Recent reviews by watermelon reimu

This game only has one ending, and only less than 2½ - 3 hours of content in total, making the cost per played hour very high.
The one singular ending is quite bad, and even though there are many dialogue options, there are no actual meaningful choices to be made.
There are numerous quite long and somewhat boring unskippable cut scenes. However one could argue that having no skip option is acceptable due to it being somewhat important to pay attention to the them. And since there's only one ending, there's no replayability, and so there's no need to have a skip option. Though realistically, and as others have pointed out, the most probable reason for not having a skip option is to extend the required playtime to over 2 hours so the game cannot be refunded through Steam.
The game has a lot of dialogue, and not a lot of gameplay. What little actual gameplay there is, is enjoyable enough I guess, but also pretty simplistic and easy. This can be seen as both a positive and a negative. If you're looking for any sort of a challenge/puzzle, you will not find it in this game. This game should be definitely thought of as a visual novel more than a puzzle game.
The story itself is mediocre and actually pretty shallow, which is very bad for a game that consists mainly of the story.
The dialogue is fully voice-acted (except for HAL and the protagonist), which is a definite plus. The voice acting is also pretty high-quality. However I cannot help but feel like way too much developer effort and money was put into the voice acting, when it should've been put into other aspects of the game.
The soundscape and the soundtrack are also good, but really nothing out of the ordinary.

Overall, The Operator is a short, pricey mediocre dialogue-heavy and minimal-gameplay game with high-quality voice acting and heavy hand-holding and railroading, and with only one ending. It feels like the game was designed to be just long enough to make it impossible to refund after reaching the ending (which in fairness one shouldn't do regardless, if they enjoyed the game and reached the ending).

I cannot recommend anything else but to watch someone else such as a YouTuber play this game. I think that will actually add way more to the experience than buying the game and playing it on your own.

The Good:
- Shields have weak points
- Better transition from stealth to loud
- Stealth feels a bit better
- The graphics are better than PD2

(Some of) The Bad:
- Online-Only (even in single-player)
- Extremely dumbed-down skills system, and no more separate perk decks and skills. In practice, this means less customizability and more railroading.
- Extremely dumbed-down weapon customization. You can only gain access to weapon customization options from extreme grinding. Feels again more railroaded.
- Progression system has been reworked - in a very bad way. You no longer gain character XP from completing heists. Instead, you gain it from completing challenges. This leads to farming kills instead of completing heists and heist objectives.
- The UI is bad. It's hard to navigate, and clearly designed for consoles. It's also sometimes way too simplistic once again, for example the in-game HUD doesn't show nearly enough information.
- No multiplayer lobbies. And you can't use chat before heist. So you can't plan ahead or communicate.
- Can't kick players from a party.
- Awful default control scheme, and the controls are definitely a downgrade from the default PAYDAY 2 experience. Everything just feels more clunky, especially the sliding.
- Awful post-processing effects. The game looks the best on post-processing set to Low (can't turn it off).
- Awful performance. I am running a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080, AMD Ryzen 9 7950X 16-Core @ 5.6GHz, 32GB 6000MT/s DDR5 RAM and M.2 SSD setup, and the game regularly dips below 60 FPS on all ultra, on a 1080p monitor. Not even all ultra mind you, I've already lowered some settings and still the game sometimes dips below 60 FPS. The game does NOT look nearly good enough for this to be justifiable.
- Mediocre soundtrack, it's not bad but IMO it's not even on the same level as most of PD2's soundtracks.

... and much, much more that I can't recall right now. Clearly a lot of very questionable design choices were made, and while many of these problems will undoubtedly be fixed in the upcoming months or years, I cannot help but feel that sunk cost fallacy/"artistic direction" might prevent them from rethinking some of these IMO very bad design choices. But we will see.

TL;DR: this feels like the Windows 11 of the PAYDAY-series. They've taken out features no-one was complaining about, features which made PAYDAY 2 a great game, for no reason. And some features they've decided to re-implement and oversimplify - again - for no reason.

The gameplay feels pretty good, and it is quite challenging, but in my honest opinion this game still feels very much like an early access title. Pretty much no customization, no character progression. So even though the gameplay is great and all, it gets boring very fast. I see that weapon customization is being planned, but character progression is not. I hope that the developers will consider adding character progression, and allow me to fully embrace being the shotguns + turret man in our Co-OP group.

I also hope that the developers will reconsider giving new players access to old rundowns. I really don't get any of the reasons as to why they wouldn't, they make no sense from my perspective. I am a new player, I want to play more of this game - I want to know more about the lore. Is that such a bad thing? Do I really need to watch videos or read posts on reddit to learn lore told in previous rundowns? I really don't want to, I want to play the game instead...

I'd also love if this game had way more horror & stealth elements. As it is, there are a lot of Killing Floor and PAYDAY esque "assaults", which you can't stealth. Fewer loud only assaults and more stealth would be better, in my opinion. Also, the game as it stands isn't really that "scary", so I wouldn't even call it horror, really. There isn't really anything that scary in the game, nothing to feel "horrified" over, so to say. I don't want jumpscares, I just want more chills down my spine, though I do admit that might be hard to achieve in a 4-player Co-OP game.

Overall, TL;DR: this game is beautiful, challenging, and a perfect Co-OP game. But I feel that the developers are way too hell-bent on their vision for the game, sometimes ultimately for the better and sometimes, sadly, for the worse. I also feel like the developers decided to bring the game out of Early Access way too soon, as it still lacks things quite vital things such as customization and progression. Therefore, I cannot recommend you buy this game for the full price as of now. Maybe buy it if it's ever on sale, and ONLY if you have a full 4-player Co-OP group to play with.

The tank designer alone adds hundreds, maybe even thousands of hours of replayability to this game. On top of that, using the included scorched earth tactics was also a blast, and definitely made my Soviet Union run a lot more enjoyable. The new focus trees are great, definitely much better than most of their previous DLC's had.

Absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ amazing

TL;DR: Don't bother buying this game just yet. Not worth the 10 euros currently. Should be in early access.

Quote from the developer:
"Sorry, but we will not make an easy mode. Everything behaves predictably. If you tell a worker to do a list of task they will do them. If you build a tower archers will try and fill it. If you build a catapult worker will push it to the furthest palisade. It's all about timing and strategy and in no instance should your hand be held, we have enough of those games already IMO. In short, it's not what this game is about and I promise if you play and really dig into the details you'll master this game and start petitioning for a hard mode. :)"

So, developers will not add alternative ways of playing just because. Before seeing this, I actually recommended this game.

What would easy mode change? Answer: Absolutely nothing. Those who'd like to play this like an E-Sports game, could play this like an E-Sports game, and those who'd want to be more relaxed, could play the easy mode. Everybody freaking wins. Nobody loses. This should be pretty clear.

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And now for the actual review and not my rant:

The game can be played through in less than 2 hours. In less than 2 hours, you will see and learn everything that you can from this game. You will soon find out that if you happen to walk in front of a catapult just at the right moment, the catapult will hit you and your crown will fall right next to the monsters, and you will lose the game, regardless of how good defences you had, or how prepared you were for the night.

There are 3 different types of monsters. Yep. Three. There are the normal "jumping", running enemies that steal your coins and/or equipment, and then there are the flying monsters that just gobble up your archers and/or builders like no tomorrow, and then there are the "trolls" that just throw rocks (?) at you. That's it for the monsters. They all come from the hell portals, scattered all around the map.

There are 5 different types of units you can have:

1. First is the archer, his/her aiming abilities are beyond, uhm... dog poo, unless you of course happen to find a shrine that, mind you, RANDOMLY, appears or doesn't appear. It might not even be in your game at all.

2. Then there is the builder, or worker, who builds your walls, towers, catapults, farms, etc. He is the type of person who will go, during the night, to cut down a tree, and then gets killed by the monsters. But canceling worker tasks would be "hand-holding" according to the devs, so, your opinions do not matter. "Our AI is flawless, you are stupid for sending him out during the night", says the developer.

3. Then there is the farmer, who will work on farms that your workers build. Nothing much to say about him, but that if you upgrade the farm to a watermill, he will not come to the town center during the night, but instead will stay at the farm, and die horribly. UNLESS YOU "OF COURSE" WALL HIS FARM IN.

4. And then there's the knight, who will have an army of archers following him, about 4-5 archers max mind you. He is the one that should be sent to destroy the hell portals that the monsters come from. You can spawn him from your town center after you've upgraded the wooden shrine to a stone one, but here's the catch! The shrine might not be there AT ALL! Because that would be hand-holding, wouldn't it now? So, better just restart your game - "We love hearing you cry. Sincerely, devs". You can only have max. of 4 knights at a time.

5. You can also have two catapults, and they do miss regularly. Nothing you can do about that. Builders build, move, and reload them. Mind you, if the catapult is outside your base, your builders will still wander off into the night just to repair them. And then they die. And ain't there nothing you can do about that.

The building upgrades are linear.
You can upgrade (marked with #) and build (marked with *) these:
- Walls#*
- Watchtowers#*
- Town Center#
- Farms#*
- Shrines#

To upgrade the buildings from wooden ones to stone ones, you have to have the wooden shrine upgraded.

Your workers can also cut down trees.

You can not command your units in any way. Some might argue though that this is a design choice, that the game is "minimalistic", and yeah, it is, but really? Could I just make a game where you just use your arrow keys to move a black square around on a white background, and call the game a "minimalistic adventure-exploration game"? No. There are some things that even minimalistic games should have, and actually, HAVE TO HAVE. And that is simple unit control. Oh, but that would be hand-holding, according to the devs, oh, almost forgot that. Sorry. Nevermind.

There is only one resource you can gather and use, and that is money. And only one coin purse, and if you fill that up, every extra coin will fall to the river. No hand-holding!

There is only one gamemode, and that is "normal" mode. Don't like it? Don't buy and/or play our game, sincerely, devs, sincerely, community. No hand-holding!

Options menu? Uhm... let's just put it this way... doesn't exist..? No resolution options, no nothing. Probably could be considered hand-holding by the devs.

Only one save slot. Because having more would be hand-holding, oh of course! And you can only load that one save slot.

Translations are good. Actually was kind of surprised to find a Finnish translation for this game. Great job on those, guys!

In the end, the game is uhm, let's put it this way, 4/10. Too minimalistic to even be considered minimalistic, dev's don't seem to care about your opinions, there's barely any options menu, too high of a price tag for essentially a flash game. Linear upgrades = not good. Only 3 types of enemies = not good. Only 5 types of units = not good. Translations are good. Please remember though, that these are my opinions. Some people might think that linear upgrades, etc, are actually good. Think that way? Good for you!

Oh wow, I used too much of my time on this one "review" (let's just be honest here, a rant). I should really get a life.

No more stupid microtransactions with stat-boosting skins. Coolio.

Such a fun game to play when you're bored. It's a great, cheap brawler. A great indie game.