A combination of badly implemented source mechanics, nonsensical levels, and incompetent game design. It seems the developers couldn't write an AI so they attempted to compensate by throwing waves of brain dead enemies that don't have to follow the rules and orchestrating mission goals seemingly designed to induce frustration. As an example, you will escort slow moving tiny NPC's across the map to a drop point (a lot), then walk all the way back across the map to another drop point dragging you through hordes of brain dead enemies that mysteriously popped up out of no where to another drop point fpr evac, even though you were literally right next to an empty landing pad. In one mission the ambush point was so obvious I moved 3 of my mechs to that location, had the forth step on the trigger hexagon and watched a mech lance appear out of thin air right next to my mechs. Most of the missions seems to be story variations on two concepts - escort tiny slow moving NPC's or blow up X number of building. Story missions are the worst and all depend on figuring out what gimmick this level is intended for rather than application of any solid strategy. By the end of the game you will simply grab every “biggest mech” you have collected and steam roll the content. The designers apparently don’t understand why mechs come in different weight classes and it's not usually a good sign when the tutorial phase has the hardest missions in the game. If for love of the source material you do decide to play this, do yourself a favor and grab one of the many mods that address this game’s numerous shortcomings.
Ignoring the numerous bugs and SEVERE balance problems (its early access) the game is worse for trying to be both a D:OS game and a Baldur's Gate sequel. It doesn't work. It comes off as a watered down blend of the two that doesn't do justice to the mechanics of either. I don't see this being fixed as it would most likely require an entire rewrite to do so. As an aside... why does every enemy down to the weakest goblin have a bag full of grenade weapons and near infinite throwing range? Picking even the smallest fight in this game feels like you were attack by a battleship.
Poor Co-op implementation is made worse by constant game stopping bugs. My wife and I just gave up even trying to play it after 2 hours of trying to figure out how to zone out of the tutorial -- after over an hour of trying to get connected to begin with. I recommend anyone wanting to play this game to wait for several patches to be released and possibly for a sell because given the failed launch I imagine it won't be too long before we see this discounted.
Quick notes: 1. I hate the combat system in this game more than anything I have played in decades. It's slow and clunky and hard because its badly designed and non-responsive, not because it requires strategy. 2. The story is that of an utter idiot that seems to go out of his way to do stupid things with no player agency what so ever. My reaction to a game shouldn't be contantly shaking my head at how stupid the protaganist is. 3. It's apparently been out a year and I still run into frequent bugs like getting stuck in cielings and terrain. 4. The amount of fiddly micromanagent is irritating. Your character seems to attract dirt like some kind of soil magnet. This doesn't make the game realistic it makes it tedious.
Besides the technical problems that still plague the game after two entire releases (they have improved but are still there) the game is kind of a mess. There are massive difficulty spikes, content that will punish you for not having the perfect party selection (if you are going to force a particular configuration why give the player a choice?), and numerous other problems that just make the game frustating. If it were more polished and well thought out this could be a great game. The graphics are ok but the music is amazing and the puzzles are fun. Keep in mind, I am old enough to have played the originals on release (*sigh*) so I am pretty much the target market here. Nostalgia alone makes me more receptive to this game than most people will probably be. But I can see through the nostalgia to be honest about the fact that this game is mostly a miss. If you are more tolerant of bugs and occasional poor design decisions there is a fairly unique game here -- but there are also much better games to be spending your time on.
While the game has a lot of promise and does some make some interesting changes to the CRPG template, it is full of bugs and unfinished content. Frequent crashes, broken abilities and traits, graphical glitches, and information screens that display programming code instead of formatted content -- the game is just not done. It also suffers from a severe lack of polish. Many quests are unclear and often break or get stuck. The game also has some of the worst balance problems in any RPG I have ever played. The current state of the game is bad enough that I literally went back to the site to double check that I had not bought a game in early access. With a few months of additional bug fixes and balancing this will be a great RPG that might rival some of the classics. But I would recommend waiting until the developer completes that process before buying.
The game is extremely poorly balanced. Even on normal setting you spend the first few levels constantly being slaughtered by ridiculously over powered enemies, but by the time you hit level 6 or 7 combat becomes trivial and boring. Other than combat the game is near perfect, but since you spend most of the game in combat the rest of the game can't make up for this obvious deficit. It's almost as if the devs intentionally put an inverse learning curve in the game. The first island in particular is very badly conceived. You will move from one fight to another being stomped by enemies with many times your power and ability, while your characters have almost no combat options to use to try to outfight your opponents. There is no guidance or path to prevent you from turning a corner and being steam rolled by enemies that are simply impossible to beat at your current level. Hard games are fun, but repeatedly putting your players in positions that are impossible to win because of bad design just wastes your players’ times.
