Reseñas recientes de Ipsaeus

tl;dr The game is quite good, but not excellent. The core gameplay is solid, and the characters, art, and writing are incredibly charming, but replayability is quite poor. I would still recommend it if you like card-based roguelikes, though, especially on a sale.

The good:
- Gameplay: Fairly typical for a card-based roguelike, but well executed. You pick 3 characters, and these characters form the card pool you'll select from as the game goes on. Each character has a specific focus, with clear strengths and weaknesses, meaning every combination is going to play quite differently. You also select a ship which determines your base health and can introduce its own gimmick into your combat. You collect artifacts as you progress through the game, and these offer passive bonuses equivalent to Slay the Spire. Cards and mechanics have reasonable variety, and making the most out of each hand is a fun challenge. In comparison to Slay the Spire, though, this game focuses much more on planning, positioning, and resource management across turns rather than simply optimizing each hand you draw.
- Characters and Writing: This game has a very blunt, goofy sense of humor which is pretty much perfect for me. Each character is well-written, and each has their own quirks, playing off each other in dialogue. Your crew will comment on ongoing battles, but also have crew-specific dialogue in random events and boss encounters. This dialogue offers a breath of freshness in runs that quickly become repetitive (see below).
- Music: A simple, catchy OST. What more is there to say?

The bad:
- Replayability: This game has only 3 zones, and each of those zones has the same boss every time, using the same attacks every time. Additionally, there are only ~30ish other random encounters in the game. This takes a ton of the variance out of runs and, in my opinion, destroys replayability. The story requires you to get 18 clears to reach the ending, and I did, but halfway through I turned down the difficulty just to make things faster.
- Difficulty: The game starts your first run on "Normal", the easiest difficulty, and it's pretty easy. I'm reasonably experienced with the genre, but not an expert, but I beat the boss on my very first run. I honestly expected it was a fakeout, or that it would unlock something later, or that I simply got incredibly lucky on my card selections (given I didn't know any of the cardpool ahead of time). But no, the game is just easy on its default difficulty. It's not a walk in the park - you do still have to make reasonable choices, play your hands well, and make sure you're building a cohesive deck. But if you know deckbuilding roguelike basics, you're going to be able to clear reliably.

I would absolutely love for this game to get a DLC, or add modding support, or something, because its biggest downfall is just a lack of content. It's good, and certainly good enough to buy, but it could've been a landmark game in the genre. Maybe it still can be. But for now, it's simply good.

This game got me to change my profile picture.

I mean, I'm probably going to change it back in a few weeks (or maybe I already have), but still.

A bit rough around the edges, but still the best spacesim currently on the market. I'd heartily recommend it to anyone who has ever dreamed of flying a spaceship, but be prepared for a ludicrously steep learning curve and a harshly unforgiving universe. That being said, the community is, in general, fantastic and is always friendly to new players, so getting help is usually just a few chat messages away (assuming you can figure out how to work chat :P).

However, if you are not into spacesims, then I would strongly caution you to watch videos and/or livestreams of Elite before choosing to buy, as the game is most certainly a niche product and not for everyone. Also, note that the game does not throw objectives at you, so if you require a defined quest line to keep yourself entertained, you may want to look elsewhere. The game is a sandbox, and you define your progression almost entirely on your own.

Please note, though, that even with the above reservations, I still wholeheartedly recommend the game to those who find the spacesim genre interesting.