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Pros - The game looks good, performed well on my relatively outdated machine, has interesting world building and lore in an original setting and can arguably offer hours of engaging gameplay IF you consult a range of resources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.
