I should have watched some gameplay videos's. I hate time limits in any game regardless of the format they take. I did like the art and the campy story was okay enough to enjoy. But yea, wasted potential. Game really encourages save scumming when developing relationships... total bore makes we want to just look up the best dialog path and that is less fun not more fun. Combat is definitely unique and interesting, though the objective can be annoying for the extra exp. In short play the game one way for best effect, which is boring. Game has potential but it feels wasted. And OMG the loading screens between everything... what is that? its a flipping load fest, everything comes with a loading screen... its actually pretty nasty!
Look, this is a really great game, I love the attention to detail which I am really digging so big thumbs up there. Some times tedium in a game is offputting but it seems to be well done in this game which is part of its fun with a few caveats. That said -1 stars for some terrible or rather lets just say missing/unrealistic elements and bugs. Bugs... -Units bug often on the wait for clear to proceed flag. This happens so often I am wondering how this got past QA/Testing. This is the absolute most glarring thing the gets my goat here. Units just look right at an enemy unit and turn away ignorning them. Almost want to remove 2 stars on this one. Mechanics -Really could use a list of actions to take in a single waypoint, like use the peek camera, then kick the door down, toss a flash bang! -no look/lean/shoot around corners, seriously guys why is a corner peek-a-boo not an option here? This is practically sinful as the defending units have the ability to hide behind objects. -too much random. You can litterally run the same plan without a single change until you win making all of the tedium very irrelavent TOO much of the time. -no Shadowing, often times a shadow is employed in tactical situtations to provide support to the unit in front of them. Would really like to be able to tell a unit to shadow for ceratin stretches or to break off and do their own thing.
Okay, the game has a lot of bugs, but thankfully they usually do not detract too much. Still very fun to play. minus 1 star for the number of bugs and the types of bugs. I have gotten stuck inside a wall, on a rail, and in mid air. I have frozen, crashed, and even had the gui itself and a portion of the keys stop working entirely requiring me to restart the game. I could walk around and still fight and kill enemies, but could not change weapons with scroll wheel, the middle mouse button, or shortcuts. This really is a problem that should never be occuring. Sometimes I have to stop pressing any keys on the keyboard before it will even register that I am pressing forward, or heal or anything really right in the middle of a fight... very annoying. The Rocket launcher sucks hard, got mine to 900+ damage and nothing takes much damange from it usually 200 or so which is bullgarbage, regardless of resistances. Most of the upgrades are nothing more than window dressing. some upgrades do not even appear to do their jobs, and you can still miss an enemy even if you are dead on! Yep, bullets, or I mean your very preciously few stocked rockets & nade ammo will just pass right through enemies like they are not even there wasting a round. That said there are more than enough other weapons that rock and the game is still very fun to play. The story is very fun to work through and the side quests help to make the world feel more open. But if bugs chew your hide up, maybe wait for a few revisions, but I think you can have more than enough fun as it is. Do not take this game too seriously, that is part of it awesomeness in my book. I am not sure what other players were expecting when they complained about this aspect, the irreverant fun and snide, snarky, jackass smartassery is what makes this game! The whole point is to feel awesome while dropping hillarious one-liners while you mow down demons like butter in an oven! Now, stop reading about my pissing and moaning and "Go get some Wang!"
By far my biggest beef with this game is the fact that you have to sit and watch everything happening. The graphics were great at near 4k, the animated cards were a very nice touch, but being able to only place 25% of the game while you sit and watch 75% of it is just NOT for me!
This game has a great game-play concept behind it, however 'arbitrary' difficulty mechanics prevent the game from really shining as it could or should. One example of the arbitrary difficulty is that your own weapons stop charging if an enemy ship cloaks, while they can continue to charge weapons and fire at you if they have the stealth weapon mod. This game is fun, but making a simple mistake can be punishing. Winning the game is not done by skill but by luck. You can make zero mistakes in a game and die quickly, and in other games you can make a lot of mistakes and still limp along far into the game. But to win, you have to get lucky as well as barely make any mistakes. I have played the game several times too many to count now and have only beat it 3 times. I am fairly certain my failure rate is over 80%. Most of the time I reset the game early because i was handed an absolutely bad wrap at first by visiting 3 systems in a row where nothing was there or that a shop was pointlessly place at the start of the 1st sector. This is the sort of game where you get the "I played FTL and survived" T-Shirt. If you are not the type of player that can tolerate inane/insane difficulty mechanics then I invite you to buy and play a copy of FTL - You will finally learn what a Love/Hate relationship is.
