I played most of the way through this not long after release, lost interest, came back and replayed it all the way later. I think that CDPR did a pretty reasonable job of fixing up its problems and getting it into shape. Then they threw all that away in an almost total rebuild for the new DLC. You had a ton of perks to mess with across around 15 skills, some of which drastically changed how the skill and game worked; now you have small skill trees that just aren't interesting enough to convince me to play again. You got myriad stat bonuses for raising attributes, so a three body character felt vastly different from a 20 - lots of hiding behind cover and using quickhacks and tech guns; now the attributes give virtually nothing, but feel free to use everything in the game to pick up small benefits from a new mastery list that isn't explained at all. As I understand it, this revision is intended to get players out of their comfort zone, push them to try new tactics and abilities. What it actually feels like is CDPR decided to nerf what people are using the most, tossed some minor bonuses most players won't even notice around and called it a day.
It's true the store page warns you that online multiplayer isn't available, but if for instance you get a code saying "Here's a bonus discount on these great games" you may not open the store page for both games included in the code to examine them for missing features. Not being able to invade other peoples' fortresses? Okay, a little disappointing, but nothing serious missed. Getting locked out of daily challenges so you are unable to buy fancy orcs and fancier bonuses to apply to them? Now that hurts. It's still a fun game despite this lack, but I honestly can't recommend buying it on GOG over somewhere that supports those features.
On the face of it, Fate Hunters has some pretty interesting new takes on the whole card play roguelike genre. Loot clogging your inventory doesn't strictly make sense, but it does add a certain risk/reward framework to your adventure. A lack of block past a single hit shield keeps fights from dragging. Customizing your starting loadout promises some more interesting runs than Slay the Spire's opening 'blessing'. Unfortunately, it boils down to a rather bland experience. The loot does get in the way, but fights can still drag depending on the cards you've found - an inquisitor who lacks decent punch but makes up for it with healing magic, for example. The customizable loadout doesn't really live up to its promise since half your cards are skills that can't be edited. And the cards are, by and large, extremely similar. You can punch for one damage, use a knife for two with a 25% chance of double damage, this relic sword that's worth five gold if you get it out deals one to two, that mace is three... there's really very little variation. Some of your skills can be somewhat diverse, which saves this from being an immediate return. Items can also add some variation to the theme of 'kill the things'. My personal favorite among items is the dagger bandolier for the way it mixes immediate and useful reward with a long-term down side. Use it and you immediately get three daggers, six to 12 damage if you're lucky in a single turn. But now you've got three fairly standard cards taking up draws because the daggers don't just vanish. It's probably worth buying this on sale, but at least in my eyes you won't be coming back to it again and again. Low HP enemies you're essentially supposed to kill before they act just don't give it a lot of lasting power, and even the less dull ones later in the game are more aggravating than interesting - who wants to get cursed for killing an enemy you have no choice about killing?
I played the heck out of this back in the day. Making my own army of bioderms to handle titanic HERCulean war machines, carefully mining every last bit of ore off maps, arranging a handful of Sensei units with superior sensors around a force full of Giants, Demons and the like... it really makes an extremely compelling and (dare I say) immersive war sim. Before the battle starts you want to get your various 'derms assigned to appropriate HERCs, adjust loadouts for new weapons or sometimes just different ones better suited to an objective, play with the internals like ore mining tools and shield generators. There is a lot to account for if you want to make an effective fighting force against the diverse issues the robotic opponents can send your way. In battle, you'll have to worry about positioning, terrain height, how shields are focused, even bioderm stability as your pilots can get extremely stressed about being shot at. Minor changes in loadout can drastically change the battle - a Giant outfitted with mortars may shoot over a mountain ridge to hit targets down the other side, while if it has more powerful cannons that isn't going to work. Overload a Demon with high energy lasers and the like, and you may not have the energy to fire everything in one turn. Simply put, despite dated graphics this game offers an extremely tight tactical experience and I recommend it to anyone who likes turn-based strategy. I had *much* more fun with this than the recently released BATTLETECH.
Some people will tell you that this is deeply strategic, that if you make smart decisions you can win most of the time whatever the dice come up as. This is a flat-out lie. You can and will be killed, repeatedly, by horrendous luck. You will send someone to handle a crisis that must be averted immediately. They have four or five dice available, and the crisis only requires 18 to resolve it - with a reroll you expect you'll have a pretty good chance to finish this crisis with just that one person, letting the others work on life support or rest in the medical bay. Instead you will roll three 2s, which just so happen to get voided in this crisis and so are discarded without any reroll. You will take care of one of the two crises currently imperiling your ship, only to have a really critical one show up *behind* the other crisis, which means you get to decide if you want to try to resolve both crises (probably impossible since your dice pools drain quickly, but if you've stockpiled food you might manage with exceptional luck) or send your best die pool astronauts through the lesser peril, taking damage so they can hopefully fix the other one. Your one and only bright point is that, having failed to heal someone because you didn't get doubles out of five results, you can at least fill your research bank and - if you happen to have something good show up - burn the fail dice for a last second save. This really does help a lot, but it can't save you if Tharsis decides to toss up seriously unwinnable conditions.
I would like to say that I love the game. I've played quite a bit of it, and at times I do enjoy the challenge behind the tactical situations that come up. Unfortunately, there's one minor problem that keeps me from giving it above a mediocre rating - frequently, the setup of a level and what spawns where will prevent you from getting a clean sweep each turn. There will, inevitably, be times that the only mech capable of reaching a particularly Vek threat is webbed. You will have cities diagonal from each other with an enemy preparing to attack one or the other and no way to kill it without pushing it into one of those cities, doing damage yourself. Sometimes it will simply be impossible to finish enough enemies off and block enough emerging ones to avoid four widely scattered Vek, making you choose which one to ignore because your three mechs can't hit them all. This isn't just perfectionist whining. Letting a city take a hit is a major issue, because that cuts into your power reserves. You won't be able to reinforce those very often, so it is essential to avoid any damage to the grid at all in a majority of levels... and sometimes, it won't work out that way. Like in FTL, victory may not be in the cards because you didn't find enough fancy loot. But unlike FTL, where you shrug and start another game, this feels like every time you lose it's because you screwed something up. If you had deployed the artillery one square to the left you could have pushed these two Vek aside! Never mind that, if you had, they could and probably would have threatened something that it was no longer in range to defend on the right. It's a decent game, but it will never be one of my favorites. I spend far too much time kicking myself for tactical blunders when, honestly, there was no way I could have known what was spawning or anticipated which of these five cities this flying enemy would decide to threaten, and I can't cover every contingency every time.
