Recent reviews by Advert

It crashes quite often, and you will lose any gear you brought with you when this happens.

You will also lose everything you have if you do not play enough, as well, which is a questionable design choice.

It takes a bit to get going.
If you don't like turn based games then this probably isn't your cup of oil.

+ Story has decent voice acting, etc; at least, to begin with.
- Loading screens.
- Clunky feel. Compare this to Into the Breach, where everything is really smooth and crisp; this is the opposite.
- Loading screens.
- Bad monitor support. Two monitors? Mouse will not lock. Click something on your other screen? Game window will minimize.
- Loading screens.
- Just really clunky. It's turn based, yet there is a "Continue" button at the bottom once loading is finished, instead of going into the game but not starting any dialogue etc. until you click.
+ I think they will fix these problems, I bought the game because I like Harebrained Schemes, but it really looks like Paradox is dragging them down. Two titles from them in a row now that just don't feel thought out.
+ Character customization, I guess? Not really sure how it affects the game so far, but it appears to give you something.
- LOADING SCREENS REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

TL;DR: Very rough. But also very polishable. More than you can expect from most early access titles.

- What this game does well:

Story. You feel like a part of the world, in the way that the world will move without you. You can't do everything; you can't accept every mission and complete it (Missions have time limits. Occasionally they will overlap, you have difficulties procuring some item for them, ...).

Ship customization. You get to modify your crew, your talents, etc.

- What this game does not do so well:

Character traits/abilties. They just really lack depth, though some of them are cool.

Combat (Spaceship). The UI fails you here, and the mechanics are not very interesting.

Combat(Crew). There's less mechanics going on here, and this uses the typical flash game multi character combat model.

Both these combat sections could be improved significantly, and I have no doubt the devs are aware of this and are figuring out how to do this.

- What this game is awful at:

Soundtrack. I think there is some stock roll going on in the background (i.e, there is no soundtrack yet). Weapon effects are poor as well, though I wouldn't call them awful.

Graphics. This is flash game tier. It could really use some work.

UI. It gets the job done, but it's really, really clunky. Massive improvements can be made here. Again, feels flash game tier where you just make the straightforward UI without many QoL options like filtering, updating results as you are searching, etc. Text entry is awful, since it enters the text on key up instead of down. Try typing your character name with capital letters. It's really weird. This'd make an excellent prank script with autohotkey, though :D

Character traits/abilities(2). You can use an ability to heal crew members -- after ship combat, in ship combat, but not when you are in the void. For some abilities this makes sense, for others, not so much. Almost feels like all those JRPGs where you stay in combat with a weak enemy to cast your healing ability or something to that end.



There's probably more where this came from, but it's being actively developed, so for once, my hopes for an early access title are up, even though this might sound like the world is on fire and you shouldn't buy this game; I have enjoyed it for the time I've spent playing. I really might be falling into the "it has a lot of potential" trap, though. But the general idea of the game ticks a lot of checkmarks for me.

TL;DR Terrible UI/QoL. It's like walking into ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, and realizing hours later, when it's too late to refund.
[ ] Buy at full price
[ ] Buy at half price
[ ] Play for free
[x] Wait for early access to end, then reconsider

The amount of effort the devs put into the actual game design is severely lacking.

In terms of QoL for the player:

Think a game from the 2000s. Maybe Sim City 2000 or something. Many menus, tons of things to configure, etc. etc. A lot of statistics. To do simple tasks, you might have to spend some time doing each thing individually.

This game: Remove the stats, simplify the menus, simplify them again. Now, you have the tedious tasks of moving people from one dome to another, but you can only do it 1 by 1. And you have to select the people to move, which unfortunately there isn't really a roster you can select them from, other than the residences. So you have to look through your residences, to find your person. But wait! You can't see their traits there, only their specialization. Oh well.

Not worth the time trying to get it run. In the past Nexon support doesn't do anything other than give your copypasta.

Fun game, but you will get frustrated by the constant crashes, poor performance, bugs (your guys ump from a roof, through another roof, then re-appear where they should land / other graphical wtfs like grenades teleporting, attacks "missing" but visually hitting / enemy climb ladder, melee your guy, then teleport a floor below, to name a few) and also the black screens (followed by crashes).