Recent reviews by Apocagen

Possibly the most gorgeous generated environments I have seen in a game of this style. Also one of my favorite crafting systems with tons of customization of builds. Making gear out of different animals or enemies gives the gear different stats along with different types of wood/stone/ore also all affecting the bonuses gear gets.

Game is fairly buggy right now and needs optimization. However, if you can make it run it's a ton of fun and FEELS like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. of old.
Also Russians are paying people (very little) money to give the game negative reviews because butthurt. So just keep that in mind as you read reviews.

A great game hampered by not knowing what the hell it wants to be. Ok so it's very similar to Tarkov but is missing a ton of the little things that makes Tarkov great. Plus side it's less punishing than tarkov is. Unfortunately it can still be just as randomly unfair as Tarkov is.

Tarkov has everyone spawn in at the same time. The Cycle has a sort of persistent map where people spawn in over time. Great concept, but terribly executed. Today alone I have had 5 separate rounds where I died within 20 seconds because someone was close enough to my spawn to just shoot me as I am exiting my drop-ship.

Pro: Great AI enemies on map, much better than Tarkov's insta headshot you cross map, homing grenade, monster scavs.
Con: Melee is terribly coded. Enemies will hit you with a melee strike while you are 15 feet away from them and they're facing the wrong way.

Pro: TTK is a lot longer than Tarkov so you will rarely just die without getting to fight back.
Con: TTK is long so a fight between 1 person of equal skill against 2 others of equal skill, the single player will almost always lose. The amount of times I have had the drop on someone and started the fight by headshotting them for 80% of their health and still losing because I can't quite finish them before them and their teammate are able to shoot back is innumerable.

The game FEELS like it wants to be a less stressful Tarkov, and it succeeds in many ways. You aren't spending 40 minutes sorting your inventory, you aren't dying from 70 feet away in one shot by someone who's been camping in a bush for 15 minutes, but you still get that thrill that Tarkov gives you. But it just falls short with so many mechanics that will kill you purely from RNG. Fix the spawning and the hilariously bad desync on AI and there could be a better game here.

EDIT: "Spawning feels better, AI is getting fixed, still get hit from nonsensical distances sometimes though. Addition of free runs was an amazing idea. I now recommend this game."

Is your refrigerator running? Then you better get the hell out of the way.

Listen, the soundtrack is going all "DRR DRRRRR DRRRRR CHUGGA CHUGGA CHUGGA WEEEWEEEWEEEEE" and you're going "BANG BANG BANG SWISH SWISH BANG BANG". It's so f**king dope I can't even explain. Just go play the demo, headbang along to your gunfire, and then buy the whole game and do it again.

Honestly, probably the best F2P game on steam currently. Almost everything can be unlocked by playing the game, you can sell items in game to other players to earn premium currency, devs actively balance the game really well. All the negative review bombing is because they nerfed a set of weapons that completely dominated the meta of the game for the last few years. These weapons just cleared entire rooms in one shot by themselves. If you played in a matchmaking party and weren't using these weapons you just kind of watched as people sprinted at max speed from room to room killing everything before you even see it. There are 500 weapons in this game, learn to aim and use one that isn't AOE you lazy pricks.

Great game, first single player game in a decade that I have really been able to sink my teeth into.

Nope Simulator 2020

Combat feels much better and smoother than most Diablo-likes.

Best ARPG on the market gets the best expansion on the Market.