Recent reviews by Tiven

Rare that I put a review on a game but for an interesting case like Crossout I feel it's needed to explain.
Firstly is the game at it's core fun? Answer? Yes and no.

Great concept, good feeling mechanics in general, lots of promise of free~form building and vast possibilities hindered heavily by a crafting system that is so expensive that selling your crafting mats and trading for things is cheaper for 90% of the game. And that's not cheap either time spent to equipment gained.
This wouldn't be so bad and would feel like each thing you earned had more worth if....if...half the things you get weren't then horribly disappointing.
If people don't realise this crafting inefficiency and make use of the market straight away they run into what they think is a paywall which is because crafting above the most basic tier takes what at first appears to be cash store currency. Selling scrap helps cover this but it essentially means every recipe is EVEN MORE expensive than it first appears which is already ludicrous.
Oh and for that trading there's a tax so even though it is better than crafting there is a loss with every transaction so the economy is being drained of a fair amount of coin all the time. Some serious cash store promotion going on.

Meta rules in this game and meta is not rich in choices.
The colourful and unique builds are rare because machine guns and radiators just do just about everything better, which gets boring fast. Pvp can excuse a few more options but even then in set ways if you want to be effective.

Me and my friends were quite into the PvE, that is what got us into it but lo and behold the Vs AI initial match was suddenly versing us against players? Recheck, get confused, then find online this is just a hidden part of the game where it starts ignoring that you wanted vs AI.
Why? No idea.

Alright story mode and raids, there's still options! The story was fine and fun as corny as it was, and it was refreshing to see an open world map to drive around with friends in our mixed builds bumping into each other and laughing at explosions. But then the fun just stops. Finished the story? I was hoping it was just the first chapter or some such but it was just over fast.
Want to replay it the story? Not allowed. But how about doing 5000 fetch quests per level up where you drive fifty metres at a time then stop and press a button 5 times each. With the occasional group objective that you may aswell solo with a minmax build because good luck with the few standard players on the map of varying levels. Don't want to do those? Well this area is out of content...

Raids! The dungeons of the game. Sweet, okay these can be fun! Still ruled by the efficient metas but at least you can get away with some flexibility...oh...until you get matched to a server half way across the globe. But don't worry that only happens....oh..all the time. 90-95% of the time, maybe more. Heavy rubberbanding, delayed input, further delayed projectiles suddenly teleporting forwards 100 metres into horrible places, on top of once you get to 'Normal' difficulty raids then if more than 2 people aren't running meta builds you have to really carry hard.
Ah good I found an option to set which server I want to connect to! Oh, until that also gets ignored almost instantly and once again I'm an Australian being matched with 600ms games to somewhere in Russia. Ah no one knows english for me to warn them when they drive straight into enemies and get themselves killed. Perfect.

PvP, if you haven't picked up the jist by now here's a quick recap. The word meta? Get used to it.
So there's a neat feature called exhibition in the game where you can share your builds! Cool!
Untill you run into teams where more than half have simply pressed 'copy' on loadouts that are the most efficient they can be for the cheapest power score. Often with an array of weapons that someone legitimately at that score could never have.
Also known as seal clubbing apparently this was just the default experience in pvp. 2/3 matches.
The weird thing is that after a certain power score even the bots do this, they have it seems mimicked player builds that equal the points of near the players but use weapons from unreachable quality tiers at the time.

As most people I know who gave this game a try, the temptation to buy a pack when the vibe is good while the story lasts and you've yet to become disillusioned with the other game modes is strong.

The 50% off special at the start of the year helped there. And I too thought the good in this game would shine through if I pushed a bit through the grind barrier but...for all the bits and pieces you get from whatever you get it doesn't change much when you realise that every time you make a bigger and better vehicle the game raises the difficulty in half it's modes. Alright that's fair for PvP, but for PvE too? Shouldn't the pve content simply promote that power progression with it's increasing modes and difficulties themselves? Nope, the only winning move is to bring an efficient and cost effective build to hit a sweet spot that yes feels powerful to use but is incredibly boring.

Summary, frustratingly good base idea for a game, and half the implementation despite the complaints is good. Weapons are satisfying to watch fire (even if the results are often lack luster), unique vehicles can make you laugh or be genuinely impressive.
Sadly I do not recommend this game even for the good half because the unsatisfying nature of leveling up, crafting, narrow spectrum of viable builds with so many neat ideas sitting there but poor performing when tried and outright atrocious match making in terms of balance, poor servers and disregard for what you want to play or where.

I reasoned my purchase in game with rose tinted goggles from early game play thinking "I would have paid this much for a another game an I will probably be playing for a while". I wish I hadn't. It does not last. I hope this gives that extra bit of pause to someone on the line of deciding. By all means give the game a go but I recommend keeping your wallet closed till you finish the Awakening story and try the rest of the modes a fair number of times and see the patterns for yourself.

A game of high potential stifled with poor marketing decisions, low value on player freedom and not enough players because of the first two reasons.