---

I can see how this game could had been great once. Care and love poured into it is self evident. Game has a massive significance in gaming industry. Sadly, game is terribly done and reeks of amateurs down to their role-playing. This is game only for people who want to remember how great their childhood were or ones who are still stuck there.

---

Just because something is a labour of love or you have fond memories of it, it does not necessary mean that it is good. Time was not kind to this game and it is thoroughly outdated in everything. From most obvious, graphical prowess and ugly looking pixels to more transcendent properties like a story telling. Nothing in Baldur's Gate compares favourably to games today and it is a great example why people reviews are mostly useless. They do not review games objectively, they evaluate them mostly through hype and preset beliefs which they formed many years ago when they first played a game which was not crap while most games were.

While this game was influential and significant, it doesn't warrant a recommendation for a person looking to play this game. A historical significance is only of interest to museum. Over time many better games came out which are better in every metric. I do believe that many old games are still worth playing even today. Starcraft I has an amazing campaign for example. However, this game has absolutely nothing to offer which could not be experienced in a lot better form elsewhere.

I'm attaching a video to this review to better convey what it is actually like to play this game. These are just few things which stuck out to me. Its horrible combat, balance, story telling. However, game is a never ending trove of badness. For one thing which is good there are dozen of things which are bad.
https://youtu.be/cDCKqDWvNL8
Nothing this game does could not be seen elsewhere done in a better form. Its graphics, story, gameplay, sound, world building, engine. Game is completely outdated in every respect while surprisingly still being actively supported.

Gameplay
• Game is thoroughly outdated how it plays. Small inventory spaces, a lot of individual items. The fact that various specialised bags in this game is one of the most treasured early game items tells you a lot. There are no real storage options outside of putting all your items at random chests.
  
  Heroes are equally as baffling. In order to recruit new ones, you have to swap old ones. Some of them will remain where they are standing. Others will go to friendly inn while few others will stay at different places. You have to collect them as pokemons and getting one is frustrating, because often you only can recruit on the spot. You have then to go long way back to Friendly Inn to deposit them and go right back to continue what you were doing. Even if you want to swap them out, it is not recommended, because heroes need to level up in order to face foes encountered later in game. For some heroes like mages, additional levels are extremely important due to their broken scaling. Thus, you can't even experiment with different heroes to see what you like.
  
  Even if you would want to, levels for most heroes do not do anything. A lot of heroes level up just stats and you get nothing for a massive grind. A grind which in my case were 7 levels. Level up after level up gave me nothing to choose.
  
  Combat
  
• Oh, it is bad. It is broken. It is extremely unbalanced. From mages being useless to becoming Gods to stealth characters utterly breaking a game. Combat in this game is badly done. From being completely outnumbered and outmatched to encountering basilisk in low level environments which can instant kill your hero and end your game. Combat in this game is a quick load chore dominated completely by RNG. You can clear hard encounter in a first try with luck or you can reload a save dozen of time until you cheese enemy hard enough until you win.
  
  Story
  
• Story in this game reeks of amateurish roleplaying straight out of hobby shops. Characters, as little they are developed in this game, are written in such a terrible way that it makes you cringe. Dorn is a good example. It seems like a teenager doing a bit about how evil he is all the time. Usually they will complain all game long and then leave you or force conflicts for no reason which are then solved by quick loading and doing the same thing again which doesn't trigger the event.
  
  Look at this dungeon master which forces himself awkwardly into the story:
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3007751870
  
  The main story is typical of Dungeons of Dragons community. They have no clue how to tell a good story. They imagine overcomplicated grand mystery which you will have to unravel. They make up evens in that story and then put you into a passenger seat. You are going through the world which assumes that you know all the background role and are involved in it. In this game, you start with giant time sink in a castle. Talking about utterly irrelevant things when you must go due to unspecified threat. That threat finds you and you flee. It mentions Iron Throne and how evil it is. For some reason it keeps on picking on you despite having no motivation to do so. Then story railroads you into mission while keeping the whole plot and motivation hidden. You have no clue what Iron Throne is. What is their motivation until the latter part of the game. You have to slug through dozens of hours of poorly explained story to get there. Encountering people who are very into their roles while you have no investment in it at all. In the end you discover that you are a Dragonborn and have to fight another Super Sayan Dragonborn who is trying to become a God by killing everyone. Yeah...I'm not even exaggerating here. Story is such a rubbish one.
  
  There are also a lot of inconsistencies. One quest asks you to get evidence on Iron Throne. You go to their headquarters in a middle of a major city with a gang of heavily armed mercenaries. You slaughter everyone from its cellar to the top floor and leave. Captain of a guard celebrates you for your deed and sends to your own childhood castle to get evidence which is found on their leaders there. I go in and slaughter them. Now I'm suddenly convicted of murder. This is a massive inconsistency. However, game thought that I will not kill them and then they could frame me for murder and execute me. Except, I did murdered all of them in middle of castle in cold blood. Game then tries to portray you as innocent running from a law for a random mass slaughter which were you and everyone around you were committing all this time. This game is as contrived as it can get.
  
  To make matters worse, story reeks of Dungeons of Dragons and people who are trying to roleplay. Characters are ridiculous and one dimensional. They have no motivation to do things other than for pure evil. Not even for self-interest. This game's broken morale system is a good example of that. My characters would literally leave me, because I'm too popular and did not decided to drown slaves in a mines. So, I went to a Friendly Inn and had slaughtered a random person. My characters were extremely satisfied by that and stayed in a party. Equally as bad is when people try to murder you in inns and for defending yourself, you get a bad reputation...
  
  Look here. Main villain motivation is literally being evil for the comedic and shocking effect. A child could write a better main character. Maybe developers should had asked them for help when I think about it.
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3007751084

Not every game age gracefully. Some of them were good only because they were okey'ish games when there weren't any good games out there. When field was full of small studios full of amateurs who were learning on the job (this is the case here too). Back then there was a lot of passion, enthusiasm, but not a lot of skill, experience or resources to make games. This is such a product. It comes from times when developers were doing what they were doing, because they absolutely loved it. Games like these were important long ago and they do have historical significance. However, it is a good thing that industry evolved past its own roots and moved away from everything what they once were.

Calicifer's Reviews

If you are interested reading full review or want to discuss something with me, please follow the provided link. I do not allow endless discussions under my reviews, because it rarely ends well.

Now to wrap things up.


To me this game falls into the same place as Minecraft did when it first released. I went in. Were vowed by its world. Explored its caves. Build some stuff. However, quickly I realised that there is very little to do in that game. Better recipes were not obvious to me or at that time did not existed. Building stuff felt just empty. Sure, I will build a wall. So what? It is not like it can do something. Finally we have Factory type games where stuff you build actually does something. However, I felt same emptiness inside. Why I'm building this wall? There is no threat at all. I want to build my army which would patrol around the perimeter, but I cannot. Everything is so static. I felt the same emptiness and lack of purpose in this game. I explored in game world and it felt so simple to me. Like that I had explored everything there is to know about it. Sure, people will be quick to point out to mods. However, I'm not evaluating mods, I'm judging the game itself.


What contributed the most to this sense of emptiness is that game presented no challenge to me. It falsely markets its own gameplay as this survival game against swarms of Biters. No, it is not. Biters are hardly any more than annoyance in this game. In fact, they are so useless that I do not even need to fight them. I would just walk into middle of their nests and would just stand there until they all die. This is how ridiculously they are outmatched in this game.

Since Biters were not challenging when what is? Game objectives? Alright, I built the rocket. What remains after that? Just do it again and again, researching ever more ridiculously time consuming recipes? It is more of a same. Sure, modders will come out with new stuff to do, but it all shall fall under the definition: "just the same, but more autistic" or in other words, you shall have unnecessarily complicated recipes those main difficulty shall be in how much time you are willing to sink in to complete ever more ridiculous requirements.

I'm not interested in that at all. I could set myself on a project like creating a computer which would judge the amount of inputs incoming and consumed. Then it would only input ingredients which are missing at the exact ratios which belt needs. I had made such system in my game already though, but never bothered implementing it on a larger scale though. However, I think that is the problem. I already solved what I wanted to solve. Applying this solution will just be inferior to what players are doing in regards to belt saturation. Yes, it would be cool, but for that purpose? It is not like I have an organic challenge in this game. All what I need to do is to expand my production. Things like I dream are just games versus to what this game was designed for. It feels that I experienced everything what in game mechanics have to offer me and I'm not interested in excelling at those mechanics. Come to think of, I do not think that I was ever interested in excelling at such mechanics.

When I play like Kerbal Space Program, I'm most excited in trying to make my contraption to work against all the odds. I still remember fondly go I went STRAIGHT TO THE MOON (rather than going around the Earth to make far more efficient use of fuel). I have fond memories how I landed on a moon literally on my engine, because I did not knew any better. I just love an idea that I landed there with something massive like that SpaceX project. I loved the idea that I had so much fuel to come back. Not like those panzies from NASA, calculating every drop of fuel for their safe arrival. Game motivates me with an idea to go to different planets. To construct unholy contraptions. I always have an idea to make two stage spacecraft. However, instead of having two engines, it would be two different launches. I would launch a space craft into the orbit. Then I would launch its engines. Then I would launch its fuel. I would also create a starbase where I could park everything and construct myself a spaceship which would have insane characteristics, because I did not needed to bring everything in one go from Earth. Stuff like this motivates me to play such games. That joy of discovery. That challenge of figuring stuff out. I feel that I figured out how this game plays and any additional content would be equivalent of doing the same thing, but for longer periods of time.


Game has a reputation for being a difficult game. It is not particularly difficult game. Players get tons of freebies and once they figure out base mechanics, game isn't that incredibly difficult. If someone wants to flex playing 300 IQ games, they would not be playing this, but rather various puzzles which are hard all the time. This game was hardest initially, mostly due to how I would take the most extreme examples in this game and would brake systems in the ways they were not designed to be used. Sure, I could just built another track, but why should I? One track is perfectly sufficient. This is how I started at the hardest possible self inflicted level and after overcoming mid game, late game was rather simple and tiresome. It is all about just running around, adding more production and fixing whatever goes wrong in your Factory. People just blueprint their Factory layout and just add more of the stuff. Wow, it is so hard to press two buttons to double your production! How exciting it is to connect your blueprinted, self constructing factory to blueprinted transport network and putting ore extractors on ore fields. All player bases look similar to me and once you figure out how to construct for example, your metal smelters, what is the point of doing it again in a new run? This is what this game had become to me. Even if there were more difficult recipes, they all relied on producing even more base materials, but redirecting them to new recipe. How exciting...


This game is really dragged out for longer than it needs to be. It raises resource cost for some of its techs for no reason. There isn't enough gameplay to maintain researching all the tech and white science tech. At that time game feels hollow which is no surprise that at that point you spent more than a hundred hours on a same map.

Entire game is like that. In order to do any task you need a lot of resources and production time. It is not enough to just build your Factory, but you also need to figure stuff up as you go. Game will throw different requirements as you progress, forcing you to redo your base over and over again. This is probably why most people never finish their base playthrough. I myself had to redo my base many times due to ever changing requirements both in recipes and amount of produce required. This really drags out the game and I felt that I was done with it dozens of hours before I finished it.


It is a great game. It was a fun experience and this is what gaming should be all about. I had great time with it, but game really overstayed its welcome. Game has an addictive quality which makes time fly quickly. However, it relies on player finding its own projects to complete if it wants to play for long time. Community for such games tends to be rather hardcore which actively alienates other groups of people. You are not encouraged to share and to have fun. It is all about optimising your fun out of your own game. Game itself had somewhat confusing direction with some things being simplified too much while others remaining overly difficult for a video game. It is also lacking on its own in many regards without mods and I saw ton of various odd behaviours which I generously considered to be bugs.

In the end, this is game for more serious and dedicated player. For more casual players I would probably recommend Satisfactory which is the most popular Factory type game with pretty graphics and all that. Factorio is for more hardcore player which wants to emerge itself to countless hours of playing with mods since more simplistic game engine gives way to purer gameplay and easier modding of new content.

When I was about to achieve everything I ever dreamed in Factorio, I went out on exploring the world. Loaded my car with tons of rocket fuel and I set sail.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2992211219

I thought that game will just prevent from further exploration just by surrounding you with oceans. This is where I thought it was starting to do that. However, that was a bug from game engine where it rendered coastline in an unnerving straightness. I thought that world is ending, but it was game engine doing its own stuff again.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2992216689

I noticed huge clumps of Biters. They were an obstacle to travel through. However, outside of having massive nests, they are just annoying as they just prevent map exploration and going back. Game loves to choke the entire pathways with their nests.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2992218418

Their nests are indeed huge. Some people say that they are evil and bad. They are invasive and such. However, I view that as a thin justification for players own action. They know nothing about them and project their own essence upon them. We are invaders who come to pollute and to destroy everything. If God could strike either one of us, I would not be so confident that lighting bolt would not come at the player itself rather than biters.

Also, people think that biters spread creep. However, in game graphic is not clear on that and it doesn't seem to be creep to me. Just freshly dug earth which indicates that they are like ants, borrowing underground. That fits seeing their worms and nests which indicates an extensive sub-terranean nests.

In my game, Biters were quite chill. I was disappointed in them, because they did not even tried to expand. They were just chilling at the same place all the time. Rare times when they tried expanding, they would always do that in the same pre-set places. I just put some artillery batteries as a stand off weapon to prevent them from coming close.
Even when I fired at their bases, they did not attacked me. They just chilled. Walked to another Biters base. I saw some even attacking rocks in frustration. Even in times when Biters attacked my base, I would just look at them disapprovingly and they would just stop. Then they would start walking in slow-mode, no doubt crushed by the sense of guilt and then they would just slowly move away from my base never to be seen again. That is no doubt another bug with the Biters, but it was funny nonetheless to see how me just staring at them was enough to force them to quit attacking my base. Like I was saying: "Dude, really? You are ruining my fun." and Biters were: "We are so sorry" and would walk away.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2992209869

In the end, the only cool thing I found from exploring were trees. These one looked cool. Also, how they grow in the desert? Map generation is whacky to be honest.

This is my spaghetti base:

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2992205244

It gets a lot worse with conveyor belts in a main base. You can't track where they go. I missed some sort of ability to name tracks. When you are playing this game, you will probably need to redo or upgrade base. If you are upgrading your base, you will probably have to squeeze stuff in if you do not want to disassemble half of the stuff.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2992208710

I made a great use of blueprints here. However, usually they are not very useful to me, because I often construct purpose-made Factories. Here I'm separating my refineries and placing them next to my oil pipes. These make up just a part of all refineries I have. Some are above while others are in completely different base. I placed them in such segregated fashion in order to not pollute any one area too much. I also avoided cutting down trees if it was not necessary. I quite liked how this turned out to be. Just factories surrounded by the forests.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2992204381

As I was ramping up my electronics production, mainly for bluechips and their products, I needed more than one plastic factory. I made an use of transmitters and modules. Their introduction alters how you have to design your base around. I liked how this part of my base came out. I transported plastic from two bases into my main factory.

When it comes to modules, here is my issue. If player wants to expand production, it is better to make more factories due to how inefficient modules are. If a player wants to reduce production speed, it is better to use lower tier factories or to even limit material inputs. If player wants to reduce pollution, it can spread it around the map. Game enables player to do everything it wants naturally.

Where these modules and transmitters seem to shine is by cumulative bonuses where you add 500% production at the cost of 900% energy, but then you detract 700% energy reduction through transmitters. In other words, it doesn't feel anymore as a Factory game, but rather as an RPG with insane multipliers. If I want to have a weapon which does +600% acid damage, but actually a blade with +32 base acid damage and +300% multiplier is better, I would play Grim Dawn. These insane multipliers seem out of place in Factorio game and I immediately did not liked them. Especially how you can trivially just make ore extraction eco friendly with base efficiency modules.

Also, this system is not intuitive. How electricity consumption relates to pollution. It seems that game is missing base stats. I would expect to see statistics like 'pollution produced per cycle'. Now this information is obfuscated and it is unintuitive.

During end game I finally discovered that trees can die from pollution. Neat. I then immediately changed modules and immediately reduced my CO2 footprint to prevent any more unnecessary destruction.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2992203581

I thought that I'm going to dislike drones in this game, however I quite liked a lot of features they provide. One of the cooler things are placing pre-planned structures from a map menu.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2992202881

I made use of drones, but never I had seen them as essential. They were to me: "How cool it would be if I could move small amounts of stuff from chest A to chest B across entire base'. They fulfilled that and did a lot more. I could just place chests and ignore conveyor belts for anything, but the most volume demanding products.

Drones for me is just another freeby which Factorio players get. Conveyor belts, modules, electricity are freebies in this game. Drones are free, because once you built them, they only require electricity and as we already talked, electricity generation in this game is simplified to the point of absurdity. Solar panels work at night. Nuclear power produces simply indecent amount of power. They do not need even fuel as after a certain point Kovarex will simply give you an infinite amount of fuel out of thin air. Ironically, Steam powered power is the only way to generate electricity which seems somewhat balanced in this game.

Did these simplifications took away from my experience? It was something which I definitely noticed, but did not cared much about. I was more concerned about inconsistency. Where in one area game tries to be realistic while in another it gives you literal magic and energy generation out of thin air. I would had dealt with production difficulties in this game like extraction of U-235 if game would tried to be scientifically consistent.

I liked how in this game you get achievements. There is a nice sound effect. Nice text box. It is easy to track what you need to do. Though, developers should give a hint to a hidden quest, because all it motivates people to do is to just look up stuff online.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2992232150

I also missed ability to change the order in which you can manufacture stuff. Sure there are some potential complications, but there is nothing which could not be solved.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2992219191

I also disliked how manual targeting is just another freebie to make your artillery so much better. That is undeserved power boost. Furthermore, just manual targeting should be reward enough for a player.

However, what I missed was an ability to queue firing orders. Now when you ran out of ammunition, you can't place any more coordinates to fire. Game should allow artillery batteries to fire on pre-set targets when they receive more ammunition.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2992215146

I also found it awkward how inserters can only rotate 180 degrees or how fast inserters can only pick up one type of item. Or how you can't set up from which line to take items from. Considering how much free stuff this game gives and how complicated it loves to be, it is little bit surprising that it remains so simple when it comes to base functionality.

I also missed ability to name conveyor belts and areas in order to make myself a note what something is supposed to be.

I do not know if it is just a bad seed which I got, but maps in this game tend to be generated very predictably. They are also illogical in their biome layout. That is more, they seem usually to contain choke points which would be so easy to seal off from Biters threat...

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2992230331

And this is exactly what I did! Entire map section was sealed off. My economy might suck compared to other Factorio players, but I sure have a huge wall!

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2992220924

It is complete with minefield, laser batteries, HQ bunkers, drone support facilities. Even an artillery train would move around the clock to clear perimeter around.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2992222699

Now, some Biters were left at the wrong side of the wall. I'm no longer stuck with them. They are stuck with me! I'm going to do something wicked to the remaining Biters. I will force them to pay me rent for the land they are living on. In order for them to pay me this rent, they will have to seek jobs. The only jobs will be in my factory. So, they will have to work decent hours from 8 to 5. However, if they do want to provide for their families at home, they will have to work constant overtime in my factory. 12 hours shifts! They will go to work and back while slowly being poisoned by the world around them. They will work until they collapse and their young shall take their place. They will have no say in the politics and how things are run. They will be kept content with TV and entertainment. I will teach how bad it was under monarchic government while preaching how free and empowered they are under democracy. Their old values shall be stripped way until they are just interchangeable mix of workers. Devoid of culture and history, they shall not even be able to comprehend what happiness is or what they should do with their own lives.

Killing them would be too easy. Too merciful. No, they shall be my citizens instead!

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Developers have an accord with the community that game will never go on sale. Having a small discount when buying in bundle with an expansions is fine, but if game ever goes on sale, this review will become negative.

---

Factorio is one of those games which will remain classic to most people. It is a game which filled a niche and created a genre upon itself. It is a standard to which other factory style games can be compared to.

It is a game designed around producing as much stuff as possible. Entire game is designed around allowing player to produce more stuff. It has front-loaded learning curve where game appears to be difficult, but it is not when you learn it. It has very strong modding community. However, due to its isometric nature, this is a game which favours function over form and thus is not as pretty or approachable to people as Satisfactory is. Hence, it is a second most popular Factory style game which is better suited for more dedicated, hardcore individuals due to its ease of modifiability.

Game is like Minecraft. It is devoid of purpose. You must set them yourself if you want to enjoy playing it and it would be better be along the lines: "factory must grow" or else you might end up disappointed. You can sure try to launch the rocket and be satisfied by it. However, if you will not have goals or desire to try something new, game will eventually feel empty. It does not have enough polish or dynamic content to make you engaged any more than a playthrough and it relies heavily on modders keeping you entertained.


This game is full of little quirks which takes you away from an experience. Some of these are little things which are still left unfinished like seeing windows mouse. Others are about unrefined features like combinators which as a result are a pain to use. Other parts are about unintuitive and odd choices which game chooses to take like going against established convention with in-game armor or a questionable relationship with a reality where game in one area tries to be realistic then goes to complete wonderland in the next.

Small things
• Something simple as pressing left mouse button on your armor causes you to drop everything on a ground. Game defies classical user interface. When you want to open something, what do you press on Windows? Left mouse click. When you want to drag a bag in Boulder's Gate to your ally's inventory, does it spill all the potions, scrolls and gems on the ground? No it does not. However, this game does it and lack of basic features like a sub-inventory causes a lot of frustration when you learn this game.
  
  Then there are other things. Why I can't say how much my smart inserters have to turn? Why they do U-turn thus forcing me into awkward situations? Why this game still has windows mouse? Why this game does not allow you to re-order your manual building menu? Why I can't name my conveyor belts or just areas what does what? There are ton of such little things which would be of minor annoyance when I would play this game.
  
  Going more complex
  
• This game is not designed for more complex relationships. For example, using rail signals for anything else than intersections between various rails is just asking for trouble and they just do not work for a single rail network. Trying to use signals for rail management is a nightmare, because developers for some reason decided to give new train ID if you add or remove a wagon for it. More complicated signals are a complete pain to do. Train for example will not move out under fully loaded cargo, because artillery wagon also has a cargo which you must load before moving out. Game is logically inconsistent to what a player would expect to happen. This creates a very unintuitive game where you constantly get frustrated when trying to do something complex and it is often game's fault as it defies a common logic and expectation of how things behave in a real life. Here is an example of this. I had a bug where my trains will not obey signals. I noticed that I put on the same network two signals with a same ID. They added up and this caused a bug. However, in reality if there are two different signals, they will not just add up. They will most likely subtract from each other's value. In this case, game does not simply have two different T named signals with T 50 and T 25. Instead, game produces T 75 signal. This is unrealistic and it needlessly complicated gameplay when game could had implicit rules to avoid such issues.
  
  Bugs
  
• People often get emotional when you call something as a bug. However, that is far more charitable description than calling something as broken or badly designed. A bug is merely an unintentional behaviour. What is unintentional is usually referenced to a design document or to developer's vision. Lack of documentation how a software is supposed to run opens a door of calling anything which does not behave as an user expects to as a bug. This is why definition of a bug can be subjective (outside of hard crashes) if we do not know what is intended behaviour and what is not.
  
  However, was it developer's vision to place artillery cannons on inaccessible places and then for that to cause Biters to bug out? Biters do not know what to attack anymore as they were programmed to attack artillery cannon and not the direction from which shot came. That little bit of lazy programming in the end causes game to break in unforeseen ways. I even saw Biters attacking rocks out of sheer frustration or just freezing in place. At other times, they attack my base after an artillery attack, but then they immediately stop. Freeze in place and then move away in slow motion.
  
  In other areas bug happens, because developer did not properly programmed their code. Why inserters insert materials into a train disregarding circuit condition and train ID? If that is intended behaviour, then I can only call this part of Factorio simply as broken. Why? Now we have higher level tools - circuit conditions which are supposed to define behaviour of in-game elements. However, these tools do not work, because underlying code is poorly programmed as it constantly overwrites conditions and rules I set up for inserters.
  
  Other bugs happen, because developer came to conclusions which are unintuitive and even wrong compared to common practices. Why train ID changes with adding new wagons? Train ID traditionally is tied to locomotive and not amount of wagons it has. Why automatic train scheduler stops working when you mess with it? A lot of these bugs happen, because programmer just programmed code to whatever makes sense to them and did not considered what these things really mean. As a result, it was supremely frustrating in figuring out why my trains just constantly stop working. Community was clueless in regards to this bug either, giving me mixed responses in whatever they agree it is an intended behaviour or not. Even developer's response in forums about similar topic implied that this is not something which logically should happen.
  
  I saw that developers does have a thread, ''it is not a bug, it is a feature". I do hope that they do that in good humour, because that is a meme in itself. Even if we assume that all of these things are how game should run then it leaves me with even more damning conclusion. This game is badly designed in a lot of areas and even broken in some others. In my playthrough I had experienced a lot of weird behaviour from Biters. I had experienced a lot of frustration from trains and circuitry. I saw a lot of illogical and unrealistically designed systems.
  
  I made a video which goes into more details to some issues which I had in this game. Mind you, not all of them are bugs.
  https://youtu.be/ITaeXU8L9OQ

I tried to create a computer which adds only a specific amount of items in the box and then if it reads that there is that amount of items in the box, it removes them. This allows me to create computerised belts as I can input specific amount of input to a belt. If I want for example 100 iron plates per minute on a belt, I can just program this computer within a game to only lay on the belt 100 iron plates per minute. No less and no more. I had built a clock, a signal generator, a counter and programmable inserters myself with very little outside help. However, through my journey I only was frustrated by in-game programming.

First Issue
• It simplifies some things to the point of absurdity like reading crate content. However, something as crucial as a clock or signal generator is nowhere to be seen. You are expected to build that. Then memory and all the other electronics parts. This simplification is bizarre, because in circuit electronics you are actually given these things as freebies. You put microchips which are combination of various electronics parts meant for training. However, in this game there are no such things. It gives you instead the most useless Constant Generator when any other part from electronic circuits would be far more useful. Game expects you to go online to their wiki. However, if I'm expected just to copy everything from online, is it a game anymore? Is it even a puzzle? What is the point of having programming in game if you are forced to copy everything from an internet and just slightly modify it for your own base? At that point, actual graphical programming becomes a lot more fun than a video game...
  
  Second Issue
  
• There isn't an interface for that. In nearly 150 hours, making forum posts and asking friend for help, I still do not know how to cut damn wires. That is of course on me, but since I was receiving a lot of outright wrong information how to do it, it shows that even community doesn't even know it. This then is extended to how difficult it is to connect more complex machines. There are countless wires and they all are mixed together. If you need to debug something, it is a complete pain. Game lacks a clear interface for its combinators. Actual electronic circuit has simulated electronic circuits where you can place elements and simulate how it works. There are games on Steam which does this thing marvellously. I will repeat myself. An actual thing is a lot more intuitive and fun than a simplified version meant for gamers in Factorio. It feels that this feature was just shoved in for checkbox reasons.
  
  Third Issue
  
• This game isn't even designed to do something more complex. Notice how most implementation of circuitry are rather go-to, easy things to do. Lights, carrying specific amount of stuff, stopping/starting to work after X. However, rarely someone does anything more complex and when they do it, they often do despite the game engine. I feel that circuitry in this game gives you a lot of complex tools and potential, but it is meant for simple cases and simple things. Trying to do anything more complex just leads to frustration by having to deal with odd Wube's choices and inherent limitations of an engine. At that point, just take on actual circuit electronics. They are more fun and easier to understand than a poorly implemented version of them in this game.
  
  Fourth Issue
  
• Most minor issue is that I encountered bugs, according to forum. I tried to create a clock. However, I could not capture when i = x. I would feed combinator output to input and it would go very fast. In my case, it had failed to capture a specific value and I had to go around rough amounts like i > 10. That might be on me as I did not gone back to test it again.

Game is designed around producing as much stuff as possible. Producing stuff for the sake of producing more stuff. Entire game seems to be designed around enabling player to produce more stuff rather than making it difficult for a player to manage producing more stuff. Then first I started playing, I had an impression that difficulty will come in trying to get all these different materials together to produce everything I needed. However, the difficulty comes solely from trying to increase your production quotas for the sake of ever more ridiculous recipes and research.

Power Generation
• One of the areas where this is apparent is power generation. In this game, it is simplified to the point of absurdity. Only coal power is somewhat balanced method. Solar panels are pollution free and even generate electricity at night. However, for mega factories you need nuclear power. Nuclear power at first seems to require a lot of uranium ore, however there is Kovarex enrichment process which converts all of your excessive U-238 to useful U-235. However, that is not how enrichment process works at all. This process defies laws of thermodynamics and produces more energy from a closed system than you inputted. This results in you producing an infinite amount of electricity without needed to worry about running out of fuel. Since nuclear power produces a ton of electricity and fuel for it is practically infinite, a player does not need to consider electrical management in its Factory design. Factories as a result tend to be grossly inefficient and it is designed that way to crank as big of the numbers as possible.
  
  Modules & Beacons
  
• I never liked modules, because they demand you to rethink how you design your base from what game just taught you. Then they introduce arcade-like stackable bonuses like -50% electricity consumption which somehow directly relates to pollution. Then you get speed modules which can add up to 150% speed and combine that with 50% extra speed. You do get ridiculous performance gains. This can be used as a lazy excuse not to design a better factory, because you can just make it magically far better or it can be used to inflate production at a whim instead of building more lines or just using lower end assemblers. They also trivialise things like pollution management in this game. This mechanic breaks a lot of systems in this game and it is done to inflate players production quotas and to allow them to control production/pollution speed with a switch of a button. This raises a question for me. Why you can't just design a factory to do such a thing? Isn't designing a factory the whole point in Factorio? As it happens, no it is not. Factory must grow, as they say. The whole point of this game are big numbers as you produce stuff for stuff's sake.
  
  Conveyor Belts
  
• Conveyor belts are another affront to God. It defies natural order of things and is an infinite energy generator. You do not need to fuel it or to maintain it. It is a perfect solution to solve all your logistics needs for free. This had stuck with me, because I remember playing Settlers 2 and how much fun I had in that game managing roads and logistics of my workers going to the various production buildings and bringing back goods. Logistics of an economy game was always the part which I enjoyed the most. This part is greatly simplified in Factorio. Instead you have a perfect line which delivers goods anywhere you want to quite extreme speeds. Massive speed of Express Belts allows players to fully saturate a single belt without having to think amount multi-belt approach due to bandwidth limitations.
  
  Even trains are not intended to transport goods between bases. This is something I did naturally myself for my own fun. However, this game does not encourage that and it is sub-optimal play. Game only encourages you to build lines to transport resources to the main base. Logistics and challenges of transporting goods is greatly simplified in this game and it is something which I did not appreciated.
  
  Drones
  
• These little fellows actually surprised me, because they are fun to use and ability to construct factories from blueprints on global map is actually a very useful feature as it is an auto repair. However, that is just another example how logistics is overly simplified in this game. Drones allow you to transport anything anywhere without a need to worry about physical connections. They essentially nullify need for logistics for anything, but most volume intensive tasks. Since electricity is essentially free in this game, drones also become a free tool to use.

Game markets Biters as some sort of threat which are going to attack you. I do not know how Biters behave when player pollutes a lot. However, any sensible approach to Factory building in vanilla campaign leads to you simply not producing enough pollution to make them as anything more just mild annoyance. Just don't destroy environment around you. Clear nearby nests. In late game add artillery for stand off range. Here, you successfully made Biters non-existent in this game.

Pollution
• First of all, in this game it is way too easy not to pollute. This in turn makes Biters around you pretty Zen, especially if you destroy their nearby bases. If anything, they are more of an annoyance which you effectively solve with an artillery battery keeping them away from nesting near your base. Biters seem to be designed for a player who completely pollutes and destroys his environment, because any run where you are not tree burning monster results in them....just not doing anything. Game feels broken as it places them everywhere and they just do not do anything for an entire game. Developers could had removed Biters completely from my game and it would had been a better game. At least, they could allow player to find spots devoid of them rather than them being spread evenly and predictably across the map.
  
  Scalability
  
• Another problem is that they never become a threat. You can easily wipe their bases in early game. Just add plenty of turrets next to them and load them with ammunition. BAM, entire base evaporated. In late they can't even kill you. You can easily walk into their base and destroy their nest without firing a shot. Game markets biters as some sort of threat. I was under impression in beta and now that they will be a threat to me. However, they never were. A minor annoyance at best. I was disappointed by game's inability to make them a threat or to give some meaningful interactions with them. I never seen them trying to nest and expand dynamically. They would just sit there. Sometimes a swarm of them would go to a random place and just freeze in place. After being frozen for a minute, a nest will pop out of a thin air. They did that in my game always to the same area. You would wipe their nest and they would just keep trying to come to the exact same space. It doesn't feel natural nor it helps you to get immersed into this world. Eventually I just built a massive wall to keep biters out, but at that point, they were not even an annoyance to me anymore. They did not even tried to harass my bases anymore. So, I built a wall and kept them in, because removing them was pointless. I might as well burn trees as they were as much threat to me and my base as Biters were.

Factorio has an extensive modding support and I heard that it has many hardcore and quality of life mods. That is great. However, I'm not reviewing game mods. I'm reviewing Factorio itself. Reviewing game modes adds additional complications. What if game mod changed gameplay in a way I did not liked? Should I blame the mod or a game? Why base game can suck, but it is okay, because some modder might or might not had improved that area which you did not liked? Shouldn't credit go to the modder instead? Why it is okay to justify this practice where a game uses modders as a crutch and refuses to provide good initial impression to people trying out their game? You know, first impressions is everything and 'you must play this game for 100 hours until it becomes actually good' is an actual meme.

Games like this often attract people with deep personal issues who use games as an escape mechanism. Such people often make everyone else as miserable as they are. I tried to share my experience in Steam forum, but it is an open battleground. People can't accept that a person might have something negative to say. They do not understand what an opinion is. They try to argue against an opinion and to prove that your opinion is wrong and their opinion is right. They pretend to talk in place of developers and create toxic, unwelcoming place where you must either fall into the party lines of "FACTORY MUST GROW AT ALL COSTS" or get ready for constant harassment and questioning. These people will contest literally everything you say. Will scream how wrong you are at everything and then immediately drop the conversation in the middle of discussion and never talk about it again.

However, I kept pushing through not for them, but for my right to use public places to express my own experiences. I'm sharing more detailed version of them here:
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/groups/Calicifer/discussions/0/3824158244554053005/

If you want to see what a mess this community is, you can go to watch circus here:
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/427520/discussions/0/3826410044369061413/?tscn=1689276285

Factorio is a long game. It is a giant time commitment. It was fun at times, bothersome at other moments and plain boring in the end. It front loads its difficulty at player at the start and then proceeds to simplify all the processes after mid game. However, mid game was where I had most fun in trying to figure out and do something unique. After that, it was about redesigning my base over and over again to meet ever increasing production demands. Then it was about constantly doing mundane stuff and connecting more base materials supply. In the end, I achieved sustainable production which allowed me to fully complete the game. It felt empty and hollow as it overstayed its welcome. It drags everything mercilessly. You get unreasonably high requirements of everything and thus you have to spend a lot of time growing your factory. It constantly shifts what you need, from where you need it and how much you need it. This drags out gameplay and complicates it to players which causes high drop out rates even among veterans who tried main campaign many times, but dropped it. Fully completing vanilla experience is a chore. Then you do it, it just feels empty as game has nothing else to offer.

I did had fun. Factorio ranks as a great game in my book. A game which I can recommend to others, but with some caveats. Like a warning about time commitment required, its steep initial learning curve. It is a game which shines for more dedicated gamers, but I do wonder if more casual people would not do better with something like Satisfactory.

Calicifer's Reviews

If you are interested reading full review (in this case there are a lot more) or want to discuss something with me, please follow the provided link. I do not allow endless discussions under my reviews, because it rarely ends well.

As you progress through the game, you unlock modules. At a first glance, they provide small boosts for your factories. However, in reality it is just another cheat code given to players which significantly simplifies gameplay for improvised Factories and creates pointless resource decreases for meta gamer.

Modules looked benign to me at first. When I started utilising them, I discovered just how badly they twist the entire game. They break entire game and introduces its own rules on top of it. Every Assembler must have best modules with transmitter. Not only it is a mess from design perspective, but also it further reinforces its tendency to give players unrealistic freebies.

Little bit confusing
• This is the least striking criticism I can come up with those modules. They are unintuitive which is a general trend with a Factorio. Modules says something along the lines: "30% energy efficiency" or "20% speed", but game does not tell you how it translates to pollution. It is something which had to be learned through practice what those modules do exactly and how effective they can be.
  
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2981787451
  
  Makes pollution management obsolete
  
• In this game Biters are broken. You might spend a hundred hours in this game, but they will never offer serious assaults on your base as game promises. Sure, there are cases when Biters are actual part of a game, but they all involve late game when players are building more Factories than CPU can handle. Any reasonable interaction with game pollution mechanic will see it plummet to the point of irrelevancy. Combined that with clearing of Biters nests, they will never be close enough to consume said pollution.
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2981788329
  Here you can see just how huge of a hit my Factory took when I started using efficiency modules on my ore extractors. They make them out of the most polluting buildings you have to least polluting ones. That is just broken game balance.
  
  Is a crutch for a badly designed Factory
  
• The key problem with these modules is that it greatly simplifies gameplay. You thought Factorio was a complex game? Not at all! It is designed to be as difficult at first as possible, but after that, difficulty curve goes right back down. After you reach mid game, you get tons of freebies. One of them are best factories and modules which makes any Factory layout irrelevant as you progress through the story.
  https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2981794660
  Here is an example of that. I never needed to increase my wire production, because one assembler is enough. They speed up to such insane levels that any spaggeti layout can be saved as you never need to scale up production. You just need to add ever increasingly BS stuff in its place.
  
  Is a free energy generator
  
• This game gives a lot of freebies to players. Conveyor belts is one infinite energy generator. Perfect and cheap solar power is another. Now to that list you can add modules which breaks laws of thermodynamics and through magics gives you extra +9999% productivity out of thin air. Game moves away from its organisational layout and simulation towards arcade where it balances game out with silly multipliers which makes gameplay unrealistic. Instead of getting a weapon which does +10% damage, you get a factory which are +400% better. Exactly the same stuff and I'm deeply disappointed by path which Factorio decided to take.
  
  Distorts balance of production
  
• Another massive issue with modules is that it ruins game balance. There is no need to balance your pollution levels, because you can easily make it non-relevant with efficiency modules. Electric Ore Extractors suddenly become from most polluting assets you have to most green ones. That is such an arcade thing to do. It also makes interaction with Biters irrelevant, because game balance is out of whack, because of these modules. A player can easily avoid most interactions with them, given that he makes some basic gameplay interactions with them like wiping nearby nests and putting efficiency modules on worst polluting offenders.
  
  Meaningless
  
• Ultimately, these modules are meaningless. It is a superficial and cheap way to play with game numbers, but they do nothing more than to inflate amount of stuff players build. What is the point of doing 10x damage in World of Warcaft if everyone is 10x times more survivable? It is just artificially inflated numbers. The same thing had happened in Factorio. These modules allow players to produce more stuff, to control pollution not to attract Biters. However, they could had easily done that by limiting amount of Factories they build and by spreading them around. There were already organic solutions to this problem. These modules merely allowed players not to worry about pollution mechanic at all and inflate their own production numbers which ultimately leads to CPU bottlenecks. There is no difference if your output is 1M steel plates per hour or 100k steel plates. These are just abstract numbers over which Factorio players go Ape. You could easily nerf productivity and resource requirements by order of 10 and nothing in the gameplay would change.

Factorio superficially seems like a complex game. It can be daunting for a new player as ever increasing demands, force player to constantly re-evaluate its Factory. It is time consuming and demanding to constantly adapt to new requirements. This is why so many Factorio players, even ones with hundreds of hours never finish this game. However, this is just an illusion. As a player progresses through the mid game, its difficulty already had peaked and after that point, game becomes significantly easier. All the new tech simplifies production rather than complicates it. Gone are coal management. Gone are multiple Factories, you can fuel everything with just one Assembler. Bots ignore belt lines. Turrets do not need ammunition. Nuclear power becomes infinite with Kovarex tech. Game becomes significantly easier and player moves from thinking and solving problems to just actively managing resource inflows and what goes wrong at his own Factory.

---

When you thought of an indie game, you used to think about interesting ideas, charming presentation, clever stories. If you look at what quality early indie games were on Steam, you will quickly realise that modern indie scene has nothing on it. Osmos is one great example how original and unmatched this game is in its own niche.

---

At first, I thought that it is a micro organism eating others, something like in Spore. Then I came to properly play this game after many years and to me it resembles galaxies or star systems. Each represented by its own little gravity bubble and evolving, becoming more powerful by the amount of material it consumes. The reality is probably somewhere in between these two things as it doesn't follow our normal definitions and it does its own thing. Sometimes it seems more like a life, other times - galaxies.

Gameplay is made out of free parts which put a twist on basic mechanics. Eventually when you complete all the levels, you get an endless mode which is a nice way to have more gameplay for people who just want to play more.

Ambiet tour
• In this game mode, you are trying to absorb static elements which have a minimal inertia. It means that environment around you slowly changes and eventually it will soft lock out preventing you from winning this level. Some levels have more inertia, meaning you have to act fast, others - very little. This is the most straight forward game mode about which you think when you see Osmos.
  
  Force
  
• This game mode is about gravity. You usually will be locked around the start, black hole or just a massive attractor. With gravity and orbits you have to move around and to consume enough materials to become the biggest. Eventually consuming star itself and shattering gravity well which causes all material to fly out of the map. That includes you and your momentum. Where, when and how you kill the star is very important in this game mode.
  
  Alternatively, there are the opposite - repulsors. These elements repulse normal material and you need a lot of momentum to capture them. You have to approach them in a completely different way, often with patience and getting up to a lot of speed. Altering your course in advance to make sure that repulsor cannot easily get away from you and you can alter your trajectory easily in order to catch it in evasive actions.
  
  Most interesting is when you have to play in multi-star systems with multiple gravity wells. You have to consume what you can in your star. Then plan ahead how you are going to escapee your gravity well and float across open space. Then you need to be caught by gravity of another star. There is a lot of depth in it. From which direction are you coming? You can come from opposite direction which ensures the easiest way to hop between the stars, but you might rotate in an opposite way from all the other elements. Good if you are the biggest, bad otherwise, because you will have a high risk into bumping to something bigger which would result in a lot of lost mass then trying to evade. Then there is the issue of movement. To move you expend material which is used for your growth. You can easily expel a lot of material out of the system into the void which causes it to be lost permanently. You want to avoid that, because this is how you soft lock yourself from completing a level. The greatest challenge however is deciding when to eat an attractor. This is problematic, because not only you need to clear the surrounding orbit first out of available matter, but also to collapse your orbit to the star at the right time and position in order for your momentum to catapult you to where you want to go. You can easily catapult yourself out of this game if you do it badly. In addition, this decision often lead into all remaining matter just flying off, meaning that you can easily and permanently destroy matter this way. It is complex dilemma to solve and this is where game shines the brightest where almost all of its mechanics come into play.
  
  Artificial Life
  
• This is the last game mode and potentially most frustrating one. In this game mode you are playing against other AI players who can consume matter and grow. They can also pursue their targets and flee from them. This makes them dangerous to you. First, they can catch you or escape you. Secondly, they tend to eat up matter in the map. Especially later on, they grow incredibly quickly and that forces you to play aggressively in order to outgrow them and to starve them out of available matter. Due to their unfair advantages in speed, location and size, game can feel quite unfair in this game mode. It becomes less about thinking about your next move and more about repetition until you learn level perfectly.

Why something like Osmos can be considered as a good game which is worthwhile even in this day with all these new and flashy games done by AA companies? Maybe my history with this game blinds me into thinking that it is better than it is? I have these thoughts and I do not believe that it is the case. I do find this game unique, offering gameplay which no other game I know provides. This makes it alone a game within a niche where no better alternatives exist and that makes it to win by default. Then the only question is: was this game genuinely fun to play. To me, yes. Game is polished, its mechanics are clever. It was engaging product and I'm glad that I played it.

Calicifer's Reviews

If you are interested reading full review or want to discuss something with me, please follow the provided link. I do not allow endless discussions under my reviews, because it rarely ends well.