SAND: Raiders of Sophie

With the game besieged by negative reviews made by people who played a couple of matches and left because of some inconvenience they experienced in an EA title, I've decided to leave a positive review. The game actually deserves it for what it is, and most importantly, what it's trying to achieve. Firstly, the game suffered from two major issues which caused the early wave of negatives: -Server instability during first week which caused some matches to crash, returning everyone back to base. This issue is already solved and the servers are mostly stable now. I haven't seen it but there might be some minor issues. Never had a match interrupted for a long time now though. -A cheater wave ~1 week ago. The devs, as with all such competitive games with resource collection (Rust, DayZ, Tarkov etc) are locked in a fight. So far, after the initial struggle, it looks like they got their things in order and solved the worst of the cheating. This game also has potential to be a bit more resistant to cheats simply due to its nature. Most fights are at range and bullets have dropoff and travel time. Wallhack would also be mostly useless. Both issues are under control now and the devs are releasing weekly patches to address the issues. This leads me to an important point about the devs: even if it's the studio's first release, the devs are very active and seem to react to many popular issues quite quickly. It doesn't mean they can solve everything overnight, but this does make me hopeful for the game's development. Just today, they've released a patch with more improvements and much requested smoke shell nerf. Smoke shell topic picked up steam 2 weeks ago tops and they reacted quickly. It's nice to see the devs doing something with feedback, even if it's simple tweaks. As for the game itself: there is no other title like this one on the market. I know there's sea of thieves but it has a different vibe. Unlike other shooters, this one is very focused on teamwork and outcompeting the enemy team with the resources you have and the machine you built. There's different playstyles and they all are based on what you come up with. Firing your broadside on the move? Getting in close with a ram? Boarding? Straightforward shootouts? Avoiding combat and having rear-facing weapons only? All are down to what you want. Asides from that, the game does feel somewhat fair compared to other shooters. Most of the time you'll see your opponents coming from afar. Ambushes and sneaking are rare and done dynamically instead of camping the only chokepoint on the map. Even if you are facing a bigger, better armed trampler - you can always try to run before they get to you, get into rough terrain that's hard to navigate for bigger ships or simply win the fight via boarding. Gear advantage is at it's weakest in close combat. Shotguns are deadly and medium tier armor is the most common. Granted, killing an enemy does not take them out of the game - players respawn in crew quarters as long as they have supplies or the module is intact. Even still, wiping the enemy crew lets you sabotage and disarm their trampler if you are quick at it. So there's always a chance for your team to win as long as you can get up close and board the enemy. This all ends up creating a thrilling experience where you have times of calm as you travel and loot the deserted (no pun intended) planet just to run into an enemy and have the action suddenly begin. Maybe you spotted them at the last possible moment. Maybe you surprised them. Or maybe you just had a chance to rob them and took it. The game has a long way to go. But people acting like the intermittent issues during the post-launch period were some sort of catastrophe really seem to miss the mark. I played during early release and had ~4 out of 10 matches ruined but still had lots of fun. Currently, you can still encounter bugs but it's something to be expected in an EA title. The only major issue that's still unadressed are teamers in solo (people trying to join the same game at the same time to play together). While it is a bannable offence, you can still see them sometimes in lobby. I suspect the devs will also roll out a patch to solve this fairly soon. The game is cheap, has huge potential, and you may have like one match out of 20 ruined. Chances are, in any other extraction shooter, something would make you rage anyway. Buy it, try it. Learn from mistakes and try to think up solutions. I say it's worth it.

If you like to get getting fisted with no lube then this is the perfect game for you! Nothing is more fun then starting to play the game learning a few things and enjoying my time with my friends and then a maxed tech tree crawler comes out of the bush and outguns you every single time so the game is just a waste of time. Unbalanced, bugs, cheaters

Not recommended at all, check in again in 3 months or something. Extremely easy ways to cheat, team up with your buddies in solo queue and central features disabled for weeks. Will revisit this review, but the game sucks as it is now.

Toxic ppl make progression impossible. Unless you feel like going pvp with sweaty nerds that play games 24/7 don't waste your time.

Shid was fun at first now you just get hacked on or go up against people with maxed out tramplers so you cant progress. fix the game then it will be somewhat fun.

I don't think i have ever reviewed a game. The game is not what is advertised. I have 400+ hours. It's advertised as an extraction shooter.... build a better trampler.. gather more recourses... Be a better shot... win. but that is not what it is. The most impactful part of the game is entering a match and quickly finding another player or team to work with (which I haven't done and most players won't.. which is why the game is dying). 2800 players total online at the time of this post. The low for 1 month ago on a Sunday night was at 11k according to tracker.gg. You are not permitted to intentionally work with someone and plan to team, it's called pre-teaming. However meeting a player during a match... whom you won't be allowed to intentionally team with in subsequent matches.. is permitted. And that makes no sense. If you want to enter a game solo.. or with your friends... and see how you do... build a walking fortress, Squad up or go solo, scavenge the dunes, gather loot.... which is exactly what the game advertises... Well you can't do it like you imagined. they left out the biggest most impactful part of the game in the description. to do the rest you must team. Teaming with some random (which is the only legal way to do it) is the biggest, cheapest lever towards success.. costs you less.. you risk less.... 1 drives, other boards... doubles the DPS... ect Healthy player bases don't want to win by having a numbers advantage w/ ppl they don't know. People want the 1 on 1 success.. or the 2 on 2, 4 on 4... what type of players want to win with that advantage? Answer? Few. games dropping pop rapidly. 2800 players active online at the time of this post. Turns out there are way more ppl who want to test their own skills... than take a fake W over someone because of a numbers advantage with someone they don't know. Find a random person... gang up on someone who didn't find a random person. Devs allow it. Players hate it. Problems being spoken about as of today: duping is not fixed Extracting can glitch you.. and you lose all of your loot and ships. OC servers are frequently down. Us central servers just disconnected everyone Lobbies are dead. You enter a match and there are 1-2 players. they introduced gear based match making... So after players put time in.. unlocked higher tier tramplers... If they use those parts... there is 0 players in their lobby and they walk around solo. The discord banned some guy for having a Trump picture... but the dude was making fun of Trump. It's a weird redit mod power trip situation like that... that reflects how the rest of the game is run... They support the whiney populations of gaming.. ignore the rest, and try to convince people it's all fine as they creep close to 3 digit activity numbers. If I could refund I would.

i think trampler capturing incentivizes playstyles that are extremely difficult and unfun to counter. i want to loot locations and fight enemies with my trampler. people ditching their tramper and on footing it kilometers at a time to steal mine incentivizes neither of those. besides that pretty fun