8089: The Next Action RPG

This is a 3089 upgrade. Great value for the price! I wonder when 9999 will come out heh.

Starting the review off I want to give a major props towards Phr00t, while the store page does not explicitly state the game will run on the Steam Deck, it runs beautifully and Phr00t has even done work to keep the game running well on the system. It's a really fun game to play, played it constantly over the course of 2 months in 1-2 hour sessions on the Steam Deck. The core gameplay loop of starting off weak in an area, spending time there doing quests and getting stronger weapon and armor parts in order to move forward onto the next area is very fun to do. Pacing-wise it is well executed as the further you get from where you got your current weapons/armor, the less effective they are, forcing you to slow down and get new loot. All in all, The game is well worth the time and money.

It improves on the first game in many aspects, but it falls short in many others... The spawner system is very weird, in order to get to higher levels you need to A. Get a spawn activator and then B. find an offline spawner and activate it. Why? And as far as i can tell the only way to get spawn activators is to get a quest from a quest terminal(only the ones in a base) that rewards you with a spawn activator. I think you can very rarely find one in a box? This is a very weird system, i honestly will change my review to a positive if they fix this, because this aspect of the game makes it very grindy, sometimes you can't get a quest that rewards you with an activator, and offline spawners are very difficult to find. I believe in the first game the only point of activating spawners was to get allies spawning in an area, not to unlock a new area of the game. This is my main complaint of the game, but my second complaint would be the gun system. I wish gun stores were more consistent, the only game used to let you assemble guns from parts, now all the guns are assembled but you have to put mods in them(guns don't work if you don't have a specific type of mod in them) Modding guns is kinda frustrating, sometimes you'll find a good mod that decreases cooldown time only to realize it also makes your bullets lob. Very few of the mods are actually fun, it's kinda difficult to find a good mod combination for guns, and even the good ones will be like -5% cooldown time, like, is that even worth it? lol My final complaint would be there doesn't seem to be much to do in it later on. Even if you activate a bunch of spawners and get a really good gun, and buy a bunch of skills, it's like good job, you can go to a higher level area and do the same thing over again. Also, if you die, good luck getting back to the higher level area because it respawns you back at level 1 lol. This game feels... unfinished. I'd give it a 4/10 maybe, i enjoyed it a bit, but it doesn't feel very fun to play for an extended period of time. Edit: I saw the dev responded and was considering removing my review if you had apologised or promised to improve it in the future, but instead you criticised me and acted like my review was invalid so ill respond to their points. 1. Okay, this was one thing i got wrong, but it's very confusing as to what the "backup" stations are, i'll give you this one, though. Weird that spawners don't act as spawn points lol 2. Yes, and this is a terrible system, what should be fixed? Get rid of it or make spawners easier to acquire. 3. I know they're not all fully assembled, i just meant the guns aren't "assembled" the same way they were in the old game. 4. Would love to find them if this game wasn't such a slog to get through lol, I never saw one story event. Didn't think this game even had an end, but i have no desire to see it, it's too boring.The spawn activators being a big issue preventing me from progressing, another being the difficulty to get proper upgrades to guns and fighting feels useless, drops are somewhat common but very very rarely useful lol An unfinished game is an unfinished game. As a game dev myself, i understand how difficult game design can be and it feels like this game is plateaued. I wouldn't have given it a bad review if I didn't feel like it was deeply flawed at it's core... but hey, that's my opinion. As I said, it's not horrible. It's just not... fun. lol, on the contrary, i hope my response(if you see it) helps give you some ideas on what to fix for this game

This is a review for VR players. The game is really slow, and a lot of the mechanics are frustrating. There isn't a whole lot of RPG mechanics, stats is about all that you'll get there. I progressed maybe 1 level an hour and by the time any semblance of story starts at 6th level I was pretty much worn out from navigating around walls, doing the same quests (do a stealth build if you want to make the most money, literally all the side objectives are based around it), seeing the same things, just different colours, all just so I could feel like I could do decent amounts of damage and not die super fast while I attempt to progress. If this isn't your kind of game, you'll probably really enjoy the prequel 5089. I'm going to add positives. The systems in game, a lot of those are great, I do enjoy picking up quests and looking through the stores. I like the way everything looks. aesthetically it's all very pleasing. The promise of finding something rare hits the bargain hunter in me. The character sounds, despite listening to them for hours - weren't grating at all. Some of the huge enemies were daunting and had the Colossus effect. The grey/blue/yellow/red system was a genius addition for stealth and made it feel possible unlike most VR stealth games. The explosive weapons that shot multiple projectiles, that is so satisfying to hit a double critical with. The one time I outsmarted a wall and climbed to the top of a 5 story building to use insta-wall to jump over it? That was awesome, I solved an abstract problem using the tools I was given. I only spent 11.50$ and played for 7 hours averaging at less than 2$ an hour which is more than worth it. So maybe it wasn't so much a 'mistake' as it is 'highly experimental'.

VR port sucks

This game makes you FEEEEL like megaman

I've played this for about 5 hours in both regular and VR modes (Oculus Quest 2 via air link) and I really enjoy both ways of playing. If you've played 5089 it's a similar format - journey outwards upgrading stats and equipment which get harder the further you go, while progressing the story missions. Much more streamlined than previous games and I found it pretty straightforward to get familiar with the new mechanics. Input via keyboard/mouse feels a lot smoother than 5089, and the VR integration is so much better - everything just works as you expect, with standard VR tweaks available like smooth or snap turn etc, no janky controls or weird UI issues. I'll update the review once I've played some more but so far it's definitely worth a play!

I honestly love these games you make, you've basically inspired me to become a game dev. I'm still early in the learning process but I want to make open world procedural games too! This one is crazy fun and I hope you continue to improve upon your style

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The best installment of the series so far.