Oh man, looking back retrospectively after 8 hours, it's not lived up to it's hype nor delays. So I started the game with a big excitement, it's been a good couple of years and 2020 needed a good wrap up. This ain't it chief. The Good: + Main story is gripping (as far as Act 1 goes) + Characters are very likeable/detestable + Acting and animation is on point + Firearms feel good + Fantastic art direction + City is stunning looking... The Bad: - ...but not as "dense" as you'd expect a megacity to be - Melee combat is just not too good. Blocking is spotty, swords seem to feel delayed in sound - Firing a gun is fun, but looking at DPS upgrades isn't - Crafting feels like a late game past time, most guns require exotic components which are not exactly that common. There's not much reason to wait for a bajilion new guns that enemies drop for the extra stats rather than upgrading or crafting a new weapon. - Skill tree feels very generic, mostly stat upgrades like "Do X% extra Y" - Inventory system, just all of it. Selling multiple items is a chore since the whole inventory needs to do a refresh before you can send the next item. - It's not much in terms of "roleplay", lifepaths are boiled down to: Different Prologue, Extra Dialogue Lines - Usable items just keep piling up in my inventory, never used, despite running on hardest difficulty. There's just not that much incentive to use them as opposed to witcher. The Ugly: - The bugs. Oh god the bugs. - This game was delayed so many times, why are there so many glaring bugs? - Texture pop in - Doubletapping a direction key by accident while stealthing is very irritating. - Augments are slightly disappointing, no notable cosmetic augments so far (Played until Act II) - UI is clearly catered to consoles, it's not a great experience while playing on PC. TLDR: Needs more bugfixing, needs more content, needs some re-working. My expectations were tempered, but I wasn't expecting to feel that much disappointment.
I vaguely remember playing the first mission of this game in my childhood, so pulled by the nostalgia I decided to give this game a go. Frankly speaking? I feel like this game is an RTS in TBS skin. The gameplay is solid, although EXTREMALLY sluggish. There is a realtime basebuilding aspect to the game, but I think it is more important to discuss the real meat and potatoes of this game. The turn based combat/movement. This game provides you with a lot of units which need to be individually moved. Some may argue that the game does have a box select and move system. That is true, but it also is incredibly temperamental, some units move some don't for some reason, if they move they might decide to move backwards and forwards until their turn units run out. The game has a pretty interesting logistics system, which, yet again, is hampered by the turn based nature of the game. You will spend dozens of turns trying to bring those pylon trucks to the shore, and then to their position. It gets a little bit better after the 6-7th hour mark once you get flying transports. Speaking of the 6-7th hour mark, this is roughly the time I finished the first "Mission". I count a mission to be moved to the next map, and the first map has 3 sub-missions. I may have been a little too careful with my gameplay but I think that's still pretty inexcusable. It really is a shame, since the game has some serious atmosphere in it.
