[Click on "See Full Review" above to have bulletpoints displayed, as steam decides not to include them on the review page here]

The concept, story, aesthetic and music of the game is great - however:

1. There is a blatant difference between challenging design decisions and detrimental neglect.
   
2. UI experience during combat is immensely dreadful
   
3. Depending on machine (doesn't have to be a bad PC, mine is rly good) near guaranteed crashes when the game is saving after a long day.

Now, don't get me wrong, near all the positive points that have been mentioned by other reviews apply; and they do make playing this game a unique and challenging experience that make you redefine the feeling of relief. Ignore any reviews of people who've barely played the game, as I've seen both people calling it boring or not encountering these issues because they've not progressed a notable amount. However, this game has not received any updates for its still ongoing issues; for 6 years, patches only ever included language support tweaks.

Examples:

• You cannot select or deselect multiple specific units, all the game offers is drag select. No basic CTRL or SHIFT selections here.
  
• Selecting units does not show you a list of selected units, and barely provides any visual indicators.
  
• Despite this, you often need to select specific units of a certain damage type for example. No filters exist, it is all manual labour, which wouldn't be THAT bad, wasn't it for the fact that:
  
• When multiple units stand in the same area (which is a given when multiple attack), the HP/SP bars of all but one unit are covered by the latter. You cannot manage stacked units in that matter. The game doesn't even display the "most hurt" unit on its top Z layer either.
  
  • The only way to find out how much HP/SP your agents have is, after every attack, pause the game, click on the enemy (or any other enemy) and click yourself through the agent list. Each department has its agents listed separately on their own page. It does not tell you whether or not the agent displayed is currently attacking the enemy in question. You can also not see whether or not they're in the stack because all the names layer over each other. The only way is to drag select them and then ask them to do a research task, then all of them will be shown by name.
    
  • If the agent tanking is worn out and should move away, but is currently in a stack, you - for previously mentioned reasons - obviously can't select them, you have to find them through a procedure similar to bullet point 4, but instead of clicking on an enemy, you click on a containment unit to tell the agent to work on it, so they move away, just enough so you can click the agent and manually command them.
• If you want to observe the HP/SP of an agent in combat, vitally the one taking the damage, through aforementioned method, too bad. As soon as you unpause, whichever page you were on gets reset to the first one.
  
• The same horrendous visuals also apply to shields, of which you don't know if they are still applied to units in the stack.
  
• (Although damage numbers are unlockable, they visually do not differ whether or not an agent just took damage or an enemy. You have to repeat the previous step after each attack animation if you want to be certain.)
  
• Weapons do not show their range (short, medium, etc.), unless when selecting the containment unit it originates from. If you want to exclude agents with weapons deemed "very short", you have to check each containment unit, write them down, and then check for every agent. This is vital for Helix Ordeal.
  
• The menu when equipping gear is also insane, as if prior to this game there has been no experience regarding loadout menus been made. Instead of showing agents with their equipment, it shows all the equipment and which agent it has (including equipment no one currently equips). There is no way of seeing which agent has not been equipped yet. There is a filter system for rarity, but it only filters specific rarities, excluding higher ones. By default, they're all shuffled...
  
• On the day summary screen at the end, it shows which agent has been promoted or whose stats have been increased. However, the field for the stats is only big enough for the first two digits, meaning is someone got over 100, it starts showing it as 10.
  
• Boss and pseudo boss battles rely too much on doorway or elevator cheese, to the point that it must be intentional. You can't command your units within a room/hallway, so you can only command units to get behind an enemy by commanding them to talk to a room behind said enemy (which can be vital for bosses). It's way easier to wait for the boss to walk to a doorway or elevator and then just dodge by moving into another room.
  
• If any unit changes rooms, they disappear for a while and then pop out at the doorway of the new room. There's no indicator (like a dot) that agents or enemies are currently in "traversal", so if you're looking for someone, suboptimal. You can still select them via drag select if you know between which doors the agent would be.
  
  • The technology would be there, as I was astounded to find out. While fighting Red Mist, during the charge attack in the fourth phase, the targeted agent gets a mark over their head, which will still be visible in room traversal. I kept commanding the unit from left to right while stuck in transition so he couldn't be attacked and killed by the special attack.
• When ordering your agents to attack an enemy and that enemy enters this room traversal, all agents will stop attacking and wait, until the enemy pops out again.

As now established, combat is ass, and some of these things also apply during peaceful downtime. These things mentioned can, in my humble but correct opinion, hardly be justified for difficulty, immersion, or reward. It's a scuffed system that does not offer its own solutions. It's hardship that is not caused by the challenges given to the manager of Lobotomy Corporation, it is agonisingly primitive UI/UX design that the player's cramped hand sweating over the back of their mouse has to deal with.

Now to the reason I got pushed over the edge to leave a review. This game - even if it barely has to deal with many variables when saving (i.e. finish your day) - can completely ♥♥♥♥ itself after a long day. It crashed, the entire progress of the day is gone, and that was more than an hour of stressful work to finish the day with suppressing a Midnight Ordeal for a mission. Lo and behold, when checking online, I found countless reports of this being an occurrence, "especially after Midnight Ordeals" (and it's not a PC issue) - they've had this happen - since the start - an excruciatingly painful crash, as it is bound to happen after the hardest of sessions, and they never wanted to fix it; so here's how you do, actually here's how you fix many issues:

Get Mods

They are not in the workshop, but you should be able to find them with a quick search. According to what I've read, the "Optimization Mod" will get rid of the crashes, so it seems to be fixable indeed...
Furthermore, I utilised "Basemod"'s commands to repeat the day with its successful mission completion, as I did not prefer to try again, as I even did it with no deaths.

Maybe. I got it on a discount. You've probably already read through the positive reviews and were looking for the downsides. It's up to you whether or not you want to deal with these nuisances.

I really wish my review could just have been:
But sadly it's not all that fun sometimes...

[h1] The review of the recent 4% you are looking for: [/h1] [Click on "See Full Review" above to have bulletpoints displayed, as steam decides not to include them on the review page here] The concept, story, aesthetic and music of the game is great - however: [olist] [*] [b]There is a blatant difference between challenging design decisions and detrimental ne[b]glect.[/b] [*] [b]UI experience during combat is immensely dreadful[/b] [*] [b]Depending on machine (doesn't have to be a bad PC, mine is rly good) near guaranteed crashes when the game is saving after a long day.[/b] [/olist] Now, don't get me wrong, near all the positive points that have been mentioned by other reviews apply; and they do make playing this game a unique and challenging experience that make you redefine the feeling of relief. Ignore any reviews of people who've barely played the game, as I've seen both people calling it boring or not encountering these issues because they've not progressed a notable amount. However, this game has not received any updates for its still ongoing issues; for 6 years, patches only ever included language support tweaks. Examples: [list][*] You cannot select or deselect multiple specific units, all the game offers is drag select. No basic CTRL or SHIFT selections here. [*] Selecting units does not show you a list of selected units, and barely provides any visual indicators. [*] Despite this, you often need to select specific units of a certain damage type for example. No filters exist, it is all manual labour, which wouldn't be THAT bad, wasn't it for the fact that: [*] When multiple units stand in the same area (which is a given when multiple attack), the HP/SP bars of all but one unit are covered by the latter. You cannot manage stacked units in that matter. The game doesn't even display the "most hurt" unit on its top Z layer either. [list][*] The only way to find out how much HP/SP your agents have is, after every attack, pause the game, click on the enemy (or any other enemy) and click yourself through the agent list. Each department has its agents listed separately on their own page. It does not tell you whether or not the agent displayed is currently attacking the enemy in question. You can also not see whether or not they're in the stack because all the names layer over each other. The only way is to drag select them and then ask them to do a research task, then all of them will be shown by name. [*] If the agent tanking is worn out and should move away, but is currently in a stack, you - for previously mentioned reasons - obviously can't select them, you have to find them through a procedure similar to bullet point 4, but instead of clicking on an enemy, you click on a containment unit to tell the agent to work on it, so they move away, just enough so you can click the agent and manually command them.[/list] [*] If you want to observe the HP/SP of an agent in combat, vitally the one taking the damage, through aforementioned method, too bad. As soon as you unpause, whichever page you were on gets reset to the first one. [*] The same horrendous visuals also apply to shields, of which you don't know if they are still applied to units in the stack. [*] (Although damage numbers are unlockable, they visually do not differ whether or not an agent just took damage or an enemy. You have to repeat the previous step after each attack animation if you want to be certain.) [*] Weapons do not show their range (short, medium, etc.), unless when selecting the containment unit it originates from. If you want to exclude agents with weapons deemed "very short", you have to check each containment unit, write them down, and then check for every agent. This is vital for Helix Ordeal. [*] The menu when equipping gear is also insane, as if prior to this game there has been no experience regarding loadout menus been made. Instead of showing agents with their equipment, it shows all the equipment and which agent it has (including equipment no one currently equips). There is no way of seeing which agent has not been equipped yet. There is a filter system for rarity, but it only filters specific rarities, excluding higher ones. By default, they're all shuffled... [*] On the day summary screen at the end, it shows which agent has been promoted or whose stats have been increased. However, the field for the stats is only big enough for the first two digits, meaning is someone got over 100, it starts showing it as 10. [*]Boss and pseudo boss battles rely too much on doorway or elevator cheese, to the point that it must be intentional. You can't command your units within a room/hallway, so you can only command units to get behind an enemy by commanding them to talk to a room behind said enemy (which can be vital for bosses). It's way easier to wait for the boss to walk to a doorway or elevator and then just dodge by moving into another room. [*]If any unit changes rooms, they disappear for a while and then pop out at the doorway of the new room. There's no indicator (like a dot) that agents or enemies are currently in "traversal", so if you're looking for someone, suboptimal. You can still select them via drag select if you know between which doors the agent would be. [list][*]The technology would be there, as I was astounded to find out. While fighting [spoiler]Red Mist[/spoiler], during the charge attack in the fourth phase, the targeted agent gets a mark over their head, which will still be visible in room traversal. I kept commanding the unit from left to right while stuck in transition so he couldn't be attacked and killed by the special attack. [/list] [*]When ordering your agents to attack an enemy and that enemy enters this room traversal, all agents will stop attacking and wait, until the enemy pops out again. [/list] As now established, combat is ass, and some of these things also apply during peaceful downtime. These things mentioned can, in my humble but correct opinion, hardly be justified for difficulty, immersion, or reward. It's a scuffed system that does not offer its own solutions. It's hardship that is not caused by the challenges given to the manager of Lobotomy Corporation, it is agonisingly primitive UI/UX design that the player's cramped hand sweating over the back of their mouse has to deal with. Now to the reason I got pushed over the edge to leave a review. This game - even if it barely has to deal with many variables when saving (i.e. finish your day) - can completely shit itself after a long day. It crashed, the entire progress of the day is gone, and that was [b]more than an hour[/b] of stressful work to finish the day with suppressing a Midnight Ordeal for a mission. Lo and behold, when checking online, I found countless reports of this being an occurrence, "especially after Midnight Ordeals" (and it's not a PC issue) - they've had this happen - since the start - an excruciatingly painful crash, as it is bound to happen after the hardest of sessions, and they never wanted to fix it; so here's how you do, actually here's how you fix many issues: [b]Get Mods[/b] They are not in the workshop, but you should be able to find them with a quick search. According to what I've read, the "Optimization Mod" will get rid of the crashes, so it seems to be fixable indeed... Furthermore, I utilised "Basemod"'s commands to repeat the day with its successful mission completion, as I did not prefer to try again, as I even did it with no deaths. [h3]Should you get the game?[/h3] Maybe. I got it on a discount. You've probably already read through the positive reviews and were looking for the downsides. It's up to you whether or not you want to deal with these nuisances. I really wish my review could just have been: [h3] "I'm mad that this game doesn't have Steam Achievements, so I could wear a badge and show the world how much pain I went through to 100% complete it" [/h3] But sadly it's not all that fun sometimes...