Recent reviews by Jip

Great game - looking forward to what it will become. Great progression system where every game matters - you'll always get more coins to improve. Factory mechanic works and has good synergy with the tower defense mechanic.

Primarily for the developers, but a little feedback:

- The initial enemies in the first few levels are cute mushrooms. You lost my girlfriend there. She refuses to build acorn towers to fire acorns at cute mushrooms. General recommendation: if you're supposed to shoot at it, do not make it cute.

- It's very easy to make a mistake with the conveyor belts. Recommendation: if a conveyor belt is not connected but it was resources waiting on it then please generate some kind of notification like you have for structures that consumed their natural resources. It's too easy to make this mistake, and it's too late if you find out the next day.

- It's very easy to turn your conveyor belts into a chaotic mess. Please add a key to force the conveyor belt in a given direction until you start a new sequence of belts. It is very difficult to create straight lines when you're in a hurry. And in general in this game you happen to be in a hurry.

- I have not read about the third tech but whatever you do, please do not make it more complicated to manage the factory/resources. I understand that a higher tech should be 'more complicated' to manage but the tech 2 is sufficiently complicated. Tech 3 should not be more complicated or you'll not just lose my girlfriend but also me as a player.

The game is fun, but as you try to get better at the game and play at the edge of what managed democracy is capable of then you keep running into little bugs that are just frustrating for the voter. This includes but is not limited to:

- Invisible fire. I get that propaganda is a thing in this game but I never realized until now how frustrating that can be. When everything tells you that there's no fire but still end up burning it just feels like I need to report it to the nearest democracy officer. Fire can deal a lot of damage but the effects are not always in sync with the damage duration. It's undemocratic to die to something that you can't see.

- Miss matching collision meshes. Especially around the edges of a mesh you may have a clear line of sight in your target in first person view, you shoot and then you end up hitting the mesh anyway. This is annoying for regular fire arms but flat out annoying if it also deals splash damage and you end up dying or being thrown out of cover (and then likely still die). The same applies to invisible props, or props that are visible but have no collision meshes at all.

- Hostile, undemocratic units being able to shoot through props that your own weapons, that are defending democracy, can not. It's certainly not what I voted for and it's frustrating because the moment it happens and it's a unit that can have a serious impact on democracy such as a Hulk or a Devastator then there's nothing you can do but hope. And as we'll soon learn in Dutch politics, hope is not a strategy.

- Being unable to properly get into the evac at the end of a mission. It was a blast the first time. It was funny the second time. But now I'm getting the urge to just report the mechanics of the evac ship for failing to meet the high standards of quality that we set out to strive for in our society. We clearly need more managing.

- Climbing in this game is odd. Especially as you can't climb over some walls that are relatively short, but you can climb over other walls that are relatively high. There's no visible logic that I found except that for whatever reason I always end up on top of the supply drop.

And last but not least; there's so many little bugs that they are difficult to sum up. It's a great game on average. It can be a blast together with other people especially when you're playing casually. But a lot of gamers (including myself) forgot what casual even means, and so here I am writing this review in the hope that the authors take note of these inconsistencies and tries to tackle them.

This is a great competitive game, but the average (carry / mid) player thinks you (the support) are the source of all of their personal problems the moment they (carry / mid) think you (the support) did something wrong. This has been so for years, and I was hoping it would've changed by now. But that is not the case :)

The game is not what it should be. Not yet anyhow. edit: a year later there are still bugs all over the place.

There are a lot of minor hiccups in the game that break the experience.
- The player is being babysit on A LOT - every mechanic is explained and you have to 'practice' it - just let me play on hard difficulty and figure it out myself, please.
- The camera is quite jumpy when you open up props for items.
- Sometimes items are particularly difficult to grab - an example when you open up drawers where you have to move a little around to get the item in the back. This isn't necessary - the game is about zombies and climbing things.
- There is at least one quest that has a marker, but once you get there there is nothing you can do.
- I can't scan the environment (survivors sense) at some moments, while I would expect to be able to.
- The player is not informed when something is not possible. As an example, I didn't understand when I could not enable co-op to play with my brother. In general: get some proper user experience in this game and inform the player why things are not possible. Now I have an epic account that I apparently didn't need.
- And last but certainly not least - the climbing system feels like I'm on the Moon.

I've recently finished Dying Light 1 again and the entire system just feels more coherent. Almost no camera issues, more earth-like gravity. But above all: a lot less baby sitting. You're just thrown in as a player.

In my opinion the game needs quite a bit more polishing - and that is sad given that I paid 60 euros for this title. I'll try again in a month.

Don't play this game for the story - play it for the game mechanics. The story makes no sense whatsoever. It plays quite smooth and if you do not grind, which other people mention, the bosses stay challenging even on hard. Take note: the first boss takes about 2 hours of attempts without grinding. Other bosses, except the Undying King (the first time when you decline), are quite easy.

The co-op mode is brilliant, been getting closer with my brother. Thank you Remnant of the Ashes.

Allow me to start with that this game has a lot of potentional. However, very little is being used.

The primary reason I downvote this game is because of the AI. In a lot of aspects, the AI simply falls short. For example:
- During an endgame crises,
the unbidden can be easily 'bugged' out by defeating the surrounding fleets. Once those are done, there is just a 400K fleet chilling in one system. For an endgame crisis, this one is most easily stopped.

- During a war with an AI, the AI repeatedly makes poor decisions.
For example, when fighting a Fallen Empire you can easily snoop off his most important planets with a mere 25K - 35K fleet. Just send in corvettes that keep going through his other systems. Once the AI follows a fleet (of 1 corvette), it won't let him go. You can utilise this time to conquer enough planets to force him to cede his primary planets (including all the defenses!).

Another example - when two fallen empires start attack each other due to rivalry. Chances that they get stuck and don't do anything at all is very high. I just had a match where both fallen empires (haven multiples of 150K - 200K fleets) camped their home systems. Meaning - they barely participated in the war and did not help their subjects. The losing fallen empire (that had a 400K fleet and a 250K fleet) didn't even come into action when his war score was -95%. This is pretty much frustating.

- The variation given at the beginning of the game have little impact on the game itself. For example, being charismatic only has any benefit when playing with AI's. Being Xenophile, for example, also has little effect when playing with players instead of ai's.

- Playing with random people is pretty much a no-go. Not only because they do not obey any kind of rules whatsoever, but primary because the way the connection is setup. If the host loses connection, the entire game falls into pieces. There's no host migration or anything similiar.

- Fleet size is what everything's about. And once someone has a larger fleet than you, there's very little you can do to put up any kind of resistance. Say he has 30K and you have 20K. The ai's won't always follow your fleet (assuming you have defense pacts or so), meaning that you're pretty much on your own. If you do engage the opponents fleet, he may lose 4K - 6K fleet size (firepower), while you lose your entire fleet of 20K. Aka, the best action to take is to run away and let the opponent do what he wants.

- Being in a defensive position is a clear disadvantage. There's practically no running away. When you warp away from your opponent, it means that he can warp directly into your fleet if the system you warped to is in range. This means that running away is fairly difficult - changes that he catches you are always present.

- When you focus on research, you are at a clear disadvantage when an empire choses to go to war with you. Simply because he has more ships. Having 1 or maybe 2 higher level weaponry only add for an 10% - 30% increase of damage. And you cannot compete with his number of ships because you invested into research. Therefore, investing into research is almost always a bad choice.

- An actual battle is out of your control. The battle is completely controlled by some AI. This means that you have no control over what happens - it's pretty much a guess.

I was going to mention some good things about this game, however, I kind of forgot them. Ow, now I remember: the modding community. There are some good mods out there that try to fix some of the issues above.

That all being said, this is not neccesarily a bad game. It's just very unpolished. If it'd be improved, it could be a gem. A really good gem.