To begin with, I believe Arcen Games is my favourite dev. All their games require a lot of reading. This game is no exception. I have played about 5 hours of this, puzzling my way through the campaign, and faling badly at least three times I remember - one currently. I do like the entire process of figuring out what needs be done, and then doing it. My patience and attention to detail is not what it once was, so I am by no means good at this game, and likely will not be able to put in the time to change that. I needed to look up info on the internet twice, which counts against the experience, but I hope that is improved once the game id fully released.
I bought No Man's Sky on preorder, but only recently have I been able to purchase a computer on which I could really play the game. When I was younger, about a deacde and a half ago, I used to play this game called Noctis. Basically, you fly from star to star, refueling and landing on planets, where sometimes you'd come across alien animals that looked like kangaroos. When I first heard of No Man's Sky - about the vision the developers had for the game - I instantly knew it was a buy for me, because I saw it as the spiritual successor to Noctis that I always wanted. And by that criteria it has more than delivered. Anything above that has, for me, been purely icing on the cake. I especially enjoy the vocabulary hunting and the environment scanning aspects. The game does have it's flaws, to be fair. It's not always clear what's availble where (I spent a ton of nanites buying tech at the Anomaly that I later got for free by following the story), and some flaws may be more due to my half-potato of a system than issues with the game per se.
Purchased the First Colony Edition during the Summer Sale 2020. I like computer games, but as a rule I have no patience to play them. Surviving Mars earns a 5-star rating from me for being one of a handful of games to break this mould. I very much enjoy the game, starting from the theme, through the gameplay and design. I especially enjoy playing through the various mysteries. I am delighted by the Green Planet expansion, as it plays to my favourite subgenre of sci-fi. I have palyed less than 100 hours, so I'm not even a novice at the game; yet I feel that I will be playing this one for a long time to come, due to the variation in Mystery and Commander profiles that really add flavour to the game. I can't wait to see what expansions they come up with next.
