Recent reviews by Qloshae

While I do have an appreciation for the horror genre, I often find most of it to be rather dull. Typically, 'horror' relies on cheap tricks and awful music. However, this particular game was a pleasant surprise. Primarily, it functions as a detective game, which, in my opinion, enhances the impact of its horror elements.

Initially, I did notice that the animations seemed somewhat stiff. However, the quality of the acting and the story compensated for this, leading to me still being intrigued by it.

If you're anything like me, someone who enjoys story-rich games and appreciates the horror genre, then this game should definitely be on your radar.

I've now finished the game so I will state my views on it.

The good
* The combination of turn-based combat and real time out-of-combat movement together with the ability to set up ambushes gives the game a far more tactical feel in my view than most games of this sort which rely exclusively on turn-based movement. A lot of games feel as though every encounter is the same and all enemies instantly knowing where you are feels a bit silly to me. In this one, you can most of the time decide how to approach every encounter before combat even starts, luring enemies away and picking them off one by one silently or engaging a full squad or outright using stealth to ignore encounters.

* The various factions feel like they approach conflict in distinct ways, forcing you to adapt while they still having some consistent core elements within them. The game is also pretty clear about the fact that some factions are harder than others and will remind you of this a few times.

* The story itself is decent, but I find it undercut by the voice acting and story inconsistencies.

What can be improved
* It would be really neat if stores refreshed their consumables and chips. Kind of a bummer that they don't.

The bad
* The voice acting feels a bit too theatrical for my taste and while the story is mostly good, sometimes the script and story feels kinda off. Like characters having strange reactions, rapidly moving from love to hate to love or having no reactions at all to some pretty significant pieces of information. It is also super weird to me that the woman who has hunted the first family for decades doesn't even know who they are. It also feels off that a character we've known to be first family since the start has this big and dramatic "reveal" really late in the story, when we as players have known it for like the last 20 hours. Personal taste, but I think the game could've tried to be less obvious about it so the reveal would actually feel impactful or had the reveal earlier.
Also, what's the deal with everyone telling the main character to calm down and control his anger? I was fully expecting some sort of nuclear explosion given how anxious they seemed about it, but it just didn't really seem relevant at all.

* The weapons also feel kinda meh. There's not really any scaling or variety among them. I was hoping for all characters to at least have one silent weapon, but never managed to find that and some weapons I had from the start were still viable at the end.

In conclusion
I think it's a great tactical game with an overall decent story (although some question marks). That said, if you mostly prefer games such as XCom, I would look at some videos first as it in my opinion plays a lot differently from those kinds of games. Overall, if this doesn't scratch an itch for you, I'd wait for a sale.

Honestly, I really want to like this game, I really do. However, it is a MESS. No kidding, I have had so many bugs, random crashes and not to even mention the very obvious foundation for a P2W system such as everything being locked behind lootboxes and the anti-cheat system for a freaking single-player game!

Every time I think I might actually recommend it, I stumble across even worse bugs. This game runs incredibly badly and has a ton of bugs. I can't really recommend it even for a sale at this point as I am unable to play past acquiring to the first new hero due to a game-breaking bug.

EDIT: I have now managed to finish the game and my earlier points still stand. The game runs terribly, it has tons of bugs and just overall plays like an alpha version. They don't even really have an AI for "Charlie", but rather, its follow is just "move towards" which means it gets stuck at literally everything and has nothing that would make it try to get unstuck. The voicelines are extremely cheaply done too. The same voicelines are used in every situation, even when completely irrelevant. Like, you're killing a bunch of soulless or vampyrs and your heroes are like, "I hope Hydra follows concussion protocols!" ????? The achievements are also bugged, some of them you simply won't get even if you've done them. Also, the NG+ is absolutely terrible, primarily as it wipes your card decks, making the grind for them pointless (but hey, probably because they wanted to initially incentivice paying real money for lootboxes).

This game has some development areas such as adding a blueprint system, some way to box delete tracks and a clearer view of production/consumption, however, overall it really manages to capture the absolute chaos which is logistics. For having just been released into EA, it has some really well polished core mechanics.

Great VR experience. I'm not super used to VR as I haven't played in ages, leading to many silly deaths, nor do I have perfect sight, leading to many missed shots, but it was very enjoyable. This truly feels like a AAA game that doesn't restrict the player by making it overly easy just because VR is relatively new.
My biggest complaint is that the game sometimes turns into a puzzle game a bit excessively, but most of the time this is mostly due to my lack of observational skills and not really realizing that I can manipulate the environment in any way not highlighted.

If you've been waiting for a real AAA game for VR, then this is it. HowLongToBeat puts the average time to beat the story at 10 hours, the lowest at 8, and slowest at 13.
Also, I mean, it's Half-Life.
Yes, I recommend it.

Yup

A lot of content to play through.
I'd say if you enjoy Wildlands and the concept behind it you'll probably like this. They both seem to be pretty close in amount of conent and type of content, but both have their own styles (Wildlands goes for more realism, and MGSV goes for more quirky stuff like cardboard box to hide in and rescuing people by jettisoning them into the sky).

It is worth mentioning however as a negative that the game features micro-transactions and uses a lot of timers to make you pay. Like, top-tier items taking up to around 10 days to finish and some of the more basic stuff can take a few minutes to a few hours to unlock as well.

One of the best games I've played.
I was pretty skeptical before I bought it because I just wasn't sure it was a good game concept, but saw the trailer for it and that immedietly sold it for me, and while some stuff are complicated like rail signals (although I have really gotten a hang of them now) and circuits, you don't need to understand everything to get something great working and for your struggles there are mods and blueprints online from the super active community.

Not going to draw this review out.

Something that makes a lot of people feel put off, I sure was when I found out, however it is nothing to worry about.
It's a bluff, I have found 0 evidence of anyone actually having their save deleted

Alright, now that we got that out of the way, this is an amazing game. It has a well made story and immersion, great art, great sound, the animations are done in mocap ie. they're really good, the combat feels great. I was skeptical because it's not my usual genre, it feels a bit like dark souls, but I totally loved it.

X universe + Space Engineers. Enough said.

On a more serious note, it is one of the most well polished new EA games I have seen and an easy time sink for anyone that enjoys either of the above franchises. Game itself takes at a minimum a day of game time I would say to finish. However, the galaxy is just massive and seed based so each galaxy is unique. You can really take as much time as you want, I don't know if there is at this time any limit at all when it comes to the size of your ship.
Many concerns and wants people have are being worked on by the dev team.

One issue I have is that there's no round object and you can't use any shape you want for something. For example, crew quarters can't be a triangle, it has to be a cube/rectangle. It would be nice if shape was different from type.
Would also be neat if you could modify stuff like galaxy size if you wanted a truly massive galaxy for a dedicated server for example.
In regards to its size. Each galaxy is something like 1 000 x 1 000 systems you can visit. Not all populated. So I mean, if you are a completionist and want to uncover the whole galaxy. Enjoy, lol. (There are a lot of upgrades you can buy or loot to help you out)