Recent reviews by Gantradies

*sighs* im sorry to say this,
but i cant recommend the game.

its got a severe case of "Firefall syndrome"-
core systems have been completely redone and replaced/abandoned so many times,
its not the game it originally was sold as,
progression, crafting, the equipment system has been butchered to turn it into a bargain-bin quality ...
i dont know what the current build of the game is trying to mimmick >.<

but its, not what i bought

one of the friends ive played with,
described the demo as a "very solid foundation",
and i absolutely agree- there's a HUGE amount of potential here, AND it isn't feeling extremely rough/undercooked either-
a good old-fashioned, solid demo of a Promising game-
Feel-wise, id describe it as being somewhere in the middle between Void Crew (heavy focus on the combat aspects), and pulsar (which is a general all-round Crew simulator experience, ala Trek- everything from pure science to combat, with as much focus on play off the ship as there is aboard it),
with a bit of a dead space/Space engineers-ish feel to the Zero-g movement on EVA that the same friend likened to how some stuff feels in ratchet and clank, with the mag boots...


i definitely recommend giving it a try before the demo period ends-
and keeping an eye on the game for after, because, whilst the demo FEELS like a slice of a game, as opposed to a paid test version,
there's a lot of promise here, for the mechanics, the setting, and the feel the NPC's have

please ignore my old review- was in a bit of a depressive slump xD

short and Pithy answer,
you shouldnt.
somewhat longer?
its.. the commentary saying it feels like its meant to be a mobile title holds up- on the visual front, the ORIGINAL game the better part of a decade ago was superior in texture/world quality.
*sighs* to be honest, it feels like an attempt to make a quick buck after buying the rights-
of all the things i found the most jarring, it was honestly the "suddenly energy shields! energy shields are sci-fi".
My friend Eyes Only gives a much better/more detailed review-
but ill say this much. the Developers locked down the Steam discussions due to all the negative feedback/opinions they'd been getting, in order to take -complete- control of the narrative/discussions, in places they can have COMPLETE control over whats allowed to be posted at all-
throw in the use of ethically dubious Ai art "as a placeholder", well...

a fun little retrax piece-
Turn based Top-Down view with heavily customiseable units
relatively easy to pick up, and even easier to fall into- its now 1:37 in the morning,and i was intending to do 1-2 missions of a run before bed at 9:30.

the combat's fairly varied-depending on enemy type/equipment, DOT/status attacks are just as potent as direct damage, if not more, but none ever feel completely useless/obsolete even towards the end of a run-you WANT a mixed unit
.
the short version is there's three "main" combat styles- Direct damage(self explanatory, heavily affected by armor), Corrosive/acid (low to no initial damage, applies stacks of a DOT effect that's permanent unless actively removed),and dumping heat into a targets heatsink's (much like cooking an enemy 'mech in Battletech)-rapidly inflicts damage that scales as the heat goes higher past the limit, ignoring armor

the difficulty -can- be a little high, depending on your gear and how many risks you take, but its almost exclusively fair- if ive gotten in trouble, ive almost allways either overreached, or taken took many unneccesary risks.

the developer's quite active and responsive in the discussions,and quite on the ball with investigating.patching bugs- i reported an odd issue about the game not listing my screen resolution as an option,and they were looking into it a short time later, and had a patch released before the end of the day- and was equally responsive to a random question about the setting!

its, to be honest, a mixed bag-i wish there was a "mixed/uncertain" middleground between recommend yes and no-
i was origionally really happy, but ive...cooled overtime
the general consensus seems to be that's its greatly improved from the original, but there's.....a few things it does poorer, some seriously-
for starters, money for value with DLC is...not..great, so far at least- compare the sprawling, game-long content additions of BOTH the origional's story dlc packs (a walk in the park, and the good,the bad, and the augmented)- at best, Kraken adds an extra 3-4 hours, a small handful of Armor sets (only two)and weapons that...well....ill get to that in a sec.
the game has a HUGE problem with weapon/equipment diversity- set boni are, on the whole, a LOT more consistently USEFUL,but....
despite them adding several additional weapon types (punching gloves, spears, double-duty and hammers), on the whole the weapons all...feel the same- there's either absolutely no differences in moveset between weapons of a type, or there's extremely subtle-and ..most of the returning weapons, vanilla and DLC have... well, they've had everything that made them special stripped out- the fire and ice weapon's Fire burst/HP bonus abilities most notably- the majority of their reason for existing was removed!

which brings me to one of the issues i have with the DLC/post-launch weapons-
there's... no real point to most of them-the same for a good chunk of the stuff there at launch, but compared to the first game.....
no special ability, animations or themes- a good chunk are... well- there's just no real reason to use them at all-they're bloat with nothing distinguishing them from the pack other than minor stat variations.

the bigger issue, is the replay value is, VERYMUCH inferior to the first-partly due to the omission of mechanics that made doing multiple/many repeat playthroughs fun-or viable at all!
the removal of the damage-scaling affecting weapon affinity system, coupled with the inexplicable decision to completely stop giving the player gear upgrades, whilst strengthening the enemies on newgame+ after 2-3 loops through basically puts you in the same territory as Final fantasy IV's NDS remake- you have 3 playthroughs, and then your savegame is essentially done- your ability to keep up with ballooning enemy damage/HP pools is just gone-its just that the latter outright wipes your save instead of giving you a wiffle bat when the enemies are getting stronger and stronger >.<

add to that a..number of... admittedly silly, little things (ironically worse Character Customiseation then the first-
sure, you can custom-tweak your facial features, but you cant change your clothing/undersuit, period, which is quite frankly a bit odd considering the number of assets (weapons/armor) reused from the first game-genuinely dont understand why another existing feature was removed.

definitely worth a try-

not EVERYONE's cup of tea, to be sure,but one of the best f2p game's ive played (up there with warframe)

its at its best with a party of 2-5, imo ^^

wanted to like it, started off promising (was palying via direct connect with a friend), then the game started randomly crashing wihlst i was mining iron.
actual dealbreaker is dieing (my own fault,got myself trapped undergroudn without food) and the game randomly deleting my entire inventory instead of spawning a death bag/chest/box/whatever-including literally all my tools/equipment.
making this worse is there are reports of this issue dating back to 2015.

short version,unstable (again, the crashing every 8-10 minutes thing),and the developer doesnt appear to prioratise gamebreaking bugs >.<

in its current state, i would not recomend you buy. maybe in 1, 2, or possibally 5 years, but not now.
yes, its an early acess game, but the core isue is..welll..
look, with this genre, the core cause of frustraition in the playerbase is the minion/colonist ai, as you have zero direct control over them.
in this case, its almost completely nonfunctional. while there IS a system for prioratising build orders, after an hour or so, its completely ignored, with colonists randomly assembling structures/furnature in whatever order they see fit (sometimes comitting suicide by ignoreing priority orders to build a hydorponic food farm or an air filter untill everyone is dead >.>), and they are incapable of basic behaviour SUCH AS SLEEPING,EATING OR DRINKING RELIABALLY as of 25/06/2017

i'll happily amend this review WHEN Simon is able to adress the AI issues, but..well. its been like this since it arrived on steam, with relatively small improvements, to some degree or other.


as a bit of an update, its gotten no better, arguabally even worse (some of the wildlife now has a chance to run at high speed into your base and eat ALL your rations less than 30 seconds into the game, and your colonists are more liekly to break down sobbing then follow an attack order.

they appear to consider comfort (beds ect) and random low-priority tasks a much higher priority than basic lifesupport (air scrubbers, air vents) and COMPLETELY IGNORE BUILD PRIORITY 50% of the time, have a high chance to set a microwave smelter on fire and die almost immediately the first time they ever use it (half the time comsuming all the oxygen in trhe air, due to their refusal to comply with oreders to build vents/scrubbers, anything involving hydroponics), are capable of starving to death while standing directly next to food/ literally refusing to take water from stockpiles and.....


look.Simon. you've done great on your own when you look at the task you've been working at.but.

you NEED to hire MORE coders.at LEAST one other person to assist with the project. you've been essentially spinning your wheels fruitlessly for the last several years, unable to get the ai to work reliabally (they still randomly get confused and stop moving/stall in an airlock till they starve/ die of dehydration)

and to be completely blunt, the state of the game is PATHETIC considering it has been on STEAm since 2013.
stop half-assing new features and put a complete and total feature lock on ANYTHING new untill the AI,pathfinding/pathwalking,rate of needs (oxygen,hunger,dehydration ect) decay ect ect ect are ALL BOTH BALANCED AND FUCNTIONING PROPERLY

RIP FireFall.

the Core of the Game's issues can be traced to RUN event Several Years ago: the Games Creator was kicked outta his own company by individuals in RED5 who essentially wanted to make WOW with Guns.
there was an almost immeidate direction hcange, followed by repeted Charicter progression and Gear wipes as the game's progression and gear systems were made increasingly more generic, followed by a poorly thorught-out attempt to gain the attention of the Esports industry in a game where the vast majroity of the playerbase were more intrested in the origional persistant OW PVE content >.>

short version, game was Run into the ground by short-sighted greed