So can anyone explain to me why this is bad?

[Sticky White Stuff]

I am consider picking this up, and from the general bigger sites, the game got good scores. I love me some Quake/Doom coupled with Rougelite/like. Is this to Quake like Ziggurat was to Hexen?

I see the general users and backers aren't happy with the game, probably because they were expecting something else or more to it. But a nice, objective opinion would be nice. Usually Steam Reviews are a joke to me, because they are mostly subjective. So i look at metacritic for the most objective sum of opinions.

[Tube Alloy]

Personally I enjoy the game once you approach it as being something of a bastard hybrid between roguelike and quake without all of the usual roguelike advancements and unlocks ( not a good thing imo). I think TotalBiscuit's review is worth watching, he's right on all points and I'm hoping for some kind of advancement or replayability in a future, however I felt the game was what I was looking for ( dumb shooting with lots of gibs ) so I bought it anyway

For me the main issue with the game aside from the lack of incremental progression is that there is no way to save and exit. I'm old now so I can't sink however long into a run as it takes ( currently haven't gotten past 1-4 or 1-5) and to try and survive you can't speedrun through as you would if it were quake, there's a lot of creeping up and sniping the ranged enemies then funneling the melee mobs into killzones which takes time.

Gunplay feels meaty but has the roguelike inaccuracy. The railgun is too imprecise in my opinion, the slow rate of fire and limited clip are already enough of a trade-off for the power. You need to hope for some accuracy picks early or you're in for a bad time. Shotgun is my personal favourite and machine-gun is serviceable

[Milk]

Well, until recently, it was quite buggy. Now, it's ok in terms of bugs not ruining your run.

It has very little to do with old school shooters, other than references. This was seen as unfavorable to some. Likewise, it is a very poor roguelite, and was also seen as unfavorable to others.

If it were one or the other, I would be happy, personally. But it is neither, so I am diasppointed.

It's a shallow game. The gunplay is ok, but it's limited. Instead of a lot of varied weapons, as you would expect in a roguelite shooter, you get three main ones. There are pickup weapons strewn about the levels, but they're one time use (ie you can't refill them, nor can you upgrade them). The main 3 weapons can be modded, but each mod is not equal, and some are terrible compared to others.

The level generation is quite limited too. Every single level starts the same, and ends the same. The middle or "guts" of the map has a very limited amount of rooms to work with, imo. I see the same rooms all the time. The levels are also extremely mazelike, to the point where I get lost in them, like, all the time. The map is also useless.

The levels themselves are also quite barren. There's not much incentive to explore. The secrets are the kind where it takes either dumb luck to find them, or they are "planted" secrets (ie you can go to secret levels). Other than that, the only things worth exploring for are those "pickup" weapons and stat upgrades, which are kinda dull.

There is a shop, and there are items, but they're not hard to afford. The mos expensive thing is like 150 credits. You can get 150 credits by the first shop quite easily. There is also a very small amount of items.

There are also some design decisions that I don't really agree with. There are levels with keycards that you need to find to progress. A game like Quake has keycards that stand out, right in the open. It's not a secret where they are. This game, the keycards are often hidden in the bodies of dead corpses. It's like trying to search for a red keycard in a literal corpse stack. You can be leaping everywhere and not find it until you blindly stumble into it. Likewise, the keycards can be replaced with "heads" that you need to open a door. It's even harder to find those.

Oh and it's very hard to speedrun because of the keycards. There are a lot of enemies on these maps. So many, that should you need to turn back, you will take massive amounts of damage because the enemies are clogging all the doorways behind you. You can't attempt to do these levels quickly, at least in the first zone. You basically just have to kill all the enemies as quick as possible.

It's not a bad game. But it doesn't have staying power. It doesn't have the great levels and gunplay of Quake, nor the freshness that keeps a roguelite fun even after 200 hours of play. Mediocre.

[MuNgLo]

I would go out on a limb and say that liking old DOOM and Heretic is not at all an guarantee you like Strafe. Most of what makes this game oldschool is in how little it cuddles the player. You are free to play the game as you like, the way you think is fun. At the same time it doesn't tell you anything about how to do that.

While a game like Doom was handcrafted maps with planned progression of weapons and availability of health and ammo when it comes to Strafe that formula shifts. What you get is a game where the core gameplay is centered around mostly one gun of 3 available that you pick as you primary. What gun and what upgrades you run into dictates how you approach every situation but there is no getting around that the core gameplay is using your primary in some form the majority of the time.

This leads to an experience wher you have to like the fighting and challenging yourself. Pushing to get that par time. Clear levels faster.
Sure you can go slow but then the difference of the guns really are mostly removed and you get a very monotone repetative game. Might be fun for a while but not the best parts of the game.

Assuming that gameplay is what you are looking for there are still downsides with the game. Most of them comes down to bugs and personal taste in details. Make no mistake, there is a lot of issues with the game. Hopefully the devs will sort them out over time but if you get it and run into issues that rubs you the wrong way it might have been better to hold off on buying the game for a while.

There is a lot of really slow gameplay out there so I made a short example of mid speed gameplay. Kinda speedy but still very safe kind of approach. If this looks appealing I think you won't be disapointed. Then again you might. Seems very individual when it comes to Strafe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LvMBYLJsL4

[Sticky White Stuff]

Thanks for such a detailed response! I usually love Rougelikes/Lites, so with the big Devolver sale going on i saw this on the store and it picked my interest. However having no ability to quit mid-game and continue onwards is a major deal breaker for me. I like to play those games in smaller time frames. I also had problems with Gungeon until they updated to include the option to quit and continue, because the runs usually last for 40 minutes or even more.

If a game is good, even in early access, i take the plunge like with the recently Dead Cells because of my love for Metroidvania. However thanks to your detailed response on the actual game, i might wait a bit till the developers polish it more/add more content and features that are highly requested and then grab it on a smaller sale. It really looks it has potential. And i can't lie, the moment i saw the Quake-esque graphics and enemy gibbing i almost bought it in an instant. But reading the reviews and your responses i changed my mind. So thanks again! I will check in a few months to see if anything has changed. It isn't the first time i bought a game then had a remorse for not living up to the expectations.

[Trojan.Exploit.SSX]

Originally posted by ＧＬＵＥ:

However having no ability to quit mid-game and continue onwards is a major deal breaker for me.

Save&Quit-Function is already in work and will come soon...

[BABOONGA]

Originally posted by Angry Floof:

Well, until recently, it was quite buggy. Now, it's ok in terms of bugs not ruining your run.

It has very little to do with old school shooters, other than references. This was seen as unfavorable to some. Likewise, it is a very poor roguelite, and was also seen as unfavorable to others.

If it were one or the other, I would be happy, personally. But it is neither, so I am diasppointed.

It's a shallow game. The gunplay is ok, but it's limited. Instead of a lot of varied weapons, as you would expect in a roguelite shooter, you get three main ones. There are pickup weapons strewn about the levels, but they're one time use (ie you can't refill them, nor can you upgrade them). The main 3 weapons can be modded, but each mod is not equal, and some are terrible compared to others.

The level generation is quite limited too. Every single level starts the same, and ends the same. The middle or "guts" of the map has a very limited amount of rooms to work with, imo. I see the same rooms all the time. The levels are also extremely mazelike, to the point where I get lost in them, like, all the time. The map is also useless.

The levels themselves are also quite barren. There's not much incentive to explore. The secrets are the kind where it takes either dumb luck to find them, or they are "planted" secrets (ie you can go to secret levels). Other than that, the only things worth exploring for are those "pickup" weapons and stat upgrades, which are kinda dull.

There is a shop, and there are items, but they're not hard to afford. The mos expensive thing is like 150 credits. You can get 150 credits by the first shop quite easily. There is also a very small amount of items.

There are also some design decisions that I don't really agree with. There are levels with keycards that you need to find to progress. A game like Quake has keycards that stand out, right in the open. It's not a secret where they are. This game, the keycards are often hidden in the bodies of dead corpses. It's like trying to search for a red keycard in a literal corpse stack. You can be leaping everywhere and not find it until you blindly stumble into it. Likewise, the keycards can be replaced with "heads" that you need to open a door. It's even harder to find those.

Oh and it's very hard to speedrun because of the keycards. There are a lot of enemies on these maps. So many, that should you need to turn back, you will take massive amounts of damage because the enemies are clogging all the doorways behind you. You can't attempt to do these levels quickly, at least in the first zone. You basically just have to kill all the enemies as quick as possible.

It's not a bad game. But it doesn't have staying power. It doesn't have the great levels and gunplay of Quake, nor the freshness that keeps a roguelite fun even after 200 hours of play. Mediocre.

Your response is pretty spot on with the issues of the game. If I had to add something else it'd be environmental damage (AKA the goo) can be really hard ot avoid. I like the game a lot but definitely can't see myself playing 100 hours in its current state.

[Milk]

Originally posted by VROOM99:

Your response is pretty spot on with the issues of the game. If I had to add something else it'd be environmental damage (AKA the goo) can be really hard ot avoid. I like the game a lot but definitely can't see myself playing 100 hours in its current state.

I felt that was too specific, but it does bother me too. Those little floating balls? They can do upwards of 40 damage to you.

[Tom7i]

Originally posted by ＧＬＵＥ:

I usually love Rougelikes/Lites, so with the big Devolver sale going on i saw this on the store and it picked my interest. However having no ability to quit mid-game and continue onwards is a major deal breaker for me. I like to play those games in smaller time frames. I also had problems with Gungeon until they updated to include the option to quit and continue, because the runs usually last for 40 minutes or even more.

In that case you'll be happy to read this from a couple of days ago:

Originally posted by Del Guapo:

We plan on adding a save feature, but we're focused on bugs, optimization and the biggest complaints right now.

Otherwise, as you already noted, it's not a direct 90's shooter clone but a FPS/Roguelite combo which contributed to some negativity in the Steam reviews from those who expected the former.

Some of the initial complaints have been fixed in the first three patches, most notably the amount of health you get in the first zone (Icarus), the sounds of guns and performance.

There are still some notable bugs in the game, but from what i read in the bug section, they are working on fixing them.

I'm more of a FPS player myself and only played the roguelite FTL before, but the randomness doesn't bother me much since i knew what i was getting in to.
The initial guns are pretty weak, untill you pick up some weapon perks and upgrades; then some combos become downright OP (imagine a tri-barrel shotgun which shoots grenades). Also, innitially you have to play pretty carefully in order to stack up some health, armor and scrap, but in the later levels you can relax a bit provided you have enough luck with the upgrade & layout RNG.
There are also shops where you can buy additional protective & offensive abilities like anti-acid gear, a rechargable shield, life regen etc. Those help a lot, but again provided that you have luck with the RNG and get what you need.
You can skip zones by building teleporters, but they require at least 4 sucessful runs (more like ten) to be assembled. From what i saw, there's also quite a lot of secrets in the game which add incentive for replayability.

To tell you honestly, if you choose to buy it at some point, the start will be rough untill you learn how the game mechanics work; but if you keep practicing, you will get better and in time the gameplay will also become easier.

Hope that helped a bit :)