The controls are extremely clumsy especially when you need to use the manual, control. Home world had already been released at this point with much better control scheme that felt intuitive. This game is the exact opposite. The interface is clunky and having to engage manual navigation of your ship is punishing. Getting your ships to fire the right weapons at the right time is a nightmare, espeically using the artillery attacks. Overall the game is a painful grind.
The main reason to not get this game is the clunky controls. A first person platformer is hard enough, but without controler support even with the few contorls you have, you find that you constantly fall becuase you don't hit that wall run just right in tight quarters and end up falling. This gets compounded by some of the auto save points that put you at a point where you have lost your momentum, at which point you die over and over again. Add in that your first person view is constantly jerking about, that advancment markers are often not very clear, which is especially bad when you are being shot at, and a very clunky 'combat' mechanic, reminds us why there are not many games like this. This game probably would have been ten times better with a third person view.
Remember those bad game masters that made their own home brewed game systems and would run you through those terrible home made campaigns, trapping in combats that overpower you where retreat or withdraw is not an option. This is a game that takes all that frustration and pours it into a into a single poorly executed mess. Lets go with the pros of the game: It's pretty and runs well. Cons: The pacing of the game is terrible. You are constantly struggling against being out numbered, out classed, or out leveled. Often it's all at the same time. You do not get equipment, cash or levels fast enough and every battle is a grueling slug fest. This is a turned based game that is put to a real time beat, so managing your group in combat leaves you constantly pausing the game to micromanage each character. Character pathing is atrocious and the character 'bases' are larger than they look often making it look like you can move a character thru a space but then the get stuck or roam around the entire battle field provoking free attacks from the enemy which leads to... The stupid engagement mechanic. If you 'engage' a target and then they try to move away you get a free attack. This only works against you never in your favor. Enemies that come in large groups will pin your front line and then the rest will maneuver around and get to your casters and if they try to flee, the enemy gets a free attack. When you have a stat that adjusts the radius of a spell you need a casting circle so you're not constantly guessing where the spell is going to strike. Also you can't cast on character portraits so you have to hunt for your team on the battle field to heal or support them. The stat system is anti intuitive spreading defenses over six stats so you always have glaring weakness that allows one of the enemy to one hit your characters. There is no enough space for the aggravating cons of this game. Don't waste your money.
The game is a real time squad based tactical black ops corp espionage game set in a cyberpunk style mega city. Pros: - Beautiful looking game, lots of neon and mega city feel. -Large range of equipment, augmentations, weapons. -Decent range of skills. -Most facilities have multiple ways to approach them usually having back doors, or vents you can use for entrance to the facilities. -You can hack guards, patrol drones, etc. and use them until you send the guard back for cloning or they are killed. Cons: - The real time aspect has no pause so you if you go for a combat option you can quickly get overwhelmed managing your team, especially if you hack and are controlling multiple guards. Your only option is to use a time slowing power from one of your team which drains their power so using any of his other abilities shortens your slow time. - Every facility has an unlimited number of security personnel and no matter how fast you kill them more will arrive. I really wish they had a cap of onsite personnel so if you blast through the security you can have a minute or two before off site support personnel arrived. This pretty much rules out any combat options for success. - fifteen hours in the enemy always has better equipment than you. They have units with body armor. You get body armor, they get shields. You get energy shields, they get mini guns. Always being behind the tech curve gets really annoying which makes a combat option no matter how well executed ending in you being overwhelmed by high tech. - without a pause it is hard to control your team if you split up. - You cannot zoom out far enough to get a good overview of where you are and where the enemy is. - It is hard to determine which cover blocks line of sight and which cover does not. It is a good game but has flaws that can cause a fifteen minute stealth run to turn into a slaughter of your team because of something that seemed very arbitrary, which can cause a lot of frustration.
