Fundamentally it's a really cool concept, the trampler combat is engaging, trampler movement is fun, adrenaline rush is great like in all extraction games, you can have great laughs with friends.
Unfortunately, the devs are completely incompetent. The optimization is absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ but lets overlook that since most games nowadays have horrid optimization, The game is riddled with (game breaking) bugs. At first it might be fun to laugh at with friends but it does get old quite quickly when you lose hours of progress due to things completely out of your control. Game was riddled with cheaters just teleporting around, interacting with objects from the other side of the map, etc. In short, the devs had no clue how to build a real multiplayer game since basically absolutely everything was client-side. To "fix" this cheater issue, the devs decided that the correct choice is to disable the CORE game mechanic (capturing other tramplers) until the cheating issue is fixed. The estimation was 1 week. It took over a month. That obviously led to the exodus of over 80% of the playerbase that will never return due to the sour taste left behind.
Now, a lot of that can be overlooked and we could give the devs some time to cook, learn from their mistakes and fix the game. IF there truly was any hope. Unfortunately the fundamental progression in this game has zero thought put into it (it's even worse if they did put thought into it and this is what they came up with). In short for the people who don't play - once you get to the last "extraction circle" a massive dreadnought ship spawns which is the ONLY way to get "experimental cannons" (alongside an insane amount of loot, like truly unbalanced and incomparable to anywhere else in the game) which are basically 2x upgrades to the cannons in even 1 tier lower (which are also very hard to get btw). What this basically leads to is an insanely snowbally game where only the strong can get stronger. The only way to win against experimental cannons is having experimental cannons and so if the only way to get them is through there, you can basically never get them unless you luck out into an empty lobby. Sounds fun, huh?
There are so many more fundamental issues like:
- absolutely no matchmaking system meaning that it's basically impossible to progress when all new players are quitting and the only people running around are massive tramplers with experimental cannons who have been nolifing the beta since the beginning
- only the 2nd zone having extraction points (which 90% of the time spawn outside of the "safe zone" and hence are not usable). This zone spawns after you had time to loot 1 town. If you are lucky and it spawns right next to you, you can extract but at that point there is no point in even playing Storm Dive over Voyage (permanent map, no red zones, permanent extraction points). After that, the only way to extract is at the "dreadnought" ship which as I've mentioned above, for someone progressing rather than full end-game, fully-upgraded, experimental cannons ship, is impossible
- Pre-teaming on discord in solo/duo modes
- Some tech tree materials are absolutely useless while some are incredibly bottlenecked with insanely braindead and boring ways of farming them (literally go outside of the map and run in circles shooting npcs who dont even really fight back. Might as well just watch brainrot on the side).
- Gun hit-reg is the worst that I've seen in any shooter. It's literally worse than games from the 90s. As I said, devs are absolutely incompetent. Probably their first game ever, wouldn't be surprised if it's their first coding project
- this is genuinely just the beginning of the list, there is so much more in the game that I just look at and think, "who the ♥♥♥♥ ever thought this was even a consideration to suggest" but the more worrying thing is "how the ♥♥♥♥ did this ever make it to live".
This game could have been so good, it genuinely had so much potential. There are so many ways to fix the issues tied to progression but it's been months now and if devs still don't see the fundamentally flawed progression and haven't reworked it or publicaly addressed it, there is no hope anymore. I cannot recommend anyone to buy this game.
With that being said, the devs made a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of money. I'm sure they do not give a ♥♥♥♥ anymore and are completely fine with letting the game rot and die in an awful state.
