Whoever suggested that this game was something like Disco Elysium... it is far from that. This is more like a visual novel with some point-and-click mechanic thrown in between. Extremely linear. There are waterfalls of text to read (some of which is just pointless and superfluous filler) and some seemingly inconsequential dialog "choices" and dice rolls. There is virtually no "game" here. Not sure what the point of "playing" through this more than once would be.
... except without any navigation aid. Feels like a KB game. However, the quest design is so bland. Much of it is just running around fetching stuff. Way too many quests provide few or no clues, as to where a player should go to obtain a requested item. It's as if someone intentionally created these quests in order to waste as much player's time (and patience) as possible. The game feels very long, because it's padded with too much running back and forth, or with clueless running around searching for something. Looking up quest guides online significantly reduces the time spent doing these chores, but it feels like I'm just using spoilers to actually enjoy whatever good aspects remain in the game. It reminded me of some cliché MMO quests (and not in a good way), but those usually had some pointers, as to where I should go and what I should do there. The game feels filled with too much cheap and lazy filler, possibly to cut down on development costs.
Nice game, conceptually. The problem is that anything below 90% hit/success probability for a player's party member results in something like 50% chance realistically, usually the first attempt resulting in a miss. The developer likely deemed fair, evenly distributed dice rolls and playing by the Das Schwarze Auge rules too easy, so they rigged the dice generator against the player. Did they really have no idea how to balance the difficulty in some less blatant (and insulting to the player's intelligence) way? Beside this, the difficulty curve is very uneven, spiking up abruptly towards the end of the game. So, the player maxes out their hit chances, only to find out that special combat moves no longer work on endgame monsters, because of a <90% hit chance against them. A disappointing experience, ruined by developer laziness.
Do you enjoy deadlines and stress? Do you dream of becoming the protagonist of The Groundhog Day? Then you might like this game. There is some kind of a time limit in almost every aspect of the game. It is not apparent in which order you should do strategic things like research and facility building. Then the game proceeds to punish you with increasing difficulty in case you did not make something in time, setting you up for even more failure in the future. The only options seem to be starting over again or suffering through. The turn based missions are not any better. Re-loading a saved game does not change the outcome of dice rolls (not in your favour, at least) - only doing actions in a different order does. And then, when you have replayed your turn(s) so many times you eventually figured it out, an enemy one-shots you into full cover and you can start over. I get deadlines, stress and frustration at my job. But I can at least make steady progress for my invested time and I get paid. This game feels worse than my job and I even have to pay for it? I am sorry, I play games to relax and enjoy myself. What good is packing a game full of gigabytes of cut scenes, when you can't even beat the original Microprose UFO: The Enemy Unknown in entertainment value?
