Recent reviews by Flynny

I HATE IT BUT I CAN'T STOP COMING BACK

No longer an 8 year long reskin.

Still, pretty damn good.

I for one am delighted with both the update and the DLC.

While many seem to be complaining more about the patch and not necessarily the DLC, I do see both as a positive. For one, the slower travel times that people are complaining about are to compensate for that fact that Hyperlane mapping is now the only form of travel. I think this is a welcome update as the choice between travel types was a futile one at best given that you'd instantaneously be put at a disadvantage dependent upon which you chose. It also goes really well with one the main patch/DLC focus: defence and chokepoints.

The new elements give you a much broader range of defensive options, where before you had relatively weak glass cannons that'd faulter at the first sign of trouble, unless you had a fleet on standby next door. Talking about fleets, the doomstack is now also a thing of the past. Combined with the fleet caps and slower travel times, the need to disperse your navies to prevent early game recurring pirate attacks and the new maruder mechanics I think is a really nice touch to an otherwise boring early game.

To move on to the DLC itself, the apocolyptic options, titans and ion cannons are just nice features that do exactly what they say on the tin. It does what any DLC should in that it provides you with alternatives to deploy on your enemies, or if you're me, make a mega turtle fortress and ride out the storm.

Overall, unlike many it seems on here, I think the new FTL travel mechanics and slower travel times, combined with a host of new defensive options and early game challenges (and late game alternatives), plus the need for various fleets just make the game much more of a challenge and feel more alive from start to finish (as opposed to the previous early game boredom, followed by relatively late game OP-ness).It's well balacned out for me and I recommend it strongly. Given a game I lost hope in a new lease of life for me.