Recent reviews by Spray Now Pray Later

Sony has decided not to move forward with their new policy. This is a win.

However, the game has not yet been returned to sale in over 100 countries, including numerous US territories.

Steam's comment from support:
Hi there,

I understand your reason for this refund request.

Upon review, the game was removed from Steam Store in over 100 countries. Since you have purchased the game before May 6, 2024, you should still have access to the game.

Steam Support doesn't have an update on when the game will be available for purchase in other regions.

Earlier Review during the rebellion (5/3):
Bait and switch on account linking; months after the Steam refund policy coverage has lapsed.
Sony is recommending players issue charge backs to steam or make a PSN if they want to continue playing.

The game is great, the policy is garbage, the handling of the policy change is abysmal.

Looks like a data harvesting scheme... Given zero requirement to use PSN up until this point.

Cannot recommend the game until this policy is reversed - and cannot get a refund through steam due to the timing of the bait and switch. :/

Initial Day 1 Review, from the evening of 4/30/2024, posted 5/1/2024:

"Do I recommend this game?" - Not yet, for the average gamer - recommend holding off a little bit.
The game shows promise for the future, has some substantial performance issues to contend with, and several UI/UX issues to work through. I look forward to the future.

I'll start with a high-level of hardware in use and a note about "micro-optimizations" performed on my system prior to testing.
OS: Win 11 Pro
CPU: i9-14900k
GPU: RTX 4090 (Latest nVidia drivers as of 4/30/2024 8:00 pm EST)
RAM: 128GB
Storage: Samsung 990 Pro NVME SSD
Micro-Optimizations: System (across the board) was OC'd as high as stable, with XMP profile OC limited due to amount of RAM. (OC on 128GB introduces additional challenges).

FPS Range: 65-132, average 105 on Epic settings using the "Quality Preset" Epic, DLSS Enabled, latest nvidia drivers.
Idle at base camp averaged 112, but swung wildly +/- 20fps.
In combat or in transit: varied wildly between 65-132fps.
Settings Tried: Tried various runs with Low, Med, High, and Epic, and various resolution changes - with inconsistent results and fps variation too sporadic to list each set without a proper benchmark sequence.
Hitching/Stuttering: This appears to be predominantly network related (but no apparent built-in network diagnostic tools), frequent 200-700ms (approx.) stutters, several (but not all) stutters did show noticeable dips in FPS, but not all of them were accompanied by cpu/gpu spikes, leading me to believe these were network related (speculation).

Quality Presets: Low/Med/High/Epic
There may be a "Settings" menu issue - numerous details look better on "Low" and "Epic" but truly abysmal on "Medium" or "High", this is especially noticeable in face/character detail. (Set to low or epic, look at character face - set to med or high, look at character face. Noticeable render quality differences were encountered). Med and High quality presets, appear to set (behind the scenes) a substantially lower texture detail or level of detail scale (LOD) for various textures, while reflections and other details varied more nominally with settings changes (especially shadows). I suspect there is a misconfiguration of these presets, as they do not behave as one would expect (Low should not look substantially better than medium or high, for character detail. Other than shadows and reflections being worse on low, most other aspects seemed visually better).

I suspect many of these will see optimization and improvement over the course of Early Access, as long as the devs listen to the player base.

Character Creation: Let me improve my graphics settings before customizing my character. Let me know which (if any) choices are permanent.
Faction Selection: You don't show me which factions my steam friends have chosen until AFTER I have chosen. This is a missed opportunity to eliminate confusion before it takes place. Additionally, recommend adding a reset (n times per wipe) to allow users who choose improperly to not be punished for an easy mistake.
Menu Clarity: Menu or dialogue font is grey/white, often on a transparent black background with white or gray tents, structures, etc behind them. By overlaying this color of text on this color and style of background, you reduce readability for typical vision sets... Let alone those with any form of impaired vision. Suggest making these backgrounds more opaque, increasing font size, changing font color, or otherwise improving visibility and readability of these dialogues. This is true at character creation and in-game.

Team Killing: It is possible to team kill throughout the map, and possible to bait individuals near base helicopters (which are fatal on arrival and departure). There's zero warning or indication of this behavior, so there is little you can do to prevent it.
Team Looting: You are very likely to be looted by allies and picked absolutely clean, if you die to a friendly (especially so in base). There's zero warning or indication of this behavior, so there is little you can do to prevent it.
Voice Chat: Why is "Z" the only push to talk button and why can't this be re-bound? Why is this not listed /anywhere/ within the game? This key is often bound to prone for many (several reviews have noted this).

Factoring out the poor framerate, hitching, and UI readability: The gameplay loop is actually pretty fun. I think it shows a lot of promise, and given time and improvements, will be fun to revisit.

On X (formerly Twitter), several posts by developers are gaslighting or disrespectful towards legitimate users who want to give them money, play their game, and have fun - many within the minimum or recommended hardware range. I absolutely get that the game is Early Access, I fully acknowledge it has likely improved over time due to various improvements, bug fixes, optimization passes, etc, and everyone knows as an Early Access title, it will (hopefully) continue to improve. But the game is "Not Optimized" fully yet, and to say otherwise feels disingenuous and disrespectful. To blame end-users frequently for hardware that isn't "min-maxed into oblivion" seems like a quick way to lose an audience. It seems like if a user falls within your advertised min and recommended specs, and has substantial performance issues, you should begin data collection to isolate root cause and work on that... Rather than routinely blaming their hardware, blaming micro-optimizations to end systems, etc.

Get it in more peoples hands, get more data points, learn how to improve your product, so we can all benefit from it and have fun!
Embrace player feedback, that's the entire point of early access.

Recommending for the action and cinematic nature of the gameplay. However, from my first few experiences I'd say the campaign was incredibly short, and not as enjoyable as the first one. I also encountered quite a few bugs and issues along the way. However, I haven't gone back to it for any long stretch of time since I beat it so long ago. :o