Colony Ship: A Post-Earth Role Playing Game

The balancing is awful, The combat itself is ok but you eat through medkits constantly and enemies seemingly have infinite supplies. A lot of scenes in the game (Chapter 1) will give you no time to prep (Notably the siege) You have to kill 6 enemies and you get 6 men, Then it immediately makes you go inside and fight 6 more while you're already injured. Then without saying a word to you it makes youfight 4 more if you spared mercy. Without healing you. There's a lot of situations like that, The MSQ itself throws insanely hard enemies at you while you can barely hit anything even with cheated in stats. The difficulty is masochistic and not in the good way.

非常完整正儿八经的科幻CRPG 秒传送设计好评拒绝浪费跑路时间 PS：游戏属性里选择localtest就有中文了

After Age of Decadence, my expectations were rather high. Remarkably intertwined, overarching choices that may affect even the slightest outcome - a visual novel, with heavy RPG component and serviceable combat. I loved Age of Decadence. I couldn't wait to see where they go next with this formula, only to find that ... well, they didn't really go anywhere with it, but rather reiterated the concept, but in space, with barely, if any, innovation to speak of. They played it safe. To be fair, it still outshines other rpgs set in grim, grey and hopeless settings, by being raw, unforgiving and rooted in how it portrays its characters, its world, the desperation. There is no "twist" good guy at the end of the saga, no hero: only harsh reality, pitting you against unbelievable odds. Becoming the hero of the story was always possible, but it will come at a steep cost and skill. Age of Decadence excelled far more at that than "Colony Ship", in which a lot of the factions, characters and themes just made me think: Yeah, this is cool, but I kinda saw this exact scenario/faction/character in Age of Decadence… and better! What "Colony Ship" ultimately lacked was ceremony. The unceremonious ending to quests, the unceremonious ending to the whole GAME. This is something that Age of Decadence was critiqued for, but got away with, it being the “first in the series of those types of games”, so to speak, but it still had reveals and turns that made your stomach drop. This time around, you have no excuse, dear devs. Getting me invested in your quests, only to “fade to black” and resolve the whole thing, without much climactic payoff is just… this doesn’t work anymore, man. We need something more. Let me give you a specific example (Spoilers for a sidequest ahead): [spoiler] So you have to resolve an issue: Refugees are besetting a certain location and the self-appointed “mayor” of that location wants the refugees gone. Basically, you can take a couple of sides here, depending on your unlocked skills. You really get either invested in the plight of the refugees, or rather just want to get a good payday, whichever your motivation might be. But the ending is the same: Fade to black, refugees disappear (or some other changes, depending on your choice) and …. Nothing.[/spoiler] No cool animation, no dynamic shot over the area, accentuating the changes YOUR CHOICES affected. No sense for dramatic suspense, at all. This ♥♥♥♥ was okay in Age of Decadence (which weirdly had still more “drama” than this one)…. Because it was your first. But now, I just want more ceremony. If you meet the big faction leaders, there should be an overhead shot, with ominous music, imprinting the importance of that moment. Not some long text box. Huge questlines you invested hours in, just to unceremoniously end with “you gain exp and money” is just not acceptable. Further, the animation work in your combat is a lot worse than in Age of Decadence with all its melee-fatalities for each weapon – what happened here? I get that most battles are now ranged, but we deserved a bit more in terms of battle-climax animations, in forms of fatalities or the ragdolls being a bit better rigged. I'm absolutely enamored with your games …. they've captured my imagination like few others, but for the love of immersive worlds, let's crank up the ceremony/drama in the next one, please. Infuse every pivotal moment with that grand, ritualistic flair: elaborate animations for key decisions… orchestral swells that echo the weight of choices, make impacts hit home viscerally, not just linger as abstract stats or flavor text on a character sheet. Turn those "on-paper" consequences into heart-pounding, unforgettable rituals that players feel in their bones, elevating the narrative from good to legendary. Overall, if you love this formula, like me, you will still get your fix of depressive, dark, raw grittiness we came to appreciate from Age of Decadence, but “Colony Ship” is the weaker of the two, by a mile.

Отличная RPG старой, можно сказать, очень старой школы. Влиться новичку стало проще - по сравнению с AoD сильно прокачали визуал, хардкорность сдала пару оборотов, хотя вариативности на мой взгляд стало чуть меньше. Но это "чуть" лишь по сравнению с AoD (их первой игрой) - а так CS по реальной реиграбельности (уникальные квесты или пути развития сюжета из-за ваших действий) все еще выше 95%+ игр с тэгом CRPG в Стиме. Рекомендую. P.S. Ну и покупая игру вы спонсируете небольшую команду на еще одну отличную игру.

TL;DR - While clearly made with a distinct development vision to separate itself from it's competition, the game simply isn't as enjoyable as other more well known games in the genre and while there are a multitude of reasons why, it ultimately disappointed me on my first attempt at a playthroughs by making large volumes of the game unplayable without very, VERY specific character builds. Long version: Pros - The game looks good, performed well on my relatively outdated machine, has interesting world building and lore in an original setting and can arguably offer hours of engaging gameplay IF you consult a range of resources before playing the game to plan your character ahead of time to ensure the game is playable. Cons - The game is at it's core not what it appears. This is not a Fallout, Wasteland or Rouge Trader and that is it's first great weakness, all the marketing and steam store page material makes it look very much like those games and so a blind first playthrough can grind to a disappointingly slow slog through frustrating mechanics that require very specific skill/stat requirements to progress. It became painfully obvious after searching for guides on how to complete certain optional missions that they would simply be impossible in my current playthrough, which effectively eliminates portions of the game for decisions made on the character creation screen. That brings me to the next point, stats and skills. Unlike other CRPGs, your base stats are mostly fixed for the rest of the game, with the exception of implants, which I will come to later. The character creation screen basically locks you in to a single playstyle for the rest of the game and on a blind first playthrough this is deeply frustrating. Moving into Chapter 2 of the game I found myself searching for ways to increase base stats and skills to allow me to progress a number of quest lines and after a tireless search both in game, and on guides online, it became apparent that there were entire quest lines that I had to entirely write off as inaccessible because there simply were not enough opportunities to level my character up to pass a skill checks to proceed. While in a normal CRPG this isn't such a problem because it is part of the gameplay loop and there are multiple way to progress, including using party members skills to supplement the MC, this does not work in Colony Ship because the supporting party members are equally as stat and skill poor as the MC and the game does not give ample ways to level skills meaning running into a skill check typically means you go no further. Character progression was clearly a design choice made by the Devs and this is supported by various Steam Community discussions where they have responded to player questions. Instead of being able to improve stats and skills on level ups, you get perks, however the perks are almost exclusively focused on combat or stealth and with some very limited exceptions, do not allow you to attribute points to skill areas you need to clear a skill check. This means you cannot postpone a questline to level up and come back to proceed, you basically reach a skill check, cannot meet the requirements and give up any chance of progressing in that area for the entire playthrough and this is just so disappointing as it basically feels like you're playing on rails once you've left the character creation screen. Implants could have entirely fixed the character stat/scaling issue if they had not been so limited. You're hard capped at the amount of implants you can use depending on a particular stat and perk, and while these do give stat bonuses which can be improved later in the game, it is too little too late and they do not offer nearly enough to give you an edge or replace the standard character level up models used in other CRPGs. I feel like if this had been adopted as the progression method for the player characters and the devs leaned into this it may well have saved the game for me, but in it's current form it is a very limited and borderline meaningless part of character building that did not significantly impact my playthrough. Stealth is a large part of the game, however it has a very heavy dependence on a select few stats, skills and perks, this on it's own would not be a problem if the game allowed you to develop a character to do this effectively, but once again we run into the character progression brick wall. The noise mechanic is honestly interesting and I like it, but the 'awareness gauge' for the NPCs does not decrease below set thresholds meaning there is almost zero margin for error and a lot of failed runs are due to a single misstep resulting in reloading saved games to try again. The set movement of NPCs and cameras, combined with the NPC awareness gauge tiers not resetting, as well as base noise and sneak stat requirements combined with various perks means there is essentially a 'correct' path to the stealth encounters, if you have the requisite stats and perks, but you won't know these stat or perk requirements going into each encounter which leads to hours of attempting what is essentially an impossible task. This only became apparent to me after consulting guides and determining that once again, an entire quest or encounter is simply not accessible on this playthrough, forcing me to arguably start an entirely new run if I want to complete that part of the game. This robs the stealth game of much depth as there is essentially a correct way to do the encounter and no real room for innovation on the player's part. Combat being the way it is, feels like another design choice which in isolation makes sense as the game is clearly making a point to be different, but this ultimately becomes another source of frustration. Your characters are not super heros, that much is explained from the very start, however while other CRPGs allow you to build your characters to fit a niche and fulfil a certain power fantasy, Colony Ship fails to do this entirely. The cover system is very very basic and pieces of scenery that appear like they should provide cover do not, which makes for awkward rigid combat. Downed characters cannot be picked back up during combat which puts you on a time limit to complete fights as soon as the first party member falls and this makes combat unenjoyable because the combat is slow and typically involves whittling down opponents who regularly seem far more threatening to you than you are to them. The very limited progression options from perks can supplement combat effectiveness but generally do not have as big an impact as you'd like and most key combat encounters that cannot be avoided required multiple attempts to scrape through and at no point did it feel like my party was getting any stronger or more capable at dealing with the threats the party faced. Once again this aspect of the game is a pale shadow of other CRPGs and just makes the game a chore to slog through. I could go on, but most complaints I have with the game stem from it trying to differ from established norms in CRPGs, but not providing compelling alternatives. I want to like the game, I do enjoy the world it has been set in, but I cannot recommend a game that is for all intents and purposes a less mechanically enjoyable imitation of other bigger CRPGs.

A game with branching choices that will effect how you can progress through it leading to great replayability ontop of a very solid character creation and combat system. One of the best turnbased games I have ever played.

Do not buy this game if you are looking for a good RPG experience 1. No explanations on the skill system 2. Bad gameplay mechanics during combat - the countdown timer is the worst ! 3. Frustratingly sparse journal entries on the quests and what was the quest trigger and dialogue 4. No NPC codex - so i need to literally remember who is whom 5. Bad camera angle to know where things are The worst is that there arent multiple ways to get things done - the build you need on your chars is very narrow and punishes even one wrong choice by not giving any mechanism to reverse and try different build ideas.. I tried to like it, played it with all the above frustrations to just push ahead - but i have had enough

おすすめかどうかはギリギリ及第点です。 ゲームとしては雰囲気も含めてとても良いですし、内容も面白いです。それだけなら十分おすすめのゲームです。 有志の方がネットで公開してくれているので日本語でもプレイできます。 ただ、マップが回転できないため、プレイがものすごいやりにくいのが欠点となっています。この点がこのゲームの全ての良い点を吹き飛ばしてしまいます。 手前の物陰の場所とかが見えずらいとか、戦闘時の敵の位置が分かりずらいとかで、いちいちイライラさせられます。 このマップの問題さえなければ良作なのに、それだけで全てがぶち壊しというのがとても残念な一作です。

Very good game. I was hoping for something to scratch the same itch as Fallout 2 and it didn't disappoint. It's very different to Fallout 2, but it's like poetry in that it rhymes. If you like games of that genre you will probably like this. Looking forward to more games from the devs.