What do you guys think of the story compared to earlier versions?

[ryan_dooley2]

I personally preferred it when the Kain and Falcon's where more morally grey and where more concerned with fighting against the swarm than just having them be pirates. It gave weight to the conflict and allowed Eva to be more of a rebel. Now she's a cop for an empire and I can't say I like that. Also having Kain know and care for Eva as a little girl explains why he doesn't just shoot her when he ambushes her towards the beginning of the game.

However, having Eva be a trained solder does explain why she is able to just mow down dozens of enemies and having the Falcon's just be pirates does make her look less like a amoral psychopath who just murders hundreds of people without feeling a thing. I mean she still is all that, but at least now the Falcon's are just 100% evil so it's a bit better. So while I disagree with this I can see the argument for the change.

But what do you think.

[Kyle]

i don't like the soldier stuff, it feels like it was just jammed in with no real weight to it and it lacks the 'personal' feel i got from the ea story

that said, i haven't played past a few missions because i'm not a fan of full release, so i've only got the opening in terms of story to judge

even a soldier doesn't really explain why she can mow down hundreds upon hundreds of units, at least not fully (mainly just mentioning this because there doesn't really seem to be a reason for it beyond this as i haven't played more story)

[Huntard]

story / gameplay / character / ship custom WAS A LOT better in EA

i really dont know why they do a 360° and removed everything was cool

[flat]

Stopped playing the early access because I wanted to know where the story was going, and therefore waited for the full release before continuing. I liked the whole western homesteader type feel where everyone seemed to know each other but with obvious animosity while still being polite. Then they changed it totally. I'll mark it down to never go EA. At least the janky scrolling was fixed.

[JHarlequin]

Some of the character background is weird now. The story is sort of okay, but either story seemed pretty good. The gameplay is okay, maybe slightly less appealing than the early access settings.

The ship custom, and fathership upgrades were much better and for me much more preferable in early access. They may be streamlined now and that is good for some players, but now I just don't have choices and it doesn't matter. I just fetch quest, and then hold a button and then I can hold more buttons.

I definitely could see the benefits of keeping both methods in the game, but I can also see how difficult it could be to incorporate both version when continuing work on the game.

[LiberTea]

My two cents:

Story wise, I dislike the changes to Kain, kinda like the approach they took to Eva but overall the story seems fine, nothing more nothing less. There do seem to be some weird backgrounds and interactions between the characters now, but nothing too worrying.

Character customization is better than in EA (armour was just a stat stick with a clear best in slot, the amulet system offers a lot more choice in that regard) and there are enough different weapons and upgrades to play around with.

Ship Combat is better! They brought back the broadside focused combat the we had early in the EA while keeping a mouse aimed smaller cannon.
Ship customization is almost par with EA it seems. Not having a choice between components is slightly disappointing but ultimately there was not too much actual choice in this regard (again EA system had a lot of best in slot parts so there was no real choice once you unlocked it).

Not sure I like the changes to crafting and farming. It's very streamlined now and farming has been completely removed. Only having to gather blue/red ore kinda removed a lot of the incentive to gather resources off of the islands and farm specific pirate ships or swarm enemies. The only plus I see here is that Coal is no longer an absolute pain to farm so yay I guess.

I am REALLY disappointed they removed the pirate raids. Those were kinda fun and the pirate faction feels too passive now during the story. Like why are they just waiting for Eva to clear island after island and never counterattack?

All in all the game seems fine. Only tried the 'end-game' raid activity once and found it somewhat lackluster. Will have to wait and see if the weapons you get from it are worthwhile. I would have preferred being able to continue playing after the story is over you still can, just on the save right before the final mission, but this means you always have the quest tracker up for the final mission and can never complete all the quests.

[Ydyp]

I have to agree to some of the points, don't like the change to Kain and the backstory connecting him and Eva together. though I do like now that Eva got propper military training and puts her in a better position to lead the Fathership.

Then the changes they did with streamlining the grind and no customization to the Fathership is one big disappointment as that was for me the main reason I stuck with this game, together with the pirate raids which are gone as well. So in the end I do enjoy the mechanic changes, but in totality the game lost a lot of charm for me and I have to say I am less tempted to play this new version.

[Zewy]

Too mutch streamlining! I like that they fix the prolog it was soo boring. but other then that pre 1.0 was a better game overall

[Tyranicus]

To be honest I hate the changes.
Before story felt way more personal, world was smaller but stakes higher. Swarm was mysterious and looked like genuine threat to the world.
Dont get me wrong, now storyline isnt awfull, id say that right term for it is 'technically correct'. There is nothing wrog with it but comparing to EA immersion went out the window

[Brasten]

This wasn't a change for the better. It removed a great deal of characterization from the whole cast.

Eva as Marshal isn't a bad idea as it explains why she's good beyond "natural talent", but the way it is done is really bad compared to how she was integrated with the story in Early Access. This Eva feels almost Marysue, she's just "there" and doesn't really have any attachment to the people she's interacting with.

The number of narrative cliches has increase and there are clear places that just feel wrong, where the new narrative and with prior events that didn't really get a rewrite. It feels disjointed. If I'd played this version first, and the EA version as the full release, I would have said they did a great job salvaging an otherwise bland uninspired story. But we have the reverse, something that was going to be interesting turned totally banal.

If this game hadn't been in development for so long, and had just started production in 2022, I would accuse the developers of using ChatGPT to write their story for them. I may yet make that accusation to explain why the rewrite is so bad.

[Crashtian]

Everyone keeps talking about the crafting in full release, but there is no crafting in full release. There is only an upgrade system.

[MudCrab]

Hard to say so far. The original did try and tie characters together more. Started playing the release version and 'Come girl, we are moving to the capital' followed by 'well now I am a freshly minted badarse returning to my hometown'.

Not sure, but only 2 very lazy hours in.

[Mr.HighGround]

Cut Eva off the world and make her a monster girl. Modern day Disney story writing. This is just not the strong and independent Eva I want to see.

[Huntard]

Originally posted by Mr.HighGround:

Cut Eva off the world and make her a monster girl. Modern day Disney story writing. This is just not the strong and independent Eva I want to see.

original eva was better writing