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.