Recent reviews by Mike.C

While unfinished, its the closest feeling to the old Socom series you can get; the core of what we all love and enjoy is built into Task Force. Hopefully we can get the updated skeleton system, animations, and character models in the very near future! Otherwise this game could truly benefit from a competitive e-sports edge and should pursue that lane!

Yes

Clunky as hell, bad UI, bad mechanics...

After owning since release, i expected the sandbox features to be expanded upon... While a great battle sim, it never become more than just that. The shallow relationships, lack of story line, and easily cheese-able combat leave a lot to be desired...

Overall a great battle simulator, i still recommend.

Lets keep this simple:

Pros:
-Romance Mode (best new addition)
-Diplomacy/Negotiation (best in the series)
-Campaign Route Movement
-Optimized

Cons:
-Have indicator above armies flag that show your standing across a spectrum from Teal-Red (Best Friends-Most Hated Enemy) Vs having to view it by clicking on the widget in the bottom right and scrolling through all the factions
-Requesting trade when it comes to food or ancillaries seems unbalanced as 90% of factions are all very poor food wise, but very rich money wise... How is that possible? Why does the AI factions never have ancillaries to trade?

Overall every total war game suffers from similar issues, but this entry into the series does the best so far at improvement.

Fell way short of its kickstarter promises: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1590639245/stonehearth

Would of made a better mobile game to kill some spare time.

Amazing game. The campaign is well fleshed out. All factions are equally balanced and provide a real unique set of differences that everyone can appreciate. Only draw back is in large scale fights trying to target individual enemy units when they are all bunched up can be quite frustrating.

-Might encounter some minor graphical errors.

Recommendations: allow a diplomacy option asking an ally to break war against another allied faction. Its strange being allied with 2 factions that are at war with each other.

Side note: i have noticed ppl mention its nearly impossible to get other factions to confed with you, patience is the key to that as reputation does matter, but so does the overall board control of all factions combined. I was able to get confed after turn 180+ There needs to be a clear indication that waring factions have a large advantage before small factions seem to confed up.

9.5/10

Lets keep this to bullet point statements:
1. Every encounter feels shallow, lacking meaning or purpose
2. AI, every creature has similar repetitive AI...
3. Modular, station "A" looks like station "B" but has one extra connected cubicle, maybe the decor will be different? Nope! (this includes vehicles as well)
4. Discoveries, do not feel rewarding... Ohh i learned another word of an alien language... cool
5. Does anyone need "iron" lets make 99% of the plants/rock things harvestable by making 98% of them harvest "iron" or "carbon"
6. Damn drones, stop scanning me every 5 mins!
7. Does it feel like the AI controlled vehicles that fly past you while you are walking on the planet seem like they are on some kind of 15min rotating trigger timer no matter what planet you are on! aaand they fly past me again...
8. Who likes farming the same 5 mineral ore types over and over again just to get to the next planet?

There are some Pro's i must say:
1. World generation is pretty cool
2. Transistion from earth to space entry is pretty cool and seemless
3. Art style is nice
4. Did they borrow the voice you hear every freaking few minutes from "portal"? it seems that way, and that game is awesome so A+

Summary:
This game has maybe a 3 week life span or 30 hours worth of gameplay before the reptitive nature starts to bore and weight you down. Maybe with some DLC in the future or "MODs" this game can be something really special, but as of now, its not.

I had to refund it, because the pricetag was not worth the experience i had. First impressions are everything!

The simplicity of the game is great, not over complicated. Having a fairly good tech tree and upgradability makes it truly fun. Where this game has gone wrong is in story development and the lack of atmoshphere in space... for $15 this game is worth it, but not for the current asking price.