Recent reviews by Battlefeathers

Don't let the advertising lead you astray: this isn't a tactics game. It's a turned-based rhythm game. You see, the entire flow of the game is based on two tiny pips at the bottom of the screen. You need to pay attention to these pips at all times, because if you let the enemy take a turn, you die instantly. The entire game is about cheesing your actions as much as possible, because if you don't, you are going to be one-shot no matter what you're wearing or carrying. Add on a terrible wound management and calorie-tracking system and you have an absolute mess of a game. Hoping I can change this review to be more positive in the future, but for now, no go.

It's good. Play it.

It's rare I'm so engrossed in a CRPG anymore to actually play it through to completion, but so far I'm on track. Couple issues with railroading but that's not uncommon.

like a billion years in development for this trash

Disclaimer: I kickstarted this game.

So if you enjoyed JSRF or Mirror's Edge, you'll probably enjoy this - it's a game about face paced movement, tight controls, going fast and jumping high. It certainly scratches that parkour itch that those games did.

PROS:
+ Tight controls (once you set them up right)
+ Cool art style, in the vein of JSRF.
+ Amazing soundtrack, almost worth buying the game for that alone.

CONS:
- Not much content - two or three "main areas", and another three to five limited mission areas. Could be completed in a solid day or two of playing. A rather small handful of character choices, and an upgrade system that you can max out within a few hours.
- AI can be stupid at times - certain game modes will have them flailing about with buggy pathfinding, and there are a lot of ways to trick them and exploit your way to success.
-- Level design is really hit and miss: often it can be downright frustrating to get around the main mission areas, as options for traversing heights or long distances are extremely obfuscated. It took me about half an hour to get inside a stadium at the top of a building to do a sidequest, for example. They definitely need to provide some more obvious ways to get around without requiring you to scrabble too hard.
-- Graphics are really lacklustre. I know that it's a cel-shaded style game, but that's not an excuse for poorly made and inconsistent textures, and low polycounts. The particle effects also leave a lot to be desired.
-- Bugs. There are some showstopping bugs left in the game at the time of writing, which I hope the devs get around to fixing. The low level of polish in the game highly indicate that it was released too early.

Despite all my condemnations I still recommend the game, at $15 it's definitely worth.

who the ♥♥♥♥ designed this game's interface

In short: Starts out great. Ends up giving you cancer.

Awful quicktime events, awful forced combat, awful puzzles, awful hunger/health mechanics that turn an atmospheric experience into a speedrun. Looks pretty if your standards for graphics are "half life 2".

But hey, the first hour or two are actually decent, despite of all of the above. Just don't expect anything beyond that.

SUMMARY: I'm going to agree with a lot of the naysayers - the developers need to work on optimisation. Badly. Yes, this is an Early Access title, but there's several glaring things they could have done already - such as not overloading texture memory with all the different maps they use in the engine. You don't need unique normal maps on -everything-. Polygons are cheap, so use them, and LODs are easy to make.

That said, the potential this game has is extremely enticing. After some heavy polishing I think the vast majority of the negative reviews will go away. I'll try it again in awhile and see about changing my review to a positive.

Empyrion is rough around the edges, still very much an early access game, and isn't very easy on the eyes.
But when you have a group of friends to play with, the game shines bright.

I don't know if it's just me, my region (Australia), or a general thing, but it seems that half the time I try to play the game times out when starting, leaving me in limbo; or it crashes outright; or I get disconnected from the game midway through a mission and have to start over.

Tried to get a refund for this but given I've spent eight hours hoping it would magically start working, Steam refused.