I really wanted to like this game but it's the most frustrating and aggravating game I have played. It is riddled with software bugs and glitches. When the game does work, it's still most frustrating and aggravating game to play because you're dealing with stress and resource management.
All your marines have some negative trait that makes everything worse then you get stress trauma debuffs which makes it even more worse, even though there is a way to deal with stress it requires 1 tool, basically one room to turn into a shelter by welding a door shut. But doesn't require any tools to break a weld. That doesn't make any sense. I don't think welding should take a tool if breaking a weld doesn't require one. Sentries that get damage require a tool to repair, hacking a door requires a tool, a marine's drone that gets downed requires a tool to repair.
The game has this overuse need for tools, and it's excessive and detracts from the game's progression.
Marines get stressed out too easily, and if you let it go on too long it starts eating ammo and makes marines perform poorly. The "Hunted" mechanic seems to be broken, when I'm no longer detected but they still come after my squad. If you held off an onslaught, it's not really over and they still keep coming. Sometimes marines don't engage while moving, that's very annoying. The game requires stealth, but then makes it impossible by putting objective items in direct line of sight of hibernating enemies, so you get detected no matter what, You can't stealth it and if you blast them to hell get ready to fight a horde.
You waste precious deployment days waiting for your marines to heal and dealing with their trauma. Which is going get you killed in the end, because I stopped in chapter 5 where you got go get a power core from terraforming facility and only had 15 days left before they nuke the planet. I finally gave up when the game glitched out and my squad was no longer able move past door thresholds, literally held captive on the catwalks.
The alien units seem imbalanced, I can kill a queen, crusher no problem, but the warrior and drones take a full squad two shotgun blast, a nade and suppressing fire to kill? But the Predatorian on the other hand, a total tank, need three sentries, the arc and the squad spamming nades to kill the bastard.
Even the weapons you buy, they don't seem better, pulse rifle and heavy rifle put out the same damage but one has a larger magazine and 0.1 chance increase of dismemberment? The plasma rifle which has increased damage and even a larger magazine I can't buy until I max level a marine? What fun is that? Gotta grind it!
Marine class upgrades, gotta grind that too, if you want a marine to have a drone it's going to cost ya, because the first upgrade is just the drone, it's a scouting drone, second one gives it the ability to weld, the third gives it a gun. But you're going to waste three class upgrades to get the battle drone.
There's the recon class, you can get the class, but you gotta buy the sniper rifle, or the techker class, but you still need 1 tool to hack a door?
sigh.
it could be fun, but they made it not fun and very aggravating, and super frustrating to play. I don't even want to finish the game, that's how off putting it is.
