Recent reviews by Jigglesticks Floptaco

It's like if Dwarf Fortress and Mount & Blade had a baby with a grimdark samurai-themed Rimworld.

I recommend this for Battletech fans and fans of turn-based strategy, but maybe not the general public. As a Mechwarrior fan, I'm having a blast. But if I tried to pick this up without any experience, I think I would have given up before I got my feet under me. There are a lot of arcane rules that can really sneak up on you... and the RNG can be downright brutal at times.

But still, the game is a lot of fun, despite its handful of issues. As others have noted, visual feedback is sometimes lacking in combat. A lot of the visuals are just for pizzaz and don't actually convey any useful info (or they're downright misleading). It can be hard to tell visually whether a hit impacted the center torso, side torso, or arm, so you often have to rely on the numbers instead of just seeing the hit. Also, there is something janky going on with the RNG for melee attacks right now--on a 95% chance to hit, I miss at least half the swings. (Since I started counting, I'm at 10 hits and 13 misses with melee attacks, each of which have reported >80% chance to hit... I might be unlucky, but I'm not THAT unlucky. I thought I might have been reading the UI wrong, but I don't think that's the case.) Outside combat, it's hard to tell whether time means anything. The game counts your progress in days, but I can't figure out whether the passage of time actually matters in any way. I started out hesitant to do side quests because I assumed there was some kind of gameplay countdown going on, but I'm not sure that's the case anymore.

But to be honest, these negatives are mostly nitpicks that don't detract a huge amount from the game. The majority of the game is enjoyable and really rewards tactical and strategic thinking.

sean murray did not personally kick your kitten, so stop being whiny entitled idiots about this game, it's not that bad

got better, then worse, then better again. play for objectives, not for KDR, and your team will thank you.

as infiltrator, you should never not be spamming recon darts--greater awareness of enemy location = victory.

People are mad because Frontier had the GALL to LOWER PRICES on something that these people PAID EXTRA FOR! How DARE a game company put something on SALE, after early-buyers bought it for FULL PRICE?! THE NERVE!!!

The game itself is good. Complaints are overblown. It's not constant-action CoD-in-spaceships, but if you're patient enough to enjoy a flight sim, you'll love this game. Some people say it's not worth full price--and that may be true for some people--but like everything else, it regularly goes on sale. If you're not confident, watch YouTube videos. Watch LOTS of YouTube videos, and make sure you can distinguish between buttmad crybabies, rabid fanboys, and legitimate players with varying rates of genuine complaints. Plenty of people fall into all 3 camps.

EDIT: Actually, the Arena game mode pretty much IS CoD-in-space now, so check THAT out if you want action-packed absurdity.

Basic gameplay follows a few branches.

Combat-oriented players can do mercenary work, bounty hunting, assassination missions, or piracy. Each has a different set of skills and ship loadouts required to be successful. (Also: aliens are coming.)

Trading-oriented players can do basic trading (mostly about supply and demand), rares trading (mostly about designing an efficient loop through the few systems that sell "rare goods"), or smuggling (so being sneaky is important).

Exploration-minded players can just zip off across the galaxy and scan planets, stars, moons, asteroid belts, black holes, etc. to sell the gathered data to the central cartographic service.

Miners can go blast space-rocks into smaller space-rocks, scoop up the space-rock pieces and sell them to space-rock collectors.

I've been playing since Premium Beta 1 and I have a shameful number of hours logged on the non-Steam version. The game isn't perfect, but it's great.

(PS: I intend to throat-kick the next person who uses the phrase "mile wide/inch deep." The phrase is cliche, inaccurate, and overplayed.)

I cut a bridge in half and had to spend 10 minutes looking for a different way across.

I cut down a bridge.

With a katana.

GOTY

AI is either unbelievably cunning or maybe it just has a really good procedural content system. I regularly find myself being a pawn in a massive-scale conspiracy, and I love it.