Failed to implement it, failed to make it cohesive, failed to make it believable, and just failed in the design. 4.5/10. The environments are nice conceptually, but the graphical fidelity and consistency is all over the place, with nonsensical visual culling, textures that drag you back to the days of Borderlands, and shoddy modeling, where some look fine, and others look incredibly out of place or dated relative to the rest. The gameplay screams Portal aspirant, with a primary focus on physics-based manipulation. Too bad that's all the game has; no other tricks, no environmental cohesion or logic, and too shallow of integration to make it last like in Portal. By the time you get to your first real area, it's incredibly boring and bland, where even your brain just checks out and refuses to cooperate. The writing is just bad. Poor dialogue, unclear and impotent relationships, with a general feel of incorrect social-form attribution. A couple PhD-touting scientists talking like Redditors? Really? Oh yes, the head-not-head scientist, your main character, suddenly swears like a sailor when confronted with a tech issue when she was previously calm and collected in general, totally makes sense. Finally, the woke angle. Sadly, the production company is known for supporting woke and/or slop content, and it shows here. Girlboss character roles all over, an implied lesbian relationship with the main character, which disturbingly echoes in the way that the main character talks to *her daughter,* and a general lack of care or cohesion with the few male characters in the game. It's nowhere near as bad as other titles, but you can see the slop seep through the cracks in this game. Overall, this game looks, feels, sounds, and plays like it is 80% done, or even as only a beta in some segments. This could have been a good game, but it needs a significant amount of work and fleshing out to make it happen. Otherwise, glad I got it for sub-$5.
So, the game itself is okay. They ironed out the crashing bugs relatively quickly, the graphics are great, and it has atmosphere. BUT... The mechanics are incredibly shallow, the perks and advancements make a minimal impact aside from your todo list and your two main meters, and it quickly becomes both tedious and even annoying, what with hearing the same background music over and over again during a single session that can take hours. Toss in the fact that, again, most things are not nearly as fleshed out or relevant as they should be, they continue to charge $30 base for the game, and they went back on their word in regards to DLC and expansions, and I cannot recommend this. Even after having beaten every bit of content that the game offers, it's very much a one-and-done game due to the lack of complexity and importance in key areas. I left children to die in the snow, yet I didn't have any discontent or words from people about it? The main reason for me even posting this is the news that Frostpunk is "successful" and we get almost immediate news that there will be a sequel. In the wake of the first game, this screams corporate adoption and exploitation. The game itself is okay, but $30 should be the GOTY price, as everything in the game is good for a single runthrough. Once you know what's what, there are no other choices for your community, as it will fail.
...This is what two years of refinement and polish looks like? The only things that are markedly better than release are the responsive behavior for weapons and the game's performance itself; that's it. Animations still skip, bullets remain inconsistent despite the gameplay enhancements, there's almost no overlap checking for events in the game (AI, messages, etc.), and the only expansions to speak of are nickel-and-dime DLC guns?! While people praise this game for polish, they MUST be talking about the graphics. Otherwise, this is somehow just as bad as SGW3. I would rather play SGW3 than this, and that's saying a lot. Oh, and negative points to the devs and to GOG for EAC and review catering. If this were an online game or MMO with EAC, sure. Otherwise, there is objectively no reason for it to be allowed on a DRM-free platform, as yes, EAC has and can cause issues with varied platforms and transfers. As far as removing reviews, you only add fuel to the fire by censoring people. Summary: if I hadn't bought the entire series for $15, I would refund this. It's garbage, and two years hasn't added or improved enough to make it worth the borderline abhorrent price tag of $30.
The good: --Solid gameplay and performance. --Retained some difficulty from the original, even after the patches. --Integrated gameplay features from later DAH titles as QoL changes. --Graphics are nice without being taxing. The bad: --Very little was added in the way of it being a proper remake; it's in that limbo zone of being more than a remaster and not quite what most would consider a 'remake'. --Nickel-and-diming for skins only to make some of them free later on just feels worthless, especially since this is a single-player game with no multiplayer and direct enough gameplay so that your appearance is of secondary concern. --After the responses from the developers over the cut content issue, I'm very concerned for the future if this is the first of multiple remakes. Their replies read as infantile and very "neo-lib", so it's entirely probable that more of the risque content will be cut or edited if they revamp subsequent titles. Summary: $30+ into the pockets of some shady devs for what is essentially an easier version of DAH with better graphics. Is it worth it to you?
...Sadly, a very poor execution. Enemies notice and aggro towards you before you can logically notice them, the weapons feel very run-of-the-mill, you're not told about the gameplay flow, the story snowballs and trips over itself, the UI mimics Fallout 4, content is still heavily restricted or non-existent, and there is a hidden timer that counts down from 30 minutes per mission. Oh, and a rather critical bug: the UI would break randomly, whether on load or on area change, and just quit displaying both subtitles and dialog selection. Despite changing the spoken language to English, it just kept playing in Russian with no subtitles, causing me to miss what little tidbits and options were offered to me. Now, the timer system. I know what they're going for, but implementing a harsh 30 minute timer is unreasonably restrictive. What, you're telling me that a cold stealth mission should take no more time than an avoidance or gunfight mission? It makes it feel like a rough demo rather than a game, where I'm concentrating on time rather than gameplay. There's a reason that freezing the timer is one of the main features for trainers. The story. Within the first five minutes, the game tosses so much out there in a scattershot pattern that you have absolutely no idea what is going on, despite getting clear plot points in said time. Missing persons, Soviet-era control programs, international espionage, anomalies, and quite a few elements from Stalker all wrapped into one. It's a shame because it could be a decent story, but there are way too many logical leaps and disconnected events that we're effectively given nothing in the first half-hour; it's gibberish. Bottom line: this game is HEAVILY influenced by Stalker and Fallout 4, and not in the best of ways. The story that we get could be good, but its implementation is a bit sour and incomplete. The gunplay, base-building, and survival gameplay is serviceable at best. Despite the time, still a beta-tier project. Avoid
