There's a lot of story. Just cutscenes after cutscenes. I thought it would ease up after the tutorial-like proloque, but it goes on. It's also interrupts the gameplay with dialogue. There's a lot of it, so if you only care about the tactical gameplay part of this game and not the story, there's going to be a lot of skipping. From the few video reviews I watched, the gameplay looked deeper and more interesting than it turned out to be. The game just throws monsters randomly at you, and then some scripted events for dramatic effect. So if it looks hopeless it may just be that next turn you're getting an insane army into play for free. Stuff just comes out of nowhere, or for "story reasons". There was Arx blargin against the Moon, so something happened and you blerged the fergendels. Maybe someone will enjoy this, but very oddly it felt more like a walking simulation, a visual novel, or an interactive experience, than a tactical game. If you're into young adult sci-fi and drama, maybe this is for you. Also, I almost gave this game only one star, when I found out about this: This game is not finished, it's in fact in early access. More than half of the content is "coming soon" (as of fall 2020).
It's good, it's different. You'll probably like it if you like turn-based strategy and working around problems rather than killing everything. Read the other reviews for why it's good. I even like that it's short, which eliminates much of the grind. The main problem of the game is that the theme does not fit the mechanics smoothly. You're running a clandestine operation and deploying highly trained agents around the world in a desperate battle against huge multinational corporations. Too bad everyone, including the most elite soldiers in these corporate forces are total idiots. Knocked out guards will wake up and start "investigating", which means going around in circles around the place where you left them. So if you left half of the levels guards at the other side of the map, you're good. When they do get in your way, you can always swing some door to get their attention and ambush them. That gets them every time. Unless they have armor and you don't have an armor piercing stun gun. In that case you can't do anything. Except maybe walk right by them if they happen to be looking at the wall or something, which they often do. And let me tell you about the guns. Most of the time you knock people down with cattle prods or tasers or whatever they are. But there are actually lethal firearms in this game, if you manage to find them and have the credits. Too bad though, that your highly trained stealth operatives only have 1-3 bullets per gun per mission. If you need to reload, you have to use a charge pack, a one-use item that takes up inventory space. All of this makes sense from the point of view of the game mechanics. The effect is that the bubble of escalating tension can burst any time you have the opportunity to cheese your way to victory past the corporate dorks. It's still a very good game. The problem is subtle and there is no clear way to fix it. It's also a great example of how hard it is to get the theme working with the actual gameplay.
It's a fresh concept and well put together. I like it. Here's the problem though: The nature of the game is such that you might die repeatedly before you get your ship going. This is expected since there's perma-death. The biggest problem are the random events you come across. There's usually description and a couple of choices. The outcomes seem luck-based, with no way to tell if your crew or ship stats help in any way. So for example when rescuing a survivor from some abandoned ship or planet you could either gain a crew member or lose one... What ends up happening is that instead of forcing you to choose between tough options (and I should say this is what I think roguelikes are all about) you end up choosing between random and boring: 1. Something good or something bad happens randomly 2. You leave whatever you're investigating and nothing happens I agree there are some roguelike elements in this game, even though it's more like a strategic space exploration and combat game. Where a well-balanced roguelike might make you feel like it's your own fault you fucked up, while playing FTL I kept feeling that my bad luck is just bad luck, totally unconnected from any choices I made. If you're easily annoyed, have anger management problems or like games that offer little to no challenge, skip this one. If you don't mind losing repeatedly before coming even close to winning, and can deal with the random number generator, I would recommend it.
