Yes, I know, 158 hours and still not recommend, the thing is, the only reason I forced myself to play this game to the end, is because I'm a sick completionist and is now finishing a lot of old games from my library.

This game is INCREDIBLY unbalanced, the only reason I managed to make it less grindy and more interesting, was to use the modding tools to bring some balance for this. So here is the list of the problems that this game has.

1. Just to start the game, u will spend a lot of time clicking on a dice so u can reroll and hopefully get decent survivors, traits in this game are very important, to the point that the skill tree in most cases is weak compared to starting traits. That must be one of the main complains from the community, the inability to actually choose a class and traits. And that is one of the main points I spent modding, using the extended skills mods as a base until level 4, I modded the classes to always have 3 custom traits that speciliazed their tasks, still had to roll so I could land on the class I needed but now I dont have to waste hours rolling for mediocre characters.

2. Experience gain is terrible. Survivors assigned to work receive so little exp, that even modded to x30, it still felt slow. Combat exp ammount is decent, I had to increase it to x3, because of how inconsistent it is. When u create a task force, u go with 5-7 survivors to explore the world, to combat and get resources, but exp is based on who does damage. So ur ranged machine gunner will basically monopolize the exp, while the melees will be left behind with nothing, literal nothing, most of the combat melee characters just dont get exp.

3. Class balance, it is just inexistent, I had to buff melee survivors to the point it looked like it was cheating, things like 100% more hp, 80% more speed, 30% projectile block, Damage reduction, etc. Because while a team full of ranged characters can kill everything before the enemy even reachs them, vanilla melee is slow to reach the target, so the combat is over before it even reaches the enemy, they are also incredbly squish, even the 'tank'. with these changes melee characters finally got more presence and survivability in combat. I also used a mod to increase the range of guns, because even ranged weapons on this game have an absurd small range.

There were other problems, like Reseach taking too long even with 5 boosted dedicated researchers or the lack of world events (there are literally 3, survivor rescue, destroy enemy scout team and faction requires assisntace).

All that said, I'm just glad I'm finally free from this torment. ty for reading