This supposed homage to SS games is one pretty boring game. Starts familiar - you are on space station, surrounded by monsters with only few characters to aid you. But then it quickly becomes apparent that Prey devs chose very safe approach. Remember SS's levels variety? The one with invisible monsters and low light? One with remote bombs? They offered challenge and kept players on their toes. In Prey everything becomes quickly repetitive - crafting from collecting stuff (you break down items to components in special machines), sneaking around dumb enemies, finding door codes and so on. Enemies variety is a major sign of lazy design. Mimics supposed to be some scary the Thing tier monster that can blend into background and attack suddenly, but they are basic enemies so their damage is low and AI pattern never evolves beyond 'attack with jumpscare sound effect, then run away and transform into obviously outstanding item'. Then you have humanoid mimics or black goo monsters which have - wait for it - elemental variety. So fire one throws fire and lighting one zaps you. Really pushing this whole 8-bit design here, devs. But the most retarded thing in Prey is - a big 'badass' monster. Yeah, you have your own nemesis, big black goo (see how lazy enemies design is?) guy who deals a lot of damage and chases you through levels...until you realise how often you can snipe him form the distance since it barely reacts, maybe due to its size, buggy AI...don't know. RE Nemesis it is not, but a barely fleshed out roadblock you can later move by sending some fake radio? signals so it can be lured elsewhere. Without it, it just sits on its ass, doing nothing. No active search for player, sending minions, blending with the background//just sitting. Oh and killing it over and over is a viable strategy since it yields many materials used for crafting. Scary, huh? It's just a pale shadow of original SS, taking advantage of nostalgia factor. Serviceable, average, in the end, meh.
Even though this game is based on somewhat interesting PnP RPG system, the execution is just awful. You spend much of the time in dunegons, divided by battle arenas - you only choose where to go between them (there are some forks during this 'exploration' phase). Fights are really boring which is weird since without exploration they should have been fleshed out more. Most of the time you deal low damage to enemies with better hp bars and dmg. There is little tactic beside out DPSing enemies and using some environment objects (most of them are mandatory to ensure battle goes your way). Towns are boring - just some small hubs with vendors, trainers and questgivers. Moving between them is annoying since game loads every time (dunno why, it's not like is so much for game to process in terms of graphics, probably just the case of crappy engine) so every time you want to pop up and get some special talents which can be taught only by trainers - prepare yourself to see many loading screens. Game loves to crash during them. Can't say much about the plot since I barely kept my attention to it - dialogues are so shallow and simplified you feel like you are playing some shit tier korean MMO. If you want better game with tact combat and plot, play Gorky 17. This game is simply not worth anyone's time.
As it is case with some originals overshadowed by their sequels (take Baldur's Gate 2 for example), Etherlords is pretty average game. Due to weird design of turns (your heroes move at the end of a turn, not during it) and castle 'sieges', missions are often series of silly chases who will get to enemy's castle first and start chipping it turn after turn. Which is both boring and cheap, yet necessary strategy. Factions are unbalanced big time - Chaots will aggro rush you with rats, pumping them and pinging your hero with spells, but as Vital, you will have to upgrade our deck to fliers and ramp spells as soon as possible. Too many times you will have to fight with enemy hero who has much better deck and higher hp, what's worse - many times there is no way but to soak damage and painfully wait to draw better cards, as it is case with Kinects. Overall, battles are either banale affair of stomping on some low level enemy, or game of ehxaustion. The lack of second cast/end phase/instant spells takes any chance from battles to have a depth and more strategic layer. It's just a damage race. tl;dr Just play Etherlords 2 which is much better game, without weird turn system and much more interesting campaign.
