Recent reviews by DerTrueForce, Withered Mind

This game has been absolutely shafted.
Bungie hasn't respected its players for a long time. This game has been expensive, and the removal of content that i paid for wasn't exactly a fun realisation.
It does still have some good points; the gumplay is unique and really good, but the bad far outweighs the good.

I couldn't recommend a new player pick it up during The Final Shape, and I've heard it's only gotten worse.
Destiny's era of being good-to-mediocre is over. I got out while the getting was still good. If you're still playing, I suggest you do the same.
And if you haven't gotten into it? Please don't do that to yourself. Play stuff from publishers/developers that actually give a damn about the experience of the game.

Edit 2024/05/06 (V-Day):
Sony has reversed their decision on account linking. The actual review of the game below my statement on that still applies. The game is worth full price, though maybe wait for a sale, keep a few cents out of Sony's mitts.

Original review:
Sony (the mob that own Arrowhead) has elected to scam Arrowhead's customers by requiring that a psn account be linked in order to play. And psn's history is one of poor cybersecurity, so this demand looks more than a bit stupid.
They should have made it a release-blocking requirement or backed out of it entirely. Locking customers who have paid out of the use of their purchase amounts to theft.

That said, Helldivers 2 is an excellent game. It's a satire, and very obvious about it.

The various weapons are all pretty fun, though some are more fun than good. The Stratagems are all pretty gratifying as well.

You don't _have_ to pay for anything except the game itself, but you have the option to speed your unlocks by doing so. This is a good practice that needs to happen more often.

The enemies are very distinct; each kind needs to be approached differently.

TL;DR: The game is good. The developers are good. Sony is bad and should feel bad.

I would have recommended this a couple of years ago, but I can't recommend it now.

StarDrive 2 is sort of like Civilization, but in space. It looks quite nice, and is reasonably well-made and quite fun, aside from a particularly gameplay-crippling flaw that manifests late-game.
That flaw is that the AI cheats its synthetic butt off, especially when it comes to spies. Spies are a way you can steal another race's technology, and they cost money (per spy) to maintain. The AI will eventually spam you with far more spies than it could possibly maintain legitimately, taking way virtually any technological edge you might have had up to that point, and might have obtained afterwards.
This is primarily why I'm not recommending this game. I feel that if the spies were removed entirely, that it would be a significant improvement. It might make it too easy to steamroll the AIs, but it would also mean that their triumph isn't a foregone conclusion.

This game also appears to have been abandoned. The Sector Zero expansion was paid one point, but that got bundled in with the base game a while back. I preferred the base gameplay myself, and there appears to be no way to remove Sector Zero. This is a lesser part of the reason I don't recommend it.

TF2 is straight-up good.
Wacky characters and cosmetic items(the world's first and only war-themed hat simulator) meets solid and varied gameplay.

You can find serious gameplay in here, but there are a lot of people who just like to meme, so keep that in mind.
Speaking of memes, there are a looooooot of memes in this game. Demo-knight, Spycrab, Market-Gardening, and the Kazotsky Kick are just a few.
It's over 10 years old at this point, and still good. All the functionally unique weapons are available as random drops(although none of the non-stock weapons are direct upgrades), and being able to customise your loadouts makes for a very wide variety of playstyles, and the sheer range of cosmetics pretty much assure that you can dress to kill(pun totally intended!) while pursuing that godlike killstreak.
TF2 has a pretty active trading scene as well(just watch out for the scammers).

The minimum specs don't lie, though. You can run it on a potato of today's standards, but I'd probably stick to minimum settings. A Quadro NVS 290 can do it, although that chokes a bit on minimum settings(mostly in MvM nightmare, the rest is mostly nice enough). A GeForce GT 610 is much better, but won't be running this on max settings either. Any reasonably recent and/or mid-range GPU should do the job just fine. If you've got a CPU that isn't complete crap, you should have no issue there.

Most definitely recommended. It is worth a look at the very least, especially as it's free.

I cannot recommend this game anymore, simply because I no longer find it fun.
I used to be able to put together a bot that looked like it should do fairly well, and it would mostly live up to that. Unfortunately, this game has changed enough that non-stomping fun builds(silly ones), or intitive builds are no longer viable ones.

Cons:
- There are some serious issues with area-denial weapons(Flak and the mortar). There really isn't any counter to them, and they are horrible to play against.
- There is no way to switch what bot you're using. That would allow for being able to take in a counter or two.
- The bigger the robot, the less powerful it is. The energy available to your weapons and modules decreases as you add more parts to your bot(not just weapons). The damage your weapons do also decreases as bot complexity rises. One or the both of these scaling factors needs to go.

Pros:
- It's still not P2W.
- There's nothing quite like it that I've seen.


Old review:
This is a very polished game, for an alpha, although, keep in mind that this IS an alpha, and a F2P(but not a P2W), so expect a bit of dodgy stuff.

Overall, I like this game, although be prepared for rather large changes until it hits beta, at least.

There are no game-breaking bugs that I've run into, and no bugs that I can think of off the top of my head.
They have changed this game from what it used to be, and that's the main cause of complaint with this game at the time of writing.

This game is fairly rewarding in the early game, but be aware that it does become more and more grindy as you level up. The loot crates added in the Epic Loot update are the cause of this. You need to recycle components fairly agressively to get a usable amount of in-game money, which needs a fix IMO. Also, the good stuff is quite rare; I've never seen a legendary-rarity item in a crate. The crates appear to be rigged so that the extra stuff that Premium users get is generally the higher rarities, but I've gotten some decent stuff in them, so I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

The developers aren't very communicative, and this leads to a lot of rotten tomatoes being thrown in the forums and reviews. Also, they don't check the Steam forums, so don't expect a reply from the devs there. They only check their own forums (www.robocraftgame.com/forum) and the reddit(I don't know where that is) so go there if you want any chance of a reply(it's not very common).

The wiki is mostly outdated, due to the very rapid pace of development, although it can be used for general info. I suspect that the wiki will be slowly updated once the game stabilises, which I reckon will be sometime during the beta phase of development. The forum is the best place to go for help at this time.

At the time of writing, the game is not balanced hugely well. As you get to about level 40-45(if you build to the maximum your level allows), you start seeing the OP weapons more and more. These are things like the Lock-on Missile Launcher, the Ion Distorter(a sort of laser shotgun), and the aeroflak cannon(an anti-aircraft weapon. Second only to LOML for killing air).

Trying to build for air is difficult for most people, as you have to balance your craft right, particularly for planes.
For planes(anything that uses airfoils) you need to get the center of lift close to the center of mass, or your weight will tend to pitch or roll you. You also have to get your center of thrust close to the center of mass, or your own thrust will push you off course(generally diving or climbing).
For Helicopters, you should try to put your center of mass as near to the middle as possible(Build symmetrically, and you should be right), and center of thrust doesn't matter to much.
Playing air is a bit counter-intuitive. It's generally best to stay fairly low, to avoid flak and missiles and to be able to hide faster. If there's no flak or LOML, then by all means, go high. Nothing except a rail will be able to do significant damage, unless it's on another aircraft, and few people build for air-to-air combat without a LOML these days.

Premium is a waste of money. All you get is double the loot in the crates(which often means double the crap), and ~12 extra colours to paint your bots with. And check this page before you log in for the first time: http://robocraft.gamepedia.com/Promotional_Codes . There's a couple of codes there that only work in the account creation page, so use 'em while you can. Also, once you log in, enter the other two codes. You'll want the boost they give you.

All up, I think the game is still fairly good, even if I don't agree with the devs opinions on where the game should go next. Watch out for the little bots carrying the big guns that the griefers use. Good luck with the crates(You'll need it later). and check the forums if you need help.

Recommended, 7/10 for balance problems and bad design decisions.