Recent reviews by Zionite

Game isn't for everyone. Unforgiving learning curves and some things aren't explained at all. I would recommend guides, but it's all spoilers. I'm not sure I could have figured out where to go on my own.

Rainworld is rewarding however. Those with the patience to learn and the fortitude to push further will be delighted to discover a unique experience. The punishing environment makes success that much sweeter. Expect to die a lot, practice avoidance over engagements you can't win, and experiment with the things you can grab.
Getting killed immediately after switching screens always feels bad. A mod shouldn't be necessary to mitigate this.

The story is told through environmental clues and some very important figures which aren't at all easy to find naturally. The narrative is often inscrutable, esoteric, and baffling. Again, patience is rewarded in slowly piecing things together. Attaining any amount of lore knowledge feels earned, rather than forced upon you.
The problem is it's difficult to seek out intentionally without external guides, and the spoilers. The helper "pointing the way" was frequently misunderstood and I ended up lost.

The art and music are just 10/10. I've no criticism on those categories; it's good stuff.

Overall a really solid game for fans of platformers.

Publisher Sony can't just change the rules after purchase. I'm out.

Shame too, because the game is great.


EDIT: Sony Liberated. Proceed to the next MO.

Game is good.

Game good. I will play a lot.

I'm really digging this game. It's definitely the only game out there with this level of granularity involving the concept of an alien invasion. There's a steep learning curve and the tutorial is insufficient to truly grasp what you're doing.

Pros:
- Music is good, need more of it though
- Voices are great, sound in general really well done
- UI is mostly adequate. Few things are not intuitive, such as switching between councilors with the investigate action selected or something. I think there's still some room for improvement.
- Narrative immersion is top-notch. I really feel like a shadow government defending earth from invasion.
- Little to no lag when switching between earth and space
- nukes are simple and effective
- priority system is intimidating but deceptively simple. Probably could use some more direct info on each category and it's actual purpose. For example, it's not clear what exactly Spoils is doing when you prioritize it (corrupt siphoning funds) and too many default priorities use Spoils. Room to improve.

Cons:
- Numbers need adjusting. For example: Sometimes alien councilors are too hard to kill, way too high security for what's appropriate. You just have to know you're going to need an assassin with nearly maxed out espionage to have a chance, and work on this early. More ways to reduce the threshold with your support network would be nice, similar to gathering intel. Nearby armies give a bonus but the councilors move too much to utilize them effectively. Good idea but not working well at the moment.
- Tech tree. It's really cool how many options is available to the player, but it needs some sort of tutorial advisor recommending actually useful techs and reasoning why. Fast track me to building a mining outpost or a xeno research orbital. There's no reason a new player needs a dozen different thruster or weapon techs; recommend one or two. It's too many options and not enough tools to understand what you're deciding on.
- Long campaign. Inevitably you're going to fail some major decisions while learning the game and the only real option is restarting entirely. I actually like the grand strategy timeline but it's tough to recover from huge mistakes. I'd propose some sort of smarter autosaves for big milestones: The moment you take a major power entirely, or the moment your first mining outpost became operational, or your first ship is produced; you get a checkpoint you can load like a normal save game. That way if I'm making good time on any of those major developments, I can go back to that instead of restarting entirely.
- The ship building is terrible. Needs prebuilds, not autobuild. Give me basic orbital defense units plz
- Councilors need more options to attaining missions they don't have. Orgs are great and fun but require admin. Sometimes I just wanna buy the mission I need with xp instead, or maybe they could meet milestones and grow new missions you choose between.

A great challenge. I really enjoyed this adventure; it set the tone before I started the main campaign having not played it before. The diseases from the early mobs kind of festered on my MC and companion and I had to cope with it to save the innocent people in the group instead, kind of dealing with the moral issues of saving myself or saving others. Each victory was sweet, as they were hard-fought. I love when the game-play supports the narrative like it did here.

Game-play aspects were very cool from a survivor perspective. I liked how I needed to pay attention to all my resources and make the most of it. Learning to overcome enemies with resistances while using terrible gear is somehow satisfying. As cool as the beginning of WotR is, I think this DLC was a better intro for me. It was grueling and didn't overstay.

Music was good, voice overs were good. Great sound overall.
I expected bugs but I didn't experience any that I can recall. Nothing a quick load couldn't fix at least.

My criticism would lie with the second companion character. He's not particularly likable, and considering the length of the DLC, I can't justify an ending where we're actually expected to just go fight in ice hell for this guy we barely know, after all we've fought through to just survive, and forsake everything going on in a tavern of crusaders for this guys mysterious mistake he refuses to talk about. We don't get enough time with him to build into something that reasonably would lead here. Really went crazy at the end for seemingly no reason, just for a twist. It doesn't really fit the tone of the rest of the story and the pay-off for completing the first companion's quest just wasn't there for me. Should have been more of a 'death star plans' moment. The cutscenes were pretty cool though. Other than that, I thought the story was pretty good.

Another gripe of mine is the environment interaction traps don't work in turn based mode, which is kind of a bummer. So I have to fiddle with micro managing on live, being unfamiliar with it and dying unintentionally by being bad. I like live mode for being lazy in melee combats but turn based is where it's at for precision.

That's pretty much it, I just wanted to say something nice about the DLC because it seemed like other players didn't like it. I thought it was fun.

I was a little hesitant to buy this at first, being a fan of the board game and wanting to learn how to play better. Many of the reviews mention bugs in the digital version that make it difficult to play. I have definitely had some hanging games after a favor is played, or just random hang-ups. Probably 1 out of 8 games have some kind of technical issue. Despite that though, the game works the majority of the time and it seems many bugs have been fixed over time.

I really enjoy this game. The art is beautiful, the gameplay is generally smooth, tons of single player content and online play as well. The only downside is how the digital is 'just' behind the board game in development, so we do not yet have the underground expansion factions or six player setups. I'm guessing marauders will be a bit later even after that. So the tabletop board game is the definitive edition unfortunately, but I have faith the developers will catch up. The quality on the new Exiles and Partisans deck is top-notch, very few bugs on release and the ones that are there are likely to be patched up. You can get so many more games in the same amount of time on digital simply because of the automation of running a turn, and you don't worry about little important rules like clearing rule for movement.

So yes, the game is good. I only wish it had more. Ideally, six players possible and advanced setups, all maps, all factions. If Root digital gets to that perfection, easy 10/10. Right now, with the rate of development and the current bugs, I'm still at about 8.5/10. The tabletop Root is still the way to go for the most options, but that's quickly changing.

I cannot believe how long ago this game first released, and the massive amount of work that's continued to go into it. One of the most beautiful and immersive survival games I've ever played. I love the details, like following a trail of tiny blood drops in the snow to your quarry, or picking up spent casings after reloading the handgun. Beautiful auroras in unforgiving winter demonstrates that nature is both awesome and cruel. I loved it 6 years ago and I love it even more today.

The only con I can come up with for The Long Dark is the walking everywhere takes time. It's balanced around this by the constant threat of dangerous predators or a nasty turn in weather and visibility, which would not be significant with Sonic-speed movement. It makes sense given the theme, kind of a calm before the storm.

There's something here for both a casual player and a hardcore masochist. Just the exploration aspect is immersive and engaging, always something new to find in every corner. There's plenty of room for player improvement and optimization too, as the more you learn about the game the better you will get. I'm a fan of player knowledge progression that encourages you to just try again if you fail, safe in the knowledge you've gained in past attempts.

Always be wary of a negative review with 100+ hours played. You get your money's worth, regardless of details you may have issues with.

Looking forward to actually playing the story at some point lol. =D

This was amazeballs.

Blew me away. Need more plz.

EDIT: We got more! Just played the latest and...wow guys. Snugglef***ing fantastic work. You've managed to innovate in a stagnating media industry, pull together amazing talent, and put on an incredible show.

Dev team and cast should be proud of what you've accomplished so far.

If you haven't purchased this game already, it's time. I can't gush anymore without spoilers. Just do it.