Recent reviews by drhead

I actually really like this DLC. Instead of an extension on the main campaign, Mooncrash is what I'd describe as an arcade-style, rogue-LITE (+1 for them correctly identifying this, I really am picky about rogue-like games only being those like Nethack) spinoff of sorts.

You play as an agent of KASMA going through a simulation of TranStar's moonbase. You have 5 characters to play as which you will unlock, which all have different abilities available to them, most with a different balance of Typhon and Normal abilities, and also skills like Hacking or Repair only appear on one character each. In the same run of the simulation, you can have multiple characters escape or die, but you have to deal with the fact that items you took while playing one character will still be gone when you go play as the next character. This plays kind of interestingly with how different characters have different skills for manipulating the world! Also, as you play longer in the same run, the simulation gets more corrupt. This will cause enemies that aren't in the same immediate room to respawn as higher level versions of themselves. Mimics will become Mimic II, for example. Also hazards are likely to become active. I remember reaching corruption level 4, and suddenly all the electrical hazards activated. Fun. You can delay corruption with a special item you can often find on larger Typhon, but you can't reduce it to a previous level. You can only do that by resetting the simulation. If the corruption gets past level 5, the game spares you the misery of dealing with level 6 enemies and just resets the simulation. Because of this don't expect to spend an hour at a water fountain for cheap healing, it'll hurt you in the long run. Your final objective is to get all 5 characters off the moon in one run.

The simulation is randomized. A lot of things will stay the same but a lot of things will change. For the most part, bodies will be in the same place. Items will be randomized, but where loot spawns stays the same. Enemies will be randomized, obviously. Some things like trams will be randomly broken, and it seems that the further you go the more things can be randomly broken. It seems that doors can be randomly broken, and I've seen at least one instance of a staircase being randomly broken. So a decent amount will be different.

Probably one of the defining things with rogue-lite games is what you get to keep between resets. First off, when you die or escape, you get points for all the Typhon you killed and for all the things you did. You'll generally get a lot. You keep fabricator plans, unlocked neuromod skills, scans on enemies (which you only have to scan each enemy type once to unlock the associated abilities) and sort of keep chipsets. When you go to respawn, you can use these points to start with anything you unlocked the fabricator blueprint for and any chipset you have found, which significantly alleviates the item depletion from multiple character runs. This works with anything you found on ANY character. As far as weapon mods go, instead of having weapon modification kits, weapons are of different qualities now, with higher quality ones having more weapon mods on them (in order of white-green-blue-orange). You can get blueprints for these higher quality weapons and start with them, they will be a tad more expensive than a normal one but will be way better anyways. Also, weapons can have special modifiers on them, like having extra fire damage on hit or nullify on hit. You can even get a boltcaster that does damage through this, which is kind of silly.

As far as difficulty goes, the difficulty seems fixed to Normal. You can't change it, and you also can't quicksave and quickload in this mode. The game uses all of the new modifiers that were added in the free patch to Prey that came with this DLC. Weapons have durability, and will jam when reaching 0, and there is no damage scaling for low durability. It works just like System Shock 2 in this respect. It is almost never a problem. They also have the trauma system which was apparently was cut from the main game's release. When taking severe damage, you may end up suffering somewhat severe debuffs, like taking damage when sprinting and jumping, reduced max health, or reduced psi capacity and an inability to install neuromods until you treat it with a special kit for that condition or use a medical operator. These conditions are annoying and the damn bleeding one is responsible for at least half of my deaths, but they add something to the game still. Your suit will also have limited oxygen, though I haven't run into a part of the game yet where that came into play.


Overall I can't think of much else to say. If you liked Prey and want more of it, you'll like this DLC, because it gives you more of Prey, and actually significantly more than you'd expect.

This DLC offers:

• Your favorite broken faction, with an actual interesting playstyle, but still brokenly OP for the moment (about as broken as Vodyani).
  
• Ability to negotiate with terrorists to tell them to stop attacking you / go attack someone else, useful if you don't like pirates.
  
• Your favorite robot hero.
  
• Lore that continues from Endless Legend.
  
• The music is a remix of the Vaulters theme from Endless Legend. I liked that song, I like it here.

Interestingly enough, the lore doesn't seem to retcon anything. It assumes that the Vaulters at least completed their main quest (which involves launching the Argosy with Opbot in it, which is not the Hissho ship) and also that the epilogue quest was completed by the Vaulters, meaning more escaped on the Hissho ship. The story quest of the Vaulters in this expansion ties up the loose ends.

Vaulters gameplay encourages you to take your time selecting good systems no matter where they are in the galaxy, since your colonizations are instant, rate-limited, and portals allow you to get a death fleet wherever it is needed instantly. The golden age mechanic (shamelessly taken from the Pilgrims of Endless Space 1) also helps with this.

Pirate diplomacy is another good improvement upon the pirates. Previously, pirates just spawned out of minor factions. Later, it was changed so that pirates have their own outposts that are separate, and now you can tell them to go away with influence or tell them to go bother someone else for money. So if you usually disable pirates, try enabling them again and you might like it.

Overall, the DLC is worth the price. Endless Space 2 looks like it is on track to surpass Endless Legend.

A solid 4X game and a worthy successor to ES1.


Some pros:

• The game is beautiful. All of the art for constructions and loading screens are nice to look at and some are even worthy of being turned into a desktop background. The colonization cutscenes are nice to watch. Blowing up planets is fun to watch. Overall, a lot of stunning graphics and very few weak points in the design.
  
• Balancing for production over time is improved greatly, you no longer get systems producing 1000 times what they started out with like in ES1. It's likely that by the very end of the game most systems will produce at most 100 times what they produced before. Things won't have a trivial cost in the endgame. There's also an inflation mechanic that makes buyouts cost more with stronger economies, further ensuring that you won't just be able to constantly pull dreadnoughts out of nowhere.
  
• The factions have more asymmetric gameplay than ever, with three factions even having completely different methods of colonizing planets. There are of course a few "standard" feeling empires, but your playstyle will be very different for all empires.
  
• The AI actually seems a lot better than other Amplitude titles, though it's still kind of crappy in a lot of ways, like all 4X games. One interesting note is that factions seem to have their own AI attitudes, for example the Riftborn are very isolationist and will freak out and close their borders if you move a scout ship to their territory.

Some cons:

• The infamous multiplayer desync problems that plague Amplitude 4X games are still here. It is at least easy to reset the game, since the host is notified and is given an option to put everyone back in the lobby with the previous autosave.
  
• The UI is very clean and informative, though certain elements may be hard to find for new players. The tutorial helps a lot by guiding you through systems as they become relevant, even within a normal game.

As a side note, if you like Stellaris, you might appreciate Endless Space 2 for its shorter matches (as in you can actually win a game in one sitting within reason) and its highly asymmetrical gameplay.

I like the game, but I'm not going to give it a positive review while it has ♥♥♥♥♥♥ microtransactions and day 1 DLC. Microtransactions have NO PLACE in a single-player game.

IF YOU ARE CONSIDERING PURCHASING MICROTRANSACTIONS, I would advise downloading and installing Cheat Engine instead. You can get all of the Praxis, XP, money, and weapon parts you want for free. Do not support a company that sells cheats for a single-player game.

If you ignore the microtransactions, the game is definitely on par with Deus Ex HR. It is a shame that Square Enix had to ruin such a good game with their meddling, and I feel sorry for the people at Eidos Montreal who have to put up with this ♥♥♥♥.

I will change my review to a positive one when these things happen:

• Microtransactions for Praxis, Credits, and Weapon Parts are removed from the game entirely.
  
• Preorder bonuses are changed to be bound to each save file instead of being one-off bonuses.
  
• The two day 1 DLC packs are removed from the store, their buyers refunded, and the included augmentations integrated with the base game.