I want to start off this negative review by saying: if you are somewhat interested in automation games, just buy the game. You're getting a solid experience for a reasonable price (at the time of writing its only £33.50 / 38,99€ / $39.99). The developers, Coffee Stain, have undoubtedly put in a lot of work and it shows. However, I'm not recommending this game because I feel the game is slightly overrated compared to other automation games.

The rest of this review will compare Satisfactory to other automation games. I have 1800 hours in Factorio and about 400 more in other automation games like Dyson Sphere Program (DSP), Mindustry, Astroneer and Nova Lands. I played Satisfactory for 30 hours back in Update 3 in 2021 and I played 1.0 to completion in 160 hours in vanilla multiplayer.

• The best looking automation game on the market. The world, atmosphere and overall design of the entire game is incredibly well done which makes it all the more enjoyable whether you're watching the sunset or a screen full of machines working. The tools and building parts you are given lets you make some really cool looking factories which gives that "Man, all that hard work really did pay off" feeling.
  
• The difficulty is well balanced. Each crafting recipe had a good amount of thought put into each one. The game gradually increases the complexity of recipes to smooth out the learning curve. I never felt like any crafting recipe was too unfair or too pointless. Even the 120 screws for an iron cube recipe poses an interesting throughput challenge that teaches you that you can't just use 1 conveyor for 1 million items per minute.
  
• Satisfactory features alternative recipes for the same item via collecting hard drives while you're adventuring. This lets players choose recipes that are more complex but cheaper to produce or recipes that are more convenient for the location you're building them in. This is one of my favourite features as it makes the planning and factory building so much more compelling than just using the single default recipe that all other automation games give you. Its a feature I wish was added to more games in the genre.
  
• Many automation games have a non-factory building aspect to take your mind off the numbers and logistics. Factorio and DSP have expansion via blowing up and shooting the natives. In Satisfactory's case its blowing up and shooting the natives AND exploring a vast and interesting planet full of useful collectables. In my opinion, Satisfactory has the most interesting non-factory building part of the genre.
  
• The Nobelisk is one of my favourite weapons of any game (I like blowing stuff up)
  
• Uniquely, Satisfactory's worldspace is not procedurally generated and the entire worldspace is hand-crafted. This is a common criticism of the game since many games of this genre have fully procedurally generated worldspaces. However. for Satisfactory's case the hand-crafted world works very well. The world still feels just as cool in the 1.0 release as it did 3 years ago.

• The game is pretty buggy. And by automation game standards its VERY buggy. You can play Factorio and DSP from start to finish and not encounter a single bug. In Satisfactory's case, we had about 8 server crashes, 5 client crashes between us (not including Exit to desktop crashes) and a lot of annoying bugs like the hotbar stops working, custom map markers disappearing, server crash when deconstructing some machines and server crash on power outage. It seems like the goal of the 1.0 release was to add a lot of cool features (and they are pretty cool) but I would have appreciated if the 1.0 release of the game focused on polish and bug fixes rather than adding a lot of features.
  
• Building stuff in Satisfactory takes a long time. Coffee Stain did put a lot of effort into adding tools that help make the building process easier and faster but it is still lacking compared to other automation games. Making a building system that rivals the others is understandably not an easy task considering this game is 3D while others are 2D/2.5D but it does impact the gameplay experience regardless. I don't expect a complete overhaul but allowing me to zoop in 2 axis rather than just a line, build rails longer than 100 meters or stop snapping buildings to ridiculous positions and instead calculate the correct blue hologram for me would make building far less laborious.
  
• The automation challenge lacks depth. If a crafting building has 1 input, you feed in 1 splitters and 1 belt and repeat. If a crafting building has 2 inputs you feed in 2 splitters and 2 belts and repeat, etc. After you have built your first column for a specific building, you have built all of them, as the item you are crafting doesn't change the the layout of your inputs and outputs at all. This is a big contrast to Factorio which allows you to utilises numerous techniques like belt sideloading, direct insertion, belt weaving, etc. You of course are not required to use the same columns of buildings and splitters in Satisfactory but it is the meta and is easy to keep spamming these same boring lines when every other method just takes so much time to construct.
  
• Some factory building games allow you to copy a group of buildings (blueprinting) and paste to help speed up the construction process. Satisfactory has this feature, but in my opinion it is the worst implementation in the genre. You are given a building with limited space to create a blueprint and if you have a problem with that the in-game narrator tells you "it's a you problem". I think constraints can make problem solving more fun, but if you are ultimately pasting this same blueprint 6 times then there was no point in limiting the blueprint size in the first place and just makes building stuff more tedious. My suggestion is just let the players make a dragbox-like copy and paste as they wish like in Factorio or DSP.

The downsides of the game made it feel more like a chore and feeling "too long" towards the end and decided to just manually stuff the manufacturer to make the final project part just so we could finally complete the playthrough. I will happily change the review to positive if some of the pain points are addressed or at least tries to so that the game is fun start to finish. Thanks Coffee Stain for the great game and I can't wait to play future updates!

I want to start off this negative review by saying: if you are somewhat interested in automation games, just buy the game. You're getting a solid experience for a reasonable price (at the time of writing its only £33.50 / 38,99€ / $39.99). The developers, Coffee Stain, have undoubtedly put in a lot of work and it shows. However, I'm not recommending this game because I feel the game is slightly overrated compared to other automation games. The rest of this review will compare Satisfactory to other automation games. I have 1800 hours in Factorio and about 400 more in other automation games like Dyson Sphere Program (DSP), Mindustry, Astroneer and Nova Lands. I played Satisfactory for 30 hours back in Update 3 in 2021 and I played 1.0 to completion in 160 hours in vanilla multiplayer. [h2]The Good[/h2] [list] [*]The best looking automation game on the market. The world, atmosphere and overall design of the entire game is incredibly well done which makes it all the more enjoyable whether you're watching the sunset or a screen full of machines working. The tools and building parts you are given lets you make some really cool looking factories which gives that "Man, all that hard work really did pay off" feeling. [*]The difficulty is well balanced. Each crafting recipe had a good amount of thought put into each one. The game gradually increases the complexity of recipes to smooth out the learning curve. I never felt like any crafting recipe was too unfair or too pointless. Even the 120 screws for an iron cube recipe poses an interesting throughput challenge that teaches you that you can't just use 1 conveyor for 1 million items per minute. [*]Satisfactory features alternative recipes for the same item via collecting hard drives while you're adventuring. This lets players choose recipes that are more complex but cheaper to produce or recipes that are more convenient for the location you're building them in. This is one of my favourite features as it makes the planning and factory building so much more compelling than just using the single default recipe that all other automation games give you. Its a feature I wish was added to more games in the genre. [*]Many automation games have a non-factory building aspect to take your mind off the numbers and logistics. Factorio and DSP have expansion via blowing up and shooting the natives. In Satisfactory's case its blowing up and shooting the natives AND exploring a vast and interesting planet full of useful collectables. In my opinion, Satisfactory has the most interesting non-factory building part of the genre. [*]The Nobelisk is one of my favourite weapons of any game (I like blowing stuff up) [*]Uniquely, Satisfactory's worldspace is not procedurally generated and the entire worldspace is hand-crafted. This is a common criticism of the game since many games of this genre have fully procedurally generated worldspaces. However. for Satisfactory's case the hand-crafted world works very well. The world still feels just as cool in the 1.0 release as it did 3 years ago. [/list] [h2]The Bad[/h2] [list] [*]The game is pretty buggy. And by automation game standards its VERY buggy. You can play Factorio and DSP from start to finish and not encounter a single bug. In Satisfactory's case, we had about 8 server crashes, 5 client crashes between us (not including Exit to desktop crashes) and a lot of annoying bugs like the hotbar stops working, custom map markers disappearing, server crash when deconstructing some machines and server crash on power outage. It seems like the goal of the 1.0 release was to add a lot of cool features (and they are pretty cool) but I would have appreciated if the 1.0 release of the game focused on polish and bug fixes rather than adding a lot of features. [*]Building stuff in Satisfactory takes a long time. Coffee Stain did put a lot of effort into adding tools that help make the building process easier and faster but it is still lacking compared to other automation games. Making a building system that rivals the others is understandably not an easy task considering this game is 3D while others are 2D/2.5D but it does impact the gameplay experience regardless. I don't expect a complete overhaul but allowing me to zoop in 2 axis rather than just a line, build rails longer than 100 meters or stop snapping buildings to ridiculous positions and instead calculate the correct blue hologram for me would make building far less laborious. [*]The automation challenge lacks depth. If a crafting building has 1 input, you feed in 1 splitters and 1 belt and repeat. If a crafting building has 2 inputs you feed in 2 splitters and 2 belts and repeat, etc. After you have built your first column for a specific building, you have built all of them, as the item you are crafting doesn't change the the layout of your inputs and outputs at all. This is a big contrast to Factorio which allows you to utilises numerous techniques like belt sideloading, direct insertion, belt weaving, etc. You of course are not required to use the same columns of buildings and splitters in Satisfactory but it is the meta and is easy to keep spamming these same boring lines when every other method just takes so much time to construct. [*]Some factory building games allow you to copy a group of buildings (blueprinting) and paste to help speed up the construction process. Satisfactory has this feature, but in my opinion it is the worst implementation in the genre. You are given a building with limited space to create a blueprint and if you have a problem with that the in-game narrator tells you "it's a you problem". I think constraints can make problem solving more fun, but if you are ultimately pasting this same blueprint 6 times then there was no point in limiting the blueprint size in the first place and just makes building stuff more tedious. My suggestion is just let the players make a dragbox-like copy and paste as they wish like in Factorio or DSP. [/list] The downsides of the game made it feel more like a chore and feeling "too long" towards the end and decided to just manually stuff the manufacturer to make the final project part just so we could finally complete the playthrough. I will happily change the review to positive if some of the pain points are addressed or at least tries to so that the game is fun start to finish. Thanks Coffee Stain for the great game and I can't wait to play future updates!