Recent reviews by Kell

Good game, solid 6 or 7 / 10, they already fixed the major bug that caused me to leave a negative review (unable to sleep/wait) so they are workin on it, even on the weekend.

Not perfect, far from bad, and really, really big. It is kinda silly how big it is.

BIG.

Really, really interesting little game! Surprisingly deep for a game with such a shallow tech tree, all around pretty good so far.

In the hopes the dev sees this, here are my only complaints, please don't take these as major negitives toward the game, just some critisims I do have for it.

Too many seige engines from AI. I'm not sure if this is an attempt at balancing to make up for how rather inactive the current AI is, or what... but its not fun to fight. Its not HARD either, but this game can make really interesting, huge battles take place, feels lame that 90% of my fights are just mowing down 30+ balista stacks.

Tutorial doesn't even mention entire systems. Nowhere in the tutorial were 'service people' or w/e their title is explained, mentioned, or even pointed toward. I still after 12+ hours am not entirely sure on what they do, what they are for, or how they work. Same goes for the research/progression system, entirely unmentioned in the demo/tutorial. Neither system is complex, and I did manage to fumble my way threw without any clue how they worked eventually.

The 'story' events are poorly explained and seem entirely pointless? Some crimson horde or something attacked me, but it was just 3 tiny stacks of inf and one ♥♥♥♥♥♥ city? I had two walled cities by that point and multiple stacks of 40+ units... Not sure if that was meant to be a mid game challenge or what, but it didn't work too well as one.

Oh, and for some reason I could do 5x fast forward in the demo but only 2x in the full version?

Needs a meh option.

Fun little game, but really lacking in some core ways.

Pros:
-Really cool world sim, totally the selling point, watching water levels rise and trees spread as you poke and prod a planet into habitability is cool AF and the selling point here.
-Doesn't throw too much at ya at the start (or ever, we will get to that)
-A lot less tedious than some other games of the type, but at the cost of depth.

Cons,
-Way, way too hand holdy and paint by numbers. No choices, no options, things are unlocked one at a time and you WILL use them in that order.
-Game is very focused on providing for your cities. Sadly, they consume resources constantly and only grow when gaining everything they want, so if your not frequently reworking things for growing demands your simply burning resources.
-Planets hold a tiny supply of resources (given its a bloody planet!) and after you melt the ice caps half of that will be under water. Most of them are non-renewable.
-Fixed camera angle just kinda sucks, I get it saves on the art budget but at least cull ♥♥♥♥ thats infront of the camera, building near mountains is a nightmare.

All boils down to a very simple, follow the instructions game with no real options. There is a creative mode that removes the need to grind threw the plot, but it also removes the need to do anything so I dont really see the point.

Biggest problem is totally the cities, they consume certain things every tick, more and different ones based on city pop. They only grow if that tick had all their needs met and all their waste dealt with, but consume anything they can and produce waste every turn anyway. This keeps the game from feeling like the semi-idle cozy game it might work as, you cant sit by and terraform a planet, if you walk away for a while to let the forest grow and the globe warm your city has eaten all the iron ore you had a rail line connected to but not grown at all. Once that happens a few times you lack the needed supplies on map to grow at all... But at the same time, there is way too little to do or work on, systems way too shallow, to make this a factory management game. Its riding the fence between the two and hurting for it.

Also... remarkably simple terraforming for a game named after it? You make two green house gasses (in basicly the same way) from extremely limited resources then slowly use trees to up the O2, the worlds sim of it happening is great, but player input is painfully limited. At some point it just starts spawning random animals around the map, no rhyme or reason to them, they dont do anything, but hey, elephants.

Good try, maybe try it on sale but I'd refund it if I hadnt taken the entire game for a tutorial only to find out it never stops holding your hand...

What the game really needs IMO is to separate the terraforming progression from the city progression, and put about 5x as much depth into terraforming as there is now. It feels like a near optional side quest to a colony building game at the moment, and because you unlocked it by progressing your cities it naturally takes a back seat.

A game changing DLC that not only adds lots of great content and gameplay, but also addresses many of the common frustrations usually left to mods to deal with in the past (limited map size, lack of late game worthy adventures to go on). Worth every penny, honestly 30 bucks for the added animals and normal game features seems fair, the entire grav ship bit is just above and beyond.

Canada's greatest export.

Solid game. Slow paced by some standards at some times, but a beautiful take on a classic setting, solid game play, and a mostly chill community (at least on my server)

I will admit, the server system leaves a lot to be desired and the queues are a bit annoying at times, but its far from enough to ruin things for me. I could see it being very annoying if your trying to do anything organized with a large group however, so might be worth reading up on before ya buy.

Oh, and walking without rhythm doesn't stop sad worms from eating you. Take a point off for that too.

I tried this game way way back when it first launched. I loved the concept, but it had some big flaws. Many, not all, of those flaws have been addressed over the years it seems, and the over all feels of the game has come a long way. Combat still isn't what it could be, but its much more involved than Eve's F1 and wait based system, and honestly, eve is the closest thing I've played. It looks a bit like M&B sometimes, and dresses up as a survival crafting game, but its got more eve in that blood than you would guess. I'd normally rag on a game for being a blatent rerelease, but it seems like a bit of an OSRS situation, same corp new team, second take on the project. Devs are active in the community, friendly, and seem focused on fixing things people actually complain about. I don't totally agree with all the choices they have made, i'd still like to see a bit more intermixing between the PVP and PVE sides of the game, but its come a long way and I'd say its legitimately fun for the right kinda person.

All that said, I'd not personally look at this if you are planning to play solo. Maybe its possible, but things are already slow going with a group of 3, a lot of systems at play, and they are all playin with themselves, so your going to have a rough go of it playing solo. That said, its totally meant to be a social game, and I'm sure many groups would be happy to have one more antisocial farmer quietly toiling away, so ya might be able to make it work.

Oh, and its dumb that you can't claim your skins from the OG game here. Like, I get it, but its dumb.

Really interesting. I personally haven't run into any major bugs, had to reload a save a few times and such but nothing I couldn't recover from. Doesn't do a great job of explaining some aspects of gameplay, but I can't tell if that is EA issues, or if fumbling around and dying a few times in really dumb ways is intended gameplay, if it is, I'm not mad at it.

Nice mix of building and adventure in a simulated solar system. I'd love to see this game grow, ship to ship combat would be tight with this orbital flight system, but even as it stands there is a lot of fun to be had.

Is rather fiddly, the UI isn't dwarf fortress levels of complex, but it isn't simple, it wont warn you before you do stupid things, so ya gotta pay attention and make sure your selecting the right parts, and the right options, the first time.

Great game.

The world building is... not easy to get into. Weird nouns and plenty of flowery language, on top of random generation mixing with the written content can make finding the story a bit of a struggle, but once you find your feet and learn to speak Qud a bit, its a magical, weird, scary setting full of interesting characters, ideas, and plenty of chances to die.

Gameplay is deep. Starts off very simple and I guess it could stay as such if ya wanted it to, but there are simply so many options inside this system that its begging to be cracked open and turned inside out. On the surface its a rogue like RPG, but when you mix that in with a world this wild and immersive sim gameplay logic, things get wild fast. The game doesn't care how you solve a problem, and it gives you a lot of ways to do so.

My only real gripe with the game is the music. Its great, but the volume is really uneven between some of the tracks. It'll be dead silent for hours then suddenly change tracks and slap me in the ears.

Oh, and its a bit grindy for a roguelike IMO. It has an RPG mode that can totally bypass that for anybody that wants to really soak in the world and play the story. But with how hard the game trys to murder you, I do kinda feel like it drags in a classic run.

Having a lot of fun with it. If the performance of the demo scared ya off I'd at least give this a try for 2 hours or less, it runs far better for me than the demo did. Still not great given its older than my GPU, but at least I can max everything out and still get a mostly stable 60fps. Looks great too, and when things DO dip it is consistently due to things going wild with particles and hair.

Gameplay is solid, NOT much of an RPG but still fun enough. I have seen a lot of complaints about the ratio of cutscene to gameplay, and although I'd agree for the first 2-4 hours, it got better after that and does actually let ya play the game sometimes. Still, its a big story rich FF game, your watching a season or two of TV by the end for sure.

Biggest complaint is the lack of a consistent party. I like the sorta arch based story telling in theory, each character brings something interesting to the dynamic of the story, but the gameplay doesn't change much depending on who is with ya, and with only one character to tinker with the shallowness of the RPG elements is even more apparent.

If ya like Final Fantasy stories and their insane ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, give it a try. If you love a good grindy JRPG, this aint it buddy.