The Siege of Brimir

TL;DR at the bottom I've had this game on my wishlist for a while and was just waiting for the right timing to get it- Unfortunately I can't enjoy this game as it is right now, which is a huge shame. I won't pretend to be knowledgeable about the dev and their circumstances, I just know what I can see, and it looks like the priorities for this game are mixed up. There a ton of little quirks, bugs, optimization issues, but all of this is normal from a game so early in development and it's clear the dev is always working to resolve these so I didn't mind it so much. What I *don't* see in any of the recent updates is much time being spent on everything else. [hr][/hr] [h2]The UI[/h2] My biggest issue is the UI, it's just awful, not just with how janky it is, but there are so many simple issues; like how the tips for each power stack as you scroll through them, making them unreadable until you wait for the text to disappear and select the power directly to see the tip for it, or how some of the images are obviously deformed to fit the space they're in. Even the character status in the top left is lacking, mostly in how unintuitive it is, it's busier than the UI in the trailers and screenshots, and other than health and energy, It's impossible to tell what anything on there is actually meant to represent just from looking, which defeats the whole point of it's existence. Though I'm willing to give this one a pass since it seems this has changed a number of times in the games development. A lot of the issues with the UI appear be that they were only worked on just enough so that they do what they have to do, and no more time is spent on them once that's done. Some things feel like more attention is drawn to them then necessary, like the warning message that the ship is being attacked, the ship has a ton of health, so this is rarely a concern, and yet it flashes red in the corner of you're screen in huge letters every time so much as a rock is thrown at it. Which is odd because the actual health bar for the ship is so out of the way that I didn't even notice there was one until my last few minutes of playing. On top of that, **why** are they even two different things to begin with? There are so many ways to have a health-bar indicate that health has been lost, having these be two different elements is completely nonsensical. Another smaller example of just bad UI - The tutorial windows for conquest; Not only do they just dump a lot of text, but instead of clicking through them, they just stay on the screen for a while and disappear on their own one after another, this is already bad but what makes it worse they take up like 15% of the *center* of the screen. Thing is though, on first playing, I got distracted moving around the ship and seeing what I could do since I was able to freely move the moment I loaded in, so I missed the tutorial windows and was completely lost on what I was supposed to do next. I realized there was no way to pull up that tutorial again so I literally *restarted* conquest just so I could pay attention to tutorial that time around. This just shouldn't happen, I don't understand why these aren't just windows you click through. [hr][/hr] [h2]Game-Feel[/h2] Other than UI, the actual game-feel isn't quite there. I'm actually big fan of these types of "Superman Simulator" games, like UNDEFEATED or Megaton Rainfall. The main draw of these games is making you feel like an unstoppable force, but unlike those games, this one fails to scratch that itch for me, and it's mainly because the game feel is all over the place. Here was my biggest issue--- There doesn't seem to be any sort of indication that enemies are being hurt or that damage is being done. There was quite a few times during both arena and conquest that I assumed that something couldn't be damaged since their was no reaction at all to attacking them until they were out of health. This might've been a bug but there was one moment that stuck out especially where I used the "Charged Plasma" attack on a few soldiers. The explosion radius covered all of them, but when the effect vanished they looked completely unaffected. It completely negated the "all-powerful" experience and made me feel less like an "unstoppable force" and more like a guy with laser pointers taped to my hands. Quite a few of the powers in this game look a lot more powerful than they feel, all flash and no substance, ironic considering the UI has the complete opposite problem. Another example is the flight, this is definitely a smaller thing but I think it's equally important to get right since you're likely to spend much more time flying than anything else, it isn't there yet, it feels [i]so[/i] [b]*SLOW*[/b], and I don't think the actual speed is that bad, it just *feels* slow. The UI tells me I'm moving over 440 KM per hour, but there isn't enough to indicate this is the case. Adding some effects would help, but for this game I feel some kind of system where you steadily increase in speed as you move would work really well on top of that. Okay there were actually a few more things I wanted to mention but I got the biggest things outta the way and I've spent hours on this now so I'll just get to my point- [hr][/hr] [h1]My point[/h1] I could very easily see someone arguing that I'm being way too harsh on this game since it's early in development and there are a lot of different features, and I'll admit, there's a lot going on here- -Destructible environments -An RPG level up system where you upgrade your stats and powers. -I believe currently *NINE* different powers, all with their own unique effects and traits -A large variety of different enemies, including superheroes meant to match your character -A "Conquest" story mode, where you conquer territory- this is looks very ambitious, it seems to be a combination of the core gameplay and some RTS elements- You have to defend the mothership while it slowly gathers resources, then use the resources to build either air units, ground units or turrets to help you defend, or mining drones to increase resource gain rate. With your ultimate goal being to use the resources to conquer stretches of territory. With all this being in the game, at so early a stage of its development, it makes sense that the game would be in it's current state. The problem? --||NONE OF THIS SHOULD BE IN THE GAME THIS EARLY IN DEVELOPMENT||-- **especially** since the core gameplay loop is still in such a bad state! It's a huge red flag to me that almost all the recent updates mention new things being added, the way it's currently going I don't see this game ever being *playable*, let alone anywhere close to being complete. Look at UNDEFEATED, it's free, it's more like a demo than a game, on paper it seems less interesting than this game, you move quickly and you can fly, but you really only have a ranged attack and a melee attack, there's only one kind of enemy, the map is tiny, and once you do the challenges and defeat the three bosses, there's literally nothing else to do, it took me 2 hours to fully complete. I decided to replay it because of this game, and I enjoyed it infinitely more. Why? Because they polished what little they had till it gleamed. It perfectly captures the exact same feeling this game is trying to capture with a lot less. I refunded the game because I didn't see a future for it, I'd gladly buy it back at three times the un-discounted price to be proven wrong, but unless the dev decides to remake the game from scratch, I don't see that happening- [b]ever[/b] [hr][/hr] [h3]Note[/h3] I turned on comments in case there are any errors or misunderstandings on my part, but my ultimate stance is unlikely to change. [hr][/hr] [h2]TL;DR[/h2] - If the dev continues to just add features without fixing the issues with the core gameplay loop, this game will always feel like a janky alpha build no matter how much time passes.

Game might still be in Early Access, but it's jank as heck. Despite the dev's attempts to optimize, it feels like they've taken steps backwards with the new features, which cause massive frame drops. To be fair, I feel like they're trying to do too much with what they have, and that causes it to run like crap. Fun ideas, and when you CAN play, it's fun gameplay. I'd like to see where this goes in the future, and if the devs can iron out the optimization issues.

So I wanted to give feedback about the game, don't really see much community wise about this game so the best I could do is write a review and hopefully the dev takes some of it on board. If not, I'm giving a bit of warning for the people potentially interested. Even though its supposedly in 1.0 right now, the game is far from "released" or in a state that could be qualified as released. They had the cool idea of adding cut scenes, that were happening live as the game played. With all the downsides that comes with, yes you can move but your camera is locked somewhere while you can be getting attacked, so in one of the first levels you can play. You get locked into a camera and I've had it happen at least a few times where I'm just OBLITERATED by things I don't know the direction of attacking me. The best way I can find out to respond to this is just summoning your shield and hoping you have enough energy to withstand everything and yes I also get you can skip the cut scenes with enter, but why am I able to be attacked through a story sequence? Sound options also don't work for most part, I can turn the music off but anything about editing my volume immediately resets itself once I'm out the menu maybe it doesn't reset immediately but it will reset in less than five minutes and the game is GLARINGLY loud in some places. The whole mothership building things seems to be mostly bugged as there's no active way to really build on it anymore? I'm not sure whats the purpose in it even being there. The game also makes my computer scream more than games like Dead by Daylight do or Stellaris. For some reason its pretty hefty on the machine still. Combat is still incredibly clunky, you can melee your way through solid objects you clearly weren't meant to get through and melee still feels pretty terrible in spite of the update it received. Another issue the game has is most attacks DO NOT in fact line up with the cross hairs or at least they don't line up with cross hairs when you're MOVING. Another issue is AI especially infantry AI is abysmal and the fighters getting their missiles accuracy buffed has effectively made fighters especially tougher ones like Eurofighters just not worth engaging. tl;dr, it still feels incredibly early access and unpolished. I don't think it should be expected to have INCREDIBLY high quality, but the low quality here is kind of problematic. I like the premise of the game, the base gameplay IS fun, but a lot of problems come with that fun, either wait for the game to update more meaningfully or give it a pass if it doesn't. -------------------------------------- Updating since I last posted this review, still MAJOR issues with the game, enemies falling through the floor, being unreachable, the campaign doesn't seem to have meaningfully progressed at all. The progress the game is updating at is... not entirely promising, updates tend to be smaller or remove things at least so far as I've seen, there was mech that used to come down and now it just falls through the floor, entire playable areas "temporarily?" removed. I'm not enthused with the direction nor the speed of the "progress."

EXTERMINATE

game runs at about 15 fps on average on mid-tier hardware. can't recommend for most people.

Needs to polish. System crashes every time. Looks like it could be a good game but is not there yet :/

Глючная сырая херня, которую еще ой как долго допиливать именно в базовых аспектах (управление персонажем, его отзывчивость на нажатие клавишь и тому подобное)

Really cool game i would give it 8/10 reasons why is: 1. Player isn't customizable (skin tone, hair, etc) 2. Lack of story(just my opinion)

Constant updates and fixes to a base game that is already fun. Turning out to be a great game with a great developer!

It's definitely Early access, but it has tremendous potential. I am very excited to see the finished product. It's like playing as a kryptonian but fighting the military.