Recent reviews by Emten

Major Order Completed.

A fun game, really. Sony has reversed course on their attempt to exclude 100+ countries from playing their game.

Good job, community.

Been having a good time so far. There isn't much to say about it. If you want a Space Sim, this game isn't going to do it for you.

A cool concept executed rather poorly and overly monetized. As an added bonus, the game now has its own annoying and buggy launcher. The game kept disconnecting me for no reason, well not no reason, it turns out their own launcher (which seems to rely on torrent to distribute the game files) gave me a corrupted file. The company says they pulled out of Russia, mostly due to the economic sanctions from the literal war happening, but oddly enough their store pages still seem to route you through some Russian thing, so that's pretty weird.

All in all, the game was fun years ago when I played it. In the state it is currently in, with its dwindled playerbase, and its hyper aggressive monetization, I really can't recommend it.

Blame it on the misfortune of your birth.

Update:

Honestly, I can't give the game a good review. It's almost impossible to get a match, and when you do get a match, there is a high probability of encountering problems or hackers. If a teammate disconnects due to the horrible servers, for instance, you're essentially handicapped the duration of the match and you still lose rating. I had hoped that the quality of the matchmaking would improve, but we're several weeks out and 98% of the time I am still plagued by "Great work out there!" without ever finding a match.

When it's good, and the matches are close, it's really fun. However, with all of the constant problems, I really cant recommend anyone else play this game unless you're a masochist.

It's one of the better Total War Games. Get it on sale with all the DLC and you're pretty much golden. There's some anger about female generals or whatever but it's way overstates and overblown. Just mod them out if you don't like them. The only reason people are having a cry over it now is they added the much demanded family tree to the game and now people are more aware of the very marginal amount of female generals that tend to spawn up in factions that have them. Truthfully, the game has had female units and generals for awhile now.

Also they're mad because a customer service rep told them if they didn't like the presence of female characters they could mod them out or just choose not to play the game. Somehow they think screaming in anger on the internet is going to get said CS Rep fired, even though said CS Rep literally just verbatim told them what the company told her to tell them.

But angry conservatives on the internet are adverse to logic.

UPDATE:
I am leaving my original review below for the sake of posterity. That said, I am pleased to report that the developers have more or less addressed every complaint I had regarding their game to satisfaction. I say more or less because I still think a sandbox PVP game should incorporate fall damage, that way positioning carries more weight.

That said, the improvements I observed in my brief return:
-Movement feels less sluggish and unnatural.
-Variety has been added to the envrionment which makes it easier to deal with on the eyes.
-There is an in-game chat functionality now. While it isn't voice chat, it is leaps and bounds better than what they previously had.
-Options and items are now clearly explained.

The mouse sensitivity, to my knowledge, works properly now or at least works the way I had expected it to. Is this the greatest game ever? Not really. I still stand by my opinion that the game would have benefitted from an even longer development cycle. A lot of how it looks and the way things are implemented still has the Comp-Sci Student vibe to them. Which isn't a bad thing.

What the game does have in spades is the tenacity of the developers, who seemed absolutely invested in maintaining and improving their product. That is something you do not see often with developers.

So do I recommend it? At a price point of $4.99, if you're into Sandbox PVP games, yes. I recommend it. It isn't the greatest or best looking Triple A Sandbox PVP game but it definitely feels like it has a unique take on the genre and buying the game supports aspiring indie developers who took the criticism I offered them in stride and resolved to improve their product. There are many indie developers who, when faced with similiar critiques of their work, have taken a different road all together.

The price point is cheap. If you're a fan of Sandbox PVP games and you want to try something different, grab Animyst. Support an Indie Dev Team who looks like they're going the right way.


ORIGINAL REVIEW BELOW:


When the game was first described to me, I kind of wanted to like it.

Unfortunately, there is no neutral option for a game review and a "yes" or "no" is often arbitrary. I would prefer a 10/10 scale, and I'll be writing a full review later on elsewhere. For now, I will say that this game is woefully inadequate for a PVP Sandbox game. In the 11 minutes that I played the game, I experienced:

Pros:
-If you like PVP Sandbox games, it seems to have a unique premise
-Indie developers who seem to have the best of intentions, but perhaps are lacking in certain technical areas
-At $2.99 on sale, there are worse games for this price. Even at the full retail price, there are worse games to buy.

Cons:
-Sluggish, unrealistic movement
-There is absolutely no fall damage
-Textures kind of strain the eye after awhile. Everything looks functionally the same.
-There is no integrated in-game chat functionality, instead you have to rely on a list of pre-selected words to string sentences together. Instead you are encouraged to join their Discord, which isn't ideal for everyone.
-The mechanics are clunky and not really well explained
-There is no real options menu, instead you hit esc and are given a list of what keys are supposed to perform commands. I say supposed, because in my 11 minutes of playing a handful of the commands didn't work.

The Honest Review:

To me the game looks, feels, and plays like something Game Design students cooked up as a school project. Everything is really basic and barebones without much underlying infastructure or development. The idea is unique and quirky, and I think the developers might have been better served if they had done a kickstarter on the game in order to implement better functionality.

As it is, the game is lacking heavily on quality of life things such as an in-game chat and in-game voice chat. These are often integrated cornerstones to Sandbox PVP games that Animyst is competing with. I believe if they spend more time improving the game and implementing chat features the game would be easy for me to recommend at its price point.

However, my experience was not ideal. I couldn't communicate, I couldn't adjust options that are standard on most PC games, commands that were presented to me as options did nothing at all such as the suicide command in game. I had hoped to suicide and get a better spawn, but the command did nothing. Likewise, trying to adjust my mouse sensitivity in game did not work.

Because of the lack of very basic infastructure, my review is a negative one. My experience was a negative one and I encountered features that did not work as advertised and feel that the game suffers from its lack of means to communicate with other players in the game. In the future, if they implement integrated chat and sort out options in a manner that are actually consistent with modern standards, I feel the game will be well worth the $4.99 it costs

Until then, however, I do not recommend it.

10/10 Would get screwed out of my money by Early Access again.

I...really just honestly don't like it. Melee is broken. The game is full of bugs. Fired a Plasma Cannon and watched my shot just disappear into thin air.

I've actually had relatively no performance problems and have been enjoying myself immensely on the game. Perhaps it is because I didn't follow the game at all. I remember seeing it at its E3 announcement and saying it looked cool, but I didn't follow the development of it at all. I had absolutely no hype going into the game and because of that I think I probably enjoyed it more. I didn't know what to expect, I didn't follow any of the interviews with the developer or watch on of the gameplay footage. I purchased it because a friend of mine said it looked good and that was basically the extent of my knowledge of it when I purchased it. I was absolutely shocked the first time I was in space and I got a notification that a hostile subspace scan was detected, I tried to flee but before I knew it the enemy was upon me and I was fighting for my life.

It was a nice experience, honestly.

Game worked perfectly for me. Karl Franz is an OG.