Recent reviews by pineappleclock

This is a groundbreaking achievement that redefines the hole genre.

There aren't a lot of advanced gameplay mechanics here, but for what it is it's fun and engaging and definitely worth the price. I had fun with it and I'm looking forward to any updates if/when they come. I also thought that this might be great in VR, but then again I don't play a lot of VR games so it might not be.

signed,
- satisfied digger

This DLC is more "Downloadable Challenge" and less "Downloadable Content".
The base game is 10/10 and well worth the price. The Space Age DLC however rips out a lot of the tech tree and gates it behind Space. There are tons of quality of life improvements for the base game, but the UI for space travel is awkward and you will be looking things up quite often. By the time you need basic things like Cliff Explosives and Requester Logistics Chests,
you've built a nice efficient base on the starting planet, and now you must leave it and do the space shuffle.

Space involves a lot of tedious grind, including: slowly sending items to/from space, keeping track of their weight, figuring out all the gotchas (in-game tutorials are lacking), transporting white/orange/whatever science between planets, starting from scratch on other planets and overcoming planet-based limitations. There's lots of these (can't build things on this or that planet / platform, the air pressure isn't correct, things are too heavy) and these are designed to have you play in a very specific way - hence the "Challenge" part - gone is your extensive base-game freedom, replaced with twists like "what if science packs spoiled?" among others.

I found myself often just wanting to get the planet busywork over with and head back to my actual base on Nauvis. I was naive and thought Space Age would add-on to the late game. I jumped at getting a Factorio "Expansion". Disappointingly, it just plops a bunch of challenge maps into the mid-game and adds a lot of tedium. I hope there's continued development on this and I will be watching for updates, but in the meantime I suggest just enhancing your game with free mods, Space Age needs time to cook.

At first, I was put off by the 2.5D style and some other minor things (like backer portraits), but I was in the mood for a 'metrioidvania' and instead of replaying Order of Ecclesia again, decided to give this a shot - I'm glad I did! What a great experience from beginning to end. Once you acclimate to the art style, the level of detail and rendering in the game is just breathtaking in areas. I love that there's a bit of levity in parts, and it's not all brooding and thematic. The music is spectacular, as well. I normally don't bother with completionism in games but felt the need to complete my shard and item list in this one. If you liked any of the DS Castlevanias, and haven't played this yet, you really need to.

This game really gets going around the 3,000 hour mark, I'd recommend it