Käyttäjän Orthopraxis viimeaikaiset arvostelut

They finally made a worthy successor to Planescape: Torment. The setting might be different, but I havn't engaged with a game in this way in 20 years.

That's who this review is for. Do you want to play the successor to PS:T? That is as fascinating and as engaging?

You found it, dive in.

The good:
- some fun new ideas here, like breaching before each encounter, instead of the buggy and poorly implemented stealth from previous games.
- neat to have pre-made characters with personality and voiced lines.
- It's more xcom! If that's good for you, this has it.

The bad:
- poor writing. What kind of jackass would throw a smoke grenade and say "SMOKE IN PLAY!" it just seems so forced.
- It's buggy. Ultimately they have a solid game here, but I think it needs a round of patching or two. I Enjoyed nearly all of the 32 hours it took to complete an expert campaign, but lots of quality of life issues - info not displayed in screens where it should. Or for example - when you de-equip items from agents not on the current mission, why doesn't it de-equip guns? You end up having to exit a few screens, swap guns, then re-deploy.
- The final straw for me was bugs in the final campaign missions. Had to replay the same 10 minute stretch for about an hour to get a playthrough that didn't bug out in a way that wouldn't allow advancement.

At the time this came out it seemed to be largely panned or passed over as "Geez, it's more far cry" - which is fair - they certainly have been cranking these out.
For me personally, I never played 1 or 2. I played 3 and very much enjoyed it, but couldn't really get into 4 - it felt like more of 3 just with a different location. 5 and it's recent offshoot/standalone dlc thing I am curious about, but given how bored I've been getting with Far Cry, I'm not interested in spending more than 10 bucks for more-of-the-same, plus the reports of how rediculous and repetitive the story stuff is is a huge turn off.

All that said, at this point in time after a few years of Far Cry where I've lost interest since 3, 4, and 5 are all basically the same game - Far Cry Primal here is landing. The change of setting (and thus weaponry, enemies, etc.) is exactly what I needed to have a more fun and interesting experience. While the systems are the same (kill animals, get parts, upgrade your stuff, upgrade your weapons), the differences make it compelling, e.g. in 3/4/5 why the hell do I need badger skins to upgrade my backpack?

In Primal you are a damn caveman - OF COURSE you need badger skins to upgrade your backpack. OF COURSE you need fancy rock to make your spear better, OF COURSE you need better wood to upgrade your bow.

Furthermore the wildlife is scary, which of course it should be because you are a caveman, and not a dude from 2010 with a friggin assault rifle.

Anyway, today in 2020 after hitting my personal level of Far Cry exhausting after about 25% of 4, this is awesome.

If you are considering buying, do so for the multiplayer - the campaign and AI is not great. Minimal effort, and I'm nearly certain the AI "cheats" in some ways. You'll find that no matter what you do, the AI somehow manages to consistently pull off amazing turns doing 3x the damage you do, pulling all their "Draw a cards" and color synergies at once.

I generally don't bother with Early Access games these days, preferring to wait and play whatever the developer considers "finished". As such I waited the last year for this, looking forward to it after reading interesting writeups about it.

Unfortunately it appears it either released too early or they didn't put any effort into properly designing and playtesting the campaign mode, and have a bizarre attitude around it's difficulty - referring to the campaign as "A free addition to the game" (a free addition? You were in early access. You released your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game. Is this where we've come now, that early access is considered "release" and everything after a free update?) and suggesting that issues with the campaign are the result of people being less experienced with the game.

Here's the thing though - when you design a game, and a campaign mode specifically with tech trees and progression, it is on YOU to either include detailed tutorials, or use gameplay to teach the player how to overcome challenges, and/or to provide to tools to overcome challenges. Assuming every player has hundreds of hours of experience from your early access period is a really odd design philosophy.

Anyway the core of my gripe is that the campaign mode is no fun, havn't tried survival yet. The initial missions come in three types:
- traditional RTS - these are fun, but the first like 3-4 are very boring and simple - make food buildings, use food to make tents, use tents to make workers, use workers to make rangers (and soldiers if you unlock them in the tech tree, which maybe you wont?). Rinse and repeat this until you are big enough and kill everything, eventually getting annoyed at how many tents you need to build to satisfy the win conditions.
- single hero tactical maps - these are interesting, but the core mechanic to get something out of these is to mouse over everything in a room looking for activatable objects.
- Zombie hoard modes with 600-1000 enemies - these could be super cool, but after the first few missions, you find yourself boxed in and unable to progress without completing these. Furthermore while they seem like an interesting concept (defend a point from 1000 zombies with limited resources) at this point in the campaign you have no advancement on the tech tree, and thus either have rangers or soldiers and some barricades that cost the same resource as soldiers. The end result is that basically you have 2 levers to play with, not much options, but are expected to clear these to move on. The only winning strategies I've found involve tedious pause/unpause micro.

All told, this is a disapointment. I would strongly suggest skipping this or waiting until they have patched it further, assuming they don't abandon it outright.

Game has been compared to Stardew however I feel like that isn't a fair comparison. While the game is somewhat deep, you will constantly find yourself running up against requirements to do anything, that you have NO IDEA how to get the components involved. Normally this is ok in my book, if a game does a good job pushing you to learn the new things, or find the new things. However this game very much is happy to let you think you are doing the right thing for hours without any guidance to look elseware, learn more, talk to people, etc.

Ultimately I like the core mechanics here a lot, but the more I play, the more frustrated I get, feeling like I'm playing a mobile game that is more interested in keeping me mindlessly running around vs. engaging in meaningful gameplay. Every step forward is accompanied by 2 steps back. Further the progression seems like they designed it with a dartboard. For example you start finding different "sermons" for the church mini-game very early on, and unlock TONS of them across the tech tree, which suggests you should be able to make them. However you can't make them until you build a writing table, and once you build the writing table you need notes, and you need to have figured out how to make paper and you can't make notes until you have ink, and you can't make ink until you unlock alchemy which you can't do until you repair the bridge and find the witch, and it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ exhausting.

Edit - so 20 hours later, this deserves an update. Basically, there is a hump to this game, and I was right before it. There are ways to improve your quality of life that become available as you go, however the criticism that the game doesn't do a great job pointing you in the right direction remains. If anyone picks this up (I'm changing to reccomended at this point) do yourself a favor and don't assume the game will breadcrumb you towards new ♥♥♥♥.
- put the effort into breaking down any barriers that keep you from going new places on the map.
- explore those places
- talk to everyone
- progress people's quests
- Unlocking the gate in the basement will lead to automating resource collection, which is a huge quality of life step, allowing automated farming and resource gathering so you don't have to.
- If you are feeling overwhelmed, remember the game has no time limit, so if you want to focus on one thing, do so, everything else will wait. If you hit a wall, go focus on another thing. Many things get unlocked as you go that are dependencies for everything else, and it doesn't all come together until 20 hours in or so.
- The teleport stone is REUSABLE. I had thought it would be consumed on use, so I didn't buy one for the longest time, to save money. However it is reusable on a 3 minute timer which will save you so much walking.

This game was fantastic. If you enjoyed the play style of Bioshock or System Shock, this is for you. Interesting and compelling story, fun combat, great environment design, great audio design, unique style - this was a fantastic experience.

Fantastic little experience. Reminded me very much of Inside, with the exception that the puzzles are easier - barely even puzzles usually, but thats ok. Otherwise it had the same mysterious texture and tone, same minimal color palette. Although where Inside was nearly entirely grim, this has moments of brightness. Definitely enjoyed.

Soundtrack also deserves a specific callout. At times sinister, at times joyful, at times melancholy, and often entirely absent - this is one of those games where the music fits the music in every scene - the developers appear to have considered the soundtrack to be a critical part of this experience. When the credits role, the musicians involved (there are I want to say 8 or so) get credited by name, which I think tells you something in terms of how important they were considered creatively.

Also to comment on length - this is not a long game. I think my play time start to finish was between 3 and 4 hours. I found it fantastic - I will remember every moment of this game, and for me 15 bucks was a fine price for that. However everyone has different priorities and budgets, and it seems silly to me that people might review this negatively based on length - so people should be aware going in, what they are paying for.

"Oh cool, the FTL people's new game is out, I guess I'll give it a try."
6 hours later
"Whoops I played all day..."

I don't know if this will have the staying power or longevity of FTL, but it may well. Very similar feel to it, right down to the "Ok I guess I'll take a crack at the boss fight... ah ♥♥♥♥ I got my ass kicked. Until next time!"

One major difference is that the progression of Into the Breach feels far more predictable - without "random events" that might reward you crew or gear, I don't think each Run will be so wildly different.

That said, the game has a sort of random loot mechanic where some missions will reward a "Time Capsule", and you don't know what will be inside until you open it. However in my 6 hours of play today, I never felt like the findings would make or break my run - just provide incremental assistance.

All told, highly reccomended I think. 15 is a nice price, the gameplay is rewarding and fun, and Ben Prunty's music is great here as well. Maybe not as iconic as those songs from FTL (you can surely hear them in your head right now if you try) but similar in how it provides a tone to the game.

Subnautica is, in short, exactly what I've wanted from "Survival" style games for years, ever since minecraft. In short:
- an interesting world. By making it an Ocean world, you have a central hook to make it interesting. The whole game probably could take place on land, but from the get go, this makes it more intriguing.

- A light story - the story never requires anything of you. WHile sometimes it might take an urgent tone, things will wait forever. Additionally, the story serves the purpose of helping to direct you around the world to find more things, using a light touch at worst - perhaps sometimes too light! But as a result, you never feel like things are just handed to you.

- Non-onerous resource usage. By this I mean, hunger and thirst don't constantly tick down so fast you are endlessly pounding food and water. Generally when they get low, if you make the effort to fill them back up, you can forget them for a while. Additionally the game provides many options to handle these things, even down to the player almost always having access to fish they can catch and eat in a pinch.

- A deep progression system, that does what you want (continually empower you in new ways) at a reasonable pace. Where you start the game with a bottle of water and some rations, barely able to hold your breath and terrified of your surroundings, by the time you begin to hit "end-game" you start to feel like master of the deep.