Recent reviews by Nyanzey

I find it hard to rate this game. I have 200 hours in it and bought two DLCs and took quite some time setting up good mod lists, so I'm obviously having fun. But this game really is what it says on the box, a "story generator". It focuses very hard on trying to keep you in the early to mid game, while the late game feels like it's not supposed to be reached.

In the early game everything works really well. If a colonist dies, it hurts, but isn't a huge deal, as there are replacements. It creates drama without hurting gameplay too much.
Losing limbs is also quite impactfuil, as it heavily reduces the effectiveness of a pawn, but it isn't the end of the world. Same goes for infections, which are a threat, and can and will kill if untreated, but can be dealt with with a time and medicine investment.
Item storage also seems to be built around you having some items, but not too many, as if you try to leave space for colonists to walk (which you don't need to, but it looks far better), storage is appropriately sized if all you have is a smaller stash.

Now, about the late game. Everything is either irrelevant or a total disaster.
Losing limbs or organs is irrelevant as you can immediately replace them with bionics which are just upgrades and infections can be prevented entirely or treated way more easily with far better medicine.
A colonist death, however, is hours of progress building up their skills gone. If you lost a builder, for example, everything they build will be a of terrible quality. That is expected in the early game, but a pain in the late game. And the game really wants a colonist to die, difficulty ramps up until one does.
Storing items is also a pain, as the huge stashes you can build up by the late game can take up half your colony or more, as the early game shelves are all you have and all you will have.

These are just some examples, but it really is a shame, as for a short little while, once everything is comfortable, I have a lot of my mechanoids from biotech, some psycasts from royalty, and just really good equipment, it feels great - but then the flaws set it, and I realize, the game really wasn't built around me actually being here.

I am supposed to have some good things, some recon armor, a few mechanoids, one or two medium level psykers. But once you have it all, things either pose no threat at all, or recovering from them feels less like drama and more like trying to waste your time.

Someone's gonna love this, I like it a lot despite its flaws, but now that I have consciously noticed these problems, they really stick in my brain and make me realize why the game felt like it was rubbing me the wrong way each time I played a colony for too long.

After having beaten all base game mission, my verdict is that this is a good game with some flaws of medium and low severity, but a good core.

I initially did not think I'd like this game as I am more of a movement shooter player, but the gameplay loop of figuring out if a target is hostile or not and then subduing it, lethally or non-lethally, turned out to be quite engaging. The environments are also well-made and it hits the sweet spot of not being so realistic it hurts, while still feeling very sim-like.

Medium Flaws
- The enemy AI is good, but could really benefit from using the environment around it more. Hiding under tables, maybe even throwing down some objects as cover. Right now they usually just stand somewhere, sometimes run into cover, and shoot. I do appreciate that during a stand-off they may back away slowly if they're near a doorway and that, if possible, they take hostages as shields.

- S ranking missions is horrible by no fault of the player. One objective for every S rank is to bag all evidence. Said evidence is usually the guns dropped by enemies. First of all, these guns can be a pain to see. That can be alleviated by enabling weapon highlighting, which breaks immersion, but I don't mind *that* much. The bigger problem are that enemies sometimes throw their weapons like they're trying to win an olympic javelin throw competition, so you have to find and grab it across an entire room or hallway. And even that's not the worst part. The truly worst part is the fact that weapons sometimes simply glitch through the floor. You beat the whole mission, got all civilians, went completely non-lethal, lost no officers, did all objectives? Lovely. Sadly one gun dropped through the floor, go restart. This alone keeps me from trying to S-rank all the missions, it's like trying to beat a challenge, but at the end it spins a wheel to see if you actually get the reward with a 3/4 chance of failure. It's awful.

- The rating system in general could use a little work, as you tend to end up with one civilian just running around the other end of the map, and with the complete rest of the mission being done, you spend another 1/3 of the mission just trying to find them, with no threats whatsoever, just a damn cat and mouse game.

Minor Flaws
- The voicelines of enemies don't quite match up to their actions. You can still get someone shouting insults and that they're gonna kill you while in the process of dropping their weapon. This is more cosmetic than anything, and quite funny at times, but does kind of break immersion.

- Decoration on some levels seems to be placed at random, without proper planning on how it could have been created. Random blood splatter with no bodies near it, about a square meter filled with bullets on the side of a tight hallway, looking more like someone shot from across the room, stuff like that.

Things I like
- The game is really visceral. Guns are almost uncomfortably loud, as is realistic and appropriate for the weight they hold in this game. Shotguns especially may also rip someones arm off, and have a tendency to kill in one or two shots, making them feel extremely powerful and good to use.

- It's new, at least to me. In nearly every fps I've played so far, if it moved, your job was to stop it from doing that. While I had to think less about movement tech, my brain was kept occupied with positioning and target identification, which is a fun variation on the genre, usually reserved to a single level or two in assorted AAA games.

- Varied environments. From a gas station over a nightclub to a container yard, the maps are varied and decently detailed. They engage you at different ranges with different problems, and while not every map is completely unique, none blend together entirely.

Verdict
It's a good game with potential to be a great one, although my hopes are low that complaints like the weapons glitching through the floor will be fixed, since they aren't exactly new. Nonetheless, while 50€ is a steep asking price, when it goes on sale for 30€ or below and you have two to four friends (one friend is also fine, but three people total seems to be the sweet spot for mission difficulty for me) to play this with, I'd say you'll probably have a good time.

Runs great on my laptop and is awesome to play with only a keyboard, so this, together with Slay the Spire, was quite the companion for me before I got a Steam Deck. It is very fast-paced, especially with certain bosses, but if you like that, you'll like this.

The usage of Megaman Battle Network's combat system also makes this game rather unique, so while I would definitely have played less if this game wasn't so perfectly suited to my situation, it's still worth checking out. I can't really fault it for anything except the harsh learning curve at the start, but once you get over that bump it feels great.

While I don't quite get the hype around it to the extent it exists, it is nonetheless a perfectly good game and at a reasonable price. You might want to get it on mobile though, it seems more convenient, unless you wanna go really hardcore on it or own a Steam Deck.

So far this is shaping up to be a quite an improvement over its predecessor

I bought the game yesterday and already have almost 10 hours in it. It's certainly not fun in a "I'm feeling so much joy/excitement" right now way, at least not for me, but it is rather relaxing. The game doesn't attempt to rate your art in any way - those systems always turn out horribly - and so if you really wanted to, you could just sell blank canvases. But, if that's genuinely your plan, then this game isn't for you. The freedom you have here means you don't really worry about what the result looks like, as long as you are satisfied with it. The commissions give you a creative spark, from "something abstract with warm colours" to "turn this pumpkin into a radish", and you just work from there. Everything I have created so far looks like it's been made by a 4-year-old with crayons, but I don't really care that much, as creating everything was relaxing, and the game is satisfied with any result.

I am a computer scientist, not an artist, and as depressing as this may be, I will likely never have enough free time and motivation to properly learn how to make good looking art. But does that mean I can not just have fun messing around in this game? It does not.

I've given up on scores for games at this point, so to the question of "How good is this game?" I'll say: If it seems interesting, give it a shot

You rock and stone with a bunch of drunk dwarves, what could be finer?

I'm not usually one for visual novels, but this one... it clicked. Despite being set in a dystopian hell, this game is really comforting and gives me hope for the future, while making me rest easier about my current problems. Thanks :)

Summary: Very short, underwhelming start, gets good later on - not worth 40€ currently, however if the modding community does a good job, it might be worth it in the future -
8/10 at the time of writing with potential to become a 9.5/10 in the future

6.5/10

(Note: I've heard a lot of Index users have issues currently. For me personally everything worked perfectly)

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First things first, this isn't Half Life: Alyx. It is not newcomer friendly in the slightest, it has a mandatory(?) vehicle section, and it is fundamentally physics based.
You've either played Boneworks, or you're gonna go on a rough ride, especially if you get motion sick easily. Doesn't mean it can't be fun though, since this game can help you overcome your motion sickness, just like Boneworks did for me.

Speaking of Boneworks, if you're coming from that game, you might get thrown off a bit. Personally, on an Index, I had trouble grabbing stuff at first, until I noticed that now they're using the touch sensor on the trigger. Also, now you can only store small guns in your holsters under your armpits. No more knives. Personally, that bugged me a bit, since the three big slots are precious, even more so now that there's shotguns. There's minor changes like that, which you just kind of have to get used to.

Overall, apart from a few bugs I hope the devs will iron out over the next few weeks or months, this is a refined version of Boneworks game with better modding support and somehow even more replayability. The game needs that though, since I was able to beat the main story in five hours on my first run and especially after the first 30 minutes until the half way mark was rather underwhelming. Afterwards it got quite fun though and I can imagine that things like the Tac Trials and Arena can give me a lot more time in the game... especially since loading screens are somehow even longer this time around.

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If you're coming for a good story and cinematics or are new to VR, play Alyx. However, If you're coming for a physics based sandbox and know your way around the virtual world, then this should be great for you.
I expect greatness from this game, even if the start is a little rough

Update: Maybe buy Boneworks instead. I've played a bit more and waited for a few patches and I'm more and more uncertain about the fate of this game. It's alright and if you got nothing else to play, it's worth it on sale, but it just feels underwhelming, even compared to Boneworks. Modding is doing well enough, but most of it is unofficial, which is what you'll get in Boneworks as well.

I get why you'd want an anti-cheat, however this is not the way to handle it.