Recent reviews by Bucket

Finished my first play-through, unsure if I'll do another at least for now.

It was a solid 7/10 I think (And not Randy Pitchford's idea of one), the story humoured me enough and kept me intrigued enough to keep battling forwards against the RPG systems holding it back, honestly this would have been much better if it leant more into the 'immersive-sim' category instead of trying to be another Fallout : New Vegas style RPG, but I digress.

The first two planets had a lot of interesting stuff to do but when you unlock the final two those worlds feel very under utilised, with a lot more potential for interesting writing and stories but they remain static. It tends to be how things seem to go in modern RPG's strong first act's then the areas later on suffer, I do however appreciate that you actually have to think about your skill-point usage and creating a master of none is not very viable, that also however meant there were a lot of 0's in my skill distribution.

Now a bit further into the RPG-side of things, regarding inventory and equipment, none of it was exceptional and anything with a decent design outwards had to be reshuffled for just small percentage buffs and barely any sets of outfits worked together visually, infact honestly I saw no need to really care about my equipment or the modding there-of, I just equipped a weapon that hit harder and diversified the ammo types. There's no weight limit, so you end up carrying a piece of everything around, or you can scrap it to use in the rather bare-bones crafting system, but really that'll be just used for you to make ammo.

Combat, was fine, can't say it challenged me too much in the later half of the game, the first half the enemies felt a bit spongey but not for long, I never really touched the TTD to slow down time, popped my shield, watched my companions flail uselessly as I tried to shoot the enemy, in the end it was just shoot enemy until dead, hit weakspot if you want it to go a little faster, or sneak for the extra damage.

Story, probably the strongest aspect, the two main factions are interesting enough and the antagonist faction is a cartoonishly evil enemy, which isn't fully bad since the game is rather satirical, none of the factions are interesting enough aesthetically or morally for me to ever truly remember them though, but for the main character and his companions it gets the job done, that said the companion interactions were very very very plain and honestly didn't feel strongly about any of them, except maybe Niles, the others are very archetypical set of companions (Psychopath, Means justify ends, Zealot, Soldier who is loyal to someone who doesn't care) you've met them all before.

Performance, this is a bit tricky, I recently acquired a new PC but I did try a bit of this on the old one, in the end I could do a solid 60fps but it honestly isn't pretty enough maxed out to warrant such a drain on resources, especially if you add in how static the NPC's and world is, it's not a problem to be that but surely that means a lot of processing power is free'd up, the only time my FPS dipped was when I had other programs running.

In conclusion : It's an okay RPG, and I'm fine with that, not every game has to be innovative or world-shattering, it killed 24 hours in totality for me and that I can live with (Disclaimer: It was a birthday gift)

Very interesting, good if you like to sink yourself into a whole weird world someone has made and you want to experience what it has to offer, the combat isn't the best but it has a decent rhythm to it, or it's perfectly avoidable for the most part.

The ideas in it really hooked me and the design was definitely interesting, I would like to see a higher fidelity version but I also enjoy the basic style of the graphics, it shows you what you need so it can accent important bits. The story was good although I wish there was a lot more to do after you get your own airship, the other islands don't really have much personality even though they have very short tid bits of a story.

Basically my only real complaint is that there wasn't ore, which I think is a pretty positive complaint to have, I'm not fully sure if I'll do a replay soon but there does seem to be a lot of different avenues one could take.

All in all, solid game, really enjoyed my time with it, got sucked right in and basically spent the last week or so diving into it, if you like a sort of ImSim vibe with a lot of lore to dig into (That you won't need to watch a ten hour youtube video to understand) then it'll be up your alley.

Completed the story finally, took my sweet time with it, had to wait for acouple of patches to fix some issues, but none more than a week.

Mostly satisfied, the atmosphere is all here, the zone I know and love, some of it does feel a bit like "Oh yeah remember this!" but it kept the vibe I remembered, the story which never honestly mattered too much to me in the previous games was actually fairly good in this one, relatable characters and such. Got a bit lost in the sauce later on, stretching itself, the boss fights I don't think I found too great, but mostly because they were put after gauntlets where your kit will be busted anyway and your ammo will be dry.

The whole A-Life debacle needed to be handled better, there's a lot of misinformation out there and a lot of nostalgia blindness too, I never thought it was the defining feature of the old games, infact it wasn't very good in ShoC and then it was the only really good thing about CS (apart from some graphical features) until finally being something good in CoP and further improved by Anomaly/GAMMA, it's all smoke and mirrors anyway, so it's not a big deal breaker.

There's a fair bit of tinkering to be done with how things work, and I'll probably come back in awhile, it's a good game but sorting out A-Life, and the general bugginess of some areas could definitely elevate this into a great game.

Personal wishlist :
- Properly randomised loot placement/system (Like a 0.1% chance for a stash to actually have something worthwhile in it instead of more beer)
- A-Life 2.0 (Or lair system, w/e) to be functioning (Including increasing spawn radius)
- In the field repair tools, or just gun cleaning item that'd only be applicable for the first 20%
- CNPP

This game deserves more than 50%

I'm gonna put this right here : Turn Nlips off to see the ships their normal size.

So far I'm really enjoying it, I'd put it at7 or 8 out of ten, selecting smaller units without nlips is a bit finicky, neither modern or classic controls worked well for me so I appreciated the easy to use customisation.

The gameplay may be a bit too fast paced for my liking, the game direly needs a veteran's system for your ships, I have no attachment to the ships I send out.

The graphics are beautiful, watching the turrets move on the mothership is outstanding, the impact damage, the smoke trails, gorgeous.

I also realise I'm one of the few who really liked the idea of the wargames mode, but I'd rather have some more unique enemies / bosses instead of just an incarnate battle cruiser.

To address some complaints I read:

The needing to use unit abilities really isn't that invasive, I hate micro and I'm finding it reasonable enough, most cooldowns are quite awhile and very situational.

Gathering all resources at the end of the level was never my thing, it ruins a lot of the urgency to me, but I understand others want it, it'd be good to add.

Overall its good, maybe I'll hate it more later on, or who knows for now I'm having a good time.

Having a really good time, the gameplay is fun, the impact of combat is visceral, its very pretty and I'm enjoying myself.

I've had one crash, and it seems to be the annoyingly common armour customisation one.

Not sure how I feel about the gun unlock system with warbonds, guns should be separate to cosmetic stuff which is my biggest gripe, I'm glad you can get the premium currency in game, but still sucks it exists in a full price game at all.

I'm hoping they bring back the vehicles, it's the biggest thing missing to me.

I really enjoyed the first game, and I must say I was pretty worried that with the more direct narrative I saw in the demo had me worried for the game, cause to go from just two well done characters to many is tough and I wasn't sure what was going to happen.

My doubts were unfounded evidently, this was a superb experience, it's made me think, made me have fun and care for the characters and most importantly given me insight into other things, I don't know why games like this hit me so hard but I'm thankful for them, if there was to be one complaint there were too many moments in the golden puzzles where I got stuck in an area and couldn't get out, where a ladder could have been viable.

Thankyou for the experience guys.

I'm in sort of a middle-ground, I had fun, I got scared and those are the two important bits so I recommend on that level.

It feels odd in a series to go from too much narrative back down to too little, the RNG whilst making for a good amount of replay made it feel a bit stilted at time, and I felt that the story took a back seat and this was all about the monster, which is fine, but I don't feel I learnt anymore about the series as a whole.

I also had a frustrating time with the final segment but it was a lot of overthinking on my part, the inventory management had some frustrating moments but it made me think about what I needed which is a good thing.

All in all a solid entrance to the series, better than the walking sim (Even if I really enjoyed the story and alien environments in Rebirth, whilst ik a few people didn't) anyway, workshop support right away? I'm intrigued to see what the community does with this foundation

Backed this awhile ago and honestly forgot it was coming out.

If you enjoyed either Stasis games or Beautiful desolation I think you'll enjoy this too, I don't know how they keep knocking it out of the park and making me invested and feel stuff about their fictional worlds but it's genuinely good stuff.

The story is great, the detailed environments are great, I couldn't get the AA on the characters working satisfactorily as my only graphical issue (That and it's SO dark) there's a lot of talent in the art department.

Gameplay is very adventure game affair, with the bad and good of those trappings, it comes with a guide which I had to make liberal use of, a few things weren't so clear to me that a simple character message or description when looking closely at an object and trying something would have helped.

(i.e Attempting a device that needs another part and the character saying "Huh, almost" would have changed a lot, or a "This has nothing to do with this" kind of reaction, or even a text description when in the zoomed in mode cause if you've forgotten what the parts are that they've talked about before, you'll never know again. Simple lil fix like that would have got me through every puzzle)

I'd still heartily recommend it though, it's up there with SOMA in underwater, thought-provoking horror!

Genuinely can't wait to see what they come out with next.

I am brave. I am strong.

It's pretty good

Well this brought me to tears.

My secret word is : Trusting