Recent reviews by Rowch

TLDR; Good game, but has its flaws. Performance needs work. Would give it a in between if possible.

-First about my Hrs played:
I've got about 50-60hrs~ into the game on gamepass. Only reason i got it here briefly was because I couldn't get the UI mod (Yes the UI for inventory is crap for PC.. again) working on gamepass so I thought that was the issue. Long story short I ended up finding the problem and got it working and now continue to play it on gamepass currently, and will pick it up here down the road on sale to add to my collection.

Now that that's out of the way..

-The game:
At its core, it's a pretty good Bethesda game, nothing really groundbreaking though. People who played the latest fallout games (mostly F4) will see some similarities between the 2. So Just think Fallout but space and that's what you're getting really in a nutshell. The Intro was complete crap IMO, you get thrown into everything right away with very little explanation of how to do what. You go from mining on a planet, to raiding a full pirate base within about 30min. Plenty of planets to explore, seems to be a good amount of random events. I'm still seeing new ones 50-60hrs in, and hearing from friends/family about ones I still haven't experienced. IE: Ran over to a ship landing on the planet.. it was hostile, boarded it to take it over.. and when i got inside, they took off with me inside, and my ship still on the ground. So I was up in space fighting this crew in their ship, while mine was still on the planet.

-The animations are great in the game, some of the best facial expressions I've seen in a long time (Bioware take notes). Seeing forehead wrinkles on kids is a bit odd at first, but I quickly got over it.

-The dialogue is about what you'd expect from a bethesda game, nothing crazy or new there.

-Ground combat is about the same as fallout.. no v.a.t.s though (so far for me at least). The Space combat is roughly the same, but that's where they implemented the "v.a.t.s" So fallout vets will see the similarity there with the targeted firing after lock on. Nothing too fancy, other than the zero-g space combat.. only experienced that once so far though.

-The ship building is pretty cool, you can build your ship anyway you want with the parts you're able to purchase, as long as you meet the requirements. The outpost building (which i haven't touched too much) looks and feel very similar to how fallout 4 was with its settlements. You can build a total of 8 outposts across the galaxy on any planet by deafult +16 more with maxed skill for it.

:Now some of the flaws (IMO):
-The POI's, space and planetside are gonna be about 80-90% of the time filled with pirates. So no real creativity/variety there. Only time you will see some variety (Not by much though) is with missions of course. But even those you will most likely be dealing with some sort of pirates. I realize its a big game to have a big variety.. but whats the point of having all this, if I'm going to be experiencing and expecting the same thing wherever I go 80% of the time?
-Space travel is very lackluster.. you get little cut scenes when jumping to different systems, or a little flyby when traveling in system to another planet.
-The companions.. combat.. oh boy.. well afaik you cant direct your companion to do anything other than "wait here".. so no telling them to move there.. or attack this thing.. once they see an enemy, expect bullets to rain from the sky and they go full rambo. The main companions are all "goody 2 shoes" that all seem to have similar views. Definitely a few steps back in that department.. huge dissapointment, no idea wtf they were thinking in this department.
-Inventory management is a headache with the vanilla UI, at least the UI mod made it somewhat manageable from what they were able to do, the game still needs a better UI when transfering items between people/containers. Have 2 columns bethesda! One for yourself or w.e your moving from and one for the person/container your trying to transfer to. It's a pain having to switch the entire inventory to see wtf I just put that gun in. If people want to see their character as they equip stuff.. then have a button to hide one of the columns to show your character instead. Whoever is making decisions in this area.. needs to seriously stay away from these games.
-Performance is not the greatest.. Todd says the game is "optimized" but I feel like its a "lazy optimized". I don't see how you should be getting 10 fps drops on a planet with clear weather.. nothing but dirt and a few scattered rocks (literally).. at night in the middle of no where. Then go to a very busy looking scene with lights casting all over, fog, people walking and still get roughly the same fps. I've also tried just looking at the ground as well (nothing but mud/dirt) and it still struggles.. like wtf is it drawing? The entire other side of the planet? My Cpu was only being used at 35-40% so it wasnt cpu bottlenecked for those wondering. It was using all the gpu for some reason tho.. guessing no proper occlusion or piss poor occlusion? who knows.

tldr: Wait till the bugs with the recent Beyond update get mostly worked out and its on sale.

It's a fun game and worth the sale price. Wouldn't pay the full price though. Pretty chill and relaxing game with a little bit of everything in it (Build, Explore, Fight, Trade). Currently I would wait to purchase it and wait for them to work out all the bugs that came with the Beyond update, to where it's a fun playable experience. When that time comes I'll change my review to being recommended. But in it's current state I can't recommend it when it's supposed to be a "Full Release" game. Since the Beyond update, it feels more like an Early Access game now. Which I would of recommended it if it was, but it's not.

Sorry R* you guys made a fun game, but I cannot support Take2Interactive actions recently. and T2I, you guys lost a customer as I won't be purchasing games with your name on it anymore. That's my middle finger back to you.

TLDR; Great game, SP story was ok, Online is fun with friends and if you don't have hackers f'n with you. WAY TOO OVERPRICED content in the online, Shark Cards are a rip off for what you get in return.


-Singleplayer-
The SP story was ok in my opinion, The main characters were pretty good, I wish they did franklin a bit different.. I always felt like he was just... there, throughout the story and not really memorable imo, pretty much felt like a 3rd wheel. After the story is complete the SP feels lackluster on what to do other than blow things up (which gets boring after about 30min) The modding "WAS" great for it to fill that gap but most of the mods now are completely gone thanks to Take2.

-Multiplayer-
Has a great foundation for online, but it wasn't exectued properly I thought. The Online is a lot of fun playing with friends or meeting other players to have some fun with. The content/toys to play with is abundent. Customization was great, everyone felt unique when meeting other players and seeing their cars and characters.
The prices is what really kills the online though. IMO I think everything is way overpriced.. but ofc you can see why when they sell Shark Cards for in-game currency. Look I understand the DLC content is free and it's optional to purchase.. yadda yadda.. I get that. But when you have the top card for 100$ for only 8m in game that may get you 2 of the new cars and perhaps some left over to customize them fully, C'mon now.. at least make it incetive for more people to buy them.. not rip them off. Then hey maybe you might just have more people buying them. But hey what do I know.. I'm only the potential customer you're trying to attract.

In conclusion though, they (Rockstar not Money bags Take2) made a great game to get a lot of laughs out of and spend hrs just f'n around with friends or other players. But the current C&D put on OpenIV, killing the mass majority of SP, and the Overpriced crap in the online just kills this game completely. So I can't recommend this game until Take2 changes their actions, and when prices are more fair for the customer in what they get in return.

Re-Review:

I am re-doing my review since the game has progressed a lot since my last review.

I still highly recomend this game if you are the builder/survival/planner type with lots of possibilites of creation at your hands, and with the modding community involved with this, and support they are giving. The possibilites of creation is just endless. I've seen full blown automated ship printing factories to ship vending machines.. yes you literly just click a button on the panel rotating your choices and the machine will build that ship you select and pop it out. People even created Space Mini golf.. to even the old classic tetris game. Those are just a select few of ideas of some of the awesome things you can see or create in the game other than just ships and bases. The game continues to get patched and/or content added every thursday since they had launched this into early access. So if you enjoy surviving/building or just plain building.. this game has you covered. A must have in your library imo.