Recent reviews by Deadweight

short: game good

Gameplay: It's good, you always feel like you're making progress- the Item pools don't add a ton of bloat that make whatever you picked up in one area completely irrelevant and I love it for that, everything has purpose, either immediately or later and things are super easy to organize, and it only gets easier as things continue. It's got a sort of episodic structure to it, you enter an area, find an issue that needs solved, and maybe read an email or three or chat with a co-worker about recent events and then you're on your way. Usually after entering or clearing certain areas you'll get a new thing that begins to happen in the facility that you can deal with by visiting that area and pushing a button to clear it, these are Weather events, and they're neat but can be a bit annoying, but they're also super easy to deal with because the game will do its best to make sure everything you need to deal with that, is available. It's incredibly fair.

Story: It's a ton of fun getting to learn more about GATE as a whole, things definitely keep you immersed in the setting itself, to the point I -really- want to try a Nuzlocke, but I'll talk about that later. There are quite a few NPCs who will drop information about what's going on, but the computers are really the stars of the show, they tell you so much about the characters you might be running into, as well as what's around you all in a way that's super organic to the setting and that ROCKS. It'd be nice if our scientist had more to say about what was going on, but that also takes away from the experience belonging entirely to the player, I'm really happy to never have to worry about them going "Erm, THAT just happened!" when a pair of boots is all that remains.

Modularity: The game has a lot of different ways to play, from ranged throwing weapons (that aren't just one time use) to Sharp and Blunt weapons and finally firearms, but also things like traps- It's really neat having a wide selection of things to pick from, but even better, the settings you can change in the Sandbox settings allow you to edit and change things that might make the game sort of a deal breaker for you, but even better- the Traits themselves also allow you a way to do this regardless of the server you're playing on- If water purification is a drag and you don't care about cooking to start, take "Lead Belly" and the water issue is solved for you in so many ways. If you want to do a challenge run, take some of those negatives, some are far more minor than others, and some might seem like long-term nerfs, but if you're getting particularly into it, definitely play with that or around them.
If the facility losing power at night makes you feel like that's a few minutes of nothing happening, make it so power stays on, Batteries are useless now (for the most part) but that's a part of the game you can operate around now, but if you like the thought of struggling through things and coming up with cool alternatives, maybe make it always Nighttime and make the outlets not work- now moments and places where you can get power, as well as certain things you may not have dreamed of touching before now have more purpose.
It's got so many opportunities and weird ways to experience the game.

If I could add a few things, I'd love the ability to give other scientist around the facility places to exist by building the proper things for them. The ability to enable all weather mechanics from the get go, just to make things far more chaotic than they probably should be, it wouldn't be much but the ability to experience how unstable the facility at the "worst" as you're going through it would feel wild. Apocalyptic exist as a difficulty, but having to find ways to solve issues as they appear at random would definitely tickle my brain.
It definitely would harm the experience to some degree, but having the option to kind of "Terraria" your way into a friends game could be interesting, sure it'd hurt the balance, but having it as a toggle for people who might want to speedblitz the game, or help a friend with a certain section with the in universe explanation being that, it's either "Another Anteverse similar to your own" or potentially a different version of the simulation running that you've entered would be nice enough for me.
I'd just about say the "hardest" thing about joining an in progress world is catching up, but even then the game is fair and consistent in the rules it sets and what works, as you progress, you definitely get more tools that allow you to accelerate processes that might've been slogs before.
i hate hacking keypads though, definitely bring one for a friend too

good game, love xcom and love FE
got well into the second map, but yeesh, 4 turns to escape a map was a run ender since i didn't understand how the barriers worked, i gotta say
I LOVE THAT ALL THE MAP OBJECTIVES AREN'T JUST ENEMY ELIMINATION, cetus is my homeboy

bananas