Recent reviews by coup

The combat sucks, the balance is quite off (you will learn to hate the Drakken), the game stutters regularly even on a 3080, it's generally quite buggy, and it no longer works with Steam Overlay, but I still love this game.

This game came out a decade ago now and it was an innovative, fresh and inspiring take on the 4X genre that influenced even Civilization 6's development. I would definitely call it a classic. If you are a fan of 4X games and are looking for a unique (and uniquely accessible) experience, then I highly recommend this game.

Editing my positive review after experiencing some of the worst game-breaking bug(s) this game could possibly have.

The game can be fun, but *the information it can give you can just be straight-up wrong*. Autopsy revealed they died by 8mm for every victim and all of them reported it was a woman with black hair? Wrong! It was buckshot from a grey-haired woman.

If you encounter this sort of bug where the game just decides to lie to you about evidence, short of a chance encounter or act of god it can softlock you from continuing to play the game. Genuinely nothing is worse for a detective game. Don't recommend right now till at least most of the bugs are fixed (god this game is a buggy, laggy mess).

This game is incredibly fun and punishing, yet fair. I have some mild complaints like inventory management being constant and a big drag on otherwise visceral gameplay, melee combat being quite awkward, and some other small bits of tedium - but from the Discord the devs seem to be constantly at work at making the game that much funner to play (they're fixing the stealth stunlock!).

Honestly, this is a fantastic game already and I have incredible confidence in the devs' ability to make this a modern classic by 1.0.

If you like SWAT 4, you'll like this game. Yes, it has problems, serious ones even - the AI cheats so hard it's genuinely stupid for example - but all I wanted was a successor to the classic and that's what I got. Fun times!

Edit: nvm the ai's aimbotting through every nook and cranny from across the map is just too absurd. it's like playing Tarkov against a bunch of cheaters

the gator gives kisses and makes you pink, 10/10

Why can't I have access to trade so I can give my friends items without horrendous changes to drop rates? Why? Antifun devs.

I wish there was a 'maybe' review option but I'll go with not-recommended for now. My issue lies pretty much solely with one thing: progression. I will also say the community is a bit toxic on their official Discord and when I asked a question I was immediately told 'stop playing', which is pretty yikes.

But, the progression: it's a bit all over the place. As you level up you unlock new buildings, often worse/more niche than what you start with (or unlock early), which makes runs artificially harder as you dilute the pool of good choices with more niche ones. This I believe is supposed to be counteracted by the Citadel upgrades, but the pacing for unlocking those is abysmal. You can speed it up by taking on harder difficulties, but as I said earlier your runs will be getting more consistent faster than you're able to get these Citadel upgrades.

This is further compounded by my other problem with progression: pace. Each settlement can take an hour out of your time (if you play on the fastest speed, which you should), and each cycle takes at least 4 of those, and each cycle you don't get enough meta resources to upgrade the Citadel one layer deep. And boy is the progression deep with it. You're looking at hundreds of hours to max it out, which is absurd - I have 42 hours in it at the time of writing and I'm barely into it.

All-in-all, the game is fun, but it wastes an extreme amount of your time for no particular reason other than grinding. If you're fine with all the time lost, potentially wonky progression, and no wiki / bad community support, then the game is a good pickup. Otherwise, probably steer clear.

Fantastic game, even if it's currently still only in Early Access. For it's asking price the game is impossible for me to not recommend, and the dev is continuously working on it - the last update was actually great.

If you like roguelikes, get it. The game can sometimes turn into a minor bullet hell, but even as someone who sucks at those kinds of games I don't have too much trouble with it.

I feel like it would be foolish to suggest anything other than to get this game. It's incredible for it's price, and you can easily tell if you'd like it or not within minutes of playing, so Steam's refund period can give you the assurance to see if you'd like this game too.

I've heard people call this "femboy vampire survivors" and "you are the bullet hell" and both are true to some degree, but as someone who easily gets overwhelmed with the visuals of bullet hells, this game has a clear and concise artstyle that makes it easy to tell what's going on at all times. The gameplay is addicting and there is a lot of cool stuff to figure out and combine too.

As I said in the opening, it's difficult for me to *not* recommend this to virtually anyone. Worst-case scenario you return it within the 2-hour period. Though, likely, you'll love it too. Great game.

EDIT: I stand by everything I saw below, but mods really saved this game for me. The mod manager the community uses is also really dope. Fantastic game.

The game is good, but, when it comes to multiplayer, it has some significant flaws that can make it a real drag to play with other people over. This was a real deal-breaker for me since I bought it to play with friends and acquaintances.

Specifically, the looting in the game is often a race between you and your teammates to see who gets busted and who becomes irrelevant as the game moves forward. All loot is available to all players, and if you're playing with people you know this might not seem like a huge issue, but as anyone who's familiar with RPGs will know, having to do the accounting on loot to keep everyone balanced is a drag but neglecting it simply ends up having one person farther ahead than everyone else too.

And, upon dying, you snowball into total irrelevancy and quite quickly lose the ability to catch back up - one death you can come back from, though not easy, but two is run-ending for you - even if your team eventually wins, it won't be fun as you'll basically just be along for the ride. This is especially brutal since runs can last hours while you're unable to meaningfully impact the game any longer.

In my personal opinion, the game desperately needs something akin to loot instancing like what most ARPGs have long since grown accustomed to. If you are only looking to play this with friends and not on your own time solo, then I suggest perhaps rethinking it. I know I should have, it wasn't correct to make this purchase for me, and I hope this can help others avoid making the same mistake as I did.

If you think that this isn't much of an issue for you to worry about, and you like everything else on the box, then the game is probably a great pickup. It just sadly isn't something I can *personally* recommend.