Recent reviews by Sym

Fix Linux.

Requires third party account. That's just annoying. Had to link my Github account as I don't have a microsoft account and am not willing to create one.

It might be a good game, but those hurdles are artificial data gathering schemes and I don't support that.

I got this game with some bundle, so i barely cared about this game. Eventually I tried it out, the first hour was more fun than expected. This game has its inspirations in the Portal Series, obviously.

A week later, i started to properly play this game until I had it completed. The Story was okay. Compared to Portal it was alot worse, and alot shorter but I don't expect this random game to be better than its genre king. The Story can be summarized in one sentence: It is basically the Portal 2 Story but GLaDOS is the good one, you are actually in space and are saving the world.


The Mechanics are bad. It starts off okay, feeling a little clunky. Sadly it does not improve as more mechanics are added to the game. Even the new mechanics added in the DLC (Challenge Mode) are barely any good.
Most of the mechanics build on the physics engine, and its terrible. For Example: you do not carry your movement speed when jumping on a moving platform. Feels terrible, most notably in the last DLC Map Space Race.
The fact that this game is Capped at 60 fps does not help here.


After the Story, the DLC gets unlocked with some challenge maps and new mechanics. The Maps themselves are fine, solving them was fun. Nothing overly difficult, as speedrunning was in mind. Solving them in the "least moves" way was cool, but I eventually just followed a guide. Sadly there are alot of "secrets" that you just have to know or stumble upon in order to complete them this way. Not a good idea for game design IMO.

The Speedrun Challenges (Beating the Dev's times) was more fun though. But I had to look up yet another guide, not because it was super hard, but to learn where all the hidden time skips are. Definitely not fun.


Most of them are "okay-ish". You get the unmissable story achievements, and alot more for beating the challenges in least moves and beating dev's times. Sadly the achievement pacing for the "grind" achievements is just terrible. "walk 100.000 meters" would only be cool, if after beating all challenges you would on average be at 90-95k meters. Sadly I as someone who does not understand every puzzle the first try and has to experimet a little, got the 10k Meters achievement just before beating all challenges in all ways possible. Not doing those ones for sure. I am sitting at a clean 90% now and will not touch the rest of them for sure,


If you have not yet played Portal 1 & 2, get those instead. If you did, play the bonus content of Portal 2 or the custom mods for those games instead of this. I could only recommend this for someone who has played all puzzle known games before and is looking for anything else.

Rock'n'Stone

visually better than the old ones, gameplaywise, not so much.
but hey, you got the privilege to pay yearly for this "service"

Do not bother downloading this, no available Servers. At least in Europe.

The latest Update made this game playable.
I would go as far as saying, its pretty fun now.
They should consider launching an open beta soon.


Edit 15.3.2023:
Random launcher update made the game not even start. I'll pull back the beta thing.

THIS Game had the BIGGEST potential to be the best monster catching game around. Although I loved Pokemon in the past (especially Gen3/4), this game managed to live up to the hope that a game could be as good as Pokemon from the past.

Then they added microtransactions. Don't buy it. Also 25 FPS on Steam Deck, playable but this game doesnt seem this demanding.

This is the official post about it:

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Novas are the premium currency for Temtem, and the main way of obtaining them will be purchasing them via in-app purchases, but you will also be able to obtain some Novas for free just by playing the game. Novas are the currency that will allow you to purchase the premium Tamer Pass and most of the items located in the Premium Store.
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This does not belong in a full-priced monster catching game aimed at kids.

♥♥♥♥ epic games.

Game is fine though

My first factory game, and i can tell you, IT IS AMAZING.

i hesitated from buying Factorio because of its graphics, this game obviously fixed this issue.
The graphics here are absolutely fantastic. For such a complex game, it also is well optimized!

This game's tutorial is one of the best one's I have ever seen. I would feel good about throwing a person who barely used a Computer in their life into this game and playing the tutorial.

Afterwards the game got me hooked and i had to learn a hard lesson. My inner spirit wanted me to progress as fast as possible, and to unlock everything as soon as i could manage.
This ended up in me unlocking sooo many technologies that i didn't thoroughly understand.
My advice to you (the potential reader) to take it slow, unlock things as you need them, and only if boredom starts kicking in, to unlock a cool new technology.

In terms of Content, (currently in Update 4) it took me around 140 hours to unlock everything and about 250 hours until i automated every essential part. (as you see, I'm trying not to spoil anything here). So Content in this game is definitely not an issue.

However in order to also contribute some negatives:
although this game does have plenty of content, Satisfactory doesn't go as much into depth as Factorio does. (As evaluated by some of my friends, who played both games)

Also some features that are in other factory games, that are currently missing in Satisfactory might never arrive in this game.
To give an example, a feature that i would really love in this game is the Blueprint feature, that allows you to copy parts of your factory and paste them somewhere else.
Sadly the Community Managers already stated, that they are hesitating of putting this feature into Satisfactory, because it doesn't fit their style.
To be fair, their concern is definitely valid, however i would love to see that feature still added to the game for one simple reason: It would incentivize me to put more time into designing beautiful factories, instead of just building something that's ugly but works.

In terms of Pricing, it is currently selling for 30€. If you are a Factory Game enjoyer, this is an absolute fair price and i would definitely recommend buying this game.
If you are a new player that doesn't know if this game is for you, waiting for a Discount for <24€ is advised. I've seen the game on HumbleBundle for 20€ already, that's a steal!

Conclusion:
As you can already tell by my playtime, i absolutely fell in love with this game.
Despite it being in Early Access, this Game has a TON of content to explore, build and utilize. (Talk about Early Access done right!)
Compared to other factory games like Factorio, Hydroneer etc. It does fall short on features, however each feature that does make it into this Game, is highly polished and thoroughly implemented. I'm looking forward for more Content and QoL improvements in the next updates, an absolute must buy for every Player that enjoys factory games or simply wants to check one out, This game (in my opinion) is the best Factory game to start off with!