Recent reviews by imPyre

Got the game in spite of a wave of recent negative reviews and I'm glad I did. This game is equal parts city-builder and train sim. It's a lot of fun and runs pretty well. My only two complaints are thus:
a) when dragging rails while zoomed out, it can cause the game to chug a bit trying to route long-distance lines all at once. I doubt there's much the dev can do about that, but it's an annoyance nonetheless
b) there's a very specific bug related to workplaces that's very annoying. If a worker that lives in a town is slotted to work in a particular building, then his residence is removed... it seems as though the game does not generate a new available job position for the now-vacant spot. Often, you'll delete a residence then a water tower or marketplace will suddenly complain of not having enough workers... and no matter how long you wait or how many additional houses you build... or how many available workers you have within range, the job never gets filled. The only way to fix is to delete the marketplace/water tower/whatever, then re-place it. It can also sometimes happen to factories/production buildings, but that seems to happen less often... and if/when it does, you can usually pause or disable the building, then re-enable it to cause it to re-list the available job positions which fixes the problem caused by the bug.

That said, it's not game-breaking and overall after almost 20 hours I'm still having fun and still figuring out new content. It's also super relaxing.

To address some of the other complaints in the negative reviews, probably one of the biggest sources of confusion when I first started was the build bar at the bottom of the screen. The developer has tried to make it "context sensitive". So what it will display changes depending on the situation. For example, you might try to build a bakery while looking at a smaller outlying village and be confused why you can't find it... the problem is most likely that it simply isn't showing up because that town hasn't met the unlock requirements for it yet... so it just won't appear at all. Another potential pitfall is if you have some other building or object selected, the build bar will usually limit the items shown to those related to what you have selected. So if you're having trouble finding something down there, try unselecting everything/pressing escape.

I like this version. I feel like it crashes a bit more than it used to, but it doesn't crash super often. Although it's not as customizable as it used to be (like with tilepacks), the builtin graphics seem to be more complete and integrate better so I think it's a win overall. I've played off and on for years, but my biggest hurdle keeping me from getting more into the game was the clunky interface and how difficult it was to learn how to interact with... the current interface is way more approachable. That said, it took me a bit to figure out how to cancel mining designations (it's the eraser icon). Some things about the UI aren't super intuitive, and I had to look up a couple things. Overall, I think this game is a lot of fun. There are some things I think Gnomoria did better though, like stockpile linking was easier, and setting up production chains was less hassle. Still, definitely worth a buy.

Fun game. A lot of good hours in this game, and more to follow I'm sure. I also like the direction development is headed in.
You might like it if you like tinkering with complex systems.

BUYER BEWARE
Here's the spoiler-free version of this review:
It will take you more than two hours to realize you want a refund (if you fall into that category). Be aware of that when you make this purchase. Below I will outline basic pros and cons, then later dig into each.

PROS
----------------------------
Scope
The scope is huge. There's a ton of map. Lots of weapon/armor/item types. Plenty of skills and stats, etc.

Gametype
I think this is a pro simply because there are so few games like this. I *loved* morrowind, and this reminds me a lot of morrowind (sans magic of course) and also mount and blade (which is probably my favorite game ever).

Potential
There's a *lot* of potential here. If it had a more powerful modding api, some of this untapped potential might have been realized.

Difficulty
The game sets a more "realistic" difficulty curve, but you can adjust it to your whim. Make the game as easy or challenging as you like (for the most part). The default settings are quite good at reminding you that in real life, you wouldn't go from being a goat herder to a marauder single-handedly fighting off swarms of bandits without extensive training (and a few beatings) first.

Sandbox-y
The game does a decent job of thrusting you into a world full of lore, and just letting you do whatever comes naturally.

CONS
------------------------
Bugs
There are still quite a lot of them. Satisfactory is in *ALPHA* and has fewer bugs. This game is supposed to be 1.0... dun... finished? Psh, not even. AI gets stuck, pathfinding is garbage (probably because of the difficulty of navigating the twisted terrain), jobs work sometimes and not others, sometimes your characters will just become completely unresponsive to *any* commands... just standing there. Can't move. The only fix is to revert to an earlier save. I've had no CTD events that I can recall, but the game has too many bugs. Also, stealing while paused seems bugged (or at least exploity). Game crashes *every* time I try to close it. Not a big deal because I've saved already, but a *finished* game does *not* crash *every* *single* *time* it's closed.

Building system
Where walls are concerned, it sucks. It's fiddly, and it's hard to get a design you like. Also, gates are useless.

Content
The map is gigantic, but it's mostly empty. Why are there a pack of manhunters walking random circles in the middle of the desert? Is one slave worth that? It seems unlikely. Why are there 5 different types of ninjas? Swamp ninjas? Sand ninjas? How is adding a special "ninja" type adding *anything* to the game? Bandits wear different clothes, how exciting. You basically have 3 or 4 enemy types besides humanoids. There are so few different species. Look at the different enemy types in morrowind, dozens upon dozens. As much "content" as there is in this game, so much of it feels like a reskin of some other content. There's very little actual creative content. 99% of that is the map itself. If you like exploring, you'll enjoy this, maybe. It just feels so lifeless. Each area only has one or two creature types you'll find in it. But remember, this game is finished. New content most likely won't be a thing, or if it is, expect more of the same I would guess. Oh, and there's a fixed number of recruitables unless you want to buy slaves. Don't get them killed.

Interactiveness/reactiveness
The game falls flat when it comes to how well it responds to the player. Save a dying ninja? No gratitude. Want to talk to more than 1% of the population? Too bad, the other 99% only give you 4 options: beat on head with stick, beat on head with stick then put in cage, beat on head with stick *from the shadows*, or ignore them. Run to that guard patrol screaming for help? Since they care about their citizenry? nope, patrolling here, that is all. Bandit demands, bandit raid, bandit demands, bandit raid, bandit demands, bandit raid * 15 then caravan, then back to the same old shtick. I wonder what happens if we poke the demands guy in the eye, he brings more friends, i wonder what happens if we pay him off, he wants more money. Oh, can we make peace? No.

Tech
The tech is okay, and it's the one reason you have to actually go exploring (because if it's money you want, sell grog). However, it does feel a bit pointless after a bit.

Incomplete/missing features
There are a LOT of things in this game that just scream "I'm not finished yet", but the dev is moving on to kenshi 2. Ranching... you cannot do this. No animal breeding. If you want to farm leather and meat for cooking and armor, you'll need to hunt it down. And raptors have zero edible meat, so yeah. No milk, no water (for drinking). I ran around carrying a water jug for the first hour of playing because I was in the desert and thought, sure, water's important right? Apparently not, all you need is food here. There's no real quest system to speak of, and if there is then there are very few quest givers. What, the guy at the inn never had a problem with someone not paying their tab? Right, because everyone is just so good about that sort of thing in a post-apocalyptic waste. No jobs either. Trade, scavenge, mine, or craft. Those are your options, and since crafting requires infrastructure and trading requires money, speed, and inventory capacity, at the beginning of the game that leaves A) Mining or B) scavenging. Mining is terribly slow with one person, and honestly the materials are better spend on crafting. So really your only way to make money early in the game is by scavenging. (Thieving takes skill) Follow patrols and clean up their kills. That's pretty much it. Prisoner recruitment? How about joining an existing faction? How come I can't sign up to serve alongside my holy nation brothers in arms or sign up with a bandit gang? You're forced to go it alone or start your own faction. Those are your two options. Noone to talk to, noone to join up with, noone to do work for. A few people you can buy from, and a few people you can sell to.

Combat
The combat is the one thing this game is *all* about besides exploration. Combat permeates its every facet... and yet, somehow the combat system is probably one of the *most* lackluster combat systems I have *ever* seen. I'd take diablo combat over this. Virtually anything would be an improvement. There's very little flex or randomness in combat. You are either clearly beat, or clearly won. There's not usually a middle ground, and when it's close, it really just feels more like standing at the soda machine and coming up 5 cents short... it's just blah. Furthermore, the squad-based nature of this game does *NOT* support squad-based combat well at all. For examples of how it *should* be done, see the total war series. Hell, even rimworld has better squad combat than this game, which is sad because rimworld's combat system is fiddly on a good day... but at least it's interesting. Weapon type choices matter a great deal, especially when considering who on your squad is using what. This just isn't the case here. Let us see where our units end up when we give a group move order during combat mode. Maybe *give* us a combat mode, let us choose formation types, etc. For combat in kenshi your options are "hold position" vs "pursue" and "passive" vs "will return engagement". That's it.

In short, I was really excited to play this game. I've waited quite a while to purchase it, specifically I waited for 1.0 and it's been supremely disappointing. I'm not sure if this is due to all the hype I heard in other reviews/youtube/etc, but in a lot of ways this game does not meet what i'd expect from a beta stage game, much less a final release. It feels like the dev spent more time adding "stuff" and "locations" than actually expanding the game mechanics and bringing the game to life. I want this game to feel more "alive" than it does. Even fallout manages to accomplish this without destroying the atmosphere of desolation and apocalyptic consequences.

5/10

Got this on sale for the daily deal for 50% off. At a price of $10, I requested a refund.
Here are my complaints:
-several crashes
-terrible pathfinding for the ship (it frequently gets stuck near coastline, but time continues to pass)
-just a re-skin of mount and blade with ship battles added
-the ship battles are terrible (difficult to control and aim)
-other random bugs and errors all over the place

Here's what I liked:
-intro music is pretty cool
-the trading and construction are improvements over the older versions

All-in-all, not worth it. If you can't get it for less than you'd pay for a hot dog, get that instead.

KSP is one of those games where you either love it or can't get into it at all. There are a lot of reviews on this game, some say how it's super difficult... and others say how rewarding and challenging it is. That's what most of them sound like, but what I'm going to do is review the kind of person that loves KSP. Kindof like a psychological evaluation.

For each question, answer 1-5 with 1 meaning "this doesn't sound like me at all" and 5 meaning "this is all me all the time".
1) I enjoy "fiddling" with something until it works
2) I science all the things.
3) I enjoy building contraptions.
4) I like big explosions and going *really* fast.
5) I enjoy a challenge.
6) I like simulation/management games where decisions involve risk/reward tradeoffs.
7) I prefer sandbox style of play.

If you score anything over a 20, or if you're still curious anyway (worth at least 20 points by itself) read on.
This game is fantastic just plain vanilla.
***however***
The mods and community make it infinitely better.
If you take a look through the mods on the KSP forum, you'll find something you enjoy.
Also, CKAN (comprehensive kerbal archive network) is a tool you can download that will find, list, and manage your mods for you. It's easy to use.

Types of mods depending on the game *you* want to play:
-Just like building and flying but hate mathing? Use Kerbal Engineer Redux and read up on dV requirements.
-Rather build ships and manage your space empire without worrying about piloting? Use MechJeb.
-Want to manage colonies? Use MKS/OKS for all your kolonization.
-Want to make it more difficult? This list is endless... life support mods, mods that add random malfunctions, mods that increase the scale of the world, etc
-Want to shoot stuff from your shiny new plane or orbital bombardment satellite? Lost of weapons mods are available.
-Want to reenact old missions? There are recreation mods and "stockalike" mods galore, also remote-tech mod.
-Want to build crazy contraptions? Use infernal robotics.

Words don't do these guys justice. This game has come a *long* way. It's barely even recognizeable honestly, and I mean that in a good way. Two years after the initial release and they're still making big changes; and that keeps me coming back over and over again. Despite all that's changed over the years, the developers have kept a strong vision and kept this game on track... even as much as it's changed, it still feels like the same game. It came out around the same time as a lot of similar games, but none of them hold a candle to this one.

- They listen to their players and fans, but still make sound decisions. If it fits into the vision for this game, they're going to try and make it happen.
- This game is both challenging and approachable. It isn't extremely difficult to start learning as a newbie, but there's plenty to master... even for an experienced player.
- The community is pretty great as a whole. Most servers are populated with helpful and kind players.
- You can play how you want and build what you want.
- Being on a busy multiplayer server feels like falling into an episode of the walking dead.
- updates... always. They *still* call it early access, but there's nothing "alpha" about this game.
- some of the best game money I've spent, 10/10, would buy again (and will definitely keep an eye out for future titles)

I always like to give fair reviews, and I always try to mention some flaws/downsides... but I honestly have a hard time thinking of any. If there's one game you wanna get... this is the one.

I enjoy ARK, minecraft, KSP, and Neverwinter. (Just to give you an idea of my preferences.)

This game *does* have some bugs remaining. I had some sort of memory leak (or other compouning problem) and sound issues after playing for awhile. It became unbearable after something like 5 or 6 hours (but my system is pretty high-quality, so your mileage may vary). However, a simple restart of the game solved the problem and only took a minute. This is not game-breaking.

I love this game... but it won't be for everyone.

Some things to note:
A) Most servers use conservative server settings that are pretty close to default.
B) At default settings, things in this game can take a long time and a lot of effort to achieve. You'll have to earn it.
C) With default settings, you almost cannot survive alone. (Farming/nature lore can both allow you to forage for food, but cooking requires multiple skill sets that will almost undoubtedly require multiple participants. If you plan on jumping into the game with no friends to help you and with no idea what you're doing... you will probably fail.
D) Some servers have much more newb-friendly settings... look for high level/stat caps and high resource gather multipliers/exp multipliers.
E) Part of the appeal of this game *IS* the fact that it takes so much effort to be successful... reaching a milestone can be very rewarding. I'm looking forward to getting my first shack built.
F) There's a lot to learn about this game, the wiki is your friend.
G) Something that I had to find out through experience and lots of looking online: Many abilities require advanced skills with a skill level of 0... but they must still be unlocked to be used, and many require lots of skill levels in a prerequisite skill to be unlocked. IE: cutting billets for cooking fuel requires lvl 0 carpentry, but carpentry doesn't unlock until lvl 60 logging.
H) Working with terrain is tedious and very time consuming... don't plan on getting in here and levelling mountains like in minecraft... you'll be digging the rest of your life... it's just implausible.
I) The skill system is very detailed and random events can occur. I cut my hand while trying to forage and it bled for like 10 minutes. Not life threatening... but interesting. This game feels kindof like Neverwinter or D&D meets ARK set in medieval times.
J) There's no magic (although prayer can have supernatural effects [including teleportation]).

So far this is just a description of the main points of the game as I see it at the moment.
Now for the good and bad.

GOOD:
-Devs are pretty active.
-Plenty of servers with a variety of settings.
-Very playable, few bugs.
-Very unique.
-Highly replayable. (partly because of how limited you usually are in character development)
-Very conducive to roleplay. (Though it's often not required/expected)
-The music. (I love it, totally my own opinion)

BAD:
-A little expensive for an alpha game.
-Graphics are very mix-n-match. (IE: character model looks amazing, but the hair models look atrocious... kinda weird)
-I love the focus on team-play... however, there *needs* to be a single skill set that will allow you to survive in the wilderness on your own. Sure, you won't be eating cake... and it's likely you'll spend most of your time hunting/fishing/gathering to support yourself... but it seems unrealistic that you can't have a single survival skill that enables you to build a simple campfire, hunt/fish, and grill up a bit of dinner. This could also make for a new skill tree leading into "scouting" skills.

This game is pretty epic. Fans of the original Jurrasic Park won't be disappointed. The scale is fantastic, the dinos are amazing, and the dev-team is a dream-team. These guys are serious about making their game epic... and use player suggestions to help them do it. This is the next KSP/Minecraft story in the making. The building system could use a little work, but it's already better than many similar systems I've seen used. Some of the dino AI could also use a little work, but it's definitely playable.

It runs (at minimal settings with the extremely low-mem start option) on my Asus Aspire V laptop. So don't be worried about trying it. (Plus, steam can refund you if it won't run on your system so long as you don't play for more than a couple hours.)

Updates are frequent, and there's still a *lot* to look forward to. The map is epic.

Getting started is quite challenging, be prepared to be eaten while freezing in your undies on the beach.

This game is best enjoyed with friends.

---EDIT---
I'd like to address the issues people are having with servers and griefing. As with any online multiplayer game, finding a good server is important. Find one in which the players there share your attitude towards gaming. It can take some work, but it's definitely worth it. Don't be anti-social. Reaching out to other players on the server and asking them about the serer itself can help.

I love the idea of this game... it also looks really great. The weather effects are awesome. That being said, I have purchase several games in alpha and beta stages. I have been in invite-only beta tests also. I know what to expect and what not to expect from games in early stages, and this one is terrible. The developer clearly has little idea of what he's doing from a procedural point of view. In the time i've owned this game here's what's happened: several patches have been released, but the big problems haven't been resolved... neat new little content has been added, but with the game unplayable it makes little difference. This game is sure to disappoint over and over again. I waited so long to write this review because I wanted to see if some progress would be made, but it hasn't. The worst part of it is that the developer has had to go off steam (on kickstarter) to continue to raise money. Please save yourself the headache of downloading this game. If you do try to play, here are a few tips.
1) Save often. F5 saves and F9 loads... the icons at the top right also save and load, i'll let you try to figure out which is which
2) The AI is always getting stuck in stupid loops or just shutting down. This happens every few minutes like clockwork... you must save, exit the game, and restart it to continue playing.
3) Things don't update like they should... if you mine ore but can't figure out why it isn't being moved to storage... it's probably AI to blame again... another reload should help.
4) Sometimes things stop working inexplicably, If the airlock breaks and cannot be repaired, you must start a new game. some things can be repaired though, so who knows.
5) Always place two doors on rooms... if the door breaks and needs repair, but your people are inside of the room, and the guys outside the room are too tired to do it and the door that's broken leads to the sleeping area... they might decide not to repair it and instead die from lack of sleep... leaving the others trapped inside to starve
6) Just get in the habit of restarting the game every few minutes
7) Don't bother with research, it causes bugs which basically cause the game to crash beyond a certain point... meaning you'll never get past that point without starting yet another new game.
8) Use windows 7 or vista, and make sure you have the latest drivers for your graphics card (and by that I mean have a graphics card that uses newer drivers) The dev doesn't like helping with bugfixing if your computer doesn't use the latest drivers, despite the fact that some older cards (like the ones in my windows 7 machine) have old drivers (even if they are the "most up to date" they are still like 2 years old) and that still others (like on my windows 8 acer machine) require the use of special drivers provided by the OEM which may not be the "latest and greatest".
9) Don't expect too much, this way you won't be disappointed.

Edit: still... don't buy this game. It's on sale, but seriously... you wouldn't play it more than 30 minutes, even if it were free.

UPDATE: 21 May 2015... I'm not sure how it's even possible, but the game is even worse now than it was before.

UPDATE: 1 Sep 2017... Still going to be a negative on the recommendation. I advise staying away from this one a little while longer. The dev has continued on pretty much the same trajectory. New features, new bells and whistles, and failure to address very long-standing issues with the game. It still has graphical glitches everywhere. Sometimes a door will be stuck closed because of power outages, but it will never update. It looks open, but noone can get inside. Upon reloading you'll go "oh, that's why they weren't building anything... they couldn't get to the workbench". Sometimes colonists become unresponsive but seem to still be standing around. AI has improved, but not by much. Resolution problems and graphics problems. None of my OTHER games require disabling overlays or nvidia share. None of my other games are affected so horrendously by UI scaling (if you go fullscreen and can't click the buttons, that's probably why... this game hates UI scaling). None of my other games break horribly when my gpu drivers are a couple weeks out of date. The dev is better at writing exuse posts blaming the flaws in his code on everyone else's setup than he is at writing code to fix problems and address issues. The game is not as awful as it was, but at this rate it'll never be a thumbs-up game. In the past couple hours I've only had one crash-to-desktop.