It's not an adventure, just a series of "character needs single item" events that lead to nothing. There are no surprising outcomes and you cannot "play" with the choices and this deception is made all the worse by hiding underneath really good art. It's nice to interact with various elements in the world but it's all surface no gameplay, no narrative, no widescreen support (seriously, your card items do not expand past the square window, lazy, lazy, lazy). Very disappointing and borderline fraudulent.
The exploration and tactical combat is enjoyable on each mission exploring dead ships and fighting monsters and mechanicals. The optional data jack combat is similar although I found the loot from those missions to be lacking and did these more for the information on the map or to disable security measures. The story is good and reflects which corporations you side with although I the perks weren't good enough. There is a problem that the story missions jumped in level requirement so you must doing regular missions to get strong enough - if you enjoy the exploration and combat anyway these are not grindy but I certainly don't recommended binge-playing this game all day. There are certain levels that feel like roadblocks where enemies suddenly get much stronger or have a lot of armor/shields. At first I thought it was lack of decent weapon from a loot drop but plenty of drops occur although finding that special one that clicks is pure RNG. (Just don't get attached to it because a few levels later, it'll be replaced.) The problem was more to do with the game does very little to teach you how your shields work and how to take advantage of them. There is a tutorial level but that's more about movement and the basics of combat. Shame really because shields are crucial to getting good and enjoying the game. There are clearly better classes than others out of the 8 available - engineer is meh at the beginning and plain shit the higher level you are, while soldier is great and smuggler is too. Within each class there are three main trees to skill from, usually best to pick all of one and grab passives from the others. Party re-skilling is cheap and well worth doing. My two major criticisms are: I wanted more variety overall from the locations and enemies; and the loot space on a mission is only 40 items FFS. I understand limiting stash space but to only allow 40 items on a mission, especially early on when you are scraping for gold, was wrong.
-plot starts you on an abandoned beach AGAIN (lack of imagination is starting to look like laziness) -same bullshit move things with poor inventory control that gets in the way -same elemental skill system that doesn't work with D&D abilities and spells -combat is always turn based NOT the real-time that can be interrupted as needed -story (early game) relies heavily on fake emergency/urgency crapola (RED FLAG for crap story writing that cannot generate a compulsion to investigate the world) -text/dialog overlay is poor/weak/difficult to read -party limited to 4 characters (why??) -where is the alignment system? lawful/neutral/evil -over-priced -where is Minsc and Boo? Is this how games are marketed and released now, in the model of No Man's Sky? Launch a clusterfuck product as a basis for publicity that has literally none of the expected features and has the audacity to charge full price for something that stinks. Hello Larian, goodbye Larian.
I love the concept and aesethic of this game a lot. For most of the time the gameplay is far superior to the Darkest Dungeon cobblers of shit dice rolls and an absence of the ability to strategise. But... The rogue-poo tendency is still present and this can really upset battles...I've had characters on the final level one-shot on easy mode. I've had super strong characters deal weak damage for reasons I can't work out and are not apparently obvious via UI (again on the final level). I also hate the fact ALL abilities are essentially gated depending on your position. It's dumb. They cleverly implemented a mana and wrath system and yet only 3 out of your 6 abilities are available per turn, sometimes the 4th depending on the wrath available. Why does position have to relate to your skills? Why can't position only matter for physical damage? Why is the rogue-poo so poo? And yet... The sanity and physical health system seem well balanced and provide a neat combination of party, or you can go full mental or full physical for a laugh and it still plays really well. I also like the materials system and the use of the graveyard to assist with healing, wrath etc. The idea of leveling up Iratus and equipping him with items really allows for some subtle choices for combat. The encounters can help in many ways but I wish there was more of them and less of the tedious ones (raise a minion). But... Several of the minions need to be unlocked before you can make them. Developers: STOP DOING THIS. STOP LOCKING OFF CONTENT YOU BASTARDS. I'm not motivated to play on, I'm motivated to call you out for doing this nonsense.
Let's get the good points down: Player directed story (tick) Chess style combat with stances and specials and fatigue (tick) Art style (tick) Music (tick) Core (story) gameplay loop has been nailed. Now the bad stuff Firstup the camera zoom in/zoom out is sickening, jarring, disorientating and there are better ways to hide the fact your characters are not animated but this was a pain. In map mode the camera bollocks is just damn annoying and I'd rather have a static camera to see where I am and what options I have instead of feeling as though I'm partially drunk. Also the camera zoomy thing takes bloody ages to complete...I'm not feeling the atmosphere, if anything it's broken while I'm waiting, and waiting, and waiting... Secondly the text spams onto the screen in a variety of ways, from full screenwide lines to speech bubbles to context text dialog choice boxes - each has it's own style and it's a mess, a graphic design failure of the worst kind. I understand that it's trying to make the most of what is essentially a lot of text to convey mood, motive and action in lieu of visual graphics but not like this. If you're a really slow reader it might feel nice but as a quick reader my eyes are being pulled about all over the place and it's nasty. Thirdly - only two characters available at the start. The rest are unlocks. Fuck off developers for doing this. Stop doing this. Locking the difficulty I totally understand but not the characters. Wanky choice. Poor choice. Developers: stop locking your game FFS. I'm not motivated to carry on, I'm motivated to drop your game and slag it off online. Like this.
Controls are slow to respond and character has an irritating sludginess when moves. This wouldn't be a problem if there wewn't so many time based puzzles but later on it's just one switch-flip-fest after another with timing being the challenge as opposed to working it out. There's also no story, no dialog, no narrative direction, no emotional engagement to go with any of the gameplay. If there is a point to literally playing this game other than the puzzles, it missed me. You are literally progressing from one push-this, pull-that puzzle with no connection beyond the obvious that they are next to each other. Also you are meant to collect 11 lights. No idea why, didn't care really, wasn't made to feel anything when I walk over one and heard a squelch. Of course it looks nice and it's not just regular black and white but pretentious black and white (i.e. with grain, depth of field, blur, subtle gradients) - I was honestly expecting a title card saying "Fin" to appear at the end.
As a story adventure with lots of dialog and weirdness there's a lot to like from that start. The setting and art is great and the character creation offers a potential variety to progression and gameplay... BUT.... Where it fell down for me was the niggles that just kept appearing the more I played. - You cannot avoid combat and if you choose the non-physical/melee characters you are screwed. - Combat is not good and feels like I'm fighting the UI to see what's going on and what I can do, all the while ALWAYS taking stupid amounts of damage. - Your characters need food else they get exhausted - there's a constant depleting stat because of course there is - Your characters need rest else they loose sanity -, again, there's a constant depleting stat because of course there is (it just sucks the atmosphere out of the game to have to constantly bloody rest) - You are constantly rummaging through things to find cigarettes (the game's currency) and it's never enough. -I've not quite worked out why there's a stealth option in the game because it's not effective. -There's a crafting system because of course there is (I'm starting to think this game copied far too much from zombie survival games, to it's detriment)
It's very rare to play an isometric tactics game that is all fun and no crap. I loved the variety of characters and skills and enemies (my favourite enemy was the musical duck creature.) The special classes were fun to play with although from I've played of them the Princess seems stronger from the start than say the Werewolf or Vampire but that might have something to do with my party composition. The story was nothing extradordinary but it did move things along and opened up the map at just the right pace...no arbitrary roadblocks here. There were the obligatory immortals to mess things up and those battles felt more special that "regular" enemies. I liked the replensible items idea and the overall amount of treasures and items to collect. The shop continually had new items and gold was never in short supply although you had to be careful what you bought, unless you wanted to repeat earlier levels to get stocked up again. As always with these games it's a good idea to replay some of the earlier (i.e. easier) maps to get slightly ahead but that's how I like to play. If there was one complaint I had it was the UI - there's a bit of conflict going on between small and large text (and not being able to adjust it). Although you can adjust the walk speed of the characters in battle (do this!) it doesn't reflect in the story elements so it can feel like you are waiting around just a tad too long. Also the game probably feels better with a controller but as I played with mouse and keyboard it felt a bit clicky/tappy at times, especially when upgrading characters and selecting skills for the next battles.
There was a good game in here but it got lost under the stupid limited inventory system that meant LOTS and LOTS of walking. There were three options open to the devs: Option A: Give player unlimited inventory Option B: Confine the gameplay to certain areas/tasks that require little movement. Option C: What the devs chose which was dumb and meant sooooooo muuuuuuch walking that you never seem to play the game just walk the game, again and again and again and again. On top of all that: -keyboard controls stink - this game badly needs controller support and some sensible UI (e.g. M opens map, M does not close map) -quests are really difficult to keep track of -the day/night/mystic cycle is wasted opportunity
You don't fail because you made the wrong choice, you fail because the game is riddled with poor RNG-Bullshit that shits on you at a moment's notice. The events in this game are unrelated to where you are in the game, your current "power" level, crew numbers etc. There is literally no chance of defeating sudden over-powered enemies within the first sectors and it didn't feel rewarding to get passed these only to get screwed again a couple of sectors later. People who say they are good at this game are lying..it's all down to RNG. Yet again another developer hasn't learned the distinction between controlled random (i.e. balanced game) and true random (i.e. the pile of rogue poo we have here). I can see why after the RNG-balls-up that FTL is the devs made a game where they effectively removed RNG and presented perfect information to the player...in my eyes that means they didn't learn from their mistakes and never explored what controlled random is and how to get it working and went for a cop-out option. Also: -Starting ship is really crap. Proper crap. Blakes 7 crap. -No where near enough "money" for upgrades. -Bullshit unlocks (why are the better ships locked away? why? why can't we have nice things to start with? FFS developers: stop doing this.) -On ship fire system spreads as though the atmosphere is 100% oxygen. -Combat autofire is retarded. -Crew learn skills far too slowly. -You can only play game aggressively (weapons and shields above all). -Play the game for speed or evasion and you die faster than normal. -Strategy? What Strategy? -Nasty mixture of lazy pixel art and rendered art. -Over-priced -Over-rated -Rogue Poo
