Recent reviews by Colin

TL ; DR - Active devs, no 3rd party launcher, proximity voice chat with 127 people is hilarious, BUFF SPOTTING TO GIVE XP PLEASE, 10/10 game

Of the many positive things that the most recent patch addressed, re-balancing the xp has brought me tears of joy. Required xp to rank up used to go up by 1,000 each time , but now the xp needed per lvl only goes up by 200!

My one complaint is that Recon's xp/hr seems way behind Engi and Medic but on par with Assault & Leader. Recon, Assault, and Leader desperately need some way to get xp in ways that Engi (2x vehicle destruction xp + repair tool) and Medic have (0-kill medics in top 5 of leaderboard). For Recon, it could be giving +50xp per spot--with another 100 maybe if the spotted target dies--and vehicles would give more.

Spearfishing game with a story-line, that turns into a restaurant management game, that adds stardew farming mechanics. The first 20hrs or so was a lot of fun and progressing the story--asides from one sub-area (Passage, seriously, why have a water temple in this game ;-;)--felt meaningful to the success of the sushi bar. The weapon upgrades are really fun too, wish there was something like it in Subnautica.

My only personal gripes with the game would be the lack of flame generation for researching new recipes and the rate at which produce is acquired. Even with a fully upgraded farm, and only planting a single crop, it would still take ~3-4 days to gather enough cucumber to fully max a dish; consequently, you would have an excess of only one ingredient but many recipes require 2+ produce ingredients. This resulted in my playthrough having only 2 recipes at max level even though I had over 30 learned.

I think this issue could be solved by increasing the amount of vegetables awarded per crop. And also further reduce the rate at which nutrients is drained from the farmland as I was still required to use nutrient-up fertilizer to ensure no crops became damaged. As for the chef flame/research currency, I think a multiplier for consecutive 5.0-rating days would be a nice way to reward people for playing into the game's mechanics. Due to the current pace of flame generation, I had to hold off on researching any dish that sounded fun to me as I wouldn't be able to afford those dishes as well as festival-oriented recipes (jellyfish, shark, cucumber, marlin/sailfish, etc).

TL ; DR - Main story is awesome, 20+hrs of entertainment; however, the epilogue becomes stagnant due to ludicrous material costs (2-3 restaurant services to afford lvl19 to lvl20 staff, 15 flame recipes, maintenance fees for dispatch employees cutting into revenue, upgrading a dish to lvl10 easily takes over 300+ of the required ingredients)

TL;DR - The cons are only relevant after beating story mode. Definitely
think the purchase would be worth it for just the additional story bosses
if it's on sale.

Pros:
+ More decos, skills, and silkbind moves! (and the powercreep is visible)

+ Followers for quests are awesome--allows you to bring allies without
scaling the monster's hp.

+ (subjective) No rampage quest requirements

+ never-ending supply of platinum eggs and armor spheres in end game
(via Daimyo hermitaur event quest + high lvl anomaly rewards).

Cons:
- Multiplayer join requests (purely mid-quest joins) are region locked
based on the download server. This can be fixed with "Better
Matchmaking" on Nexus.

- (some) Room cosmetics, armor augmenting, & useful talismans (albeit
TU5 made talismans much more approachable) taunt the player behind
lottery gacha.

- The decoration balancing is strange in that skills like Protective Polish/
Razor Sharp get +2's while Spare Shot is left with only +1. Or how +1
Offensive Guard is a lvl3 deco, but its stats are comparable to Sneak
Attack which has a +1 lvl2 deco. Or +1 Speed Eating being a lvl2 deco.

- The endgame grind is a bit much. I'm not even done yet (281 anomaly)--
It'll have taken me ~725 anomaly investigations to see Sunbreak's
equivalent of arch-tempered monsters.

Save Corruptions w/ Sunbreak expansion:
Thankfully, I have not experienced the save corruption people have written about. There is a video by "Nintendo Sphere" that details a possible solution if this happens to you. Although, I think if data--such as setting changes/character creation--is stored in the save that overwrote the original then the process is much more difficult.

Still waiting on the amogus character

Edit: Bro they actually made an amogus DLC LOL--100% buying it.

First playthrough is addictive. It's a very fun game, would definitely recommend. I like to think of it as a peaceful subnautica.

My only criticisms would be the planets feel amazing in their size, but you only ever need to explore a small fraction of each planet's surface for materials/ alien architecture. I thoroughly enjoyed the side-activities of utilizing probe scanners, and doing the VTOL quest-line, if there were additional missions with themes pertaining to the planet-- I think that would be incredible.

Also, on higher gravity planets, or maybe planets with more rough terrain (I'm not sure of the cause), sprinting and traversing with vehicles will come to an abrupt halt on even slight changes in geometry.

I originally bought this game in early access five years ago-- started it up, and immediately declined to face the open water + free standing story structure (I generally have struggled with games that give little direction i.e. dark souls, pokemon, World of Warcraft); however, coming back to this game so many years later (and with the power of a second monitor for guides) it has been an awesome experience I couldn't recommend more unless you have

The game just looks absolutely stunning everything from the water texture, buildings, HUD, sea creatures, plant life, and topography are incredibly detailed and well thought out. Not to mention, I encountered one singular bug in my entire first play-through of 24ish hrs, but it was nasty one in which my vehicle was pushed 30m into terrain at 550m depth-- I did not live that excursion.

As for the story, it is engaging and unique and one which I have not been able to draw similarities on from other games. There is a bit of hopelessness when you aren't quite sure of the next bit to progress, but I am a strong advocate of help through guides. Another brief mention is that the database of text pertaining to the Planet 4546b is just as important to the story as actually exploring. I ignored most and payed for it dearly with hours of lost productivity.

Lastly, I would just like to say I was unsure whether I would buy the second title, but I will 100% be buying Below Zero on full release. Any current and future games can only be amazing using these themes and environments that are wholly unique to Unkown Worlds Entertainment. 9/10 because losing 1.5hrs of time to regrind a seamoth due to a bug with the terrain + Leviathans was a fiasco