Neue Rezensionen von Theroxenes

Update: as of the 12/28/23 patch supposedly the progression-stopping bugs are fixed. Tentatively switching to a recommend, assuming it all works now this game is well worth playing.

For a quick summary, while this game is mechanically fun and narratively interesting, I cannot recommend buying it in its current state.

First, the good stuff: the standard ground combat is tactical and satisfying, builds feel fairly diverse and powerful while still leaving room for your mistakes to be punished. Space combat is very hit or miss, especially early on when your ship has no/few upgrades, but it's tolerable enough. Colony management feels like a bit of a chore and doesn't tie into the main mechanical systems that well but it's serviceable, and never feels like it gets in the way of completing the primary goals in the game.

The companions are mostly all interesting characters, the VAs did a great job, their questlines (when they actually work), while not flawless feel compelling to explore and complete. The setting and overall tone of storytelling are appropriately dark, the "alignment" system has some interesting impacts on how the story develops and your relationships with the other characters. At times it feels like being a stereotypical "good guy" has no real drawbacks, which I don't think is the right choice for this setting.

As many other reviewers have mentioned this all works fine and feels fun to play... right up until the start of chapter 3. At that point, the story becomes borderline incomprehensible, and the bugs start getting extreme. Quests stop triggering, companions become uninteractible and potentially die permanently despite saving them, for me the game started crashing every time burn damage was applied (and I was playing a pyromancer on my first playthrough).

The content is also fairly sparse in chapters 4 and 5. Or at least, it seems that way. I can't tell if it actually is or if sidequests are simply not triggering correctly. And that's part of the problem, it's hard to judge the latter half of the game on that front because it's never clear if it's even functioning correctly. Buy this game in ~6 months when things are at least functional, getting invested in a playthrough at this point is just not worth the trouble. I was only able to complete the game by manually triggering cutscenes and quest progression with the Toybox mod.

I haven't played through the standalone rougelike mode yet, but as for the integration into the main game... it's not good. The way it interacts with corruption and crusade mode is extremely annoying, your corruption continues to go up if you rest in the DLC with very sparse places to restore it, and unless you are constantly leaving and coming back your crusade stuff will get screwed if you're managing it manually. The undertows also don't play very well in the main campaign since you are sort of locked into your character builds and some of them can be downright crippling for certain party members.

On top of that, there are quite a few cutscene bugs and a very nasty bug that can prevent characters from moving entirely after one of the last bosses. Thankfully I found a way to break out of it, but if I hadn't it could have bricked one of my companions permanently! It's also just... kind of boring and obviously tacked on. Which is annoying, because it is the only non-modded way to achieve a certain ending with certain mythic paths. There are also some very powerful items scattered throughout but thankfully you don't have to finish it to get those.

Overall a decent improvement to the base game, though I'm not sure if I will purchase the next expansion unless a lot more is added in the next year.