Steel Seed

To start with what I liked about this. Resource management was very well balanced, I could typically afford most of what I was looking for but always wanted more without new upgrades ever feeling impossibly expensive. The way that new abilities were unlocked by associated actions kept gameplay engaging - though a pinning function would have been nice to remember what I was trying to do any how much I had left. The art directing was superb, the environments feel both incomprehensively massive and appropriately detailed without being too cluttered - most of the time. Everything else was disappointing to actively awful. The plot was at once both extremely predictable with betrayals and deaths exactly where they were expected, and utterly incoherent with characters frequently citing off-screen plans that are never properly explained unless you decide to scavenge for logs and stop your stealth-action to do useless homework. Combat was usually alright if not for elites that were immune to your hacked allies and the sentry gunners that would just kill you if they saw you. Collision detection is poorly polished and more than once I lost a cleared area because I got stuck in front of an enemy that just slowly murdered me. The animations are shockingly well polished for how frustratingly slow and generally unimpactful they feel. The MC's voice acting is so wooden and shallow that it's impossible to take anything she says seriously; I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that a silent protagonist would require essentially no adjustment and work much better. We're supposed to become instantly emotionally attached to a character whose only function is a marketable mascot that keeps throwing itself into gunfire or pressing needlessly convoluted buttons. There is so little regard for its own story, openly contradicting itself multiple times; a non-physical character being killed with a sword, an irrational antagonist that just magically turns into an ally, an impossibly powerful antagonist just falls over and dies in a cutscene, the MC is praised for her inquisitiveness despite *never asking a question ever*. The save points and checkpoint system is often frustrating, respawning enemies in immediate proximity while still depleting your energy and ammo. Far too many instant-kill zones and explosions. Essentially nothing in the way of useful tutorials, I was halfway through the game before I randomly discovered Koby's tool wheel. Elites don't show up as elites until combat starts so planning an approach is difficult to do until you've screwed up and died so you know who is who. The headshot mechanic is frustratingly unreliable, sometimes just starting combat instead of picking off a sentry. The incessant cutscene paralysis, making me wait to see what arbitrary limitation or problem I was about to be saddled with because the MC doesn't have two neurons to rub together. I could keep going for a while, but I feel I have made my point. If you really love stealth-action gameplay and can cover your ears for the dialogue, it may be worth your time. Otherwise, don't bother.