I'm sure the devs had all kind of grand intentions, but this is just not a playable game. The combat system has high hopes of being "authentic," but it just fails, miserably. I happen to have some training in western swordplay, and the handling gets a few things right, but this is a video game. The moves, footwork and fluidity of authentic swordplay just don't translate to a keyboard of video game controller, so when you try to make it authentic it just ends up being akward, clumsy, and generally frustrating as hell. Akward, clumsy, and frustrating as hell, in a nutshell, sums up this entire game.
I realize it's still in development, so hopefully some of these issues will go away - and if they do, awesome! 1. Dialogue is silly. Screen after screen of pointless, akward dialogue with NPC's will irritate and frustrate. 2. The economy, especially in the early game, is broken. Be prepared to grind on missions for barely more than the fee each harbor charges to undock (average money made from mission = 150 credits or so - average fee to undock = 100 credits). To put that in perspective, any significant upgrade for your ship costs 5000 credits or more. This makes missions mostly pointless, at least until you get a jump drive (6000+ credits) - which of course, you can't. 3. This cycle can be broken by meeting a random NPC or two who will offer you a mindless task for a ridiculous amount of money. However, there's no challenge or "fun" factor to these missions, which makes the payoff seem cheap - and the reward of purchasing upgrades to your ship pointless, since that only offers the chance to grind on more pointless missions. 4. The game doesn't seem to have a coherent "goal" or plot. While some aspects are fun (below), those quickly become repetitive as a result. Not all is horrible: 1. The maintenance system for upgrading and modding your ship is well done (though a few bugs do still exist in the beta). 2. Space is vast, though fairly empty. In the end, kudos to the devs for attempting this project - it's a great idea, just needs lots of refinement and development, and much more content. An over-arching story-line, periodic goals and rewards, and a more coherent and balanced economy would definitely make the game a winner.
*BANG BANG BANG.......BANG BANG "ching"* That is all. If you've played it you know exactly what I'm talking about. Still just as fun as when it came out.
This is a great example of a studio using crowd-funding to keep itself going, with little or no care for the final product. This is, hands-down, the most buggy game I've ever played hot off the press (yes, that includes such bug-infested titles as Gothic 3, Ultima IX, etc). There are detrimental bugs present that will keep you from completing quests - yes, even after 4 patches. The whole game just feels really, really half-@$$ed. And that's a crying shame, because a lot of us had high hopes for it. Beyond the bugs, there still just isn't much here. The writing tries to be "hard core" and "gritty," but instead comes off like a six-year-old trying to use bad words - immature and kind of pathetic. The "hard decisions" don't put the player in a difficult place, nor do they add "realism" to the story line - in fact, they're not really decisions at all, since in the end it doesn't really matter what you do; the story will end up the same. The plot is transparent beyond belief and feels like the writers spent all of about 5 minutes thinking about it. And while I'm certainly not one to complain about language and "adult" themes, in this game it feels like both are present just so that the studio could say they made a game with adult language and themes - and again, this comes off as being immature and ridiculous. The gameplay itself is monotonous and, dare I say it, boring, at best - at worst, it's quite frustrating. If you don't believe me, we'll talk again after you critically fail a quest-required lock or safe, jamming it beyond repair (there is no alternative to open the safe, as the game snickeringly informs you) - for the 100th time, and realize the last save is the auto-save at the beginning of the area - 5 hours of gameplay ago. There are no "ground-breaking" concepts, no new UI ideas, no "revolutionary" changes. I'm very disappointed in InExile and Bryan Fargo. They're capable of a lot better than this.
Had really high hopes for this game, and shelved it 3/4 of the way through. 1. It's very buggy. The first part (Arizona) is ok; there are at least no bugs that will require you to look up a work-around or get through a quest. The second part (California)? Look out. I've run into at least 2 major bugs that frankly I can't think of a good excuse for - one is main-quest-crippling; the other is a logistics bug that is not game ending but REALLY annoying. Did the studio not even bother to play through the main quest before release? 2. The story and writing sucks. Sorry, but there's just no other way to put it. The main story is amateurish, predictable, and laughable in its attempt to be "hardcore." The side quests are so much worse they almost make the main story look passable. Also, I have no problem with "adult" language and content, especially in a game like this (I hope for it, actually), but in this case it's so pathetically over-done that it appears the writers were just trying to be as "shocking" as possible, and it comes off as transparent and ridiculous. 3. The overall gameplay design is poor. In some cases I "get" what the designers were attempting, but when I have to save-spam to open a safe that is the key to an entire side quest, because my character (at level 8/10 in the skill) critically fails to pick the lock 40% of the time - thereby rendering the safe inoperable and the quest unplayable - that just feels like laziness or ineptitude on the part of the designers. 4. The much-trumpeted "no good choice" decision tree is a gimmick, and a poor one at that - it just falls flat. Even though you are forced, early in the game, to make a choice between saving one settlement or another, it actually matters not a whit which you pick. Instead of rewarding us for choices, this game makes them meaningless. Conclusion - this feels like a game in which the studio took the money of a well-meaning and hopeful fan-base and wasted it. I wish I hadn't bought it.
