Recent reviews by Tokyo Morose

Ah, Sprocket. Time to update my review, and sadly little has changed overall.

Game that started off fantastically - giving me some of the most fun I've ever had has continued to veer down into endless complexity.

I should lead with the fact that the sprocket you see on the store page, is quite literally not the Sprocket you get anymore. Want to make that STRV 103 in the trailer or a few other of the wonky designs? Can't anymore without going to what is basically a CAD software, due to changes in the "generated" designer.

The vast bulk of development since it came out has been on endless technical rewrites, and the new "freeform" designer which basically has you model your tank in a 3D modeling system. "dedicated and intuitive designer" as the store page sells it, it is not. It does allow far, far more complex things at the cost of being well... diet Blender more or less.

And the sheer amount of coding it took to implement that, along with the other rewrites after rewrites, mean the core game is still three and a half years (!) past launch extremely spartan. That is not to diss the developer, who has put in herculean efforts - but that the development priorities long ago shifted to pandering to those who spend hours upon hours making incredibly intricate designs, often editing files in a text editor outside of game, instead of... developing the actual 'game'.

Enemy AI is pathetic, scenarios are often broken, there's no campaign, custom battles are still semi-experimental and have many issues, there's no shell design so gun performance is wack (as are ammo racks), mobility in all regards is still a pit of issues... there's just so much still incomplete that hasn't been touched (or in the case of the legacy designer outright made worse) since launch that it takes what should be an easy recommend into a no.

The development path has just descended into scope creep over technical perfection and adding features so that people on the discord can show off ever more elaborate vehicles instead of just using blender or any other 3D modelling program (it's not a coincidence that blender import was added!).

If you are fine with trudging through all of the complexities, understand sprocket you get is not what is currently advertised on the store, and are still willing to accept a game that actually gets new game features at a rate approaching glacial movement (credit: the dev consistently puts out work, but the scope creep has consistently outpaced his output) as rewrite #35332467 is committed... it may be for you.

I cannot honestly recommend it to buy for the average person who may be interested in tanks because those core issues quickly wear at the long-term playability of the game and the dev has sucked himself into endless scope creep.

When I wrote this last, V3 of the roadmap was just out and pushed everything way out - over 2 years in some cases. It runs to 2026! Funnily enough, there was *another* designer rewrite and a generic technical rewrite period in that roadmap. And since then, the game has only fallen behind the roadmap further. The dev is dedicated, but refuses to bring on additional manpower (even voluntary), and continues to chase perfection in the designer over the *game*.

The current Geometrics effort entirely broke everything that *was* in the game, and months have been spent simply re-adding things that worked in the launch version but under this new branch. The game was originally reasonably scoped to be done in 2024, and 2025 is here with the game having had no new *game features* in well over a year. If you don't trust me, check the update log, it's almost still trying to bring the game back to parity with launch.

Only 5 hours in I can say one thing: the model building experience is nice and relaxing. The progression and other bits are well thought out.

But the game runs quite poorly at higher resolutions and settings for baffling reasons, and so much of the game's content revolves around painting that it can be perhaps better described as 'Model Painter'. Which is alright, but for someone who doesn't have the superfine motor control for detailed painting it can be a real pain, literally.

I'd still recommend it, as most people won't have the issue with nerves that I do paint wise, but I hope the devs can come up with some solution to painting the fine details other than "lets have the players paint it just like they would IRL" for those who simply can't paint that way practically.

A wonderful surprise of a game. The school festival was truly sometihng else, and the special weekend event is probably the most interesting thing I've ever seen in a VN.

11111111111111111111/20

Although it has promise, I cannot reccommend this game, and that is after playing literally thousands of hours of Eugen's wargame series. To be blunt, balance is a joke. The two key things that completely wreck balance are the fact that AA is near-worthless (you too can have 16 AA guns up, with a leader buffing them and shoot down zero planes!), and only ever stops the first plane in a train from hitting you by panicing it to retreat, letting every other plane pound you.

If the overwhelming effect of airpower isn't enough of an issue, the "improved" morale system will be. Everyone panics near-instantly. It is tooth gnashing to have guys throw grenades, and 37mm fire at your heavy tanks and they retreat under the hits, usually exposing their sides. Of course, having the command units around is supposed to help this, but nothing stops those command units from panicing themselves.

Finally, there are a bunch of little things - like them putting in instant kill crits (literally in terms of crew and ammo, effectively in bailing out - there is no way to recrew bailed vehicles for no apparent reason)... despite the fact that any hit (even bounces or totally ineffective fire) can cause a hit. I have seen first hand a Panther blow up to a 37mm hit frontally due to a crit. Eugen needs to make it so that not all hits have a crit chance.

The game systems are otherwise excellent, and it runs well enough. For all of the rest of the game being so good, I cannot reccommend an RTT (particularly a primarily PvP one) with such poor balance.

Outside of performance issues and length, the game itself is actually very good. A certain reccomendation - but only if bought on sale.

It's not long enough or replayable enough (very finite variability, can be a pain in terms of chugging to play at times) to justify the cost. But while it lasts, the game is great. Now that all the DLC is out, I'd say buy it - but only buy the DLC if you can get the DLC for cheap. Much like the game itself, each DLC segment is great but short. All of the DLCs (including "Desperate Measures") have this odd taste of being cut out from the main game just to be resold as DLC. Desperate Measures fills in a good part of the investigation in Prague that is left hanging in the vanilla game. System Rift actually links the rift game into the story/universe and rift seems out of place without it. A Criminal Past is crucial bridging content as to how Jensen ended up working with the TF. And then all the packs are just consumables, microtransaction style.

This would be a real GOAT contender if Squeenix wasn't so determined to starve it of content, but still a must-buy if you can get it on sale.