Game is still Early Access, this is the main point.
Now to the rest, the game has been in early access for a year now, considering the time of writing this is the anniversary, i kind of expected more replayability tbh, after 30 hours i feel like i have already experienced the game's gameplay loop, atp its all the same missions nodes and combat.
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I strongly suggest playing with at least 2 people, better with 3 and ideal with 4.
If you play solo you can enjoy one kind of ship designed for solo play, and pray Buddy can keep up with everything while you are on your seat busy dodging enemy gun fire.
With two people you still get help from Buddy so things will get out of hand significantly less likely.
3 is a good spot, one pilot, one gunner and one engineer/technician, very good spot to play with your friend and enjoy the game.
4 people opens up a new team comp, 2 people stay on ship and 2 people go duck hunting, they can actually get out of the ship and chase enemy ship down one by one, this actually bypasses a lot of lvl difference/difficulty so its a pretty viable option, just tell the pilot to not leave you behind (lol).
Personally, i like the game a lot, it has potential, though the replayability is lacking, so i suggest just playing the game occasionally with your friends instead of grinding the game out, this would prevent burnout that might make you hesitate to click on the "play" button next time (or the desktop icon).
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HERE LIES MY PERSONAL WISH DUMP:
Game is developing in a good direction, and looking at the roadmap, i am very much excited of what the game might become in the future, looking at it, i will lay here my wished on things what aren't mentioned in the roadmap or unclear.
PLEASE make it so enemy ships are actively being pushed out of geometry after 10 seconds of being inside them, there had been one game where a ship is just chilling inside a planetoid and we had to restart the mission.
There had been a rare case of invulnerability on enemy ships, rare, but happened, glad that we got the mission replay option in this update aye?
The current gameplay on sectors/nodes within a mission is too.... small for much significance in deciding where to go, really what we are doing is either picking if we want components for out ship or weapons for on foot combat, or both and get pestered my the legion ships every 2 minutes, this works well for a QUICKPLAY, but for a better experience and making choosing where to go more impactful, make them structured more like the map in Slay The Spire 2, where you choose a path to go, people can draw on said map, and depending on the situation such as lack of materia, adapt to a new route, of course you don't go for it 1:1, i still like the idea that you can go back and/or take a longer route for more resources/rewards but get pinched by the legion ships.
+ To add to the previous suggestion, this would likely make a rebalance to the artifacts and its upgrade system, tbh i dont care enough, it will make gathering artifacts a bit less rng and encourage artifact building for the last mission and thats good enough for me.
REBALANCE on foot combat, this is pretty ridiculous when enemies just become bullet sponges and just rush to your position to maul you down.
I suggest cutting down on dps difference across all the weapon tiers, and significantly cutting down on enemy health pool scaling on higher difficulties, this gives weapon scavenging more diverse variability/uniqueness where its more reliant on special niche/perks modules instead of just +damage +reload speed +mag size, and make the enemies rush you way less, make their AI behavior encourage distance from players and moving around to find an opening instead of rushing the players down, since this is kind of already done by a specific enemy type, looking at you fire and cancer spiders.
Speaking of the spideys, i suggest just straight up removing them from the natural spawn pool, make them a enemy minion spawns instead, since they are low health and rush your position not very scalable in higher difficulties, sound more like weapons than actual "enemies". (side note, due to the current enemy pool, fire spiders can stay in the natural spawn pool but the cancer ones can be spawned from the spider tank, alongside with cancer balls, or both fire and cancer but make the spider tank an absolute coward and hide constantly and lose primary attacking options, this might make a more interesting enemy instead of just another enemy that shoots you while having cancer balls and air bursts)
Make Tasers more distinct from the others. Like seriously, when a bunch of drones just swarm together on you, just the enemy shape isn't enough to distinct them from others, should add a special light color for specialized enemies and a unique sound effect on them.
OPTIONAL:
Make med stims not craftable by materia. Hear me out.
We already have medical crate and food crate as lootable, im not sure whenever these are ground loot prepared for a future update, its very unlikely that they are just generic "loot" for credits.
Medical crate gets disassembled into medical supply, used to craft med stim and potentially other stimulants, and the food supply is used to feed the cafeteria, alternatively converted into medical supply at a lesser ratio.
Cafeteria is used for whatever, can include small buffs such as slow regeneration and recover from injuries of being knocked down. Also, can i have an option for a no pineapple pizza? Thanks love yall!
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TL;DR
Overall game is good, but good doesn't mean good for a long gameplay time, just... good? it has its bugs, stability issues and small replayability, the game has its potential, so what i suggest is either wait for its development to continue, or support the devs and buy the game and let it simmer, such as of writing this review, its on 40% sale, heck, ♥♥♥♥'s bundled with Deep Rock Galactic, if you got friends to play with, get both games! DRG is fun, very moddable while you can let this game simmer in your library and check in from time to time for updates or casual game session with your friends, that's it, have a wonderful day and evening ladies and gentlemen and everything in between!
