Recent reviews by SpitefulCrow

9/10 - No option to romance the attractive space spiders.

Victrix causa deis placuit sed Victa Catoni

SPACE PEACOCKS!

Seriously, need I say anything else?

I'll be honest here, if you've never heard of starbound before, and you like the idea of a sci-fi sandbox survival-ish game, then you'll probably enjoy starbound. I however am giving this a thumbs down, for reasons I shall go into.

Long ago, in the early access days of starbound, players glimpsed what was a relatively complete game that was clearly a framework for something greater. Something complex. Hidden behind it's grid-based construction/mining engine was a surprisingly complex universe, complete with six unique races all of which had their own history, adversities, asthetic style and personality. For once it seemed like the character's species was actually going to matter, with even the descriptions of food items hinting that different species would have to eat different food, which is a very cool idea in a survival game. This type of complexity was, for me, what set starbound apart from other games in the genre, it wasn't just a sandbox, it was it's own world with conflicting cultures and people.

The earliest sign was that racial bonuses (abilities unique to what species your character was) was planned to be in the next update. These bonuses were later changed to be tied to the race's armoursets, where wearing the full set (head, torso, leggings) of a race's armour would confer it's bonus. This was apparently done for the sake of balance, and keeping each of the races equal. Sure, I thought, but to this day racial bonuses are still not part of the game.

Starbound's development has been slow. Very, very slow. I was ok with this, as it was the developer's first game, and after dabbling in game dev myself I am aware that it can be a very difficult thing to do. Things were fine at first, a slow creep of new assets and features, adding more content to the world's random-gen system, etc. Everything you'd expect from an early access title.

However, somewhere during development, something changed.

Everyone was hype for the next big update (as updates were incredibly rare) and it'd hit, sure there was all this cool new stuff they'd shown off in screenshots, but they would always come with a number of game-breaking bugs that would severely impact gameplay, and would sometimes take months to be fixed. But the most bizarre part to me was that CF would often just cut assets entirely from the game. Items, furniture, gone. no explanation given. Just gone, and for a game about exploration, collection and building, this seemed like a very odd move.

The last few updates leading up to 1.0 were the worst offenders at this. The previous diversity and characterisation of the game's six races were severely stripped away, racial weapons, and ship AI were removed for seemingly no reason, which is very strange considering the racial AI often featured in the game's devblog. This, along with the removal/altercation of several other features (the game's UI being one of them) pushed things over the line for me. I had hope, I had patience, but I look upon the finished product that is the 1.0 build currently on sale here and can't help but feel utterly disappointed.

In summary, what first appeared to be a surprisingly complex twist on the survival sandbox genre was dumbed down to rush it for release. Also, the game costs $5 less now. It's nice I paid extra to experience this disappointment.

There are actually a number of other issues I could go into as to why I'm giving this a thumbs down, from reckless spending to the developer's reaction to criticism, but this review is already long enough.

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EDIT: Since everyone seems to comment on this. Yes, I have 1600+ hours played. This is because the early access builds had a launcher that was very easy to leave open for long periods of time, also I did actually enjoy playing the game, however, now that 1.0 has been released, many of the things I enjoyed about it have been removed, and I am doubtful they will ever be restored, hence my negative review.