An Honest Review of the Beta

[Proudly Toxic]

I got to the end of the available content, my overview of the game is mostly positive. However, there are some glaring issues and I'll get into all of it here.

Some of what I'm about to say is also going to be subjective, so what might be a positive for me might not be one for you.

The Good:

The Resource Grind is Minimal:

I found myself spending more time worrying about water than I did about any specific resource for crafting. However, early on in the game, and honestly even later on as you progress down the tech tree, the most reliable way to get water is to kill people and take their blood.

If you're killing people you're also getting loot since you're going to be near areas with energy cells and the resources you might want to also be collecting to advance your gear/base.

The rarer resources are going to require you to either go into the crashed ships which can be a PVP zone or to the dungeons which are the Imperial Labs. Usually one run of either will be enough to craft whatever you were aiming for if you looted the entire place. Be that a full set of armor and a new ranged and melee weapon, or a bike, shield and suspensor belt.

This means that unlike games like Valheim where the transition to copper might be an hours long period of farming copper and tin, bringing it back to base and smelting it by the hundreds for a full set of upgraded armor. You end up spending more time playing the game and less time hitting rocks and doing base administration.

Research progression feels meaningful:

At the end of the beta I had a MK2 cutter that doubled the yield of copper and granite compared to the improvised cutter you start with.

I had an upgraded blood bank that had double the blood to water conversion rate compared to the starting one.

I had a water sickle so I was no longer locked to hunting down NPCs for water, which became a resource for advanced crafting materials at around the same time.

Unlocking the suspension belt meant that, combined with the trooper grappling hook, I could legitimately just fly up into the air with the grappling hook momentum. This meant vertical movement became a loot easier and fun.

The Sand Bike is based and I love it.

Admittedly though, this is in the Beta. I'm not certain how this will translate into the full game. I like it when upgrades bring quality of life and new mechanics and not damage number go up, and so far that's what the research has been like. The more advanced vehicles have modules, better speed, better armor and less fuel consumption, but there's a lot of them and that's a lot of research points that might end up wasted later on with the kinds of procederal upgrades I don't like as much.

At level 27 I was starting to be asked to unlock upgrades that weren't even available in the beta because the areas weren't in, but I wasn't even 3/4ths done with the previous tier of new recipes, and I wasn't being wasteful with what I learned.

Having a shield on your character also changes your combat tactics significantly, but this will be in its own section.

Hagga Basin is mostly full PVE:

No getting offline raided. And if you die, you only lose resources, you don't lose gear. This is also true for the PVP areas. Death means you lose durability, which is still a problem since repairing an item lowers its max durability like in tarkov. But it means death is not as punishing as in other survival craft games like Rust.

For me that's a good thing, it means there's less instant quit moments like in those other games for someone. But there's still some here, more on that later.

It captures Dune pretty well:

From making you manually disable your shield before running on sand to not get eaten, to seeing the sand shift as the sandworms move around. If you like Dune and you wanted a game in the Dune universe that isn't spice wars so far this one's pretty good.

The Bad

The Combat

Admittedly it isn't as bad as I thought it would be from when I saw the combat trailers.

Ranged combat is mostly fine. However, if you don't know Dune, and you don't know how to fight in range in the Dune universe you might make some mistakes due to being programmed to play third person shooters like. . . well, a third person shooter.

This is both a positive and a negative, since it keeps universe cohesion, but it means the -way- you're meant to fight might be unintuitive to the average room temperature IQ player.

Before you have shields, you need to kill ranged enemies quickly and only then engage with melee. Or, you want to get melee to fight you out of line of sight of ranged enemies.

Once you have shields you need to understand how shields work:

If you or an enemy start firing their weapon, your shield is disabled. You can't fire with your shield on.

This means if an enemy is shooting at you, unless you have cover, let them shoot you until they need to reload. All the damage will be absorbed by the shield and you can open up on them while their shield is still off. This works for regular enemies.

Don't waste your bullets shooting at a shielded enemy with a gun. A lot of people were having trouble with the shielded heavy in the Tier 2 Dungeons. You can literally just peek around a corner and start shooting him once he starts shooting you. Most of his bullets will miss, most of yours if you have good aim will hit.

Wether or not you enjoy this type of ranged combat is an acquired taste. I think that the shields early on are too powerful while the player doesn't have the means to deal with them from range. Later on the Mentat can use spice to shoot the same area of an enemy's shield to disable it. The Trooper can get a flamethrower and just ignore shields entirely. But at the point in the game we're in, the only way to deal with a shielded enemy besides trading with them is to go into melee.

And this is the biggest problem facing the entire game.

The Melee Combat

Dear god is it stiff and janky. Some problems are implementation problems, others not so much, depends on how they decide to take this. Let's talk about the implementation ones before we talk about the design ones.

You have full 360 movement even while engaged in combat, there's no lock on or anything so trying to reposition backwards means turning your back to your enemy. So if you're trying to move back to, for example, break LoS with a ranged enemy, you now turned your back to the swordsman who's going to attack you.

Some enemies just have too much HP. Its not all of them. I was playing Bene Gesserit, I invested in melee weapons and daggers and on the damage bonus to staggered enemies. So If I did a slow blade attack to a swordsman who I had parried they got 1 shot. But, if I staggered and unshielded gunner it'd take multiple power attacks to kill them, something like 3.

The Shielded Heavy takes like 4-5, and this is with level appropriate equipment.

Its not -all- bad, but its pretty bad.

The reason why some of it feels bad is a design decision. Because you're going to face shielded enemies, and you won't deal damage past the shield to them when you attack them normally, and because this will also apply to players, if you get hit you need to get some kind of hitstun.

This is because the point of light attacks to a shielded enemy is to inflict a heavy stagger, from which you'll be able to do a slow-blade attack and deal heavy damage or maybe even one shot them.

When I was fighting enemies I'd one-shot in 1 slow blade attack the melee combat felt fine despite the jank. Especially because with the compel command from the Bene Gesserit, you can just pull people into your cover and instantly kill them with 1 stab.

When I was fighting the ranged unshielded enemies and the shielded heavy though, yeah, that was pretty bad. I'd rather just trade with them even when I don't have a shield than try to melee.

Even a shielded melee character just takes too long to kill them. But they need to, or melee would be too strong. Because a shielded melee character is -taking no damage- when they decide to bumrush these ranged enemies regardless of what armor they're wearing.

Overall, it needs some revisions. Its not as bad as I thought it was going to be, and I think some people hate it because they don't understand it, but its not good either.

The Uncertain:

There's a lot of big features that we don't get to try in this beta that are also what will make or break the game.

The entire MMO aspect of the exchange and the deep desert are completely unavailable here. How prevalent cheating will be in these environments will also determine if the game lives or dies.

Right now the only way to lose all of your gear is if you die in a coriolis storm or if you get eaten by a sandworm.

I've already seen someone quit because they decided to relocate their base and got eaten with all of their mats on them. That's a skill issue, but it is a quit moment.

Thankfully, this is also a game where once you're established getting a gear set back together isn't very difficult unless you were using those only 1 craft per blueprint items.

But that probably won't stop some people from trying to grief others with worms even if the game is full PVE. I can see people waiting near the border of a biome transition with a level 1 sandbike and try to ram people to stop them from getting to the rock island to get themselves, and their target eaten by a worm.

Overall, my outlook on the game is still positive, we'll see how it turns out.

[crzyfsh123]

Oh there will be plenty of griefing.

[w0rm_lord]

Really appreciate the detail in your review, actually refreshing to see someone break things down without rage or blind praise. I agree with a lot of your points.

That said, I think you’re being pretty generous on the combat. Ranged is passable, sure, but saying melee “isn’t as bad as I expected” kind of highlights how low the bar was to begin with. The shield mechanics are lore-accurate, but the whole “wait for the enemy to finish shooting before you can fight back” loop just doesn’t feel good in actual game play.

And melee… yeah, even when it works as intended, it feels stiff, slow, and unrewarding. I get that some of it’s by design, but bad on purpose is still bad.

Glad you enjoyed the beta overall, and I respect your take, but for a game that claimed it wanted to “set a new benchmark for survival combat,” what we got feels more like a pre-alpha experiment.

[Menzagitat]

Originally posted by Proudly Toxic:

You have full 360 movement even while engaged in combat, there's no lock on or anything so trying to reposition backwards means turning your back to your enemy. So if you're trying to move back to, for example, break LoS with a ranged enemy, you now turned your back to the swordsman who's going to attack you.

You want lock? Why? Wouldn't that be too easy and unrealistic, controller style game-play?
Note: I haven't played the game and didn't watched streamers either.

[Proudly Toxic]

Originally posted by w0rm_lord:

Really appreciate the detail in your review, actually refreshing to see someone break things down without rage or blind praise. I agree with a lot of your points.

That said, I think you’re being pretty generous on the combat. Ranged is passable, sure, but saying melee “isn’t as bad as I expected” kind of highlights how low the bar was to begin with. The shield mechanics are lore-accurate, but the whole “wait for the enemy to finish shooting before you can fight back” loop just doesn’t feel good in actual game play.

And melee… yeah, even when it works as intended, it feels stiff, slow, and unrewarding. I get that some of it’s by design, but bad on purpose is still bad.

Glad you enjoyed the beta overall, and I respect your take, but for a game that claimed it wanted to “set a new benchmark for survival combat,” what we got feels more like a pre-alpha experiment.

Some of this gets more nuance once you have groups playing together, since someone can be drawing fire to let someone else shoot, and then there's the damage types that bypass shields altogether that we haven't tried.

But yes, they really need to take a hard look at the melee combat. They're not going to fix it on time for launch, there's no way. It needs a complete revision.

[Proudly Toxic]

Originally posted by Menzagitat:

Originally posted by Proudly Toxic:

You have full 360 movement even while engaged in combat, there's no lock on or anything so trying to reposition backwards means turning your back to your enemy. So if you're trying to move back to, for example, break LoS with a ranged enemy, you now turned your back to the swordsman who's going to attack you.

You want lock? Why? Wouldn't that be too easy and unrealistic, controller style game-play?
Note: I haven't played the game and didn't watched streamers either.

With the way its currently implemented, you can't block and move away from an enemy, a running attack from both you and enemies can just completely miss because of the janky 360 movement combined with the attack animations.

I'm not sure lock on would help, or fix it, but no lock on is also feeling pretty bad.

[Menzagitat]

Originally posted by Proudly Toxic:

Originally posted by Menzagitat:

You want lock? Why? Wouldn't that be too easy and unrealistic, controller style game-play?
Note: I haven't played the game and didn't watched streamers either.

With the way its currently implemented, you can't block and move away from an enemy, a running attack from both you and enemies can just completely miss because of the janky 360 movement combined with the attack animations.

I'm not sure lock on would help, or fix it, but no lock on is also feeling pretty bad.

I have to try it myself to understand. Is not going to happen before release.
But I prefer no lock mechanics.

[w0rm_lord]

The problem isn’t that it lacks lock-on. it’s that the melee system doesn’t feel built to function without it. You’ve got janky movement, sluggish animations, and poor hit detection all happening in a freeform 360° space with no clear targeting logic.

Lock-on isn’t a crutch, it’s a tool. Especially when your combat animations have commitment and hitboxes that clearly aren’t forgiving. Right now, it feels like they want Souls-style tension but gave us PS2-era precision.

[shmokenn]

when the combat is weak, game will die on it own sword. 100%

[Siameasy]

"the grind is minimal"... theres a reason they stopped the test at the point they did, in a team its grindy, solo its very very grindy. losing an orni solo will make you cry as it takes that much time to farm the materials.

[😎Astran😾]

An F2P game with the entry ticket cost

[Proudly Toxic]

Originally posted by Siameasy:

"the grind is minimal"... theres a reason they stopped the test at the point they did, in a team its grindy, solo its very very grindy. losing an orni solo will make you cry as it takes that much time to farm the materials.

I'd like to know your source sine we don't get orni in the beta. Are you just assuming that the costs of crafting skyrocket as the game progresses?

I mean I guess things can get more expensive, but as the game progresses the ammount of materials you get per literal 1 second shooting a beam at a scanned rock also increases. Like I said, I got double mats with my MK2 Laser.

I never spent more than 10 minutes farming a material unless it was something that required me to go to a shipwreck or an imperial station. If it did, I only needed to run it once and I had everything I needed.

That was playing solo, by the way.

If this becomes a problem later, I wouldn't like it either. But right now you have no evidence that the game won't keep this pace of material farming which seems to be the intention.

[Scyris]

Originally posted by Siameasy:

"the grind is minimal"... theres a reason they stopped the test at the point they did, in a team its grindy, solo its very very grindy. losing an orni solo will make you cry as it takes that much time to farm the materials.

If you call this game a grind, you have no idea what a grind actually is. If anything resource yeilds need to be massivly decreased, you get way to much from everything imo. The materials rates also could be massivly increased for the beta so people can test things, for all we know, resource yeilds could be halfed or even cut to 25% in the final game. I honestly hope it is, as its way to easy to get a massive amount of most things.

[Captain Worthy]

Originally posted by Scyris:

Originally posted by Siameasy:

"the grind is minimal"... theres a reason they stopped the test at the point they did, in a team its grindy, solo its very very grindy. losing an orni solo will make you cry as it takes that much time to farm the materials.

If you call this game a grind, you have no idea what a grind actually is. If anything resource yeilds need to be massivly decreased, you get way to much from everything imo. The materials rates also could be massivly increased for the beta so people can test things, for all we know, resource yeilds could be halfed or even cut to 25% in the final game. I honestly hope it is, as its way to easy to get a massive amount of most things.

The resources needed for crafting increase later on as you advance through the tech tiers. That's when the grind increases.

[Proudly Toxic]

Originally posted by Captain Worthy:

Originally posted by Scyris:

If you call this game a grind, you have no idea what a grind actually is. If anything resource yeilds need to be massivly decreased, you get way to much from everything imo. The materials rates also could be massivly increased for the beta so people can test things, for all we know, resource yeilds could be halfed or even cut to 25% in the final game. I honestly hope it is, as its way to easy to get a massive amount of most things.

The resources needed for crafting increase later on as you advance through the tech tiers. That's when the grind increases.

So far the way the cost of things has increased has been with the addition of new materials than just ore that require you to do other activites than just mine rock to get materials.

And you still get a lot of them assuming you have the tech for it.

Ore yields also increase with tech. So right now I'm at the point where I'd start mining carbon. I can't see the recipe, but I assume I'd be using carbon and iron to make steel.

I get increased yields on steel because of my upgraded mining laser, I'd only get lower yields from Carbon.

Once I upgraded my mining laser again I'd be getting even more yields across the board with everything.

See how even if they increase the ammount of materials required you still end up -not grinding all that much- especially when compared to -other survival games-?

The guy you're replying to is even telling you he'd rather they dropped the ammount of resources you get. I don't think they will because that would mean the early game would be hell because of how much time you need to dedicate to dealing with your low water supply.

[Yo"rr gamma ix bae]

Originally posted by Proudly Toxic:

Originally posted by w0rm_lord:

Really appreciate the detail in your review, actually refreshing to see someone break things down without rage or blind praise. I agree with a lot of your points.

That said, I think you’re being pretty generous on the combat. Ranged is passable, sure, but saying melee “isn’t as bad as I expected” kind of highlights how low the bar was to begin with. The shield mechanics are lore-accurate, but the whole “wait for the enemy to finish shooting before you can fight back” loop just doesn’t feel good in actual game play.

And melee… yeah, even when it works as intended, it feels stiff, slow, and unrewarding. I get that some of it’s by design, but bad on purpose is still bad.

Glad you enjoyed the beta overall, and I respect your take, but for a game that claimed it wanted to “set a new benchmark for survival combat,” what we got feels more like a pre-alpha experiment.

Some of this gets more nuance once you have groups playing together, since someone can be drawing fire to let someone else shoot, and then there's the damage types that bypass shields altogether that we haven't tried.

But yes, they really need to take a hard look at the melee combat. They're not going to fix it on time for launch, there's no way. It needs a complete revision.

THIS holy god the melee combat sucks. I can't even believe this is the state it's in. How did they let it get this far???