70/100, not worth $15 yet.
The game has potential, but seriously tapers off after a dozen hours.
Wait for later patches, see my suggestions.
The game feels unfinished despite 1 major 5-part quest chain.
======== Pros/Cons ========
+ Great artwork
+ Loot-a-holic drops, 8 tiers (grey, dark green, light green, blue, purp, red, orange, and teal)
+ Nice skilltree, multi tiers, upgrading both characters and your ship.
+ Great rooms system on ships, has more potential later on.
+ Love having multiple units, each class has 3 play style options based on their class relic.
+ Ability to add difficulty to missions for better chance at loot drops.
+ There's a few rerferences to other games, which is a trip.
(Apparently there's a cube recipe for a cow level? I would love to see a wiki for unique recipes)
= Music is alright. Not blown away, but not hating it either. Chill, sorta ambient at times.
= Matter / Fuel become almost useless over time with high-tier Research Point upgrade.
= There's a nice number of planets to check out, but see my notes on level scaling.
[b] However, there are a ton of small things that just snowball into a poor experience.
These will effect your gameplay, I guarantee it. [/b]
- Major memory leaks / fps drops: I'm running a moderate+ system (i5 with a 1070 GPU)
I'll drop from 150 frames down to 20 over the course of one map. That needs to be addressed.
- No Auto Attack + Hold Commands don't work: I would make more use of tactical pauses, but it's just better to set a 2x4 basic team formation (Vanguard tanks up front, Marines 2nd, Healers 3rd, and Scout/Eng in the back) and just focus fire on one monster at a time. Your units will just sit there and eat damage if you don't do something about it. Keep a finger on Q, you'll be babysitting that key.
- Automatic level scaling: I love leveling to zone, and the bosses should reflect that progression as a milemarker.
Nothing feels better than grinding hard, swooping solid gear then smashing a boss into next week. (It should be a 15-25-35-45-55, Final 65+ kinda deal.) This way, If I want a hard battle, I can throw on the modifiers.
Instead, Give yourself 15+ mins (not kidding) to chip away at each boss and micromanage their timed minion summons.
Bosses aren't a challenge as much as they are obnoxius.
Every planet auto scales to you, so there's no benefit or need to travel far out to find the right zone.
[b] The level scaling seriously kills the sense of progression in this game. [/b]
- "Company Quests" are just cheap low-tier item / fuel / matter grabs. Take your pick of the three: Save prisoners, research rooms, collect random drops. Rinse. Repeat.
- They need to change the color on their final item tier. Top tier items blend in a little too easily. Try black/red/silver striped boxes or somethin' different.
- Multiplayer is a nice feature, but it needs a ton of work. I had some luck with playing LAN, but I have heard horror stories for those not playing locally.
- Endgame after the warp: I watched my brother play past the final boss, but... there's... nothing.
No endgame quest trigger, no special company quests, no unique planets. Did we miss something?
Why include it if there is nothing but a replay of the same game under the guise of an "alternative universe?"
Edit: I made it to the "alternative universe" to see it for myself.
... uhhh. Wut.
======= Final Verdict ========
70/100
The games an alright time sink for now, and with some much needed fixes, it could be worth 15+ bucks.
They have a great idea, and some great mechanics already in place.
Problem is it's lacking some basic features and endgame content. It still has gameplay killing bugs.
Either wait for it to go for less than $6-7 on a sale, or wait until 1.0.2 or much later is released.
This game was... finished, but not really, you know?
======== Dev Suggestions ========
- Fix Auto Attack / Hold Commands
- Chef Zakarian made a great point about the game having an RTS feel, but not having a intelligent/behavior autoattack system. I linked his review below:
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198041699470/recommended/342640/
- Remove Level Scaling. It's killing your game.
- Address Memory Leaks + FPS Drop.
- Please add a convenient to access loot filter. Once you hit 10k Matter, you're really just looking for Purple's or higher to do cube rolling.
Things to add?
- Add more quest variants: "Timed" Explore/Kill, Multiplanet Escort Missions, Maybe a "clear infection/wipe out mutiple hives" Maybe a "Distress Beacon, check out this ship" quest. Hell, I would love a "Help fix a warp gate" quest to help create waypoints for far exploring.
- Endgame: Perhaps Legendary Class Relic quests, Maybe a rare merchant quest leading to a get upgradeable ship rooms, making matter/fuel useful again. Introduce Minor/Major sockets add-ons allowing us to tweak with Purple or lesser items.
- Play with random encounters: Let me decide to pick up those hitcherhikers that always become Punks invading my ship. Currently they are more of a headache then "oh wow, this could be neat".
- Add "warp gates" that we can reach from the outposts, or allow us to save warp locations.
- Add "home base" near the first wormhole, where we can store items, maybe have NPCs chill?
- Play with your cube crafting system, it's an awesome little thing to gamble/reroll, but you could do some end game customization with it. A recipe tracker tab on the box would be nice.
- Trading in multiplayer, it would be nice to have an item/resource economy to encourage dedicated MP.
As a side rant, I have put the game down twice trying to get to the 5th boss because I have to fly about 400+ fuels distance (no, I'm not kidding)
Why are 4 major bosses within 30 fuel of eachother and this one is so far out?
Those interruptions are now the sole the bane of my existence in your game.
I wrote this review rather than deal with the trip to the 5th boss.
