Man, I really want to like this game. In fact, it's my third ever purchase on my Steam account, way back in 2015. Saying that just makes me feel old.

It's premise is fun, build your own ships, planes, tanks, whatever, and fight to the death. It's a strategy game with other factions, trying to take over the world.

So much has changed, oh how so much has changed. I play on and off every couple months, and every time I come back, seemingly something else has changed, for better, or worse, or for no reason whatsoever. I have so many ships that just no longer work because of how much has changed. The developers seemingly baby down some mechanics, while making others incredibly hard. Believe it or not back in 2015, the oil drill would actually drill a standalone resource called "Oil".

It's turned into a strategy game, which I was expecting from the very start. It's sort of like Sid Meier's Civilization in a way, except focuses on individual units as well as your overall military power. That's what I don't find particularly fun.

What got me into this game was the one-on-one battles. Build the biggest and deadliest ship you can and try to wipe the floor with an entire faction. Or, trying to find loopholes in the game and taking out faction after faction that way. If I wanted to play a legitimate strategy game I would play Sid Meier's Civilization series. FTD is an amazing concept, except they are taking it far too seriously. It started out as a goofy block building gun game, and that's what I will always see it as.

Some time ago, I started playing the game again, and I found a prefrab called the "Voice Example". I was intrigued, so I placed it on my ship. It immediately started speaking like a Japanese schoolgirl. I was appalled. My guess is they went down the path of World of Warships with the ship waifus, for I dunno, money or something? I guess they weren't raking in as much as they used to. It seems like weebs love to insert themselves into any sort of militaristic medium for some reason, can't get enough anime girls with guns I guess. Nothing is sacred anymore.

Look, if you are one of those people who loves to build things and takes military strategy far too seriously, then you will spend thousands of hours in this game. You will love it, trust me.

If you are like me and just want to mess around in a campaign and see what you can get away with, I'm sorry, the game just isn't like that anymore.

Update post-camera: ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, these devs smoking them Broward County Tic-Tacs if they think this is a good way to push an update and also cope and do damage control. It's almost comical to see how they manage this game and the community. For those of you who like the old version better, you can roll back the update in the betas. Look for the one that says "pre_camera_change". Boom! Happy times. I'm staying far away from the FTD community. I just want to build my ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥-9 in peace.