than an afterthought and its inclusion just makes the game more tedious. All the core stuff is there to make a great game. Its a shame they didn't. Story was neat. Its a game about discovery, exploration, and the journey, but its all boring and pointless. Maybe... that's the ultimate discovery?
At a glance this game seems fantastic! * Good graphics * Plays smoothly * Custom build a ship with modular pieces * Paint / Decal your ship * A skill tree to invest in as you level up * A crafting system * Multiple factions * Various system, stations, and planets * A campaign and a freeroam mode It looks great in the store and the feature list is exactly what you'd want in a space game, but thats all it is. A game that looks great in the store. Its a terrible game. I bought this game early in the development stage and when I check it out it felt like it had all the framework necessary to make a good space game and it was justing waiting to be fleshed out. After its actual release, my opinion is still sadly the same. Its got all the necessary stuff to build a great space game... but its still waiting for that to happen. Honestly, aside from how custom waypoints get plotted on the map and the sound effect of some weapons I didn't really notice any differences from the initial early access sale its "final" state. The story line took me ~13 hours but that's with me grinding for some pointless upgrades trying to get my moneys worth from this purchase. If I had ignored all but the essential (sort of) upgrades the story likely would have taken me ~6 hours. As for the game features... The skill tree is shallow and pointless. The upgrades are all so minimal that you can't even tell if they actually do anything. The "big" skills in a branch are the only useful things and they are all passive and largely unnoticeable as well. The weapons are boring. They all feel about the same and perform about the same. Custom ship is neat, but mostly pointless. You just pick the highest stats and there is no meaning. Unsure if engines even do anything. The world seems alive at first, but in an hour you realize every system and faction is the same and the missions and "events" are all the same. Honestly, the story is terrible but it was the only thing that kept me going.
The game itself is fantastic! Interesting races, classes, items, lore, world, etc. Its an old school roguelike with a lot of quality of life features. Its pretty much the best roguelike I've played. I could spend time going into more detail but I won't. So why the 1 star review? Because of the shady scam style BS involved! First off, despite having already paid for the game... it still gives pop-up windows during gameplay to try to coerce you into donating money! Second, the game comes with an item vault, a storage chest like most loot based RPG games have, except its implemented in a way that feels like a giant middle finger to paying customers who choose NOT to make an account and just want enjoy their entirely singleplayer game offline. The offline version of the item vault, when it even works, gives you 3 item slots. That's right. 3 slots for all the heaping tons of loot you'll end up with just by the time you reach it in the first place. According to the donations page every $2 earns you 1 slot. So shouldn't the ~$29 I spent buying the game and all its DLC at the very least get me ~14 slots!? The final kick to the sack is that if you buy the game here, or on Steam, by the time you actually REACH the item vault and realize how much offline players get screwed... you're already past the point of being able to refund it. To potential buyers - Don't buy the game, just grab the free version off the website and play it. If you absolutely insist on buying it wait until its on some massive sale. At least then everything will balance out... the developer gets a portion of a full purchase price and you'll get a portion of a full game. To the developer - You made a great game, but you need to make up your mind! Is this a free-to-play game with microtransactions or a paid for product? If you're going to sell it straight up like this then give paying customers a FULL product, or at the very least a monetarily equivalent one to a donator, when they buy it.
