Recent reviews by Nokhal

Vatnik dev

I desperately tried to like the game. Its relatively well polished and chokefull of content, with alternative galore. However :

90% of the playtime is artificial padding :
>Turn based combat snorefest
>Skillcheck with no depth/interesting outcome on failure. Just an aribitrary : Reload your game now mechanics
>The whiniest ♥♥♥♥♥ sex pests ever written as party members. I had to genderswap them all to make it barely bearable.

The Bad :
>Take me to the next impressive woman simulator. I swear, if any named character is competent, she is a minority woman showcasing all the traits of toxic masculinity. It's jarring. Did I mention the epic genius black girl that can do anything better than an adult ?
>A clone of a man is a woman.
>The NPC are ugly. It's 2023. It's a hundred million dollar budget game. If the NPC are ugly, it's on purpose. Hopefully that will get fixed with mods.
>Overall, the game feel like it's escapism for the HR and DEI department of bethesda, not for the player. You have strong epic stoic lunch ladies shooting guns and mining and solving problems and the quirky faux-nerds of constellation and it's their story. You the player are just the faire valoir of those "amazing" characters.
>Space is pretty much an additional layer of loading screen for fast travel with the occasional minigame. If you are coming from X4/Elite and expected a space adventure, you are gonna be disappointed. You spend less time in space than in loading screens.
>Inventory management game. Have ♥♥♥♥ Inventory UI because of console.
>Bethesda bullet sponge's are back. It's not hard. It's tedious. You get >less< powerful by gaining levels relative to enemy HP.
>Huge imbalance between the "on foot game" where as long as you have cover and enough stimpack you can win anything and the spaceship gameplay, which is the dumbest DPS gearcheck ever that even MMO don't dare to have anymore.
>Every single gameplay element is perkwalled.


The mid :
>This game is a "adapted to modern audience" version of mass effect 1 with fallout 4 engine and gameplay.
>Lots of content. Shallow, repetitive, but content nonetheless

The good :
>Perks challenges are a good idea over simple SPECIAL requirement of Fallout 4 I guess ?
>Technically the most solid bethesda game at release. However, SSD is a >requirement<, not a suggestion.
>By being essentially a reskinned fallout4, the game also have a similar core gameplay loop and good dungeon design.


Verdict :
The story and characters really take away from what could have been a good game.
Without mods, game is a 5/10. I'll probably finish it because the core gameplay loop is still very solid, but I actively dislike all the companions save the robots so far.

Was expecting Kenshi : Settler, instead got a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ Tower Defense.

General story/writing:
Game is saved by the "evil" characters which are well written and actually use their brain. You are not safe however from the sassy, wise black-woman with american accent stereotype, or the lesbian transgender couple shoved down your throat as the good guys (same as Valerie the mid being fawned over as beautiful in the previous game).
Overall story is okay and offer a lot of possible overall slightly actually different outcomes branching that could be considered "best" depending on how you roleplay it.

Game mechanics :
Absolutely garbage, and that's a consequence of using a D20+Rest system and everything being about either :
>Meta-gaming the "test" that you will be required to take to stack modifiers, making it gamey and tedious
>Reliant on luck, encouraging save scumming
>Either you put the difficulty to trivial or you are punished for not save-scumming metagaming.
>Witholding a lot of information about the consequence of choices, resulting in punishing players for not metagaming
>Class system is tedious, offer a lot of options but most of those are "wrong" choices. You'll end up theorycrafting your build in advance instead of making spot choices with the information available to you
>What works mechanically doesn't thematically, and vice versa.
>Overall wide disconnect between game mechanics and story.


Recommendation however is to install mods such as bags of tricks/isekai class to take the piss about the world and having say, your OP character and his harem rather than playing it seriously.

Overall the game is wide but shallow, most of the play time will come from reloading/turn based "gameplay" (erk) if you play on higher difficulty and you are actively punished for not-metagaming. Very different from actual tactical RPG, such as the original dragon age for example. This one is closer to a very long checklist that was made for you and that you have to clickously check dialogue by dialogue, skill check save scummed by skill check save scummed, grease exploit ecounter by grease exploit ecounter.

Also :
Californian Spyware installed on my machine despite me being European. Lawyering up for a refund and breaching ELA on top of breaching GDPR.

They removed some of the original jokes because it would potentially offend some LGBTIABRAAP snowflakes.

The game is extremely linear. The "gameplay" part is extremely tedious crafting and puzzle, the dialogues are not that good. Would have been better as pure VN.

The art is good, even though everyone have nearly the same body mesh, with only skintones/morph variations (and ofc the face). A lot of aniation, wich is rare for this kind of games.

Game keep creating hardware crash. On a 3090 setup with latest updates.

"Game" can be finished under one hour (depending on how fast you can read and how tolerant you are to bad writing). That's actually a positive, because the characters are uninteresting, the scenario is thinner than Pong, and the art is grotesque and unnatractive, and the technical quality somehow manage to make it look worst. It's /d/ meet tumblr at a furry convention bad.
The only "gameplay" is exploring conversation branches that loop back until you find the right one.
There was obviously a lot of passion in this project, but if you don't share the grotesque fetishes of the author (Namely tumorous breasts bigger than the rest of the body/pegging/futa/skinny man with tits masturbating/giantess femdom), it's a complete waste of time.
At this point i'm surprised at the lack of Vore, Shota and Homosexuality that are also on the bingo list of people enjoying this kind of stuff.

Still early access.

Cons :
- Currently NOT worth more than 10USD.
- Grid combat is a snorefest of shallow tactics and RNG.
- You buy sex scenes, they have no integration in the plot whatsoever
- The girls are not waifus they are hot sluts sleeping with you, aliens and the rest of the crew.

Okay
- Space combat is fun even if not super deep.
- Australian MC.
- Drug addict MC.

Pros :
- Better music than most video games i've played in my life. On par with ruiner and hotline miami. It's obscenely good, especially for a casual porn game.
- Top notch writing

Should you buy ?

If you are looking for value for money, NO.

If you want to signal the market that you want more games likes this and that sex/good writing is more fun to you than mindless US propaganda violence or pretentious indie crap, YES.