Recent reviews by Napkin (RPKN)

Lovely automation game. It has enemies to constantly harass our base and drive boredom away, constant demand for more and new resources and developing the logistics to acquire them, protecting said base from enemies, and now it has new maps (space and other planets) with different hazards too. Very active and dedicated devs and community.

The gameplay is really nice, the gunplay is also great, but I think this game is trying too hard to be like Destiny in the wrong ways as well, not just the good aspects.

Right now, I feel like rushing into the game not because the game feels great, but because it shoves so much time limited stuff on my face that I feel obligated to do stuff. I don't want any of that pressure, I already have a job and life to care about.

There is too much bad monetization and excessive grind right now, and it relies too much in FOMO (i.e.: battle passes). At the same time, this game inherits a lot of mechanics from Warframe, but none of the good aspects related to being more casual friendly (better monetization, less FOMO). The battle pass didn't feel like it's worth its value. What I receive back as a player in Warframe is much higher for the same amount of money as the battle pass in First Descendant, and they need to rework this. It has to feel more rewarding.

There is a lot of good stuff in this game, and potential, but right now, as it is, I can't recommend it for people who, like me, want to play it in a casual way, without having to worry about deadlines, FOMO and all that.

I'll give it a long break, and plan on returning to it in the future to give it another chance, but this game will need to change a bunch of these aspects for me to change the review into a positive one.

Pretty good, but I felt like it needed mods to be a complete experience.

Old AC fan, biased (played since the PS1 days). The game feels just like an old AC game with a few modern elements, I am loving it!
Warning: Just be wary that the Steam version, as of today (30 Aug 2023) is struggling with a few performance issues (apparently FromSoft carried them over from Elden Ring...).
Fans have created fixes which can be found online and in the community hub, and hopefully FS will fix them down the line.

Therapeutic. And the soundtrack is killer too.

This game is dangerously addicting. Recommended!

I write this as someone who has played Halo CE and 2 when they came out for PC, then never again (waiting for the franchise to come out to PC someday). Well, that day came, and we got MCC. I can't say much from a Halo fan's perspective as I was never enough of a fan to get the consoles just for the games alone. But I held out hope that it'd come for PC someday, so I guess there's that. I wasn't disappointed, the games run fine, the Anniversary editions are great, specially Halo 2. I got it on sale, just for the campaigns, and it satisfied me, 10/10 for someone who likes Halo but doesn't care much about multiplayer.

Lovely isometric pixel-art action. Like everyone else says, art is top-notch, so is the soundtrack and general atmosphere (the lore, setting and everything else).
This game has made me feel like a child playing video-games for the first time ever, and at least to me, that was a very special experience that I haven't had in a long time. Might have something to do with the choices the devs made regarding the GUI and how the game conveys information (or the lack of it haha). I did grow up in the 90s so this game might just strike me with the right kind of nostalgia... who knows!

An important note however, is that I have seen many complain that the combat in this game needs some work/polishing due to timing issues and the such. Things like I-frames, controls needing responsiveness tweaks, etc.
I liked the combat though, but I'm not a very avid or hardcore gamer, so being a bit of a casual, I guess I just kinda brute-forced it through trial-and-error, which I can't say is the best way to enjoy something. That said, the combat might not be everyone's cup of tea.

So, summarizing, I loved the experience and IMHO this game is a wild ride... the sights and sounds... atmosphere and all that made it for me, I give it a solid 9/10.
Just keep in mind the combat and controls might feel a bit off.

I recommend this game to anyone who has played games with RTS and RPG elements, from franchises like Fallout (both old and new), Dragon Age, Command and Conquer and Total War, among others. Or pretty much anyone who wants a very different experience as this game has struck me as being very unique.

This game combines the elements of squad based RPGs (individual unit stats and inventory/equipment) with RTS games (building and managing bases and units), with factions and an enormous open world (some 870 km² iirc).

You start the game as one of the many possible game start scenarios you can choose from (i.e: a lone wanderer, a slave, a group of poor people) and figure out what to do with your character(s) from there. The appearance of your character(s) is also customizable when you start (and later on when you find plastic surgeon NPCs).

It is important to note, as the game itself advertises, that you are not special, your characters have basic statistics like everyone else, and a generic town guard will wipe your entire party if you are unprepared.
There is no individual leveling/EXP system, all your statistics increase with usage (there are multiple categories of statistics, i.e: combat, engineering, athletics, science, farming, etc) and they affect how your characters interact with the game world.

The game does not feature active skills (magic or anything of the sort), the combat mechanics are closer to Fallout in this regard (though you can sneak, perform certain actions like picking up people, or patching wounds, looting, etc.) and you do not have active combat actions like jumping/dodging on demand (i.e.: use an AoE attack, or throw a bomb, drink a potion, etc.). It also does not feature vehicles or explosives. Your characters are semi-autonomous and will attack with moves based on their skill level with their equipped weapon type (there is a variety of weapons and types to choose from, including unarmed combat), the blocking and dodging is also autonomous and the performance will be linked to the relevant character skill/stat.

You can micro-manage them, like picking targets, actions like toggling block mode (no attack, only defense), and movement for instance. For example, you could order the tankier characters to taunt and block enemies while the ranged characters attack and a medic rescues and heals your wounded behind the front lines.

There is no real "goal" in the game but surviving (careful, you can starve to death!) and doing your thing in the game world (the world is a sandbox with day/night cycles and NPCs have their daily routines). You can try to affect and change the world or blend in; build your base and become a major faction or join an existing faction, or maybe buy a house on a large city or something similar.

There is a faction relations mechanic which can earn you allies or enemies in the game with the existing NPC factions. Your choice of character also affects intrinsic relations with certain factions as well (the game features sexism, racism, slavery and other real world themes), for example, playing as a skeleton (robot) makes the Holy Nation attack you on sight as they hate skeletons (regardless of your faction relation with them). You can build a base and recruit many characters to eventually wage war against a major faction for example.

The factions and world remind me of the Fallout franchise, except with samurais, ninjas, robots, swords and crossbows in your average post-apocalyptic setting with ancient technology lost to the people of the present. However, there is no major over-arching plot or campaign, you just live in that world like everyone else.

Regarding the RTS elements, you can assign 'jobs' to your units so they manage your base according to these jobs (i.e: farming, building, hauling, research, crafting, search and rescue/first aid, etc.), and you can also create squads to better organize your units as you can recruit many NPCs in the game world, with some being generic procedurally generated characters, while others have a backstory and some unique dialogue. Your base can eventually run itself autonomously if you assign all basic functions properly as your characters will work, produce food, defend and run the base according to the instructions you assigned as their jobs.

The combat is very unique (imho), by combining RTS and RPG mechanics and combat behavior, it makes use of the unit statistics/equipment and simple commands (passive, taunting, defensive, sneaky, etc) you give to each character along with a limb-based damage system (limbs can be permanently removed, and then eventually replaced with prosthetics). There are different damage types as well, which can make characters fall unconscious (for non-lethal approaches for example) or bleed to death, or both. Watch out for the fauna as well, they might eat your characters alive and play fetch with their severed limbs.

The game features a on-demand save/load and quicksave/load system, it also allows you to pause and speed up gameplay (but not rewind), similar to the Total War franchise. It is not turn-based. You can control the camera freely, again in a similar fashion to the Total War games.

You can play anything from a farmer, researcher, craftsman or merchant, to a stealthy ninja who steals from, kidnaps and assassinates people, or a mighty general, a bounty-hunting warrior or a wandering traveler, or maybe all of those combined.

For those who are interested in modding, props to the devs for the good mod compatibility of the game (it comes with simple mod management built in the launcher), which also has a very active modding community (both in the steam workshop or the nexus) with many options to choose from.

It is worth noting that the game engine has its limitations and due to the scale of the world you might face stuttering whenever you move fast across the game world due to the terrain and objects being loaded. The game also may have many units on screen at any given time and that may cause lag on lower end PCs. Tweak your graphics settings accordingly and mind the simplistic graphics, this game is rather laggy but isn't known for Crysis-like high end visuals.

I'm not part of the Undertale fandom or anything, I expected this game to be rather bland based on the marketing material, even though I knew the the guy behind it (Radiation) from the MSPA forums... boy, was I in for a surprise...
Don't expect anything from this game, ignore most reviews, and please, by all means, play it as blindly as possible. This game is an amazing experience. That's all I can say.