Recent reviews by Marajin

TLDR version: I'm disappointed. It'll get better, it has tons of potential.. but this. was. not. ready!

Now let me start by saying that I, like many others writing reviews and comments on this release, have been enjoying KSP1 since it was first available back in 2011. It later switched to a paid title but at a cost less than a quarter of an AAA release. KSP2 is £44.99 which is significantly higher than an AAA title would have cost in 2011 but on 2023 pricing.. just slightly below the common price. This colours my expectations.

I'd also like to address the fact that this is released via "Early Access". However I would draw a contrast to KSP1 being released in a proto form of early access. KSP1 was being created by an extremely small team (in fact possibly the earliest versions were basically the work of one person!). KSP2 has been in development by a significantly larger, "professional" development team for seemingly over 4 years and had repeated slips in its release date.

So let's get down to my impressions of KSP2, sequentially in approximately the order they happened to me:

What the heck is this obsession with having a game launcher? Stop it! It has no value add to the product, it annoys people and it creates compatibility problems. You're on steam, which pretty much handles everything you have a legitimate reason to use. At least I can say I don't want an account and continue.

And now the game is loading.. Impressive, it feels really fast in loading compared to KSP1. The menu background is fun and looks reasonably advanced graphically. PBR materials? Advanced lighting? That's more than good enough even if it doesn't 100% live up to the market speak descriptions. I'm happy at this stage.

Ok, so it's loaded up on my 21:9 widescreen monitor and I want to throw it over on my 16:10 4K monitor for now.. Into the settings, no monitor preference.. that's unfortunate, but I have a solution to this. I exit out of the game, switch the windows setting to make the 4k screen "primary" and launch the game again..

Again, loads snappily.. but stretching is going on. Well, it persisted the resolution from the ultrawide screen, so I'll just set it to the correct resolution aaaand.. now it's letter boxed. Yes it's set to 3840 x 2160 resolution, a 16:10 ratio and it's technically rendering at that.. only it's retained a 21:9 viewport in the middle of the screen.. quit and reload again and this time I have a game that properly fills the screen.

It's not a great start.. but it's only an oddball situation caused by me having multiple monitors with differing resolutions and aspect ratios. I worked around it easy enough and I don't expect it to be priority tested use case in general. (But plenty of people use multi-monitor now guys..)

Start a new game, set up my agency.. limited flag selection but otherwise it's looking good so far.

Intro cutscene.. it's cutesy.. the voice actress for "P.A.i.G.E" is fine, though I suspect in the long term I might find the high pitched and young sounding voice a liiiittle grating. I do wonder what the heck is going on with her scrabbling around and looking for slides when in just a few seconds later she's apparently an AI? Why and how is she scrabbling for slides? But it's minor pedantism about a tutorial character, so not worthy of more than the idle thought.

Ah and here is our new KSC.. ooh, a docks, two runways, 4 launch pads, lots of greenery.. from here it looks snazzy enough.... from here ... remember that, it's important.

Right! Let's start building a rocket! Into the VAB, loads nice and snappy.. skip all the pointless tutorial speak, I don't care. Basic rocket gets snapped together in a matter of a minute, the very core building experience seems acceptable, the parts *mostly* look good... the engineer report and target predictions that Paige was keen to point me at get glanced at before I ignore them because they're clearly lacking vital detail to be actually useful to me for... I... am a rocket scientist! (Yes I'm not being serious, but it's fair to say I'm a veteran KSP player).

Try to save the ship and who the what now? Ok.. It took me a minute to work out what this workspace and vessel name malarky was about. It's a good idea that wasn't explained and needs some usability/UX attention but hey, I can let that slide.

Let's build something else. I wanna see this new KSC up close! Buggy time.. now the building experience starts to fall apart a little.. There's a toggle between vertical and horizontal vessel design, it seems to work with most parts but it wasn't 'sticking' with the little single-kerbal seat. I had to put down something else in the right orientation, add the kerbal seat to the scene then throw away the other part.

Oh look, there's a 'truck' chassis thing.. handy! Slap that on with the seat at one end. Let's get some wheels.. Uh-oh.. these wheels seem rather *large* compared to the truck chassis and seat.. I have to use the very smallest wheels for them to fit. What's going on with the scale here? Oh well, I can make it work... a few minutes of fighting it and ending up manually placing the wheels, I've got 6 mostly aligned wheels on the thing. add an RTG & battery just in case, stick a ladder on the front so I can get in and out, save and let's go..

So I launch.. and I find myself on the launch platform. I cannot actually drive the rover off because it has yellow railings around it that this rover is incapable of even ramping over. Ok.. I'll pop Bill out the seat and walk down that staircase..

No. I won't.

The ladder I added is "blocking" him from getting out the seat (it really wasn't visually but code might not be able to determine there's sufficient space).

Back to the VAB, move the seat back, move the ladder, save and switch the launch site to the runway, let's go Mk2!

On the runway.. check I can get Bill out.. Success! Exploration time! I accelerate up to 10 m/s along the runway, it takes a few seconds. Not high performance parts but it's all good... I let go of the key... I'm holding speed.. Cool! Automatic cruise control... wait, I'm accelerating still, just slower.. odd.

Take a look around. This is a REALLY big runway.. the mixed concrete paving seems neat.. but that center line paint? It looks like you took a photo of a real world painted line and then stuck it in game scaled up from the original few centimeters to about 2 meters wide. It's not a BAD material, just too large.

Now up to 11.2 m/s with my slow rolling induced acceleration (~40kph). Suddenly we've lost traction, I go into a spin.. almost a full 180 .. that was weird but turn it around, get back up to speed and let's journey onward to the control tower and the rest of KSC off in the distance. Twice more skid spin, but I get to the tower... that is clearly human size. Each step is half the height of Bill, the door is massive and up close the textures are sub KSP1 level, oh and it's floating off the ground. This situation continues.. Odd scaling from kerbal size to hobbit size to real world scale all over the place. Textures that belong on 1990s N64 game. 1 pixel is stretched to 2m wide in places. (Check the base of the Kerbonaut complex statue!)

KSC now obviously not having been looked at from ground level, I go for a rocket launch. This feels epic. The music, the countdown, the sound design, the engine plumes. Awesome job! Orbit, no problem. Transfer to the mun? Wah-wah-waaaaah. That sphere of influence change is horrendous. No idea WHAT my vessel will be doing afterwards.

For lack of space in short from here:
Manuever nodes are fickle, sometimes completely broken,
Terrain scatter floats,
Collision meshes badly aligned, especially terrain.
Physics is *cursed*.
Decouplers often don't decouple,
The space bar sometimes stops working,
No re-entry heating, Science, Career, Colonies..

I love KSP.. this, is not worth playing yet. This is an early alpha. The ball has been dropped. Please pick it up devs!