Recent reviews by DreadPirateFury

Don't buy it, the game has been abandoned. Devs took the cash and ran, it's been one whole year without an update.

If you don't mind that and you need a cheap Battlefield alternative, this might be as good as it gets, and it's decent, but I wouldn't support a dev team that pulls a stunt like this.

On the dollar per hour ratio this game gets an A+. Provided you have friends to play with you can easily get a dozen hours in of enjoyment.

Singleplayer I'd say about 7-8 hours before most players master counting the odds against the AI.

Aesthetic is great, gameplay is surprisingly complex. Honestly at its current price it's a great bargain.

No.

Minor Spoilers

I tried Act 1 eleven times, I tried 8 different characters with combinations of dialogue options, different classes, different fantasies for what these characters could be and how I might portray them over the course of a playthrough. Each iterative attempt had the same result, and the same overriding feeling.

My character is made of cardboard, the established party members and quest writing are the real stars of the show. Fallout 1-NV, Elder Scrolls, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Witcher, Mass Effect, Shadowrun: Dragonfall. All of these are RPG's I've played and felt the protagonist, whether silent or not, was a real person living in the world. The worst part about this feeling is that I don't know what this game doesn't do that those games did, in fact, this game has some of the most class and choice specific dialogue I've ever seen in RPG, which is usually a driving factor for this immersion.

Maybe it's the gameplay, how in my first attempt at playing I veered right instead of left in a fork in the road, in the starting zone no less, and found a very forced combat encounter that was well beyond my means to solve. I approached some ruins, talked a couple of fools out of looting the derelict down on the beach, and approached the door to the tomb where the rest of their friends were. Two of my dialogue options at the door seemed decidedly antagonistic and manipulative, the other informed the people down below that their two friends above ground had turned tail after what I told them. That apparent tidbit of information was highly offensive to this band of adventurers and they told me they'd kill us if we went below. I figured it to be a bluff out of fear that I had done something to their friends, the intonation of the voice, and the touted freedom this game claims to offer emboldened me to give talking a chance. Maybe I could solve this conflict peacefully, and get someone to inform me of the local area, after all, this is one of the first NPC's I've encountered, surely the game wont club me over the head for this? Well no, the game was apparently all too ready to teach me a lesson in assuming the worst. The combat encounter that followed going through that door was none other than four level two enemies with a proper class composition versus me and my two party members at level 1. It was ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, I had to leave the area, and then I felt empty and defeated because I couldn't complete one of my very first encounters. It felt like I just got railroaded by a bad DM.

Maybe it was the writing, how each and every party members flaws are on their sleeves from jump street, informing you way too early on what their arc is going to be like moving forward. Or just how problematic these people are when you put them under a microscope. Sex offender Astarion, Edgelord Shadowheart, Alien ♥♥♥♥♥, or "Let me eat your shoes I promise its completely necessary, no I wont tell you exactly why" Gale. These characters are loud personalities, IMO an excellent fit for an RPG with an established character like Witcher or Mass Effect, here though they completely overpower you. This game is about them, not you.

How about the game's tonal pacing, where things are completely out of control. One moment a character says something incredibly personal, heartfelt, and revealing to you, and in the next heartbeat the game gives you the option to kick a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ squirrel, or find a couple ogres going to pound town on eachother in a locked barn. These things are fun in moderation, but there is no moderation, it's completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ wild at all times to be quirky, much like most DnD sessions honestly, I guess that's a huge positive for some, but for me it completely took me out of the game. I felt like the developers were winking at me constantly.

Or how about dialogue triggers happening completely out of order, like Shadowheart revealing to me a second time about her chosen deity, or the entire party experiencing selective amnesia for a big reveal that... We already found out an hour ago? Takes you out of it a bit.

Maybe it could have been the almost point and click adventure levels of narrative traps for the player to blunder into, like talking to the Goblin lass with the mindworm and picking just the wrong series of dialogue options and locking yourself into a situation so sticky you'll be loading a save regardless of how you handle it. Whoops, there goes that plotline, try again.

A failed check often times meant a save/load, because the outcome from that failed check was so undesirable from a narrative or gameplay perspective that you just don't want to continue with that blunder. This further separates the player from their character each time this happens, so much so at a point you've degraded all game integrity and now you're playing XCOM instead of an RPG. This might inform the reader of why I restarted the playthrough eleven times, and might also inform them of why I had such a bad time with this game.

I'm glad BG3 got made, I'm glad it's successful, maybe it will pave the way for RPG's I enjoy, because there's a lot of strengths here I wont talk about because they're talked to death by now. But in no way is this game a 100% surefire purchase, even for an RPG lover. You may just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hate it like I did. I will try the game again, someday, with fresh eyes and more patience hopefully, but my hopes aren't up.

Arrowhead is following an interesting pattern of making a great change for the game, followed by an abysmal one.

Most recently, at the time of writing, they've pivoted after community backlash for some microtransaction shenanigans. I'm keeping this negative while I wait and see if they can consistently keep their nose clean.

As a business, they have every right to make money, but how they do it is an exceptionally important factor to the health of the game.

find the lightswitch

I'll rescind this review when they update system requirements to coincide with the switch to UE5.

I've been grandfathered out and performance is garbage on a 2070 Super. It'd be one thing if they acknowledged it but to keep system requirements the same on the store page is nothing short of negligent.

For a one man studio, this slapped.

I've seen some truly atrocious reviews of this game lately in games journalism and from a few content creators. I cannot fathom why, even after listening to their nonsense.

I recommend tossing the FEAR comparison partially out the window, while this game clearly took inspiration from FEAR, Trepang2 is an entirely different animal. There are still some great horror set-pieces that manage to nail FEAR's ability to make you think "There's something a lot scarier than me in here." But these moments feel more like homage than adaptation. Likewise as long as we're comparing it to FEAR I'll risk it and say the narrative of Trepang2 takes a backseat against its spiritual predecessor. The story is by no means bad, in fact I was engaged with it throughout my time playing, it's just a lot less character driven and at times will feel more like set dressing than a plot. Towards the climax things will tie together and I think most people will be satisfied with what they got, especially if they're taking the time to explore and read the extra fluff found scattered around the levels.

The real content of Trepang2 is its gameplay, and it manages to feel fairly unique despite its inspirations. There's obviously FEAR's bullet time and melee, but there's also Crysis's cloak, weapon customization, and the ability to grab and throw enemies. How it all blends together makes a very high octane concoction whereby the player can really go anywhere they need to be and basically turn any man or set of men into meat crayons. You can slide into a corridor of tightly packed enemies ragdolling them, grab one out of the air, and toss him into his friends with his grenade primed. You can kick off of an enemies head or a nearby wall for a bit of extra air time. You can even use the dropkick feature to reach heights your normal jump alone wouldn't scale, so there's some advanced movement mechanics hidden under the surface if that's your taste.

The game is fairly short but it's also replayable. There are plenty of difficulty options, cheats, and wave based combat arenas to sink your teeth into. I was shocked to see cosmetic unlocks for your viewmodel (hands, arms, legs, and feet) which is so extra for a singleplayer FPS I couldn't help but smile.

Also Gianni Matragrano voices the cultists and come on, it's Gianni. It's gold.

Overall I'd say this is totally worth its asking price and an absolute must have on sale.

I like the game, but it needs time and I've got quarrels with it. Latter half sucked unfortunately, the entire game should have been more like the first mission (not the unskippable tutorial mind you, just Dead Hills colony). Instead it's very linear for most of its runtime and with half baked stealth mechanics and scripted sequences being the emphasis it turns a good 40% of missions into a chore on a second playthrough.

Welding doors, it's too costly for little benefit, it would be nice if we could somehow separate the cost for welding a door for tactical reasons and welding a door for rest. For rest it makes perfect sense, for funneling aliens and trying to maintain map control, it's a waste of a valuable resource.

Recon, your premiere don't get spotted class, has no way of breaking formation in order to take something out quietly, you also can't set them as the spearhead of the formation, making it extremely awkward trying to shuffle your guys around to pop a stealth kill off, and in that time you'll probably get spotted.

Linear levels, again, I have to emphasize just how hamstrung the game is because of it. The game is absolutely at its best when you have a large and open level with a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of objectives and not enough resources or manpower to do all of them in one go. Because the levels are persistent and the suite of passive tools at your disposal are also persistent, the game has this really neat strategic element whereby each trip you make with a bit of planning and forethought can improve your control over the map, making it easier to complete objectives and navigate the area. The problem is these levels devolved as the game went on, I noticed less and less interesting methods of getting from point A to point B and less opportunities for map control. It's like one camp of development wanted to make an interesting LV 426 simulator and the other camp wanted a sequence of scares and scripted events to drag you by the teeth and tell the story.

Sentry guns, like welding, became a bit of a disappointment in level persistence. Tools are too valuable a resource to waste on sentry guns, however the only way to pick up a broken sentry gun is to repair it first, this wouldn't be a problem if sentry guns didn't break on level transition. Even using an elevator in the middle of deployment will break all sentries that you placed, regardless of their location and situation. I put four sentries at the end of a corridor, took an elevator for a quick nab of ammo on the floor above, came back and all sentries were broken without firing a shot. I get the idea, the aliens got your sentries while you were away, but it doesn't make sense while I'm still deployed in the same area and it's been all of ten minutes, and it doesn't make sense that their ammo is at 100% when there is literally no way around them, not even a vent. It feels like creativity is punished just as much as it's rewarded, and it doesn't help that the levels themselves want you to go one exact way so often.

That brings me to the waiting game. You know what was tense the first ten times? Watching motion tracker contacts getting really close and waiting in a dead end room for them to pass by, hoping, praying they don't choose to check your room. Then it got boring, really boring. As the game progresses you get more tools for dealing with patrols without getting spotted, at first it's the motion tracker and its long range distraction feature, then it's landmines and sentry guns, and then finally you'll have the Recon class with a silent kill option and the Tecker with a dubiously useful drone (the distraction tool on this thing may be better than I'm giving it credit for, I'll have to do some testing). All of these with the exception of sentries and the drone require command points, it's like your mana in the game. Command points regenerate slowly over time, or you can spend one tool (This is one of the reasons tools are so important) in order to get a few points back immediately. Seems fine except it ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ blows waiting in a room for five minutes because you don't have enough command points to make a play at leaving undetected, or you didn't have enough command points thirty meters ago and now you're cut off in every direction with no means of distracting patrols. In these situations either you risk the hour long run and punch through, getting spotted with no CP left for combat. Or you do the optimal play, hide your marines in a corner and go make a sandwich so you can regenerate all of your CP and actually do something about it when you get back. I'd much rather most of these tools be a finite resource that require supply points to purchase and bring into a level via marine loadout, but sadly I think that's out of the question even in the future of the game.

I'm not even gonna touch on the story, it wasn't Aliens: Colonial Marines bad, but it wasn't Alien: Isolation good either. (Movie quotes out the ass, it yoinked me out of the game's atmosphere so many times.) It's really tough for me because I love what this game got right, and I love what they were trying to do, I just wish they went all in on its sandbox elements and didn't lean so hard into its linear maps and narrative.

I also ran into a litany of irritating, game breaking bugs, I'm just glad I didn't play the game in iron man, because I'd have tossed it in the bin over it.

Oh yeah and marine barks are either broken or they didn't have the means to re-record lines, motion tracker contacts almost always cause your marines to bark "WE'VE BEEN SPOTTED." despite well... Not being spotted at all, in fact the contact is 55 meters out and through several bulkhead doors, we're fine, chill Webb.

(As of June 29th 2023 many of the technical issues I experienced have been addressed in a recent patch, the review remains negative for the time being for my own subjective viewpoints, we will see how further development time and modder support affect this.)

As always, I'll keep comments enabled. If you have arguments to make in bad faith, want to tell me to git gud, or you generally want to troll, feel free to post below so that I can laugh at you. (If you're not a spastic I'll probably reply, my opinion isn't set in stone and I think the game will get better.)