I think...it is time that I finally update my review for this game, as 1.0 Actually dropped. After... 11 years?! Jesus okay, well surely the game is good enough to warrant such a delay in release right...?

Well....I think not honestly. I have a lot of gripes with how they transitioned away from Alpha. And Ill start by discussing a few things that were merely discarded and stripped down just to "Clean" up their game basically to make it look more "polished".

• The character creator was stripped down from having things like sliders and color shaders of selection down to a mere few pre-created options.
  
  
• The clothing system has basically been completely scrapped, meaning that making sure you stay cooled of or warm, realistically isn't much of a concern anymore. There are armor modifiers that still modify your temperature resistance as well as perks, but given that, there are only effectively a few way to modify how a character looked. I do give it credit though that there are a lot of armor sets... some better than others admittedly.
  
  
• Quests are now limited to a certain number a day because apparently people were speed-running quests too hard. All it does is pad out the game.

And thats the bare jist of what they had removed realistically. Now onto the more positive notes.

• Its has a pretty good game concept/idea that it wants to go for- to challenge the player every 7 days to basically defend against an endless hoard of zombies. In the days before that, they are spent in the loop of raiding locations, gathering supplies, and building traps/a base.
  
  MOST of the time, the loot progression has been pretty solid and a good linear curve for the game. Starting out with basic tools of stone and pipe guns working up to more middle tier two and three guns as well as melee weapons, to eventually getting to end tier loot of big bad guns. The recent update prior to release improved this very nicely, along as well as vehicles, and lastly mining and gathering of resources.
  
  
• Game has fair amount of customization settings that you can set for each save that let you tinker with the settings of the game/difficulty. If you ever had problems with *Cough* game balance *Cough* or issues that you don't agree with the updates- then you can easily toggle a few options about around here.
  
  
• I think the new injury system/wellness system fits the games current design, and is well balanced unlike before where you would get instant bled and loose half your health, or where you would die repeatedly and get stuck in a death loop of having weaker and weaker stats to be unable to help you. (God those were some dark times) Not to mention I think an exp penalty debt is a fair punishment for the player to work off for dying. Good enough incentive to not die unless your basically level capped.
  
  
• Ill give it this, CPU wise the game has been fixed honestly. My cpu on not a high end computer was able to actually handle this game, which is surprising.

And now onto the problems with this game. I have a LOT of issues i have frankly put with this game. ESPECIALLY NOW THAT WE ARE IN 1.0.

• While they have fixed the game progression terms of game stage and speed of how fast it progresses in multiplayer and single-player, I still feel sometimes that the game balance is a bit F***ed. Straight up- the zombie AI is too good at times. Digged a base deep underground? The zombies will tunnel to you through the dirt. Built a super tall base? The zombies will just mine out the structure beneath you and cause you to tumble down towards you, as well as there are flying zombie vultures and zombies that used to be able to climb walls. Its endless b******* basically the way zombies circumvent defenses and their smartness to take the easiest/ best route is ridiculous.
  
  
• That leads into the next bad Difficulty curve. The blood moons. While at first they are manageable, eventually the zombies not only get stronger in tiers of feral or irradiated (which I am fine with) the biggest issue I HONESTLY have with all of it, is the stupid demolition zombies that can basically nuke most blocks in one hit with their explosions- are super bulky in armor and health, as well as can do insane block damage. The Explosions will pretty much one hit concrete, and while steel is an option- it is just super unlikely you'll have enough resources to build a base out of steel bars, as they are expensive to make, and require a lot of crafting unlocks to just produce out a reasonable amount of them. That and with how your only given 7 days before each blood moon, you'll spend precious amounts of that time just repairing/upgrading your base. Leaving you to have little time to scavenge/loot to get stronger.
  
  
• Which leads into the problem of, eventually there's not a reasonable human way of defending everything off. if you loose your base once, its pretty much over of having for the save....so the only way that's possible I feel after a certain point to survive for a long time...is to simply just- create bases that break the zombie AI/ confuse the AI so much that they cant really do anything. Personally- I don't find this fun, and this whole blood moon thing is part of the main game's gimmick. its in the title after all.
  
  
• Another point that I was talking about earlier was "require a lot of crafting unlocks". There are magazines that are basically everything for unlocks. Sure you can spend skill points to increase the chance of certain magazines to appear, but gating crafting behind these is a waste of time. Not to mention it does make it mostly RNG and forces everyone to require to loot basically in order to unlock new crafts, forcing everyone to require looting, which is a problem in a multiplayer scenario. There are some goods that come with the magazine system ill give it that, but I feel it brings some new problems with it as well. (Some arguably worse than what the prior systems problems were, at least i could find the workbench schematic or buy it from a trader or get it as a quest reward)
  
  
• The graphics for this game are simply a mess. I am pretty much required to have a high end pc just to EVEN play this game smoothly. Even on an RTX 1060 3gb graphics card the game pretty much STRUGGLES to run. The optimization of this should have been fixed LONG ago.
  
  
• And another point i should point out at this point. Apparently there was suppose to be a lot more content like bandits, and such that were suppose to be added into the game at some point. Yet oddly for some reason that didn't make it into 1.0? Not to mention they jumped the price of this game by 20$ to a 45$ USD title. For the quality of this game has and how essentially loop like it can get at times... Its honestly not worth the money. There are games that require high end set ups that are WAY better than this game frankly put.

As of its current state I can't honestly recommend the game. The game just has too many red flags in issues to scrapped content practically to warrant such a high price tag. If you can get this game off for at least 66, maybe 75% off id maybe suggest it? But do be warn that there is a lot of issues with this game.