Recent reviews by Scalapher The Artificer

Bots make official matchmaking and servers practically unusable the majority of the time, let alone on holidays, when bot hosts make their biggest push. It's only really gotten worse over the years. Free To Plays have been unable to communicate for so long now, and yet bots still spam chat and sometimes even voice with rotten nonsense nearly undeterred. All manner of bots ruin the game in all sorts of new and creative ways, but of course the most common is the slur-spamming spinbot snipers that instantly one-shot anyone anywhere on the map, and coordinate to votekick real players and defend eachother from getting votekicked. You get the idea. Pretty much have to play community servers anytime you want to play it, so honestly I'm not even sure why Valve is bothering to pay to keep the official servers online at all anymore if they're not going to fix it.

Edit:
Still waiting to see how long this lasts.

Edit: Mostly fixed.

Next gen update broke everything. London is really good at least, practically an entire fan-game of its own.

Change your modding policy.

About what you'd expect from a space themed Bethesda RPG, as a now somewhat stereotypical Bethesda RPG, though a little more than what you might expect in some places, and less in others. It feels different and yet familiar in ways both good and bad. I haven't gotten that far in overall, so I'm not sure how much is actually still ahead to do, explore, and see, or how much of that might be an illusion, because this one relies on more illusion than a Bethesda rpg normally does, which I think is where a lot of the disappointment comes from. So far my take is that it's fine. It's not terrible, it's not bad, but I'm not certain that I'd call it exceptional either. It's essentially Fallout 4 in space more or less. Regardless of whatever is lacking or awkward about it, I have no doubt that it'll be great whenever the Creation Kit drops, I'm looking forward to see what people are able to do with this. Honestly, whether to recommend this or whether you'd want to play it is super variable depending on what you're looking for or expecting from it. I wouldn't recommend it to everybody, it's not an incredible new experience for everyone that everyone has to experience. There's adventures and exploration to be had in it, and you can make some stories happen, whether written/developed, procedural, imagined, whatever, but it's not really an everything game. If you want a refined linear narrative sci-fi rpg, try mass effect or something, if you want elaborate seamless space sim try elite dangerous or no man's sky. If you want bigger Fallout 4 in a new world compartmentalized into a bunch of chunks and with a spaceship minigame, and that you'll undoubtedly be able to mod to oblivion and back, this is pretty much that. The procedural and random encounters and elements can get repetitive and dilute the rest, sure, but I'm fine with it overall, and I'm sure it'll be better when there's mods that add a bunch of new ones that can spawn to help mix it up.

Edit 11/28/2023: Wait for Creation Kit to release, and for mods to fix the thing up reliably. It is a great canvas for modders to paint on, and people have already made it possible with the limited tools available to actually fly between planets instead or fast-travelling all the time using mods like SlowerThanLight, I imagine that most complaints will be remedied by a couple hundred mod load-order. Looking forward to more weapons and armor, more varied locations to explore, and elaborate and clever fundamental changes to the game.

Edit 1/23/2024:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO0DvyfLAeo

Probably one of the best games I've played, even before any of the DLCs are out yet. I loved Age of Wonders 3, but this just blows it out of the water in so many ways. Really looking forward to the first two DLC. Still wish there was some way to not have manual battles be so disruptive to the game pace in multiplayer though.

Edit: It blows my mind that people are complaining about the level of customization and variety of civilizations you are able to create in this game. That's one of my favorite parts, you can make anything without having to mod the game necessarily. I don't play with people who play meta builds, so I haven't encountered any problem with it, and I think it helps keep every game fresh, whereas some people seem to claim it makes everything uniform and monotonous, I do want to say that I've had a different experience, and sincerely hope that the devs DON'T listen and start locking down creation options, I would be very upset. I do find mixing about any affinity combination to be really intriguing, and being able to make custom races with any traits with cosmetic forms is honestly something I highly appreciate about the game.

Multiplayer is broken.

A classic, plain and simple. One of my favorite games of all time without a doubt. There's not much more I could possibly say that has not already been said. I recommend the whole series, wait for the collection to go on sale- it's a good deal.

Forsaken was Forsaken by Bungie.

7/6/2021 (<30 hrs)
'Sunsetting' content is an asinine concept that just screws over new players. I just have to say it, the 2021 New Light experience is kinda bad.

There are 3 whole planets, 3 singleplayer story campaigns, a ton of shaders, exotics, and other items and gear- and probably much more that I don't know about- that I will never be able to experience, simply because it has all been removed from the game, or is at the very least no longer obtainable. This is a terrible decision for any game to make. New players will always have missed out. From what I understand this trend began at some point back when the game went free to play. The funny thing about the free to play model is that, generally, the way it's supposed to work is that the base FTP game is good enough to rope in new players, keep them hooked, and actually make them want to buy additional DLC content and or cosmetics.
However, the Destiny way is to apparently gut the base game besides some disjointed repeatable event content, and then say "Hey, buy all this new content in our DLC!" Very cool Bungie.

Destiny's a sort of hybrid FPS and MMO, right?
Well, take Bungie's old Halo for example, I can go and launch up Master Chief Collection, and play all of Halo's history in it's entirety perfectly preserved in one neat package. Take, say, Elder Scrolls Online, I can buy any expansion, and play all of the content in all of the locations(including the original vanilla base-game content) any time I want forever until the servers shut down oneday.
And then you have Destiny, going scorched earth on everything and starting over (apparently like, three times or something?) And acting like it's some deep Unus Annus stunt about time or something, somehow fixes balancing issues, and was necessary to reduce file size.
It's utterly mindblowing and baffling, the stuff that actually existed in Destiny 2's past, that are now just nowhere to be found because the people developing this game actually thought it would be a good idea to just up and remove massive swathes of content from the game.

I wanted to get into this, only to discover that they nuked their own game, and that what does still exist is locked behind DLC. Why would I want to buy the DLC then, like Forsaken for example, knowing that any content product I purchase for this game is just inevitably soon to the chopping block, and everything is limited time? It seems like a relatively poor investment to be entirely honest.

The gunplay's nice and the gameplay loop is mildy addicting though, so there's that.

Update 8/13/2021 (172 hrs)
I hate the way Destiny handles time. It doesn't care about players' time, it just runs on its own whether anyone keeps up or not. You do not play the game at your own pace, you play at the one artificially and arbitrarily set by Bungie. For example, to fully experience the Season of The Splicer as a story, you'd have to be there from the beginning and play it throughout. To actually see the Vex night in the Tower for that vital context, before the scattered events toss confetti everywhere for example, you'd have to be there for the limited time it is actually there. Then, if you tried to start after the epilogue, then instead of playing regular override missions, you play the end mission over and over again for the Splicer I-VIII quests. Now, everything will be out of order, and will only make any sense for those who were there from the beginning. You have to dedicate a lot to Destiny to not miss out, and generally, have joined before you did. Better have a time machine on hand, or else be ready to watch a whole lot of youtube videos from this 'Byf' guy everyone raves about instead of playing the game if you want to understand or contextualize anything it continues to present. This is a microcosm of a greater issue with how Destiny is handled, and that is that it holds a clear design philospohy of capitalizing on FOMO in an attempt to force player retention, or else. I personally think this is a terrible idea, and one of the worse of examples of games as a live service, and seasonal content. The Destiny 2 train will continue chugging along with or without you, if you want to experience it, then you better be there- forget any other obligations you may have. Buy some DLC, cosmetics, and the season pass while you're at it.
Also, there's very few multiplayer maps, like way too few, and I'm told it wasn't always that way. I'll never understand how a game could set itself so far back by removing its own content- much of which I'm told people payed for.

I do have to say though, that since having started, I still can't stop playing this game. However, I will say, you almost NEED to have a guide, or "Sherpa" for this game, it is almost an absolute must. The number of things that aren't explained, or that are stupidly unintuitive that generally require an experienced player's explanation are far too numerous. My friend gifted me DLC content, and I continue to enjoy the game's content. I'll admit it, I have a free ride of Destiny here, and am still complaining about the issues, and I'm also still a noob who hasn't hit 1300 light level yet. I will still to continue to play, the simple gameplay loop and pvp mechanics are fun enough to keep me interested, and now I do have at least some campaigns that I can play. I'll say this: It appears to me that Bungo will continue to make questionable decisions and mismanage their game in inconceivably incomprehensible ways until they decide that it is no longer profitable to do so, that they don't want to fund it anymore, and they pull the plug. But if you have plenty of time to set aside, and hate yourself at least a little bit, then it's not the worst ride out there to go along for. Definitely won't recommend it to new players like I was (and arguably still am) though. The game's just not very friendly to new players. You won't have to worry about toxicity though, because chat still doesn't work.

Also, the current tower still has annoying alarms going off every few minutes. That's cool.

Original Review Post:
Practically a scam or some sort of scheme, with a weird cult audience and playerbase. As far as I know it's apparently some personal passion project developed by one guy. In any case, the game's in early access development hell, and there's hardly any actual game at all, nor has there been for the past 7 years. Any development progress or updates on this game are by far the slowest and most minimal I have ever seen in any game. This is by far the most barebones early access game I have ever seen, save for your bargain-bin unity asset-flips. This "Red" guy who makes the game promises a ton, but it doesn't really seem to be going much of anywhere in the next upcoming decades. I will willingly bet that we'll see commercially viable nuclear fusion energy integrated into power grids worldwide before this 'game' even begins to remotely resemble one. Now, none of this is too surprising, I get it, games like these are a dime a dozen on Steam, and it's my bad for buying it in the first place- and not refunding it while I still could- but the weird part of the game is the cult following that does exist. This game is simply an anomaly, and its community is a weird little pocket dimension separate from the expectations and standards of other games. If there's one thing this game does have, it's simply the undying hope and the unnatural patience which the community holds. The game has a complete lack of anybody asking questions, and everyone had been perfectly satisfied with waiting 7 years for an actual game to emerge. (Though it's not even clear what the game is supposed to be, or will end up being, it mostly just seems to only focus on building, don't expect much else) Furthermore, anybody who even ever-so-gently mentions any of this or brings it up is instantly verbally assaulted and nuked to utter annihilation by the most diehard and loyal defenders of a game I've ever seen, while somehow simultaneously hiding behind the most aggressive facade of forced kindness I have ever seen. There is a group of people that REALLY believe in this game, hard. Now, if that's enough to convince you to buy it, sure, go ahead. If this game ends up becoming the next big thing, I'll eat my hat. This is a world that's not rising anytime soon.

Edit:
I definitely appreciate the developer response, it was quite promptly posted. I agree that my wording was excessively harsh, and will admit that it was more than necessary. I don't truly feel that a refund is a necessity, I suppose I still myself hold some interest and curiosity in where the game might arrive in the longterm. I do want to say that I hold significant respect for someone willing to tackle the challenge of creating the game that they want to make. I will make my true assessment of whether I was 'scammed' or not when it is finished and development and support officially end. I apologize for essentially making a hasty accusation in that regard. However, despite all of that, I do not currently feel that I should change my position on my review, and still do not feel that I can truly personally recommend the game in its current state to prospecting potential buyers who may encounter my review.