Recent reviews by The Chuggernaught

Incredibly solid demo, there's a lot going right here. If you're a fan of Death Must Die, you'll enjoy this. I've played 10 hours as of this review, have beat floor 1 multiple times, and have a fully decked out character with multiple Superior and 3* Legendary items.

Disclaimer: This is a DEMO, so many things like lack of tutorial I didn't mark against it, stuff wasn't that hard to use my brain and figure out. Stats/gear are/is self explanatory, and the only confusion I had was Shrine Blessing which I just figured out through experimentation. It's very clear they have tons of stuff to put in the full game as evident by the hub. Due to this, I won't hold lack of 'content or guides' against the game, when they're showing off a demo, gameplay and player interest are the 2 biggest metrics right now..


The Pros:
Starting with the most important one Loot:
Legendary loot feels legendary.

I see a lot of other reviews complaining about "loot not mattering" and I can tell you they just haven't played enough. In any ARPG game, your basic white - yellows aren't very exciting. It's the legendary effects that cause the game play to entirel opens up. Some of the Legendary effects in this game change the skills, reworking them entirely (for example, Spinning Blades and Hammer throw now orbit around the player vs random/cardinal direction throws.) This gets to a point that your entire build can be swayed by the loot you pick up, and these legendary effects can STACK, creating absurd combos.

Example: my build is a d2 hammerdin mixed with corpse explosion necromancer. 3 of my legendaries have effects that buff Corpse Explosion. 2 of them grant 100% more targets affected by Corpse explosion per cast, then the 3rd causes enemy death explosions to have a 30% chance to apply the Corpse Explosion debuff enemies hit by it.

This, with the legendary that causes hammer throw's hammers to spiral around you, and another legendary that causes Slow to spread to other enemies, has created an absolute cacophony of dopamine. Enemies ball up from slowing, get pierced by spinning hammers, which then trigger non stop death explosions.

There's at least 13 other legendary effects you can do insane builds with, like turning your flame breath into a tri stream, who's critical hits explode in an aoe.

While not in the demo, there's many features one can infer based on other ARPGS that ToB will have. Some items have "gem sockets" which will allow you to add stats to them, and there's a "runes" tab, which will more then likely allow for stat rerolling and value buffing. Floors also have a listed "item level range" so more then likely the blacksmith will be a way to further customize and augment a players gear to fit a build, or buff up gear to progress to the next level cap.

For me, build expression and control is imperative to any good rpg elements in a game, so this gives me hope.

Gearing white to legendary felt like a genuine progression. Every few runs made a difference in the buffs from "basic stat buffs go." People need to remember, many arpg/rpg progression systems are *incremental*, and until you start getting legendary items, you'll just be at the " I hit/tank harder" phase. Be patient.

So in my opinion, the loot is absolutely a W. Legendary items feel legendary, and a lot of games get that wrong making them rather middling.

The art direction/graphics.

I honestly love it. It's very "dark toony sketch" like Don't Starve and Darkest Dungeon. It's gritty, but charming. A bonus for having your gear actually show up and change the characters appearance. Didn't expect that but that's a bonus.

The parti and VFX for abilities and enemies are all really clean imho. Lighting is pretty, effects are rather distinguishable from one other, I can look at an effect and recognize exactly what caused it. Readability in that sense, is rather well designed.

Core Gameplay loop:

The core gameplay loop is like any other survivors/arpg. Best akin to D3 Rifts if I'm honest. You jump in, kill enemies, pray for loot, beat the boss or die trying. You get exp, get skills, upgrade those skills levels to make them do Bigger and Better things. Tried and True Survivors Formula. Rather then using VS "combine skill" system, Tower of Babel plays into true ARPG fashion and augments your skills with "legendary Effects" from legendary items. As stated above, these legendary effects can entirely change how a skill functions, or massively buff that skill encouraging you to build around it.

Failure, has a consequence, in that a some of your loot will be sent to the merchant where they need to be purchased at low cost. Many have voiced resentment against this feature, but I'm not against it? Rather then losing resources like gold, or gear equipped breaking, you simply have to buy it back, and the majority is garbage loot. As you level up Blessing, and beat the first floor, gold pick ups scale, and items drop like candy, making the efforts of purchasing back lost items much easier.

Like in Vampire survivors, different minute marks spawn different enemies. Some of these waves act like "mazes" and force the player to adapt to the enemies pathing to navigate around them. Movement as well as "reading the board" will keep you alive more then anything. While there's nothing to explore on the map, I think that's a positive. A LOT of these games try to force player engagement by making you walk to the POI on the map for a stat buff. By not having these, ToB prevents a mandatory Speed optimization meta for bumrushing the POIS to "be at full strength". If they did add that stuff, I won't be complaining, it's more of a personal preference.

In short: it's your traditional Survivors genre stuff, but utilizes the effects of your gear to create diversity among skills, rather then picking the "right skills to combine/meta choice" which is refreshing.


Performance: Performance has been flawless. Even running a 200%+ projectile spam corpse explosion chaining build, I have experienced zero fps drops or stutters.



Now we get to the cons:

Visual Clutter: Earlier in my pro's, I listed the ability to identify particles and projectiles accurately. While this is true, TOB has a very distinct "overlap" issue with visual effects. When lots of explosions are happening, it becomes really hard to accurately see where enemies are, as they get obscured by visual effects. This also extends to loot, which is incredibly hard to see during high density waves, and with no radar to tell you loot has dropped, you can easily miss it. This problem doesn't extend to Legendary items, as they have an incredibly distinct visual and audio cue that plays when they drop.

However, if you get to the point that you cause so many explosions you can't see enemies, you're not in any real danger if I'm honest. Few enemies will touch you at the point visual clutter becomes a true problem, but I'd like to see enemies have a red highlight that is layered over player spawned particles. This same suggestion should extend to loot on the ground.


Sound design/music (we all knew this was coming):

The music is awful. I'm not sugar coating it, it is a very short loop of dark fantasy drums that repeats every 7~ seconds or so. It's droning, it's boring, and it has zero instrumental variation.

Special attack needs to be special. Right now t's *just* an axe throw. It needs to have some kind of progression system to make it worth using, like chaining, debuffs, self buffs on hit, etc.

Enemy Ranged spawns during post 15 minutes: In the final waves, sometimes the game will rarely spawn a majority of ranged enemies. The final wave is very much a VS Library style "survive being surrounded until minute 20." When 60% of those enemies choose to be ranged, you are ♥♥♥♥♥♥. If you don't have a Resurrection to reset the board and change the spawn pattern, it could end a good run.

Beyond that I can't really think of anything major that I can mark TOB for.

My review is just like the tooltip of the Haphazard Knight.

TL;DR: Push Buttons Have Fun.

A whimsical and wacky D4/POE/Last Epoch. Was charmed by the writing, stayed for the sick loot.

Where the writing and story don't take itself seriously, the build crafting absolutely does. This game fills the looter ARPG niche I've desperately been craving, with none of the annoying Online Exclusive 60$ Cosmetic Battlepass FOMO Ultra ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Deluxe Edition for 200$ and 4 days of EA stuff others do. You just pay and play.

Push buttons, stuff happens. Use a few braincells and a lot of stuff happens. Use a lot of braincells and dopamine slot machine is born.

I absolutely love this game, easily the best live service co op shooter on the market in over half a decade.

Also Sony, eat it. Never try to ruin a good thing again.

In a genre that has begun to grow stale, Death Must Die has revived my interest in Survivor games. It is an incredibly unique, well crafted, and down right addicting hybrid of the traditional RPG looter system, a Hades Style God Boons, and the tried and true Survivors game play loop. 20 minute matches that never overstay their welcome either.

With a whopping 6 characters, each with a talent tree and 36 skill points to invest, and tons of unique perks/item blessings, there's a lot of build diversity and crafting to be done. Despite what a bunch of brainlets may be crying about, Diversity and build crafting only got better with Act 2. Now I have more nuanced choices in what I want to spec into, not just taking the exact same gods with a generalized loadout of Spell damage, and having basically 1 build. Builds now consist of all aspects: your character, their skill tree, your equipment, equipment spells (basically a passive ability), and then the gods who may benefit your build the most.

Act 2 was a banger of update, and minor enemy mechanical gripes aside, it's worth grabbing if you've been sleeping on the game. I was scraping the bottom of the barrel before, act 2 has refreshed all sorts of build craft and itemization theories to toy with.

Years of silence, lack of updates, insulting and condescending behavior from the developers. Broken promises and empty packages. A game that suffered from greedy scam devs.

Second extinction could have been a fantastic addition to the horde shooter genre with the likes of Deep Rock Galactic if the devs had just **TRIED** but they'd rather shill a new game and a Generation Zero DLC then actually do their work.

RIP Second Extinction you should have just been sold off. Not shut down forever.

I thought long and hard on what I should give Starfield as a review and I've finally come to a decision. This will be lengthy so bear with me.

Despite being absurdly hyped for this game, and putting 70+ hours into it on steam and xbox, I am not recommending Starfield. Let's get into why. I won't do some super pin pointes thing. Many people have voiced similar issues, this is just the personal big ones that really killed my fanboy hype and excitement for this game.

Starfield was a game that was HEAVILY marketed to be a No Mans Skyrim. They emphasized the phrase "Unparalleled Freedom" and "Do what you want to/Be what you want to be" many times in the marketing. The sad truth is this game is actually incredibly limiting and actively ruins it's experience if you don't play the way the game wants you to. Here are some examples:

Encumbered mechanic is absolutely horrible. Inventory management is tedious, time consuming and really bogs down your experience. Even using ship cargo + companion weight + max carry weight skills, I still found myself encumbered by resources or weapons/armor to sell and collect. Venders have such a pathetic credit stock. The game actively punishes you for trying to gather too much too soon. Much of the QOL regarding inventory management like storage, increased ship size, etc, is locked behind over FIVE SKILLS that each require hours of grind. - point to "unparalleled freedom" Some people will say "yea but infinite chest in Lodge" Okay sure? where I have to go through loading screens every 30 minutes to get there to drop my stuff off, to go back to where I was? And none of that can be used in crafting or research remotely like ship storage. It's too much tedious bog down and grind just to have basic inventory management.

The stories quite frankly aren't that captivating and companions are terrible, despite what fanboys say.
- The story basically sums up as any other 1990-2000's scifi film. Humanity discovers alien artifact, gets super powers, pisses off the people who made it, become god. Nothing really riveting.
-Some of the areas like Neon, the literal corrupt, crime ridden city, where you expect something really bad to happen, are just a slogfest of talking and side questing. No actual threat, no actual surprises, some small combat. When a side quest is outperforming your main story in terms of "threat and consequence to the worldbuilding" that's a problem.
-There are no risks taken in Starfield's story. It's very Corporate Advertiser Friendly. No one really suffers, no one really has anything bad happen, no massive risks that result in stress or fear for the player. It's just Brand Friendly TM.
-Many mechanics like ship docking are actually locked behind a few hours of story progression, so - point for "unparalleled freedom"

On the topic again of unparalleled freedom: Starfield actively limits what you actually can do. Yes you CAN steal ships. IF that ♥♥♥♥ generated as a ship that can be stolen, AND if you grind out max level piloting skill before hand. Yes you CAN build outposts but you need to do the exact same thing 30 times to unlock a skill that lets you build on any planet. You can now build outposts on any planet but you didn't invest in x other skill to unlock other parts for that outpost. Now do the same thing again 30 times to max that skill out, you see where this is going?

Starfield actively imposes a lot of limitations and locks features behind a ridiculous amount of grind. Some of which are massively helpful to the player. And with how hard exp scales later on, you need to seriously invest your points or the late game gets rough for qol stuff.

As an MMO player, star field has the most boring grind ever.
70+ hours and I'm only level 40~ while actively doing exp grind and combat. It feels like ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I'm an MMO player and have over 2000+ hours in games like warframe, trove, destiny, and Star conflict. I'm used to repetition and grind. The problem with starfield's grind, is that it's not engaging and it' repetitive. I talked about it above, but a lot of skills literally copy paste a similar format. Do x thing 20+ times. So many skills have that, to the point the meta becomes not engaging with the actual systems of the game. Prime example outposts. Why am I only allowed to have a certain amount of outposts, but the skill wants me to build over 50 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ outposts on 50 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ diffferent planets, that I can't even keep 90%? Outpost management. Maybe, instead, have the player build up an outpost with different features. Ya know, manage an outpost. Level 2 is a basic outpost. Level 3 is a resource mine with 2 npc staff. Level 4 is add things like agriculture, automated defenses and 3 staff. Have me MANAGE my OUTPOST. Teach the player the game and engage with systems relating to the skill. So amny skills you level though cheap cheesy tactics they don't feel earned.

Repetition: Holy ♥♥♥♥ did they really stretch the line on "some handcrafted structures in Landing zones, others are proc genned"

In reality, every structure in a landing zone is copy pasted. One Abandon x facility will always be the same as the next you find. Everything down to Enemy Faction, Enemy Placement in that Dungeon, every chest will be in the same location, every secret lootable like pdas or magazines, etc. Everything is exactly the same for every POI in Landing zones. This became apparent to me in hour 7. By hour 70, as someone who enjoys "exploration" (if you can call it that), it became really repetitive, really boring, and too easy. Knowing where everything is just by seeing the name "Abandoned Robotics Facility" really ruins the whole "unknown surprises to be found" they pushed in marketing.

Performance on PC has been terrible for me. I have a very solid rig, generations above the recommended specs. Starfield refuses to run above 44 fps in LZ's and dips below 30 in cities. "Next gen gaming" promised 120 fps and 4k resolution. Starfield isn't that. Todd saying our PC is the problem, then dropping an optimization patch not even a week later, yet getting by just fine for that is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and the xbox/Starfield fanboys need to wake up. EA didn't get a pass, CP2077 didn't get a pass, you roast BG3 on PS5 for low performance, so why should Todd get off free?

Community: Starfields community was the killing point for me. First time I get involved in a gaming community, and there is so much bias, fanboying, and obvious sellouts in the game that it made it hard to have any constructive discourse. Reviews are blatantly ignoring actual problems, fair reviews of 6/10 were shut down and ♥♥♥♥ on despite openly talking about the problems I wanted to hear about, and trying to have any constructive criticism of this game is "Hating". People are either blind, retarded, or blindly retarded when it comes to accepting and seeing genuine problems with this game. Being attacked for wanting bethesda to make the game better certainly didn't help me enjoy the game. Literally had to blacklist Starfield on Twitter I was so sick of the Hive Mind.

There's so much more I could point to as a problem, lack of fov and color settings in a 2023 next gen game, boring and unfun itemization that's entirely rng dependent with no upgrade system to increase caliber or rarity, store venders barely having enough stock to sell items to so you just sleep, vendor, sleep vendor sleep vendor after every ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ dungeon run. No town maps, npcs that constantly ♥♥♥♥♥ and moan every 40 seconds when you pick up items, and so much more.

The only thing starfield really has going for it is "pretty" and "bethesda" but bethesda's formula is 10 years outdated and they've really done nothing to improve the formula, yet brag about being "next gen tech pushing".

Just go play deep rock. A fun game, with better lore, better grind, and doesn't take itself too seriously while never trying to be advertising friendly.

Review updated for Echos:

Wayfinder Echos is what many failed MMOs should have done. Give us something to play rather then shut down and leave with the bag. I am an Exalted Founder, and I played about 100+ hours of the original MMO Version. I originally bought Wayfinder as an MMO, but if I'm honest, Echos is everything I've wanted. Here I will detail many changes and my experiences.

Rehaul of Loot and Wayfinders. Weapons and wayfinders are no longer f2pmmo style grind a thons. Weapons now drop with levels, random echo slots, and rarities like Borderlands/Looter style games. Wayfinders are 100% guarented drops from specific enemies or bosses. This change is absolutely massive as it encourages picking up and playing/buildcrafting way more.

Talents aka a massive skill tree: On top of weapon abilities, wayfinder abilities, Wayfinder Affinites, we now have a sprawling Talent Tree that has unique perks that effect how you play. You can be super beefy and gain damage for HP, become a caster who heals off fast cooldown hard hitting casts, an uninteruptible berserker who gains damage for playing perfectly and maintaining combo, etc. Each of the 3 wayfinder Archetypes has their own unique Talent tree with multiple ways to build them. Build diversity is stronger then ever, and it's easier then ever now.

Combat has been fleshed out, feels more responsive and snappy, massive QOLS to UI and other elements have been added over the MMo version. Put simply, if you want a fantasy Borderlands this is it.

Addition of difficulty scaling. Whether you want a power fantasy god sim like warframe, or you want a real challenge that will punish you for failing to read an enemy attack, mistime your dps uptime, or otherwise make simple mistakes, the difficulty scaling options are a nice addition. No rewards tied to them, purely for the sake of player enjoyment.

new content has been added. New story, weapons, new wayfinder, and Mythic Hunts. I won't spoil anything, but Mythic Hunts are an absolute loot festival and are worth it.

progression as a whole has felt good. The whole 0-30 experience has been streamlined, and now that weapons and echos have been made more "lootery" it's always exciting finding that next drop, then getting to 30 and min maxing a build. There's been very few dull loot moments. New chests, free cosmetics, and all sorts of other goodies like secret pets, lore etc. The world and dungeons are now filled with stuff to find and do, rather then just a speed run festival. Some dungeons even have secret shop keepers to spend resources for even more goodies like skins, mounts, color paints, and more.

Overall, Wayfinder Echos is what Wayfinder should have been. Negative reviews of the past are not an indication of this games current quality. Is it perfect? No, but if you enjoy Story based RPG/ARPGS like Diablo, Borderlands, everspace 2, Vrising, Enshrouded, etc, this is a solid pick up.

Be fair to wayfinder, the game has changed a lot for the better, removing any and all of the Monetization Plague Grind F2P Business Model that plagues 80% of new games in this industry. They spit out an arguably appetizing RPG in 4 months after DE abolished their publishing firm and ghost dropped them out of nowhere. I hope and dream for a NMS update system, where we get new wayfinders and stuff every few months, and if people support WF enough, we may get that.

Overall Wayfinder Echos is a little rough around the edges. Multiplayer can be slightly buggy (I've played about 20 hours of Echos with a buddy) but it's thankfully incredibly fast drop in/out via steam. I've not encountered many bugs overall, compared to the absolute horrible state that the MMO version was. It's not a perfect game, but it's definitely a solid Early Access RPG.

As of right now, I'd say Wayfinder Echos is a 7/10. It's much better then it way, but it still has room to grow. I will update this review again should they deliver another update. One of my main asks is that accessory setbonuses are more exciting then a 5/10% stat change. Add some unique effects, like fire on hit, freeze on dash, stuff to encourage players to be picking certain sets beyond "what has the best stats" and not rely exclusively on boss echos for unique effects.

One of the best simple arpg dungeon crawlers ever with no seasonal character resets. All the momories and fun, weapon builds and diversity. Simple is more with MCD.

However anyone buying this game in 2023 should be aware:

I've been with MCD on the Microsoft store, swith, xbox, and steam. I've played this game since the start. I have over 300 hours across all platforms and saves (steam i got recently to play with my Significant Other). I am abysmally sad to see microcock has silently rug pulled a game they said to "seasonally update" after 3 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ updates. November 20 2022 was the last update MCD received and iut's clear they have zero intentions to even put in the most basic effort of holiday event reruns to keep the game alive.. No more easily rerunable holiday or anniversary events, no updates on new content, no seasonal events past the third update despite promising seasonal consistent updates,. The last update added tower multiplayer, a new armor, and a new artifact. Since november 20 2022 the game has been purely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ silent. No teasers, no more posts on the twitter even. The game for all it's worth got three "seasonal" updates that were minimal and often extremely delayed, then left to rot.

For what MCD has though, that rotting corpse is worth the memories. I just wish Microsoft would realize they have a big market to the casual arpg dungeon crawl audience and could actually compete with d4 easily had they just kept platforming and developing this game. RIP MCD, thanks for the memories.

I would like to preface this review with the knowledge that i am a Subnautica veteran, since the days of beta and EA. Subnautca was the first game I ever owned on steam and 100%. I have nearly 300 hours in Subnautica. I have also finished all the story content and almost discovered everything in the discovery tab for Forever Skies. This is my honest review at the time of 6/25/2023.

If you love raft, and you love subnautica, I can recommend this game wholeheartedly. There's not much content but the gameplay was better then both raft and Subnautica EA. As a Subnautica vet and diehard, that's not a compliment I throw out lightly. Otherwise, purchase it now to support the devs, and just wait for 1.0.


This game is honestly the perfect blend of Subnautica and Raft. For a lot of people going "Just play subnautica/raft" negative reviews, remember those games were in EA long ago. Forever Skies has a much better EA then either of those games did IMO. I experienced zero bugs, only had small spikes of frame loss in the Underdust on ULTRA graphics, and overall thoroughly enjoyed my expereince.

Now lets dive in.

Gameplay:
The general gameplay loop starts off very similar to raft. You have an extraction tool (with no durability thank good good choice devs) to gather materials and expand your airship cube by cube. You come across various structures like windmills, towns, gardens, greenhouses, etc to get further specific materials for upgrades. This will occupy most of your gameplay. Towards the end of EA, the game changed that, and turned the game into land based subnautica. You have limited O2 and have to travel on foot without the safety of your airship. This was an AMAZING change of pace and really felt good. Devs, if you read this, please add more of these zones, if not massive areas like this. Granted we'd need some sort of O2 vehicle to stay under for extended time and get around but the level design and feel of Underdust was incredibly well done. I'd see places through cracks and gaps in the wall, and wind up there, then find secret shortcuts that linked the entire Underdust together. It was incredible level design. Overall, the gameplay and loop felt incredibly satisfying. General raft airship for chill moments, tense, uneasy, and vulnerable Subnautica vibes in the Underdust. Perfect.

Food, Water, and Item Durability: Done right. Food and water can be simple and low maintenance to get once you set up the right system. That is very good. Food also is just food. No balanced diet or you lose health, no valheim needing to have a balanced diet and meta cook to gain health and buffs. It's just food. This is very good. It works just like in subnautica. You need to maintain it, but it doesn't require a massive amount of maintenance.

durability is once again, done right. Damaged airship parts are relatively easy to fix. Unlike raft, parts that hit 0 don't seem to break, rather, if they're an engine or other mobility items, they lose effectiveness. This is a very welcome change to gameplay. I don't have to worry about the wind blowing debris into my ship, having a piece get stuff, damage my ship multiple times, and just lose all those materials. Please keep this system in for the airship.

For tools, you use a battery charger to charge the entire tool itself, circumventing the tedium of making a battery to put in the tool to replace the old battery, to charge the old battery. Just charge the tool with batteries from every structure. Simple, effective. Low cost maintenance without excessive tedium. This felt very good, and I would like that to stay.


Story: I'm incredibly invested in the story. I love the inspiration from subnautica with the pda lore you can find, and was surprised to even have a in game cutscene and voice acting at the Underdust area with the Friendly Bug Pet. Genuinely gave me a good shake up. . You're drip fed context and piece together clues of what happened to the world/what state things are in through scannables, lore entries, items, etc. Again, very subnautica inspired which is a good thing. Learning and utilizing what your ancestors did right is a good idea. I'm very keen to see more and will be playing this game constantly as it updates, just like I did with Subnautica one and Below Zero.

- My one criticism I'll touch up on the improvements section is that finding planters (if they even exist) has been incredibly rough, as in, I have not found planters yet. I would like to see scannable planters found on the large greenhouse structure so the player can at bare minimum begin farming plants, especially since they spoil relatively quick.

Now lets talk about some things that need improving.

Stamina when using the knife to gather biomaterial needs to be greatly reduced. Being totally fatigued after 5-6 swings, then having to wait for stamina to regen, while doing that 1 biomateral at a time, 10 needed for fuel, felt horrible. Especially in areas there was a lot of vines. If the knife gathered more biomat, or had highly reduced stamina drain, I'd have no complains.

Gardening: Idk if there are planters in game, or if they're one of the blueprints I'm still needing, but they're desperately needed. Some plants require multiple to craft something (like paints taking 3 of 2 different plants). The issue here is unless you hard focus on finding another greenhouse/overgrown tower, those plants might spoil if you get side tracked (and you will). Greenhouse structures should have a guaranteed small planter, and a chance at a large planter that can be scanned and crafted.

Balloon expansion: I expanded the balloon forwards way to much on accident and didn't realize it after having massively expanded my base and the lift demands. I tried to remove the balloon expansion, but I wasn't able to unless I deconstruct the entire base i just fully renovated and decked out.

One QOL I would like to see to that, is that if your base is landed and secure, you may remove balloon capacity that goes under the lift limit of the base, but you have to expand to the proper amount before you can take off. Or in order to prevent soft locks in the case of someone crafting helium fuel, allow the player to remove balloon expansion segments, and place them like an inventory item. Again, the player must be grounded to remove segments that would fall below you lift capacity. This would be a small QOL but would help a lot for expanding bases and making them look good.

At the time of writing, that's really the only major issues and game play faults I can think of. I have a 3070ti and a ryzen 5800x, and I only experienced frame dips in certain areas of Underdust, and when adding rooms to my nearly 40+ room base. Nothing unplayable, but some graphic optimization needs to be done.

That concludes my review as of 6/25/2023. I may update this as significant progress to the game is made, but I highly doubt it will change an overwhelming thumbs up. Forever Skies has potential to join the ranks of Subnautica and Raft as a solid, well made, proper survival crafting game. Blending concepts from both games perfectly, in it's own original take, and with improvements over its ancestors. I look forwards to seeing more from you Devs.

DRG is commonly what many of my pals refer to as "The last good game with the last good dev team"

This review is from someone who has played this game since EA, and bought all the dlcs not because I even use them, but because I feel these devs and game genuinely deserve that extra monetization. I play a lot of horde shooters, survival games etc. Darktide, MHW, MCD, Warframe, EDF, Far Cry, orion, Second Extinction, Vermintide, The Division 2, etc. I know my way around a horde/fps shooter and progression rpg elements in a games, and what makes them good. I also tend to do a lot of Beta testing and EA stuff for games, but that's not important. that's just my background and mindset so you know where I'm coming from.

While there are other good games, DRG is a primary example of a live service title done right. Player experience and mechanics first, monetization on the lowest priority.

Gameplay: DRG Is your typical horde shooter, but it's dark. REAL DARK. Missions consist of several varying objectives from "Simple" mining missions to eliminating rival corporations death machines engineered to kill your ass. You pick one of four classes, each possessing 3 primary weapons, 3 secondary weapons, a support tool, a traversal tool, several grenade selections, active and passive perks, as well as armors. The class diversity is simplistic on the surface, but the build diversity and potentia teamplay/personal build dynamicsl is incredibly wide and in depth. Once you reach level 25 with a dwarf and promote, you can start earning "Overclocks" which can add minor buffs (More ammo and faster rate of fire) or massively change how a weapon performs (turning grenade launcher into a literal nuke launcher, a missile launcher becomes a mine layer, bullets become mines that can shock, freeze, or explode inside enemies, etc)

Enemy diversity is yes. Most Glyphid enemies are melee based, Mactera are ranged based, and there's a few curve balls of horrible abominations thrown in there. Cave systems are procedural generated from tiles and random events/secondary objectives can be found. Not to mention incredibly rare and dangerous enemies that may spawn. Deep rock galactic will find now things to throw at you 200+ hours into the game.

Seasonal Pass and monetization: Now I know what yoru thinking. "Oh god a battlepass I have to spend hours doing specific annoying challenges to earn exp for that gives me an advantage over other payers if i spend 10$ and a 20 stage head start." NOPE.

DRG Breaks nearly all forms of modernized AAA Monetization. Cosmetics that are free and earnable in game by finding hidden crates (1/6th spawn chance iirc) are in the HUNDREDS and they aren't garbage tier either. The Season Pass is essentially Evergreen content, you don't have to do it, but it's there for people who like having goals and are motivation driven. You CAN do simple missions that will happen as you just play the game ie( play x games as gunner, do a mission in x biome, or do x mission type) but you also just earn pass progression as you play the game. Every holiday we get events that 2x that progression. Just play the game, get extra rewards, no extra effort, money, or time is needed.

What about FOMO??? Surely with such a generous system, these items are fomo as ♥♥♥♥? Nope. ALL items with the exception of seasonal events (which always come back every year) will be put into the loot pool of those hidden crates i mentioned earlier. Deep rock also puts the cosmetic dlcs themed for each update on sale with every update (the game itself too) and almost every holiday has a sale. You get a massive amount of paints and skins for every dwarf/weapon for just 3-7$. No 49.99 for a single skin here. The free cosmetics are just as good, some even better imo then the DLCS.

Destiny 2 sunsetting: Nonexistent. All forms of content that have been added in previous updates have stayed in game. With the exception of holiday items, which again, come back each year, and are permanent once unlocked. Fomo is not an issue with deep rock, nor is there sun setting.

Modding: mods are available for DRG and let me tell you, it's the best modding experience I've ever had. All modding can be done in game, you can make modding presets, and mods are reviewed and thrown into 3 catagories. Approved and Verified are essentially "Non cheat/gopdmode" mods. They are mods that can change the game play from sounds and skins, to things like Karl Class, which lets you use any weapon or tool on any dwarf, to increasing the bug spawns by a ludicrous amount. This category will not affect normal progression to much, isn't considered cheating by the devs, but will disable achievements (if you care about those). Sandbox mods are exactly as they sound. they are mods that alter the game and or players power level to the point they are considered cheats. This will cause you to create a copy of your save labeled as a Sandbox Save. You CAN play multiplayer modded with friends and even join random lobbies.

Devs and the community: the community of DRG is amazing. There will always be bad eggs in every dozen, but drg community and the devs go out of their way to make the place as welcoming, helpful, and memeworthy as possible. The devs are constantly active and stream the game almost weekly. They play the game they made and understand it. They also talk and play with the community from time to tme. On top of all that, Ghost Ship Games recently opened their GSG Publishing firm to help Indie devs get a strong arm start in the gaming world. Just like how DRG was once an early access indie title. I can not sing GSG and the devs of DRG enough praise. They are the golden standard of gameplay, fun, and community first, making money sixth.

So if you were disappointed with everything Darktide recently did wrong this last year, then Deep Rock is the game for you. Deep rock has been around for a while now, and somehow every game that came out afterwards fails to stand up to the love, care, and attention to the community as PLAYERS not USERS. DRG Is probably one of the 3 games I would give a 10/10 genuinely.