Recent reviews by Faust

Creation Credits? Really? Does Bethesda not get it? This is a single player game. Who am I going to show off the swag to? Hey look at my screenshots? I'll pass.

If I'm going to dump money like that, I'll go play star citizen. After 200+ hours I can give this game a resounding: Meh

The good:
- Combat is smooth and interesting.
- There are some story twists which is neat.
- Graphics are in line with current tech
- There are a lot of quests and quest content
- Cities and population centers are well done and have distinct personalities

The Meh:
- Ship design is neat at first but you hit the wall seeing everything fairly quickly
- Ship modules are very difficult to see the path from the ramp to the cockpit. Ladders seem arbitrary in where they're placed to get to a floor above.
- Base building in overhead mode is nice, but you randomly get closer and closer and can't adjust the height you are viewing.

The Bad:
- Whoever designed the menu UI needs to be demoted to a mop and bucket.
- Choice of storage limitations gives me feelings of looming "buy more storage with credits vibe". It's woefully tiny even at a base. For example, my ship has 7000 storage my base 5000 with a ton of containers.
- Ship selling. 2k Credit profits for selling a class C ship you stormed and took over vs selling a rifle you found in a crate for 5k.. yeah, this needs adjusting dig time.

The ugly:
- Finding meds in your inventory. Scrolling through 500 items to find your med kit.
- Microtransactions .. in a single player.. yeah. ok

First, I would like to say I don't write too many reviews but felt compelled to do so here.

I run a fairly large and active roleplay community for Conan. It is absolutely clear to me and a majority of our members that Funcom does not see the RP community as worthy of interest or investment even though battle metrics consistently shows that 8 out of the top 10 servers as roleplay servers, beating out almost all of officials. Seems lessons cannot be learned from GTA where the RP community has kept the game alive well past its expiration date.

It's not clear to me or others I've discussed with what the mindset of the game director is. Seems to me that they want to make conan more of a battle royale type game than what it was in it's original intent which was survival/builder.

I have almost 3000 hours in this game, some of our members have over 6000 hours. This is due to roleplay adding varying content Funcom couldn't imagine.

Before finding an RP community, I had 100 hours and lost interest in the game fairly quickly. Hardcore official pvp servers get stale, have a good bit of toxicity, and don't really have lasting communities that stick to the game. Without RP, I would have shelved Conan long ago.

The Siptah map was a huge disappointment. As other reviews have pointed out, it's smaller than exiled lands map and approximately 2/3rds of the map is unable to be used to construct bases.

Biomes are small and unimaginative with the most interesting parts being coastlines that you cannot build in.

Since a good amount of the roleplay servers are heavily modded, most using Age of Calamitous in particular, the mechanics for Siptah thralls are irrelevant and a much unneeded grind. I imagine it's still a grind no one wanted in any event.

Resources are grouped up around the dungeons with no particular biome to house them, the most rare (black ice and obsidian) being in the middle make it an uninteresting chore if PVP is not the main focus.

What we wanted was more places to explore and settings to build in. What we got was a smaller rehashed map with only about 1/3 of it being usable for base building. Lack of thralls and POIs with people make the map feel lifeless and void with no real interesting features other than animals and not much of an immersive world.

I've been playing this game a LOT. Sure it's EA and has the usual bugs but I've been enjoying the game immensely. I play on an RP server which really takes the game to an entirely different level. DarksideRP if you wanted to know.

Be a pirate, a trader, in the Royal Navy, or just be a nomad. The sky is the limit. I haven't enjoyed a game this much in a very long time.

Almost 1500 hours into this game.

If you enjoy survival, base building, sci fi, and an actively developed early access project then this is the game for you.

Not recommending this game at this time. I'll explain toward the end of this review.

Preface:
This game is something I've had in my wishlist for quite a while and something I was looking forward to playing being a big fan of Empyrion, Space Engineers and games along that genre.

I reluctantly bought the game to give it a fair shake but was concerned by the high EA price, I also specifically ensured my hours played fell under the requirement for return.

I'll review on what is actually in the game right now. I tend to ignore bugs, optimization, and other such annoyances as the expectation is that they will get patched at some point.

I'm reviewing the game as determined by the current EA price point and my expectations for a game at that price.

Pros:
Game has a lot of potential.
Interesting alien creatures; some friendly, some not so friendly.
Planet Biomes vary greatly
Large map
Complicated base builds and designs possible
Vehicles and complex moving systems with physics
Complex systems and subsystems
Basic tutorial on how to get started

Cons:

Very generic crafting tree - Build X before you build Y, just because, doesn't really appeal to me although with time this is something the game could tweak.

Generic and non-varied terrain within biome.

Generic resources - Iron, Silver, Aluminum, Carbon, Silicon, mass containers, meat, Fruit. I shoot at a tree, I get mass, shoot at a dog-camel thingy, I get meat, shoot at rock with silver veins I get silver-aluminum, I think you get the point. Reminds me a lot of no mans sky. (Which may be why it's on this side of the review)

Over-Simple Crafting - It's more like crafting in No Mans Sky than Empyrion where you have build a resource + resource = frame, frame + resource = item.

I prefer crafting like empyrion or space engineers: build x number of metal pieces, build wires, build computers, which take electronics.. etc. The crafting is really really shallow.

Look/Feel of base components. The art on the base and base components have a look and feel that is more flash than function. With unnecessary creases and bolts, etc that just don't make sense for what it's being used for giving the entire base a very fake and unrealistic appearance. I'm sure it's just personal preference here, but it would be nice if the textures actually made some sort of sense other than filling space to make a pattern.

Price point: At $30 this game is the most expensive EA title that I am aware of and have ever see, and I own a LOT of EA titles. It costs more than multiple titles of the same genre that have had considerably more time to bake and substantially more content.

As such, the content in this game is:

Hunt Resources
Build Crafting Items
Build Base
Build Vehicle
Explore Planet

That's pretty much it.

What it doesn't have:

- Weapons
- Multiplayer
- Air Craft
- Space craft
- Other planets
- Any kind of transport ship
- Alien Humanoid NPCs
- Any resemblance of an end game

As I sit here writing this review, I wrestle over keeping or refunding the game. After playing all these games, empyrion, Space Engineers, Planet Explorers, scrap mechanic, etc, nothing really stands out here.

Everything I did or saw had that "been there done that" feeling to it. I really want to love this game, but full disclosure, prior to buying I had been playing Subsistence and I wound up wanting to go complete my base in that game rather than continue playing this one.

I recently put some time in on the game, about 25 hours or so. Very enjoyable. It just pulls you in, and you are grinding without really feeling like you are grinding. Everything gets used, you have a good ramp up from beginning to middle to end game.

What really is cool about the game is the map and the terrain. It's very realistic and works to really give you a sense of surprise. You come around a rock or crest and hill only to wind up face to face with a bear or a wolf.

The hunters have insane AI. They run, zig zag if you are shooting, slide into a kneel to shoot back at you, and they use cover and concealment.

There is always something you can be doing. Unlike other games of this genre, rarely are you sitting there waiting for something to cook off or craft.

It doesn't hold your hand, you will have to figure out what methods work best for you and learn along the way.

If you like survival games, you will like this one. Well worth the price at $14.

Entertaining, playable, addictive, and hey, you can't beat the price.

Returned.

The game is essentially a smart phone port and as such, it's a mile wide but an inch deep.

Some may like this, but for the price, it's simply not worth it.

This game should be removed from the steam market and devs should not be supported with their other game.

The game was abandoned by devs and even the features listed on the store page do not exist in game.

Graphics are decent, gameplay is intuitive but mainly because it's identical to all the other pay to win games. Game is definitely pay to win, buy "platinum" and get the better stuff, etc.

Worth playing casually, wouldn't sink much money into it.

World of Tanks, World of Planes, Etc etc... now in space.