Great RPG, although the learn-by-using stat system is a bit flawed. You will probably reset your character after the first attempt at the game, once you realize how the stats system works

Sorry but I did not enjoy this game. Played their previous titles on a dif account but even following a guide for builds ended up being unable to continue. I have no desire to start a new game. Funny I went with a combat build so I could not pass any speech checks but left blocked on combat for Jeds quest. Seems you need a lot of grenades.

Good luck with your next game.

So I'm going to focus my review on combat because it's the reason why I stopped playing, and I think it's bad in interesting ways. There are other elements that I have opinions on, but they're more ambiguous as to whose at fault. For instance, is it the game's poor writing that caused me to start skimming over all the dialogue, or just my shredded attention span? Whose to say?

Also, I should say that my play time is inflated, because I bought it a while ago, stopped playing, came back and said "why did I stop playing, that seemed fun", then "Oh, that's why." I got to about the end of chapter 1 both times. But that is enough for the game to signal to me that the stuff I noticed wasn't going to change. Even if it did, I shouldn't have to muddle through the first part to get to the fun.

Anyways, before combat, let's talk about the fantasy of charisma. In this game, the rewards of having a high charisma seem to mostly be three things: you get a bigger party size, you can get paid more at jobs and you can skip combat. The first one is an interesting choice on its own, but fails in combination of elements I'll talk about later. The second is nice, but not enough to rest a fantasy on. The third one just feels like you're being rewarded for trying to primarily engage with the game as a story, rather than a vehicle to get to the fighting, by giving you the ability to skip content. Which, incidentally means your skipping loot. There was one time that I got the impression that negotiation was going to be rewarded with something other than an absence, but looking it up, that seems to be incorrect. Now, of course, you might say 'do I need to be rewarded with loot if I'm trying to engage with the game via negotiations rather than violence?' To which I say, part of the benefit of charisma in this game is that it makes you better at fighting by having more people.

Anyways (again), on to the actual combat problems. First I should say that I did not find combat too hard. I did have to reload a lot, but this didn't frustrate me. Moreover, I did get the sense that my team was becoming more competent relative to the enemies, making it seem like less of a thing of chance when I won. Also, I did like the base mechanics of the game. What I hated was that the game felt like it was repeatedly hitting you in the face with a brick with the encounter design. I say 'the encounter design', because there's really just the one, repeated with minor variation.

Rooms, it's all rooms. You have no control over how you start combat. It's always just go into the room, then pretend that negotiations have broken down, and you start fighting. The only choice you have is that you get to pick between like 10 squares to position your team in. But that doesn't matter, because none of the squares have cover, and only seldom puts you in easy reach of it.

You think that the formation you put them in might matter, but that's a lie, because no matter how you position them, the enemy will always just focus fire your squishiest dudes. Which is why I talked about charisma for so long. I thought that the fantasy was that I was going to be a bad at fighting little dude who was able to convince a bunch of big burly dudes to protect me. But I can't even have that, because the enemy always just shoots me first! Ignoring the big scary duded with the big scary gun in front of me to do it!

Now, at this point, I did think it was probably my own fault again. That I brought this on myself for playing such a lopsided character. So I decided to go back and start again, so I could look at the premade characters to see how I was supposed to be playing... but no! One of the premades was litterally only one stat point different from me! I even had the same starting feat and tagged skills! Clearly what I was doing was intended to be a valid playstyle.

So anyways, back to the room. You're in a tight room that you can't leave with no cover, every single fight. But that's okay, because the enemy always starts surrounding you anyways, and the enemy always starts with some of them in cover anyways. So it's better just to stand and shoot anyways.

Now, I did think maybe at first that this was thematically appropriate. After all, the ship is supposed to be cramped. But there are plenty of wide open spaces, you just don't get to fight in them.

...I guess how I should have condensed this thing down to is that there's a real dearth of tactics in this tactical rpg. It's not fun. It's mostly just a sense of mild satisfaction over selecting the right feats so that Evan can hit with 90% acuracy with a five round burst on his first turn, downing an enemy before they can act twice.