Recent reviews by csr

I was in the middle of writing this review when i decided to go on a speedrun to "find the content." I found content. It's hidden behind like, 10 levels of the same boring cave. There are apparently bosses in this game, which i could not imagine trying to find and defeat without being bored out of my mind from the seemingly-endless empty caves that you need to traverse through in order to find it.
I found a cursed sword which was kind of cool. A minecart which looked absolutely silly but apparently it brought me down a few floors so that sped things up a bit.
Overall... Pleasantly surprised, but still miffed that i had to play this game for over an hour to find any content.

It's free, so it's fine for a short time waster, but it's nothing special. The gameplay loop is enter cave, hit enemies until they die, get perks, repeat. There is no gameplay outside of that. The fact that there is a ten dollar battlepass for this game is actually disappointing.

And why, in a game about dwarves in a cave with a pickaxe, do you not allow me to use the pickaxe for anything aside from hitting monsters?

If you're going to add a paid battlepass, at least have content in the game aside from killing the same enemy over and over again with the same boring swing animation. Protip for game devs.

It's a charming little game for sure, but I can't see myself actually playing it for more than an hour.

Can't recommend if you value quality of experience over quantity of hours required to play this thing.

Highly recommended if you enjoy Factorio or FTB/Tekkit and couldn't care less that the game sucks.

The game plays similar to Factorio in its early stages. You crash land on an alien world surrounded by danger and you must automate your way to victory. Sounds pretty straightforward... Right?
...Wrong. The game throws you in with a barebones tutorial that just tells you to do things without any explanation of their functions. It then forces you to rely on an in-game guidebook that is hardly even finished, and tends to bug out with mislabeled entries or broken buttons. Sometimes entries don't even exist! (Lithium coils please?)

Now here we get into the main gameplay element: Automation. The game expects you to progress RAPIDLY. And that might honestly be an understatement. The game shouts at you to build things that you are nowhere close to having access to with your current resources, and on top of that it expects you to know how everything works off the bat from lousy descriptions. Also, despite being one of the main focal points of the game, the automation is extremely difficult to do. You are expected to be automating the tier 2 versions of most things before you even have access to iron, which is required for basically everything (not to mention just the extraordinary amount of it you need... I mean come on, 5 entire ingots of iron for a single tiny gear?! How does automation change the amount required? Where does all the material from manual crafting go?!)
Now you might be thinking, "I'm smart, I can figure all this out on my own!" Well, that's where you're wrong, kiddo.
The game requires that you upgrade everything "immediately!" even though the upgrade materials are stupidly expensive and not worth your time for the meager amount of efficiency that the new versions provide. On top of that, it's not clear from the start that you can PLACE CONVEYORS SIDEWAYS, UPSIDE DOWN, AND ON WALLS AND THINGS STILL SOMEHOW TRAVEL ON THEM FINE.

And i'm not even going to get into the DLCs which are abhorrently priced and only serve to pad the length of the game with unnecessary ♥♥♥♥ like Mutators. (Mind you, the game on NORMAL settings is projected to be 80+ hours of playtime even though, realistically, it's more than double that.)

This game looks and plays like it's in Alpha yet the dev decided it was polished enough to release...
Dude, you can't even exit to the main ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ menu from in-game. You are forced to QUIT TO DESKTOP in order to return. What kind of dev allows their game to have such a massive oversight after nearly 6 years? Also I've heard through the grapevine that the dev has abandoned this thing, as has said on twitter "perhaps it's time for a sequel."

Dev, if you care at all about your games, and even read these reviews, DO NOT MAKE A SEQUEL, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. FIX THIS GAME FIRST! I can't stress enough how janky and poorly executed this game is, on top of how confusing it is to learn...

With that being said, play this game at your own risk. I admit, it is fun, but it is NOT a good or polished game by any definition of the term.
/rant
3/10

i ♥♥♥♥ with this

10/10

UPDATE: ok so i've played this game way too much. Time to fix my review

Empyrion is the game I've been wanting for a long time. An immense game full of exploration, combat, building, customization, and survival, the game's titular activity.
The amount of variety in planets, stars, POIs and even just landscapes is impressive. On top of that, the devs are constantly adding new features and fixing old problems. They never disappoint. Playing the game solo is much more relaxing, and acts as a much better creative outlet than I thought in my first review of this game.

The game's expansiveness, however, can be a double-edged sword.
Exploring the galaxy can feel overwhelming at times. The sheer number of stars, planets, asteroid fields, POIs, enemy ships and space stations can feel like a bit too much. Other issues the scale of the game presents is the reuse of assets. The devs have stated that they have had to purchase and reuse assets in order to save time and energy for gameplay. It feels a bit worse for me because I recognized some of the assets from other games (Most notably the model for the Abominations/Nightmares. I've seen it in a few asset-flip games so it sours my opinion of it a bit)...

Mods such as Reforged Galaxy and Project Eden help immensely with filling in content gaps and making the galaxy feel more engaging. Project Eden has many custom planets and stars, which makes every new planet an exciting discovery, and Reforged Galaxy adds some neat balance changes that can spice up gameplay after a long vanilla playthrough.

Empyrion is one of my favourite survival games, hands-down. It's fun, engaging, and honestly quite beautiful. Looking out of my Capital Vessel at a giant nebula star, or building a beach house on an ocean planet and watching the sun fall past the watery horizon is always relaxing (This might be the space nerd in me talking, but I'm sure many people can agree with my sentiments). The game can be even more exciting with friends, especially when you can challenge each other, or when PvP is involved.

I can safely give Empyrion: Galactic Survival a 9.5/10. Keep up the damn good work.

So glad Re-Logic brought this onto steam as a free DLC.

Thank you to the Tmodloader team for making this a thing :)

Excellent character designer.

Horrible survival game.

This is a mixed bag. If you're getting it for the survival gameplay elements, you will be sadly disappointed.

If you're getting it for the character designer, however, you will be pleasantly surprised with how detailed, in-depth, and high quality the features are.

In both cases, it's still better with the HF patch.

Do not get this game at full price. Get it on sale. It is not worth full price.

10/10 points for the character designer aspects
2/10 points for the survival island dating sim aspects

Awesome realistic survival game. I highly recommend this game if you are a fan of games like The Forest or The Long Dark. Note that this game is HARD and UNFORGIVING. Not for the weak!

One of the most enjoyable roguelike games i've played. Action-packed, bullet-hell fun around every corner!

10/10 would get mugged by some egyptian gods again

boom pow shoot

yes amazing