I know what you think - how can a game that looks this cool and with such a unique theme be a failure, especially with such a strong prologue. It's because outside of the prologue nothing is really amazing. Quest design is boring and predictable as well as unrewarding. Crafting is time-consuming, unexciting yet mandatory. Skills on level up don't change the way you play 90% of the time and some are absolutely useless. Dialogue options don't matter and the main character always sound so apolegetic. The opene world is large and full of inqosenquential things to do and there is no reward for exploring. The combat is fine and the story is interesting but alone can't drag the game out of the mud. If the devs decided to put a focus on a more linear experience instead of a hallow open world, the game could have been enjoyable. Currently, it feels like a missed opportunity and a waste of time.
The platforming is a mess. It is sometimes difficult to tell what is the foreground and background and then there is fall damage (unless you get a secret upgrade). Thankfully platforming is not a huge part of the game. Combat is simple and comes in melee or ranged mode. Honestly I have no idea why ranged exists as when you move in melee your enemies can't shoot you and you can block damage more easily while in ranged mode the enemy can just shoot you while you shoot them. You can also switch to hacking mode and hack enemy's brains to stun them which is insanely broken because then you can insta-kill most enemies. Not getting this upgrade will make your game 10x harder. The story is interesting, but it ultimately kinda disappoints. It builds momentum only to stop dead for quite a while, then it picks up again only to end in something that feels very rushed and disappointing. It's fully voiced which is a plus. Some voice acting is bad and hard to hear which immediately negates the plus . Tony's voice lines are cool though. The dialogue is a hit and miss. Some lines are well written, while some absolutely make no sense. The main character, Dex, does not seem to have a clear personality and some voice lines in some cutscense absolutely break what little character she had. Persuasion skill design sucks so bad. It only allows you to try and persuade the NPC by selecting 1 out of several options in hopes what you have in mind is what the writer had in mind. If it doesn't match, too bad, your persuasion will fail and you can only reload to try again. Enemies are just clones of each other, fitting into two categories, either melee or ranged. You will approach most enemies the same. Hacking is a chore and takes the form of a poorly designed SHMUP If the story was not botched at the end, I would have perhaps even give it a borderline recommendation.
..Pleasantly surprised and damn that GOG 40 character limit on titles. I went into this game thinking I was in for a deep tactical RPG. Well, it's far from it. Let's pick it apart: 1) Combat This is the thing you will be doing for most of the game. It is a real-time-with-pause style combat but where you need to "dodge" aoe attacks. Similar to Aarklash Legacy but worse. While AL rewards you for positioning and timely use of skills, here it feels like a hack&slash. I had to up the difficulty to the highest one and even then it was mostly walk in the park. The worst part is that the combat drastically increases the time it takes to finish the game. 2) Itemization and skills This part was fairly well done. You can refund all skill points and place into something else at any time with no cost and some of the skills are pretty fun. For example you get to draw walls and encircle enemies in, trapping them or wall off choke points to block archers at shooting you. Items are similar to ARPG, lots of stats, but somehow they are more meaningful than +3% boost to this but -1% penalty for this. With items and skills you can truly make killing machines. 3) Story and character development The story is really something. It breaks off of traditional narratives and is the game's strong point. For me the story alone was worth it. And although it had some misses, I truly loved how different and fairly deep it is with it's multi-level reveals. The characters don't of start strong, but i must say, by the end this game made them feel more alive than some of the AAA counterparts with a fraction of overall dialogue length. 4) Graphics and environment The maps are pretty large and the environments are so diverse I couldn't always believe how much effort was placed into this. I truly commend the artists that worked on this project. Overall, I liked this game a lot. If you are a fan of RPG and good stories give it a try, although I wished it had more complex combat or less of it.
The truth is this game is a huge time sink with little rewards coming your way. It is very very slow in it's gameplay. God forbid, you take someone out who is wounded or very tired, they will crawl through a mission and there is no way to sped it up. You literally watch your character walk at snail’s pace. Also I have no idea why you can't forward time in your house. You can either end the day, or wait. Thing is, you need sometimes need to wait until some action is completed. Catching water for example takes 5 hours but not the full day, so ideally you would wait the first 5 hours and then reapply the filter and end the day, but you can't speed this up. There are also a lot of inconsistencies too. Message says you have been raided, but they did no harm. However it also says my character is bleeding and it doesn't look good. Other times, I would have my character never go scavenge because is slightly sick so he is resting and recovering. But throughout the game he never actually recovered from being slightly sick even though he rested all the time and even took meds. On one other immersion-breaking situation character says, "We can't just sit here and die! We must get supplies even if we have to steal them" and then in in the same day, the character refused to go scavenge for supplies because they were depressed. The only redeeming thing about this game
