Recent reviews by omar_uav

A FPS squad based shooter, very similiar to BattleField 2 AI squad with human squad, yet the game is underwhelming regarding balance , QoL and grinding.



- Very Wide Matchmaking Battle Rating Bracket
PZ II vs T34, 20mm vs 76mm how should a player overcome such thing.
After that a match of M4A3 (105), a Tier 4 tank , while am still at Tier 1, not to mention the planes and small arms included , with full squads all with laser SMGs.

Such experience makes the match completely dull and not fair and not fun matches of one sided stomping.

- Very Wide Matchmaking Level Bracket
Full Level Marshall with Paratroopers jumping on top of your head, and the best you get is reserve infantry with WW1 Rifles.


- Overpowered weapons/vehicles
Top Players either Full LMG/SMG squads or Plane/Arty Spammer.

PPS-42/43 SMG can shot laser beam up to 70meters (its medium-long range in game), while same class as your SMG which yours have high recoil and low RoF.

T-50 failing to be penetrated nearly any place you shot it, sometimes even deflecting PAK40 AT Gun, an gun 2 year advanced than the tank itself.

- Realistic Tank Ballistics in Non-Realistic Environment
Warthunder Ballistics of actual real values, which combat ranges are easily over 1 Kilometer away, while in game extreme long range is 200-300M.
a PTRD can penetrate your tank from spawn to spawn due to such reason.

- Non realistic Warfare with Realistic Tanks
A guy 360 no scope hipfire a PTRS while carrying TNT+grenades+SMG+ carrying his whole 3 factions inventory , after that throws a TNT over 15 meters range scoring golden medal in the olympics.
Whole squad carrying Bazzokas paradrop over your head and just insta wipe you.
Tank cant go over 30 degree hill due to historical accuracy, PZ III J moves at top 24 km/h in game (although historically can be faster) , every slight turning or bumping speed drops to near 0.
Tanks visbility is too bad, every player carrying TNT and just rushes and sucidie bombs you, even worse thank Battlefield. (Could learn from Red Orchestra 2)
Tanks Machine guns overheat if you fire over 20 rounds (not even realisitc).
Tanks Turret Turn is very slow most of the time you only need to camp way behind to be useful.
Bazzoka and panzerfaust can fire over 100m, although ranges in the game is about 150m.

- Sudden Spawn of Artillery piece
Suddenly PAK40 spawned from the pocket of an engineer, no solhuite or ghost or anything, just pops out suddenly, its easier to spawn AT gun infront line than drive a tank.

- Dedicated Fighter Class with no Dedicated AA
You can only get AA if you are a leveled up enough Engineer class, there is no vehicle AA or better way to access AA, as AA is fully static unlike AT Guns.




- Wacky Tanks
Tanks when stopped keeps moving in its place (does not snap with the terrain).
Tanks cant climb terrain and slides off terrin like soap is all over the place
Tanks Reload Round Switching Perk reduces your reload speed than increases.
Loader perk only works when at loader seat, if 1 crew left and get into the tank again the whole crew setup gets mixed up and loader becomes gunner, losing the his traits same goes for the driver.
Smoke Screen that dont work, weird smoke screen launches backside.

- Over Customization per Soldier
You need to add each soldier first aid kit, grenade, rifle, perks, upgrades, skill tree etc. Some squads have 9 members in it, a very tiring thing to do.

-

- Dailies Mechanics Are Weak
Dailies are not given to you direcly, they attached to random mission, and this mission maybe impossible to do, as am in Tier 1, need to get Semi-Auto Rifle kills, a gun appears at Tier 3.
1 daily reward can be equailvant to same price as 1 grenade per 1 soldier, need better daily.



- Progression is Slow
atleast 100 games to unlock next gun in T2-T3.

- Forced buying of Previous item to proceed
you must buy everything before to procced to next item, example you need to buy SDKFZ 234/2 and Panzer J1 even if you not using them, but just to be able to buy Panzer III N or Panzer IV.

- Bundles and Premium Units Are Costy
1 unit only, and its a vehicle unit which have a max per game and not every map do support vehicles as some are purely urban warfare, costs 40$

A mix of many RPG games together, giving a new experience.

Sadly the game is slugged down by certain implementation.

Heavily Infested RNG
The world is based on 3 dimensions, but here we got 9 dimensions, and 6 of it is RNG.

Upgrade your weapon power level? every stat gets downgraded, repeat the RNG Loop of rerolling weapon stat everytime you upgrade your weapon, never ending cycle.

An item with 20% Drop Chance, been doing it in a full team, 9 times , got it in the 9th , yet am the only one from the team who got it.

Overpriced Items
Once i saw the price of season pass i was going to buy it , affordable price and gives you back some of the spent currency, as the game value the players money, but... once i saw characters prices 40-100$ per 1 character , you may like its playstyle or not, and a single pair of trousers and shirts costs 30$?

Gameplay not aligned with some characters play style

No Health/Mana Regen Casses with holding the line or ranged focused suffers from those issues, while classes that are based on running around can easily collect ammo and Mana.

Unblockable Attacks Many attacks ingame, especially from bosses requires running around to dodge and are basically 1 tapping attacks, classes with low mobility or shield as cover suffers alot with those types of bosses, as such attacks ignores shields.

Ammo issue for lockdown characters
All ammo types need to be collected, and base ammo is moderate in size.


Everything Costs, Money or Time
A paint for a skin? pay real money.
Unlocking Character? wait for 12+ hours, want to skip? pay money.
Crafting Material? wait for 4 hours.

Game is Anti-Social
Party making is buggy and very limited, you cant leave a party, you cant join an existing party if you are in party, 2+2 cant join together.

every sector is maxed at 4 players, you and 3 players can be in a sector, sadly sometimes those players are AFK you need to do all the missions solo.

Communication between players is bare minimum and no notification, whispers or chatting lacks any sound clue, as also pinging targets or enemy is not there.

I Really hope such issues to be fixed, as the game have a decent gunplay, but sadly lot of deterrents.

Game is really fun from Difficulty 1-4 , after that becomes pretty much very linear and frustrating.

- Buggy Bugs: No not Bugs Bunny, Bugs are Buggy.

Dead Bugs as Cover
All sized bugs tend to leave behind their corpse, such corpses act as a cover to other “alive” bugs, which it stops or even deflect projectiles & explosives, while also they don’t change their path, they just walk through the corpses , which makes them immune to taking any damage , especially after killing a large enemy. While also shooting bugs projectiles pass through those corpses, which makes it’s a cover that works for one side only.

Support Calling Bugs
For some reason a support calling bug (a creature) does not require LOS (Line of Sight), they can call support from either behind actual “Terrain” or “Corpses”, which makes it impossible to stop reinforcement even if you try to intercept.

- Player Rag dolling:
Garry’s Mod/Source Engine inspired flying from explosive like, its looks fun and nice, yet its way too punishing, the simplest slope will keep you locked and sliding like water for couple of seconds not able to shot or move, just laying there doing nothing.

- One Tappers:
Mainly about “Rocket Devastator”, a mech that shots salvo of rockets almost with 100 meters range (Far Range) , and require just 1 rocket to take you down even with a heavy Armor, even if diving (which reduce explosive damage) you still are able to die from 1 rocket.

- Air Support Angling:
As a feature in HD2, your support arrives from your ship/destroyer, orbital support is all angled depending on which side of the map you are, but when it comes to air support, same thing happens although you get an actual air support, and most of air support are carpet bombings or strafing runs, with angling not controllable, most of the times it’s a miss or unintended friendly fire due to predefined angling of bombing run.

- Terrain Explosive Calculation:
Explosives penetrate terrain to a certain level, for example a tank shell can penetrate even concrete walls, doing much lower damage than direct hit. Yet when it comes to stratagem, the calculation is too harsh, a 500 KG Bomb does 0 damage, because there is a little elevation difference.

- Armor is ineffective:
Going light armor makes you more resilient, as many attacks are just one taps, you need to dodge rather than absorb, bile bug attacks and rusher are nearly impossible to dodge with heavy armor Armor offers no deflection, even the worst bug or bullet can damage or flinch your aim, yet suffer from huge debuffs, as low stamina reduces your accuracy, heavy armor makes you even a worse shooter, a system to “starship trooper: Extermination heavy armor” would be better.

- Anti-Armor options are bad:
All Anti-Armor Weaponry are pretty bad, Recoilless Gun requires 2-6 shots against a non-boss armored target, as in Hulk or Charger, yet require a lot of upkeep to maintain the Recoiless Rifle, as it punishes solo Recoilless player harshly with extensive reload time and makes player fully vulnerable. when it comes to spear (pretty much a javelin AT Missile), the target acquisition is weird, its not smooth as the Commando from HD1, or even any game with guided AT missiles, secondly its ammo is way too limited, only option right now is Railgun, which is decent vs mechs , yet suffer against bugs due that heavy armor targets atleast require 4 shots.
Update: on 6/March, railgun got nerfed without buffing any other anti armor options.

- Most Stratagems are Weak:
MGs as support weapon slot is decent in Diff 1-3, once medium/heavy armored target exists it suffers, especially the Stalwart. 120mm Barrage-380mm Barrage are weirdest support ability, very wide AoE, yet very limited ammunition fired, even with upgrade quite weak. 110mm Rockets, even in its video, it fails to kill its targets, and so many stratagems go on.

- Most Weapons are Bad:
Breaker or Dominator, everything else is way to weak to compete, snipers having same penetration as SMGs, DMRs having same damage as SMGs, a weapon with AP Ammo does ½ damage of non AP variant, yet also suffer from higher recoil, less ammo and lower ROF. Burst weapons have a weird working mechanism of firing semi & burst at once.

Update: on 6/March , rather than fixing weak weapons, every good weapon was nerfed, with no weapon buffed.

- Supply Pickup isn’t Scaled:
Supply gives Full Ammo, ½ stim, ½ grenades, and support weaponry ammo, depending on the weapon, yet the scale of support weapon is pretty much bad, you need from 2-4 supply to fill support weapons, also armor that gives extra grenades or stims does not benefit from getting extra stim or grenades per supply.

- Max Currency:
Max currency of just 50,000 is way too low, also no alert or message indicate that a player reached max currency.


06/March Update Aimed at fixing the balance of the game, which did output weirdly, allowing no options to deal with armored targets as with the nerf of railgun and also nerfing the only weapon that is effective in game. That the Devs, have stated exactly the next day, that the nerf was harsh and armored Bugs/Bots is going to be nerfed, while also going to change the spawn rate of heavy units.

Nerf a weapon & Make other Stronger
Breaker shotgun, was nerfed with increased recoil and less ammo, while buffed Spray&Pray shotgun, that now everyone has switched to the spray and pray variant, due to how bad the original breaker variant is, the issue is breaker is available much earlier than spray&pray variant , nearly by 140 Medals. while in reality the whole thing that was "OP" in the breaker, that the game have no damage fall off, you can snipe with it over 100 meters.

Dropping Weapon Below Standard
Railgun was nerfed too harsh, that it ricochet off armor on "stable mode" or low charge mode, while also does 1/2 damage when it peirce armor, failing to serve any purpose at current state, that the already weak "Anti-Material Sniper" serves better purpose than the Railgun.

these issues are pretty much the most affecting on game play, yet many other yet less impacting issues do still exist.

Ark + Colony Survival + Many Survival other games, all together into one.

Ready or Not, Is Not Ready.


- Wall Bangs: AI will shot you through wall corners, even if you were walking slowly , somehow they got sensors.

- John Wick Altitude: A Suspect has taken 3 7.62 rounds to his limbs, runs to you and scores all his shots, the suspect is just a looter looting a Gas Station.

- Grenades are short term effect: suspect gets 1x Stinger 1x Flashbang and 3x Beanbag shells, to just surrender, once you close in they draw out a gun. the suspect was not even wearing clothes.

- Shooting & Throwing grenades , increases suspects aggression: somehow shooting a target or breaching with nades increases suspects aggression, you should approach them slowly with gifts.


- Scopes are barely usable: scopes are hard to see through, almost all of engagement i play on canted , with or without laser, much better than using a scope.

- Loadout slots limited: sometimes i feel am police on budget, barely having enough slots for a mission.

- Pepperball are anti-player rather than anti-suspect: pepperball will make a suspect surrenders after multiple shots, once closing in to cuff the suspect, your character gets affected and takes damage, if you wait for pepperball effect to disappear the suspect will resist arrest and deploy a weapon.

- Grenade launcher ammo is static: If a player wants to be the operator for deploying nades, cannot as ammo is constant and cant be increased.

- Chemlight Colors & Flares: Chemlight are limited 10 per player, and all players chemlight are all alike, yet also chemlights are barely visible and hard to see, some maps chemlight is way too dim for it, as large rooms or even outdoors, flares are mostly needed for those situations.

- Operator Back Tape/Nametag: in SWAT 4, SWAT operators had their names and team color on their back, allowing quick interaction and planning, here its missed.


- No Off/On for specific mods: Its either you uninstall the mods or install them, makes it hard to play with other players who are running other mods, you can still play vanilla by safe mode, but not using specific ones.

- Buffer OverFlow of Slots: There is a mod that allows more inventory slots, yet it was working before the official release, now it gives all clients "Buffer overflow and kicks them out".


- Optiwand/under door mirror: in SWAT 4, you can use align the angle of the camera to a certain side and use it to peek corners, here its way soo static, also Picture in picture mode is not visible at all, as if the operator sneezed on the screen.

- Door Breaching shotgun: it works as a aircannon, you shot the door from 50meters away, it opens the door a little, sometimes even shooting it directly on the lock point blank , it opens the door by half , without breaking lock or anything.

- Body Armor Mitigate Damage:
Wearing Ceramic armor and got shot at by some homemade 9mm pistol, in the plate , you get injured.

Legs hurt for kicking a door: kicked a door 3 times, didn't unlock ,took damage and cant walk straight, got stressed and need therapy. Is this what SWAT about? getting therapy from getting insulted by a door?

Campaign only stress level: Kinda a good idea, it gives real life feeling, yet its too much, with aggressive suspect AI, every game is a shootout, you can get even S, yet your operators are stressed because they got shot at , even if its a miss.

- New Base: The new base feels more alive and better in overall, yet a bit large and feels a maze sometimes , but more lively.

- Campaign Mode its a nice mode for single players, yet i feel it require more depth between operators.

- New Missions: We got many new missions with different design which increases content for us to experience.


-SWAT 4 Elite Mode: A very decent mod for the old gem SWAT 4, it improves Suspect AI, Civilian AI, Load out management, pretty much if implemented in RoN, would fix many issues.

Silica fills a genre that was empty for a huge period of time.

Switching between Pure FPS/RTS whenever at your own convenience !
got bored of controlling troops? go to FPS, got tired of combat go to RTS , its amazing idea!

Yet game is lacky in terms of content at current state, the review do include many of as i see basic features in FPS/RTS,

FPS Side:
Classes are too basic.

• 1 Gun per class, no secondary
  
• 0 Abilities (Fast sprint/passive abilities staying in group/ more damage against certain enemy type etc.)
  
• No equipment (Grenades/Mines/C4/Grenade Launchers)
  
• No Combat Progression, you kill to attrition the enemy only.
  
• Classes are way straight forward
  
• Melee Weapons for human (weapon bash/weapon bayonet)
  
• Unit Commanding (Allow command of friendly AI)

RTS Side:
Lacks many RTS games main element, when compared even with old RTS games as COH1/2, World in Conflict, Men of War Assault Squad.

• Lack of commands, the only command you can give is right click
  
• Lack of Hotkeys
  
• Lack of VoiceLine (atleast voice effect that unit in engagement) / Faction Announcer
  
• Lack of cover system (Although every faction have ranged units, no cover to build)
  
• Lack of XP Unit system or atleast veterancy when deployed (This makes early game unit disappear in late game rather than fill a role)
  
• Lack of Scheduling commands (you cant give more than 1 order at same time to a unit)
  
• Lack of Smart Commands (Keep distance from Melee units)
  
• Lack of Unit Information (you cant know if this unit is melee or ranged , accuracy/effective range
  
• Lack of Building Status
  
• Lack of Events Viewer HUD
  
• Lack of Unit Upgrades
  
• Lack of Obstacle/Defensive Buildings

Core Gameplay:

• Player soldiers seems stranded in the battlefield not knowing what to do , or don't have a objective to fulfill
  
• Game play can get some increased overall, infantry movement is slow,same goes for building, and resource collection.
  
• Allow to choose a unit when switching from RTS/FPS, whenever now you switch to FPS you spawn back at base , allow for both option either to spawn back at base or to frontline spawn.
  
• Allow for mobility improvement as with a match progresses, Tunnel as Teleport, Jetpacks, Transport helicopters or vehicles.
  
• Faction Core Abilities (Factions seems to have design for units only, not with special abilities or ideas.)
  
  
  i will recommend it for now due to its idea and genre, as it can be beautiful game in the future, reminds me of "Renegade X" and "Arma 3 ZEUS RTS"

2 Equally good & Unique Divisions

Half Baked Company of Heroes Game.


BUGS BUGS BUGS
The Game is overwhelmed with bugs, not even COH2 Beta had that back in June 2013 got those game breaking bugs.

- Tanks Disappear
- Units Not Functioning (Example Repair Vehicles not Repairing)
- Path Finding Bugs , even for infantry
- Buggy Abilities
- Most Sounds Effects Missing and are generating "NO SOUNDS".


Bad Balance Design & Execution
- Factions do lack basic needs.
- COH2 Weapon Team spam but worse.
- COH1 Sniper Spam with huge defense on retreat. ( 4 Infantry Units with MGs cant kill 1 sniper)
- Bazooka/Shreck Infantry Spam (Anti All).
- Anti Infantry Tanks are doing worse than mainline tanks.

Weak Faction Design
- Doctrine Options that are Resource Trap (Example M4A3E8, M8 Scott)
- Some Faction got much lower units.


Voice Lines & Sound Downgrade
- Barely 1-2 Units Voice lines that do match the energy & atmosphere of WW2 Soldiers.
- German DAK Troops Speaking German-British Accent.
- US Voice Announcer seems like a phone game announcer.
- Many Weapon Sound Effects are weak.

Was Trying not to Downvote for a long time,
but here it is

The game is a Wonderful Baked Cake , that has been ruined by a very bad icing and decoration choices, that can be fixed in the future if they wanted to.

Atmosphere, map design, graphics, sound & visuals are all decent and amazing.

Balance, Gameplay, Classes,Builds,Shops are all not good at all.

Got Promised a shooter, but got Vermintide , with little more shooty less stabby.

a Free FPS game with lot of potential.

PvE mode is new of its type.