Let me start by saying this review is merely my own highly subjective view of the game and is not meant to detract from others enjoying it. But the game evoked such a response from me that I am compelled the share my experience to help others. This is a tale of expectations vs delivery.
For context, I am a prior fan of the traditional rougelike genre, Qud and perhaps more relevantly Cogmind are my main experience in the genre.
Quasimorph: I opted to wait for 1.0 to play the game as I wanted to judge it based on a fully cooked state. Now we’re at release and it can be assessed fairly.
Among the things I can praise without hesitation are the graphics, the level tiles and lighting effects in particular look good and along with the truly great soundtrack the atmosphere is delivered in spades. The sounds in general like weapon and death effects don’t quite reach this bar, but they are present and do the job. What’s not present is any gui sounds, most menus open silently, confirmation buttons make no sounds.
Next we have the GUI in general. There are lots of design choices that lead to friction. For example, you want to see your inventory on the ship? Sure, just press ‘spaceship’ in the lower right and then click an unlabeled box in the upper corner. Okay, now we’re looking at an inventory that takes up a tiny fraction of the screen, like 20%, and all the rest of the screen is unused space, so now you gotta scroll to see your stuff. On the positive, there is a robust sorting mechanism for the inventory. Just no keybind to trigger it, you have to click a tiny square. Unfortunately, every single system in the game is like this, tons of wasted space and random clicking to do the basics, with no keyboard option. Be aware this game is not playable without a mouse, even in the tactical layer.
Okay gameplay, I can forgive some rough edges for great gameplay. Let’s do a mission. You pick a clone and gear them up and send them to a dungeon typically 2-4 floors, to complete an objective, then extract, or die trying.
Alright we’ve selected and sent in a clone. You get to pick a skill set, which are preset builds that you choose from. Once on the ground, here’s what you’re going to do, no matter what. You will sneak, until you get to door or a corner, you will stop sneaking, open the door, then wait to refill your AP then peek into the room or around the corner, with 1 AP in reserve to go back. This isn’t horrible, but this or finding a corner with cover, and firing your gun to lure enemies are the two tactics. There is no real tactical choice here. If you deviate from this, you will certainly be killed for sure, so you will be doing this move thousands of times over a run. If you do this consistently, you will still encounter enemies, and sometimes you will just get vaporized on the first turn of the encounter. Okay, the game us sold as being hard, and it is, but it’s not due to tactical choices you make, it’s often just bad rng and you’re in an unrecoverable situation that had no better option. Some enemies will camp the exact tile to ensure you cannot engage without first rolling the dice because they will get the first shot no matter what. Okay, no big deal, you die. Git Gud.
Welp any skills that you leveled for that clone are gone forever along with his gear. The gear is forgivable, but losing hard earned xp in a game that treats death as a common event means you’ll stop engaging with that skill system immediately.
If you do survive a mission you get some loot and whatever you carried out and can upgrade your ship. The ship upgrades are the only progression you retain aside from loot.
Alright, if that’s the game let’s engage. Here’s where we hit possibly the worst trade system in all of gaming, ever. Your location has some stations you can trade items with. These stations only want certain items and the only sell certain items. Meaning if someone has something you want and you don’t have the specific thing they want you can’t buy it. In fact you can’t sell stuff elsewhere either because any credit you gain selling is ONLY for that specific station. There will be cases where you just can’t get what you need where you are and you need to travel. Guess what? You get zero indication of what the stations at your destination sell or buy. There’s a stock market screen , but it doesn’t show where a particular item can be found, so you just roll the dice. The lack of information means every choice is just a roll of the dice for the player and again zero strategy.
That’s the overall theme here, the lack of information makes it ‘hard’ but it also robs the player of any agency.
Yes there’s a lot of mechanics, but they don’t really mesh well and for me it felt repetitive and tedious. As things progress, you get stronger weapons and armor, but the tactics remain identical you and the enemy are just trading larger numbers now. Or you’re the same as you were at the start because death resets your clones.
There’s the potential for a good game here but this game absolutely does not respect your time and you can play for hours for nothing. I just can’t recommend this in a world where better games exist in this category, if you’ve played them, this will feel bad by comparison, and if you haven’t then go play those instead. This is a slot machine disguised as a tactics game.
In 20 years on Steam this is the first time I’ve left a negative review, and if my rationale above is exactly what you love about the game, that’s fair, by all means leave a positive. But for others like me who were mainly interested in tactics over crushing grind and tedium, while being punished in the face of rng, it just felt bad to me.
Which is a pity, of course I wanted to enjoy this. If it was still EA, I’d say it looks promising, but there are so many fundamental design issues in the full release that I’m baffled.
It’s entirely possible I’ve been spoiled by games that have 15-20 years of development under their belt, and some might say it’s unfair to compare to the best in the genre, but hey this costs more than they do, and your time is limited. Disappointedly shelving this for now.
