Game is complex without depth. It is a real shame because it is still fun to play at first. Everything devolves down to throwing mobs at the end of the day. The only depth comes from trying to throw the right types of mobs but since so many different types are available and usually combined it just results in everything being the same. Bugs galore... they are not exactly game breaking by omg there is some kind of a bug with everything. Drone's cannot be controlled. Beams... they suck, they suck bad by comparison to the first game. Beams are expensive and do nearly nothing because even though they are hitting no damage is registered, this was most common on the Lone Spire ship. I watched the ship keep attacking and even though the beam looks like it was hitting it did not actually register a hit until I clicked on the enemy unit to force and attack and then it hit. Pathing is occasionally bugged... every once in a while fleets will go exactly the opposite direction you want them to go if you send them more than 1 system away. This is occasional enough to get you not remain vigilant watching it and then wham... you notice that one of your fleets is way out in BFE for no reason getting slammed in an enemy system you didn't even send them too. The new ships bound to fleets management is a headache and I began to hate managing them once I started getting large fleets. One problem traded for a different problem and results in no change in the micromanagement headache when it comes down to it. The progression is likewise annoying. I hate that I need to keep going back to old systems to add new tech I just recieved and the new tech tree seems less intuitive than the original. You can also spend tech points in ways that really wastes them and is nice for flexibility but gives hearburn when you find out that your fleets do not upgrade the way you expect them. looks like I am out of space...
Buy on sale. So much wasted potential. Fast firing low damage low energy guns are clearly superior in this game. You might fight 3 enemy ships but you cannot have 3 enemy ships. Story is not compelling it feels tacked on. Boarding enemy ships is pointless because they only self destruct with your crew on board, but it does offer a way to kill crew you don't like since you cannot get rid of them any other way. RNG makes no sense. You can never really improve yourself or disposition, just add more crew and hope RNG is your friend. If you need to rely on RNG this much to make the game difficult just put it on autoplay and let me just watch and have to do nothing. That would be more entertaining that having to micro manage things in the game to boredom. Crew assignments was interesting at first but quickly becomes needlessly tedious. Kudos for the peaceful and combat save crew position features but they still suck because crew will forget that they have fire suppression, security, and repair assignments so you have to check them at the start of each new combat. Annoying! This is not FTL, this is not even a rip off, maybe FTL inspired, but heavily modified and definitely not well balanced. Game could easily be 4 stars if the debs put in the effort to make the game that nice. I find that I just am not able to remain interested in the game long enough to play it for long.
Own this game on Steam. The game is not bad, but it is not good either. It does have some high difficulty, but it is mostly contrived difficulty. Build 1 block to close to a Group of zombies or Doom Viliage and it sets off a chain reaction rush into your village. Just 1 zombie getting through your defenses is enough to sink you. Campaign is a very mixed bag as well. But its really just a graduating chain of the survival game that has been there since release. Difficutly is not very confiurable. Example... suppose you want to face a lot of zombies but also want to play longer... you can't. Increase in difficultly also means less time to win map or build before a horde arrives. There is however a map generator so you can make your own custom maps and share them. Game relies on difficulty as part of its gimmick and I feel done poorly. Game is very easy to beat on any difficulty provided you play just about one single way every time "slow and methodical". Game also has poor balance issues and actively prevents save scumming so those that really hate perma death should avoid. Yes this game very fun for some folks, but make sure you are in that camp by watching some game play videos. Game was fun for me, but I am repeated turned off by the whacky zombie rush triggers that can happen when you play on the harder difficulties... but honestly easy is just boring in this game. High difficulty is the only real excitement and you can quickly be punished for it.
This game was pretty fun at first, playing with friends is also fun, but frustrating if you are not careful with moves. The character improvement system is novel and interesting. You have to buy food to increase your stats and you have to buy moves to increase your combat repetoire. Game has plenty of easter eggs towards the genre and plenty of characters and moves to try and test. This is fun at first! Then comes the bad... Wow, I have a friend that loves these types of games and we were excited to play at first but wow... did these guys miss the mark after time went by. Some characters are clearly loved on by the devs while others are hated to the point they are useless. Some characters are slow, move slow, hit slow and they do are not compensated for it with increased damage. Brawlers and Wrestlers mostly suck and are useless compared to Ryan and Glen for example. In fact the Devs hate wrestling entirely and makes you pay heavily if you miss grabing characters by stunning you. Seriously? Near the end the ememies all play keep away so it is nothing but a jockey for position to keep from getting back/pincer attacked because that is about the only think the AI tries to do to you. It is beyond annoying requiring you to use only fast move/attack characters. Enemies can move backwards almost as fast you can run. Spamming the same move in an ultra boring pattern is the key to wining... almost too easy in fact. You can mow down enemies on mass with certain moves while other moves jsut do not work or will never land due to how they execute. You are going to spend a lot of time running enemies down and it's annoying! Would like to see more games like this so I think it is still worth buying and playing, but play with friends and avoid the wrestler brawlers because the devs nerfed them hard. It is clear that more than 50% of the moves and Characters in this game were just padding without any useful purpose.
Seriously, I am not seeing what all the hype is about. I am begining to wonder if people are so eager for this to be a success that they will themselves to believe a mediocre game is something more than it actually is. Bloodstained: Circle of the Moon was a more faithful game than this. I feel like I am playing through molasses the entire game. The environments are nice and the look of the game does bode well for the game. But there are just too many flaws and bugs in the game. The weapons all feel like cheap knock offs. SOTN had much more crisp weapon animations and movement speed. Game is highly focused on timing your hits, far beyond what SOTN required you miss and you get hit. No matter how you slice the pie this game is a "meh" quality Metroidvania. Game is at risk of becoming a cliche of itself. It's like they took everything SOTN had and then phoned it in. Exploration feels, rigged or on the rails too much to be a "metroidvania" either. Bag drop bugs, OMG they are horrible to the point where I am losing around 25% of my drops to bugs. I have had floating bags in the middle of the air, stuck in the wall, stuck in ledges, stuck in the ground and I cannot pick them up. How is this getting past Q&A? How about the terrible Controller Support, you must have an Xinput game pad or your controller is not supported. You have to get an Xinput wrapper or a controller to keyboard emulation tool. Console gamers are obviously being catered to here while PC gamers are just being disregarded. Wait for this game to be 50% off... after all the devs seem to have only given 50% themselves. They had a winning hand here and they squandered it!
I like the story and I like the Attmosphere. The Fighting Mechnics are decent but has loads of room for improvement. Now for the bad... which really hold the game back. Bad Mechanics in the fights and over the top difficulty which come from arbitrary difficulty gimmicks like Scouting is a random thing. You can only carry a very limited amount of supplies and you have to lose that all at the end of the mission making you spend money for nothing. Every mechanic in this game is intentionally designed to put you at a dissadvantage for no "plausible" reason, from members of your roster disappearing for 1 week randomly, to character instantly being stressed out from one single curio. I mean seriously, don't put this stuff in your game and then try to make me believe that this town residents have not already burned everything down and murdered everyone in madness by now. Debuffs are cranked up and Buffs are toned way down. Gring Grind Grind, too much pointless grinding and boring same room, same hall, same enemy, same things over and over agian. You can easiliy run into a boss enemy in just the 2nd mission. I barely played this long enough to get my moneys worth out of it. Another game that is only interesting because of it's difficulty which also only serves to make it less fun at the same time.
The idea and premise behind the game is great. I do enjoy running around in the world and visiting the different cities hiring mercs and checking out the stories and events. The adult themes/writing is a most welcome element and glad to see in the game. The mission setup and map travel is really interesting, though it would be nice to have horses/carts for faster travel and options instead of just 1 speed. This game really suffers under great ideas being poorly implemented. But the worst park in my opinion is the use of RNG the way that they have. RNG counts more than your skill or tactics in this game. Sure a good strategy helps, but not enough to overcome the RNG problems. This game of course suffers from the usual ignorance most medival games do when it comes to combat. I don't ask that games be "realistic" but I do ask that they not be absurd as well. Stupid things like... Archers that can't shoot after being attacked and have to "escape" to an empty space before firing, or units being able to infinitely attack when you try to move backward a space. Having to choose between a shield wall or spear wall when doing both at the same time is the "correct" mechanic. Fully armored units being able to move as far as units without any armor or becoming just as tired when moving making encuberance mechanics appear comical. 80% Accuracy often misses even 2 times in a row for me, but 30% accuracy hits as often as 60~80% and commonly hits 2 times in a row, how does that even math, my brain hurts seeing it happen so often? This is a sign of a really low quality RNG implementation. I still plan to keep playing the game and enjoy the World/Setting, but why did they go and have to damage they game with inane difficulty gimmicks. That's not fun, thats just unfun!
Game relies to much on RNG to "simulate" variety be objectively fun. Yes, you can have some fun maps, but you can also have some unfun maps where advanced factories can spaw several systems away, turret/ship fabricators are useless ones, or terrible module awards from Champion missions. I went through 7 missions in one game and never got the spire ship or the photon modules awarded to me. Another game gave them to me on the 1st mission success. Too much "what you get" randomness in a way that impacts gameplay too much. I have had systems spawn with loads of advance level 4 stations just 2 jumps away. I have also had the systmes surrounding my home system with 1 & 2 metel production making them worthless to capture increasing AI and dragging out my initial start of the game. It is a terrible experience to play for a couple of hours and realize that this map seed and RNG options just suck to much to enjoy the game play and thinking about starting over... no wait... now I am thinking about not playing anymore. The game does have lots of interesting ways to play and ship types but the RNG for what you get just does not make for a quality game play experience. I enjoyed the game for a while, but the middle of the journey was the best. The more I learn about the game and it's mechanics the more bored I get with it. But like I said... since I can't know what I am going to be allowed to have... I just cannot feel comelled to play the game further. What a massive let down because the game would be a great replacement to SINS... This goes down as a game ruined by bad RNG decisions for me.
If you liked Stardew Valley you should at least get your money's worth of fun out of the game, but it is by no means a complete game yet. Several game play aspects have been changed frequently and a few bugs have been fixed. The game should clearly be marked "early release". It has potential, but you are not likely to enjoy this one as long as some of its fellow gametypes.
Where to start is the question. Easy to play... but no balance to anything. I like the concept but the implementation is meh levels of effort. This game could become so much better but this just feels like it will never get there.
